Banty Chick's WebAPP Web Automated Perl Portal

Jos's Notes

Follow Up ~ Monday, March 31, 2008 at 11:23 AM

Looks like I made it a little over another month after that last post. I left that WebAPP Network Group at On's .net site on Sept 7, 2006. On and I were friends before that. We've been enemies ever since, purely by his choice. Never been so hassled in my life.

But bad as it's been since, the worst nightmare was before leaving Jack and Ted behind at the WebAPP Network site. The NE group would have been all right all along if the rest of the group would have done something about the way Jack and Ted treated their fellow developers. As it was, some found it simply impossible to stay, with me as their main target being one of those who could not. But I wasn't the only one - there were several others who left that group as well, and for the same reasons.

Not sure what they think they are going to win out of all this. The "WebAPP" name ??? Big Wow.

Dear WebAPP Group ~ Monday, July 31, 2006 at 7:07 AM

Today I woke up at 6:30 a.m. after only 5 hours sleep, and as often happens, you were the first thing on my mind. The last thing I did last night, also as often happens, was work on some files for the WebAPP script to try to organize a bunch of bug fixes I have done in past weeks into some order to put into the files and make available for you and the world to download and use. For the past two years I have put about everything I had going on the back burner to dedicate myself to this project, for a good part of the time and for most segments of these past two years.

First I started off with cleaning up the HTML in your files, where there were scores of incorrectly nested tables and other errors that caused dozens of HTML validation errors on every page. I worked through every one of them, digging through the table tags and Perl code until I could find and eliminate the error or omission. Now most of you have mostly HTML valid sites.

Next I proceeded working through your forum board for Fixes. There were fixes prepared and posted on that board that were never applied since the year 2003. A large number of these fixes were by Abywn, but there were others too. One by one, I checked each to see whether they were already applied. If they were, I marked in red for someone to please move the thread. No one responded. If they were not applied, I applied each one, tested, made notes in the file and in the change log, added the changes to the file in the CVS, and posted a note to you on the forum about that bug fix being applied. No one responded. I continued anyways and put it all together as a new version, WebAPP v0.9.9.2, a little closer to bug free than WebAPP was before. This was in February of 1995, after 7 months of dedication to and work on this project.

During those months, two consecutive administrators who were in charge of running the site had left on short notice - Ditto and DenDen. Most of the main contributors of the past were gone, most leaving with little or no word, no goodbyes. Floyd, as project manager of the Genesis project, made the biggest impact by his sudden departure. He was gone before I even started on any work for the project. Abywn left very early during the Cornerstone development project of June 1994. She contributed some of her modifications to the CVS and then left after about a month. I was working with Ted on Genesis code and John Drury on HTML/CSS for awhile. After releasing an updated CSS sheet and a Menu Manager redesigned to work with Genesis, John drifted off. Ted left when Carter came back and stated he was about to become active on the Genesis project. This was after Ted and I had managed to get the entire thing mostly in working order. Shortly before DenDen left he decided to delete all project development boards, close down development, and dedicate the site strictly to WebAPP support for legacy versions. I informed Carter of this, and Carter promptly shut down the entire site. On recommended me as a possible person to keep the site going, so Carter went with that and asked me. I said yes, and that is when I became Administrator and Project Manager for the WebAPP site and project. I was pretty happy about it at the time. This was also in February of 1995. So I cleaned up the site and quickly opened it back up. I restored the deleted development boards and proceeded with development and beta testing with the group for 0.9.9.2. There weren't many problems with it as I had been testing everything in it all along on my sites, so before long WebAPP v0.9.9.2 was released.

Over the next few months, a few bug reports came in, Anton fixed some things, and Carter added password encryption after a major security problem we had that March. These and a few things I did went into version 0.9.9.2.1 released in April that year, 2005.

Meanwhile, I proceeded with finding and eliminating the causes of several thousand Perl warnings that WebAPP was generating when the warnings switch was turned on in the script. These warnings caused WebAPP not to run on some servers and to run slowly and clunky on all servers. After several months I was able to say that the great majority of them are gone. That work along with a few incidental bug fixes and security patches all went into another version, WebAPP v0.9.9.2.2 of July 2005. WebAPP was now a smoother and faster script. I was able to run it even on my Windows 98 computer, with warnings turned on. This never had been possible in the past. To the contrary, it barely ran on my computer at all, warnings or not. Now it runs quite smoothly either way.

I upgraded my websites with this version 0.9.9.2.2 and continued on with maintaining the WebAPP site and providing support at times when it seemed no one else could or would. Also I worked some on my own sites, each of which has a WebAPP installation running, and some of which were quite busy. Over those months I uncovered a few things to fix and several features to improve upon - memberlist, backups, statistics, XML, front news, recommend, email topic, security logging, blocks editing, Calendar, and other etc. I added all these features and fixes and submitted the package to you at the WebAPP site development boards as WebAPP 0.9.9.3 beta, in early October 2005. This package was in almost perfect working order. Once the team got ahold of it there was the traditional push to get whatever new features anybody could into the package before release. I went along with most of these, adding integrated ShowHTML, IMX Instant Messenger, Menu Manager, Gallery, Forum Archiving, Threaded Comments, upgraded Who's Online Block, breadcrumbs, new Ban routines, CAPTCHA, Welcome Message for Guests, Profile Data Administration, user.cgi, On/Off banners, Center Blocks, new UBBC tags, and etc. I checked all these in the code, and the group ran ongoing beta tests while I added fixes until mostly all of this new stuff was basically in working order. I was able to finish up enough to get a package together for Carter in time for WebAPP's 4th birthday, Jan 3 2006. This took up most of my Christmas holiday.

Since then there have been a couple more minor release versions that included some security patches and fixes for some small things that were found after 0.9.9.3 release. These were versions 0.9.9.3.1 and 0.9.9.3.2 of late January and early May of this year, 2006. Then there was the version for the WebAPP Network group, WebAPP NE v0.9.9.3.3 of this last month, June 2006.

Now you might wonder why I do all this. I have 3 main reasons. One, I want a good working script for my sites and few others seem to find much time to work on it. Two, I would much like to fit into some community and be a part of contributing something worthwhile to the world. Thirdly, of course I would want at least some credit for all of this. I've used other peoples' contributions whereever I could find them, often fixing them with as little change as possible just to honor the contributor and give credit for the efforts. Some contributions were actually good as they were when submitted. But a large majority of this I must say I did all myself.

I feel that I have succeeded in the first of my motives for doing this. I have a much better script than I did before. On the other counts, I feel that for the most part I have been abused, ignored, and trashed on. Yes, by only a couple of you or a few, but the few are so loud and the others so quiet, that the insults and downgrading of my work has been what has seemed most apparent. I deserve a lot better than this after all I've done for the WebAPP project.

I know some of you probably don't even know about any of this, so if that's you, then please just ignore this. Chances are most everybody will anyways.

I know I have built on the work of others and that those who went before me have put in a lot of time too, but can you imagine how many hours I have put into this thing? I know I didn't "have" to, and I would have done it anyways, but I didn't have to share it all with you and the rest of the world. Come on guys, give me a little kindness now and then, if you could there, please. [wink]

Bugs I fixed for WebAPP ~ Friday, July 28, 2006 at 11:46 PM

I guess since I didn't get very far with my story on what happened with the WebAPP group, I could start new with a list of all the bugs I have fixed for WebAPP. It will take a long time to make this list. Maybe I won't get very far with that either. I keep forgetting about this Journal Mod I have here. This was the first mod I ever made.

WebAPP Story ~ Monday, July 24, 2006 at 10:12 PM

Well I guess I didn't get very far with that.

My First Words ~ Thursday, April 07, 2005 at 10:03 AM

Here's what I said when I signed up -

"Hi, I'll help where I can. I'm pretty distracted right now with a mod_rewrite project, but that will end SOMETIME, I expect. Or that's if you'll have me ;)"

To which Ditto replied:

"I'll betcha Abywn would be thrilled to have you on the team!"

Followed by Abwyn:

"Sure enough :)

Welcome Jos"

So that was the day it all started.

The beginning ~ Tuesday, April 05, 2005 at 3:18 PM

It all started after Ditto took over as webmaster of the WebAPP site so she could open the site back up. Web-app.org had been down for months, with most of the time no one even knowing what had happened to it. It had simply disappeared. A lot of folks carried on as best they could using Ditto's theme design site. Then when we got word that Ditto was going to get web-app.org running again, many of us were very happy to be able to get back in to our old "home".

Ditto started back up with a lot of enthusiasm for the project and for new development. She created many new boards for WebAPP "Cornerstone" development, with some of them for signing up to join various "teams". One of these teams was the Bug Zapping Team.

I signed up for that one on May 21 2004. I was thrilled to get a chance to work with Abywn on the code for WebAPP, since I'd admired her for a long time. Abwyn had fixed many, many bugs in the WebAPP scripts over the time I had with the project. She had been ordained by Ditto as Team Leader for the Bug Zapping team.

Change Log for 0.9.9.2.1 ~ Tuesday, April 05, 2005 at 1:32 PM

Last 0.9.9.2.1 Change Log

Link to 0.9.9.2 Change Log ~ Tuesday, April 05, 2005 at 1:12 PM

Last 0.9.9.2 Change Log

My Work on 0.9.9.2.1 for WebAPP ~ Tuesday, April 05, 2005 at 1:03 PM

I would love to see a nice writeup of all I did towards version 0.9.9.2.1 of WebAPP as far as fixes I did myself and new features that I developed myself. So therefore I am setting out here to make a journal of all I can remember about it. I plan to use the changelog for reference. There will probably be some notes on things other people contributed mixed in with these as well.

First Entry ~ Wednesday, July 4, 2001 at 6:11 PM Evening

This is just a sample entry to show you how it works

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