Tables are back, magedb hosting, mageprojects server move

Hi,

Quite a lot is going on in and around MageDB. Lets start with the Tables.

Tables are back
At first when i started with magedb (late 2006 early 2007) i was under the impression that tables where just bad period. That opinion got changed roughly a year ago when i read something like this somewhere: “Tables are not intended for defining how a page looks. Tables are here for lists of data so use it for lists and use divs for page layout stuff.” so when i made the category and file view in MageDB i remembered that. The result of that is that tables are back in MageDB (if you search the internet on MageDB and tables you will find me posting on some blog that i removed tables) and are kicking asses there. As a result of tables being back the MageDB browser support could be from Internet Explorer 6 and up. I usually don’t support IE6 but in this case where i wide range of people could use this script at some point in time it seemed wite to me to support as much browsers as possible with as little javascript and css tricks as possible. Right now i use NO javascript tricks and NO css tricks and it works fairly well on IE6. Some parts do not work on IE6 but that will have to be fixed by using the famous IE7 javascript file which makes ie6 act mostly like ie7. this is done through conditional comments in html so that other browsers see it as.. comments and do nothing with it. Only IE knows it and does something with it. Microsofts way of telling they screwed up big time in ie and a possible way of making it all a bit better.

MageDB hosting
This is right now just an idea but something i’ve been thinking about a lot lately and something i really want to provide with magedb. Perhaps some of you remember paFileDB? they had an option to buy “paFileDB hosting” which was optimised (right?) for use with paFileDB thus giving you the ability to have hosting that was sure to work with paFileDB and had support from the creators. I tend to do roughly the same thing. I don’t plan on buying a dedicated server and put hosting on it becasue that’s not just one server if you do it good. That’s going to be atleast 2. 1 for backup one for the accounts. My idea now is to allow you to register for a simple free account on mageprojects on which you can host your files, screenshots and have your database on. It’s NOT meant as hosting where you host your site on.. only your database with the graphical interface (MageDB). That idea would be the free plan. The paid plan (yes that’s going to be there if i do this at all) will allow you to run your site from that account, will allow you to buy a domain along with it, will get you access to probably cpanel and will give you support for MageDB. That’s going to cost you some euros per month. Right now i’m thinking of something around 15 euros per month.

Mageprojects server move
A few days ago i received a message from my host that they where attacked and are going to stop providing hosting packages and giving all there customers 2 weeks to move there sites to another host or everything will be lost (they didn’t said the last part but i can guess that) so i’m right now hunting for a new hosting provider. Finding one in the netherlands (my home country) or some in europe that’s equal or better then the package i currently have seems extremely hard to find (6 gb space, 60 gb bandwidth for just 4 pound in uk) so i’m right now looking at hosting in USA to see if that’s going to work out. Whatever the results are. Mageprojects will have to move to another server within now and 12 days.

As for MageDB progress. None happened yesterday but last sunday the file view was nearly finished (only thumbnails left to do). And in the very near future i’m going to make a blog post here with the features that are in MageDB right now, those that will get in there before i release a release candidate and how the features are in the end MageDB 1.0.0 release. For now i do intend to release a beta later this week (depends on the admin panel) and during that beta new features will still be added. During the release candidate cycle there will only be bug and feature fixes but no new features at all. The release planning so far:
MageDB Beta 1 (0.8.0) — later this week or early next week
MageDB Bera 2 (0.9.0) — unknown (and only if needed)
MageDB Release Candidate 1 (0.9.5) — unknown
MageDB Release Candidate 2 (0.9.6) — unknown (and only if needed and as you can see in the release numbers i can go till rc 5 ^_^)
MageDB Final (1.0.0) — somewhere in July i hope

So a lot of stuff is going to happen with MageDB and Mageprojects.

Till next post (on perhaps another server),
Mark