MatthewSchenker

Good Morning, To jcloaiza: Over the past few weeks, my ServInt sites have often been extremely sluggish. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this morning once again all my Servint sites (and e-mail) are down and I am receiving customer complaints left and right. Is anyone else experiencing this today? Thanks, Matthew EDIT: Just found out -- again, via Twitter -- that this was an outing to fix a kernel vulnerability. It was supposed to be <15 minutes but it is now 4 hours.

Greetings, I'm glad Reed posted that. For me, I got some sleep and am better able to just chalk it up to ridiculously bad luck for all involved -- clients and ServInt. Propagating information like this also helps those of us who need some support when clients want to know what happened. Like all adversity in life, I'm hoping that, through this, we all learned something and will be wiser and stronger. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, Ryan: I appreciate the fact that clients should have a back-up plan when doing live presentations. However, in this case, it is a contest site, and the presentation was more of a launch, after which contestants were supposed to start using the site. It was all planned far ahead of time, carefully orchestrated months ahead of time. Charles: I think we're talking about different things here. Of course, I would never lead a client to believe that outages don't occur. It's one thing to cite in a contract that outages may happen, and quite another thing for the site to fail for 10 hours at a crucial juncture. How many developers would be comforted by the fact that they had a clause in their contract saying this might happen? Having it in your contract doesn't protect you from the reality of client impressions and business repercussions. Regarding "integrity, honesty, and being a professional": I consider myself to be all three. And just for the record, I am paying ServInt for one of its premier services. I admit that in the end this may just be a case of phenomenally bad luck and bad timing. The outage occurred right at the heart of all the activity for this project. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, I'd be curious if anyone here explains to clients ahead of time that this sort of thing might happen. My guess is, it would make you look bad next to the competition (who isn't saying this). Part of the cleanup effort is to use various channels to make it 100% crystal clear, and totally certain to my clients, that this was a failure of a service beyond my control and has nothing to do with my work or the CMS I use. On a related note: does anyone know of an independent resource that provides information on server downtime, so I can compare various hosts? Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, All told, including loss of FTP and email, about a 10-hour downtime. That is beyond absurd in 2014. And e-mails sent during the downtime are all still lost. This morning, I face the impossible mess of explaining things to a client who went in front of an audience to launch a site that I spent around 30 hours developing. All they showed was a blue screen. I'd like to know what it is about ServInt's hardware that could cause this highly unusual situation. Sorry if I am too upset about this, but it has a real impact on my business. And like a lot of people here, my business can't really afford hits like this. Thanks, Matthew EDIT: Just saw this incredible statement on the ServInt Portal: "...No device outside of the ServInt network is supposed to be capable of impacting the core in this way..." I might expect a statement like this from a college student learning how network hardware works, not from a company hosting very valuable, real-world assets.

Greetings, This is outrageous. The server has been down for almost 6 hours. How in the world could a modern hosting service be in this situation? Thanks, Matthew

Hello, Is anyone else experiencing a problem with a Servint account? I cannot view or log into ANY of my sites hosted with them, nor can I log into the ServInt portal. This is a disaster. I literally launched a major international project TODAY, with a live presentation occurring this evening in Germany for the site. Does anyone have any information on this? Thanks, Matthew

Hey Everyone, I have tried so many of these... I keep coming back to Espresso (MacRabbit). It lacks a couple of things that Sublime Text has, such as the indent lines and auto-complete PHP functions. But overall, Espresso is smooth. I have tried Sublime Text, but a couple of little things bug me about it. One is inconsistent code coloring. For example, PHP in the following two snippets would be colored differently: <img src="<?php echo $page->image->url; ?>"> And <p><?php echo $page->main_body; ?></p> It's a relatively small thing, but it is annoying. I actually keep switching between ST3 and Espresso, so maybe I'll find a way around the above issue. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, Well, earlier this week I was getting very little sleep and working on three projects simultaneously. I was making some changes to the CSS file for project 1, and kept reloading the page, wondering why that particular CSS change wasn't taking effect. I even opened Firebug and could not see the change. You can guess the reason. Sorry Joss, it's not as bad as yours. But there is a connection here: I was thinking of a certain pirate narrator while working. How do pirates get WiFi while out at sea? Thanks, Matthew

Sorry Gurumeditation... Between the amazing stuff in ProcessWire and the stellar support community, it can be hard to do any work around here! Talk about "RelativeTime": 9 minutes from post to double answer. Thanks, Matthew

Hi Pete, I've been using an Intuos5 medium-sized tabled for a couple of years and really like it. The Intuos is great for sketching, paired with Illustrator. I also use it along with ArtRage. After you use it for a while, it beccomes really natural. But at first using the tablet feels a bit funny (I kept reaching for my mouse for a few days as I was getting accustomed to it). Thanks, Matthew

Greeting, I'm always a bit jealous of you ex MODx-ers. At least you came from a decently flexible system, which got you using some proper pratices, and (I think) you could convert some sane code into ProcessWire materials. For those of us who came from Joomla, not only was there nothing to re-use, but Joomla encourages such bad coding habits it takes a while to convert your sites and adjust your thinking. But the bottom line is: we're here now! Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, I have two opposite interpretations here... I think this is a good moment for us to remember how complex Internet security really is. We can sometimes get the idea that if we just run this or that script we have it covered. But I've been researching security over the past few months, and I'm amazed at how murky the situation is. It seems to me that a lot of our "security" is an illusion. It's only secure as long as no one seriously tries to break in. If a malicious person has enough knowledge, motivation, and time, nothing is completely secure. On the other hand, the "Heartbleed" situation reveals that even security problems are more contained than they first appear. With all the hype, you would think that every server in the world is broken. Read further and you see that most servers weren't even running the compromised SSL library. And the ones that were compromised were able to seal the hole quickly. On a related matter, this situation also revealed how poorly most people understand the basics of the Internet. Advice to rush out and change your passwords was silly. If the server was compromised, your data isn't made safe by changing your password; if the server was "fixed," there is no need (of course, changing passwords regularly is a good idea for entirely separate reasons). Major newspapers published inaccurate (even damaging) information. For example, The New York times published an article suggesting it was the open source nature of the SSL library that is the problem, stating that "its code resides online and can be amended by anyone." There is a lot we can learn here about security, but the lessons are not always so clear. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, I've spent so much time experimenting with various MVC frameworks (CakePHP, Laravel, CodeIgniter, Yii). I discovered Phalcon a few months ago, and gave it a try. Since my background is in C derivatives, it seemed interesting to me. The speed boost Phalcon promised was really enticing. After trying it out, I will say I like Phalcon. But the speed advantages may not be relevant to you unless you are running really intensive sites. In recent months, I've spent much more time delving into ways to use ProcessWire as a framework. I've written about this here on the forum (https://processwire.com/talk/topic/2393-processwire-framework). To me, the ProcessWire framework runs circles around some of the ones that get so much attention. Yes, I'm looking at you Mr. Laravel. Thanks, Matthew

Hey Ryan, Excellent idea! How about an item called "Good Karma" with an open price? Thanks, Matthew

Hey Everyone, I got some spam today from Plaxo, and I was about to delete it when their logo caught my eye... http://www.plaxo.com/ Just thought that was amusing. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, First, let me say that I am always very impressed with CMS Critic. As for ideas, I think it would be great to shed some light on who votes most for which CMS. Of course, there are limits to this, and as Joss said you can easily ask for too much data. But within reason it might be nice to ask questions like this: Considering the ways you use a CMS, how do you view yourself: 1. I am more of a designer 2. I am more of a developer (coder) 3. I am a designer/developer It would be great to present some kind of visualization that (hopefully) shows how (if) certain people cluster around particular CMSs. I have always wanted to parse out the data on CMS use. I think most comparisons on the web leave out the fact that not all systems can be compared because they appeal to very different people. It is the rare syatem that appeala across the board. Since you're doing the vote, you have people's attention. It seems you could use this to creatively get some more insights. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, @Joss: Leonard Cohen for sure. I mentioned him on the first page of this discussion. Only problem is, his poetry makes me stop working. Lately, these are good: Andrew Bird (the album "Thrills") Keren Ann (especially the song "Strange Weather") Sun Ra (the album "Space is the Place") Not really programming music, but have you had a chance to hear/watch Johnny Cash's "The Hurt"? http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, You will have to force a template to set a temporary password for you. 1. Add this code to any template file in your site: $temp = $users->get('admin'); $temp->of(false); $temp->pass = 'rememberme'; $temp->save(); Replace "rememberme" with your own temporary password. 2. Browse to the page where you placed this code. 3. Remove the code from the template (so it does not reset the password again). 4. Log into your site and change your password from the admin control panel. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings Fokke, Thanks for posting this! Great work. Viewing (at the moment) on iPad Safari, and the whole experience of the site is terriric. The large images work well to give an immersive feel to the whole site. Nice design for the slideshows of the "Collection" items. Just a couple of very small comments: the text on individual "Collection" items has odd line breaks (see screen shot below). The slideshow is just a bit slow. Excellent work. The client should be appreciative of how well you present their works! Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, There are many methods you can use for forms -- as others have suggested. Remember: ProcessWire allows terrific flexibility to accomplish almost anything. But that flexibility also means you have to be clear about what you want to accomplish. I regularly build front-end interfaces for my ProcessWire projects, largely based on forms (of course). Once you head down this path, the possibilities are endless! I tend to build my forms with classic HTML, as Soma suggested. That method gives you the greatest flexibility. Please provide more information about what you want to accomplish, then we can give better answers. For example, are you trying to create and control ProcessWire content through the foms? I've worked through all this and posted about it before, as have others. Here are some links to get you started: Form to Create ProcessWire Content Using HTML (with file uploads): http://processwire.com/talk/topic/3105-create-pages-with-file-upload-field-via-api/ Form to Create ProcessWire Content Using ProcessWire Field Modules: http://processwire.com/talk/topic/2089-create-simple-forms-using-api/ Form to Edit ProcessWire Content http://processwire.com/talk/topic/4350-how-edit-a-page-using-api/?p=42620 Follow up if you have other questions. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, I've transplanted most of my Seblod plants to new ProcessWire beds. It's amazing how the nutrients in the soil are depleted in those Seblod beds. Can't really grow anything there. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings Joss, Glad to see this up! I think you showed me the previous site a long time ago (back in our bad old Seblod days). Everything looks great, and of course it loads up nice a fast. Great balance of images with the open space -- kind of makes you feel the outdoors. One small suggestion: increase the opacity of the "maincontainer" class from 0.8 to 0.9 for better readability. Thanks for sharing, Matthew

Greetings, Assuming "reise_flyer" is an uploaded file, just do this: <a href="<?php echo $page->reise_flyer->url;?>" target="_blank"><?php echo $fields->get("reise_flyer")->label;?></a> Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, I think it's pretty clear that the voting for this doesn't "add up" properly. Part of the game here, it appears, unfortunately, is to find ways to vote multiple times. We're actually doing well comparatively: think how the people at Silverstripe must feel right now. Hey, at my local mall there's Best Buy, Apple Store, Radio Shack, Verizon Store, Brnes & Noble, and others. Just saying... Thanks, Matthew