Now that a lot of people are working on modifications, and getting the hang of doing things, is anyone interested in organizing the various wants/needs of the forum into a collaborative set of projects?

There are many smaller things that people can tackle and which can be integrated into larger projects, and a bigger whole.

If everyone agrees to certain standards, and conventions, and calling/naming conventions, then many of the things we do can be built into the next version of Links, and be extended upon again, etc.

What this could be simplified as is a "developers guide" and then a list of components that are needed.

Is anyone interested?

Right now I have several things nearing release, and have partially created a shopping system that fits my needs -- it can be expanded by others who have different needs.

My needs are I need each link in the database to point to one and only one item in the catalog (or no items), but each item in the catalog can be referenced by many links. I only need a quantity of 1, then sold out, but I've left room for it to handle inventory and such.

I've modified the existing scripts to access the various features, so there is nothing "funky". All calls go through DBSQL.pm, and the CATALOG database is linked to the Links database by a field added to the Links record (This is the many-to-one linking of the Links database to catalog).

I've left room to expand it into a separate free-standing catalog, that can link to the Links database, and I might also add in a reverse one-to-many linking, since there are ways to do it.

The first release is for specifically my needs, but I want to expand it to be a generalized catalog, so I can set up a catalog site. All the catalog programs out there are pretty bad, and Links SQL has all the features (except MC/Visa transactions) built in -- user verification, cookies, sessions, search, detail pages, etc.

What are needed are some good templates, and a re-design of the database a bit to run as a catalog not as a Link/URL type of system.

This will then link into the Advertising/banner program so that you have flexibility in joining your catalog and database together.

Big project, but 90% of the time is design, since the functionality is already in Links SQL. Good design solves 90% of the problems before you encounter them!

Any takers??

Hi pugdog, I'd be very interested in working together with you on the layout/design end of things and creating templates which could be customized by users.

Funny, when I purchased LSQL back at the first of the year - that's what I was really hoping for, I had exchanged a couple communications with Alex on getting LSQL to customized to work with an ecomm site I was developing at the time. The purchase was mine for my own project but, I wanted to pursue working the two software programs together to have one dynamite product in addition to my project!

Let me know if I can be of help on what you're dping.

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Karen

I second what Karen says. I don't think my programming skills would serve much use, but if I can be of help in other ways such as templates, by all means let me know.

Dan

I'm in too.

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Robert Blackstone
Webmaster of Scato Search
www.scato.com

Great idea.
Please read this thread:

www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/forum/resources/Forum9/HTML/000815.html

I´m no programmer at all. I have done some mods here around stealing and testing code from here and there and trying so long till the goal is reached, not at least with the help from the guys around here and do not always understand what i really do. Here the solution counts not the way :-(

But the real cool things i have as ideas inside my mind i really could do not alone. Asking here for a greater thing than some tips has no chance to get an efford. So i think about ordering an extern company i know to do the things. Much better would be the power of this community here, so many heads could think better than one or two alone. Cause i work in this business and have some orders from clients to create their database with links, i could spend some dollars too for helping on doing different mods. Maybe we could do a smaller community for all business-people working with links and spend all a litte payment to improve things. (Maybe Alex could be the one, who gets this money, if he had more time for this little community.)

I have done an ordering-system, too, but i only use links as database for the articels, (so it goes with links and links sql), adding some fields and doing a form with entree-fields and some hidden-fields from links for every sold product.

This was easy cause i use a shop-script that normaly is based on a static html-page. So all i do was doing this static-page with links.

Because this shop runs in a closed system, i would not show it here, maybe you write a mail and i do a test-account for some hours for you. (emmerich@adeva.de)

We manage a greater portal-site and are about to release three more sites the next weeks. We have a lot of great ideas inside the cupboard, and would be really happy, if we found a way to plan and realize projects together.

What do you think about this litte community?

Maybe the people around speaking german/living here would be interested to talk or meet personally.

We reside a cologne; calls are welcome to 0171/60 555 40 or 0221 / 515800 (german numbers, german office-times.)

Cu, Robert


BTW: Has someone an idea how to improve the ultimate bulletin board with the function getting a mail if someone answers to a thread not only for that man who starts the thread than for all doing a follow-up when clicking a cick-field for this. This theme is really important for me, so i must visit this site every hour to see if someone has answered. Seems, the second best script ever used could be improved, too. :-)



[This message has been edited by Robert (edited March 20, 2000).]

Please read this thread for another good idea, i think.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...um9/HTML/000813.html

Robert

pugdog, I could do a spiffy job on documentation of changes / modifications and structuring that info into how-to's if that would be an area I could help in.

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Karen

I'm back... I had to get some sleep, I was working 20 hours a day, for too long, got myself sick, and had to just sleep for awhile.

It sounds like Alex has some new releases due, so it might pay to start planning for things, but not really doing it yet.

Karen: Documentation is time consuming, but really necessary! Once of the things I've been meaning to do, is get into the Admin area, and create a text file of all the tags that are available in each file. I've printed it all out, but I've never uploaded an edited version. Another thing would be to take ALex's getting started guide, and using the hints and tips in the forum and FAQ expand on it to a full "how to install and get Links SQL running" I'm sure if you start it, you'll get a lot of suggestions on it! I've posted several "how to" do things -- like add a table, add a column, etc. If you take the first steps, I'm sure you'll find a lot of help to work on or expand various sections.

Robert: the use of UBB's user registration has been talked about, but I think a bunch of people jumped ship from here to WWWThreads, and there is now a working model to integrate the WWWThreads user base with the Links SQL user base.

Is there a thread , how to get an email as second writer in UBB?

I dont talk about a connection from links and UBB; as you know the ubb add a user in different files; so the solution must be a routine in links that changes these files in the ubb-dir; not more.

Robert

I don't know what you are asking.... Might just be the late night, but a cgi program should be able to modify the code/data in any other program you have access to. For the UBB, it would probably be getting the data from Links, locking, opening, reading, writing, closing, releasing the UBB files before ending the Links scripts.

Any script can access any data in any tables in a MySQL database that your user ID has access to! So, if you are sharing user data between programs, you need to make sure there is a way that each access of the database is UNIQUE and re-verified, so that if one program changes it, the other knows it's been changed.

For instance, if a person has two browser windows open, one using Links, and one using the Forum -- they may be doing it two different browsers -- ie: netscape and MSIE, so that the cookies are _not_ shared. You'd want to re-verify any access cookie, and session data, to make sure one program didn't change it while the other program was "sleeping".

Make sense?