The trickle down effect

While trying to get a demo site up and running I ran into an issue that has taken me down a path I didn’t expect to head down at this time.  But now that I have run into it, I have decided to fix it correctly.

The wp-SwimTeam plugin depends on phpHtmlLib and the 2.x version of the library requires that it be installed in the web site’s root directory.  This typically isn’t a big deal but in some cases can be inconvenient.  It also requires the library be named phphtmllib as the path is (was) encoded into quite a few of the widgets.

When I uploaded the library to the new demo site, it didn’t run correctly.  The demo site is running PHP5 which I immediately suspected as the problem.  So I loaded PHP5 and phpHtmlLib into a new virtual machine (I love VMware, it is wonderful for configuring different environments) and all the examples ran just fine.  Odd, very odd.  Digging into it further, it looks like the hosting provider’s PHP virtual directory support setting is different than what I had locally and affects how include files are handled.

A couple of tests confirmed my suspicions.  Since this hosting provider is large, I suspect this PHP configuration is pretty typical and it provided sufficient motivation to go back and fix phpHtmlLib 2.x so it can be loaded with appropriate configured PHP define() statements.  If you look through the phpHtmlLib forums you’ll find this is a fairly regularly requested item (including by me) and phpHtmlLib 3 (which requires PHP5) is configured this way.

Over the last couple days I have been updating the phpHtmlLib 2.x branch to support this configuration method and now have it all running correctly in my development area.  Before I commit all the changes, and there are a lot of them, I need to verify it all works in the suspect hosting environment.

The trickle down of setting up a demo site resulted in an overhaul to phpHtmlLib.  It needed to be done anyway and doing it will allow phpHtmlLib to be loaded as a WordPress plugin eventually.

Demo Site

I have had a couple ask recently about a demo site for wp-SwimTeam so I think I am going to set one up that people can play with.  The plugin is current live on the MacDolphins web site but since that is a real team and real data, it isn’t a suitable sandbox for people to explore.

If I can set up another instance of WordPress underneath this one to demonstrate the plugin, I will make it available for play with.  I am not sure how to assign new users the necessary permission to admin the demo site since that would provide them a fair amount of control over the actual WordPress install itself.  Hmmm … need to think that through before I turn it on!

Busy with Swim Team

It seems like most of my free time has been consumed with swim team lately.  I volunteered to help bring the MacDolphins into the 21st century this year and it has taken quite a bit more time than I expected it would.  A lot of that is because it is fun working a technical problem and doing it right.

We had some goals for the season.

  1. Report results in a timely manner.
  2. Capture times and keep a history so swimmers and parents could monitor their progress.
  3. Electronic registration to minimize data entry errors.
  4. Communicate quickly and effectively.

After searching the internet for an existing swim team solution I determined there really wasn’t anything suitable do I decided to write my own WordPress plugin to address part of the problem.  I had no aspirations to build a complete solution but I did want to offer something which addressed goals 1, 3, and 4 above.  I started working on the plugin early this year and for the most part, it is working out pretty well.  I wish I had a few more things done but I am happy with what I have been able to do.

For actual meet management, our team (actually me) ended up choosing WinSwim over the industry standard Hy-Tek solution.  I went with WinSwim mostly because their support was excellent and their ability to import our roster electronically.  For whatever reason, Hy-Tek has made doing this difficult if not impossible to do.  (Read more on my wp-swimteam plugin blog regarding my dealings with Hy-Tek.)

WinSwim is easy to use but it hasn’t been without some problems.  Fortunately they don’t seem to mind the volume of e-mail and issues I am sending them and they turn around solutions really quickly.  To distribute the data our parents and swimmers want to see (mostly their times), I have learned quite a bit about Crystal Reports.  It is pretty powerful once you get the hang of it but the learning curve is non-trivial.  This weekend I think I had the “ah-ha” moment because now I am able to edit and create new reports pretty quickly.

The season is coming to a close and I still have a few things to do.  I need to get end of season reports done for our banquet.  I think this will be pretty straight forward now that I think I have a handle on Crystal Reports!