scriptygoddess

1 | Daynah

June 11th, 2002 at 2:49 pm

Oh boy! More geek girls! hehe The site looks great gals. I love the geeky news your posted! keep it up! 😉

2 | Christine

June 11th, 2002 at 11:20 pm

Thanks for sharing those Lynda! I'm considering giving pMachine a whirl to test it for our hosting clients – I look forward to your feedback on it! Do you mind if I link to your "hacks" in our forum over there later on? Thanks!

3 | Lynda

June 12th, 2002 at 12:36 am

Of course, Christine.

4 | Mark

June 12th, 2002 at 4:03 pm

This may sound like a daft question but just how good is pMachine? It looks fantastic but it is good enough to tempt me from my beloved Movable Type?

5 | Lynda

June 12th, 2002 at 4:11 pm

It depends on how you want to look at it. Out of the box? No, it isn't as good as MT. Moveable Type has user functionality together. It has TONS of options already done up for you. Easy peasy!

But…. if you LOVE hacking (like me. hehe!) then you'll love pMachine. Everything is held in a mySQL database so you can do almost anything you can think of with all that information with just a simple query! Plus, it is just starting out – it will be growing and expanding just like any other blogging script.

It has a free version that's nearly fully functional (for use with one weblog only) for you to install and use. I'd suggest playing with that to see how you like it.

What I think is a big plus . . . the Pro price.

It's no secret Moveable Type is going to go Pro one day in that it's going to charge. The mySQL version of it is going to be the one with the price tag.

On their website, they recommend donating something like $20 for one publishing key (to be added to their site when you update) and $40 for two of them. They seem to think that people are going to (or are already) paying for multiple keys.

They state the price of the donation NOW will be SUBTRACTED form the cost of the pro version. So hmmmm. If they find it common for people to donate $40 or $60, I can only imagine the pro version is going to be quite a bit above that.

Just speculation on my part.

6 | Tina

June 12th, 2002 at 4:27 pm

What about the non-mySQL version of MT? I ask basically because MT suits me just fine, and the significance pMachine using mySQL is totally lost on me. Not least because I haven't the foggiest what mySQL actually does, and because whatever it does I don't have a need for it right now. I could be persuaded to try it out, but because I've got two blogs (my main one and a media-based one), I don't know that it's worth it right now…

7 | Lynda

June 12th, 2002 at 4:36 pm

I think there will always be a free version of MT. I'm not sure. All I know is that it's no secret that it will one day be a pay-for program if you want to use ALL the features.

The great thing about mySQL (other than the HUGE plus that it takes up less space and resources than flat files) is that you can use ANY piece of information in it for ANY reason.

If you want to make a list of all the posts a certain member has made, you can! If you want to make a list of all the posts a certain member has made in a certain weblog in a certain category on a certain date, you can!

I can't think of any better examples because if I could, I'd probably hack them up…

The point is, with MT as it stands now, it's very difficult to extract information from that database they use (which is nothing more than a glorified flatfile system). You can create an "entrylist" from MT variables and put all that info into an array to extract the data, but that is going to take forever.

With mySQL and a little bit (and believe me, all I have is a little bit) of php/mysql knowlege, you really can do just about anything.

8 | Tina

June 12th, 2002 at 4:42 pm

Interesting. The only other thing would be figuring out how to convert my current blogging system to pMachine – because right now I have two blogs, the main one and a smaller one containing reviews and such. It's something that could probably just be done with categories, and would probably be slightly easier that way anyway, but I have different templates for the two which is why I suspect it'd be a bit awkward, and paying up for the pro version right away would be a bit much.

On the other hand, things like the Event Calendar, pBlocks, and just about every other feature would take *so* much work out of keeping everything up to date, seeing as these are all things I do manually at the moment…

9 | Mark

June 12th, 2002 at 4:48 pm

I have always wished that MT used mySQL. So maybe a move to pM is tempting, but I would only move if there was a smoth(-ish) migration path. So would it be possible to import MT entries into pM?

10 | Lynda

June 12th, 2002 at 4:49 pm

You could put them in two separate templates with a little bit of fiddling. I haven't tried anything like that yet.

11 | Lynda

June 12th, 2002 at 4:51 pm

Mark, not yet, but from what I hear Rick, the guy behind pMachine is working on an import script.

12 | Tina

June 12th, 2002 at 5:00 pm

Seeing as the file to import entries into MT is only a text file, I can't imagine it would take too much work. I wouldn't mind getting rid of the majority of the posts I made on Blogger, anyway…

I'll try it out when the import function comes along. Or, rather, I may try and set it up away from my MT blogs, and then transfer everything over when I can import posts. If I can get everything set up like that, it'll be easier to transfer everything from MT when the time comes.

(Yes, that took a whole lot of difficult persuasion to get me to try it out… ;))

13 | Mark

June 12th, 2002 at 6:11 pm

I downloaded pM and installed it on my site. The whole thing took less than 30mins to set up.

http://www.zapology.co.uk/pm/weblog.php

I'll give it a go for a few days.

14 | Tina

June 12th, 2002 at 6:30 pm

Wish all of us were so lucky. I'm having a mini nightmare trying to figure out the mySQL database right now – for some reason, it doesn't matter what I put in the config.php file, it just doesn't want to connect to the database…

15 | Lynda

June 12th, 2002 at 6:32 pm

Tina – I sent you an email about it.

If the database isn't already exising (in many cases it isn't) you have to create it first. I have no freaking clue why Rick didn't mention that in the manual because it's the number one question I've been asked so far.

16 | Liz

June 12th, 2002 at 6:46 pm

Hey,

I have a couple silly questions about pMachine….

1) Does it have image uploading with thumbnails and pop ups?

2) Can you have PHP in your entries?

3) Is there a way to adapt the Restricted Posts hack to pMachine? For any MySQL database weblog program, actually.

4) Are there categories for entries?

Bad questions, I know…but things I couldn't quite tell from the website.

Thanks
Liz

17 | Lynda

June 12th, 2002 at 6:52 pm

1) It has image uploading, but no thumbnails and popups.

2) Sort of. You can't actually have it *within* the entries (well, you could, but that would be one freaking huge hack as you'd have to tear apart how the system does things and I know you don't want to do that) but you can have php elsewhere on your site.

3.) Sort of. It would be tricky. It allows member registration so you could set up a separate weblog (in the pro version) for members only.

You could do something similar to the restricted posts hack too, but it wouldn't be as clean.

4.) Yes, there are categories for entries but there are no multiple categories (two or more categories PER entry)

18 | Mena

June 13th, 2002 at 3:47 pm

>Just speculation on my part

Lynda,

I'm not quite sure why you've always been so aggressively against a pay version of MT. I've read past threads on the old Greymatter forums where you've torn MT and us apart.

We've always stated that there will always be a free, powerful version of MT. 2.0 is very powerful, and if we chose that as the version to freeze at free, I believe that it would still be a great deal.

About MT using just a glorified flat file system: Part of the reason we didn't not release MT w/
MySQL support out of the gate is because there is a large number of users who don't have access to MySQL. Most everyone can run MT with a basic web hosting account that allows for CGI access. We didn't want to limit to userbase.

Regarding the price of the pay version — no you can't assume it's going to be "quite above" $20 -$40. Since we started thinking about a pay version, the price in our minds was always around $45-$55. We don't publicly state that since we want to always allow for change.

And finally, the MySQL support is coming and it is in the free version.

Our friends and a lot of users say we're crazy for releasing more versions for free. I don't know why we do it — we just do.

Of course, we do encourage people to donate; MT is our full-time job. We do some contract work on the side, but the bulk of our income comes from donations.

I don't want this comment to come off as nasty, so please don't be defensive. I just want to defend us and our software and try to curtail all this speculation.

19 | Lynda

June 13th, 2002 at 4:19 pm

Mena,

In the face of all people I've helped use MT, the number of people I converted to MT, the number of hacks I came up with for MT and whatever other work I've done to actually PROMOTE MT because it's a wonderful product and STILL promote it because it's a wonderful product… I am rather insulted that this is the one thing you choose to point out.

I haven't aggressively been against a pay version. I have just always pointed out that there WILL be a pay version at some point. When asked if a free version will remain (I'm not sure, it may have been asked in this thread) I stated I think a free version would ALWAYS be around.

I was just given the impression it would be more than my wallet could pay for. Hi. I did donate to MT too. Not so I could receive a key. Not so I would receive a discount on the pay version. But because I believe and still believe in the product.

I'm sorry for my impression and expressing my impression, however I always stated that it was NOTHING more than speculation. Was that a mistake? Sure, I'll admit it, but I can't take it back now.

And as far as mySQL being released with the free version, how the heck am I supposed to know that when Ben himself stated it would be available in the pro version? To exclude "free version" from those statements led me to believe it would be pay-only. Again, speculation on my part. My apologies.

To your accusations that you have read me tear MT and you and Ben apart personally on the Greymatter forums, that is simply not true. In my greymatter days, aside from being skeptical about a pay version, I NEVER tore either MT *OR* you and ben apart. ESPECIALLY not you and Ben. Some other users DID, but I do not recall it. In fact, in the midst of a huge heated debate on the matter of MT vs GM, I started using MT and fell in love with it.

So, whatever, I guess. I can see how I may have hurt your feelings and I can see how I was wrong, but I don't think it's very fair of you to ignore all the good I've done (or at least tried to do) in YOUR honor.

I will continue promoting and supporting MT to the best of my ability. Your opinion of me doesn't matter anyway.

Lynda

20 | Mena

June 13th, 2002 at 4:33 pm

Lynda,

I'm sorry you feel insulted. That wasn't my intention.

Thank you for promoting MT on your various sites. We do appreciated it.