Volume 12 , Issue 16

Refactoring OkieLegacy Journal

Your eZine and tabloid journal by Okie gets a facelift.

The upgrades are a bit subtle and some may never notice. Let me direct your attention to the following tools:

1. Shout Out to a Friend
2. Logon Feature
3. Registration/Update Area
4. Local 3-day forecast with registation with city and state info

I fixed the rotating banner (Shouts) for visitors to post small messages to one another. Each message will expire 7 days later if it is not removed by Duchess, Sadie, or NWOkie. Please try to keep the message short and without line breaks or HTML code. I have included filters for a lot of HTML that had been submitted.

I simplified the logon and registration while adding extra features. Once logged on, you will see 'Add to Favorites' at the end of each feature story. This will allow you to link that feature to the email that you registered with. In addition to tracking favorite features, your registration area will also display all the comments posted with your account (also links to email address). If you register and supply a city and state, you will see a 3-day weather forecast at the top of the journal.

A lot of these upgrades were made possible as I translated from one language and database to another. For you geeks out there, I cleaned up the logic, refactoring the algorithm.

Recently I have had the opportunity to examine the logic behind OkieLegacy journal programming. I taught myself ASP web programming back in 2002 when I was managing a database of 400,000 AmeriCorps Alumni in Washington, DC. This is basically visual basic (the programming behind MS Access). I used this language to create a more dynamic website and a content management system where NWOkie did not have to format and write individual web pages each week and focus on composing content.

I left my job before the economy tanked in 2008. I have been living off savings, taking additional programming courses, and testing applications at OkieLegacy.net. I transferred the OkieLegacy Journal to utilize the Open Source PHP (server-side language) and MySQL (database interface). If you have ideas for this site, please email me.   |  View or Add Comments (2 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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