Bengfort.com

Well, I just hit a wall in my forward progress that I have been making over the past couple of days! I have just got a brand new computer that is perfect for development work. I have purchased Visual Studio 2005, which is on its way, and I have everything I need to get going on all of these grand ideas I have… or not?

I discovered that Microsoft FrontPage 2003, the HTML editor I was using on my old computer no longer exits on my new computer! I have the same exact Microsoft Office installed- MS Office 2003 Proffessional, and yet, no Front Page 2003! At first I thought that because I have 3 copies of Office (A student copy, a copy from Navy, and a copy from my old computer) that perhaps I just had the wrong copy of office— nope! I did find Front Page XP, but that is really of no use.

So I am HTML editorless, which makes it tough to do web design work! To do everything this weekend, I used notepad, which obviously gave me a lot of bug shooting to do because I type too fast for my own good.

So I said to myself- I just need to buy a new copy of FrontPage (although after more exploration, good riddance- FrontPage does the most annyoing thing by putting a thumbs.dat file in every single folder you are using). But Microsoft has given up on FrontPage and split it into two very different products- SharePoint designer 2007, and something called Microsoft Expression Web, which I guess is Microsoft’s attempt to rival Adobe Dreamweaver.

Well Expression Web is 200+ bucks, more if I pay in pounds. I had already purchased Visual Studio 2005 to do ASP.NET work as well as C#, but before I could go talk to Jaci about the software purchases, I realized- do I really want to buy into Microsoft this completely?

This led to a lot of angst about my path along this learning process. I have swerved into Microsoft-only technologies somehow, and I am wondering if I should try to escape while there is still time (although Visual Studio is an expenseve back down!), or if there is some good way to mix the two. I am torn, because I started learning C# instead of Flash or Java, and I really should switch back. Needless to say, the Adobe Web Design Premium suite (which contains photoshop CS3, which is another product I really want) is going to run me 1500 bucks- so should I switch now?

Well, now I am HTML editor program-less and clueless about what I should do next! See my next post for my learning path, and maybe someone out there can make suggestions.

Well, it has been a while since I have put posts onto this blog- I’m sorry about that. Things for bengfort.com except standard maintenance and adding photo albumns have sort of fallen by the wayside- mostly because of my new job at the Oxford University Press.

But aside from that, I have been learning new technologies that will help me broaden the website and give greater flexibility while adding web applications to the site. Since I am new to the world of web application development, you must bear with me as I do a lot of reading- a lot of reading- and not much implementation. Plus the current state of the website (see below) has not allowed me the flexibility that I need. Right now I have fallen into the Microsoft trap- I am developing using Windows Server 2000, ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server, and Visual Studio 2005. I was going to teach myself other technologies like MySQL, PHP, Apache, and XML, but only XML got picked up. The main reason for this is because of the Microsoft development I do at work- but also because as a would-be professional, I want to get developer certifiactions, and this is one way to learn them.

Needless to say, you won’t see very many changes to the website in the near future- at least not having to do with any of the technologies I mention above. Hopefully you will see continued use with the blog space, and recipe and album pages updates as we put them up. But for now, the basic plan will not change- with just one exception.

I am planning on changing the homepage of bengfort.com into a single page that will serve as a graphic for your homepages- see http://www.google.com, http://www.cengen.com, http://www.wikipedia.org for examples of pages that have a single graphic entry portal. These pages are single graphic with no news text, but possibly announcements and graphics changes. They include links to navigate into the website, as well as a Google searchbar to facilitate searches into the rest of the web. I want every time you load your webpage to have this page be your entry into the internet.

State of the Website

This is the state of the website as it stands on August 14, 2007. Right now the website is basic HTML pages (sometimes with the extension .htm) that are posted to Atlantic ASP’s server via ftp. I believe that the website has 5 GB of space allotted to it, I have no idea how much space is actually being taken up- but my backup of the website is 80.7 MB, so we aren’t using nearly as much space as we have- but 5 GB will run out quick! The problem with this provider is that I don’t have access to the server that bengfort.com resides on. This means that I cannot run scripts on the pages or run applications like Apache or MySQL on the server because I cannot config them- and therefore basic web applications that you take for granted on other sites cannot happen on bengfort.com (things like feedback surveys, and dynamic HTML).

We use third party providers to do most of that active/dynamic work on the website. For instance, we use Google’s blogger to provide our blogging functions. To write blogs, we navigate away from bengfort.com and sign in and use blogger’s applications to write and design the blog. Then when we hit publish post- blogger sends the blog as HTML via FTP to bengfort.com. We use Clocklink to host our clocks on the main page. Metric Conversions hosts the converter pages. Access Counter keeps track of all the site statistics on the main page. iWebAlbum creates the photo slideshows. And finally, Google provides the search boxes.

Unfortunately this provides limited functionality as well as poor performance on the website becasue many different outside sites have to work on the page, which causes higher traffic on your internet connections, and slows FTP work down back and forth.

Update Plans

Therefore, not out of vanity, but rather as a learning experience- the plan for bengfort.com is to switch internet providers (probably to a provider that costs money to maintain) that way I can have access to the server and actually host the applications that are on the website. I don’t plan on setting up my own server to connect to, because we are moving so much, this would be a waste of our broadband, and wouldn’t provide reliable service to the website.

The first step will be the single graphic homepage, I am going to need your ideas for the design of this! Let me know what you think.

Next will be the website migration- which might change the design of the site completely. During this process there will be a temporary loss of service to bengfort.com.

Next, the recipe application will be designed and put up- and the blog probably switched over to wordpress or some other software. Finally, all other applications will be run on the website.

This basic plan probably spans a couple years- so don’t hold your breath for these changes to happen soon! Hopefully we can grow this website together as we do more blogging, etc.

Well, things are progressing, though not as I had expected (or planned that they would). Thanks to some procrastination and holiday laziness (especially because of the trip coming up on Sunday) I have not been able to force myself to do the necessary book work to follow the course I laid out in the last post for the page.

I have, however, managed to get a decent www.bengfort.com album page up and running- but it is not as functional as I had hoped or would like. So everyone, refresh your browsers and go to the album page and check it out!

I am using freeware called iWebAlbum (iWA for short from now on) to create albums with JavaScript and HTML. It is very similar to Chris’ web album template. What this means is that I have an easy way to create albums and post them online (although uploading all that data is a pain in the butt!) and share them with you- including a slideshow function that switches the picture off every 5 seconds!

However, I will be the only one who can post photos online- you guys cannot upload pictures and create your own photo albums, which is what I am hoping for in the future. So for the time being, only my and Jaci’s albums will be put online.

How do we get around this? Well, you would have to email me your photos, or ftp them to my ftp site, then I would have to take them down to put up an album. Which kind of stinks, but if we do have a lot of pictures, this is an easy way to share them without sending around huge files- folks can choose which pictures to download. But it does limit what albums you can put online.

In the time being, though, I wanted a picture album site online, especially because of the aforementioned trip- this is an easy way to share (at least) my pictures with you all.

What I need from you all now is to tell me what pictures should be posted and when. For instance, I can post Bethany 16th Birthday pictures without too much trouble, or wedding photos. Should anything be a priority, etc.? Frankly, I don’t know how much space I have to put up numerous pictures, so that will be another thing to work out.

At least for now, though, we have one less under construction page on the website! I promise I will have more interactive php sites up in the future, but maybe not for a couple more months!

Hello All,

Just a note to say that I have updated the girls’ webpages with new links so that you can link directly to their blogs without going back through the Bengfort website. Since there was so much demand, I hope this satisfies everyone’s navigation concerns.

Also, I realize that the comments page isn’t as reliable as it could be. Keep in mind if it says that it didn’t publish your comment, it may actually have- just refresh the page, or click on comments, and it should be there. No worries. Also for those of you that are writing under anonymous, it might be better just to put your name, you don’t have to put a website, just your name will do (like you have been using in the anonymous section- mom, matagi, momb, dad bengfort, whatever you like). This might help. Finally, the main blog page may not actually have the comments listed (it may say only 1 comment when in fact there are 4 or 5. That will change when the post is republished, which should happen every time a comment goes, but it takes a bit- just hit refresh, click on comments, or go to the specific entry page via the link on the side with the title of the post, you should be ok!

I have received a couple complaints about my blog: I apologize that I am not as prolific a writer as the girls, but this particular blog was just intended to address the concerns of the site, not necessarily be a daily blog like the girls’. I intend on starting one soon! Right now my tasks are below (in the order I hope to accomplish them, but who knows the timeline):

1. Get email notifications to you guys when new posts are put up (who knows if this is possible?!)

2. Update the homepage for China Trip

3. Finish writing the series I started on various Blog Engines (which means continued reading)

4. Add Album pages to the website including Paris Album, and Christmas Albums, (soon it will also include a China Album!)

5. Get a recipe post php script online so we can submit and add recipes

6. Remove the site from Blogger to allow a Bengfort.com only engine.

It will be work, but stay tuned as the site continues to be updated!

I have become a nerd- thank God!

Today I have officially (according to my wife and my sudden urge to watch re-runs of TNG) become a nerd, and not a moment too soon! (The picture below should explain all, note the CenGen shirt…)

Today I turned my Naval Academy computer that is five years old, suffering from all the various components (and video games) I have installed on it, into a local web server with Apache 2.0, php 5.1, and MySQL so I can have a testing environment to build the Bengfort Blog Engine.

Frankly, I am not sure it will survive the installation.

So far, I have desperately run to Staples to get an external USB hard drive to back up my computer in the face of ever impending blue screen doom. (Somehow, magically the computer came back to life… I don’t know what happened, but to this day the Computer sometimes will not turn off without physically unplugging it from the wall!) I can’t run multiple applications of anything more complicated than iTunes or Internet Explorer. And every time I turn the computer off, I do so terrified that it won’t turn on again (especially since my computer basically rejected the external hard drive!)

Well that is that, and even though my poor 90 GB Hard Drive is almost maxed out (remember when: “90 Giga-whats? Gosh, I won’t even use 90 of those mega-thingys, why do they give us so much space?”) I have still boldly gone into programming territory.

Today I have moved from simple web designer to web programmer.

With my successful installation, I hope to achieve what so few jocks have done in the past- to actually do something useful with a computer. And if my computer survives, I intend to design and install our very own blog engine onto the website. Step one complete: one small step for 10 year olds, one giant step for ex-Navy Lacrosse players everywhere.

And as promised in the past few blogs… it begins! Now the only question remains: does my domain have php, etc. installed on the server in Baltimore?