An N2 CMS

As I wrote about earlier this week, we’ll be “forced” to move our company and personal blogs off of the Blogger platform come the end of March this year.  All opinion on the matter aside, we decided this was a great opportunity to test ourselves with N2F Yverdon.

Going in line with that idea, we sat down to catalog the features we needed to replicate from Blogger and WordPress to make the CMS useful to us across multiple instances.  Here is that list:

• Support for Windows Live Writer and other desktop publishing clients (Atom Publishing Protocol, MetaWeblogAPI, MovableType or Really Simple Discovery)
• Multiple authors with profiles for each
• Entry trackback links
• Comment moderation and spam protection
• Image upload integration with RTE
• Pings to services like weblogs.com
• Atom/RSS Feeds
• Code Syntax Highlighting
• Memcached compatibility

The list we have going is a bit longer, but mostly due to it digging down deeper with each of the above features and listing most of the common features you could expect in any useful blogging application.

You may notice that there is no mention of plug-ins.  Keep in mind that for the moment we’re building a system mostly for internal use.  N2F Yverdon is already so easily extensible we basically have a plug-in system already built.  We will be releasing the application somewhere (likely on the N2F site) under the same MS-RL license used for N2F Yverdon.  If any of you would be interested in helping us build a good plug-in system, we’re all ears.

That’s all for this announcement.  It’s looking like we’ll be putting down code as early as next week, which is good if we intend to have this ready for use by the end of March!  More updates to come as they’re available.

 

- Andy

The End of Blogger (At Least For Me)

For the past few years, I’ve been using Blogger as the service powering my blog (and recently it was chosen to power the blog for the company).  It made things pretty easy for me, as all I needed to do was open up an FTP account to the service and let it rip.  Google had announced a while ago that they were phasing out the FTP feature for Blogger.  Since I try pretty hard to ignore Google, I missed this notice.  They were kind enough to send me a reminder email of sorts yesterday, letting me know that sometime in March this year, the FTP feature would be discontinued completely.

In some ways, this is a sad moment for me.  I have enjoyed the service, mostly because of how easy it was to use.  In other ways, this presents itself as an opportunity.  I have no intention of allowing Google to hold onto anymore of my data than they already do, so the thought of switching to a custom domain is just unacceptable.  I’m left with two choices as I see things:

1. Install WordPress/Drupal/etc to replace Blogger
2. Create a new CMS/Blog, because the world doesn’t already have enough of these

It’s true, the world probably doesn’t have enough.  A Bing search for ‘free Blog engine’ turns out approximately 17.5 million results, which essentially means nothing.  There are a ton of good-enough solutions out there which I could easily utilize to take care of the switch.  Unfortunately for me, I am – by default – required to be an annoying advocate for my open source framework, the N2 Framework.  We love our little framework so much, we’d rather spend time reinventing the blogging wheel and show it can be done.

So it seems that is what I’ll be doing over the next month or two.  I might be able to rope one or two of the other N2F developers into helping, but I don’t have more than a few extra hours each week that I can devote to the project.  I’ll do what I can to outline our progress here and on the N2F site.  Our goal will be to simply replicate all of the features we have available for us with the Blogger service.  I’ve got two months, here’s hoping this framework works as well as we need!

 

- Andy

New Zibings Inc. Blog

As of today, Zibings Incorporated is now entering the blogosphere.  We have created a blog for ourselves using Google’s Blogger service at http://blog.zibings.com/.  We’ll make sure updates are posted every other week, so be sure to check it out!

 

- Andy

Forget Me!

Now that I’ve finished rebuilding the ZibTech Consulting website, I took a bit of time to have fun with jQuery and N2F on the comments for our news entries. In doing so, I came up with an idea to solve a problem I had, as well as maybe solve a problem end-users have on the internet.

The problem I was solving was a common one; Anyone who navigates away from the news entry page (purposefully or not) would have their comment page reset to 1, even if they’d been on page 23. This seems useless and annoying, so I quickly implemented a storage method using PHP’s sessions. Though this did solve the problem, I decided I wanted a way to clear the pages I was tracked as being on if I felt like reading from the beginning again.

It was at this point I realized I could do something that users to all Zibings sites might enjoy. If you visit the site, you will see a “Forget Me!” link on the bottom of every page. The purpose of the “Forget Me!” link is to give user the ability to clear the session information stored about them on the server. This feature is going to find its way onto all Zibings Incorporated sites in the future, but not simply because we’ll have some AJAX comments hither and thither. Instead, the feature will enable end-users of our sites who haven’t signed up to opt out of things such as having their demographic information stored for their visit to the site.

When we build a site that needs a more thorough explanation on the technical specifics of the feature, I’ll take the time to spell everything out (I’d look for this on the upcoming release of ZibNet). Until then, just know that moving forward we’re going to at least commit ourselves to giving users a real option for opting out of certain things on our sites without forcing them to stop using the site. I think we could all use a little bit of that in today’s age of lost privacy, don’t you?

- Andy

Updates!

I’m feeling particularly chatty tonight, so I figured I’d give some Zibings updates to those of you who still read this blog.

The Zibings Network
We are well into the rewrite now and are hoping to be testing a new version of the site towards the end of October.  Whether or not this happens will depend a lot on me, but we’re putting as much time into the project as we can afford.  It has become a very large part of the direction we’re looking to take Zibings in general, so the lot of us are doing different things to make the re-launch smooth and worthwhile.

N2 Framework
Ah yes, the framework we love to use so much we can barely spend enough time to do updates!  In a way, we’re really happy that we’ve gotten so busy using it that we haven’t been able to finish doing the v0.2 release, but in most ways we’re just annoyed.  The release is coming still, but I’m learning that setting dates for these isn’t going to be easy while we’re the only main contributors to the code.  Even so, I keep putting some hours into it each week and will hope to release Yverdon v0.2 before the end of the year.

Super Tech Help
The forums are back, and about as active as they ever were.  No real plans have been put forth JUST yet to figure out ways to draw new traffic to the boards, but a meeting is in the works for that exact thing.  I’ll be reviving my PHP tutorial, finishing it eventually, and moving on to another tutorial which I hope won’t take me 3-4 years to complete.

 

All in all, we’re busy-busy here and loving every minute of it, as usual.  I’ll be sure to let you know when things are getting closer to completion.

 

- Andy

N2F Yverdon: v0.2 Dev Released

After well over a month (heck, almost two) of internal testing, we’ve nailed down enough of the bugs that we are comfortable releasing v0.2 to the public for testing.  This is a development release and will still have bugs so should probably not be used for production development.  As always, you can find the downloads on the N2 Framework website.  Enjoy!

 

- Andy

N2F Yverdon v0.2 Update!

In case nobody has been watching the website, we finally have started showing life again on the Yverdon v0.2 front.  The code is officially feature complete and going through some new test routines that are being built to make sure that we aren’t breaking anything major between v0.1 and v0.2.  After testing, we have some website updates to do, as well as new documentation to create, and then we’ll be ready for release.

In other news, we have begun work on an early prototype version of N2F Rupley, which will be created for use in an environment very similar to ASP.NET.  We’re excited about this, even though we feel we’re about a year away from having an alpha version to show for our work.

 

- Andy

Upcoming Zibings Activities

I’ve had a few people ask me recently what’s going on with Zibings.  The renewed interest comes at a very peculiar time, considering how much is going on behind the scenes that nobody knows about.  In order to give people a bit to go off of, I thought I’d share some things…

N2 Framework – Yverdon
Work has not stopped on Yverdon (though it’s been hindered by many other things).  At this rate, we’re hoping to have v0.2 into testing very shortly and released as soon as possible afterwards.  You can expect to see the next version sometime in March if everything stays on course from here on out.

The Zibings Network
The Zibings Network, which to most people has been dead for quite some time, is actually far from being dead.  Our initial Proof of Concept version (http://beta.zibings.net/) was a great endeavor for us as a development team, and we’re working hard to build the first legitimate version.  No specific dates in mind just yet, but we’re aiming for beginning a testing phase sometime in the next month.

Other
The reason for the delay on the previous two mentioned projects is going to be revealed within the next 3 months to early testers on ZibNet.  We’ve been putting tons of work into approaching this project in an organized manner and I know I speak for everyone at Zibings when I say that we’re excited as hell to reveal it to you.  Keep your eyes peeled here and on the main sites (www.zibings.com) as they begin to change and mature while we head towards the unveiling of our new pet project.

If you want more insight than this, you’d probably be best off joining us on IRC.  Otherwise, I’ll look forward to filling you in on more details as they come!

 

- Andy

Some Interview Questions for Developers

While reading through links this morning I came across this blog post making fun of how managers interview developers.  Having been a part of several interviews recently and being a developer myself, I thought I’d lend a few good questions to those managers out there who are looking for some tips.

I’ve used each of the following questions in various interviews with mixed results, but each one was effective in giving me some insight into the potential developer’s tendencies and personality.

1. Have you ever had to work on a project that has fallen behind schedule?  If so, how did you manage the pressure of catching up without sacrificing quality?
2. Would you call yourself driven?
3. Why did you decide to get into programming?
4. What project were you most proud of that you’ve completed?
5. What is your weakest area in the development process?
6. What is your strongest are in the development process?

As usual, don’t think that I expect my questions to be the ultimate solution or anything.  These are ones I use, I’d be curious to find out what other people use for similar situations.

 

-Andy

Yverdon v0.2 - Looking Forward

For those of you who have been testing out Yverdon v0.1, I want to first say "thank you" for your time.  We've gotten some great feedback thanks to you and are doing our best to shape the system based off of your input.  We're aiming for a release early in December of v0.2, so I thought I'd give everyone a taste of the things v0.2 has in store.

Bug Fixes
Though I'm proud to say we've had a small number of bugs thus far, it would be a feat of unmatched fame if we had gotten through v0.1 without a few.  We're tackling all of the bugs we've encountered or been informed of, as well as fixing a few bad design choices with some of the core systems.  Everything will be backwards compatible with v0.1 just in case any of you have started using the framework seriously.

New Template Extension
Yverdon v0.2 will introduce improvements to the current dynamic template extension, as well as a new template extension called "static."  The static extension offers a more secure template parser for use with publicly editable templates.  We'll be sure to post a blogtorial on how to use it when the time comes.

More Database Accessibility
This release of Yverdon will expand upon our database engine selection.  We're including the old MySQL library as an option, plus one or two new engines that we'll save for release.  We also made sure to account for a bug in PHP's MySQLi library that would dump errors regardless of suppression.

New Utility Extensions
In order to show how versatile and effective the Yverdon system is, we're also piecing together some utility extensions (such as a FirePHP extension) to enable new capabilities for you, the developer.  I won't disclose a full list, but as usual we're working hard to make sure that the code is well thought out and efficient.

There will be other improvements, including additions to the web site and the introduction of a formal documentation.  I know I speak for everyone on the team when I say how excited we are to be getting close to this release.  Thanks for your patience with us as we build Yverdon into the robust framework it's bound to be and I look forward to more of your comments!

 

- Andy

N2F Yverdon v0.1 Released!

It's official!  The N2 Framework web site and the N2F Yverdon PHP framework have been released.  You can get to both of them by going to our website:

http://zibings.com/n2f/

Make sure you sign up on the forums too!

 

- Andy

More ZibNet Updates Coming!

We're quickly approaching our goal for initial release of ZibNet.  We'll be cutting it close depending on a few things and are intending on taking another week or two in order to do some solid security enhancements and testing...  But!  That does mean one good thing for all you beta testers.  We're going to be throwing out a few new features over the course of the next week and will be ready for major testing.  There are three big features slated to come out this week that are all comfortably on schedule.  Also, we'll be seeing our new design come out in short order as well.

Hope you all are looking forward to this as much as I am!

 

- Andy

Dad in Providence Business News

Just thought I'd throw out some 'kudos' to my father (who is now President of Zibings Incorporated). He was recently interviewed for a short article in the Providence Business News magazine. Doesn't have that much to do with Zibings (or me for that matter), but it gives a taste of the level of professionalism that he'll be bringing to the company.

Full Article @ www.pbn.com

- Andy

What A Week...End...

So what started as a small idea for a side project between z|Casey and myself has turned into one heck of a plethora of changes.  I'll go straight into the breakdown.

The Zibings Network
This was meant to be the side project.  We were going to create a new site for the Zibings Network, one that allowed us to provide a good centralized location for registering with the network, logging into the network as well as getting general information about the network.

What happened instead, was the birth of a whole slew of upgrades to the network infrastructure.  While doing the upgrades (which include things such as friends lists and private messaging), I was faced with the necessity of having to change the way ZSF worked.  And that is why, the second part of this is...

The Zibings Site Framework
Yep!  And as with the ZibNet updates, this one started out small as well.  I just needed to add one capability to one section of the framework.  In adding that functionality though, I realized that just throwing the feature in its place wouldn't do much good in the end to help the framework grow.

After a few hours, I'd completely rewritten the framework, and we now have a few bug fixes thrown in as well as a new event system (that was the feature I needed).

 

Either way, its been a lot of programming, and this forces us to do some major updates to ZTC soon as well, so keep an eye out for that.  We're flying around like little bees as usual, this time just a few more fun things are on the way for you the user.

 

- Andy

Quite A Few Updates

Alright, so its been -quite- a long time since we've last spoken.  I won't apologize for it as the reason I've been so flaky with this blog is due to my excessive amounts of work towards adding features for little old you.

ZibTech Computers
A ton of work has gone into the ZTC web site, there's more details on that if you go to my news post.  What it comes down to, is that we've finally finished the inventory system and its in testing phases.  Once it leaves that, we'll be putting together things like our product listing and configuration.  Very exciting stuff!

Zibings Network
The Zibings Network updates really come in the form of two things.  First and foremost, we've sorted out a ton of bugs in the connection code and are now testing it on the ZTC site.  So far, its been running almost flawlessly, so we're happy.  Secondly, we've begun recoding ZibNetBot, which you all know and love.  He'll be redone in PHP and run as a Windows Service on our dedicated server, and from what we've done so far I can honestly say I'm looking forward to getting it done and seeing him in action.

Zibings Technologies
With the addition of someone to the Zibings Incorporated team, some new life has been breathed into Zibings Technologies, or as it was once named...Zibings.com Web Services.  I won't go into too much detail, as that would be giving away juicy secrets, but I will say that we're working on something useful for ourselves and for the company.  All of it is aimed at bringing something to life that should've been alive for years.

Epoch Gaming
Ahh, Epoch Gaming, my favorite little thing to forget about, how I do love thee!  For once, Epoch has taken a large step forward on a few fronts.  The web site has been resurrected and is being tweaked to work with the current version of ZSF.  Also, we're preparing to plug in the ZibNet connection code so that it works properly with the network.  Add onto that the fact that we've begun having development meetings for Forgotten War...for once I can gladly say that we haven't forgotten about good old Epoch.

Zibings Incorporated
We've recently added a new Director of Marketing.  Though his name is also Andrew, it is not the same person as me, which means the world to me.  He's already proving to be a very effective and motivated addition, so I think I speak for everyone when I say that his joining us is a welcome event.

 

That's about it for now.  I'm still out campaigning of sorts for Ron Paul, but its been hard to get much done with all the work being done on Zibings.  I'll make another entry when I can, and maybe someday I'll be caught up enough that I can fulfill my dream of blogging on a daily basis.  Until then...take it easy!

 

Andy

Stick To Your Guns

From good news to bad news, life seems to pack one next to the other, no matter how the world seems to be treating you. The multi-million dollar contract that we were working on has fallen through, but thank goodness it fell through in the manner that it did. I'll explain...

When we first started dealing with the bid we were a bit cautious as I stated in my earlier post regarding the bid (the post titled 'A Day Of Great Expectations'). I had asked a few friends to do some research on the company that we were dealing with in England to make sure that the offer was legitimate. The initial findings that we received weren't very promising, but we concluded that the best course of action would be to continue with the bidding process and see if our suspicions were disproven.

Up until the end of the process, we were happily disproven most times by the buyer. When we'd ask about something we were suspicious about, they'd answer in a way that gave us enough doubt in our suspicion to be comfortable with proceeding. As we got closer to the end however, they started making demands for product without payment, and finally for payment of a bogus registration fee to a government agency in Britain that didn't exist.

We finished up our research with our friends, and retracted our bid offer when they refused to take the £1,350 registration fee out of the several million Pound Sterling payment we were to receive on Monday (May 14th, 2007). We have contacted British and American Authorities and are working with both to try and track down the people we were dealing with so that they can't scam someone else.

Luckily, because of our suspicions and the title of this post, we didn't lose a penny on the scam. The phrase 'stick to your guns' is one of my favorite when it comes to business transcations. I know my company, I know what we're capable of and more importantly what we're comfortable with. I do not leave our 'guns' at any point during a negotiation, regardless of how large or small the transaction is.

In this case, our 'guns' were the facts that we would not begin working on building anything until we had received payment, and that we weren't going to pay for anything that we didn't know was necessary to pay for up front. We paid for things we needed, such as licenses with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, our distributors, etc.

We're all pretty upset about the loss of this 'contract', but we've already begun advertising all over the internet with our new website. If you search for the right terms, you might even see one of our links on the side of MSN Live Search or Google. ;)

- Andy

ZibTech Computers - Open For Business!

In the midst of everything else going on with the company, we've managed to finish the first version of our website and release it to the world. The site is by no means a good representation of what the site will eventually become, but its a great start and wonderful way to introduce the company to the general public.

I'd like to give a special thanks to Jon Coleman, Chris Butcher and Matt Hykes. Each of these three gentleman did a wonderful job working with me (often times late into the night) to get the different portions of the site setup and running smoothly. Without these guys, the site wouldn't exist yet, so thanks!

Along with releasing the site in its infantile form, we've started advertising online through things such as Yahoo! Classified, Windows Live Expo, and Google Base. Of the three, I so far like Expo the best, though its statistics could be a little better. The statistics category is taken by Google Base, and Yahoo...well Yahoo is there and used by a lot of people, so why the heck not use it?

Make sure you tell your friends/family/other and check out our website whenever you've got a few minutes!

http://www.zibtech.com/

- Andy

Focus: Your Only Weapon

The "Day of Great Expectations" came, and it flew by. We are now finalizing paperwork on our warehouse and office, sending out employment flyers wherever we can, and doing all of the other things we've been planning endlessly since the bidding process began.

As easy as it is to hoop, holler, and jump for joy, one thing that everyone on the team has been amazing about doing is focusing. Within minutes of hearing the news, we were already into full speed ramp-up. The order is huge, and is no small undertaking to fulfill, so it isn't hard to think of the urgency a small company like ours has to use when working towards this type of goal.

It would have been easy to sit and think about the money, to think about the change in lifestyle, to think about any of the changes really. We could have all taken a day or two, and simply celebrated. Instead, we all got to work, and as a result I have every confidence that we will not only fulfill the order in the time span we were given, but we will more than likely beat our schedule by almost a week.

This brings me to the title of the post, "Focus: Your Only Weapon". As I've made clear, its easy to celebrate your victories, but you should never forget that a victory isn't complete until the entire war has been fought. When you hit a milestone with a project or with your business that is a huge victory, but only part of the puzzle in the long run, do everything in your power to focus your 'troops' on the tasks yet at hand. If you can do this, you will always come out of the war with a victory on all fronts.

Forget it, and you'll have fun for a while, but end up regretting it in the end. Reminds me of what my dad always used to say to me, "Work hard now, so you can play your ass off later." So true dad...

A Day Of Great Expectations

The title for this post actually comes from Bill, one of my wonderful production managers with ZibTech Computers. Given the subject matter, I think you'll all agree that the title is about as perfect as perfect can be..

A few of my loyal readers have noticed that my updates recently have been few and far between. Though I do feel bad for neglecting my blog, the nature of this lapse in blogging is more than worth the bad feeling. ZibTech Computers was recently asked to bid on a contract with a company in London who is/was asking for 15,000 computers.

The multi-million dollar contract, is a huge deal for me and my little 8 year old company. When we were first asked about the bid, we were a bit timid about putting a quote out. After a few days of discussion and planning though, we came to the realization that with the right ingredients, this bid was not only possible for us, it was perfect for us.

The entirety of ZTC has been flying around since then planning this and that should we get the bid. Our bid price has been finalized, and a sample unit is on its way to the buyer. The day the sample unit arrives is the so called "Day of Great Expectations". We are all aware that we have not yet won the bid, and could still very easily lose it, but it is quite clear that we are the #1 bidder and that we have a better chance than anyone at the moment.

Should this bid go through, it will certainly change my life, not to mention the lives of those people who I employ. Either way, it's shown us some things about our company structure and personnel that are very emboldening. Should we lose the bid, we'll begin an aggressive marketing campaign (within our budget of course) to start pumping the company into a production mode. Should we win the bid...

If we win the bid, I expect you all to come see us in our new office/warehouse sometime in the near future. ;)

- Andy

Hiccup!

Its been far too long since my last update, but we've just been -that- busy with everything at Zibings Incorporated! I've been flying around updating things with the release of our first beta for the Zibings Network, not to mention the server work we've been doing.

Server Migration
That of course calls into question the server migration that never happened. We ended up waiting for far too long to get the server from the new provider, so we cut our losses and put the money into upgrading our current server. As a result there wasn't any downtime, though we are planning on adding another server again in the near future, I'll of course keep you posted.

ZTC Site Beta
Then there was ZTC, which has been another source of my busy-ness as of late. The inventory system is going much faster than I thought it would and will be into the testing phase soon with staff members. After we work out some kinks, we'll be piecing together some of the configurators using the 'live' inventory, so we'll need you all to go build fake computers using the site. Again I'll keep you posted when there's more information regarding the site.

Zibings.com
Along with the release of the first beta for ZibNet, we are trying to fly through and do minor skin and security updates on all of our sites. The first one in line for this was www.zibings.com and it is well into its makeover, hoping to be finished with it completely before the new week begins on Monday.

Zibings Network
As I said earlier, we're all buzzing about our 'Beta 1' release of the Zibings Network. What is the Zibings Network? The basic idea is to create a network of services/sites that will work together with unified logins and profiles so that you can organize yourself, collaborate with others, socialize, etc without having to keep track of 30 different websites and their respective logins. We're excited about it obviously, and we already have both ZTC and Epoch working off of the unified login system. We're working on creating a few more ways to integrate with the system so that we can continue adding new sites without needing months of modification/development, but its a work in progress (and is a beta after all).

ZibNet IRC
I felt this update deserved its own section, though it really belongs underneath the above 'Zibings Network' section since that's what it is part of. We have put the finishing touches on our IRC network for now, and you are invited to come join, bring your friends and chat to your heart's content. The easiest way of connecting is to use our IRC Connection Form and join up using the web-applet. However, should you be one of those IRC experts, you can connect using your favorite client to:

Normal: irc.zibings.net:6667
SSL Enabled: irc.zibings.net:+6670

Epoch Gaming
Haven't gotten to do an update on this bugger for a while, but we are happy to announce the return of Chris Butcher to the development team for Epoch Gaming. He will be in charge of system development for the site. Chris is very dedicated to the completion and ultimate success of Epoch, so I'm very excited to see his contributions.

That's all I have for now, I had thought of another post I'd wanted to put up a while ago and just haven't had time to type up, so maybe tomorrow I'll throw that up. Thanks for reading!

- Andy

Server Migration

Over the next few days, Keith and I will be working hard on migrating the systems over to a new server. The move should be relatively quick and painless, but as always there is the chance for hiccups along the way.

This move will affect all hosted services for up to 48 hours depending on the frequency with which your DNS resolvers update their cache (we use OpenDNS for our computers). There will be no data loss for any services, including webmail, ftp, databases and file structure.

We will also be taking this opportunity to widdle away some more at our inactive hosting accounts. We will still have backups of all inactive accounts for the next 4 months, but after that point we will erase all memory of them from the server.

The new server is running a Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66Ghz with 4MB L2 Cache), 2GB of RAM, a 400GB hard drive, and is sitting on premier Savvis pipes in Atlanta. The new server will be faster, more secure, and just generally easier for everyone to use.

I'll post again after the migration is completed, wish us luck!

- Andy