Yesterday all servers in the U.S. went out on strike in a bid to get more RAM and better CPUs. A spokes person said that the need for better RAM was due to some fool increasing the front-side bus speed. In future, busses will be told to slow down in residential motherboards.
Book Club already have search capability but search is through menu item. And there is no visible search form to search Book Club. Also top right corner search box is not connected to book club search.
I have connected top right corner search box to Book Club Search. Also a book cloud is added which picks few books at random in right side bar. Any suggestions on this?
As mentioned in Book Club Modifications - IV, Book Addition Mechanism is being simplified. SVTechie Book Club right now can read book data from Amazon based on ISBN number so that user does not have to type in whole information. It uses SOAP interface to achieve this.
But I wanted to add search/fetch capabilities to Library of Congress catalog as it has much bigger collection. Now, I stumbled on something called Z39.50. This information is from Z39.50 Gateway.
Z39.50 is a national and international (ISO 23950) standard defining a protocol for computer-to-computer
information retrieval. Z39.50 makes it possible for a user in one system to search
and retrieve information from other computer systems (that have also implemented
Z39.50) without knowing the search syntax that is used by those other systems.
Z39.50 was originally approved by the National Information Standards
Organization (NISO) in 1988.
Great, only thing I need is Z39.50 client which can work with PHP. And YAZ is the great thing to achieve this. Information is available at Index Data PHP YAZ page. And letest version canbe downloaded from PECL.
I checked if Dreamhost provided PHP already has Yaz extension support and it does not! So ofcourse, I need to compile my own PHP and BTW, Dreamhost has nice support script to achieve this. I would like to provide it here but I am not sure if I can do that. link is here http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Installing_PHP4.
Ofcourse, it did not work right away as other linux/unix scripts. First, I needed to add YAZ support into this. Another was libxml2 gave "xml.sax" related warning and script aborted (though there was no need to abort the script). So I built Yaz and libxml2 manually. Rest of the stuff was okay. I tried example fetch script from YAZ page and it worked
Oh, there is one more thing.. I tried to use sudo as mentioned on YAZ as I did not know anything about sudo.
Sudo (superuser do) allows a system administrator to give certain
users (or groups of users) the ability to run some (or all) commands
as root or another user while logging the commands and arguments.
Ofcourse, sudo did not work and it could be dangerous too! Actually I need not to use sudo at all because I was installing in my home directory. Neverthless, my attempted sudo access is logged in to dreamhost system logs
Latest Modification goal is to simplify book addition.
Currently it looks like following
There is next section to this form which looks like following and is needed when fetch information setting is "On your own". Though this form is not required in most of the cases, it is there (implemented as static form).
Next step is to implement this form using DHTML. This unnecessary portion can be hidden and make visible only when fetch information is set to "On your own".
Similarly, if person doesn't want to rent book, Book Location and Book Condition is optional and can be hidden in similar fashion.
Also I would like to add text book donation option (while adding the book) indicating book is available for donation. Once there is critical mass of books available, these books will be collected and shipped to charities.
And ofcourse, Tag/Keyword system is also in the air.
New version of SVTechie Book Club is released with following changes
Template change - Tables are more user friendly and nice looking too!
Pages are compatible with both - IE and Firefox Browser.
Manage Request - Simplified Interface. Included declined book as well in transaction history. Cleaned up significantly.
Lend Request Form - DHTML/JavaScript based calendar to enter dates.
Allow negative credits - Person can request books. Owner can make decision based on credits and user reviews.
Currently working on following modification
Book
Addition - Compact DHTML based book
addition.
Book Tagging - Rather than creating various categories to handle the books (which complicates user interface and bulky too), book tagging is added. Person can tag the book with a single keyword and this keyword may act like sub-category too. I have copied this idea from other sites.
Before I start writing second SVTechie Book Club modifications blog entry, some notes from book club development history are presented here.
First and foremost, I always find using and modifying existing code easier than writing from scratch. Though, existing code is always written over finally, old code provides nice anchoring plateform. (More so when I know so little about web design). So I chose com_booklibrary component of Joomla! to start with.
com_booklibrary component had lots of bugs when I started using it. But now it is little more stable. Initial modifications were little cusotmization for svtechie.com. But later on, I have added more features and have rewritten most of the code.
Few features I added (apart from bug fixes) are
Referral based User Membership. It required separate member database in joomla! as I wanted same user management system as rest of svtechie.com
User can add/modify/delete there own books.
User profile management
Credit based lend mechanism
Simplify some of the addition.
Will be posting later on development status and new features, I am planning to add(modify) in svtechie book club. stay tuned!
I was thinking about creating an online community based book library management system for long time and I was partially successful in creating such system as you may have seen at SVTechie Book Club.
Though SVTechie Book Club is in itself is complete but I am thinking about new set of features. I started with following features in mind
Sharing - people can share and exchange books.
Flexibility - People can list books for reference only and indicate if do not want to share
Flow control - Credit mechanism to facilitate equitable book sharing mechanism
Safety - Referral based membership and admin approval for membership and each book additions.
Ease of use - Extensive control panel to perform book management. Easy addition of books etc.
Current System does support all of the above features except in hindsight, I feel that some of the features may not be needed
Sharing - Except third world countries and students, general audience may not want to share books. If they want to get book, go to library.
Safety - Referral based membership creates initial membership hurdle and creates unnecessary steps in registration process.
Ease of use - some of the features require compromise on usability.
I am thinking about following modifications
Template change - Make use of space and compact menu system
Registration/Login - Direct membership into book club and one step simplified registration process on book club main page
Book Addition - No approval required to add books. Compact DHTML based book addition. Add library of congress to addition search. (Simple ISBN based system)
Groups mechanism - User group system. User can create groups and can decide if it is book share, exchange or reader's club. Inherent support for all three of above systems.
Invitation and connect - Users with similar books & interests are connected together and invite them to create reader's club.
Categories - this I am not sure of. Should categories be extensive or simplified few categories (as now)? Any suggestion!
What do you feel about these features.. any suggestion, comment etc.
SVTechie Book Club is Community Based Book Club, designed for users of SVTechie.com. Book Club is a fun place to review,
get feedback on, exchange, or loan a book.
2 Easy Steps to Explore World of SVTechie Book Club
Register on SVTechie.com.
Once approved, add couple of books of your own.
User Credit Management
1 Credit for each listed & rentable book.
Extra Credit for each rented book. Credit is allotted for the duration of rent period.
2 Credits required to rent a book. Credits are deducted for the duration of rent period.
Great Feature set
Book Review and Feedback System
Manage community based book library. It allows a group to share
all of the books among itself and outside.
Book Club provides tracking mechanism
to manage book requests.
Easy interface to Amazon to allow quick and simple addition of books.
Additional fields to control and indicate if book is available for rent or not.
Built-In safety mechanism... user doesn't need to have
separate ID to access Book Cub and only friends gets access to the
system.
Built-In Tracking Mechanism and Flow Control.
Encourage equal and equitable sharing of resource, in this case Books.
Module rewritten from scratch... major bug fixes in this release.
BlogCal 1.5 (Navigatable Calender)
Please Install Blogsidebar Component (Version 2.0.5) also. This components lists items
based on date. Required for full functionality of calendar.
Version 1.2 Supports Calender Functionality & Navigation for
JoomBlog, Mamblog and for that matter, any section. Embedded Links to
view content listing based on day is supported.
Modular structure mean you can change location of each sections
Content Item listing based on day (will be shown in navigatable calender format) Done
Support Joomblog/Any Section for Navigatable Calender and other features Done
Navigatable Calender
Done without writing special component. Go to SVTechie Blog
to see Demo. Now information is passed by _GET variable and passing
a variable to indicate month to display with respect to current month.
Component is developed and please download and install if want to
use with Joomblog and other sections.. Mamblog still will work without any
component.
How come it has resurface. Looks like Mamblog is the crappiest component around and I still love it. It is one blog system which behaves like blog system with "no-bells and whistles". But again it doesn't have necessary stuff too! That's why I had to develop MBSidebar.
Anyway I had to modify Mamblog to suit my needs, like support catagory based view using Mamblog Component. (MBSidebar uses Joomla Standard Catagory View). Also to support daily/monthly listing in MBSidebar, I may need to modify Mamblog Component as I can not use Joomla Standard Components here. But then again I may just add a small component by myself.
Okay, enough!! I like Mamblog + MBSidebar So what if little modification needs to be made. If you need help, drop a line!!
Now we are back to above problem. What happens is that Mamblog works perfectly if Blog Items are viewed using standard joomla component. But using Mamblog to view a listing doesn't work and above error resurfaces. Ironically, the fix which I applied long time ago to solve this issue only fixes a part of problem. How to fix it? See below
Solution is that don't use mamblog component to see individual entries. Instead use Joomla Standard compnent by doing following
Installing JD-Wordpress since I like sidebar style in Wordpress. Most of the stuff is okay, same as installing other components/modules but there are few issues
Initial Login to WP Dashboard. Even if you login to Joomla! control panel (As Admin) ofcourse, it doesn't allow you in Dashboard. Reason is pretty skewed. It looks for original Joomla Installer ID (with id 62). In my case, it was not possible as I could'nt find any id with 62. So fix is presented below
Go to {joomla-install}/components/com_jd-wp/wp-includes directory
edit capabilities.php
Go to line 230 or so and you should be inside body of function has_cap. Modify it to return true always. For example, comment out following lines
SVTechie Blog 
and I still love it. It is one blog system which behaves like blog system with "no-bells and whistles". But again it doesn't have necessary stuff too! That's why I had to develop MBSidebar.
So what if little modification needs to be made. If you need help, drop a line!!