At 1/15/13 10:58 AM, FallingTears wrote: My place of employment only has 22 employees.

It was the computer science department's Linux lab I was sitting in which is why there was so many computers. Although finding a place of employment is something I'll be tasked with in a few months time, because I'll have graduated by then. Still have no idea if I'll be able to find some kind of developer job in my town or not. I'm assuming it'll be hard so I probably wont be leaving uni and going straight into a job that's related to my degree. I think ideally I'd like to end up in web development but I'm pretty unprepared for the future.

Strong immune system? Maybe so, but imagine if you touched your mouth after using them. Next thing you know you're getting cold sores for no apparent reason. You get an examination .... wow, you got herpes from a keyboard? Nasty. That's how a friend of mine got infected. I'm not going to allow myself to fall into that trap. I wash my hands and will continue to do so. Ugh, so nasty!

Okay, yea, that is pretty brutal. Thankfully I'm rarely ill but that kind of statement is sure to result in me catching some nasty illness now. I don't actually use the university computers all that often anyway. Only time I'm really on them is if I can't find a place to set up my laptop or if I'm in there as part of a class.

Customers .... again.

They'll set up an official meeting with you to discuss changes that they want on their website. During the conversation, they trail off into a debate with each other, because they haven't decided what they want to do with their website. Note to customers .... FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU WANT BEFORE YOU WASTE OUR TIME!!!!!!!! I'm drowning in work and I don't have time to sit around for thirty minutes while you debate on what you want done. Then, turn around to say "We'll call you back once we've decided." Ugh!

Cross-browser compatibility is a fucking joke.

Also, people that get mad over people still using IE is even worse than people using IE (which is not that bad, really. God damn)

Do NOT give customer's FTP access. Do not let customer's have full power/control over their own websites. Limit their control through permissions. If you give them full power/full access, they will break EVERYTHING. Then, you'll spend several hours fixing the site if you have no backups. If you do have back ups, this still could take a few hours of time depending on what they've done and what you've backed up. AHHHHH! Punch them in the face.

At 1/19/13 01:08 PM, FallingTears wrote: Then, you'll spend several hours fixing the site if you have no backups.

Why aren't you using version control?

At 1/19/13 02:15 PM, Diki wrote:

At 1/19/13 01:08 PM, FallingTears wrote: Then, you'll spend several hours fixing the site if you have no backups.

Why aren't you using version control?

My thoughts exactly. Git that shit, please.

We're using SVN.

Unless you do a dump of the MySQL database, subversion does no good with something like Drupal. One client is using Drupal. Another client is using Joomla. We're not set up to do daily backups ... so, lol. By the way, I'm not the system admin. If I were, there'd be a lot of things that would happen. For example, always updating and keeping software up to date. We have PHP 5.2.4 on one of the servers (look at all the exploits that can be done with this version of PHP). Next, I'd make sure Snort is running with tons of very important rules. I would also run Spamassassin.

I've never used Drupal before, so what about it stops you from just re-uploading all the latest commits of the files that the customer dicked around with?

At 1/20/13 03:07 AM, Diki wrote: I've never used Drupal before, so what about it stops you from just re-uploading all the latest commits of the files that the customer dicked around with?

Everything in Drupal is stored in the database (except for image files, Drupal modules, css, template files, and js). That being said, unless new image files are uploaded, css/js has been changed, or new template files have been written then there's no real purpose for Subversion (or any other source control for that matter). The only solution to this would be to do a MySQL dump of the Drupal DB would need to be done on a daily basis. I guess you could use subversion to control the changes made to the database by tracking it through the SQL dumps, but I don't see the purpose in that.

That's why I'm an advocate of taking away all permissions from clients. Then, only enabling permissions that are necessary to the people necessary. No more, no less. That's why, with my employer, I advocate the idea of an "intermediate CMS," which is basically a page that has only the necessary administration links/processes necessary for the client to feel like they're managing their own website. The least amount of work that I have to do in the future the better.

So, in my opinion, source control should be used only when changes are done to files in the physical structure of the web directory. The "revision" number should be rather small (as I only need to check things in once a day. We're responsible for entire sites, so its not like anyone elses hands are in the barrel for these sites). Daily backups of the MySQL database should be done. Other than that, I don't know what else to do as my employer doesn't actively backup sites. They use Subversion minimally. MySQL dumps are not setup in the chron at all.