• Jeff (unregistered) in reply to not frist at all

    I think your auto-troll script needs some fine tuning in the keyword matching area.

  • El Ka-Ben (unregistered)

    I've done stuff like that for simple websites that seldom get updated. I just stuck with Tabs and Returns, though.

    Tab delimited text files are fine for that sort of thing, and easy to manage. If you need "users" to work it they can even open it in Excel. If you're setting up an FAQ section, or a set of items used on a couple of pages.

    As long as it's only a handfull of these files and they're read-only it can be maintainable.

  • Spewin Coffee (unregistered)

    TRWTF is the use of WordPress. As a product, it is nearly unusable. Especially if you want to do something sensible like integrate network credentials instead of WP's built-in system, which educational institutions like to do these days. It certainly is not suitable as a CMS. (I manage the technical side of one of the largest WP installs in the world, and as a CMS, it sucks - it is also a terrible blogging platform, but that's a different story).

    However, WP would be a step up from this worse-than-fail scenario. But as a product, the use of WP is a fail. I'd go with the "or something" part of the boss' idea and find a more suitable product.

  • b0b (unregistered) in reply to LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet
    LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet:
    "Do you like our new website? Please respond with either yes (Y) or no (N)."

    Why is this not working???

    Your comment was caught in the ASCII porn filter. The second one looks kinkier, even a bit scary.

  • b0b (unregistered) in reply to Captcha:nibh (is that one new?)
    Captcha:nibh (is that one new?):
    The "string split" solution is not actually such a bad method. Sure, you're gonna get a lot of collisions with "(Y)", but how likely do you think that is if you use "(i|=J7}Y&.`Gb)" ?
    You just used it. So you should still check. MIME uses a random string separator for multipart messages. Just put it in the header so the decoder knows what the separator is. If you're going to build a search tree for full-text search anyway, it's easy to find an empty branch.
  • Cap'n Spanky (unregistered)

    (Y)

    I don't get it. ...wait...we're programmers. none of us do.

  • Wyrm (unregistered) in reply to Justsomedudette

    More than that: it's the first "happy ending" I read with a spontaneous good choice from the boss. According to the story, the dev agreed to the boss' decision, not the other way around, which is mostly the case in the occasional "happy ending" stories.

  • 5urd (unregistered) in reply to @Deprecated

    TRWTF is that there isn't even a command line tool to update the database. LET ALONE BASE64 THE IMAGES!

    CAPTCHA: luptatum

  • Dann of Thursday (unregistered) in reply to not frist at all
    not frist at all:
    Fuck me. I'm not clever.

    I have no idea what I just read....did some nerd write a script to automatically bitch about links to a webcomic and set it loose on a thread where nobody linked to the comic?

    Nerdy nerd nerd nerd. Look at all of that pure nerd rage.

  • Fedaykin (unregistered) in reply to Something
    Something:
    If this had somekind of proper layout, I would not think it would be THAT horrible of a solution to use text files instead of a database. The upside is obviously that you are not likely to get SQL injections, and if advanced querying, performance and safety isn't needed this might be OK.

    Yet I cannot seem to wonder that a harder solution was chosen over an easier solution, where you just make a connection and start querying. Having to parse the files manually seems more like feature creep than anything else.

    CAPTCHA comment: praesent, like a present but with an a

    Use the right tool for the right job.

    SQL Injection is trivial to avoid.

    CMS is a solved problem.

    Building a frankensystem like that is always, always idiotic.

  • Johnny (unregistered)

    [QUOTE user=Article] “Mostly. If images exceed a certain size, I think we overflow the buffer, but I haven’t tested it in awhile.”[/QUOTE]When I discover memory issues, I just ignore them. They might go away. I'm never sure though, because I haven't tested whether the issue still exists for a while.

  • Johnny2 (unregistered) in reply to Johnny
    Johnny:
    Article:
    “Mostly. If images exceed a certain size, I think we overflow the buffer, but I haven’t tested it in awhile.”
    When I discover memory issues, I just ignore them. They might go away. I'm never sure though, because I haven't tested whether the issue still exists for a while.
    FTFY

    CAPTCHA: distineo (that I have on my feet) is quite itchy

  • Friedrice the Great (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    College radio stations tend to be fairly professional organizations. It's not like it's some club that people do on the side- it's a job which people get paid for.
    I didn't get paid when I worked in a college radio station. And we didn't have any computers in the station at all.

    Guess that makes me old, doesn't it?

  • Matthijs (unregistered) in reply to Pista
    Pista:
    Being done for a business organization (the college radio), it wasn't an amateur project, but a professional one. This is true even if I'd rather cut my tongue instead of calling that guy a "professional"
    That's a bit black-and-white if you ask me. Yes, it was done for a business organization, but it was clearly not done by someone whose job description said "make websites". If I work as a programmer and my boss asks me to help him put together an IKEA desk, that doesn't suddenly make me a professional carpenter.

    I, too, have been there, when asked to make a simple site on a server that did not host any form of database. And I have also seen this kind of thing being taken much too far, with file-locks, editor interfaces and cobbled-together file indexing scripts to retain some semblance of sanity on the whole mess. It never works. But you only learn that after you try it. There is no shame in writing a system like this, only in maintaining it when you know better.

  • (cs)

    My solution to a temporary PHP database was to store the data in .inc files: One page --> one folder --> one .inc.

    Now, unlike Chad, I know that is sub-optimal. Even if it did save a lot of up-front work; and require manual creation of each new .inc. But for an 11-page site, it works fine.

    But I planned ahead. When it comes time for a real database, the .inc design is formal enough to allow me to port the data to a database. Just one dumb little script to loop through all the folders, including each .inc in turn and inserting a row, and I'll be live.

    ...but I bet Kyle's problem will be a bit harder. After all, Chad knew his design was best because it was "invented here".

    At least Kyle's boss made the right decision.

  • bicj (unregistered) in reply to Matthijs
    Matthijs:
    Pista:
    Being done for a business organization (the college radio), it wasn't an amateur project, but a professional one. This is true even if I'd rather cut my tongue instead of calling that guy a "professional"
    That's a bit black-and-white if you ask me. Yes, it was done for a business organization, but it was clearly not done by someone whose job description said "make websites". If I work as a programmer and my boss asks me to help him put together an IKEA desk, that doesn't suddenly make me a professional carpenter.

    I, too, have been there, when asked to make a simple site on a server that did not host any form of database. And I have also seen this kind of thing being taken much too far, with file-locks, editor interfaces and cobbled-together file indexing scripts to retain some semblance of sanity on the whole mess. It never works. But you only learn that after you try it. There is no shame in writing a system like this, only in maintaining it when you know better.

    But an IKEA table is something that (theoretically) anyone with an allan key should be able to do.

    OTOH if you agree to cobble together ANYTHING I.T. (Website, min-app, Excel Macro, whatever) that is actually used by your work then when you say "Yeah, I reckon I could do that" you are basically claiming that you are able to produce something near-professional quality. If you're not, then you should point oput it's not your area of expertise. In the context, he was creating a (theoretically) useful system (not the boss's cousins third sons website) so if he didn;'t know what he was doing he shouldn't have done it. If my boss asked me to rewire the powerpoints in the building I'd be explaining to him that I'm not even remotely qualified to think about touching them.

  • Endurion (unregistered)

    And thus Disqus entered the scene and f*cked up commenting...

    ...which delivers several WTFs on its own.

  • (cs) in reply to Friedrice the Great
    Friedrice the Great:
    Remy Porter:
    College radio stations tend to be fairly professional organizations. It's not like it's some club that people do on the side- it's a job which people get paid for.
    I didn't get paid when I worked in a college radio station. And we didn't have any computers in the station at all.

    Guess that makes me old, doesn't it?

    and what sort of bands were you playing at the time?

  • uns (unregistered)

    For trolling I'll name my rock band "Y".

  • Fernie Canto (unregistered) in reply to not frist at all

    Why don't you write it in your BLAG? Hahaha LOL LOL LOL I'm definitely the best person in the world only because I know xkcd!

    Oh, wait! Wait! I have a better one! PHPTXTDB? Nah, not really into POKEMON! OH MY GOD I'M NEARLY DYING BECAUSE OF HOW AWESOME I AM. I am such a special, perfect angel for being so knowledgeable on all things xkcd, because no one else knows it. I go around all day quoting xkcd, but nobody gets it! OH GOD WHY DOESN'T ANYONE UNDERSTAND ME? They're all SHEEPLE, they are.

  • Martin (unregistered)

    I look into sources of Wordpress once and in comparison with it the PHPTXTDB solution is clever thing!

    Wordpress is a nightmare, but it just works :)

  • (cs)

    I love WTFs like this. Not only needlessly reinventing the wheel but also unmitigated shite.

  • Bas (unregistered)

    The real WTF is why they kept this system for so long rather than moving sooner.

  • one day late (unregistered) in reply to Jeff
    Jeff:
    Yes but you're just one person; you don't expect the entire world to redesign its software systems just to accommodate you, do you?

    Say that to little Bobby Table.

  • (cs) in reply to Bas

    It's because the people who usually have a say over this kind of thing will forgive most diseased piles of wank passed off as quality work so long as the money keeps rolling in.

    "But it works"

  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    College radio stations tend to be fairly professional organizations. It's not like it's some club that people do on the side- it's a job which people get paid for.

    Except for the good ones, that is. KRRC 4-evah!

  • Friedrice the Great (unregistered) in reply to Cbuttius
    Cbuttius:
    Friedrice the Great:
    Remy Porter:
    College radio stations tend to be fairly professional organizations. It's not like it's some club that people do on the side- it's a job which people get paid for.
    I didn't get paid when I worked in a college radio station. And we didn't have any computers in the station at all.

    Guess that makes me old, doesn't it?

    and what sort of bands were you playing at the time?

    Led Zeppelin, Allman Brothers, Jefferson Airplane, Leo Kottke, lots of live recordings, etc. Basically, anything that wasn't Pop 40.

  • Shinobu (unregistered)

    I don't understand what Kyle and Bill are complaining about. Have they never seen a CSV* file before?

    • cleavage-seperated values
  • Neil (unregistered)

    I've actually had to do the delimiter dance. With real SQL too. No, I lie, it was MS SQL 2005, which conveniently can't parse CSV. Or at least, not the same CSV as products such as MS SQL 2000 and MS Excel 2000 parse.

    I guess I could have resorted to the Unicode character set, but as it happens it turned out that the data I was importing only used 94 of the 95 printable ASCII characters. Guess which one I chose for my delimiter.

  • Neil (unregistered)

    Actually, now that I think about it, the delimiter was a comma, but in order to include a comma in data I needed a text qualifier, and MS SQL 2005 won't let me quote the text qualifier to use as part of the data, so I needed to use a character that wasn't in any of my data.

  • camelotbob (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter

    What college did you go to? Everybody at my college station did it for free for the experience.

  • Isaac (unregistered) in reply to not frist at all
    not frist at all:
    Jeff:
    Yes but you're just one person; you don't expect the entire world to redesign its software systems just to accommodate you, do you?
    I didn't even read the responses to this comment and knew it was some fag linking xkcd. It's not clever. It's not funny. The initial comment was all I needed to know that someone would link the cartoon where the parents iteratively one-up each other on how to screw the school system.

    It was funny to read when it came out. It's even funny when clicking on the Random button on the site and seeing it. It's NOT funny when someone links to it from a one-sentence post and thinks they're so fucking clever to have discovered xkcd.

    You probably still use lmgtfy and think you're so damn clever.

    It means in real life, you're an unoriginal hipster doofus.

    Got anything to do with sanitizing inputs to a SQL database, etc.? Link to Bobby Tables. Got a nerd-project slow-ass turing machine? Like a minecraft logic circuit from redstone? Link to the one where it's some guy alone in the world making a computer out of rocks. Got a story about password security or encryption? Link to the one where they beat the password out of the guy with a wrench.

    Fuck off. You're not clever.

    Whoa whoa whoa ragemonster... You don't have many real life friends do you?

  • Chris (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that they replaced it with Wordpress.

  • Maltz (unregistered) in reply to Justsomedudette
    Justsomedudette:
    The real WFT good decision boss? Now that's a frist.

    It seems to me that most (not all, but most) bosses became bosses because they make GOOD decisions. I've found over the years - and I say this as an IT person - that disagreements between management and IT are often the result of either IT not fully understanding the full context of the business problem they're trying to solve (after all, the purpose of IT isn't IT for IT's sake - it's to make the business run more efficiently) OR an inability to explain in layman's terms a technical issue to management. It's all about communication.

    ...unless the boss is just an idiot. Sometimes that happens, too.

    (In this case, the Real WTF is the guy not bringing this issue to his boss' attention sooner with a solution in hand.)

  • Lloyd W (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter

    Wow, and I'm sat here as part of a team who runs one with no paid staff at all.

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