Entries Tagged 'Web Technology' ↓

Those of you who look at the site regularly: You’ve probably noticed that there are a lot of broken pages. That problem should be rectified within the next few days.

Note to any programmers out there: As much as I value practice through experimentation, there is something to be said for finding out how to do things right before you put everything together.

Case in point - When putting links to vital PHP scripts for each page, I used static links. Yesterday, our lovely host had to move the site to another server as an emergency measure…thereby breaking every single static links for these vital bits of script that the pages are built with. I’ve fixed most of them, but it will undoubtedly take me days to find them all (and maybe not even then…).

And all this, simply because I was ignorant for the longest time of the simple PHP global variable $_SERVER[’DOCUMENT_ROOT‘], which would have prevented this whole thing in the first place by locating each file relative to the root directory of the site.

Sigh.

If you know of any pages that are broken, leave a comment or E-mail webmaster@thedeconline.com. Your help is greatly appreciated.

As one might guess from reading some of the things I’ve written in this blog, I’m not always entirely positive about Millikin IT (that even despite the fact that I have a friend in the department). I chalk that up to my frustration at wanting to do more with The Dec Online when we were still confined to university servers. Really, the people in Millikin IT are by and far good people.

And now they’ve given MU students a great resource: My Millikin.

There’s plenty to mention about this new page, but here are some highlights:

• A Google Homepage/NetVibes inspired layout with lots of pre-installed modules
• Handy links to campus notices and RSS feeds for dining (if you care to dine on-campus)
• A single-sign-on (SSO) approach to accessing certain MU sites

This last option is especially appealing to me as a commuter. Since I am only on campus for limited times, I have not been able in the past to take advantage of many of the resources available online in the library because they are limited to on-campus access. With the SSO, journals available through the Staley Library page are now accessible from anywhere. As an English major, that pleases me immensely: now I can access JSTOR at my leisure rather than planning my research around spare time on campus (which is not abundant in the least).

So kudos to you, Millikin IT, for making something functional and aesthetic and very useful for our community. I thank you sincerely.