by Matt Lightner, April 29th, 2006 | 7 Comments
Due to popular demand, we’ve put together an autoinstaller for the popular Ruby on Rails based blog software Typo. The installer takes an application name (I.E. “myblog”) and a mySQL database password and does the rest for you, including setting up a mySQL database, installing the application files to your account and configuring the app to work with the new database. From there, all you need to do is create your new Typo admin user and start blogging right away!
If you want to install custom Typo themes or work with the application files, you can find them in the “rails_auto_apps” directory within your account’s top-level directory (outside of public_html).
For a more customized install, you can still install the program yourself or tweak a basic autoinstall instance.
The new installer is committed to our codebase and will be available in NetAdmin under “CGI and PHP Scripts” within the next 24 hours (we need to push out a new NetAdmin RPM to all the servers first).
Hope you enjoy this new feature–we’d love to hear your feedback on it!
by Kevin Hazard, April 4th, 2006 | No Comments
After receiving several emails and messages from confused blog-faithfuls, we have decided that the jig is up… Matt’s most recent post was an April Fool’s Joke! I know what you are thinking: “That was so ‘out there’ that it couldn’t have been real to begin with,” but the joke wasn’t that we wanted you to believe what he wrote; we wanted to see if anyone saw the real message written in the post.
It was a short post, so I’ll copy it right here…
Testing Resumes in Certifying Keys
Through holes in security, I successfully appended new and productive resources into limited features of our lifeline servers. Just observing key environmental outcomes, nearly each descriptor appreciated. Your loads and terminal effects will exponentially heighten our processor’s effectiveness; you only use html and ‘data accumulation’ gradients on our ‘data operating nexus environment.’ Since internal testing exceeded 5 levels of varying effectiveness, servers in the study call users simply to operate metric external research simulators. Judging on killed experiments, samples are reinforced excepting ‘first user naturalization.’ Keeping everything equal, productivity increases through a set equation calculating resources every time.
Hmmm… That’s a peculiar title: Testing Resumes In Certifying Keys… he didn’t even mention “testing,” “certifying,” or “keys” in the article. What if we take the first letter from each word, though… “T R I C K”… And we have found the Ovaltine Secret Decoder Ring key to the entire post! Let’s go through and take out the first letter from every word and see what message we can extract… Got your Ring ready?
Deciphered…
Trick
This is an April Fools joke one day late. We hope you had a good one. Site5 loves its customers; jokes are fun. Keep it a secret.
No… no security holes, don’t wory about the ‘data operating nexus environment’ that I am not at liberty to discuss, and you may continue to use your ‘first user naturalization’ to your heart’s content. 
Have a great weekend and look out for some great “real” news from us within the next few days.
by Kevin Hazard, April 2nd, 2006 | 1 Comment
Check out the article that Matt posted regarding some of the more interesting developments he has been doing with the engineering team over the past few days since Backstage went live.
If you don’t understand the specifics of the post (which wouldn’t surprise me since he had to spend about 10 minutes explaining what exactly it meant in the grand scheme of things), either leave a comment here or on his blog post to bring up any areas that are at all confusing… I think the blog post was secondary to the actual work, so he did his best to sum up the progress while not distracting him from the overall process.
One of the best things about keeping up with Site5 is that you never know what you will see next. Enjoy the news!
by Kevin Hazard, March 30th, 2006 | 8 Comments
Ever seem like your software development plays out like a game of Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe?:
HaXOrCder has died of Dysentary…
Your wagon tipped as you attempted to ford the river and you lost 3 models and 2 controllers…
Pace: Grueling
Here Lies: m45t3rpr0gr4M|\/|3r
Food Remaining: 100 oz of Red Bull
With the holy grail of a perfect, amazing, l33t program at the end of the trail… maybe even more satisfying than the Hi-Res O-Trail screenshot:
Now I am as much of a programmer as I am a gourmet cook (and to put that in perspective, the pinnacle of my cooking ability is grilled cheese with a side of cheetos), but I can observe with the best of ‘em. With that in mind, I simply make the Oregon Trail statement because, we have survived to the end of the Backstage Development Trail to find these screenshots… You will have to forgive us if they are not quite as nice as the graphics on the Apple IIe… we tried to replicate them, but I fear we failed miserably.
Entrance
Dashboard
Account Permissions
Manage Accounts
Access NetAdmin Accounts
NetAdmin Loading
NetAdmin Through Backstage
MultiAdmin Through Backstage
phpMyAdmin Through Backstage
Webmail Through Backstage
That’s right boys and girls… It is awesome, and yes, phpMyAdmin and Webmail work through the system… Surprise! It’s now available for all Site5 accounts… Jealous? Want one NOW? Try our 11GB disk/ 400GB bandwidth SuperHosting Xtreme plan with full functionality for only $7.77/mo by ORDERING HERE! Be the first on your block to experience Site5’s Backstage.
by Kevin Hazard, February 22nd, 2006 | 1 Comment
Over at the madcap E5 Engineering Site, we’ve just added a nifty section that now shows what music team members are listening to in real time. The few souls out there that are mildly interested can now correlate a developer’s activity to an accompanying soundtrack.
Spot a wacky idea submission or a build breakage? Ah, Brittany Spears, Creed, an experimental noisecore band (we all have our guilty pleasures) or a poor random choice on iTunes’ behalf may be to blame.
We thought it might be fun to add this kind of transparency to the site. Matt implemented this feature through the magic of Rails in a mere 30 minutes, as it pulls data from our team members’ last.fm feeds. It was adopted by the rest of the engineering team in unheard-of quickness.
To witness the real-time magic, header over to the music page on engineering.site5.com.
