testing, testing..

If I had a quid for every time I hit the refresh key while working on scripts, I'd have been a millionaire a long, long time ago. Same goes for building desktop applications, the "compile cycle" can actually form a fairly dancable rhythm. I like to get things just right, you see.

Amazing as it might sound, I'm loath to release code with bugs in it, or that doesn't work the way I conceived it to work, or any number of often quite minor foibles. And so I test. And then I test some more. And in this way, small improvements are made all-over, and one by one, things come together. I'm having a lot of fun, anyway. Getting back into the php is always fun; seeing things afresh, digging the notes.

While it's definitely possible to create bug-free software, my continual drive to add new features almost guarantees that this is a state my software never attains. I don't mind; so long as it looks good, and works, though not necessarily in that order.

Which brings me to the comment script, which, after almost four years of tweaking and improving and fixing, is just about ready to be released into the wild. Before I disabled it here at the org last year, it was working great, but simply wasn't able to deal with the sheer volume of (mostly automated) spam that was being posted on-site, or rather, I wasn't able to deal with the spam that was slipping through. It needed some serious toughening-up before coming back online.

While I has doing that ( GD image verification, as well as a few other tricks to fool automated spammers), I added a couple of other features that have been on my mind. The first is an ini file, enabling one to switch individual comment pages on and off at will. There are four settings; 0: totally disabled, 1: show comments but no posting allowed, 2: enable comments and posting, but must verify, and 4: free-for-all.

Level four is currently enabled for the secret comments page; if you know what and where that is. Some of the other pages have also had their comments facility tentatively enabled, too, so we'll see how things go. Hopefully, everything should remain within working parameters and I won't have to spend any more days and weeks removing penis enlargement ads and chinese porn links from my comment files. I might even get a chance to answer a few.

So now I can have stiffer security in areas that are most abused, while allowing looser restrictions in the quieter areas, or any number of other possibilities. I'll expand the ini's capabilities later, to take in more of the prefs, with perhaps a config page to read and write it, because I like ini files, a lot. It's probably working so much with AutoIt that did that - its ini handling is very strong, and one tends to use them for all sorts.

The other feature I'll keep under my hat, for now. Once I clean up the documentation, I'll drop a beta into the /engine, which I would grab pronto, because eventually I'll be selling this baby. Once I code up a PayPal check-out, that is.

for now..

;o)