SCM @ home

I've started a project at home - homework if you will. It will require both database design and and web programming. As with many others projects, I'll use MySQL as the target database and PHP as the web language. I'll possibly also create a client, perhaps utilizing mono, or maybe just Perl/TK.

I decided to use an SCM. It was going to be Accurev, indeed the title of this post was originally going to be "Accurev in Anger." However, I've just checked out the Accurev website. Apparently the previous 2-person free download is no longer available. I checked out the websites of a number of other SCM vendors: PureCM, Perforce, PlasticSCM and IBM (for ClearCase and Team Concert.) Perforce appear to be the only company still providing that kind of long term small scale evaluation without requesting the inside leg measurement of your Mother's first cousin's girlfriend's sister's hairdresser's cockateel. Well, in addition to ClearCase, Perforce is also used at work, although not by a software development team. I do not want to use it at home.

Consequently, it looks like I'm going to be using Open Source. Well, there's quite a choice of those too. Might as well be Subversion with the TortoiseSVN client. Bazaar or Mercurial or Git might have been more "with it" or edgy or out there, but as its just me the initial attraction is to actually get things done.

I've downloaded and installed the server and client. Now to start writing some code.

Changing the Domain Name of a WordPress Mu Site

I downloaded the Multi-Site Manager plugin from http://wpmudev.org/project/Multi-Site-Manager

This plugin makes it incredibly easy to create a new site. You can clone the original site to a new site, and then transfer blogs between those sites.

Unfortunately, in my experience, it didn't quite work perfectly. Probably a rookie mistake on my part. It is probably best not to transfer the primary blog from the original site. That caused some very strange behaviour from WordPress.

Anyway I ended up hacking through the MySQL database manually editing all the URL references.

Aarrgghh!!

This was made worse by the extra half dozen or more users who had appeared overnight. Each user causes an additional 8 tables to be created in the MySQL database. Truly, everyone has their own playpen!

137 tables later all the references had been updated.

There was a problem with tags and references or more specifically Permalinks. I found I had to go in and reselect the permalinks options. As none of the existing users have complained about tags and categories I’m presuming that they have successfully followed the instructions I emailed through to them or haven't yet re-logged in.