I thought I’d have another go at checking some CMS software packages like Joomla. Joomla needs a web server, database and PHP so it’s not just a question of downloading Joomla and running an .exe. I already had Apache running OK on the Vista PC as well as MySQL but when I downloaded and installed PHP I couldn’t get a phpinfo.php page displayed.

Then I remembered the XAMPP package which includes all of the above and is supposed to work well. So I uninstalled the individually installed Apache web server, MySQL software and PHP, rebooted and installed XAMPP. Started MySQL as a service, from XAMPP, and that did show as running in both the XAMPP control panel and on the Vista Services window. Tried starting Apache and nada. I messed about trying to get that running for far too long and eventually gave up on the Vista PC and uninstalled XAMPP. I repeated the whole process on the XP PC and it all worked OK, including displaying the phpinfo.php page.

I copied the Joomla folder to the XAMPP htdocs folder and fired that up and it worked. Created a database and managed to get Joomla to create some content. I’ve been learning it via a pdf file which is so much slower than reading a book. Good point, how do I upload all of the junky contect I’ve created to a hosted server? Will I use it in anger? Dunno yet.

I’ve recently installed a statistics plug-in for this WordPress blog and it shows statistics like the search terms used for finding this blog and popular pages. The search terms included Palm Island in Dubai, not that I have ever written anything about the place though I have a picture of Palm Island, with that as the description, on one blog entry. Google Images has spidered that and hence I get many hits from some very poor misguided viewers. I’ve removed that picture so with luck after Google has done another trawl I will be removed from a search of Palm Island. I also have a lot of referrers from condominium sites in Florida. Go figure. Other search terms used have been about faking ISEB certification, for heavens sake.

I was trying to find out how I could import this blogs MySQL database into a local copy and found that I didn’t need to FTP to the server as I can get to it via phpMyAdmin on the hosting sites server, perfect.

I exported the data to a CSV file and that worked OK but after I had finished messing around getting that file onto the XP PC, where I am attempting to possibly home host this blog, I tried importing that file into my XAMPP installed version of phpMyAdmin and that didn’t go anywhere. I then tried exporting the data to an SQL file from the server and tried importing that into my local version of phpMyAdmin and that worked fine.

I then applied a password to the root user for MySQL and created another dummy user to see how that worked and then created a 3 line PHP script to see if the user could connect to the database and, eventually, it could. It also proved again that PHP was running OK. So what’s next? Can I get my users, via some very noddy PHP scripts, to read and display some of the data from the database. Then? Just the little job of copying the whole of the downloaded version of this blog to somewhere where XAMPP knows about and seeing if index.php actually displays.

Meanwhile back to the real world. An agent rang about a position that I was just about perfect for and everything appeared to be OK. He did mention the V-model and I quickly explained that to him, though I thought at the time that maybe he checking to see whether I really did know what the V-model was. He sent my resume to the client and about 20 minutes later, after he’d obviously read my resume in a bit more depth, he phoned back and asked where the V-model was mentioned on my resume. It isn’t mentioned at all. In an attempt to get the resume down to 3 pages I removed a whole load of stuff including any reference to the V-model as I figured that it is such an intrinsic part of the test process and that just about anyone worth their salt would know it that it would be taken as read that I knew about the V-model. How could I have avoided the V-model, I’ve been testing software for nearly 20 years ferchrissakes.

I’m not sure the agent was convinced and he did sound a bit worried that reference to the V-model wasn’t on the resume. No doubt the client company have requested someone with V-model experience and not seeing it on my resume will probably cause them some concern, though I feel that may say more about them than me. This could turn into a waste of time as my resume may intimidate them as I have way too much testing experience. They might call me in for an interview and hammer away at V-model questions till they finally trip me up and get their ‘gotcha’ moment. Give me strength.

Thought I’d have a go at hosting a site from one of my home PC’s, just to see how easy or not it is.

For some reason I decided to try on the XP PC and of course that had XP Home on it, which doesn’t have IIS. Don’t know how that got on there as I was pretty sure that my XP disks are all for the Pro version (No doubt some dubious Windows update from Microsoft. Ed). What was even worse was that it had SP3 on XP Home and all of the XP Pro disks I have only include SP2 so there was no way I could do an upgrade from XP Home SP3 to XP Pro SP2. Eventually got the required XP Pro SP3 disk written from an ISO image courtesy of Nero and installed that over XP Home SP3.

All of that took several hours but eventually I was able to install IIS and start that as a service. Tried to load a loopback page and nada. Hmm.. Messed around for a bit with no success so stopped the IIS service and installed XAMPP. That went on easily enough and the Apache service started and I was able to display the loopback page. Generated a ‘Hello World’ PHP page and that was displayed, so that meant PHP was working. Emboldened by that success I saved an already open Word document as a web page, which has an extension of .mht, in the htdocs folder, where Apache looks for pages and that loaded as well.

Tried to create a database with phpMyAdmin and that failed with a horrible error message. Repeated that and got the same error message. I rebooted and had another go at creating a database and this time the critter was created OK. I then started getting another error which I think had something to do with passwords being out of sync. Stuck with that problem right now. Maybe it’s time to RTFM.

When I have sorted that out and have managed to get, or a copy of, the MySQL database that’s behind this blog then I’ll try and host it from home for a couple of days. This version will still be on the hosting site but a copy will be on the XP Pro PC. I think I might have a problem getting a copy of the database from the hosting company as it’s on a different server to where these pages are stored and I’m not convinced I can FTP to it.