RAQUEL needs a New Home
After I formally retired from Northumbria University, I continued to work on the RAQUEL language and DBMS. I used a website kindly supported by Northumbria for specification and design documentation, and the Sourceforge website for program code and design documentation.
Alas, the Northumbria website has had to be discontinued. To quote the Head of Computer & Information Sciences :
"Dear David - thank you for your email. .. Whilst it was possible to allow you to continue with access for the last year, we cannot continue with this. You may be aware that both Universities in Newcastle suffered a major cyber-attack two months ago and all systems and future access have been under stringent review. I am therefore unable to make the case to the University that your access can continue."
According to local news, they were ransom attacks. At least half a dozen UK universities have been similarly attacked.
So please can anyone help me find an alternative to support my website ?
The Northumbria website was created by 2 students. The first produced a prototype, and the second turned it into a robust product. Its contents consist entirely of XHTML pages and PDF documents. XHTML pages are created on the webserver, either solely by PHP scripts or by PHP scripts which extract data from a MySQL database. The database is integral to the website and stores only website data. All the data on the website can be added to, deleted, and/or amended, using the website itself. There is no need to connect directly to the MySQL database or write PHP scripts.
David Livingstone
The simple answer for hosting a static site is GitHub. Just check it in, check it out and bingo! Andl does that.
You could run any occasional PHP scripts on your own web site at home. If you need PHP hosting there is plenty around, very cheap. I don't like free, because sooner or later it isn't, and definitely not recommended for long term stability. I use Dreamhost at about $100 a year for random sites and email.
I'm happy to host it for you assuming you want to keep the current infrastructure, though I make no guarantees that whatever PHP/MySQL code you have will run equivalently on the versions I use without modification.
Though as dandl suggests, this might be a good time to drop the PHP/MySQL bits and move to GitHub. It has become the expected place for such things.
Thank you, dandl, and Dave Voorhis, for your helpful replies.
Last time I looked at Github, it appeared to be essentially for program code - maybe I'm out of touch now - and the Northumbria site has no code on it. I've used Sourceforge for code, and I use their wikipedia facilities for program code documentation, and for .pdf files that the wikipedia references.
I'm trying to focus on the programming side of things. Publishing 'good ideas' is fine, but I think it's important to have some software for others to play with, which at least gives a demonstration that the ideas can and do work. My programing skills have atrophied somewhat in recent years - because I've had to focus on specs, design and other things - so I'm building them back up again as part of developing the RAQUEL prototype.
I have no intentions of developing the (ex-) Northumbria site further. It achieves its purpose as it is now. It may well be "a good time to drop the PHP/MySQL bits" (quote), but I'd rather leave things as they are if possible, since they still work fine, so that I can focus on programming.
So I would be very pleased if I could take up your kind offer to host the site, Dave. Hopefully it would be straightforward transfer (although nothing ever seems to be quite so straightforward as one would hope !).
How should I go about this ? Should I email you directly, to avoid cluttering up the TTM site ? Or ... ?
Thanks again, Dave !
David L.
No, that's a misunderstanding. There is a thing called Github Pages, which has nothing to do with executing program code. You just check an existing web site into a repo using a special name, do a bit of setup and it just works. See https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/working-with-github-pages. I have one here: https://david-pfx.github.io/PuzzlangWeb/.
You may do better going with Dave, but you should at least be clear about the choices you have.
Quote from dandl on November 10, 2020, 1:28 pmNo, that's a misunderstanding. There is a thing called Github Pages, which has nothing to do with executing program code. You just check an existing web site into a repo using a special name, do a bit of setup and it just works. See https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/working-with-github-pages. I have one here: https://david-pfx.github.io/PuzzlangWeb/.
Thank you for that, dandl. I followed your link to have a quick look at Github Pages. It doesn't mention whether it supports PHP or MySQL. I would prefer whatever option turns out to be simpler, which I think may be Dave's.
I've just discovered that "GitHub Pages does not support server-side languages such as PHP, Ruby, or Python." (quote from GitHub's 'About GitHub Pages' webpage).
Quote from David Livingstone on November 10, 2020, 12:08 pmLast time I looked at Github, it appeared to be essentially for program code - maybe I'm out of touch now - and the Northumbria site has no code on it. I've used Sourceforge for code, and I use their wikipedia facilities for program code documentation, and for .pdf files that the wikipedia references.
Github isn't just for executable code, its also for documentation and related resources. It hosts Git repositories and anything you can check-in to Git you can have on Github. I for one have a number of repositories that are documentation-only and aren't executable projects. That said your best bet would be to exploit standardized documentation formats such as Markdown files, my file type of choice these days.
Quote from David Livingstone on November 10, 2020, 12:08 pmThank you, dandl, and Dave Voorhis, for your helpful replies.
Last time I looked at Github, it appeared to be essentially for program code - maybe I'm out of touch now - and the Northumbria site has no code on it. I've used Sourceforge for code, and I use their wikipedia facilities for program code documentation, and for .pdf files that the wikipedia references.
I'm trying to focus on the programming side of things. Publishing 'good ideas' is fine, but I think it's important to have some software for others to play with, which at least gives a demonstration that the ideas can and do work. My programing skills have atrophied somewhat in recent years - because I've had to focus on specs, design and other things - so I'm building them back up again as part of developing the RAQUEL prototype.
I have no intentions of developing the (ex-) Northumbria site further. It achieves its purpose as it is now. It may well be "a good time to drop the PHP/MySQL bits" (quote), but I'd rather leave things as they are if possible, since they still work fine, so that I can focus on programming.
So I would be very pleased if I could take up your kind offer to host the site, Dave. Hopefully it would be straightforward transfer (although nothing ever seems to be quite so straightforward as one would hope !).
How should I go about this ? Should I email you directly, to avoid cluttering up the TTM site ? Or ... ?
Thanks again, Dave !
David L.
Email me.
I'll give you an account, a MySQL database, and ssh access to the account. Hopefully everything will Just Work™.
I use Amazon AWS these days, having been annoyed by a dud hard drive one too many times. Similarly, I ride a bicycle these days, having been annoyed by an internal combustion engine one too many times. But I digress.
Quote from Darren Duncan on November 10, 2020, 6:19 pmGithub isn't just for executable code, its also for documentation and related resources. It hosts Git repositories and anything you can check-in to Git you can have on Github. I for one have a number of repositories that are documentation-only and aren't executable projects. That said your best bet would be to exploit standardized documentation formats such as Markdown files, my file type of choice these days.
Thanks, Darren.
I now just use markdown files and .pdf files (but on Sourceforge) to document the code.