My Technology Magazine

Mapping Software: Putting Data Visualization on the Map

admin — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:42:27 +0000

Mapping Software Improves Data Visualization

From the outset, it is important to clarify exactly what mapping software is and what it has to do with data visualization. If you are looking for driving directions for your next road trip, this is not the article for you. If you are looking for a tool to organize and bring to life complex levels of information which revolutionizes tracking and reporting, then you have come to the right place. Data visualization used to be visual organization of data in simple bar charts, pie graphs, or some form of mapping until mapping software enabled data visualization to simplify complex levels of interactive information.

Mapping Software Tools

The reason why mapping software is able to make so much information interactive is that it interfaces with so many interactive mapping tools commonly used in the business world. Any report, map, chart, or graph used in tracking, reporting, presentations, or research will benefit from mapping software. The following is a brief explanation of many of the tools used in mapping software.

Flash

Flash technology streamlines information by making visible only what you are looking for. For example, you may move your map from the “home” link to the “about us” link of a website and see the “home” menu disappear and the “about us” menu pop out. What you are looking for appears, everything else disappears.

Java

Mapping software also interfaces with Java technology, allowing networks to benefit from mapping software. Each manager, employee, and customer will be able to interact with the company information they need.

HTML

Mapping software interacts with HTML in order to provide interactive information to the broadest number of businesses and consumers. Using HTML enables the entire World Wide Web to receive and convey interactive information.

JSP

JSP technology uses java for web page content, and when teamed together with mapping software, each web page comes alive. Interactive data is able to work with any server, from the WWW to the remotest consumer.

PHP

PHP technology is server-side coding which interfaces with HTML. ASP, Perl, and Cold Fusion technology interact similarly with HTML, which means they work similarly with mapping software to create dynamic pages.

.NET

Even WWW networks using TCP/IP network protocols using .net technology can interface with mapping software to bring .net charts, .net graphs, and .net maps to life both within the business and among clientele.

PDF

The concern of businesses using any of these networking or programming technologies is based on long experience of not being able to convert HTML, Java, JSP, ASP, Perl, Cod Fusion, .Net, PHP, or any other type of interactive information into a printable copy. Mapping software provides a solution by allowing any of these technologies to convert to PDF.

Mapping software has benefited companies as diverse as airlines and chambers of commerce and people as different as a 6th grader and a CEO. The diversity of mapping software lies in its interfacing with common business and educational technologies.

Joe Miller is an author of informational articles and online advertisements on business software. Find out how your business can use Mapping Software at Corda.com.

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Constructionalist Parsing - Deciphering Natural Language

admin — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:42:27 +0000

The research in the field of Natural Language Processing usually assumes the existence of a syntactic “Generative Engine” that combines words and word-like elements into syntactic structures, and then sometimes displaces them by “syntactic movement”. A Linguistic Parser must “undo” all the effects of syntactic movement, which results in a structure where the relations between the words are represented more directly.

In recent years, a new theoretical framework was introduced, in which the syntactic combinatorial system does not stop at the level of the words. Instead, the same “Generative Engine” continues all-the-way-down into morphology. The various parts of the same word correspond to the different areas of the syntactic tree, and then are brought together by multiple applications of movement.

Within this Constructionalist Framework, the syntactic is not a tree of words - it is a tree made of sub-lexical elements like roots, prefixes, suffixes, etc. The components of a single verb are spread all over the parse tree.

Correspondingly, the function of a Linguistic Parser is different. The goal of the parsing is to “reconstruct” every such sub-lexical element into its original place in the syntactic tree.

By undoing the effects of syntactic movement, “Constructionalist Parsing” produces the syntactic trees where atomic constituents of every word are distributed through such a “reconstructed” syntactic tree. Every constituent is restored into its appropriate location in the tree, where the context for its semantic contribution is found in immediately adjacent locations. Deep Parsing makes it possible for all the relations between the elements in the tree to be strictly local.

The primary distinctive property of “Constructionalist Parsing” is the fact that the meaning of all the elements of a syntactic tree is determined locally.

The argument structures of all the verbs are represent by a small number of “functional elements”. These “functional elements” introduce arguments and determine the semantic roles of the immediately adjacent Noun Phrases.

The state-of-art algorithms of “pattern matching” generally fail to produce good results on natural language text, before or after parsing. But when text undergoes “Constructionalist Parsing”, the output is more accessible to standard “pattern matching” methods and analysis, because an appropriate representation of text is generated that is in the domain of real Computer Science.

Sasson Margaliot is the founder of Linguistic Agents Ltd, a provider of advanced Linguistic Parsing technology for natural language applications.

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Benefits of Integrating Online Chat Software with CRM

admin — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:42:27 +0000

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy and processes used to learn more about customers’ needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. CRM applications are traditionally developed as client-server software. The proliferation of the Internet and the Web has fueled the rapid growth of Web-based CRM or online CRM applications. Web CRM systems are widely deployed for Web based call center, contact management, trouble ticket, personal information manager and scheduling. As more and more corporations use chat software to provide quality customer support, many CRM vendors have built chat functionality into new generation of Web-based CRM systems.

The first generation of text-based online chat software was developed years before the World Wide Web (WWW) gained its popularity. The new generation of Web-based chat software is much more user-friendly and is powered with audio and video chat.

There’re many benefits to integrate chat software into CRM systems.

1. Many customers have experience in using chat software

New technology is often challenged by user acceptance. Fortunately, online chat has been widely accepted by average Internet users. It is estimated that tens of million of Internet users login to online chat rooms regularly. In free adult chat rooms or free teen chat rooms http://www.chatjungle.com/teen-chat.html, people talk about anything under the sun - love, pets, music and games.

2. One customer service representative is able to support multiple customers at the same time.

It is common to wait 30 minutes or even more before a customer can talk to a support representative. With chat software, customers have a better chance of instant access to a service representative. One support team member may be able to chat with a few customers at the same time.

3. Chat software can automatically log a support chat session

Call center software is capable of recording support conversations. However, it requires extra cost to convert audio recordings to digital information that a computer can understand and extract valuable information from. Chat software, on the other hand, can be easily configured to automatically log a support chat session.

Bruce Zhang has over 10 years experiences in developing and implementing ecommerce and ebusiness systems in various industries. His latest research interests include ERP failures and ERP benefits http://www.sysoptima.com/erp/erp_benefits.php.

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SQL Administrator Skills Required to Support Microsoft Great Plains

admin — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:42:27 +0000

Microsoft Great Plains is becoming more and more popular and we see new purchases among midsize and large corporations, where, in our opinion, Microsoft SQL Server DB administrator position is a must. If you are database administrator and you are part of the decision making team, purchasing Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains for your corporation, we would like to set your expectation on the level of SQL knowledge, skills and experience needed to support Microsoft Great Plains in-house

? Data querying. Microsoft Great Plains has decent ReportWriter, which allows users to create and modify existing reports, however the recommended tool, and you will soon understand that if you need really challenging reports (Sales Commissions, Bill of Lading, Sales Order Status with Purchasing info, Regional Sales, etc.) ? you need to deploy Crystal Reports or Crystal Enterprise. Crystal Report itself is usually based on the view or stored procedure. So ? you should expect to be familiar with Great Plains tables architecture and be capable to create select statement with multiple joins and unions

? Data Repair. You should be ready to save GP table prior to data repair: select * into SOP10100_Copy from SOP10100 and then use update statement to fix incorrect values. If you need to load SOP10100 back from the backup table ? first drop DEX_ROW_ID column and then use: insert into SOP10100 select * from SOP10100_Copy.

? Backup and Restore. Great Plains has DYNAMICS database which stores system info, such as users, security, companies, etc. and each company has its own database. You should be able to restore mostly company databases from the backup. This seems to be trivial routine.

? Technical Support. When you have issues with posting or need help from Microsoft Business Solutions Technical Support, you place case through customer source and you should expect the technician provide you with SQL scripts to fix your data.

? Some Useful Scripts. You need to be able to delete locked user: delete activity where userid=’TOM’, also very popular is batch recovery script, you need to unlock the batch in SY00500 table: Posting Definition Master

? Do not expect. Replications (except probably snapshot) ? it adds GUID column and then Great Plains Dexterity runtime can not upgrade the modified tables. Referential Integrity is not used, Varchar or NVarchar are not used ? the reason is ? Dexterity architecture, which was initially designed with database independence in mind. Logins and access management ? Great Plains uses its own security, which is translated into SQL logins with encrypted password.

? Moving Great Plains on the new SQL Server. It is often confusing for the DB Admin. Besides physical move through backups or detach/attach DB you need special scripts to transfer GP security and users logins, these scripts are available through MBS tech support or feel free to call you MBS partner.

? Advanced Techniques. If you need to notify your GP users on the specific event in GP ? such as invoice was paid, you can deploy SQL emailing: xp_send_mail. This procedure could be called in the trigger for the apply payments table.

? Data Integration. XML inbound and outbound streams for the integration stored procedures is becoming defacto standard. Also you should be familiar with heterogeneous SQL queries: OPENROWSET and linked server conceptions.

Happy implementing! You can always appeal to us to help you with your system. Give as a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Microsoft CRM, Navision, Microsoft RMS, Microsoft Business Portal customization company, serving clients in Chicago, Boston, New York, Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Toronto, Montreal, Brazil, Mexico, UK, Australia, Canada, UK, Europe, Russia an having small offices in multiple states and internationally.

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Understanding XML Server

admin — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:42:27 +0000

XML Server can be a Web Server that stores the XML files in it and serves them on demand. The XML Server would have processing capabilities with an XML engine and to transform the XML document to other forms. Basically a server which hosts and serves the XML documents is called a XML Server.

There are many commercially available XML Servers in the market. The popular among them are the Tamino Server, the Sonic Server and the FDX XML Server. Though the basic functions of these servers are same the way they are implemented and the features that they support varies.

The Tamino XML Server is from Software AG and is used to publish and exchange all kinds of data especially the XML documents in the native format. It handles open standards. Leveraging on the XML technologies will improve an organizations data access.

In traditional relational databases, data is stored in rows and columns which can be too complex. But in the case of an XML Server such complexity is avoided and any data can be stored which includes even multimedia files and even relational data. These data can be easily retrieved at lightning speed using a Tamino XML Server.

To retrieve data that is requested by any application, XQuery is used in Tamino XML Server. This server implements the XQuery specification draft. Hence queries on the server can be issued using the internet and data can be returned in any format by using XSL style sheets. Thus the customers can manipulate the format of presentation of the data that is presented using style sheets. High speed retrieval of data is possible in XML Server.

The Tamino XML Server is robust, reliable, and scalable. It is used in mission critical environments and there is almost no failure and loss of data. It is reliable in the sense it supports backup of data that can be stored in external devices or remote devices and used in clustered environments. The number of users can be increased and the load on the server can also be increased.

The document structure can take additional elements without changing the entire structure of the data store. These characteristics of the XML Server help it to be used in mission critical environments. Developers can develop XML applications very faster by using Tamino XML Server. It can be easily integrated with application servers.

FDX XML Server is another XML Server available in the market. This product is created by Snapbridge. This server is also used to create and deploy sophisticated XML applications. XSL, XSLT and scripts are supported in this server so that data can be transformed to any format requested by the user or any other application.

Sonic XML Server is another product from Sonic software which is built upon the native XML processing engine. This helps in pipelined processing of XML documents which eliminates the need for generating intermediate xml text file for processing. This improves the speed of the transaction dramatically.

We have seen that an XML Server is any server that gives an XML document as an output so that the other applications can use it for processing. The document can be delivered in any format using XSL and XSLT engines. It is possible for us to write some code in ASP which will serve an XML document to the user when they view that ASP page. We can store this code in a web server and this code can be said to be a very simple XML Server since it serves the user with an XML document. Go through the code given below:

Save the above code in your web server as book.asp and store it in the same directory where you stored your other web pages. Then view that page in the browser to see an XML document in display. In the above code you may note that the content type for the page is set to "text/xml". This is why the output is displayed as XML file. You may develop a little more complex program to retrieve data from a database and generate an XML document from the data retrieved from the database. Thus you can start developing your own XML web server.

Stay current with the latest technology developments realted to XML. Visit XML Developer Guide to get your FREE subscription now!

** Attention Webmasters / Website Owners ** You can reprint this article on your website as long as you do not modify any of the content, and include our resource box as listed above with all links intact and hyperlinked properly.

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Great Plains Dexterity Development: FAQ

admin — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:42:27 +0000

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is Dexterity-written application and currently we see increased interest for Great Plains customers to do in-house Dexterity development and customization. Dexterity itself is written on C programming language and its initial architecture was based on the Graphical and Database platform independence, which C programming language was believed to provide. Initially back in 1994 Great Plains Software Dynamics and Dynamics C/S+ were realized for Macintosh and Windows and pretty similar Dexterity DYNAMICS.DIC dictionary worked for Ctree/Faircomm and Microsoft SQL Server 6.5. In our days Microsoft Great Plains is available for Windows and MS SQL Server only (since version 8.0). In this small article we would like to give you highlights on the most typical entry level Dexterity development questions

? How do I install Dexterity. If you have Microsoft Great Plains Standard or Professional license, you Great Plains CD #2 has Dexterity installation files. However you need license from Microsoft Business Solutions if you plan to do in-house software development. If you have Small Business Manager / Small Business Financials ? your distributive doesn’t have Dexterity ? you need to call your MBS partner and have them to do the job.

? DYNAMICS.DIC. This is your core dictionary which should be used for your customization.

? New Custom forms vs. Alternate Forms. If you are beginner, please try to stick to new Great Plains Forms. Do not customize existing forms. If you open existing form in Dexterity ? you should be aware that field scripts are stripped off and if you place your own script over the original one ? you will destroy the field logic

? Dexterity Triggers. You register them in Startup script ? look Dexterity manual. If you have to deal with existing fields logic alteration you register before or after original script trigger. Please see the examples.

? SQL Stored Procs. Latest version of Microsoft Great Plains is available for MS SQL Sevrer/MSDE only and you should consider combination of Dexterity and Stored procs. Try to avoid using old Dexterity cursors, statements, like: start range. Hint ? ranges were the instrument of database platform independence and it seems to be not the case anymore.

? Dexterity Chunk. You should be aware that Dexterity reserves certain range of the resources for MBS internal developers, you can not modify and use these resources, all the custom resources you create in your customization will use the numbers outside of the proprietary range. Your new resources will be packed into so called chunk. Please refer to the manual on how to create the chunk.

? Customization Upgrade. The most challenging portion of upgrade is Alternate Great Plains forms. If you place custom fields and logic on the existing forms then, you should know that Great Plains can change the form for the new version and you will have to review and redo the custom logic.

? Localization. Dexterity has string resources ? this is where you can translate the strings and have Great Plains work with your native language. However your native language code should be single byte, not Unicode. If you need Dex to work with Chinese, Japanese or Korean ? there is special utility to enable this feature.

Happy customizing! You can always appeal to us to help you with your system. Give as a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com

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The Tools and Features of Adobe Photoshop

admin — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:42:27 +0000

Adobe Photoshop is one of the world’s leading graphics editing programs, developed by Adobe Systems. Available on Mac OS or PC, Photoshop is used as one of the leading image design programs for the World Wide Web. The most recent version of Photoshop, or Photoshop CS2, “bridges” between other Adobe products such as Image Ready, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, and Encore DVD to produce professional videos and DVDs. Photoshop uses a file format called a .PSD or .PDD to store multiple layers of an image. Recently Adobe released a program called Photoshop Elements in order to give a less expensive version of Photoshop with many of the same features. Although Adobe Photoshop is used primarily in doing touch-up for digital photos, it is also used for creating designs for web pages and professional companies.

Adobe Photoshop was originally created as a convenient and powerful way to retouch photos. Its most basic features include easily cropping and straightening photos that were either scanned ore taken with a digital camera. Under- or overexposed photos can be easily rescued with the retouch power of the Camera RAW and other plug-ins. Photos taken in difficult lighting situations can be perfected by a few clicks of a mouse. Filters and plug-ins can be used to make the picture seem old or change to black and white.

Many web and graphics designers use Photoshop to create and design company logos and advertisements. Built in Photoshop effects and filters can make designing professional logos or advertisements a quick and simple process. With the power of layers and opacity, pictures can be blended together and effects such as shadows, blurs, etc. are made possible. And, for those who desire to return to the finger painting days of their youth, Photoshop has a paintbrush tool with countless brush shapes and textures for anyone who just needs to let out their creativity.

Text editing has also become easily accessible because of Photoshop. Perspectives, shapes, and type on a path are just a few examples of the tons of amazing text effects that are available. Slimy, dripping letters or cloud-writing in the sky are made easy from filters and text effects built into Photoshop.

Web designers thrive on Photoshop for making animations using Photoshop with other Adobe products. The things that can be done with Photoshop are literally endless. This is truly and amazing program.

For a tutorial on Adobe Photoshop, visit the photoshop tutorial website.

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Microsoft Great Plains Customization Recovery & Upgrade for Large Corporation

admin — Sat, 10 May 2008 19:42:27 +0000

At the end of XX century, in the late 1990th Great Plains Software eEnterprise was recognized as one of the leader on the midsize to large corporate ERP market. Due to the nature of eEnterprise architecture - it is Great Plains Dexterity based application and Dexterity imposes some specific to the database access and table structure ? eEnterprise was subject to relatively inexpensive customization. During the recession time a lot of former Great Plains Software and then Microsoft Business Solutions partners either went out of business or merged with Auditing firms and their Great Plains clients saw this instability and simply stopped annual enhancement program payments and become so-called orphan clients. Today, in 2005 ? it is time to upgrade from eEnterprise 6.0 to Microsoft Great Plains Professional 8.0. If you have major customization for eEnterprise ? you need to understand your options before you find your new Microsoft Business Solutions VAR of record. In this small article we will describe you the main steps and options to upgrade Dexterity customization:

? DYNAMICS.DIC with the source code. This is where your customization script should be originated from. The nature of Dexterity makes the developer to produce so-called Dexterity chunk from this DYNAMICS.DIC with the source code, in the chunk itself the code is stripped off. You should have this dictionary, if you don’t ? contact your old VAR and see if somebody could give it t you. If you can not find the source code, then customization should be understood and recoded ? yes ? how sad it might sound.

? VBA / Modifier code. Alternative to Dexterity customization could be light (or heavy) VBA scripting. Modifier allows you to place new button on the Great Plains screens and address new and existing fields in the VBA code. VBA scripts are located in DYNAMICS.VBA dictionary. This dictionary should be present on each workstation, using the modification. Usually this code is not encrypted and programmer could analyze and upgrade the code. Modified forms could be also upgraded. Sometimes we see heavy VBA coding, using element of Continuum, where it switched Dexterity dictionaries and then uses inline Dexterity sacscript scripting. These customizations, probably considered as very high-skills programming in the past should be redone.

? Stored Procedures. In eEnterprise, beginning with version 5.0 Dexterity cursors were recommended to rewrite in the form of stored procedures, and so offload Dexterity logic into MS SQL Server scripting. Usually you need Dexterity programmer to take a look at your Company or Dynamics databases and tell you which stored procedures are deployed by Dexterity customization. And you are lucky if they are not encrypted.

? Other custom elements. You may have ReportWriter reports: SOP Long Invoice Form, for example. These is a list of upgradeable and no-upgradeable, the last ones should be redone.

Good luck with customization upgrade and if you have issues or concerns ? we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 866-528-0577 or 630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) ? Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in California, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia

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Four Desktop Tools To Drastically Increase Your Productivity

admin — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:42:27 +0000

Sticky Notes

http://www.deprice.com/stickynote.htm

With StickyNote 9.0, you can create beautiful 3D notes on your desktop or send them instantly over the Internet.

StickyNote also enables you to adhere notes to documents or windows AND to attach documents to your note.

StickyNote eliminates the clutter and confusion of keeping up with the reminders and phone numbers that never seem to be where you left them. Forget jotting down messages and let StickyNote deliver them for you. You can even customize a note’s texture, color and priority with a few simple clicks, and you can set an alarm to have notes appear at a certain time or at regular intervals.

Cute Reminder

http://www.deprice.com/cutereminder.htm

With the help of Cute Reminder software you can easily create desktop sticky notes and make reminders for an appointment, birthday, phone call, bill payment, meeting, oil change, TV show and other events or tasks. Take a pill reminder, break reminder, gift reminder, etc., and you will never miss anything important. The program automatically tracks the history of related events and stores the information into archive. Individually colored skins, support for audio files in various formats, schedule, linking files and Web pages to reminders and printing. The user-friendly interface provides comfort at your workplace whether at the office or at home.

Ideal Calendar

http://www.deprice.com/idealcalendar.htm

The IDEAL Calendar allows the user to insert an unlimited amount of occasions. The program displays a dialog and plays a sound on the selected occasions. The program runs in the system tray and contains enough options to satisfy any user. The excellent options and user-interface make this program truly ideal.

Features:

* Print calendar exactly as you see it (WYSIWYG)

* Select any image for your background (JPG/GIF/BMP)

* Share occasions over the network (Private and Public entries)

* Create multiple calendars

* Backup/Restore capabilities

* Various types of recurring events

* Plug-ins to add more features. (PDA Export/Import, HTML Calendar, etc…)

SpeedUpMyPC

http://www.deprice.com/speedupmypc.htm

SpeedUpMyPC makes it easier than ever before to optimize your settings, free up resources, and remove resource hogs. With simple explanations and real-time graphs for all vital system resources, SpeedUpMyPC identifies performance bottlenecks in minutes. With a heavy-duty arsenal of optimization tools, such as RAM recovery, CPU optimization, startup management, and automatic crash recovery, SpeedUpMyPC is THE must-have utility for both beginner and power users.

John loves discovering software “jewels” - computer applications that actually make the life easier. His small but proven collection is publically available at http://www.deprice.com/desktop.htm

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Review of TikiWiki Content Management System

admin — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:42:27 +0000

TikiWiki is open source software - it is written in PHP, uses phpAdmin for mySQL database administration, and uses the Smarty Template Engine.

Installation - Since our host installed the TikiWiki, I cannot comment on ease of installation.

While TikiWiki has many features, only the features used on the Spotlight on Lake website will be reviewed.

Administration - It is hard to determine what some features are and do, such as the Ephemerides feature. Documentation is sadly lacking! The most complete documentation is for Version 1.6, and Version 1.9 is the current release - so many of the newer features do not have any documentation. While there are Forums and a documentation website, the “Search” feature does not work for either site! Many Forum questions are not answered in a timely manner or incorrect information is supplied. Asking a question with IRC chat may also be an exercise in futility or frustration. On the plus side, it is a simple process to turn features on and off by unchecking or checking a box.

User Rights - It is easy to set user rights to groups or individuals.

General Preferences - While you can add the site’s title in this section, you cannot add metatag keywords or description. In order to add this information, you will need to modify the “header.tpl” file.

Theme - If you want to create a custom design or to modify an existing CSS theme, be sure to select the “moreneat” theme. After basing my design on a different style, I was later informed, “The others are buggy at best, use ‘moreneat’ as it’s the most stable CSS template”.

Home Page - Do not select the “custom home” option. I originally selected this option, and was told “It doesn’t work correctly - don’t use that feature”.

The Wiki - This section was easy to set up and use. If you have never used a Wiki before there are several items of note: (1) to create a link to a new Wiki page, do not use any spaces in the link text and add double parentheses before and after the link text; (2) use the question mark (”?”) link, to add content to the new Wiki page; (3) with spellchecking, there are times when the Wiki will place a question mark after a business name or word. To avoid this, use double parentheses around the word.

Articles and Submissions - This section was also easy to set up. It was also easy to add new Types and Topics. However, it is difficult to display only one Type or Topic on the Articles page. It was easier to use phpAdmin to modify the database tables than it was to use the Articles Administration Section to make this simple type of modification.

Calendar - There are 2 calendars: one is for private use in the “My Tiki” section; the other is for public use. The public feature Calendar is “buggy”. There are so many steps to complete in order to add an event to the Calendar that I found it was necessary to include “How-To-Use” instructions on the Calendar page.

Banner Ads - Simple to set up and allows text or image displays. There are several options for frequency and you can set the zone where the add is to be displayed.

Featured Links, Forums, and Polls - These features were also easy to set up, and no problems were encountered.

Category System - There are 2 Category Systems. One is for the Directory feature, and the other is for the Wiki.

Directory - The Directory feature automatically checks for URL validation.

Email - The Email system uses only a very basic form with input boxes for user email address and comments. Ease of Modification

With college courses in C and C++, it has always been easy to read and understand other programming languages. However, the Smarty Template Engine code was a new experience. Quite a few hours were spent searching through the Smarty site, my PHP books, and both of the TikiWiki sites. I even asked the assistance of a friend who is a PHP whiz, and he couldn’t figure out the problem.

Modifying the existing TikiWiki code should only be attempted by experienced programmers. After many hours searching through the Development section of the TikiWiki website looking for a flowchart, I was finally able to find a section that contained file relations.

With perserverance, I was able to modify the Directory, to build a Listing feature based on the modified Directory, and to include a customized Email system for the Advertising Contact page. By modifying the database, I was able to have only Articles listed on the Articles page and only Events on the Events page.

TikiWiki Rating

If I were to rate TikiWiki on a scale of 1 to 10, I would give it an 8. This is due to the lack of documentation and also due to the fact that “buggy” sections are included. In my opinion, if a feature does not work correctly, it should not be included as an option!

Diane Hildebrandt owns MsDetta, Inc., a Northwest Indiana web development firm. Diane has a B.S. in Computer Science and believes that websites should be designed to be accessible by every visitor. Diane also emphasizes relationship marketing - turning a visitor into a potential customer of your product or service. Web development services include scripting, programming, Flash and graphic design, ecommerce solutions, database management, and content management systems.

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