WCN Open Source Software

Open Source Software by Peter Falkenberg Brown ~ Updated Nov 4, 2006

=> Simple Form v3.0 will be released soon (in late Nov., 2006).
=> The Open Source Support Forum is back online (Nov. 5, 2006).

Open Source Support Forum: If you need technical help, you may also leave a post at our Open Source Support Forum. If others answer questions before I get to them, I don't mind at all :-) Ah, the joy of being busy ...

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See the section on Software that WCN Highly Recommends (at the bottom of this page) for software tools that I personally use and like a lot -- enough to highly recommend them :-)

Available Now

WCN:Talk v2.0 (formerly called "FutureForum", ending in v1.33) | /opensource/wcntalk | A web discussion forum written in Perl and MySQL, with many features. New Features: Private and Public Discussion Board Feature . The private board requires a username and password. HTML Templates - Almost all html output has been separated out to html template files. Thus, it's easy to change the look and feel of amost all parts of the program. Email Subscription - Now, because the program has a user table (allowing password protection) it also has an email subscription function which allows each user to receive a copy of each post via email. Alternatively, users can receive an email at the end of the day containing a list of posts with authors and subject lines. Users can subscribe to each forum section (see below) with either option, or unsubscribe completely. There is also a function that allows the admin user to setup a section (like 'Announcements') that has mandatory subscription. In my opinion, the email subscription function is a significant plus when it comes to bringing users back to the discussion board. If they never receive any messages, they don't know if anyone has posted anything. Discussion Board Sections - The program now has the ability to have multiple sections, each one contained in its own copy of the data table. This way, discussions can be separated from each other. Sections can be set as 'read-only' so that admins can post announcements, but regular users can't post in those sections. File Uploads - Now, private boards can have file uploads enabled. Public boards cannot have file uploads at this time, primarily because the coding would require a 'no-clobber' function on uploaded files that I haven't written yet. Of course, public file uploading is a dangerous issue anyway, since someone could upload nasty photos. Note that file uploads can be of any type. There is a variable for setting file size limits. There is also a new table that stores the filenames and descriptions. There is also a new link to display all file uploads. Administrative Options - There is an admin page for approving, editing and deleting users. There is an admin function for managing sections, i.e. adding and deleting sections and modifying section names and the topic list assigned to each section. Registration Function - New users can register via a public function (register.html). They'll be tagged as 'denied' until the admin approves them. The admin will be sent an email saying someone has registered. Email Forgotten Password - Users can submit a form to email them their forgotten passwords Improved Menu Interface - The Menu has undergone numerous improvements, including more searching options. User Help Page - I've finally actually written a User Help Page. There are many other small improvements, as well as a cleaned up code set. With FutureSQL, the forum messages can be managed by a forum administrator, allowing for tasks like deletion of records, mass updates, etc.

Simple Form v2.3 | /opensource/utilities/simple_form.html | Updated: - v2.3 - September 11, 2004 Version 2.3 is a Major Feature Update. Version 2.2 is a critical security upgrade intent upon frustrating spammers in their attempts to use scripts like this as "Open Mail Relays". I'd appreciate feedback from programmers about this attempt. Simple Form is written in Perl. There are a TON of form processors, many of them great. I wanted something simple and quick that could be used for any form, so instead of checking out all the others, I rolled my own. Was that a time saver? I don't know, but I enjoyed it. :-) This form processor emails the results to an admin user, and is very easy to set up. New features and fixes in 2.3 include: SECURITY: Added routine to remove linefeeds from email headers in subroutines &mail_to and &mail_to_win - one more step against spammers. FEATURE: Added ability to use an html template for response pages. The parameters for this are in the hidden html form fields. FEATURE: Added ability to use "include files" inside the html response files by placing :!:tags:!: representing the include files where the normal <!--#include virtual="/header.html" --> include SSI commands would go. For example, instead of using the above SSI command, you would place a tag, :!:header:!: in that spot. Then, in the form hidden field called "include_file_vars", you would place the tag name "header". You can use more than one, separated by | pipes. FEATURE: Added a hook to include a Perl include file that contains various calculations on the form fields - such as totaling orders, etc. Thus, the script can be expanded without modification. Note that the code in the include file has to be aware of what's going on in the form and the script. BUGFIX: fixed problem with checkboxes - multiple values with preview function were not getting passed. OTHERS: a number of other cosmetic features, such as variables for tables, ability to use multiple tags in the email subject line, etc. (see history in script). New features in 2.2 include: MAJOR: removed admin_email_to and admin_email_from from the form parameters to stop spammers from potentially setting the to and from fields via the url line. the vars are now set in the script MAJOR: added ability to store admin_email_to, admin_email_from and return_path emails in secondary script file, providing for multiple form usage Fixes: see docs and history

PageMod v1.4 | /opensource/pagemod | ~ "PageMod" is written in Perl. PageMod is a "web page text and image modification system". It allows a web owner to modify sections of text and also upload images for any number of web pages, all done via a simple web interface. It "meshes" data with html templates. The templates can contain any valid html or Javascript content. It can be setup in 'simple' mode where one web owner is able to conveniently modify his or her own pages, or it can be used in 'multi-user' mode where a web hosting owner can provide the same feature to any number of web accounts. Modification of the structure of the web pages is easily done via a web interface. The data structure and data itself are stored in a Perl "hash of hashes" (a simple text file) -- thus no database is necessary. Features include: easy installation via two .tar.gz (zip) files (shell access required) installation can also be done via ftp (file permissions have to be modified) structure modification done via the web web button to backup the data file web button to regenerate all pages, based on new templates changes web button to view an extensive help document online admin menu to create and delete "users" (new user web directory trees with separate logins) admin or user menu to change a user's templates to a different set of templates (shared templates require the same data structure, of course) web button to view other user urls

MySQL Backup v3.1 | /opensource/utilities/mysql_backup.html | Updated on November 21, 2003 ~ MySQL Backup is written in Perl. It uses mysqlshow to grab the database names and "show tables" to grab the table names for a user's account, and then uses mysqldump to save the data in a subdirectory named in the script. It then tars and gzips the files, using the date and time for the file name. It can be run from cron on a daily basis. It now removes old files and has an option to email the gzip file to an admin. It also has options to use "select data into outfile" or a regular "select" for users who can't use mysqldump. (Some hosts don't allow that.) New Features in 3.1: fixed bug in mysqldump parameters with --result-file being in wrong order added some code to the ftp upload feature New Features in 3.0: I've skipped from 2.7 to 3.0 because I consider this a major feature release . It has many, many improvements in the code, including: options to refine the tar/gzip functions (-z switch, piped or two step method, intermediate text file, deletion and support for bzip2); mysqldump now uses --result-file (check your version of mysqldump!); the script can now be run from the web, with password protection; the script now works on both Linux and Windows (including email and ftp functions); fixed a much requested bug with the parsing of whereis output; added a significant amount of error checking; cleaned up the reporting method; rewrote the subroutine that deletes text files; added a switch to disable reporting to stdout; created a method for selecting method of output (screen, email or both) for all print commands; many other small fixes and features. (see History Notes and comments in file). Additional Features saves backup files, then has option to email file and/or ftp file to remote server supports large sets of databases and tables (tested with over 3,000 tables) uses .cnf files, or user/password in the file, or web login removes old files, based on time criteria backup can be done with mysqldump, select into outfile, or sql select (some may not have permission for select into outfile, and some don't have access to mysqldump

FutureSQL v2.4 | /opensource/futuresql | UPDATE NOTE: WCN:SQL v3.0 is already running on numerous client systems. It's just a matter of me finding the time to package the program and release it with adequate documentation and examples. It's MUCH better than version 2.4! I hope to release it soon. 5/17/2003. PFB. ~ FutureSQL is a Free, Open Source Rapid Application Development web database administration tool, written in Perl, using MySQL. It uses DBI:DBD and CGI.pm. FutureSQL allows one to easily setup config files to view, edit, delete and otherwise process records from a MySQL database. It uses a data dictionary, configuration files and templates, and allows "pre-processing" and "post-processing" on both fields, records and operations. It's very flexible and has a wide range of options. It can be used for administrative functions, but it can also be modified to allow web visitors to perform read only searches on data tables. It allows multiple setup files to provide different views or operations on the same data set. Thus, an administrator / programmer can tailor it to fulfill a large number of functions, providing a different look and feel for different web sites. Documentation is included in the setup file.

Search and Replace v1.4 | /opensource/utilities/search_and_replace.html | Updated on October 27, 2001 ~ "Search and Replace" (ok, it's not an original name...) replaces characters in recursive directories and files line by line, with a strong suite of options for prompted replaces. It's a medium size utility written in Perl. It's very useful for replacing things like domain names, etc. On one client's system it processed 13,029 files, with 7,487 replaces, in 11 seconds. It also writes its operation output to a log file, so you can check what it did. I also use it to replace items in large data sets that have been saved in text format. It's quite fast. It processed 13,402,165 replaces, (13.4 million) (a 67 meg text file with 163,441 lines) in 1 minute, 10 seconds on a Pentium 166 with 64 megs of RAM. As an alternate method, I recommend using VEDIT, the fastest huge file text editor in the world, at 'www.vedit.com'. From v1.4, it includes the ability to use user-specified setup files -- so an administrator can copy the main file to /usr/local/bin and give each user the ability to use the script with their own setup variables, and file extensions. File extension options now provide the ability to 'include or exclude' files with a set of extensions, or ignore extensions altogether. The command line options still work, of course.

Selected Backup v1.2 | /opensource/utilities/selected_backup.html | Updated on May 6, 2001 ~ Selected Backup is written in Perl, and is based on MySQL Backup. It uses "include" and "exclude" files to tar and gzip files and directories per the user's criteria. It's very useful for backing up critical directories like .conf files, etc., as well as web directories. It can also be used for hard drive to hard drive backup, backing up whole directory trees. It removes old files and also has an email attachment option.

Coming In Awhile

WCN:SQL:Shop An E-Commerce Shopping Cart written in Perl and MySQL. A live version is in use at: http://jjwatchrepair.com/shop.

WCN:SQL:Publish An online publishing system written in Perl and MySQL. I'm now using WCN:SQL:Publish on this site, to publish all of our articles, columns, verse, etc, under The World Community Journal. Again, I just have to find the time to release it.

WCN:List A Yahoo like web category of sites program written in Perl and MySQL. A live version is in use at: http://jjwatchrepair.com/weblist.

Software that WCN Highly Recommends!

UltraEdit - My current editor of choice. It's *really, really* great!

Also ... another GREAT editor! ...

VEDIT , at VEDIT.COM, is the FASTEST Text Editor in the WORLD!!! (At least I think so :-) 2 MILLION replaces in a 100 meg file in 1.51 minutes!!! I do a lot of heavy duty database manipulation, on gigantic files. When you have to WAIT and WAIT and WAIT (yawn) for other editors to decide to even begin to do the million or so replaces that you need to do, then you begin to say to yourself, "Oh, if I only had VEDIT!!!!" :-) (It's true.) Smart programmers have more than one editor in their toolbox, so they can do each, very different job, with the best tool for the job. BUY this editor today if you need speed. You won't regret it.

(I fixed a 50 meg file with 170,000 replaces multiple times using VEDIT. If I had not had VEDIT I would have been REALLY miserable. VEDIT saved my NECK.)