For authors, syntax highlighting is turned on now so please make use of it. Super simple to use:
to turn on highlighting for a section use an opening PRE tag with an attribute of lang=”java” as an example. make sure to close the tag with a /PRE at the end of the code.
Example:

/**
     * builds a MD5 hash for the input string
     * @param hashMe the string to hash
     * @return MD5 hash converted to string
     */
    public static String getMD5String(String hashMe) {
        log.debug("Request for MD5 of string [" + hashMe+"]");
        if (hashMe == null) {
            return null;
        }
        try {
            MessageDigest md = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
            md.update(hashMe.getBytes());
            byte[] result = md.digest();
            String retval = getHexString(result);
            log.debug("returning MD5 is " + retval);
            return retval;
        } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException ex) {
            log.error(ex.getMessage(),ex);
            return null;
        }
    }

that easy.

This is a follow up to previous post This should be interesting … where I stated the intention of getting WordPress up and running in my SourceForge user web space . Depending on where you are reading this you can see that it worked out pretty nice. I’ll go over what steps were needed. I do assume here that the reader has familiarity with installing WordPress and at least some practice at using SourceForge’s project and user tools. If you don’t have that experience then I strongly recommend that you first practice setting up WordPress locally and also experiment with SourceForge to gain an understanding of what it provides. Both exercises will do you good anyway.

1. You must own at least one project on SourceForge so that you have a database to use.
   1. Strictly speaking WordPress doesn’t need it’s own database and you could just tell it to place it’s tables in an existing db but I like to keep it separate so I created a specific database just for the blog.
2. Download WordPress locally and unzip into a temp work area.
   1. For each SourceForge project there are 3 database user ids: read only, read write and admin. WordPress needs the admin user so it can create it’s tables. Edit wp-config.php and put in your database and user specific information.
   2. Upload all the WordPress files and directories to your htdocs directory ( example: /home/userweb/r/ro/rogercuddy/htdocs is mine).
   3. Create a directory on your persistent userweb space that will be used by the blog to store uploads. Your persistent space will be under  /home/userweb-persistent and a full path example would be /home/userweb-persistent/r/ro/rogercuddy .
   4. You will now need to replace the WordPress uploads ( location <your WP install folder>/wp-content/uploads ) directory with a link to the persistent directory created in previous step. Many GUI SFTP programs do not have the command ‘ln’ but any command line interface should have it. If you are using a GUI based SFTP then also you can check if it allows you to type in a custom command to send to the server.
      1. Remember to remove the uploads folder before trying to create the link
      2. Syntax should be similar to ln /home/usweb-persistent/r/ro/rogercuddy/uploads /home/userweb/r/ro/rogercuddy/htdocs/wp-content/uploads
   5. You should now be ready to browse to your blog /wp-admin/wp-install.php
      1. If anything goes wrong don’t get excited. Just analyze the error and fix the issue. The most likely problem you will run into is making a mistake on your database setup in wp-config.php .
3. Limitations inherent to running on SourceForge because it doesn’t allow outgoing connections.
   1. You will have to install themes and plugins manually by uploading them instead of being able to browse for them in the blog site admin section.
   2. Most plugins will work just fine but plugins that rely on outgoing connections won’t work. This one is a shame since it means Akismet doesn’t work to scan comments for spam.

Even with those limitations it has far fewer limitations than trying to use SF’s hosted apps. With the hosted apps you can’t do much but post (at this time anyway).

That’s it. Happy blogging!

We’re still a bit undecided on whether to use the library website to post items intended only to the dev team. For now dev items will be posted on my SourceForge site and at Poor’s site both.

Poor and I have tried to structure the build process to minimize special requirements on any developer’s machine . So far at least we’ve been able to keep it pretty mild, especially if you only have the developer role. Most developers will already have everything they need installed.

To develop and build

• Text Editor of your choice. Use whichever tool you normally do but DO NOT check IDE specific files into the source repository.
• Subversion (and a GUI if you wish)
• JDK 1.6 SE
• Ant 1.7.1
• Optional – PMD installed for use by Ant, ant task doc

If you will be working on the website then you need to add a little more

• Pushing to the website via the build script requires that your ssh key be registered with sourceforge. We very much do not want any user ids and passwords embedded in the script at any time. It’s just too easy  to forget and check in build.xml with your id / pw now publicly available.
• Pushing from Ant requires you have optional library JSch installed.

That’s it for now anyway. Changes will be posted as new articles so they are easy to catch.

Can you really run a functioning WordPress blog on Source Forge’s user space? We’re going to find out. My first thought about installing was admittedly ‘this is going to hurt!’. Once setup it will be accessible at Rog’s SF Notes

Goals:

1. Be able to install themes and plugins.
2. Responsive enough that it drives readers mad waiting on pages to render.
3. Support sitemaps
4. Easy to backup/restore both the database and the file system.
5. Allow multiple contributors

Quite modest but if I can get that much working I’ll be pretty happy. #1 itself rules out using SF’s Hosted Apps as it won’t be possible to use any themes or plugins.

Will post soon on how it all went.

The Poor Man Facebook Library project site is now active on SourceForge. The goal is an easier to use Java library for accessing the Facebook server API.

The website for the library is at Poor Man Facebook Library

The project site is at SF Project site for Library

It will take a few days to get the site fully configured but we are making progress.