Doing my due diligence as an IT professional quickly narrowed it down to…. IE of course.  I spent hours digging, using a debugger I kept getting the error in the title of this post.  I kept going through the Call Stack trying to figure out what was going on, but the javascript is minified very tightly, so following it became daunting.

Two days later another user complained about not being able to update their profile.  While debugging this, both problems became very clear.

I had recently put in some rewrite rules to make the forum more SEO friendly.  However there are a couple situations where the rewrite rules broke down.  I was missing the two lines colored in green below.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/videos.html /forums/36-Bowling-Videos-amp-Pictures
RewriteRule ^/threads/ckeditor.php /ckeditor.php?t=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/threads/(.*) /showthread.php?t=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/forums/(.*) /forumdisplay.php?$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/entries/(.*) /entry.php?$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/blogs/(.*) /blog.php?$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/members/ajax.php /ajax.php?$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/members/(.*) /member.php?$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/list/(.*) /list.php?$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/list/author/(.*) /list.php?$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/$ http://www.bowlingboards.com/forum.php  [R,L]

It was that simple.  I am sure I am missing some other rules, and will try to get them corrected in due time.

The East Central Florida PHP User Group (Daytona Beach area) is new/restarting.  They have only had one meeting so far, and finally scheduled another a few months later.  They seem to be more geared towards teaching new PHP developers.  While we haven’t done anything so far, they are leaning towards a mentor/student type of group.

The Orlando PHP User Group is quite different.  They lean towards more presentation style meetings.  Someone proposes a topic, and then someone volunteers to be the presenter.  If there isn’t a presentation, then they do some coding in DjangoDojo.  I have not been to a meeting without a topic yet, so I am not sure how those go.  I probably should since I am not very familiar with Django (or Dojo for that matter) at all.

Of the two, I prefer the Orlando version because I am growing my skills.  However, I may like the mentor version because I feel I am a decent programmer and love teaching.

I am looking forward to doing a presentation sometime, because I really want to improve my speaking skills.

How does your user group run?  What is your preference?

I have been fighting an APC out of memory/100% fragmentation nightmare.  I kept tweeking settings in /etc/php.ini and nothing seemed to be fixing the problem.  Sure, gracefully restarting Apache will appear to fix the issue at the moment, but then it returned.

I started looking at the Runtime settings in apc.php and realized that nothing I had set really changed anything.  Turns out, apc by default put its config in /etc/php.d/apc.ini.  Sure, I would set them in php.ini and then they were overwritten in apc.ini.  ARGH!!!!

Found and fixed… YAY!

My Background:
I have been programming for 20 years (12 professionally).  Grew up on BASIC and PASCAL.  And first job was in the old school Q&A database.  Needless to say, I started out very procedural.  My first web programming started in 1999 with PERL.  And I have always had the attitude of I will make it work and work quickly.

Advice Needed:
I took over a project 6 years ago.  It started with no pay, just a percentage of profits at the end of the year.  I took what they already had, and extended it to be able to sell more.  I year after that I was hired full time and have just been adding on top of the mess since then.  Spaghetti code, procedural, unused database tables, unused database fields, it’s just a mess.  I know OOP, but haven’t had the aha experience until a couple of years ago.  I used objects here and there, but ultimately not in good form.  

I went to TEKX to improve my skills.  I have been looking into Zend Framework, CakePHP, and others for about a year, and have decided to go with Zend Framework and Doctrine.  So I am going to rewrite my entire codebase.  Here is where I need advice.  I’m at a fork in the road.

I can either keep my bad database structure and work with it, or start from scratch and migrate the old data into the new database layout.

Pros for keeping the DB structure:
I can build parts of the site in ZF and get the code live quicker, letting the old codebase continue to run and eventually die out on its own.

Cons for keeping the DB structure/Pros for rewriting the DB structure:
The old DB is a mess.  A new DB structure will probably improve speed and data accuracy.

Cons for rewriting the DB:
I will have to rewrite the entire codebase before it can go live.  Everything will need to be rewritten and tested.  A data migration script will need to be written.  And a date will need to be set for new code to go live.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I am working on this and coming to solutions slowly.  It really was apparent on the last update I made.  I had a script that was running probably a thousand plus queries.  During testing by myself, of course I didn’t notice it.  Launch it live to thousands of users running thousands of queries and you quickly learn about the mistake.  To the tune of taking the server to its ‘knees’, which is kinda neat because they don’t have knees.  Throw some quick cacheing into the mix and you have a happy system, and a happy system administrator (ME).

Check out the new feature that caused my little nightmare on bowlingball.com top sellers and bowlingball.com popular searches.

I am almost thinking about “spinning” the traditional model.  I will have my Administrative DB(ADB) in a central place.  ADB will be where I pull all reporting, master updates of product and pricing, all orders, etc….

On each individual web server I will have a slave DB (SDB) that will replicate all data from ADB.  The individual web servers will pull information from SDB for pricing, dynamic web pages, etc…  It will also have its own database (ODB) for writes (order information mainly, maybe other statistics as well).  When an order is placed (instead of trying to reach ADB) it will put the information into ODB.

Now I can have a cron job that will pull the data off each ODB to update ADB for reporting purposes.

Why?

1. Each web server should be able to run without relying on any other machine.
2. Once the web server’s SDB is up to date, there should be very little delays in price/product changes.
3. Scalability, simply launch a new server to be up and running.

Does this make sense?
Web servers write to ODB
Administrative server reads from ODB to update itself which replicates to all the SDB (Every slave/web server becomes a realtime backup of ADB)

Here is a diagram of my thoughts.

DB Proof of Concept

I finally read through the XSD which is not the most fun things to use to try and solve a particular problem.  But the answer was there.  To offer a cart level promotion, you simple need <CartPromotionId>DiscountName</CartPromotionId> in your <Cart></Cart> section.  And then the same <Promotions> section that they have laid out in the documentation for item-level discounts.

I hope that this helps someone find the information faster than I did.

This answers the question: “How do I offer cart-level promotions in checkout by Amazon?“

“If they are not available, why do you keep them on the site?”

Our answer is simple, people like to look up information on older equipment.  They also like to compare old equipment to new equipment.  And the real die hard bowlers like to reminisce over older equipment.

Well now your searches will initially not contain the added bulk of these additional items.  But if you want to find them, all you have to do is check the box that say include discontinued items.

How I got started programming:

1. How old were you when you started programming? I had a real interest (unexplainably) in computers when I was around the age of 7 even though I had only used one a couple of times. My mom dated a guy when I was about 9 whom had a computer and he had King’s Quest 3 (I fell in love with computers).
2. How did you get started in programming? My mother met her current husband and he had a Tandy Cocoa Color III.
   He taught me BASIC and I used a reference book that I still have
   today. It had every command on a separate page with a description of
   what it did. I went through the book trying most of the commands.
3. What was your first language? My first language was BASIC, however I also did quite a bit on the TI-85. I create a Space Invaders type game on the TI-85.
4. What was the first real program you wrote? My first program was a simple quiz game for my youngest sister, it taught her our address, phone number, etc… I also did some db work in a program called “Q&A” for the company my mom worked for “Connery Concrete”.
5. What languages have you used since you started programming? I started in BASIC, in high school I became a Pascal user, after college I moved to Perl as I became a “web guy”, and have since changed to PHP. I have dabbled in others, but very limited.
6. What was your first professional programming gig? My first paid job was for Connery Concrete doing some DB work. They did not store their information in a convenient way to make use of it. I also did similar work for a travel company. Before I started they entered all of their customer data into “Q&A” and then hand wrote all of the information onto forms. What a complete waste of time that was.
7. If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be? Think outside the box. I can’t tell you how many things I have been able to do because I have thought about the problem and solution a little differently than any of my colleagues. “There is more than one way to skin a cat” is something my mom used to say all the time.
8. What’s the most fun you’ve ever had programming? I have to say what I am doing now is. I am part of a team that cares where our project is going. Ecommerce is such a competitive field, and selling bowling balls is tricky. Trying to be on the cutting edge and know that you are doing it before the competition can blink is a GREAT feeling. Having a boss that doesn’t just settle on a store bought solution because it may be cheaper makes me feel very appreciated. I have really grown to love the sport and the nuances that go into it. And to be able to spend my day working in this industry is just plain awesome.

I had to follow suit when I saw this post from Joe Stump. I can’t imaging working with such cutting edge technology persona’s as Kevin Rose, and the old crew from the Tech TV era.

I wish I had people to tag. The only other programmer that I knew and respected was the best man in my wedding, but he has pretty much cut me out of his life. Long story, but I miss his friendship. The long talks we could have. Working together on programming projects. Makes me sad when I think about it.

Oh well. He knows who he is and if he wants to carry on this type of post, I would be honored.