Web Threads » Misc

Church Website with News, Podcasts and Video Streams

Web Threads — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:15:42 +0000

One of our favourite ongoing projects has been the website of The Church of the Open Door (Clinton, Iowa, USA). This site development has been ongoing for over ten years.

Using open source software for the majority of content management, they update their own website content in news, events, podcasts and upload video broadcasts to Vimeo. Using Vimeo, the latest videos are automatically embedded in the church page. Website news is automatically posted to their Facebook page, keeping church members updated to new website content.

Website: http://www.theopendoorchurch.org

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Local Bed and Breakfast Site

Web Threads — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 18:07:06 +0000

We designed a small website for a local B & B, one page with all of the accomodation details and a website contact form. They’re able to update the content themselves and we managed this with a low budget.

Website: http://www.orchardlea-b-and-b.co.uk

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Eggdrop on Mac OS X, Auto Start Service

Web Threads — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:04:08 +0000

I run eggdrop on my Mac Mini, which connects to an IRC channel that is used via java applet by website users. With Eggdrop I can monitor the channel users and display who’s in chat on the website.

I needed this service to start when the Mac starts or reboots regardless of whether someone’s logged in or not. It did take some digging and much trial and error (only a little blood, sweat and tears), but I did find a solution.

With MS Windows you drag and drop a program to the Startup folder, or there is an included service installed with the install program. Not so for Eggdrop, at least the version I installed some time ago.

I now have in my Mac > Library > StartupItems a StartupEggdrop directory which contains two files, startupeggdrop and StartupParameters.plist.

startupeggdrop:

#!/bin/sh
#
#==============================================================
#       MyStartupEggdrop
#       Copyright (c) 2009 Leah.  All rights reserved.
#==============================================================
 
. /etc/rc.common
 
StartService ()
{
        # Log a console message
        ConsoleMessage "Starting Eggdrop"
 
        # Start eggdrop with the path to another startup shell script which launches the program
        #
        /Users/leah/eggdrop/eggdropstart.sh
}
 
StopService ()
{
        # Log a console message
        #
        ConsoleMessage "Stopping Eggdrop"
 
        # Stop eggdrop with the killall, though this might not be the best way to stop it, I'm no guru
        #
killall eggdrop
}
 
RestartService ()
{
        StopService
        StartService
}
 
RunService "$1"

StartupParameters.plist:

 version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

 version="1.0">
>
        >Description>
        >eggdrop irc bot>
        >OrderPreference>
        >Last>
        >Provides>
        >
                >StartupEggdrop>
        >
        >Requires>
        />
        >Uses>
        />
>
>

I opted for eggdrop to start last as it has some dependencies on other system services but I couldn’t tell you which.

The shell script that is in the eggdrop directory specified in the startupeggdrop file…

eggdropstart.sh

#!/bin/sh
 
cd /Users/leah/eggdrop
sudo -u Leah ./eggdrop

How can you tell if you’re not logged in that it’s running? telnet to the machine and type “top” (q to exit), it will name the running processes and eggdrop should be listed, ftw.

I’m normally a PC user, but I also have a Mac Mini for development purposes. There are some things that the Mac does better for me than a PC, and vice versa. I don’t take part in the mac v. pc argument. There are good and bad about both, but having both gives me the best of both worlds.

Now I can go on to setup the ventrillo service to startup in the same way!

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Websites Past

Web Threads — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:26:39 +0000

Unfortunately some websites don’t last forever and a few of our clients have moved on to other things. But here are some additional highlights of our previous work.

We provided the design and concept of Iowa District of Foursquare Churches website for several years until the districts were restructured.

We provided the custom template designs for the Cottage Hearth.

We provided a fan site for December Quinn, steamy romatic novelist, with forums and a blog.

We provided a magazine style template with Expression Engine for a section of the KNEEguru website. It turned out that Expression Engine was difficult to work with and expensive to maintain the license so the content was eventually migrated to Drupal.

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