RedCell Launched

RedCell, an award winning PR company based in Coggeshall, Essex, launched its website officially today. It sports a clear and very user-friendly interface, and in some parts minimalistic.

The front page consists of a Flash movie of moving red cells; the clients section showcases their portfolio with some exceptional graphics.

The backend was implemented using CMSMadeSimple, an open source CMS system running on PHP and MYSQL. Due to the fact that the pages are generated dynamically through the database using Smarty templates, this could be a performance hit as more pages are added in future.

My solution to the problem was to implement an additional feature in the main page listing which allows the author to publish a HTML version of each page. The page and site contents are still stored in the database and can still be accessed through the existing features of the CMS.

If you are looking for a CMS, check out CMSMadeSimple.

RedCell can be reached at http://www.redcell.info.

Nash Resorts launched by Skyblue Creations

Skyblue Creations has recently completed an in-house content management system for Nash Resorts.

My role involved building the backend system using PHP. Most of the site content such as the news items and galleries are powered by XML. This is processed by PHP classes using libraries such as ActiveLink XML. Bespoke functions and classes are also written to process and update static website pages.

The only database used is a SQLITE database used to manage user access.

I enjoyed the project as it is my first attempt at backend work without using databases to manage live content.

Fixing file upload error using MERB on Windows

I have just started experimenting with the MERB framework recently after using Rails for about a year. Although I am of the opinion that there are far too many web frameworks out there and I’m still in the process of learning Ruby properly as a language, I can’t help but be curious about the features this much-talked about framework can deliver.

I use a Windows box for development work in the offices. After a few failed attempts to get the gems to install correctly, I setup a simple file uploading script using just a controller as follows:

class Uploader < Application
  def index
    render
  end

  def upload
    FileUtils.mv params[:file][:tempfile].path, Merb.root+”/uploads/#{params[:file][:filename]}”

    redirect “/uploader”
end

end

The controller is uploading a file into the ‘uploads’ directory in the application path. However, if you run the above as it is on a windows machine, you would receive a ‘permission denied’ error. Changing the permissions on the folders would not make any difference.

The only way to fix this is to add a line of code to the gem library as follows:

1. On your windows box, browse to you gem directory and locate ‘merb-core-<version>/lib/merb-core/dispatch/request.rb’.
2. Browse to line 526 and add the following:

   else
data = body
end (approx line 526 here)

   (only add the body.close line after end on line 526)

   body.close

Save the file. Restart your application and you should find that the controller is able to upload to the specified directory.

Official documentation on this can be found here.

Although the bug has been found since January this year, I hope that anyone who comes across this problem on Windows will find this useful.