| Who Is Beaky? | Beaky's Blog: Older Entries | Beaky Recommends | ||||||
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Beaky is the main developer of the WACS
web-based adult content server package, a free software product released
under the GNU General Public License which runs under the LAMP (Linux,
Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl) environment.
WACS resources can be found at the website on sourceforge, in the WACS entry on launchpad and the WACS project page on freshmeat.net. Commercial support offerings and custom programming services related to WACS are available from Bevtec Communications Ltd who are currently developing a commercial CRM (Customer Relationship Management) add on package for WACS. It is expected to be available Q4 2013. |
27 Sep 2011: WACS 0.8.6 has been released! Phew, now I can actually start doing stuff based on those new schema changes put in nearly TWO YEARS ago. 18 Sep 2011: The devil's in the detail! Still battling silly little permissions issues with the packaging for installation. Trying another build today... 2 Aug 2011: Documentation, Documentation, Documentation. That's been the flavour of the last couple of weeks. Not the best fun but pretty much essential for a large application suite like WACS. Still we're now in the home straight and should be hammering release candidates within the next week or so. Definitely aiming for an August 2011 release for Wacs 0.8.6 and still comfortably on target to achieve that. After that, it's on to WACS 0.9.0 and all the neat new features we have planned for that. I'm thinking of a little and often release process with 0.9.0 so that we get a few new features out each time and don't overload people trying to keep up. 10 Jul 2011: It's been over a year since the last blog entry and my life has changed beyond measure. But I'm still here, and just recently I've started work on another release of Wacs - 0.8.6 - which hopefully will be released shortly. This is not the big jump to 0.9 that was originally promised, but it does continue down that path. As well as just updating WACS to work on recent distributions of Linux, it also includes programs to ease the migration and build the infrastructure needed for the big changes coming in Wacs 0.9. Amongst these are the wacsschema program to update the database schemas to the new layout and fields and the new multi-talented XML reader/database preloader wacspop. These are already available via the Subversion repository on sourceforge and will appear in the release itself. 30 Mar 2010: OK - Wacs 0.8.5 came out about a week ago, we've got new content in the can for pinkmetallic.com, and I'm having a battle with the debian build system in the hope of getting a package archive set up on Launchpad.net. Almost there... I hope. 29 Jan 2010: Been busy... Wacs 0.8.5 won't be long now. Finished up today after nearly three years in development is the initial release of the Wacs-PHP Simple Skin. Tired now... 4 Dec 2009: Another massive milestone - the domains for the WACS demonstration site have now been set up - it's going to be called pinkmetallic.com (with extra links for those who can't spell (http://pinkmetalic.com), those who randomly add hyphens (http://pink-metallic.com), those who can't tell their .com from their .net (http://pinkmetallic.net) and those who think countries exist still (http://pinkmetallic.co.uk)!). There - I think that covers most people! The original idea was to name it bluemetallic after one of our favourite props - a blue metallic dildo, but bluemetallic.com had gone already, and we also figured pink would maybe be easier for people to associate with pussy. No idea why we thought that.... :-). 18 Nov 2009: It's been a very long time, Sorry. Yesterday the wacssetup command actually worked for the first time - it produced a complete and usable database, preloaded with all the necessary parts. This seems like such a massive milestone, although it's just one app, as we'd always said it would be in the next release - 0.8.4. It's vital for the user experience that you can just point a web browser a setup page and end up with a working system. This is a big part of making that happen. It's now just a case of finalising the documentation and preparing the release candidates for testing. May 6, 2009: FINALLY! The Ubuntu/Debian packaging tree for wacs-php is now almost working. It's taken ages to get it to work and I just don't know why. I guess I just didn't have a clear enough feel for how the dh_install command in particular is supposed to work. Current plan is to do a very quick and dirty release of wacs-php 0.8.3 just to keep the numbers in sync and then do a full release of wacs 0.8.4 with wacs-php 0.8.4 together shortly thereafter. Apr 22, 2009: I have no idea if I've found all of the problems caused by what I think is a change in perl behaviour between 5.8 and 5.10, but I think so. I'm currently working through the short order TODO list for the 0.8.4 release and planning to make a new release as soon as I can. We'll have to see how that idea works out! Apr 2, 2009: OK - there's a bug in the wacsmodelmgr shipped with Wacs 0.8.3 and I think I understand what's causing the bug. I even have a reasonable idea of how to fix it; the problem is I can't find all the instances of it in the code at all easily. I've found and removed several, but the bug is still occuring in obscure places... D'oh. Mar 29, 2009: With the main release of 0.8.3, I get to use Wacs for a bit rather than developing code for it, and what do you know, I find the vendor details for KPC are out of date. So I've updated the vendor.xml file to fix that, but you'll have to pull it from SVN for now. Mar 28, 2009: It's funny but after the seemly endless polishing that's needed to actually get each release out the door, there's always some ideas for stuff that I've been putting off doing until the release is done. That's been the case again and there's already a couple of cute new features towards Wacs 0.8.4 committed to the SVN repository. Mar 27, 2009: It's OUT! After a vicious skrimish with the installer script, Wacs 0.8.3 finally passed the install-without-problems test and we've uploaded the release. Enjoy! Mar 24, 2009: Another long slug at making a significant code quality improvement and we're almost there. The administration guide (aka manual) is now finished at 103 pages, and loads of annoying little bugs have been found along the way and duely removed. Just a few small things still to sort out - we are definitely hoping to have the 0.8.3 release out before the end of March. Watch this space.... Feb 26, 2009: A month and a half since the last update - sorry about that. Finally got my head around Debian packaging so WACS 0.8.3 should finally be available as Debian/Ubuntu packages. Also been working like a thing possessed on the Administration Manual which is getting there but only slowly. It's currently a very solid 54 pages long and I've probably only covered about half the material so far, so there's still quite some way to go. Since we promised an interim edition ahead of the WACS 0.8.3 release, I'm thinking of uploading that as soon as the next chapter and a half or so is written - that will cover model record managment and the starting points towards unpacking sets. I'm a little daunted by just how much there is that still needs to be covered... At this point I'm 99% certain there will be a 0.8.4 release before we feel ready to go 0.9 - there are just too many fixes and improvements still on the TODO list to cover it all in WACS 0.8.3. :-( Jan 12, 2009: Sorry folks, I've been off at the other end of the planet overeating and generally enjoying the summer sun. I did just manage to get WACS 0.8.2 out before the end of the year, but it was a bit like the second coming of the prophet Zarcon in HGTTG. All rushed, flustered and at the last minute. I skipped the usual testing regime as I didn't have access to my usual test machines, but since that hadn't done much good in spotting the problems in the WACS 0.8.1 I figured there wasn't that much too loose, and I have been running the codebase that went into WACS 0.8.2 on rather more machines than usual. Hopefully people have found the WACS 0.8.2 release rather better than 0.8.1 was. Anyway, plans for a straight transition from WACS 0.8.2 to WACS 0.9 have been shelved. There is simply still too much work still needed - the next release will be WACS 0.8.3 and that should be sometime in the February-March timeframe. After that... well, we'll just have to see what happens... Nov 18, 2008: Still trudging through the TODO list for WACS 0.8.2; making progress, but it's slow. Today's new feature is that the placement manager now offers headshots of models with the same name as the second one in a lesbian set. Makes it much easier to add Lesbian sets though... Hopefully we'll make a new release early December. Oct 24, 2008: The long slow grind continues... most of the "glamorous and exciting" new code for WACS 0.8.2 is now in there. We're now working on the essential but fairly boring stuff: updating the documentation for the new features and fixes to wacsxmlin to make importing work better. I think it's now quite likely that 0.8.2 will be issued with an imcomplete sample PHP skin system because it's probably going to take too long before that's a complete system... Oct 16, 2008: Wherefore art thou WACS? Yes, I know there's not been much going on of late... but we are definitely planning a release, which will be called WACS 0.8.2 before the end of the year. The new attire feature is in there and a lot of work has gone into improving support for galleries, with more planned. The documentation is also seeing a lot of work. There is also the whole new Wacs-PHP based sample site implementation - BUT above all, we're taking our time and trying to make WACS 0.8.2 a really solid release. Sep 10, 2008: Bugger! Turns out that WACS 0.8.1 probably wins the crown as our buggiest release yet, especially if you are trying to use it with video clips. We're fixing each and every bug we find and there are quite a few of them... :-( We've also decided to finally write the skins code (or at least a first one) ourselves - again, boy has that revealed a lot of bugs the simpler example programs didn't find. Still, the net effect should be both much improved core code and a neat technology demonstrator that will be a plug-and-play porn site! Right now we're not giving a release date for 0.8.2 except to say it'll be coming this year! Aug 24, 2008: The final release testing for 0.8.1 took much longer than I expected, not least because none of my DVD-ROM drives could read the OS install disc I'd burnt at the office. Anyway, the release is finally out, and would you believe it, the first code changes of 0.8.2 have already been uploaded to SVN! Not hanging around... the show must go on and all that. Actually, mostly wanted to start making use of the new schema field and of course that change couldn't go into 0.8.2... Aug 19, 2008: One of those eureka moments in the car this morning. A way of filtering by the general style of clothing in the set would be a neat addition - so a new field called sattire is going into the sets schema. Still need to figure out the keywords, but definitely like the idea. Aug 7, 2008: IT WORKS! The code I've been carefully adding to allow a completely random zip file to be uploaded using the web interface now WORKS! At test case has been worked all the way through with no errors... I've been working on this since late June, and finally tonight it's all come together! Phew! July 24, 2008: Treading carefully - trying to re-engineer what is now probably some of the oldest code in wacs is proving difficult - the issue is to make the .unpack file convey extra information in the absense of a true download record so we at least get associations and source foundries showing correctly. The changes aren't quite working as they should just yet.... July 15, 2008: Well things are moving on pretty fast towards 0.8.1; the info manager is pretty much done, the keyword manager is beginning to come together, and work has started on the updates to the wacsplacemgr. However the first pass at the keywords manager has shown what a mess the initial stab at the keywords table was - I think I'm going to be asking people to delete the old data and start again - it's messy. July 12, 2008: I've hacked on the updateinfo script so it won't overwrite a set-specific pussy hair attribute with a model's standard one; in the process all the keyword scoring code got moved from wacsid into wacsstd and got documented to boot! Also added a few more fields to the wacsinfomgr which is beginning to get there! July 10, 2008: Wacsinfomgr is now at the state where I think it can move things about OK and I'm currently testing it. There's still a lot more I'd like to put into it, feature-wise, but I really wanted to get this base functionality working. I've also added trimmed as a keyword with an appropriate icon, so all pussy values now have their own keyword - hope that works out OK. July 9, 2008: There's a little bit more flesh on the bones of wacsinfomgr (still nothing like ready though)... plus I've finally gone ahead and added hairy and brazilian to the model attribute icons. Been planning that one for a while. Amazingly it looks like most of the apps just worked with the new attributes - quite a surprise! July 8, 2008: Well with Wacs-PHP out of the way, we're back looking at the code for the next release. It's always kinda bugged me that there isn't a web interface to relocating sets or correcting their names, so I've started working on one. It's called wacsinfomgr and it's beginning to take shape in the Subversion repository. I'll let you guys know when it's in a fit state to make use of. July 7, 2008: Wacs-PHP 0.8.0 has been unleashed on the world. The new programming guide got to a substantial 104-pages, all the planned new features went in and worked. Time for a huge sigh of relief. What next? I don't know, I plan on taking a break for a bit and thinking about what still needs to be done. July 4, 2008: So it's been a hectic week - the wacs-php code is now feature complete and the documentation is currently at 93 pages against my target of 100 pages. June 24, 2008: another new function in wacs-php is now working... the reference manual has about another five entries,... things are progressing reasonably.... still a long way to go. June 23, 2008: OK, so once again I'm back in the shadowy lair of DocBook - I've decided that if the wacs-php 0.8.0 release is to be of much use to people, the API documentation really has to improve. So the various sections on programming are getting a re-write into DocBook form. It'll take the form of three sections - a tutorial, a reference section and a database schema directory. The tutorial is half-written, the reference section is bare bones, and the database schema directory is pretty much completed. It's currently running to about 55 pages... once finished, I expect it'll be comfortably over 100 pages. Getting a little bored with DocBook today so switched to implementing actual code - wacs-php now has the read_menu function! June 17, 2008: You know what, getting release 0.8.0 out was a great relief, but almost immediately I put together a package of the DocBook sources for the User Guide and Icons and released that. It's useful and every new announcement on freshmeat gets WACS in front of more eyeballs. So wacs-devel is out there too. I started looking at what was needed for WACS-Php and decided I really needed to fix the documentation on the programming interface. D'oh. June 13, 2008: Release 0.8.0 is out! Got it done last night - it took six release candidates before I finally got one that passed the install test on both Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9 - the most ever. Fedora 9 switching to perl 5.10 even caused me to have to do some last minute code changes to the way I handled the parse tree generated by XML::Simple before it would work. Both distros also changed the path for perl libraries to boot. Still it's a huge relief to have it "out there" at last. June 11, 2008: OK, so DocBook is the bitch-monster from Hell! You'd have thought adding a nice little graphic icon to the frontpage of a document would be easy, right? Nope. :-( It's hard - you have to read several web books on XSL Stylesheets about half a dozen times before you even begin to understand how that's supposed to work. Still, I've finally cracked it and produced a User Guide I'm proud of - simply put, it's the Poodle's Privates! Nothing standing in the way of building the release candidate and seeing if it'll install cleanly on Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04.... apart that is for the desperate need for sleep... June 9, 2008: After a lot of hard graft over the weekend, the User Guide is now almost finished; a little bit more work on tidying up chapter 13 and we'll be good to go. Release candidate testing could start as soon as tomorrow. June 5, 2008: The sign-up links are sorted thanks to work by our commercial division bod; please support WACS by using them if you sign up with any of these sites - it costs you nothing and helps keep us in caffinated beverages.... On the subject of the user manual, Chapter 7 is done now. It's gonna be next week before all the Chapters are done though I guess... I've got some Real Life(TM) stuff planned for the coming weekend, but will probably try to write at least another chapter anyway. June 3, 2008: Well chapter 6 of what will be 11 chapters as at present planned for the User Guide is now written - so I'm more than half way there. Hopefully the new User Guide will be worth the wait - while the documentation has always been pretty important to me and covers most of the WACS system, this should have the best presentation yet. Doing it all in DocBook has been an Experience, I can tell you! May 30, 2008: I really want to get WACS 0.8.0 out before the end of May, but it's taking forever to complete the updated User Guide to my satisfaction. I really want it to be a good introduction to WACS and how to get the most out of it and it's looking like getting it polished enough is going to slip the 0.8.0 release into early June. D'oh. |
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