Panic ensued at 9pm on August 27, 2008. My website was down after it had been operational all day. For some reason, my e-mail accounts were not working either. I hadn’t touched any settings whatsoever. All the files on the server were fine – the server just wasn’t sending information. An hour later the website problem resolved all by itself.
My e-mail is still down, but at least the website is back up.
Update: E-mails back too! Yay!
In my never ending quest to build the world’s best workers’ compensation website, I’ve made a few upgrades:
Using open source software can be a two-edged sword. On the down side, anyone with the ability to read the source code can figure out the security vulnerabilities. The plus side is that people are constantly working to improve and eliminate those very same security vulnerabilities.
Since people are working on WordPress all the time, it will need to be upgraded all the time. Doing so allows me to take advantage of the latest features and security updates. So far I’ve used WordPress 2.3.2, 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.6, and now 2.6.1.
The theme (the “look” of this website) is completely user configurable. Since this website’s launch I’ve been constantly tweaking the look. Minor changes to the color scheme, menu at the top of the website, and how many posts are shown on the blog page.
I work on the theme in order to (hopefully) make the website more aesthetically pleasing and easier to use.
I’d like to make the free registration process as quick and as painless as possible. I’ve had the opportunity to watch a few people go through the free registration process for this website. What I saw was that people were logging in for the first time and were sent to their user page – which looks totally different from the rest of the website. Unfortunately, this caused no end of confusion.
I modified an existing plugin to override website’s default settings to send users directly to the calculator page as soon as they log in.
I just posted a new EAMS article with three new downloads and some important information about walk throughs and case filings!
I received a few handouts regarding the new EAMS system while at the San Francisco WCAB yesterday. The WCAB SFO only had a limited number of these documents, so I’ve scanned my copy for everyone else’s benefit.
I also learned some interesting things about EAMS:
I recently gave a brief overview of my permanent disability and workers’ compensation benefit calculators. In that post I wrote a little bit about how my online benefits calculators work. Since then I’ve posted about my use of javascript, PHP, and AJAX in creating these permanent disability and permanent impairment calculators.
As I mentioned in the prior post in this series, my first few versions of this website and its workers’ compensation calculators did not use MySQL. The initial versions of this site only saved information – which meant I only had to use PHP to open a file on the server, add an extra line of information, and then close the file. This had several problems:
MySQL is an incredible tool for storing, organizing, and retrieving a large amount of data. Like PHP, it is also open-source. This means it is:
So, why did I avoid MySQL? I didn’t want to have to learn a whole new programming language. I had to learn how to set up a database, tables within the database, how to search for information in a table, how to put information into a table, and how to change information which was already in a table. There was a lot of trial and error. I ended up doing some pretty cool things in the process of learning this language. Some examples:
The end result of learning this language is a more interactive website. One of the last incarnations of this site was a version that would show different color schemes, advertisers, and messages depending upon the user. All of this was made possible by large amounts of data stored in MySQL.
Thus ends my technical overview of my workers’ compensation permanent disability calculators! If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or leave a comment below!
Javascript appears all over the internet. You can be pretty sure that your favorite websites use a LOT of javascript. You see it every time a website creates a pop-up advertisement, sends you an alert, lets you bookmark their page, or interacts with you in some way.
I’ve written some pretty cool (in my nerdy opinion) things in javascript:
I’ve written innumerable other mini-programs which either had a very limited or one-time use or which I never developed into an actual program. One example was a program that would help me quickly search muliple ebay auctions and compare the various prices. Another was a Sudoku puzzle solver which I never completed.
I recently gave a brief overview of my permanent disability and workers’ compensation benefit calculators. In that post I wrote a little bit about how my online benefits calculators work. Since then I’ve posted about my use of javascript and PHP in creating these permanent disability and permanent impairment calculators.
As I’ve mentioned in those prior posts, both javascript and PHP have inherent downsides. My very first attempt at online benefits calculators using javascript and ASP actually suffered from all of the downsides of javascript and PHP. Those first calculators used tons of user’s computers’ resources, bandwidth, and server power. However, learning more about AJAX enabled me to build a set of calculators which benefited from the strengths of javascript and PHP while minimizing, if not eliminating, their weaknesses.
The acronym “AJAX” refers to “asynchronous javascript and XML” – a collection of other technologies which allow a webpage to communicate with a web server without requiring an entire page download.
Example 1: A calculator without AJAX calculating “6 x 7” would send information to be calculated to the web server. The web server would then respond by giving you an entirely new page with the answer, “42”. However, in order to download that answer you would need to download a whole new page – and all the images, text, and code associated with it. Even a normal web page could be between 30,000 and 300,000 bytes in size.1
Example 2: A calculator with AJAX calculating “6 x 7” would send information to be calculated to the web server. The web server would then respond by sending back just the answer, “42”. This would be 2 bytes.
If my calculators needed to download of 300 kilobytes for every single operation, a simple calculation could take about 30 seconds on dialup and a full 1 second on broadband. Although 1 second doesn’t seem like a long time – it is in the internet age. Most of the calculations on this site take approximately .500 seconds using a broadband connection. I would guess that about 90% of that time is due to network latency/network lag – which wouldn’t be much different for a dialup connection.
For the first few months after the launch of this website, it did not use a MySQL database. I actually went to some pretty ridiculous extremes to not have to learn a new programming language. I eventually gave in, learned how to use MySQL and am a better programmer for it.
Next up, MySQL!
The Latin phrase “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes” means, “who will watch the watchers?”
The above phrase means, “Who will train the trainers?” Answer: The DWC.
Today our office manager is stepping into the brave new world of EAMS. (Thanks Monique!) August 15, 2008 is the Northern California training session for anyone who wanted to learn about EAMS in order to train their office.
Those of you who missed the EAMS training session in Southern California and aren’t going to make it today can get a glimpse into the future by reading the “EAMS Train The Trainer Overview.” The Board website also has a wealth of information about the system, demos, videos, etc.
Maybe our office manager will be able to answer my biggest EAMS question: If EAMS is web based, why does everyone at the Board need a separate monitor for it???
Golf or EAMS training?
I may be a nerd, but I’m not totally hopeless. See you on the green!
I recently saw banner advertisement for something called, “The Mojave Experiment.” The “Mojave Experiment” consists of hidden camera videos of people (who had negative opinions about Vista, but had never used it) being shown the next version of Windows, codenamed “Mojave.”
The Twist: Mojave was really just Vista.
Critical flaw #9: People who haven’t tried Vista by now probably don’t know enough about computers to tell whether the program they’re using is good or bad.
Shocking development #7: Everyone loved Mojave! Riiight. Everyone thought Vista could do wonderful things and was fast and responsive.
Here’s what they’re not telling you:
I would be astounded if this bit of propaganda changed a single person’s mind. More than 18 months after Windows Vista’s launch on January 30, 2007, people still loathe it. People hate it so much they’re telling their friends.
Here’s a business tip for Microsoft: Don’t try to convince people they want your product. Just learn from your mistakes and build a better product.
I recently gave a brief overview of my permanent disability and workers’ compensation benefit calculators. In that post I wrote a little bit about how my online benefits calculators work. My last post in this series was about how and why these permanent disability and workers’ compensation benefits calculators use javascript.
I had tried Microsoft’s ASP (active server pages) in experimenting with a prior version of my permanent impairment calculators, and while functional, the coding was a complete mess since I didn’t fully understand what I was doing. To make matters worse, the only manuals on ASP I could find gave examples using VBScript – which is MS’s version of javascript.1
Just over a year ago a friend of mine encouraged me to try PHP. (Thanks Johnny!) Its syntax, the way in which you write code, is very similar to javascript and was fairly easy to learn.
Unlike javascript, PHP is run only on the web server. There are a lot of benefits to moving all of the calculations from being performed by a user’s computer to my web server:
But, PHP isn’t without its downsides:
Using AJAX (more on this later) to create workers’ compensation benefits calculators has allowed me to take advantage of all of the strengths of javascript and PHP and minimize the negatives of these technologies.
Next up, AJAX!
