I’m not in GSoC 2010 list , , Why – FUN

This year i applied for Google Summer of Code but fortunately I wasn’t selected to GSoC 2010. so i planned to do a research to find out the reason behind this fortunate story.

some of them are,

1. I don’t know the mentor for my project but I am pretty sure that there was a mentor has been assigned to that project idea.
2. I didn’t send any single mail to WordPress mailing list but I strongly believe that I sent the proposal to GSoC site.
3. I don’t know the exact solution for this problem but I gave a good solution which surly makes some improvement on their system.
4. I got a feedback from someone (may be he/she would be the mentor) but I replied after 3 days because of laziness (actually it’s not laziness, I don’t know what to reply)
5. I didn’t know that there was a subscription button in GSoC proposal site and i forgot that button so i didn’t get any mails from GSoC also i never checked GSoC proposal site after i uploaded my proposal.

There are many  . . . . .

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Moving WordPress Proposal

Project Description

Change the domain name

This part is risky and need to handle it carefully. If we had some problem with WordPress address URL then it’s hard to access admin panel and page lost its beauty. The problem with Blog address URL will break the link with blogs and comments.

Through my plug-in it will be able to access the wp_option table in WordPress database and make the modification on appropriate fields. But here we have some problem with handling sterilized array so I planned to unsterilized the valued then make the changes in that value and update the values to wp_option table.
Change the server location without changing domain address

The current process to move the WordPress is, download the whole files and export the database from old server and upload it to new server so it consumes some time and not an effective way and there is a chance to failure.

So the new method will be effective and able to reduce the errors while moving the files. Another interesting thing I would like to add here is, blogger no need to wait until the uploading process finishes. It means the process will run in the back and blogger will get a notification after all the files moved to the new server like importing posts to WordPress.

Sample WordPress is already installed on new server so what we need to do is make a comparison between old and new server and copy the new files from old to new server. For that we need the following details,

1.   Both servers’ name

2.   Username and password of ftp server.

3.   Username and password of WordPress account.

New server’s details can be retried from wp-config file and the old server’s details must be provided by the user. To do this, I planned to provide a new tab under WordPress setting dashboard so then it’ll be easy to enter the login details and by pressing the button the process will be conducted.

The starting point of this project will be a plug-in development because it easy to develop and fix the bugs. With the success I plan to move to WordPress core which will be little bit of harder.

Open Source Development Experience

PHP Experience

During my 2nd year I developed a online based database system that keeps track of all sponsorships details of various events that are organized by CSE department. Here php is the server scripting language with MySQL database. Here is the link http://cs3040.totalh.com/ .

WordPress Experience

During my third year I developed a plug-in that applies the MPTT technique to WordPress (it is a GSoC 2009 idea from WordPress - http://codex.WordPress.org/GSoC2009 . I did it as a project for a subject called program project. It was a hard thing to deal with WordPress core so I developed it as a plug-in by dividing the project into two parts.

1. Applying the MPPTT technique to WordPress database – it’s a simple thing and   that was successful

2.  Showing the contents of WordPress using MPTT – it’s the hard part and in order to do this I need to deal with WordPress core. But simply did this by providing a new template that handle the MPTT technique.
To check it visit to http://code.google.com/p/mptt-WordPress-ajith/

Work Experience

During my training period I got more knowledge about open source because the project I did was finding an open source solution to pdf printer driver. Also worked on developing a plug-in to NetBeans.

Why WordPress

I really interested on creating and designing websites. Initially I didn’t have any idea about CMS and used some tools to create the website. After I got to know about WordPress CMS I really involved with it because of its friendliness and power. Also as I mentioned earlier I worked with WordPress in my third year and I have an understanding about WordPress architecture and its coding standards. The best thing I noticed in WordPress is, compare to other CMS it’s simple and easy to understand the architecture of WordPress.

Moving WordPress

WordPress is one of the best Content Management System(CMS) that make our work easy to build a web site. I really interested in involving WordPress CMS and i found that WordPress announced some ideas(GSoC 2010 ideas) that they want to build on their system in future. I have gone through the ideas and found a cool idea MovingWordpress . So i this post i’ll talk about this idea and my solution to handle this problem.

The problem goes like this . . .

Currently, if you want to move your WordPress install to a new host and keep the same domain, you only need to move all the files (WordPress Core, Themes, and Plugins), and then export/import the database. It’s pretty straight forward, but still more complex than many users are capable of.

However, if you want to change the domain (even without moving to a new host) you have to export the database, do some search and replace on the .sql file, and then re-import the updated database. Even then, if the new domain has a different number of characters in it than the old one did, you can run against problems if any of the places you replaced the name happened to be inside a serialized array (almost all the options, including things like widget settings, text widget text, etc).

The goal of this project would be to make a these kinds of transitions simple and smooth. If only the domain is changing, then when the user updates the WordPress URL we would update internal links in their posts, settings, image urls, etc. If they are moving to a new host, allowing them to install WordPress at their new host and enter their credentials for their old host (WordPress admin credentials as well as FTP credentials) and WordPress would simply import everything (posts, settings, uploads, theme, plugins, etc).

My solution goes like this . . .

Change the domain name

This part is risky and need to handle it carefully. If we had some problem with WordPress address URL then it’s hard to access admin panel and page lost its beauty. The problem with Blog address URL will break the link with blogs and comments.

Through my plug-in it will be able to access the wp_option table in WordPress database and make the modification on appropriate fields. But here we have some problem with handling sterilized array so I planned to unsterilized the valued then make the changes in that value and update the values to wp_option table.
Change the server location without changing domain address

The current process to move the WordPress is, download the whole files and export the database from old server and upload it to new server so it consumes some time and not an effective way and there is a chance to failure.

So the new method will be effective and able to reduce the errors while moving the files. Another interesting thing I would like to add here is, blogger no need to wait until the uploading process finishes. It means the process will run in the back and blogger will get a notification after all the files moved to the new server like importing posts to WordPress.

Sample WordPress is already installed on new server so what we need to do is make a comparison between old and new server and copy the new files from old to new server. For that we need the following details,

1.   Both servers’ name

2.   Username and password of ftp server.

3.   Username and password of WordPress account.

New server’s details can be retried from wp-config file and the old server’s details must be provided by the user. To do this, I planned to provide a new tab under WordPress setting dashboard so then it’ll be easy to enter the login details and by pressing the button the process will be conducted.

The starting point of this project will be a plug-in development because it easy to develop and fix the bugs. With the success I plan to move to WordPress core which will be little bit of harder.