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Introduction

This site is developed to gain knowledge and experience of Internet related developments. To explain this we must to lift a few years back in time.

Short history

We write the year 1999, a year in which the Internet-hype yet heyday fourth. Everything that something had to with Internet was worth gold and one paid for it coarsely, quite coarse, money. The sky was real the limit. Everybody had the mouth ful of Internet, think alone but once of the World Online masacre. Also the technicians talked busily about it. In any case technicians wrap themselfs often in mist. Their knowledge certainly to put, for knowledge is power. With the rise of Internet, in combination with Y2K, pushed also (new) IT-terms through till in the room of the usual citizens. Terms as firewall, TCP/IP, viruses, E-commerce, webbased, etc. now fixed notions became in our linguistic usage. A few years ago these terms were complete strange at most men.

As developers of PC-software, there was a lot of experience with PC software, but only the Internet veiled yet too much secrets. Books with relation to the Internet were there scarcely and the information was sore. Therefore we wanted to lay close on everything about Internet.

Start

Where do you begin? As most we began with the going over of all sorts of documents about HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, XML, etc. After time I found out it that this part was not the Internet, this was only the outside of it., . Furthermore there are many to0ols (MS Frontpage, HoTMetaL,..) on the market to get on with ease to make beautiful webpages. The necessity to know HTML degrades with the use of these tools. As real developers, this offered no challenges. Therefore the deciaion was made to concentrate on the serverside of the Internet (ISP).

LAMP

An inventory was made on the surroundings there existed for the developing and exploitation of Internet. For what concerning the operating system the choice could be:

1. MS-Windows
   The advantages of MS-Windows were the general acquaintances, availability of resources and it was user-friendly. The disadvantages were the (faulty) protection, instable and 'pillory' for hackers;
2. Unix
   Unix stands known of its stability, precise and flexibility only had/has the disadvantage that it rather takes a hoblle to learn.
3. LinuxLinux has the advantages of Unix only beside it also is free.

First the server (Unisys 233 Mhz 96 Mb internally 10 Gb HD) was setup with Corel Linux 1.0. This linux version offered to less to put up an server. SuSE Linux 7.0 Professional became the successor of Corel and until the present (version 9.0 is in production) there is absolutely no regret about this decision. The Unisys machine is replaced by a Recom 350Mhz 398 Mb internal 2*30Mb HD. Beside of a defective HD this machine is in operation now for over 5 years without any problems. And this with a speed of which Microsoft has to become jealous.

After learning Linux for a half year, the next choice to be made was: in which environment must the future site be developed and with which webserver?

After a long time on the internet my choice was LAMP. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. The main advantages of the LAMP construction are: the stability, business security, world-wide support through developers, speed and it is free. As already indicated before Linux is the operating system. Apache is the webserver that looks after the request for HTML-pages. The site Netcraft.com has identifiers about the use of the various surroundings, Apache's penetration is about 70% as the date of writing. With other words on about 70% of all webservers, Apache is usesd.

The M is the database MySQL and is the database in which the information is stored. With SQL (Structured Query Language), the data can be retrieved from the database. MySQL (3.x) doesn't meet at all requirements according to the ANSI-SQL standard but it's very stable and extremely fast.

And the last one is PHP. PHP is a script language (thus not compiled) which takes care of the generation of the HTML. This language has many syntax elements of C, C + + and Java. The language is fast, simple, flexible and yet powerful. Also PHP can be used as 'normal' scripting language.

Development

After the LAMP environment was up and running, the development of this site started. We are now talking about the end of 2002/the beginning of 2003. Starting with a book called 'PHP and MySQL - Web Development' (ISBN 0-672-31784-2) we tried to understand PHPShop. This system was the base for this site. The result of a many of evening hours, is what you are looking at now. Important functions of this site are:

1. Flexibility
   Almost everything is in the database, this is THE base for optimal flexibility;
2. Multiple languages
   As in the previous point been quoted, all the texts are retrieved from the database. Because of this the user can for instance change the language 'on-the-fly';
3. Authorisation
   Users can be authorized per module and/or functionality;
4. Menu
   The menu also part of the database, and can easily be maintained;
5. Searching
   De data can looked up based on individual words;
6. User freindly
   The site holds user specific information to make this site easy to use;
7. Statistics
   a lot of information about the use the site is kept in the database so one easy retrieve statistical information about the use;
8. Fun
   Having fun in the things we make.

Target

If you have remarks, (textual) errors or any aother improvements, we would like to retrieve this information from you. Via the use of Contact, you can send us this info.

This text on the english part of this site, is translated through a program this with all it's disadvantages. You must forgive me for this terrible english. As soon as this sites pays off I will let it translate by a professional. Till that time you have to do it with our english.

Thank you for spending time looking at this site.

Menrone