Does anyone know; if I move to another Foundation Blogging system, can I use the same SQL database?
Any recommendations, perhaps Joe Workman’s?
My Armadillo blog makes me look a little stupid!
The headline stack on my front page has decided to show the code of the YouTube video, but the actual blog post is OK. The headline stack has never done this before and I haven’t changed anything (although something must have changed).
Also, for some reason in the post the body text above the video is much bigger than the text under the video.
Yesterday was my unsuccessful battle with YouTube videos on a blog fitting on a phone screen.
I promise I didn’t change a thing.
I just want to be able to post a pic and write some stuff on my blog relating to my career playing and writing music.
I realise that something must be amiss, either I’m not doing something correctly, or there’s some kind of conflict. I like Armadillo, my partner uses it, but I haven’t got the time to keep trying to correct a blog post.
Joe’s TotalCms blog does not need or use a database. You would need to cut and paste your current content into new posts if you were to move to TotalCms Blog.
If you are asking about Total CMS with this question:
It does have a blog, but does not work with a Database, so you would have to re-enter the information you have from Armadillo. It is a great blog with lots of cool options for showing off your content.
Nothing is going to use the same database as Armadillo. It uses industry standard MySQL but the table structure would be unique (like all database systems) to Armadillo.
I think What ever blog you choose to replace it with would require you to cut and paste the content.
You should keep in mind that you’re probably going to have the same issues with any other blog.
The post you had about YouTube, and pasting a fixed iFrame would happen with any of them. It wasn’t an armadillo issue but what code gets pasted.
Thanks for the information about the database Teefers,
actually I have two other YouTube videos on there that worked perfectly and didn’t show code; added in exactly the same way. So I don’t know what’s gone wrong.
I’ve used RW for years, I don’t mind solving problems. But I don’t have the time or expertise to deal with the small issues thrown up when I try to use Armadillo. I looked at the Armadillo website showcasing Foundation and Armadillo to see how my site might look, and there is an example of what I mean right there: the out of place tag heading next to the image:
Joe’s TotalCMS looks great, but I don’t like the $99 per website, and it needing to check I’m licensed every seven days.
I have an aversion to ‘assumed criminality’. We suffer from it a lot in the UK. We tend to have a lot of regulation because the Government and Councils think if we get the chance we will exhibit criminal behaviour (a bit Orwell 1984-ish). When in fact the majority are decent people with a moral compass.
Joe’s licensing says/hints to me ‘I don’t trust you, I’m gonna check on you every week to make sure you only use it on one domain’.
I have multiple Sitelok licenses, I don’t think Vibralogic checks every week that I have a license for every domain (which of course I have).
Anyway, I understand why Joe implemented the system, so I might have to overcome my sensitivities.
The Tags element is there because there’s no text content to go with the image. If you were to add some text to that post, it would go to its ‘proper’ place under the post. It’s not terrible elegant but I think that’s what’s going on.
It has less to do with assumed criminality and more to do with safeguarding - so if their servers can’t verify your licence for some reason (outages, server failure, etc), it won’t automatically assume your licence is invalid and shut down it’s functioning. There’ll be a 7-day grace period for the issue to be resolved. I believe there was an issue in the last couple of weeks where a developers website went down and people couldn’t save content to their own site because of it.
Unless you’re referring to something else and I’m misinterpreting. As for the per-domain cost component - fair enough, everyone has their price points.
I do want to say, that if for any reason our licensing server goes down, all licenses will remain active for 30 days. We should have any outage fixed by that time, but if not, Joe has the ability to extend it even longer, even extending it permanently if he needs to.
@robbeattie but that’s what I mean about Armadillo; what if I wanted to have just an image in the post… like the example?
@jabostick I take your point, but I’m not sure I agree fully. What is it safeguarding after the initial first license check (and potentially every day)?
What benefit is it to the customer to be checked on every week? Does it increase functionality or services?
Yes, on initial setup (as with a lot of software these days) connect to a server (with a grace period) and verify customer and license. But why then continue forever unless it was to assume people might be ‘naughty’ and use on multiple domains.
@zeebe that’s reassuring, although are you not solving a problem that wouldn’t exist if you checked the licence once during initial install.
Having said all that, I do really like the card layout blog examples and I’ve uploaded a 30 day trial to my test domain. I’m not finding it easy to make it work, I’m working my way through Joe’s videos.
As I read that FAQ link, it only checks when you try to save something new, it isn’t continuously checking. The benefit of what it is doing, is safeguarding your CMS functionality in the event that Joe’s servers go down.
As I mentioned, last week a developer’s site went down and people were unable to use that developer’s CMS, because the licence was being checked for validity when a change was made, the server was down so the licence couldn’t be verified, thus the changes couldn’t be saved.
Joe’s 7-day method (or much longer, according to Zeebe) protects against that
Kenneth,
I agree with you 100% about the per website license. Any software is a tool for people; tools should be purchased, not rented or paid for on a per use basis. I’ve heard the argument to “build it into your pricing”, but most of the competition for small web development use Wordpress or similar open source platforms. That means building it into your price, equates to taking it from your profit, or losing work.
Does your car mechanic pay snap-on tools a fee for every car they work on? Would that fee be per tool? If it’s such a good business modal than shouldn’t it be used for every stack?
Assuming the outage isn’t Joe. What happens if Joe goes out of business, or next time Joe goes Snowboarding he breaks his neck? That may sound cold but businesses need to take into account disasters.
I wanted to give users the flexibility to move a Total CMS license to a new domain. In order to do that I need to ensure that a license is not used on multiple domains. This is why the phone home functionality exists. If I changed the system so that it never phoned home, then I could not allow users to move the license to a new domain.
You are not renting Total CMS. You own the software for your website. There is no subscriptions either. However, I also need to make sure that the licensing is enforced. Sadly the honor system does not work in the world today.
I should also add that displaying of content will NEVER break, even if phone home stops working. Only saving of data to the CMS would be affected. As @zeebe stated, my server could be down for up to 30 days and no one would ever be affected. I also have back door methods of extending that indefinitely if I see the need.
It isn’t the checking of your licence that safeguards it. I am saying that if that first check doesn’t go through for some reason (because there’s been a power outage or a fire or some other server failure), your cms still functions. Total CMS will give somewhere between 7 and 30 days of grace period to resolve the issue. That isn’t the case with others I don’t believe (and I don’t have a good sense of how all of them work).
I’d love to not have to use per-domain pricing (particularly for those cases where I am building something for a non-profit) but if it helps ensure that the product continues/evolves/improves (unlike a recent e-commerce example) then I am happy to pay it.
I’ve also thought ‘what happens if Joe goes down’ and the answer, most likely, is that I’m screwed. But the same can be said for Dan/Realmac itself. Or Isaiah. Or if Chillidog decided to disappear, for example. It’s the downside of supporting small business/indie developers. And my original point was that the licence structure (i.e. not disabling your CMS functionality if the ‘phone home’ doesn’t work) is a step towards guarding against account disasters (temporary ones at least).
I get what both of you are saying but I see the Team Joe rationale.
Not true at all. Your rapidweaver and stacks plugin will continue to work. Look how many folks still post questions about RW4 RW5 and RW6. You can still have fully functioning products, and publish and update without them. Yes, you would have to make changes, find another product, but your customers wouldn’t have any impact on your current site. The could still add posts to Armadillo or other CMS products.
Choose another product. Adobe has gotten away with the monthly subscriptions so far because for some products they were the only show in town. Microsoft, Filemaker PRO both tried that model, and haven’t had the success Adobe has. A lot of the Graphics industry is migrating away from Adobe and because of the pricing model and now there are competing products.
If this is a good model then should it be used for Foundation 6 or 7 if it comes out? What about stacks 4? Rapidweaver 8?
You’ve just described 3 different pricing models - monthly/subscription (like Adobe, setapp, etc), a per computer, per version licence (RW), and the per-domain TCMS model. So, no not every pricing model should be the same. There’d be lots of factors that go into it.
Until they don’t, because of a MacOS upgrade or something, for example. And I’d say ‘fully functioning’ is in the eye of the beholder.
I get what you’re saying but, in my opinion, if any of the major players in this little ecosystem go away, a lot of us will be forced to simply redo our work - trying to live with something that doesn’t get updated or evolve will eventually catch up. I’ve talked myself into the per-domain pricing as a way to help sustainability of Joe’s stuff (which I admit may be completely misplaced on my part) which gives me a bit of peace of mind.
(Sorry @blue4miles - I’ve totally sidetracked much of your post!)
@blue4miles So back on topic. Why not post a link to the problem post in the blog. Armadillo is pretty rock solid and there are many happy Armadillo users here. You mentioned that you have used YouTube links in the blog before without an issue. My guess is that the YouTube URL in the problem post is malformed or perhaps YouTube have changed things. Or maybe there is some styled text included. There are many things to check out before considering a change of blog system.
Unfortunately, users have the power to enter stuff in the Post which can mess things up, which is pretty true of all blogs.
@webdeer actually, all my YouTube videos go off the side of an iphone screen. The problem YouTube URL is just another issue on top of the initial size issue. Then there’s the inconsistent font sizing, and the sometimes odd line spacing…
“There are many things to check out before considering a change of blog system”
Yep, but I don’t have the energy; I’m only trying to do a simple thing: Some text, and a pic or a video. All I want is an easy, consistent way of doing that.
I picked Armadillo because I saw lots of nice looking Blogs out there, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to continue using it. I realise it might be something I’m doing or not doing; but I’ve checked everything.
“Unfortunately, users have the power to enter stuff in the Post which can mess things up, which is pretty true of all blogs.”
There is only me as a user, I deliberately only put up eight posts to make sure everything was working, eight posts have caused many problems. It’s a new site, I was hoping to have everything finished before I take part in a music festival in Athens in ten days…
Here’s my front page showing the youtube code (remember it’s an unfinished site):
www.kennethwilkinson.eu
The main Blog page looks nice, simple and I would happily continue with it. But the posts have different size body text etc.
@joeworkman thank you Joe, and it makes complete sense to enable people to move their license to different domains. If TotalCMS doesn’t use a database, where does it store the posts, on my hosting server?
