What I support…
I realized when I moved back to Wordpress, I lost my post that had to do with what I support, so I’m going to rewrite it so people can understand where I’m coming from and know exactly how and what I support. Here’s the rules for support for this site.
1. All support is done in the forum. Do not email me unless I ask you to. The reason is that your question is probably similiar to someone else’s and this saves me the time of answering the same emails. Plus, I’m a chaotic person. I never remember to email people back. You have a better shot in the forum of getting answer.
2. My scripts are designed for PHP5. I get random reports of errors, and I can easily tell people are still running php4. PHP4 has been end-of-lifed by php.net and therefore I don’t support it either. If you can’t upgrade to PHP5, find a new host. If you can’t find a new host, visit webhostingtalk.com to find some good ones. If you can’t afford hosting and your stuck with php4, and my scripts don’t work for you, then I’m sorry, but I’m not rewriting my scripts for your legacy hosting. Hosting is cheap. I’ve used HostGator.com. $5/month for some decent hosting. If you can’t afford that, then you probably shouldn’t be doing websites.
3. I support my scripts and nothing else. Sometimes I have been known to offer up some server settings or other configuration options, however these come with the expectation you know what these settings are and probably just overlooked them. The problem is that almost no 2 servers are ever the same. What works for one person, will probably not work for everyone. My scripts are meant to be as universally friendly as possible, but ultimately they won’t work for everyone. It should be a law of the internet. I do NOT support your server, your website, your integration ideas, your custom additions to the scripts, training you on html, training you on php, or training you on system administration. These are things that should be learned before attempting to integrate php scripts.
4. I do this for fun and I am not a security/php expert. I write php scripts because I enjoy doing website work and I’ve learned early on to share what I’ve done, so that it might inspire others to do the same. This I believe is the most important fundamental piece to the whole open source software movement. I do the best I can to keep my scripts simple that even php beginners should be able to look at the code and understand what it’s doing. However if I think your ignoring the code and just trying to get me to do the setup of the script for you, I will probably ignore you. I WANT YOU TO LEARN. And you won’t learn by having me do the work for you. However these scripts come as is with no warranty whatsoever. Make sure you know what the code is doing before trying to use it.
5. PHP to me is a hobby, not a job. I know it’s geeky, but I really enjoy writing it. It gives me a sense of pride when I figure out how to do something or find a new way to make things easier for myself. I host and run a number of websites so I use php pretty much on a regular basis. However I also work a full time job, I have a wife who requires my attention, a house I need to take care of, and plenty of friends and family that absorb most of my time. I have sort of checked off learning php on my life’s todo list and so far I’m ready to move onto other things. This site just serves as my way of sharing and inspiring. But this isn’t my whole life. Maybe 1% of it.