WACS: Web-based Adult Content Server / News: Recent posts

Wacs-PHP version 1.0.1 is now released - not much new functionality but major fixes to the libraries to support PHP8 which significantly changes some of the object handling syntax and breaks just about every one of our PHP programs! Do expect to have to test your own code as well before going live with this release on PHP8-based platforms (such as Fedora 35). Anyway issues fixed and of course is the partner to the recently released Perl WACS 1.0.1 version. As ever, the perl version is needed for collection management - the PHP version is for content serving only at this point.

After two years of tinkering away, we're pleased to bring you the latest version of Wacs, version 1.0.1. This is mostly a maintenance release bringing it up to Fedora 35 and Ubuntu 20.04 levels. We've also put a lot of work into improving the administration tools with a much improved and configurable system for video thumbnailing, better support in the collection administration tools for importing descriptions and official icons, and a lot of improvements in how it interacts with the PostgreSQL database. With this release, our in-house development installation has migrated from Oracle 11 to PostgreSQL 13 so the PostgreSQL support is much improved because even obscure issues have come to light and been fixed. We will be releasing the matching wacs-php version in the next few days and will release binary packages for the Raspberry Pi running Ubuntu as well.

After more than fifteen years here on sourceforge, we have finally released the 1.0.0 version of Wacs. There are changes in a multitude of areas; new applications, new tags and icons, major tidy ups of previous code and significant new collection features. Wacs-Php has also been updated with all sample programs re-written to use the PDO extension instead of the obsolete DB library. The documentation, particularly the programming and installation manuals, have had a major rewrite and new information added. Come and take a look!

After a very long delay for which we sincerely apologise we have finally got the re-write of Wacs-PHP for 0.9.2 released. This sees support for Php 7 as well as Php 5, jQuery replaces XAJAX as our dynamic content platform, and it includes both an improved version of modelsel, and a new similar app allowing dynamic selection of sets by a similar means. There are also other small adjustments and improvements to the software.... read more

It's been what seems like an eternity in development, but WACS 0.9.2 is finally released. It's been a long hard slog but finally the Web Administration interface can properly handle Video files. This has always been one of our key plans before finally moving on to a 1.0 release which now looks likely to happen around our tenth anniversary in November of this year (2016).

We've also done a lot of cleaning up, bug fixing, documentation updates and improved download performance. About the only thing that hasn't actually changed much is the user interface for users of the system - but hopefully they will appreciate the faster operation, better icons and smoother downloads. The addition of proper support for streaming MP4 video files is also a new feature that should find a lot of favour with our user community.... read more

It's been a long time since the last release of WACS but development continues. We're heading towards a planned release of WACS 1.0 next year in 2016 to co-incide with our tenth anniversary. We hope to have WACS 0.9.2 out very shortly - work in recent weeks has really concentrated on getting the web-based interface for adding new video clips sorted out and it's finally reached a point where the web-based workflow doesn't require behind the scenes work on the command line or upload of materials prepared elsewhere.... read more

We're pleased to announce the release of Wacs-PHP version 0.9.1. This release provides the latest versions of the WACS API and sample website for use by developers who prefer to use PHP5 to Perl.

Most of the changes in this release concentrate on tracking the new API features introduced in WACS 0.9.1 with relation to the content caching, improved performance and increase in utility functions. The advantages of the usedirect method of accessing cached icons and thumbnails are now available to PHP programmers for the first time.... read more

It's been over a year coming but release 0.9.1 is now out. Appearance wise very little has changed since Wacs 0.9.0 but under the covers we have a totally new download and icon caching mechanism that massively improves page load performance and download web server load. We've also totally re-written the whole way that Wacs applications interact with each other in such a way that for the first time we support https, alternate port number specifications and operation on Web Hosting sites that do not offer cgi-bin directory support. We have one major new web application, wacstagedit, which allows the editing of saved searches - a task that was previously very cumbersome. There's new features in the API, with iconlink having had a workover and now has two partners, thumblink and contentlink which provide similar one-stop building blocks for common web page elements.

Wacs Release 0.9.0: new features included in this release have been in planning and development for nearly three years now - but it is finally ready. There are many changes but the most fundamental are new abilities to handle relationships between sets and a completely configurable and dynamic attribute system. The first major new feature is that there is now good support for showing the relations between sets: links between videos and photo sets, provisions for multiple resolution versions of the same sets, provisions for multipart videos. The second major feature is that all the attributes used to mark up sets are configurable and dynamic - it's now possible to tailor search features to your specific needs without resorting to code changes.

We've now entered the feature freeze for the WACS 0.9.0 release and hope that it'll be released very soon. We've already updated the documentation in anticipation of the new release, so you can already start to read about the cool new features that will be available in WACS 0.9.0. We've also started work on upgrading our demonstration site at http://www.pinkmetallic.com to run the new version and hope to have that fully operational shortly.... read more

The new release of Wacs is now out. This release includes a few neat cosmetic changes but the main point is to provide support for Ubuntu up to Natty (11.04) and Fedora 14 & 15 and to pave the way for the upcoming 0.9.0 release. A new database schema update tool (wacsschema) paves the way for this upgrade.

It looks like the upgrade of the PHP bundled with most Linux distros to the PHP 5.3.x has caused a more-than-average amount of havoc with the WACS PHP API and programs. We're working on the fixes which include upgrading to the latest xajax 0.6beta1 version of our dynamic content code.

Additionally if, like us, you use Oracle, you've probably lost your installation of the oci8 driver for all the PHP programs over the upgrade. Running: pecl install oci8 mostly fixes that, although you do need to also create an oci8.ini file in /etc/php.d (use the mysql one as a template) and then restart your web server.... read more

I know it's been a while since there was last a new release of WACS, but I just wanted to reassure everyone that we are still here and we are still working on WACS. Real life(TM) has intervened somewhat but code changes towards 0.9.0 are starting to flow again. A small number of bug fixes have already been committed to the Subversion repository with much more work to follow.

Hang in there. Wacs 0.9.0 is still on it's way and will be a great release when it's finally done.... read more

WACS 0.8.5 is now available. This is a major release including a fully functional version of the Wacs-PHP Simple Skin template web site, a brand new detailed model page, the ability to authenticate users via the database (very useful in web hosting environments), and a management tool for creating connections.

For more information please see the release notes. To see the release in action, visit our Demonstration Web Site at http://www.pinkmetallic.com (WARNING: Adult Content).

Sorry folks - it looks like there's an issue with the model manager application and creating new models. We're going to do a little more testing and then issue a revised tools package to fix the problem. Check back for a new -2 revision of the wacs-tools-0.8.3 packages on Monday evening.

Cheers
Beaky

LONDON, ENGLAND (27 Mar 2009): Sort out that porn collection with WACS

According to the tabloid press, the internet is full of porn. We think
this is a good thing because we really like pictures of pretty young
ladies loosing their attire! However finding your favourite bits can be a bit of a nightmare and so a group of F/OSS advocates with too much time on their hands have spent the last four years developing a solution to that problem. WACS, Web-based Adult Content Server, is a free software package that lets you build a mini porn site on your own Linux PC in which to keep all those beloved gems you've picked up from who knows where.... read more

We'd gone quiet but we hadn't gone away ... we'd been beavering away to bring you the very finest in beaver cataloguing tools! What's more we tied ourselves to the chair until we damn well had that missing administration guide written. It's all done and we've got you a better documented, neater, faster and distinctly less buggy version of Wacs to enjoy. It even installs on Ubuntu using DEB packages now! So download it today, don't delay!
Cheers, Beaky.
March 27th, 2009

OK some good news for you Ubuntu/Debian linux fans out there - as of today we seem to have a working set of .deb packages for installing the SVN version of Wacs on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. Obviously we've got a bunch more testing to do and then there's always the documentation to write... but it's now 99.9% certain that Ubuntu package support will be in the Wacs 0.8.3 release. There's some other new stuff in there we hope you'll like, but mostly Wacs 0.8.3 will be focused on improving the quality and fixing the bugs.... read more

We've already started work on the next release of WACS, which is provisionally called 0.8.3. The first piece of work for Wacs 0.8.3 is a major re-write of the icon handling code to incorporate scaling and caching into the process. Initial tests are showing a VERY SIGNIFICANT improvement in icon display speeds - at least 10-fold - after the icon has been initially generated and cached. This bit should be available on the SVN server shortly.... read more

I've just added the RPM packages for Fedora 8 for WACS 0.8.2 and Wacs-PHP 0.8.2 to the sourceforge repository. Given that Fedora will be dropping support for release 8 about now, it's likely that these will be the last RPM packaged versions for Fedora 8. We will of course continue to support Fedora 10 (RPMs already available) and Fedora 9 (RPMs due soon), and expect to add packages for Ubuntu 8.10 at the next release.... read more

WACS 0.8.2 is finally out! It's a simply massive new release with a huge amount of effort having gone into stabilisation, bug fixing and some neat new features. The BIG new feature is the attire, or clothing type feature, which works like our previous locations and set type features as something you can quickly sub-select sets on. You want to look at just the swimwear in the garden sets, the attire attributes will let you do just that.
We really hope you'll enjoy it and that'll be the best release yet - but please let us know if you find a bug - we're really trying very hard to make it as stable and useful as possible but we need your help to do that.
Cheers, Beaky.
December 28th, 2008.

Well, we said that wacs-php would be out a lot quicker this time, and we've made it - two days after wacs-0.8.1, the matching PHP version is also available. How about that?

It's basically got a bunch of new API functions ported across from the perl version plus all the new relevant ones from the 0.8.1 release. The documentation has had a workover too, plus there are RPM packages for the first time. Enjoy!... read more

WACS 0.8.1 is now available. This release sees a major cosmetic change with the set ratings becoming much more prominent, but that's only a beginning. There are two new web-based collection management tools - wacsinfomgr which allows relocation, renaming and additional updating of sets and wacskeywordmgr which gives you control over the keyword scoring system used for creating meta data. The wacsunpackmgr has had a big makeover allowing it to cope with uploaded zip files and importing directly from server directories to make it much easier to import image sets from sources other than subscription services.... read more

We're still working on 0.8.1 - most of the new apps are well on their way to completion. We also decided to bring forward our plan to produce packages in RPM formats to this release. Part of the reason for that was that we figured it would take us more than one release to get it right - so in 0.8.1 the packages will be pretty experimental, and hopefully by the 0.8.2 release they'll be a bit more stable and we'll have added .deb files for Ubuntu too. We're probably still a week or two away from the final 0.8.1 release at this point.... read more

Since it's been a week or so since the last release (wacs-php 0.8.0), I thought I'd just update you all on what is going on. WACS 0.8.1 is well on it's way; it was supposed to be a quick bug fix release following the 0.8.0 release, but it's been growing fast into what promises to be a pretty major release.

It looks a bit different because the set ratings are now featured in a lot more places - both the detailed and thumbs model page, the new stuff pages, the tag set viewers, etc. There are a number of new apps coming onstream - the Info Manager finally allows web-based relocation and renaming of sets and gives access to updating a whole lot of fields in the sets table you'd previously have had to go to SQL for. The keyword manager is about half-written at this point and allows you to edit the attributes keywords and what they mean and score. The placement manager is being upgraded to allow placement of a set without needing a download record.... read more