ByteHoard / News: Recent posts

Yes, ByteHoard/e Alpha 0 has finally been released. This initial alpha release is lacking most of the useful features, but has the core functionality of upload, download, delete, and folders.

The purpose of this release is for you all to have a go with it, and give me feedback on any bugs, ideas, or other comments that you have. I'll be putting an actual bugtracker up in a few hours, and I'd like that to be used for bug reports; the forum is a good place to initally bring up comments and similar things, however.... read more

It's now nearing the end of October, and so it's time for another news posting. This one has several sections.

Firstly, there's another site redesign. This one is a lot cleaner and bandwidth-friendly, and I've also updated and added a few pages.

Secondly, if you're getting bored of the positively glacial pace of the main news, there's now a development blog. You can find links to the most recent entries on the right of the homepage, or you can visit http://aeracode.org/blog/category/bytehoard/ to get your BH news fix.... read more

Time for a change of direction. I've gradually realised that ByteHoard3 is no more than a prettier, more extensible BH2, and that's not what I want. ByteHoard needs to be more about file management, not about the other parts. Plus, the Pythonic approach was going to alienate the PHP users, as the last news item sort of hinted at.

So, naturally, I decided on a new approach. The code that makes up the 3.0 Alpha release - the bytehoard3 codebase - is going to become unmaintained for now. The next release of ByteHoard will actually be in separate parts. Let me explain...... read more

Work on ByteHoard3 is progressing, pretty much normally. There are a few basic changes in the works; I'm integrating a proper database system rather than the previous excuse of one, and this means that there won't be any upgrade possible from the Alpha 0 to the Alpha 1 (If you really really need to it may be possible, although you shouldn't be using Alpha 0 seriously anyway).

I'd also like to let you know that I haven't completely abandoned ByteHoard as a PHP product; I am contemplating a new PHP version, albeit a very simple, inextensible one, which as well as being suitable for light/personal use could possibly talk to BH3's remote filesystem engine. It would probably do away with folders and rely soley on the very Web 2.0 tagging idea, which would simplify everything a lot. Anyway, that's for further in the future, not the current time.... read more

The first release in the highly anticipated ByteHoard3 series is here. It is quite different from BH2, while remaining similar; be aware, though, that this release is alpha-quality and as such is nowhere near feature-complete (in fact, it's currently less featureful than BH 2.1).

Nevertheless, I invite you all to download it and give it a test if you have the time; feedback is much welcomed, and very much invited at this stage of development. It's still early enough to make fairly substantial changes, so if you have any suggestions, please go ahead. The forum is probably the best place for it.... read more

I believe the DNS change has fully propagated now, and the forums are therefore open for business again (although they've been available for a while). The interface and underlying software has changed, but all the posts and users have been imported (the contents of the old 'Help' forum are now in ByteHoard2->Help, and the contents of 'General' are now in General->Discussion.

In the meanwhile ByteHoard3 is progressing, and while I still can't give you a release date I can say it is getting nearer.

Two news items today; the first is that a server change is underway. For the past couple of years, Mohamed Eldesoky has hosted bytehoard.org, but now he's had to let go and we're moving. I thank him for his hosting for all this time.

The second item of note is that the source code repository for BH3 is now live, in the SourceForge subversion (folder bytehoard3/). There's not much point getting a copy yet, since it's nowhere near a final state, but if you want to see it, want to help out, or just want to spy on my work, it's there.... read more

This version has fixes for the holes mentioned in my last post, as well as the cumulative bugfixes since the last release, and some small polishing on the installer. Get it from the download page.

I've just discovered (or rather, been alerted by a vulnerability mailing list) that there are a few security holes in BH 2.1, allowing arbitrary copying of files to directories and page defacement on shared files.

A fix is in the works - I only found out a few minutes ago, although I should really have spotted these long ago - I'll be releasing the fix tomorrow, hopefully, with a few other bugfixes bundled in.

Ok, well, so perhaps it's not _quite_ web 2.0. But it's close; there are gradients, patterns and drop shadows.

Anyway, this is the bytehoard.org redesign. As you may notice by the URL, this is the fourth design so far, and I like it the most.

Some content hasn't made the jump yet, so you'll have to wait for some, but most of it is here.

Your comments are welcome; drop by the forum (it's hard to miss the link to it now) or send me an email (andrew at bytehoard dotorg) with your overflowing praise or scathing criticism.

It has been a while since my last update, and those who don't go by the forums a lot may have thought I ceased to exist around January.

Luckily, this is not the case. Work is going at slightly higher than full speed on BH3, which, as I have told several people, will be the best thing since the bread slicer.

I already have the base system working and am currently working on nearly everything else at the same time. New features that should be particularly noticeable include the truly modular system (all features are being written as modules, which can be removed, inserted or updated at runtime), the introduction of some CMS-like features, a saner templating system, much improved user administration (with an unlimited number of user types, each with fine-grained feature control), the introduction of multiple simultaneous authentication methods (allowing things such as CAPTCHAs, for example), a new skin (of course), a 'proper' logging system, no database dependency, and much, much more.... read more

This release is just an update with all the bugfixes from the past few months - no new features yet.

Work on BH3 has started (this may be the reason for the lack of new features in BH2). I'll have some interesting stuff for you all to look at in a few weeks, I think.

After the events of the past few weeks, here's a summary of what is going on:
- The poor forums have been restored to a simple state after the recent 'problems'. I'm working on a site upgrade, anyway, so for now the two forums will do.
- Progress continues slowly on ByteHoard code. I am trying to finish off BH2, although it is getting more difficult to get time for it. I plan to release what will probably be 2.1.0 (but which will not be as stable as I had hoped) sometime soon.
- Planning for BH3 has started; I have begun drawing up specifications and trying things out, but this again suffers from a lack of time to spend on it. If you have any insights, they are of course always welcome.

The forums have been hit again, and this time it's bad. All posts apart from those in the Archives have been deleted, but I'm seeing if I can get them back.

Perhaps this will teach me to upgrade phpBB.

There is a now a new forum for discussion and ideas for version 3; you can find it under the 'Future' category on the forum main page.

I have, after much debating, decided to go Python for version 3. I believe this will be the best move for the majority; a PHP version 3 would not have much above 2.1, because of language and environment limitations.

ByteHoard's development is best aimed at becoming a more reliable, standalone package; those who require the stability and reliability that the current version lacks are often those with more flexible hosting.... read more

Yes, normal service is now restored to the forums. All the posts I've written have been changed so they were written by 'Guest', but that's an unfortunate side-effect of this. If I can get my hands on the backups I'll redo the message database.

As the more observant among you may have notice we seem to have had a slight change of forum administrator. Don't worry, though; a crack team is on its way to the datacenter to restore control.

Actually, I've regained control already, after our friend deleted my account (OH NOES!!!), which I have recreated, and I've checked all the forum files for any hidden surprises, and there are none, so it's all clean. Normal service will be restored shortly.

It has been over two years since I started ByteHoard, and close to three years since I started web programming.

I originally wrote ByteHoard in PHP, because it was easy to learn, had lots of functionality and was installed on nearly every server. Two years later, with the advantage of hindsight, that was probably a good idea, but now, in the changing environment, I have a dilemma.

I would like to move ByteHoard to running on Python and the CherryPy web framework, which will be easier for me to maintain and hopefully be more stable, less bloated and a lot nicer to extend and use.... read more

I've been thinking about redesigning the ByteHoard interface lately - a lot of people want real CSS support and some people are getting confused with it - so I've make some mockups. You can see them, read more, comment and vote here:

http://www.bytehoard.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1712#1712

In case you didn't guess, I'm back, and feeling a lot better than two weeks ago. I've answered all the emails and posts I can find.

It seems there's a problem with the new database selection code. This isn't a ploy to get you all moving over to another browser, honest - it must simply be the way I have written the HTML, and so I'll check up on that. Along with the edit module not working, I'll release 2.1 Delta soonish.... read more

Unfortunately, due to a freak natural event (human error) which caused a comma to be left out of the Gamma release, the 2.1 beta upgrade (and hence 2.1 alpha upgrade) did not work. This error has been fixed, and a new archive has been released, with the filename bytehoard-2.1-1.(zip/tar.gz/tar.bz2).

The download page has been updated; if you need this to work then please redownload the archives.... read more

Yes, it's that time again. Since I'm away for a while soon, you get the next release (which is really just the latest Subversion checkout - it's all stable code in there now).

This release contains group editing support, more FileMail features and a few other things.

If you encounter any bugs, get them back to me as soon as you can.

I've finally moved ByteHoard to Subversion, and although it's currently running off my home server, with the current state of the SourceForge CVS server's there's no real speed difference.

You can find it at svn://bytehoard.ath.cx with your preferred Subversion client. Unfortunately, since I'm away for two weeks starting Monday, it will be down then. If anyone has a svn server I can use temporarily then I'd be grateful.

A quick update to what is happening in the wonderful world of ByteHoard development:

- WebDAV support is looking pretty good. A few minor problems, but not enough to stop a test version being available in the next release.

- The installer is being revamped. The new version will allow for a much easier-to-write-for upgrade system, which means better upgrades for you and the possibility to upgrade from absolutely any future release to any other future release. Also, it now requires less clicks.... read more

After some long, hard, late nights and lots of blood, sweat and tears (OK, about 2 hours) the forums are now working with increased vitality. Faster, nicer, and more reliable.

You can get there via the same link (http://bytehoard.org/forums), and the old location will redirect here. Have fun.