Re: [cobalt-users] Control Panel

["Carrie Bartkowiak" <ravencarrie@xxxxxxxx>]

> > OTOH, you could hire a programmer to take the shell tools and whip you
up
> > your own personalized control panel.
> So,  Ms. Raven <big grin> are you volunteering?

Oh goodness... can I duck out of this one by saying "not at this time"??  ;)
The money would be nice but honestly I'm swamped with a bunch of database
projects and building a control panel for my hosting business.
(When I have extra time [HA!] I'm also trying to work on a RaQ4 control
panel but *nothing* as complex as other stuff that's been advertised on
here, it deals more with interacting with your customers and offering them
stuff than running your machine. You won't be able to drop the Cobalt GUI
all together.)

I would really *really* recommend that anyone interested in shopping carts,
form processors, even online control panels for their 'balts buy a good PHP
book and take a read. PHP is super easy to learn (makes much more sense than
CGI/Perl scripting) and you can make your *own* *customized for your
business* shopping cart/whatever in just a few days.
One book that's great is PHP Fast & Easy Web Development by Julie Meloni.
It's perfect for beginners. If you're interested, get it at Fatbrain.Com,
because it's waaaaay cheaper there than anywhere else on the web.
Use the "Search" box at www.php.net and look at the user notes to get a lot
more info, ideas, and code snippets when you start going out of the realm of
what Julie's book covers.  (Although if you just think a little bit and be
creative, you can use the examples in Julie's book and modify them a bit to
fit just about whatever you need.)
And once you grow beyond Julie's book and you get tired of looking up
functions on PHP.net, get the PHP4 Bible (by Tim Converse and Joyce Park). I
swear there's more functions in this book than there are on the php.net
site. *L* (It just seems that way.)

For people wanting to know how in the world they could build their own
control panel or anything like it, just take a look at the SHELL TOOLS. Open
each script and read it. Look at the examples. You can do so much with those
things, and all of those commands in the shell tools can be executed by
CGI/PHP scripts!

Sorry if I just gave away some big trade secret and made people who are
developing control panels mad. Hey, people have a right to info.
And note I didn't even give my fatbrain.com page/affiliate link. <grin>

> No need to duck the swipe, there wasn't one. Just a smile across the
> miles.

~8>
(that's a feather, a pair of eyes, and a beak... a smiling Raven. Hehe.)

CarrieB