As you can see, there is a new link to the right that takes you to the forums. I will check it once in a while. There are a ridicolous amount of outdated posts, but I decided to leave everything as is. You can also go there following this one: http://www.buio-omega.it/forum/
It surely sounds a bit premature to reactivate it now, but one of the biggest databases I found among my backups was the old shop forum’s. It took me two full hours to completely transfer all data from the old database to the new one. I also wanted to change platform altogether migrating to a solution that is way more secure, robust, flexible and feature-rich. I also wanted to play a bit with this old data, I admit. I am quite sure ninety percent of the email address herein contained are not working anymore after 5 to 6 years but who cares? I still won’t publish link to the forum right now because I want to clean up some of the more shameful posts about future projects that never came to reality. I also need to drop a few hundred spam messages that somehow wormholed into the old forum.
Technical details for those who care: the old database was a stupid access file that underlaid Snitz Forums. I needed bullzip’s fantastic utility Access to MySQL to convert Access data into a MySQL dump file. I could also do direct transfer via ODBC but I preferred it this way. Obviously I needed to install MySQL’s ODBC for Win before that. That meant another annoying registration – sigh – my KeePass file is becoming huge! Once done that, I installed PHPBB 2.0 (no, you can’t use the converter for Access directly to PHPBB 3.0… umph), ran the import utility I got from Japanese Sourceforge – at the time the US website wasn’t working (http://sourceforge.net/projects/snitz2phpbb/) then upgraded to PHPBB 3.0 using the built-in upgrader. That was surprisingly smooth except for a few errors which I managed to fix along the way.
The road to salvation is obscure indeed!
Yesterday I have deleted over 50.000 old files including backups and redundant data from the huge collection I have put together. I have found a lot of shop pictures, customer checklists, old flyers and posters, and thousand of contacts which will be inserted in the new mailing list software. Making order from that mess was really healthy as I finally have an idea of what kind of struggle awaits me. Still I can’t see the exact boundaries. but it now looks conquerable.
One of the things I loved more and also felt more guilty for was to see the list of aborted releases for Nuclear Abominations and Orgasmo Nero releases. I am really amazed by the quantity of cult releases that never saw the light of the day. Some of those have been released by other labels, that we all know, but some of them I was wise enough not to spread word. I have two big priorities for the label now, which are mostly done actually and just need a few finishing details (and cash) before being sent to print. But I won’t make the same error twice: things will be announced when they’re already in my hands.
The good news is I decided to give up to importing all the previously inserted shop data, as the thing was probably going to cost too much in terms of brainpower and time. I will therefore start everything from scratch even if it looks like a nightmare. I now know how to properly backup data in a way I could access it just in case I will decide to suspend the project. But for now, things are going great. The new web-shop is already installed (even if barebone) and I can start creating product categories, shipping options etc. There are more features that I could possibly ever use (such as discount coupons etc.) but the job of working on the new shop is invigorating. It’s clobbering time!
As you can see things are better now. No more tedious page freezing and a score of features are now working behind this blog. I also managed to add a proofreading program which will be of big value for a non-native english speaker like me. Now that the big jump is done, I will plunge full-head in the web-shop installation and old content import. Looks like a long road, but at least I’m in track!
Today and tomorrow (hopefully, if my business tasks and training will allow me) I am going to transfer all these files to a new server. Probably something will go wrong, but in any case it will take 3-4 days before everything starts behaving correctly again. I will try to save the blog first, then the mailing list software etc. Cross fingers.
As requested, you can see up in the address bar 
The blog won’t last forever, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy our staying.
So when young bands are formed they really have no idea of what was going on back them. For them Black Metal is just normal. They might dye their hair black, they might wear inverted crosses, but the destructive philosophy is not there. I can’t control peoples mind, but of course it is a bit sad. It would be a bit more interesting with some disturbing elements in Black Metal. Some more fires or something…. I hate that it has become so nice and clean.
Metallion
Ok, my huge wave of enthusiasm came to an abrupt stop yesterday, when I suddenly realized that the blog had some sort of problems which could be correlated to web hosting. The back-end I am using for this very blog behaves in a weird way, as lots of the main features are either incredibly slow or just don’t work. Permalinks don’t work. Posting does work, and that’s definitely what counts. But the blog statistics I loved so much have the nasty habit of freezing the whole website. Not just the page I am currently in: I mean the whole website. Whenever WordPress attempts to collect data everything just get stuck and I have seen even the page you’re reading outputs timeout errors. Whatever is causing such behavior is certainly related to the web-server configuration, so I have very little control over this. Since buio-omega.it will is not going to remain just a roadmap blog forever, I just assumed I could live with this reduced functionality and keep working where the real meat is.
Unluckily, yesterday was also the day I decided to update the web-shop engine to the latest version. I already made a first setup of this system some months ago and things went relatively smooth. I configured the database correctly and inserted a couple hundred products. Then I simply dropped the whole project and came back to it a few months ago, when I realized the web-shop wasn’t working anymore – generic server error. After some pondering I decided to just freeze everything once and for all – too much energy for a project that had no clear boundaries. Just the mere idea of looking in this software’s huge and sparse documentation was a huge let down. From that day, up to just a few days ago, every single thought or idea for Buio Omega just fell in that nice little box on my desk at home, for later analysis. Like I said before however, the time is now ripe and yesterday I just went strong-headed into this goddamn problem. I downloaded the latest software version, made a backup of database and files, and started a brand new installation. My teeth cringed when I read that the installation could not be completed because of server configuration. Reading a couple dozen newsletters from the provider which I never read before but straightly archived in the “Buio Omega someday” folder in my Inbox I realized the servers were not the same the website was hosted on a few months ago. Terror hit me when I got a reply from the provider that some scripting features were simply not available anymore on the actual server. That meant I had to change provider and really, if you know what it means from a programmer’s perspective, that was not something I wanted to do. That meant hunting again for cheap hosting and reading hundreds of lines of specs trying to find a hosting with all the proper features. This meant going through that hellish monstrosity that is Italian bureaucracy for changing domains, the dreaded NIC (just mentioning it sends shivers down my spine). Nightmare visions of obscure forms, endless chains of faxes, endless waits at the phone immediately profiled before my eyes.
In the end I begged the hosting provider for an alternative solution and it told me I could just switch back to the old server where the features requested by the e-store engine were satisfied. I am awaiting for the change, then I will have to move files, recreate database structures, transfer database data, check configuration files, and cross fingers while the DNS and ARP caches are refreshed. No real need to strut technical stuff I know, but sometimes I just like to talk like that eh eh.
In short, I believe things are still going for the better. In a week or so I might have the e-shop development structure up and running, and might even be able to import my old product data. The most difficult thing will be to add a colorful (so to speak) interface to the shop – but that will be the very last step.
I am also slowly reading all the old emails and notes I wrote and received during 2002-2004 while the shop was open and a flood of nostalgia and new ideas just hit me. Lots of recrimination for having handled the shop with complete incoherence and lack of dedication. The good thing however is that now I know how to handle things. Strong people are able to learn from errors and see things with perspective: great things await on this website. You have no idea.
So far I have recovered all the data I have stored in the past 7 years – scans, cds and records data, huge lists of mailing addresses, email backups, copies of every version the webiste has undergone during all these years, invoices, business cards… even sketches and notes. Luckily I have found a backup of all the data I had already inserted in the new catalog. Dozens of hours of work have not been wasted. Every item I have inserted had a description and a number of attributes that will be used for a better browsing (or as they say “user experience”). I have don a LOT of cleanup and thrown away thousands of fake backups, duplicate files, and useless text files. What can I tell from now is that the new Buio Omega website will be a really huge thing. The more I work on it, and the more the project takes shape in my mind, the more I get excited. I have also deleted every single file on the server that pertained to the old website. I am doing everying from scratch – again. Just thanksfully I now have not just a vision, but a good set of practices and methods to make it a real thing. Just as I was writing this post I have stopped several times to take notes and fill a folder with ideas and reminders. This desk is red hot these days, prepare for nice things to come.
The mailing list service is now active, it can be accessed from the sidebar, simply fill in the fields with your e-mail address and click the submit button. Subscribe now and you will be notified of the most important steps in the development of the new e-shop. I d0n’t like spam myself so stay assured only important events will be notified. If you subscribe now, you will also be delivered access to the web catalog before its actual release so to get the first picks on the prettiest items.
Configuring the Mailing List program has been a relatively small bloodbath due to predictable code errors and the fact I had to refresh my webdesign skills to add this small snipped of code into the page. But other that that, it looks neat and so far it works like charm.
Notice you can also subscribe to this blog through RSS feeds, as with basically every other blog. This way you will be notified directly in in your RSS reader/email client (read: Outlook or Thunderbird) whenever a new post is added to the blog.
