This is Salvador Cordova, the owner of this site. I am creating a website/blog/discussion forum to further educate the public about YEC and Intelligent Design from a theoretical and empirical basis. It will also be a place to collaborate and pool research and public relations ideas.
The first order of business is to get the website up and running. It’s not quite where I envision from a technical standpoint, but in the mean time I will be posting topics just to keep things running while the website continues to be improved.
I will post links to various beta test sites that will showcase the look and feel of the envisioned website after the first round of construction is complete.
I welcome your all’s feedback and assistance.
Consider this an open thread to talk about anything (with the provision the discussion is restricted within limits of civility.)
I am a Christian, and I believe the discovery of a YoungCosmos will honor Christ, but the approach, imho, should be through arguing the evidence, and not theology. If the evidence speaks for itself, then the Bible and various theologies will be believable.
Christ recognized in John 10:38 that some will distrust His Words even if they are willing to believe in Him. Imho, He admonished such good-hearted individuals who are doubting His words, rather than to simply stop doubting, begin considering the empirical evidence.
The miracle of the universe and life point to God. And if we discover the Cosmos is Young, the world not only points to the existence of God, but the Christian God. Let us follow the evidence where it leads.
Incidentally, comments posted yesterday to the new site have been overwritten, since I just now refreshed the database from the current site.
Hey Rick,
I saw your response yesterday:
Unless you’re talking about another comment, it showed up for me yesterday.
BTW I’m “skeptic,” I was just doing a test post from a newly created account. Just so you know, there was no apparent delay. I saw my first post after I submitted it.
My spam comment was related to a message I posted yesterday on this site, perhaps you’re seeing it and I’m not. It had two hyperlinks to graphics and it still doesn’t show up. (maybe I never even submitted it, I was doing quite a few things at once yesterday.)
I updated the bckheader_con.gif file to blend better with the off-black background. no more contrasty black line. sixdays.net/misc
OK, cool. I’ve downloaded and replaced the bckheader.gif graphic.
Salvador, I emailed you a direct link to the admin area of the forum. Not sure if you got it or not (I included a zip file with a screen shot–not sure if your spam or virus solution would block based on that).
Apollos, I like the graphic with the honeycomb-looking thing best.
Rick, do you have forum software readily available on your server that would provide a single-sign-on with the blog? I could see some advantage to using something hosted on the same server rather than using proboards.
jb, I haven’t yet looked at forum software; however, it’s sort of on my mental to-do list. I certainly do see the advantage of having everything on one server. I’d probably lean toward phpBB, just because that’s what I’ve seen around the most often.
If you’d like, I can probably get you set up with access to the account, so you can install the forum software and start getting it set up. My guess is that, like WordPress, it require minimal, or no, modification to files outside the account’s root directory.
–Rick
With sincere apologies to Apollos and johnnyb, some comments were trapped by computerized moderation (which I have little clue as to how it decides), and I was lax in checking the queue.
Your comments were just released. Please accept my apologies.
Salvador
Rick, hm. I’ve never actually installed forum software, but I believe I could work my way through it (I am an “IT guy,” but my background has been in network administration and engineering, mostly at the systems level [firewalls, routers, etc.] though now I play the role of the pointy-haired boss for an IT department). Actually it would probably be good for me to take a shot at it and get some experience in that area.
I just took a gander at the phpBB software site, and it looks pretty well-documented and straight-forward to set up. I assume from your comments above that you have MySQL installed. phpBB requirements state that it needs version 3.23 of that, and version 4.3.3 of php. I know very, very little about php, but I suppose if I get into a jam, I can probably go to you for questions?
What OS are you running?
Boy, I’m not sure what I’m getting myself into, here, LOL. My time is already pretty tight (family with 3 very young kids, homeschooling, fixer-upper-house, vegetable garden, thinking about getting Checkpoint NGX certified on my own time, etc.).
Gentleman,
I appreciate the sacrifices made and I think you all are deserving of relief and blessing. I would simply ask at this point you offer prayers for this project, that God would keep our burden light and yoke easy, and that this website reach many.
Salvador
jb,
Thank you for sending the link to the discussion board, unfortunately, I go the message:
”
Message Board :: An Error Has Occurred
An Error Has Occurred
You are not allowed to access the administration area.
“
jb, got PHP 5.2.0 and MySQL 5.0.27, so we should be good on that front.
Not sure what specific OS we’ve got here, but according to the spec page at ServInt, it’s an “up-to-date CentOS Linux Operating System.”
If you’re not sure about having time to mess with this (and it does sound as though your plate is…um…moderately full), no worries; I can look into getting phpBB set up. (Single, no kids, no pets, no vegetable gardens.) Can’t be that hard. I just know how frustrating it can be to be chafing at the bit to get something done but not having the necessary access and therefore being stuck waiting until the guy with access “gets around to it.”
Up to you ;=).
Salvador, try it now. After looking at the proboards support forum, I found that simply putting someone in the “Administrators” group is not sufficient to give them what you would expect to be Administrator priveleges. Apparently, by default the people in the “Administrators” group have no privileges, and the main Admin (me) has to go in and turn on all the priveleges for the Administrators group.
It should work now.
A couple of interesting banner ad’s showed up on the forum while I was just in there:
http://www.icucmoderation.com/
(You can actually OUTSOURCE your forum or chat moderation! Imagine that!)
Then there was this one:
http://www.serve.com/herrmann/main.html
The banner ad claims that the guy is the “originator of ID,” which I find hard to believe. Ever heard of him? I’m sure that random banner ad’s like that will turn up some, …er “interesting” content.
Thanks for the feedback, jb.
No worries on this end. I’m pretty sure the spam filter choked on the multiple hyperlinks I included. I’ll tend toward obfuscating my link inclusions until the spam filter “catches on.”
Weird. I just submitted a comment which doesn’t show up on my primary machine, but I can see it on my project server. Am I the only one having this experience? Can all see my post responding to jb and Salvador?
Every thing’s showing up for me now, and all is right in the world.
Rick, I’m thinking it probably would be best to centralize everything on one server. I did some looking around and it appears that for integrating the user databases of WordPress and a forum software, there are two options:
1) Install a WordPress plugin called wphpbb. This integrates WordPress with phpBB. It allows you to use the user database, avatars (if you’re into that, that is–I personally don’t care for avatars myself), forum code, etc. into the blog comments. It is available at:
http://happypoet.com/hackery/
However, there’s a down-side to this: it’s a script that appears to be written and supported by just one guy doing it in his free time. And his site announces that the next version will be the last version. So this doesn’t give one a warm-fuzzy feeling about future support. But then, maybe there’s not that much to it.
2) Instead of phpBB, use bbPress. This is forum software that’s put out by the same folks that make WordPress. It appears that it will integrate well with WordPress. I don’t know, however, if it will support all the nifty things that I’m used to with other forum software, like forum-code. I’m going to read a little more about it.
I’ll put a link to it in a subsequent comment here. (I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the criteria the spam filter here uses is the number of links in a post).
Here’s the link to bbPress:
http://bbpress.org/
Rick, I forgot to say, if you want to give me access, I can take a stab at installing it.
Um, on second thought, maybe I’d better not. Sorry for being so fickle here. Got to looking at the documentation for bbPress and I think I’d be in a little over my head. If you’ve got experience in php and MySql, though, it looks like you should be able to handle it. Sorry to back out like that. There are just so many things I want to do, but time is so limited.
I’m still up for helping moderate, though, if needed.
Hi jb,
Thanks for the suggestion of bbPress. I’ll have a look at it.
I’ve installed phpBB2 on the server where the blog is under development, and it’s currently at http://www.virtual-creations.net/~youngcos/phpBB2. I’ve done nothing as far as configuration goes, or even setting up topics; but there it is.
I share your concern about future support for integration between WordPress and phpBB. Moreover, from what I read on the phpBB site when I downloaded the software, I’m not entirely sure about the future of the software itself. (Of course, once we get it up and running, perhaps it’s not important that they keep upgrading it.)
–Rick
Thank you all for your volunteer efforts. I wanted to let you know I’ll be resuming work on this next week as I’m on vacation till next Monday.
God bless,
Salvador
Please Note:
ATTENTION! YOUNG COSMOS HAS MOVED!
Salvador