I’ve already mocked up a design for Authware and tweaked the database layer — I was able to communicate successfully with PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server. Hopefully, any other developer interested should be able to write a layer for mySQLite or some other obscure database. I used PHP 5’s Interface feature — the classes only have to implement it. I only have to work on the admin area and the different modules — it’s going to be tougher this time because I’m using pluggable functions like WordPress, a detailed permissions system, and perhaps XML-RPC.

I’ve been spending a while working with PHPBB3 Olympus, working on some obscure site for some [rich] clients (you may take this tongue-in-cheek). Without Zend Studio to help me explore the code, I daresay I’d have been truly doomed. What confounds me now is duplicating the registration and login codes to work out of the PHPBB concept without lumping together all the core PHPBB code together. So far, I’ve been chasing my tail running through myriads of functions that each make their contribution the the complexity of the code. The annoying thing is that since it’s in beta, there’s no code documentation — I have to make guesses and keep trying. What’s that joke — the last thing a coder wants to do is code.

Flex looks like one of those necessary evils — I remember PHP was when I had to give up ASP and recode a crazy site entirely in PHP. Ikezi’s been bombarding me with Flex UIs to no end but I guess what finally did the trick was Ms Dewey. Talk about a pretty girlish yet sophisticated bot who pouts and winks to no end at you, or looks out of the corner of her eye while doing something silly. As a search engine, it fails — as a seductive marketing ploy, well…