WACSip

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

Getting Help

AppNotes: Application Notes

1. Recreating Old-Style Vendor Mode menus - how to recreate the old by-vendor menu style using the new XML-based menu system.
2. Running Multiple WACS instances - how to run multiple WACS sites on a single web server through apache virtual hosting.

Position Statement - Where We're At

To give you a little context and background on our release structure, the initial package release was 0.5 back in November 2006, with an additional digit added as we increased the release frequency through the 0.6.x series. The 0.6.x release series saw a lot of work on collection browsing tools and at the end of this series we were reasonably happy with the user interface (although it also had a big makeover in 0.8.0 as the result of some usability testing, etc with novice users). Never-the-less, it should have been quite usable by most people. The problem with the 0.6.x series was that in order for a collection to exist in the first place, it has to be prepared for and imported into the Wacs system. This was done originally by pretty esoteric command line tools, which while documented reasonably thoroughly almost certainly require some SQL and *nix experience to use effectively. (These commands still exist and can still be used if you prefer them...)

In the 0.7.x release series, we worked towards the goal of an entirely web-based collection management interface. It'll still require some level of understanding of the method and nature of tagging sets and videos in Wacs, but will not require the use of extraneous skills such as SQL and *nix experience. The end of the 0.7.x series saw us doing some cleaning up - removing the older "relics" that are still part of the system like the old index.php "front page" from before wacsfp existed. At that point we progressed to the 0.8.x release series at which point we declared WACS to be Beta quality and tried to encourage a larger audience for it. We achieved that landmark around the middle of 2008 with the release of 0.8.0, the first Beta release of WACS.

Our plans for the next few months include a bug fix/maintenance release called 0.8.1 which will also include a couple of new utilities that didn't make the cut for 0.8.0. After that there will be a release called 0.8.2 at which point we will be building .rpm and .deb packages for Wacs in order to make it easier to install.

What happens to WACS beyond that is somewhat unclear. We believe it is very capable of hosting commercial web sites via use of it's PHP interface with the core perl-based environment being used primarily for content management. We are certainly considering making a commercial version of WACS - the core applications will remain GPL as will the PHP interface, but additional applications in the CRM (Customer Relationship Management), support request tracking, news and forum areas and along with a set of web site templates might well be available as a commercial add-on with support options. We're starting to look at the design and interfacing issues at this point, but no firm decision has been taken. We are also considering creating a live demonstration site allowing people to see and interact with a populated Wacs installation featuring a range of our own photosets.

On the free side, we are intrested in creating a public data repository that will enable people to find additional sources of sets by models they particularly like from vendors they were not previously aware of. Whether the industry will welcome this kind of cross-promotion or for some reason seek to stop it, we have no idea, but it seems like a cool idea to us.

Supported Distributions

• Fedora Core - Releases 5 and 6
• Fedora - Releases 7,8 and 9
• Ubuntu - Release 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) and Release 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron)

About MacOS X

• Oracle is not supported on Intel Macs - our own master Wacs development database uses an Oracle 10i database backend and we've just discovered that Oracle have yet to release any Universal binary versions of their products. This is a bit dumb since they claim they support Apple MacOS X but it turns out only a version that runs on the PowerPC hardware that you can't actually buy anymore. This means that we can't connect into our Oracle database from the Mac (well, actually we can, but only using a gross hack we wouldn't suggest anyone support or deploy).
• Binary packages not available for MySQL 5.0, etc - we're new to Macs and we've been steered in the direction of the Fink Project as the best source of OpenSource ports (www.finkproject.org) but unfortunately their binary repositories offer only MySQL 4.x and a build-from source toolkit for MySQL 5.x (and then only if you enable unstable mode). When we tried this for MySQL 5.x, it took our MacBook Pro hours to build even the MySQL component. With all the other stuff we need, that makes for many hours of compiling as part of the install process, which just doesn't seem sensible to us.
• Fink fails with dependency failures - at Wacs 0.7.1, the installer actually knows about MacOSX and will attempt an install of the necessary packages using fink. Unfortunately during our tests, fink failed to resolve dependencies correctly when building php5. The necessary libPAM (Plugable Authenticaion Module) is also not supported, so we'll have to wait for a future Wacs release with database-hosted user accounts as an option before the dynamic lease mechanism will work. We've left the settings for MacOSX present in easyinstall, but it will require work to resolve each issue as it comes up.