Learning to let go: A reflection on craftsmanship and control

All your database are belong to us

[anax]

This is a reflective post, not a "how do I..." post. Reflective replies are welcome.

I'm an old-school HTML hand coder, and have never used any of the WYSYWYG applications like DreamWeaver, etc. All my webpages have been written for years with BBEdit on a Mac (Wintel people will have a similar text editor that they may use), and I keep them all neatly organized on my own computer in a file structure that mirrors my websites. This lets me easily do search-and-replace through my sites whenever I want; I make extensive use of the BBEdit-include facility, which lets me update template-ish information site-wide. When I've made my changes, I upload to my host with an FTP program or directly within BBEdit if I'm working on a single file. I like to keep my HTML source clean: if you were to view source on one of my pages, you'd find it well formatted and easy for humans to read. Writing webpages is a craft, and for me this is good craftsmanship.

I've just started working with WordPress (one of the free blogging packages) to see if it would be good for running a "news" section on one of my sites that has about 200 dated pages, with a new post added roughly once a week. I want to take advantage of the auto-generated RSS feeds, the automated updating of my news index page, and the ease with which the "next post"/"previous post" links on each page are generated.

So, this is the thing: I'm having a really hard time letting go of the ability to have every single webpage on my site mirrored by an actual HTML source file sitting right on my own computer. With WordPress (and any similar application) all the "content" is dumped into a database, and nothing really corresponds to the HTML document I'm accustomed to having underneath every single webpage.

Part of my problem, of course, comes from the fact that I don't understand anything about the mechanics of the database itself. It's just a black hole to me, and if something breaks, it's gone. I'd have to look through the help section on my host's site to even find where the actual database file is stored in order to download a copy as a backup. Maintaining the original HTML files for my sites on my own computer is so ... *tangible*. (An odd term for a cluster of phosphors floating on a cathode ray tube.)

I remember a friend in grad school some years ago when PCs were just starting to become common and everyone was getting one. She was an historian and had thousands of index cards with all her research information on them. People were telling her to computerize them, but she liked the security of the physical cards. Paradoxically, the HTML files now feel to me like physical objects, which I have some control over (that's the power of the desktop virtuality), whereas the database is just a black hole that I can't touch.

Has anyone else gone through a phase like this?

[jecasc]

I know what you mean. This is always the case for me when I learn a new technology and don't clearly understand what it does yet. The only way to get behind this is to learn how stuff works.

So best thing to do is to install a copy of phpmyadmin [phpmyadmin.net] and have a look behind the scenes. Once you see how the Data you enter is stored that "Black Hole" feeling will soon dissapear.

You will recognize that handling information in a database is pretty much the same as having those HTML files. Only difference is that you have tables instead of files and it is much easier to handle the data.

[deejay]

Yesyes YES!

anax, I could have written this, if not word for word, then feeling for feeling.

The crazy part? .... My day job is primarily database designer/administrator.

I'm thoroughly at home with them. More than that.. my dbs are my babies.

And yet... I *love* my html files. Tangibility, yes.

I am now using a CMS for one site.. well, three sites as of this week. But I do still struggle.

For me, I think it will come down to finding the time to sit down and build my own database... my own system before I am really comfortable.

*sigh* If I only had time... if I only had... tiiiiiime.

[volatilegx]

One thing you might consider is looking for a way to back up your MySQL database (if that's what you're using) into a text file. You can then download that file to your computer and feel warm and fuzzy knowing your data is safe and sound.

If you look at the text file, you will see that it is structured as "insert queries" which are used to insert the data back into a blank database. It contains both the structure of the database and all of the data.

There are plenty of backup scripts available which will handle the task for you. I like to set up a .sh script I found and cron it so my data is backed up daily and then I also get weekly and monthly archived backups on the server. I actually only downoad the monthly backups.

The one I use is a sourceforge project located here: AutoMySQLBackup [sourceforge.net]

[anax]

Yes, all the recommendations on how and where to learn more about the database backend are correct and would be helpful in that I'm sure. I'm still aiming at something that has to do more with the concept of the web, I think. The picture of the web I hold is the original picture of the docuverse: it's a great collection of *documents* delivered via HTTP. A webpage for me is fundamentally a document. It may have components filled-into it via transclusion in one form or another (whether an image from a remote server or a piece of data from a database), but the page is still fundamentally a document with HTML behind it, and (in my head) I want that to reside somewhere.

One of the things that has bothered me (in this conceptual way) as I've learned to use WordPress is that the pages are synthesized out of several chunks every time they are viewed; I guess I'd be happier if WordPress just generated a full set of static pages; and if I changed things, I could regenerate the set of static pages. Perhaps it can do this; I just haven't found out how yet. (I've only been using it for about a week.) Before selecting WordPress I experimented with blogger.com, and one thing I did like about blogger was that you could specify a remote site that it would ftp your blog to, i.e., it would generate the static pages and send them wherever you wanted to put them. I guess I'd feel happier with respect to "tangibility" if I were running WordPress on my local machine, and then just having it (automatically perhaps) upload the static results of my editing. I imagine this is possible; perhaps I'll figure it out at some point.