It is time for me to open my mouth (hopefully, not putting my foot in it). I am concerned with the future of BOINCStats in General. Willy the Admin of this project has indicated that he has no time during his working days and has restricted time on week ends due to Real Life Home Commitment. That is understandable. The problem is that there appears to be no body else that is minding the store and giving Willy a hand to answer legitimate questions in the forum, let alone wishes to make this site a better place to visit. I am sure reading all the points mentioned in the forum that users are pissed off for not getting a reply and will go elsewhere. That is not the desired effect I hope. We had an Easter Holiday in which time Willy could have had time to spend some time on the site, but than again, I do not blame him if he took his family on a holiday away from phones and internet. At the same token, he has not answered any questions for days/weeks prior to that.

I have noted that at least one user has recently retired after 25 years of IT work that involved developing programs for a major site. He has gave this information in his post pointing out anomalies to this site and wishes for improvement. In view of the facts as pointed out by Willy, it's an opportune time to ask for help maintaining this site for surely help is available as long as you ask. What about it willy?

I'm open for any serious LAMP developer but I'm very careful about whom I give access to the code and the servers.

BOINCstats uses PHP, Perl, MySQL and of course HTML/CSS. I use a custom build framework (so no PEAR for example).

I would suggest that we start with someone helping out with the web facing side of BOINCstats and leave the stats generating side out of it at the start.

I have the sneaking suspicion that Peter is referring to me...

Unfortunately, I know none of the technologies Willy needs. My work was centered around Windows app UI and my age dates me back to C/C++... Yeah, I am that old...

However, all that gave me a keen sense of usability, thus I am really good at writing lengthy posts about how things should work!

Tuna

Tuna, do not put yourself down. After all, 25 years in the IT industry must have thought you something. In my case, I am still learning VB6 because my brother who spent similar time in the industry still thinks it is the best to learn the basics of all from which you progress.

I am doing it for fun, but I am sure there must be others similar to you who have the expertise necessary to help Willy. It is just too much to expect one person to maintain.

The very first stats generator for BOINCstats was written in VB6. The updates ran on my home server and were pushed to the webhoster after the update. It broke the harddisk in the server after five days at which point I decided to redo the updated in PHP + MySQL (both of which I never used before). Later I moved the code to Perl.

So, VB6 is an excellent starting point but in my opinion it's better to use one of the C derived languages.

Sorry for the delay, but I have missed this post. Willy, I have stated that I am willing to help. Please tell me what I need to do or learn in order to help. Surely, as it will take time to learn a new language I might still be helpful somewhere on the line. I just wish to keep this site up to date as much as possible as even in my own Team I am asked for help that should freely be available here as regards Statistics and relevant support. There are a number of stat sites available, each with some likes and dislikes. Can we not make this site the best?