Mantis Bugtracker Upgrade

Recently upgraded Mantis Bugtracker to version 1.2.0. Finally they got rid of their extremely basic color scheme!
Interface could be more 2010, but it is and stays extremely functional.

Subdirectories and URL rewriting

When we install CMS-systems, we always create them in a seperate subfolder on the webspace. This to keep things clear, and logically structured.
However the problem that then occurs is that URLs tend to get ugly.
E.g. our webspace looks like: http://www.agito.be/CMS/index.php, instead of http://www.agito.be/index.php

.htaccess files are an ideal solution, but often difficult to use. Today I managed to remove the /CMS/ part out of the URL without side-effects. Here is the code:

RewriteEngine on
#
# Internally rewrite requests for all pages in "/" to pages in /CMS/
#
# If not already rewritten to /CMS/
RewriteCond $1 !^CMS/
# Prepend "/CMS" to the requested URL-path
RewriteRule (.*) /CMS/$1 [L]

If CMSMS would remove the index.php to be shown, I would be completely happy :)


Toggl

Estimating the budget of a software project is extremely difficult. It becomes even more difficult if you don't have any idea how much time was spent on previous projects...
Therefor we decided to look for an easy to use time-registration system. There are numerous systems available, some paid solutions, some free, some require installation, some are service-based.
We decided to go for Toggl (www.toggl.com), nice interface, desktop applications for windows and mac, Iphone tool, ... Everything we need. Too bad my Nokia E71 doesn't have a Toggl app.

From now on, we will be tracking every software development project we realise.

Pretty URL's in CMSMadeSimple

Pretty URLs can be achieved quite nicely in CMSMS. I've used the following guideline, and I'm quite satisfied with the results:

http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/User_Handbook/Tips_And_Tricks/Installation

One.com upgrade to PHP 5.3

One.com installed PHP 5.3 in december of this year. The old track record of PHP adoption was that it takes several years for a major upgrade to be accepted. However, things must’ve changed, because we’re hearing more and more issues with 5.3 compatibility, even though it’s only been out for a few months.

We ourselves had some problems with CMSMS, which will be solved in version 1.7. Looking forward to these upgrades...

Mantis Bugtracker

In our never ending search for optimizations in efficiency, we've installed Mantis Bugtracker (http://www.mantisbt.org/). An open source ticket management system, that allows us to follow-up bugs and problems in a structured manner. Our customers get access to the system and can monitor the evolution of their problems.
Mantis is light-weight, but serves our needs perfectly.

Dommel Hosting

Since we decided to build Airportservice, a system to manage taxi transfers from and to the airports in the Benelux, we have been looking for decent Software Development hosting.
Dommelhosting.nl came out as a winner. SVN-support, multiple, easy configurable MySQL databases, configurable FTP-accounts, ...

So far, we've been very satisfied with the results.