Are there enough Pmachine users still left to support a “Best of Pmachine Hacks, Scripts and Tips” website? 

How about a wiki instead? That way it’s not just you doing all the work.

As far as the number of people still using pMachine, I have no real idea.

I use pMachine very rarely these days. But I did put up two small sites with it this week.

I used to have more pMachine thing on pMachine and EE Howto - but I started over last year and didn’t get many items up for pMachine.

LisaJill has an EEWiki that has a bunch of items for EE.

A few people have written about interesting ways of using pmachine. And there are some interesting hacks discussed in the forums. But they’re all scattered all over, and often hard to find.

I cannot move from Pmachine and I don’t think my situation is that rare. But pmachine users just go into hiding like crabs.

A wiki sounds like a good idea. Maybe have tutorials on converting Wordpress themese to Pmachine etc. But it needs a lot of contributors. And I’m afraid I can’t find any.

Then do what I did originally, doc what you want to remember, and if the others come they come, and if they don’t—you’ll have an easier way to find things.

I also use a Del.icio.us tagging system for eestuff, perhaps you could do something similar for pMachine.

I don’t have my hacks any more for pMachine. But if you do decide to put up a wiki, I’ll have a few things to contribute.

Tutorials on converting WordPress themes to pMachine and EE would be a good thing.

I’d love to do a wiki and contribute to it. But as selfish as it sounds, I’d only do it if I thought it would be useful. That’s why I was wondering how many are still left. If there was a significant number or if I knew that there were people who were taking up Pmachine, I’d be happy to start one.

There are quite a number of newish interface features I’d like to highlight such as the ability to make a “Most Popular Entries” list and a “Related Entries” list. Features that were only found in other CMSes like Wordpress but are also now in Pmachine. 

Well.. i guess there are more people like me who just can’t afford EE, so I love your idea! I have pmachinepro working as a CMS on my site but it would be nice to browse through other sites modifications to get some new ideas to improve it.

One of those things would be a simple integration with phpBB. Nothing complicated, just a way to copy new phpbb_members to the pm_members. It should be possible, i just dont know how :-|

I hope that if there’s a site dedicated to pMachinepro it would get a new audience. A more active audience. There’s only one condition. The founders would have to put in quite some time developing and maintaining it. And since most off you already have a site, that could be a bottleneck for a succesfull pM site…

pMachine is still great for building a static CMS site. I have about 5 clients that still use it, and it’s overkill to use EE.

You can import phpBB members fairly easily. They use the same password scheme. The hard part is to make it automatic. You do it using PHP coding.

But I’d use punBB instead of phpBB. Personal preference.

The idea behind using pMachine is to make a templated file that you’d have two variable listed at the top of the page:

<?php include("pm_inc.php");
$id="P12";
$title = "Site Map";
?>
<? include("master.htm"); ?>

the id, and a title.

master.htm has the html code and the idea is that if you need to change something design wise, you only have to change a single file.

master.htm could just as easily be master.php.

You don’t ever call master.htm on it’s own, just as an embedded page.

So each page of your site is only these few line.

Also, set your forum database to the same MySQL database you have pMachine in. Makes it a *lot* easier to grab stuff from to display.

@Sue: thanks a lot for your response. I know this is going a ‘bit’ off-topic, but what’s the use of the code you provided? To create a CMS? Or is it to copy the phpbb_members to pm_members?

In case it’s used as a CMS: i already got pM running as a CMS. I used a different approach, but your seems to work just as well. Actually it seems easier than the way i’ve done it.

I’ll try to explain what I’m looking for:
If a user registers to my site, the moderators receive an email in which they can activate the user. I guess it should be simple to add a second line to that same email in which there’s a piece of code, to copy the data from that specific member to the pm_members table. I just don’t know how to generate that second line so that in the email the correct data is being copied…

I do know the disadvantages of this method: members would have to login twice to respond to both the bulletin board and all the other content. But i guess that the positive points would win that battle in my case…

To create a CMS. I like to boil it down to the fewest files to modify.

Not sure about modifying using an email. But you could probably pass over a userid that updates a new row in the pm_members table.

I still use pmachine for the news section of a site I did last year.
The newspage needed to be in Dutch & English and pmachine pro fitted the bill for this job admirably.
I’d say it’s still very nice to use on sites where using EE would be overkill, and you can’t argue with the price

I too am thinking of using pMachine to set up a fairly stating website with blogging functionality because I just can’t afford another copy of EE. A such, I’d be interested to know if you’ve made any progress on the wiki idea.

Frank

FrankJ - 24 June 2005 05:33 PM

I too am thinking of using pMachine to set up a fairly stating website with blogging functionality because I just can’t afford another copy of EE. A such, I’d be interested to know if you’ve made any progress on the wiki idea.

Frank

You do realize you can run more than one domain on an EE install. I use addon domains that are on the same webhosting account.

...I meant ‘static’, of course.

No, I didn’t realise I could run more than one domain on an EE install. Is there a guide for this?

FrankJ - 25 June 2005 05:01 AM

...I meant ‘static’, of course.

No, I didn’t realise I could run more than one domain on an EE install. Is there a guide for this?

Installing Subdomains

I use what are called Addon domains which I create in my site CPanel. (Not the same thing as the EE Control panel.)

Thank Sue. My system uses CPanel too, so I should be able to do this. One question. Will this only work in the form “subdomain1.domain.com”, “subdomain2.domain.com” or will it also work in the form “www.domain1.com”, “www.domain2.com”, “www.domain3.com” etc?

FrankJ - 25 June 2005 09:34 AM

Thank Sue. My system uses CPanel too, so I should be able to do this. One question. Will this only work in the form “subdomain1.domain.com”, “subdomain2.domain.com” or will it also work in the form “www.domain1.com”, “www.domain2.com”, “www.domain3.com” etc?

I use www.domain1.com, www.domain2.com, etc.
Haven’t tried ith with subdomain1.domain.com

The key is the path.php pointing to the right path for the system directory.

Excellent. Thanks again for your help, Sue.

Drack - 20 May 2005 02:35 AM

I cannot move from Pmachine and I don’t think my situation is that rare. But pmachine users just go into hiding like crabs.

Nope, not rare. Yup, like crabs we go. If you are like me, you have a site up and it just works. I would love to do more with my site, but I don’t really have time. So I just sit there running the same stock software. I guess it is Rick et al’s fault for making something that is so easy to use and reliable!!