Perspective of this guide
This guide was written for absolute newcomers to MDP and was written from
the perspective of users, not developers or people very experienced with
it. It was written for the benefit of those who take a hand on approach
to learning and can find their own answers with a bit of guidance. Much
of it, in fact, was written from actual experience by a newcomer to MDP
as he learned about it.
It was also written in plain, direct terms as this ability seems to be
lacking on many technical sites.
The people who write the descriptions just don't tell people what they
want to know.
Imagine if they described (analog) television (in the U.S.) to someone
who didn't know what it is.
Developer: it scans images at 525 horizontal lines of resolution and
completely conforms to NTSC standards. It receives broadcasts in MTS
and SAP.
Person : But what does it do for me?
Duster: It lets you see pictures and hear sounds of programs of all
types, from fictional dramas to documentaries and live news.
Usage of this guide
This guide is best utilized if a newcomer reads it in its entirety, especially
the Features and Usage section.
Philosophy of this guide
This guide was written with the following beliefs in mind
- That guides should be written for beginners who want to learn and
can follow well written instructions
- That instructions should be well written, with sequential steps and
no unwarranted assumptions
- That any assumptions are stated
- That instructions should be written from hands on experience in conjunction
with the program in operation
- That instructions should correspond to the screens whose functions
they describe
- That instructions should incorporate visual elements of the screens
whose functions they describe where needed
- That all issues related to a feature be described in a single location
for convenience and ease of locating them
- That the easiest and/or best way to accomplish something be listed,
even if it is not the official way
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
simpler."
Albert Einstein
Assumptions
File relationships in MDP are relative to the position of the index.php
file. For the purposes of this guide, some assumptions are made where
necessary. One is that you have MDP installed at the document root location.
The assumption is made that it is /home/your loginname/www/ and that you
will make any necessary adjustments. Another assumption is that you have
your own domain name. Finally, http://www.yourdomain.com/ has been used
where a URL is necessary as an example.
Terminology
Before you proceed, you may find it helpful to become familiar with a
few basic terms you will see mentioned over and over.
Database - A collection of information stored in a program
for easy accessibility. (See field and table.)
One example is the Internet
Movie DataBase at http://imdb.com
It has a huge database of information about movies and television shows
that can be accessed and provide answers in a matter of seconds.
Field - A place for specific information in a database
or form, usually designated by type. For instance, this site has a contact
form. There is a text field for the sender's name, another for their e-mail
address and a text area field for the message. Other field types include
date and money (currency), which tells the program how the information
should be formatted.
Table - A table is a collection of fields in a database
or on a page, usually grouped in the same table because they are all needed
for a function or group of functions or because they are related by topic.
MySQL - An open source database program. The SQL stands
for structured query language.
PHP, PHP3, PHP4, PHP5 - Hypertext Preprocessor - PHP
is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed
from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown
in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically
generated pages quickly. Some languages do things, others get things done.
PHP is commonly known as the latter of these two. Many PHP programs use
a database as a back end (the PHP program does the work up front and MySQL
or some other database program collects and keeps the information in the
back end.)
phpMyAdmin - A program that acts as an interface (control
panel if you will) using PHP to administer MySQL databases. Databases
can be complex things to administer and phpMyAdmin makes the job easier.
MDP - An abbreviation for MDPro
