Beta Tester Help
Updated 27 Apr 10
Index
Getting Ready
Site Status
Hiker Permissions
Hiker Roles
Database
Hike Entries
Hiker Entries
Schedule Entries
Getting Ready
Most Beta testers are already in the system.
If you are not in the system, you need to join.
Go to the Hikers menu item and click Join ASCHG. You need
your Senior Center membership number in order to complete your hiker
profile. Make sure you remember your password. Passwords
are encripted and can not be recovered. If you forget your password, you
will have to ask the webmaster for a temporary one and then change it in
your profile. Once you have completed your profile, you are asked to wait
while your membership is validated (a manual process, more later).
If you realize you made a mistake in your profile, wait until you are
validated and then change your profile by clicking the menu item
Hikers and then the submenu item Change profile.
For testing purposes, email the webmaster as soon as you have completed
your profile and he will validate you as soon as he sees your email (which
may take a while since he isn't always on his computer). See the Contact
us menu item for information on emailing the webmaster.
For those of you testing email or upcoming hikes, make sure you
include words to the effect that this is a test!
If you think hike and schedule data are incorrect or has misspellings, let
the administrator know. If you think anything else is odd, wrong or
misspelled, let the web master know. See the Contact us menu item for
information on emailing the administrator and webmaster.
Some of the information below is fairly technical and is for administrators.
Don't be worried if you don't understand it. But if you do, that's great!
Thanks for your help!
Site Status
The site is fully operational.
We are on a shared server which gets restarted several times a day. If
it does, you will get no response or an out-of-service response. Wait two
or three minutes (that's how long it takes to restart) and try again.
Occasionally, it takes four to five minutes for a major restart. Be
patient or think about endowing the site with more money so we can get off
the shared server.
There are still lots of hikes and old schedule data that need to be loaded
into the database. But the current period (2010H1) schedule is loaded as
well as all the hikes it references. There are many other hikes loaded
too but not all that we have in our collection.
There probably are some browser compatability issues not corrected. Firefox
was used for development and IE was tested extensively. But no test checks
everything so there can still be some issues.
Known problems:
Mac's Safari will not display a hike notice.
Hiker Permissions
What a hiker can view on the menu bar and what actions the hiker can
perform are governed by the hiker's permissions. Hikers can have
multiple permissions. Examples of permissions are:
logged in, hike leader, van driver and news coordinator. Most permissions
are granted by the administrator but logged in and van driver are not. Below
is a table showing menu items and the permission required. If the hiker has
any of the permissions, the hiker can view the menu item on the menu bar and
perform the action.
Menu Item
and
Action
|
Permissions |
Anybody
|
Logged
In |
Van
Driver |
Van
Coord |
News
Coord |
Email
Coord |
Hike
Ldr |
Hike
Coord |
Admin
|
| Home |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| LogIn |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Hike Schedules |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Hikes |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Hikers: Join ASCHG |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Hikers: Change profile |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Hikers: By last name |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Hikers: By first name |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Hikers: Administrators |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
| Hikers: Emergency info |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
X |
| Hikers: Hike coordinators |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Hikers: Hike leaders |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Hikers: Inactive |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
| Hikers: Van drivers |
|
|
X |
X |
|
|
X |
X |
X |
| Hikers: Waiting approval |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
| Responsibilities |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Contact us |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Email: Unpublished hiker |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Email: Generate email list |
|
|
|
|
|
X |
|
|
X |
| Email: Send broadcast email |
|
|
|
|
|
X |
|
|
X |
| Email: Send upcoming hike notice |
|
|
|
|
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
| About us |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
| Admin: Center maint |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
| Admin: Hike, add |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
X |
| Admin: Hike, edit |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
X |
| Admin: Hiker, add |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
| Admin: Hiker, edit |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
| Admin: News item, add |
|
|
|
|
X |
|
|
|
X |
| Admin: News item, edit |
|
|
|
|
X |
|
|
|
X |
| Admin: Region maint |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
| Admin: Schedule maint |
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
X |
X |
| Admin: View comment/suggestion |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
| Admin: Whole schedule maint |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X |
Hiker Roles
As stated above in Permissions, a hiker may have multiple permissions
and, thus, have multiple roles. Following are the hiker roles:
Anyone can visit the web site and view the schedule(s) and hike
information. They can also view hiker responsibilities, about us and
contact us.
Logged In is any hiker who can log in; pass the user ID and
password check. They can change their profile, see basic information
about other hikers and send an email to hikers with unpublished email
addresses.
Van Driver is any hiker who has checked that they are a van
driver on their profile. They can do anything that a logged in hiker can do
plus view hike leaders and other van drivers.
Van Coordinator is designated by the
administrator to coordinate between van drivers, hike leaders and hike
coordinators. They probably are not van drivers themselves. They can do
anything that a logged in hiker can do plus view hike leaders and
van drivers.
News Coordinator is designated by the
administrator to coordinate news on the home page. They can do anything
that a logged in hiker can do plus add and edit news items.
Email Coordinator is designated by the
administrator to coordinate email. They can do anything that a logged in
hiker can do plus generate email ists, send broadcast emails and send
upcoming hike notices.
Hike Leader is designated by the
administrator as a hike leader. They can do anything that a logged in
hiker can do plus list van drivers, van coordinators and hike
coordinators. They can also send upcoming hike notices and do
schedule maintenance.
Hike Coordinator is designated by the
administrator as a hike coordinator. They can do everything a hike
leader can plus center and region maintenance. They can also add and
edit hikes.
Administrator is designated by the web master and can
perform all actions.
Database
It helps to understand how actions are performed and their
sequence by knowing how the underlying database tables are related. Below
is a diagram of the database:
As an example of what you can infer, to add a new entry to the hiker table, the
center the hiker is associated with must exist in the center table. Another
example, to add a new entry to the gps table, the hike the gps file is
associated with and the hiker who authored the gps file must exist in their
respective tables.
This last example offers more insight into how actions are performed. To keep
the coding simple, database transaction updates were not used. Transaction
updates mean multiple tables can be updated as a single operation. Since transaction
updates were not used, adding a hike's gps files at the same time a hike is created
isn't possible since there is no hike reference available (yet) for the gps entries.
Once the new hike has been added, the gps entries can be added. The result is
several distinct actions: one to add the hike and one more for each gps file.
Finally, the diagram illustrates another common data base problem, the
referential integrity error. An example: If there is an entry in the
Hike table referring/pointing to the an entry in the Region table, you don't
want to remove that Region table entry until the Hike table entry referring
to it has been removed. Otherwise, the Hike table entry would be left
referring to a nonexistant Region table entry. The database software
regognizes this problem and will not let you remove a table entry that
has references to it.
Hiker Entries
Everyone is a hiker. There are two major classes of hikers: active and
inactive. Most of the inactive hikers no longer hike but were hike
leaders, authors, etc. in the past and we need to be able to reference
them. Only an administrator can create an inactive hiker. An inactive
hiker cannot log in to the web site.
There are temporary hikers in the system as explained in Getting
Ready. This situation gets around a database startup problem of needing
references to hikers as hike leaders, authors, etc. and is temporary. No
more temporary hikers will be added to the system.
Hiker database entries have status values. The main reason they exists is
to prevent incomplete or incorrect entries from being displayed. An
administrator can view all entries and is the only one who can change
the status values.
Hiker Status:
0 - Empty. Data entered by a program directly,
not via the website. Not displayed.
1 - Blocked. Administrator has blocked (locked
out) hiker. Not displayed.
2 - Data Missing. Or incorrect. Temporary and
inactive hikers have this status. Not displayed.
3 - Verifying. Hiker's membership number being
verified. Not displayed.
4 - Known. Correct and verified hiker entry.
Displayed.
Hike Entries
Entries for hikes are of two major classes: hike and hike placeholders. A
hike placeholder has very little data; no map, description, waypoints,
etc. It exists because we have a schedule entry that references a hike we
don't have in the database. A hike has all the data.
Hike database entries have status values. They exist to prevent
incomplete or incorrect entries from being displayed. An administrator can
view all entries and is the only one who can change the status values.
Hike Status:
0 - Empty. Data entered by a program directly,
not via the website. Not displayed.
1 - Inactive. We have data but think the hike
should not be hiked any more. Not displayed.
2 - Inprocess/Missing Data. Or incorrect data.
Not displayed.
3 - OK/Done. Correct hike entry. Displayed.
Schedule Entries
Schedule database entries have status values. They exist to prevent
incomplete or incorrect entries from being displayed. An administrator can
view all entries and is the only one who can change the status values.
In order to present a completed schedule all at once, the status values
are used to hide the entries until all are ready. When that ocurrs, the
schedule is published (all the entries that have a status value of two
are changed to four at the same time). A schedule can be unpublished
as well (all fours changed to twos).
Hike Status:
0 - Empty. Data entered by a program directly,
not via the web site. Not displayed.
1 - In Process. Or missing or incorrect data.
Not displayed.
2 - Waiting Release. Entry is complete but
waiting to be released. Not displayed.
3 - Canceled.Entry is complete. Displayed
with date "struck through."
4 - OK/Done.Correct schedule entry. Displayed.