Online Writing Lab Code Installed at Southern Oregon University

I spent the latter part of last week in Ashland, OR (tough job, but someone's got to do it) installing this project's Online Writing Lab code at Southern Oregon University.

To say that I learned a lot would be a huge understatement. If nothing else, I learned the value of testing on several platforms. They gave me space on a Suse 10 test environment, the same that I use at home, and I was abashed to admit that I never actually installed the code on my Suse box. If I had, I probably could have saved myself 4 or 5 hours of troubleshooting just trying to figure out why core PHP functions were generating error messages (the answer is that Suse breaks up the PHP into a couple packages, which, once they were installed, landed me squarely in squishing bugs in my own code, instead of web server/environmental errors).

Despite the rough start, the code is now working in a test environment at Southern. I'll be providing links to the SOU implementation here once it's public. Both SOU's OWL and this project could use the publicity, after all.

Thanks to both Laura Y. and Paul L. at Southern for their help. They were both terrific. Laura was especially so, as she took me out for a marvelous meal in Ashland, and night on the town. Kudos to Laura, Ashland, and its spectacular cuisine.

Dennis