It's been close to seven years since I set out with the intention of becoming a mangaka... excuse me, comic artist. (Have to keep the hipsters happy, donchaknow)  Seven years since we first started out, seven years of incessant setbacks. Sometimes it's seemed to me as if life threw too many obstacles at me to make this possible, and I often wondered if I should just throw in the towel.  At times I doubted I'd actually get anything out.

But without getting into an entire teal deer herd, let's just say that I persevered.  This Tuesday, Claude and Monet was finally launched after a month of hectic scribbling and two weeks' worth of all-nighters!  It will be updated every Tuesday and Thursday, and hopefully I'll be able to pace myself better now that I have a buffer.

Then again, all-nighters are kind of exciting. They make me feel like I'm actually accomplishing something.

It's probably not a good idea to be up until 3 in the morning fixing wonky code -- particularly when I had to be up at 5 -- but that's just how we roll here.  And it's not as if I'm not too obstinate to simply set aside a particularly stubborn problem until the blasted thing is fixed.

The problem was something that I remember having back when I'd first installed and ran Joomla, the infamous JFolder::create: Could not create directory problem.  Specifically, Joomla couldn't seem to find the installation package whenever I attempted to use the Extension Manager to install components or templates.  I'd found a work-around initially, but it escaped my memory, which in turn forced me to hunt down a real solution.

The general consensus appeared to be that it was a file permissions issue, but a quick check on Filezilla told me that no, the correct permissions were all set on the relevant folders.  The second best solution was that the path was wrong, but another check told me otherwise.  So I basically spent hours until I found a good combination that finally worked.  So here it is.

First, check with Joomla itself to find out if it's reading your folders as writeable by going to the Admin Panel and selecting System Info > Help Section > Directory Permissions.  Even though the folders themselves may be set correctly, Joomla might not be reading them that way.  In my case, both the tmp and logs folders were listed as unable to be written to.

The next part is a bit of a PitA, but it was the only way to force Joomla to read them correctly: you'll need to edit your configuration.php file.  (Make sure you have a backup copy in case something goes wrong) Find the the two lines that look something like this:

var $tmp_path = '/localhost/longassstring/ofcode/yourwebdomain.com/tmp';

var $tmp_path = '/localhost/longassstring/ofcode/yourwebdomain.com/logs';

Change these to:

var $tmp_path = '../tmp';

var $tmp_path = '../logs';

Even if the path is correct, (as it was in my case) Joomla won't necessarily read it due to redundant security. (Which is what makes Joomla so difficult to hack... we like that in a man CMS)  This way, even if your host makes weird changes that Joomla doesn't like, it can find its own way.

Lastly, if you can't force your FTP client to overwrite the existing configuration.php file, you'll have to delete the one on the server and re-upload the edited one.  If you changed only those two lines, you shouldn't have any problems.

For me, this cleared my problem right up.  Now, if only the updated version of Gantry would stick...

After blowing an entire day of installing, familiarisation, and ironing out kinks, (mostly the latter) The Foundry is now online!  Basic, yes; glitchy, most certainly.  But the important thing is that it's up and running.

There are still a number of things I'm not crazy about when it comes to Zen Cart: changes have to be made within the code itself, (no easy WordPress-style overrides) changing code can't be done through the administrator control panel, (as it can be in WordPress, phpBB, etc) changed files have to be uploaded and overwritten via FTP, (as all the aforementioned back in the good ol' days) a rather unwieldy control panel, (Joomla's CP might be complex and take a while to learn, but it's very streamlined and organised)  and files all over the damned place in some rather nonsensical locations. It reminds me a little of when I first tried my hand at PHP, with a gazillion includes.  Zen Cart is that on a much wider, messier scale.

Yet, for all the hassle, running my own shop allows me 100% of the profits of the proverbial sweat of my brow.  Every single site that offers the same services skims a ridiculous amount off the top, the worst that I know of being DeviantArt. (Which grants me a 'generous' 20% on whatever work I would sell through them.  And while having a premium account would allow me to set my prices and royalties, the cost of the account wouldn't be offset by whatever meagre profits I were to make)  Currently, I'm working on making the site more customer-friendly... though admittedly, many of those aforementioned sites aren't that much better.

With the successful implementation of the shoutbox and contact form, I deemed the site functional enough to go live.  So here it is, the reborn MythNet.

Since I wanted something a little different in terms of graphics, I decided to use one of my Poser renders, a piece called "Victoria's Secretives" which will be going up in my gallery when it's implemented.  I've decided to fold Unfettered back into the main site to save myself some hassle with having to design a layout for and constantly update a separate gallery.  Joomla is robust enough to support a built-in gallery.

But for the moment, having the site up and running was the priority.