i am looking for a PHP web script that could suit my needs. i am ready to write it but i suppose it has already been done, so i thought i'd ask here first.
what i want is to have a web page that i can edit in real time (just like etherpad), but that basically is never finished. in etherpad people export their work when they are done with it and no one cares if the pad is destroyed a few months later. in my case these notes are important and i'll be working on them for a really long time. which means that i need:
a) to be sure the hosting website won't close its doors abruptly - this is why i have decided to host this on my own hosting.
b) the ability to protect my data with a password. (will be done with a htaccess)
c) the ability to send a backup regularly to my e-mail address. (just a few lines of PHP code)
etherpad is really not far from being perfect but it's written in java i think (?) and i only know a bit of PHP, so i don't think i'll be able to add those features to it. not to mention i wouldn't even be able to install it on my shared hosting.
on the other hand, i really don't mind the text formating or simultaneous editing by multiple users. had i a simple black and white form with just an "update" button, it'd be fine.
and that's definitely something i would be able to do. which leads me to question 2:
had i to write this script, there would be only one huge wall of text on my page, containing a months worth of work on these notes. my worry is, it's going to be updated very frequently. how can i make sure that the data will never be lost if there is say a mysql error once? would writing to a file be more secure? should i do both mysql and fwrite() to avoid any mistake?
thank you for any help. hope my english was clear enough!
What you intend to do sounds an awful lot like a wiki... If you want to checkout a lightweight PHP wiki, then have a look at DokuWiki. It doesn't even require a DB (uses plain textfiles) and changes can be tracked.