There is a reason…

There is a reason why I prefer text based / commandline / unix interfaces.

“Why?” You may ask?

So I had to update a website – basically changing from ‘2011’ to ‘2012’ – for someone. Once I got in to the file manager (web based) I could find the graphics files to replace, reasonably easily, and upload new ones.

But I needed to update the text of the banner. No .html files, or .inc or anything to edit.

So I went to the “WYSIWYG” editor section of the site. I could edit everything, except that part. And the footer. And the page title. So, I could edit the “articles”, but not much else.

After hunting around for a while, I decided to try the “Website Management” area. Total different interface again, loads of settings boxes and tabs. I found there on different pages where I could set the page title, and so on. But I couldn’t find the banner! Anywhere!

Eventually, this morning, I found it.

In “Website Management” -> “Structure” -> “Website Settings” -> “Code Injection” -> “Advanced” -> “Site Banner HTML Override — Edited”

I hadn’t found it before, because the section I needed was “Site Banner HTML Override”, and to find that, I needed to look through a drop-down box which was displaying “Extra Header Code (within )” with some javascript includes.

SERIOUSLY.

What is wrong with just having a bunch of text files, and then letting me type

“grep 2011 *”

And it giving me a list of files to edit? HOW is this graphical interface any easier?

OK. So ‘grep’ isn’t common English, I know. Learning basic unix does have a steep looking learning curve. At first.

In case you’re interested, I started, months and months ago, writing an “English-like” command shell.

So you could type commands like:

“list all files which contain 2011”

and it should tell you.

It’s on sourceforge, the first alpha versions of the code.
[There is a reason why I prefer text based / commandline / unix interfaces.