The Doggy Diaries... gone to the dogs!

Tag Me!

[UPDATE 06/30/04, 20:50] -- I've fixed the problem with the tagboard (or so I think). It should be fully operational now in IE and Mozilla-based browsers. Feel free to leave tags as often as you want! Have fun, y'all!! :)

[UPDATE 06/30/04, 09:10] -- The tagboard is causing my blog to display improperly in Mozilla-based browsers. I have disabled it until I can troubleshoot the problem and resolve it.
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I decided to jump on the bandwagon and add a tagboard to this site. As this is the first time I've ever used a tagboard, I'm still “testing the waters”, so to speak. My initial impression, however, is quite favorable. I decided on a tagboard called Dawg Tag. Although it doesn't have the emoticons that other tagboards offer, it does have two features that I find very important -- IP blocking and the ability to delete nasty posts or spam posts.

I had previously reviewed both TagBoard and ZonkBoard, and while both of those programs had the IP blocking and tag deleting features I was looking for, neither of them were freeware. ZonkBoard is only free for a seven day trial period, and TagBoard only offers those features in their upgraded deluxe version. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly willing to pay for a product when I find that product to be useful. I am not, however, willing to buy something only to find out a few days down the line that I don't like the product. In this case, I'm not completely sure I want to keep a tagboard on my site. I figured that I'd try it out for a month or two to see if I like it.

As I said earlier, I am so far very impressed with Dawg Tag. The installation was quite simple, and I was able to customize the look of the tagboard to fit the theme of my blog. If you decide you want to try Dawg Tag for yourself, you'll need to make sure your website is hosted on a PHP-capable server. You'll also need to know how to create a MySQL database to store your “tags.”

I've so far found only one problem with the Dawg Tag install. The MySQL database name, username and password are stored in a file that is easily accessible to anyone because the file is stored inside public_html. I modified the PHP code slightly to move those pieces of sensitive information into a more secure location in a directory above public_html. Through the use of PHP includes, I call the file containing the sensitive information. In this way, I took an extra step to keep my database username and password out of the hands of unsavory characters who might try to use my tagboard for devious machinations.

If anyone else is interested trying out Dawg Tag, I'd be happy to help you set it up. You can send me an email using my contact form. If there's enough interest, I may just post the installation procedure I used here as a blog entry.