I have now retrofitted my previous blog entries into the database. I hope I got the days right, so that any permanent links will still work. Apologies in advance if I failed.
During the process I discovered that SimpleBlog does not have a backdating feature. This minor drawback was eliminated by reading the source and noting a dateToInt that counts the minutes since the 1st January 2001. A check of the database revealed by previous entries to be at 2254320, 2265840, 2274480 on the 16th, 24th and 30th of this month, respectively. A quick confirming calculation meant I simple had to add 2880 and 4320 for the two and three day gaps. Easy! It also showed that the hours and minutes were ignored in the calculation.
Without the source code this would have been a longer scrabble with numbers. The lessons learnt are that source code is good. Open file formats are good. And that with the abundance of other software available there’s more chance of switching vendor at the first sign of trouble, especially early on in the deployment cycle. After all, if you find a problem in the first month of use, and it takes longer to diagnose and/or fix the problem that it does to trial some other software –what stopping you?
Long live free software!