Planet MySQL is an aggregation of blogs and news from MySQL developers and users. Nothing here necessarily represents the views of MySQL AB.

• Top

MySQL AB owns the domain names and the MySQL AB Community Department is responsible for its maintenance, together with the web team. Currently, Jay Pipes and Lenz Grimmer handle most issues.

• Top

Jim Winstead did, using the Planet software.

• Top

Custom PHP code (storage in MySQL), written by Arjen Lentz. Originally the Planet PHP code looked very promising and suitable for adding the required enhancements, however it also needed PHP5 and that was unfortunately not available on the server where it needed to run. The system does use various standard components such as MagpieRSS and Smarty.

• Top

Some of the original stylesheet magic comes from Planet PHP. The rest is a mix of the basic MySQL site design, some additions by Arjen, and more fabulous CSS magic by Adam Donnison (web team) to make it all look good (most of the time at least, feed content can sometimes do funny things).

• Top

Any blogs and other feeds related to MySQL that we know about. We currently have four feed classes:

• Aggregate: feeds with more than one author
• Community: feeds from individuals
• Employee: blogs by employees of MySQL AB
• Official: official news feeds from the other MySQL AB sites

• Top

We calculate the most active authors by counting the number of postings over the last 3 months.

• Top

In line with requirements from our sources, we update only once per hour. New entries are added to the local archive, and updates to existing are also detected and processed (posts timestamped more than one hour in the future are ignored). The front page and RSS 2.0 feed are then generated statically, to have an optimal response time and reduce server load. The main page displays the latest 10 entries (paged, you can browse), the RSS feed contains the latest 50 entries.

• Top

Sure! Fill in the submission form linked from the top navigation bar.

• Top

Since we use MySQL for storage, we can run queries on the data. This list is of all authors who have made two or more posts during the last three months. So, it neatly and automatically keeps track of which authors are the most active on Planet MySQL. Now, do remember that Planet MySQL only stores MySQL-related items, so an author may well have written lots of entries on other topics in his or her blog. Those non-MySQL entries are not counted here.

• Top

Planet MySQL can take categorized feeds, but it can also handle an uncategorized feed: it then filters for MySQL-related content using a simple regular expression with some magic keywords. All relevant text fields from feed entries are scanned. So this way, a general blog or news source that occasionally has a MySQL related item can be aggregated also. Only entries that pass the filter are stored in the local archive.

• Top

We have support for languages other than English, starting with German and Spanish. We are happy to add additional languages if there are enough feeds to make it worthwhile.

• Top

Currently, inbound feeds are converted to ISO8859-1. This is not optimal, but prevented some other hassles in feed handling. We will however move to UTF-8 in the not-too-distant future.

• Top

Yes, definitely. Of course some work they do and information they have is confidential, but most of the MySQL development process is open anyway. So it is left to the individual author's discretion what they feel they can or should write about.

• Top

Follow the Archives link in the top navigation bar. Right now the main archives page just shows all posts since day 0 for a particular language (most recent posts first), but later you will be able to browse based on dates, authors and topics. A search function will also be added.

• Top

Just use the feedback link in the top navigation bar. Thanks!

• Top