The goal is to provide a central repository for our cameras', lenses' and other equipments' serial numbers, together with the current status (stole) of those items.
From a security perspective, y'all already have an account here, and it seems to me to be logical to hook into that account; hence my first port of call is to investigate ways to add into the existing functionality and extend upon it.
Any disagreement with or discussion of that point of view?
It seems to me as if many of us will have a common baseline set of equipment - D70 Body, kit lens, SB800, tripod - and from there we'll each be adding who knows what.
Some of us have more than one body, and some have older film bodies and lenses that they may wish to have included.
I've had a quick browse through phpbb.com and phpbbhacks.com to see if there's anything there that might be able to handle this task for us.
The closest I've seen are mods that relate to car ownership, whereby you can add details of your car to either your existing profile, or in a separate profile. Of these, two seem to be semi-suitable, but not without further modifications on my part, although I've not yet looked at any of the underlying workings of these mods.
The car List simply provides access to a listing of members' cars.
http://www.v63400.com/carlist.php
I would presume that the number of fields can be extended, thus also the data displayed. Changing text such as "cars" to "cameras" and so on is a no brainer.
Separate Car Profile provides more information, and is somewhat closer to what I'm envisiaging, although it still seems to me to only permit just the one vehicle - or in our terminaology, one body.
http://www.v63400.com/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2
Again, modifying the displayed text, and the various fieldnames used isn't likely to be a major issue.
Similarly, I could probably provide fields for Body1, Body2, etc, maybe allowing for up to 5(?) bodies, 10 lenses, 5 flash units, etc per member.
Again, bear in mind that I've not yet opened up the code for these packages,; I'm simply speaking from the basis of what I'm expecting to see once I do.
My one reservation with both of these add-ons is that they display the details to all and sundry. I have no issues with one person seeing their own data, but I have an issue with letting, for instance, everyone see your camera's serial number, unless there's a good reason to do so, like the camera's been stolen.
Otherwise, making it public might be asking for trouble - anyone else can use your number for anything that they wish to, which is probably not a good idea.
My thoughts are that it's probably quite simple to remove the link (as used in the demo) from the profile, thus hopefully then making the only access to this data via the user's profile.
I'm open to all thoughts and suggestions, so please, feel free to throw your ideas around in this thread. Let's see what we can come up with!
