Scalar – The USC one for publishing webpages

Posted on by Tom Woodward

Scalar often frustrates me. Probably because I only interact with it on rare occasions and usually when something has broken. The name also drives me crazy because I struggle to find documentation or posts given how much math and other software turns up.1

Here’s hoping this eases someone else’s frustration.

First, there are several empty PHP lines after the closing ?> in system > application > models > user_model.php. You must remove them or things will break. You’ll get an error code about headers already being sent. I don’t know why they use closing ?> but I am not a real programmer. Maybe the pull request will work.

To turn on error logging in Scalar go to system > application > config > config.php and change line 205 to the setting of your choice.

This will automatically put the errors in system > application > logs. You can customize the path if you want.

All very easy and sensible when you know it and perhaps there is some great technical documentation for Scalar somewhere. If so, please point me in the right directions.

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Error Logging Threshold
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| If you have enabled error logging, you can set an error threshold to
| determine what gets logged. Threshold options are:
| You can enable error logging by setting a threshold over zero. The
| threshold determines what gets logged. Threshold options are:
|
|	0 = Disables logging, Error logging TURNED OFF
|	1 = Error Messages (including PHP errors)
|	2 = Debug Messages
|	3 = Informational Messages
|	4 = All Messages
|
| For a live site you'll usually only enable Errors (1) to be logged otherwise
| your log files will fill up very fast.
|
*/
$config['log_threshold'] = 0;

1 Waa, waa, waa! I’ve got a magical box that searches unimaginable amounts of information nearly instantly and sometimes it brings me back too much knowledge.

4 thoughts on “Scalar – The USC one for publishing webpages”

  2. Cobol! hah,hah,ha,ha.

    This is the same thing that happens to me where I work. I do one support request on some vendor’s product that everyone else avoids and is scared to death about supporting. And after that I am suddenly the subject matter expert. GoReact?! Ask me Anything. Dont’ use it, don’t know how to work it. I feel like the instructors who are told to use know less than I do and I don’t know anything, but their dept. man, they’re demanding they use it. It’s best effort. That’s the best we can do. Lookup stuff, copy and paste their help documentation into responses and HOPE they’re able to follow the steps.

    Reply

    1. We just ended our GoReact contract. It is wild how a combination of search and documentation can create the illusion that we know things about systems we never use.

      I think a lot about whether best effort means anything. I did learn quite a bit about Scalar in this latest endeavor. It was not a great use of time in the scheme of things. I think I’d rather use a stubbornness rating and we assign people to help based on how unhappy they get when they can’t figure something out. Do you dream about issues? Do you wake up because you are haunted by personal failure to fix something?

      Reply

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