Group Therapy

I have made some progress on the group management issues I discovered while working on the logic for creating a way to let your end-users register at one location and roam to another without re-registering. You will soon be able to login and create and manage separate Zone Roaming Groups. This will allow you to manage all locations from a single login, but still maintain separation between locations if so desired. This is useful for individuals or wireless groups that setup many different location types or retail chains.

User Registration Groups

This has proven to be more difficult than I thought. It would be fairly simple to group your registered users according to how you group your Zones in Zone Control. But what if you want to administer or create groups of Zones that would allow seperate roaming from within one login? Eventually someone will say - "I setup two different locations, but I don't want end users to roam..." or "Coffee shop A has three locations, and Coffee Shop B has one location. I don't want users to roam between the different coffee shops" or "Is there a way to allow any Public IP registered end-user to roam to my location."

You see my concern....

Zone User Class

I have started the development of the "Zone User Class", aka - Known User Class. This class will be optional. The class will be defined/customized by the administrator inside the Public IP Zone Control login area. The firewall rules(open ports) and many content filter rules will be configured from a new interface in Zone Control and downloaded to the ZoneCD during boot time.

You will also be able to define the Zone User Class as the default user class. This means that all your new registered users will be assigned to the Zone User Class instead of the Public Class.... be careful what you let unknown users access.... You've been warned...

User Registration Groups

I will be adding additional functionality to the ZoneID grouping logic. The functionality will allow your users to roam between each of your locations without re-registering a login for each.

This should also help those of you that are using the same ZoneID for separate locations. The problem with using the same ZoneID for all locations is the Usage Stats are not specific to a location. Would you like to see what users are traveling between different zones? Which zones are more active than others? Using one ZoneID causes you to lose a lot of location specific data.

Multiple Zone Administration

I have implemented logic that will allow you to create groups of ZoneID's that are accessible from each other. When you are logged into Zone Control, use the link for **Add a ZoneID** to create a Zone that you can access from the current login. The new Zone will have separate stats and a separate hotspot login/registration system. You will be able to switch between Zones by using a select menu that will appear in the top right corner.


If you already created separate Zones, just email me the ZoneID's and i will group them for you.
scott at publicip dot net

Remember_Me = "Less Funding";

Seems like you guys are using the Remember Me feature.... I am sure you have noticed that no ads display while logged into Zone Control. This is done for a couple reasons... because Google doesn't support ssl(causes a mixed content dialog popup), and the session id causes crap ads to display. Anyway, less displays means less clicks, which generates less revenue... Which is bad. Please donate if you can...

Translations Wanted

I have put together an archive that contains all the files that need translation on the Authserver. If you would like to do a translation please grab the tarball, make your translation, and email the files to scott at publicip dot net.

There is already someone working on the French translation. If you decide to work on a translation please post here. This will help prevent someone else working on the same translation.

ZoneCD Known Users

I am looking at adding an additional class to the ZoneCD. One that will be between Public and Trusted, a Known User class. All Known users will have loosened restrictions but will not be fully trusted. Known users will bypass the content filter, but I am not sure on the port restrictions.... I am considering opening port 25 for email, maybe some other normal ports like 21, 22, 8080.... or maybe I will leave them all closed, I am undecided.

Authserver Upgrades

I have got a couple of things to work on for the Authserver. Not really bug fixes, but enhancements to the system and interface.

Multi-Zoning: I will be adding the ability to create/access multiple zone's from a single login. I have developed some grouping logic in the past, I will drag it out and dust it off to see what I need to do to implement it.

Remember Me: No, not me, you... I am adding a little cookie setter / login rememberer to the Zone Control login form so you don't need to keep logging in all the time. It will be an optional check box. Please use it at your own risk! Somebody could change your login page while sitting at your computer.

More Language options: I am developing logic to change the messages on the [NoCat] login pages and registration pages. Anybody interested in doing a translation, please contact me - scott at publicip dot net.

The other project i have been working-on is called... fRESHSPOT

It's been about two weeks from conception to implementation. At the very least, I think you will find it to be an interesting idea.

The idea was first conceived from some issues i am encountering with bad, or old, data in the public ip db. After exchanging emails with a couple hotspot directories, i found it to be a much larger problem... This is one solution.

I won't bother explaining everything here. Check-out the site to see what it is all about. http://www.freshspot.net/

Community Web Hosting

A new server is online and available. Any wireless communities that need free web hosting should contact me.

Community Hosting Delays

I am having a major problem with the hosting provider that supports the .org domain and my debian(ZoneCD) devl setup. I may have to take drastic actions and move again. This is the cause for the delay in creating a couple free community hosting setups.

Still programming....

I am still here... programming non-stop. The current ZoneCD release seems to be very stable. The forum is quite, only sporadic questions and requests, which is really allowing me to get a lot done on the new Public IP Service that should be made available later this week.