For the Pidgin History Control plugin I needed a dirty, and easy to work with, php interface for the backend database. This is by far not my prettiest work, but it works just fine.

Security

If you are storing your history online, there is always a security risk. Here it is definitely minimized by using sessions. The username and password (that are stored encrypted with a salt in the database) are not sent along every single transaction, but instead a hash that remains valid for 600 seconds.

This hash will determine if a transaction is valid and also map to the user it corresponds to. The data transfer is done unencrypted so far, but I will look at the https-option sooner or later.

Requirements

• Webspace with PHP
• MYSQL Database accessible from the webspace and PHP

Installation

Copy the contents of the downloaded tar.gz File into a folder on the webspace. The folder can be user-specified, like synchub.

Edit the config.php and fill in your database information. Contact your web administration support if you are uncertain what to enter.

Testing your installation is fairly easy. Navigate your browser onto your website, the subfolder that you specified and register.php. As an example, if I used this webspace and the above subfolder, the link would be: http://www.powerpuff.net/synchub/register.php.

The first registration generates the tables for you, no need to worry about that. So inside your MYSQL Administration interface two additional tables of the names hub_users and hub_history should appear. Now you can use that login for Pidgin and sync your history logs.

Remove the register.php from your server or set its permissions to 600 if you do not want anyone else to sign up.