Greetings and a few questions

OpenEMR Development
1

matthewvita wrote on Saturday, May 14, 2016:

Hello all. My name is Matthew (software developer in the healthcare space) looking forward to contribute to this project.

I have 3 questions:

  1. Where did this discussion from 2014 leave off at? The website can definately leverage a modern look… I’m no designer, but I’m sure I could work on a Twitter Bootstrap version of Robert’s mockups!

  2. It appears that OpenEMR is very popular. I’m curious if there’s any page on the site or wiki that lists out active users (hospital systems/clinics/skilled nursing facilities/etc)?

  3. I’m having a hard time with getting the OpenEMR codebase to run locally (using modern version of Linux Mint). Going to post my full setup steps below and I hope someone can point me in the right direction:

Basic system dependencies:

sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get install -y tree wget curl build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev libxml2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev vim vim-gnome meld git-core gitk

OpenEMR system depedencies setup:

sudo apt-get install -y libcurl3 apache2 mysql-server libapache2-mod-php5 libdate-calc-perl libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libhtml-parser-perl libtiff-tools libwww-mechanize-perl libxml-parser-perl php5 php5-mysql php5-cli php5-gd php5-xsl php5-curl php5-mcrypt php-soap php5-json php-gettext imagemagick

… git config setup/chromium installation/bashrc config setup/MySQL workbench setup/vim installation

Clone the repo (will make a fork once I ensure base repo is working):

cd ~ && git clone https://github.com/openemr/openemr.git openemr && cd openemr

sudo cp -rf openemr/ /var/www/openemr/

sudo service apache2 restart

…localhost/openemr doesn’t have the setup stuff. Just a basic Apache page :frowning:

Thank you.

2

fsgl wrote on Saturday, May 14, 2016:

Hi Matthew,

  1. see this.
  2. see Success Stories, no update since 10/2/12.
  3. install the Package first, later on you can try customized install. One’s enthusiam is greatly dampered when the first install is troublesome.
3

matthewvita wrote on Saturday, May 14, 2016:

Fsgl,

Thanks for the response.

  1. I was actually talking about the website for OpenEMR and not the web application.
  2. I see. I’m assuming that there are a large amount of ZH Healthcare users as well? (I’m looking to contribute to a high-impact project… this appears to be one of them)
  3. Thanks, I have the .deb package installed and the web application is working! The next step is to do a git clone and run that refresh.sh file every time I want to see my changes reflected, correct?
4

robertovasquez wrote on Saturday, May 14, 2016:

Hi Matthew
There is a video tutorial in this link that will help you to set it git in your development box.
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Git_for_dummies#Submit_your_code_for_review

To commit your changes you need to
git commit
git push origin ‘your_branch_name_here’

5

fsgl wrote on Saturday, May 14, 2016:

Brady, Project Co-administrator, mentioned something about migrating the homepage elsewhere. Before you start designing, you may want to email him, (brady.g.miller@gmail.com).

ZH Healthcare is a major contributor to the Project. They have been very generous in helping us to make the final push toward 2014 CEHRT.

Here is a list of other vendors. I have a sense that there is a multitude of DIY users, like myself, all over the world.

Brady can give you a better estimate of how many users, how many downloads & what country has the most downloads. The last time I looked 2 years ago, it was China.

6

fsgl wrote on Saturday, May 14, 2016:

Roberto’s link is a great place to start.

For additional info, try this.

7

bradymiller wrote on Saturday, May 14, 2016:

Hi Matthew,

Welcome to the OpenEMR project!

Would definitely be nice to get a website overhaul. It’s a bit dated :slight_smile:
Check out here for details on the current website:
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_Website
Note it contains an embedded wiki, which is most of the website, which needs to continue to be supported:
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_Wiki
Note the wiki is not included in the above github repo(the wiki is rather huge). So, when you develop the new site, recommend embedding same version of mediawiki(ie. a dummy wiki) with the openemr skin(I can email this to you) for development purposes.

Newer versions of ubuntu/debian use the /var/www/html directory, which is why your initial install was not working. The package is a much better starting point, though, since it uses /var/www by setting up apache to do this via an alias, and also does the work to support Zend.
For details on this, see:
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/openemr.conf

As you are doing, the refresh.sh file is what I use when developing:


(note you will need to add a password to the mysql call if your mysql has a root password)
(it’s a nice workflow to work on and test out different branches quickly)

For git use with openemr, recommend going through:
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Git_for_dummies

We can always look at number of downloads here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/openemr/files/stats/timeline
(it defaults to showing each day for a week, but can look at any time and also show where the downloads are coming from)

Predicting the actual use is much more difficult. If focus on the participation of new developers, professionals, companies, vendors (which generally should be driven by the use of OpenEMR), then the trend over the last several years has definitely been in a very positive direction(especially the last year where we have seen larger professional groups tackle large under the hood projects such as PHP7 compliance).

-brady
OpenEMR

8

matthewvita wrote on Sunday, May 15, 2016:

@Roberto: Thanks for the link. Definately a fan of git!

@fsgl: Thanks for the follow up information. Am happy that OpenEMR is running locally without issue now.

@Brady: I appreciate the information and the welcoming. I will, in my spare time, start to work on new website implementation based on the designs here: https://sourceforge.net/p/openemr/discussion/202506/thread/298821a4/?limit=25

Once I get it to a good point, I will push up a branch. Note that I am not a designer but am pretty good with HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

I noticed there was a wiki page for task management w.r.t. the OpenEMR web application… would it make sense to capture this version 2 website work there as well? That page is the main area for project management, correct?

SMALL UPDATE: working on the nav bar (attached)

9

matthewvita wrote on Sunday, May 15, 2016:

Had some time to work on the first slide of the carosel today:

10

bradymiller wrote on Sunday, May 15, 2016:

Hi Matthew,

Looks like a very nice starting point. Note will need to instead use the current OpenEMR logo (it was since decided that we should not change the logo since the current OpenEMR logo has a strong brand already).

Regarding the task management wiki page, I assume you are talking about the Active Project wiki page:
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Active_Projects
(albeit we don’t have an official place for task management, we(mostly me) have been using this to follow items or as a placeholder for items that should be worked on)

Definitely feel free to use and edit that wiki page to track your project and the rest of the wiki as needed. Just request wiki access here, and I’ll confirm it:
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Special:RequestAccount

thanks,
-brady
OpenEMR

11

matthewvita wrote on Sunday, May 15, 2016:

Brady,

Sounds good! Just put in the access request. I’ll make sure to add “open-emr.org Website Rework” to the Active Projects page with a bulleted list of the work that needs to be done.

As for the logo, I will switch it back to the original one. However, If you don’t mind, I can bug some designer friends later on to see if they can enhance the logo to be more modern but without losing that brand recognition/familiarity.

Thank you.

UPDATE: Just got the email and wanted to note this bug (not worth fixing, but made me chuckle) “Someone, probably you from IP address 127.0.0.1, has requested an account “Matthew Vita” with this e-mail address on OpenEMR Project Wiki.”

12

robertdown wrote on Sunday, May 15, 2016:

I can’t speak for anybody else, but I would welcome bringing the current
OpenEMR logo into current design standards. This may be a difficult
task, however, as the current OpenEMR logo is trademarked and we would
have to pay to register a new one. That being said, I think it deserves
some serious consideration.

I think it is possible to create a real logo for OpenEMR and still
maintain the brand. I am a fan of the Cancer Research UK logo and think
OpenEMR could have a nice logo in that “style”

13

matthewvita wrote on Monday, May 16, 2016:

@Robert: I will add this to the task list (working on it now). By the way, nice job on these initial designs… hoping to work with you through this new website process!

14

bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, May 17, 2016:

Hi,

My thoughts on this subject (as with Robert, I also can’t speak for everybody else) are that if the OpenEMR logo could be modernized while maintaining the old look, then that would be ideal.

-brady
OpenEMR

15

matthewvita wrote on Tuesday, May 17, 2016:

Brady, Robert,

Sounds good. For the time being, I’m going to use the modern logo but we will replace it with an enhanced version of the current logo later.

Was able to mock out [1] the basic layout of the homepage (if you think about it, the homepage is really the major item we’re redoing/making fancy… all other pages are just wrapping the wiki). This image is attached and I would appreciate feedback… I’m no designer and this rework project will move along much nicer if Robert or someone with equiv. design skills can lend a hand!

Thanks for the feedback so far!

[1] This is very early on… things are not styled perfectly. Just looking for feedback on the overall layout.

16

bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, May 17, 2016:

Hi,

Layout looks good to me(however, I’m also not a designer and would defer to others).

-brady
OpenEMR

17

robertdown wrote on Wednesday, May 18, 2016:

I may have some time to work on this once the new OpenEMR theme is
wrapped up. It’s mostly complete, just some nuances I want to finish.

18

matthewvita wrote on Thursday, May 19, 2016:

Sounds good. I will continue laying out the foundation and then we can really clean up up the homepage design once you’re ready!

19

matthewvita wrote on Thursday, May 19, 2016:

Brady,

I’m not seeing any of the code for the /wiki on the github repo you provided. Where does this email live?

Thanks,
Matthew

20

bradymiller wrote on Friday, May 20, 2016:

Hi Matthew,

The wiki is rather huge at this point and the database does contain sensitive information.

For development purpose, recommend installing Mediwiki version 1.16.5 on your local setup in the wiki directory:
https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.16/

And then make 2 modifications to the wiki per following wiki page:
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_Wiki

  1. Make the changes in wiki/includes/OutputPage.php
  2. Add the ‘openemr’ skin and removed all other skins from the options to force use of this skin(I attached the openemr skin files which can be extracted into the skins directory)

Always feel free to email me at brady.g.miller@gmail.com .

-brady
OpenEMR