Author: Bill

WordPress › Blog » 2.5 Sneak Peek

Since I have a local WordPress blog for my development work, this was a no-brainer. I let Subversion do the hard work. I tried the revised admin panels since they have changed significantly. It was nice to know that my theme and my plugins seem to work fine. So far this upgrade looks pretty solid.

  1. Since I have recently been looking at easy ways to use Flickr images and create image galleries, I was curious how the improved media gallery works. After playing with the insert image and media gallery, I am still trying to figure out how the media gallery works. I guess it is a work in progress. The Gallery and Media Library tabs do not seem to do anything.
  2. It was not obvious how one creates an avatar either.
  3. I tried to automatically update the PhotoXhibit and Database Backup plugins and it did not work.

WordPress › Blog » 2.5 Sneak Peek

Right-Justify Part of a Line – Expert Help by PC Magazine

I found myself trying to remember how to right-justify part of a line in Microsoft Word again. 

If the ruler isn’t visible at the top of the typing area, select Ruler from the View menu. Create a tab stop by clicking on Format | Tabs. In the Tab stop position field, enter the inch number on the ruler (6, for example) where the right margin begins. Check the Alignment option titled Right, select a Leader character if you wish, and click on OK. This will result in the effect you want.

On each line, type the item name, press the Tab key, then type the issue date. All the dates will line up at the right margin. If you’re applying this formatting to text that’s already typed, select all the text before you set the tab.

Right-Justify Part of a Line – Expert Help by PC Magazine

SQL 2005 Express Tips

My version of SQL 2005 Express was installed when I installed Visual C++ Express Edition. Today I was trying to use the Upsizing Wizard included in Access 2003 when I ran into SQL Server problems. So here are my tips:

  1. Go into the SQL Configuration Manager and enable TCP/IP if it is disabled. Someone wrote a post stating that Access 2003 uses TCP/IP to communicate with SQL Server.
  2. Go into Services and check to see that SQL Server Browser is running. This service was disabled on my machine. This allowed me to see the correct hostname. My hostname is called, “MYCOMPUTERNAME\SQLEXPRESS”. You can disable the SQL Server Browser when you are comfortable.
  3. Download a copy of SQL Manager from EMS. I used the Lite version since my needs are small and it is free. I would seriously consider checking out the paid version if I was doing a lot of conversions.
  4. Sample databases are a great way to brush up on your dormant SQL skills. If you are looking for the Northwind database, it is not installed with SQL Server 2005. In fact SQL 2005 does not install any sample databases although a new sample database called AdventureWorks is available as a separate download. If you want the old familiar Northwind database, you can download the samples for SQL Server 2000.
    1. Download the SQL Server 2000 sample file from Microsoft.
    2. Extract the files from the archive and copy the Northwind MDF and LDF to your SQL Server 2005 data directory. See Jeff Atwood’s post for more details.
    3. Attach the database to your SQL Server. I used SQL Manager since the manual method described in the Readme file did not work for me.
  5. Now if you have successfully navigated the SQL maze, you should be able to run the Upsizing Wizard, access the SQL Server using an Access Project(ADP), access the SQL Server using Excel, and access SQL Server via your favorite programming language.

WPDesigner » WordPress Theme Checklist

Here is a handy checklist for people creating or modifying WordPress themes.

Note: The following checklist was based on WordPress 2.0. Since WordPress 2.1, WordPress has replaced and introduced new template tags.

Files, functions, and to-dos you need to check-off before using / publishing your own unique WordPress theme:

Files and Templates
  • 404.php
  • archive.php
  • category.php
  • comments.php
  • footer.php
  • functions.php (for widget-ready sidebar)
  • header.php
  • index.php
  • page.php
  • search.php
  • searchform.php
  • sidebar.php
  • single.php
  • screenshot.png / .jpg / .gif
  • style.css
  • readme.txt (optional)
Header.php
  • Blog’s Title
  • Blog’s Description
Footer.php
  • wp_footer()
  • Footer text and links (usually, copyright message)
Sidebar.php
  • Search form – Does the regular search form match the widget search form?
  • Pages / wp_list_pages() – Have you styled the second level links? Third level links?
  • Categories / wp_list_cats() – Sort by name or ID? In what order? Is hierarchical turned off or on?
  • Archives
  • Calendar – Does the regular calendar match the widget calendar?
  • Links / get_links_list()
  • Meta: wp_register(), wp_loginout(), wp_meta()
Index.php, Archive.php, Category.php, Search.php, Page.php, Single.php
  • the_ID()
  • Post title: the_permalink, the_title()
  • the_content
  • Postmetadata: edit_post_link(), comments_popup_link(), the_author(), the_category(), the_time(),
  • trackback_rdf() [hidden]
  • posts_nav_link() – Next/Previous page links
  • Else – What to display when there is no content.
Archive.php, Search.php
  • the_excerpt() replaces the_content()
Page.php
  • link_pages()
  • Remove Postmetadata
  • Keep edit_post_link()
  • Remove posts_nav_link()
  • comments_template()
Single.php
  • link_pages()
  • Remove comments_popup_link()
  • comments_template()
Comments.php
  • Comments list
  • Comment forms and textarea
  • ‘No comments’ message
  • ‘Comments awaiting moderation’ message
  • ‘Must login’ message
  • ‘Password protected’ message
  • Comments off message
Pages to Validate
  • Home page
  • Archive pages
  • Category pages (if you customize category pages)
  • Search result pages
  • Pages (i.e: About)
  • Single post view page
  • Single post with no comments
  • Single post with comments
  • Single post with must login message
  • Single post with no login required message
  • Password protected single post with comments

Note: This is not an end-all checklist. It covers just the basics. More items will be added.

WPDesigner » WordPress Theme Checklist

Top 10 WordPress CMS Plugins | Blueprint Design Studio

From the Blueprint Design Studio we get this list of WordPress CMS plugins. I can vouch for Cforms II and Google Sitemap Generator since I already use them. I am definitely going to check the rest of them.

  1. Cforms II – This is far and away the best contact form plugin there is. The reason? configurability. You can easy build literally anything with it. We’ve built out employment application forms, wedding checklists, and more for clients. It also drives our own quote form. There’s also built in spam protection, via question and answer or captcha. by delicious days
  2. WP e-Commerce – Unlike cforms, this plugin has no competition. It provides an easy to manage storefront and shopping cart as an integral part of your wordpress installation. It includes the ability to sell digital downloads as well, which is great for photographers, musicians, and authors. By default it includes support for PayPal, although the $29.99 fee for the authorize.net module will pay for itself in lower fees for most serious e-Commerce sites. by Instinct Entertainment
  3. Search Everything – Since most of the sites we develop focus more on their static content than on their blog posts, this plugin is essential for allowing users to search your entire site without leaving your site and relying on google. by Dan Cameron
  4. Google Sitemap Generator – The biggest benefit of using wordpress is the manual labor you save because the software already knows where all of your content is. This Plugin submits a comprehensive index of your site to google, yahoo, MSN Live, and Ask.com every time you update your site. It’s a huge boost to your site’s SEO. by Arne Brachhold
  5. Subscribe2 – Subscribe2 is a newsletter plugin for your site. It allows you to create newsletters and manage subscribers within your WordPress Dashboard. It also allows you to email subscribers when you post a blog entry, which allows you to have a permanent copy of the newsletter that you can refer people to. plugin homepage
  6. Event Calendar 3 – There are a ton of event plugins out there. This is the best & most integrated one we’ve used. It provides an iCal feed, in addition to the standard RSS feed. Since the events are created as Blog posts, it’s easy to integrate them into your site. by Alex Tingle
  7. Page Links To – by far the simplest plugin on this list, This plugin allows you to create “pages” that link to something else. It’s the easiest way to add links to your main menu, without mucking around in code. It’s good for adding a link to an external photography portfolio, for example. You could also use it to link to sections of a page, rather than an entirely seperate page, which could be useful for linking to sections of a restaurant menu, or other small sections of a larger page. by Mark Jaquith
  8. TinyMCE Advanced – I’ve posted a lot about using this plugin. It was referred to me by Jim Burke from TSG Real Estate, who needed a way to easily add classes to blockquotes, tables, and images. The plugin also does a great job of making tables work well with WordPress posts. plugin homepage
  9. XSPF_Player – As much as I’m not a fan of auto-playing music on websites, This MP3 player makes it easy to manage playlists, cover art, and artist links. It’s a great way for music venues to highlight upcoming shows. Used in conjunction with Event Calendar, you can make the track link lead to the post for their upcoming show, all of which is easily manageable from your WordPress dashboard. by Boriel
  10. pageMash – I just posted about this, but it’s worth mentioning again. This plugin makes it very easy to put your pages in order, without having to edit every page individually. by Joel Starnes

Top 10 WordPress CMS Plugins | Blueprint Design Studio

Win32 cheat sheet

Here are two favorites from this post I found via Del.icio.us. The first tip I knew about one of these but forgot how to do it. The second tip I never knew about it.

Win32 cheat sheet
fozbaca
Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Live takes a Dive

Vlad pointed out an outage for Live. His questions about what we are learning are worth repeating:

What are we learning here? Or rather, what should we be learning:

  1. When the service goes down, who is available to help?
  2. When the service goes down, how long does it take for the support/info request to be acknowledged?
  3. When the service goes down, do you know exactly where to go to confirm the issue?
  4. When the service goes down, do you get an ETA of the repair?
  5. When the service goes down, do you get a refund?
  6. When the service goes down, does the company offer a plausible excuse for the outage or does it just shrug its shoulders?
  7. When the service goes down, are you alerted about its recovery when it comes back up?

If you can’t easily answer those questions, you do not have a business solution. You have a best effort solution.

What’s the difference between a business solution and best effort? Well, your business is. Take a look at Sarah Perez’s account when she got locked out of her Gmail and realized there was 0 recourse for her. Woops.

Live takes a Dive

Yesterday I started using Live for my nonprofit work. I have some files I want to share between computers and I have some people I would like to share files with so we can prepare grant applications.  So here is my answer to his questions.

I view this problem the same way I view Internet issues with DNS, routing problems, unresponsive email servers, unresponsive web sites, etc. I will work around the problem until it is fixed. Live is not a critical service for me. It is a convenient service that satisfies many non-critical business needs. I am probably making a huge mistake on so many different levels if I am keeping anything out on Live that gets me thinking about service level agreements and security policies.

Options WordPress Theme: What WordPress themes should be like

A magazine theme with some interesting ideas. I do not know if I am going to use it but I may use an idea or two. Nice work Alessandro!

Options WordPress Theme: What WordPress themes should be like
alessssandro
Sun, 09 Mar 2008 09:30:00 GMT

My 10 favorite Windows programs of all time | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

Here is a post from ZDNet about some useful Windows programs that are low cost or free.

My 10 favorite Windows programs of all timeI’ve been using Windows for nearly two decades, and during that time I’ve tried hundreds of programs. Most come and go, but a handful have stood the test of time for me by solving a particular problem particularly well.

In this article and accompanying gallery, I list 10 Windows programs I use every day. Every one adds a feature that makes Windows easier to use or can help make you more productive. Each one comes from a company that has proven its ability to support the product and improve it over time. I’ve been using every program on this list for long enough to recommend it without reservation.

Most of the programs in this list are free; for those that aren’t a trial version is available. All of the programs in this list run on Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista (and most run on other editions as well). I’ve devoted one full page to each program, with info and download links and enough details to help you decide whether it’s something you want to try. I’ve also provided screen shots for each program to help you see what I’m talking about.

My 10 favorite Windows programs of all time | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

I like to look at programs that people like to see if they have found the better mousetrap. Here is my take on his choices.

  • Process Explorer (Sysinternals/Microsoft) This is a great debugging tool but I rarely use it.
  • RoboForm (Siber Systems) I use the open source program KeePass instead. The Windows version of KeePass has an autotype feature works for most login pages. There is Linux version with a few less features. Recently I created a script to login into sites that have the login split between two screens(e.g. Banks). KeePass is free and it works.
  • Keyfinder (Magical Jelly Bean Software) I downloaded this program to check it out. I still like the tip someone wrote for KeePass. They recommended saving your product keys in KeePass. I still think this is the smarter practice. Keyfinder does not list the keys for some programs like QuickBooks.
  • ClipMate Clipboard Extender (ThornSoft Development) I guess some people like fancy clipboards and use them regularly. Some people do not care. I fall in the second group. I have used Yankee Clipper in the past but I rarely used it.
  • FeedDemon for Windows (NewsGator Technologies) This is a very good RSS Reader. I use it and it is free. Some people prefer the browser based readers like Google Reader.
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery (Microsoft) This program was somewhat interesting while I had it working. Somehow I mucked it up and re-installation did not fix the problem. I do not miss it. Flickr has more uses for me.
  • Allway Sync (Usov Lab) I use Microsoft’s SyncToy. It’s free and it works for me.
  • SnagIt (TechSmith) There are a lot of people who like this program but I do not use screen captures that often. There are a lot of free alternatives that work reasonably well if your use is occasional.
  • IE7 Pro I downloaded this program and I liked it! I think it is likely I will use its enhanced features for IE7. I had to disable the proxy to get the download manager to work.f you use IE7, you need this free add-on, which provides ad blocking, tab management, inline search, crash recovery, and all the other features Microsoft left out.
  • FinePrint (FinePrint Software) I tried Greenprint on my laptop. It seems to have the some of the features of this program. It is supposed to help you avoid printing extra unwanted pages. It does not help me. I bypass it most of the time since I either want to print everything or create a PDF with PDFCreator. Greenprint is an extra step without added value for me so I am removing it.

Some free programs that did not make the list but I use often are TrueCrypt, Notepad++, and Windows Live Writer.

Hacking Flickr Manager 1.5.1

I am looking at moving all of the photos on an existing site over to Flickr. The plan is to convert the site over to WordPress and use the images from Flickr so I wanted an easy way to insert photos. I was looking for something that would be as simple to use as ImageManager or WordPress’s existing interface. So I went over to WordPress.org/extend/plugins to see what everyone was using.

The most popular Flickr plugin was PhotoXhibit by Benjamin Sterling. It has a lot of appealing qualities. You could bring photos from Picasa, Flickr, and Smugmug. It has a lot of sophistication and it used jQuery for the heavy lifting. I just could not get it to work right. It was unbearably slow showing the pictures.

Then I tried Flickr Manager. This plugin worked despite the fact the ReadMe file says it needs PHP version 5 and my PHP version says it is 4.4.7. It looked really good. It used a very straightforward and intuitive way to insert photos. My only complaint was that it had this Lightbox thing going on. That meant that my web page was going to load the prototype JavaScript library and its friends(~100K). Recently I found a jQuery version of Lightbox that is a much lighter load so I really did not want to go back to loading prototype and his friends.

The next plugin I tried was WP-Flickr. This plugin worked but had less features than Flickr Manager. I thought about hacking this plugin to add support for jQuery Lightbox to show the larger picture when you clicked on it. Before I had gotten too far in my thinking I was struck with the thought that Flickr Manager has more desirable features. Maybe I should look at changing Flickr Manager to work without the prototype library. It was an easy change. All I had to do was comment out one line. I even found the lines to change to get the Lightbox feature to work with the jQuery version of Lightbox. Well it kind of works. I did not get it to work properly with single photos. It never finishes loading the larger photo from Flickr. The demo at Trent’s site shows the Lightbox feature working with photo sets. Lightbox is a “would be nice” feature for me. The way it works now is to take you to the Flickr page of the larger photo. That’s not that bad so I decided to stick with the slightly hacked version of Flickr Manager. Now I can start uploading pictures to Flickr.

A quick review of two Related Posts plugins for WordPress

 Mitcho found a post I wrote about adding Related Posts to a WordPress blog and said:

I would recommend to you and your readers a plugin I wrote, Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. It’s similar in functionality, but has been built with admin-friendliness in mind, and doesn’t require you to edit your theme files. Check it out!

I checked it out and I am impressed! The idea behind related posts concept is that a reader may want to see other posts written by the author that are related to the post he or she is reading. A good related posts plugin  should automagically create a small list of related posts and attach it to the end of the post. Creating a list automatically is the easy part. The hard part is the magic used to find the posts that are related to the post.

A popular related posts plugin is the WP 2.3 Related Posts plugin by Denis PaoPao. It uses WordPress’s native support for tags to build the list. For this plugin to work you must add tags to each post. I have used this plugin on this blog since I upgraded to WordPress 2.3.

Mitcho uses a different technique. He gratefully acknowledges the work of several people, Peter Bowyer, Alexander Malov, and Mike Lu. The key part of this plugin is the algorithm to identify related posts. Peter uses MySQL’s fulltext search score to identify related posts.

Since I am an empirical type of guy I put it to a little test. I activated the plugin on this blog and put the related_posts call in the main WordPress loop. Although the plugin is admin-friendly you have to manually edit your theme to get it into the main loop. Now each post had two lists, one generated by YARPP and one by WP 2.3 Related Posts plugin. This makes for a wordy post but I expect to print both lists for a short time. Since my main page had twenty posts, I printed off the main page of the blog.  I found that I preferred the YARPP related post list for ten posts. Some of the lists were actually quite good. Two of these posts won by default. I had forgotten to add tags to the post. That is a plus for YARPP. Since the YARPP algorithm does not require tags it created a list where WP 2.3 Related Posts plugin did not. I found it interesting that I did not find a related post list created by WP 2.3 Related Posts plugin I liked better than YARPP. Hmm… Another interesting fact I learned is that I found ten posts in which neither related posts list were particularly related the post. Oops!

After this small test it is pretty obvious that although YARPP is not perfect, most of the time it creates a list that I preferred over WP 2.3 Related Posts plugin. At its worst YARPP creates a list like the list created by WP 2.3 Related Posts plugin that is unrelated to the post. Great job Mitcho and thanks for the tip!

Test your web design in different browsers – Browsershots

 

del.icio.us bookmark this on del.icio.us – first posted by lordpet to browser webdesign tools design test – more about this bookmark…

Test your web design in different browsers – Browsershots
lordpet
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:30:00 GMT

This is an interesting site but do not expect quick results from the web site. It creates screen shots using different browsers by using distributed computers that upload the screen shot. It created 29 of the 41 screen shots I requested. It took about thirty minutes for the 29 shots to appear and I did not find any web page design problems. I suspect that my testing with Firefox 2, IE 6 and IE 7 are adequate for catching most problems but this might be handy to show tor clients who are looking for maximum interoperability.

Share This (jQuery): a WordPress plugin » Semicolon

Today I ran across Bennett’s jQuery version of the Share This plugin. By using plugins based on jQuery rather than Prototype library, I reduced the load time for several web sites. I still had one web site that used the Prototype library and I suspected it was because of the Share This plugin. By switching over to the jQuery version of Share This, the Prototype is not loaded and the amount of JavaScript downloaded was reduced by 70K. Thanks Bennett! 🙂

Share This (jQuery): a WordPress plugin » Semicolon

FileZilla Portable 3.0.6 Released

Filezilla logoFileZilla Portable 3.0.6 has been released. FileZilla Portable is the popular FileZilla FTP client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your ftp client, server list and settings with you. This new release updates FileZilla to the latest version, works with Notepad++ Portable and other portable editors when moving between PCs, has an improved installer and launcher and assists users with updating their settings from FileZilla 2. It’s packaged in PortableApps.com Format for easy use from any portable device and integration with the PortableApps.com Suite. And it’s open source and completely free.
Read on for more details…

read more

FileZilla Portable 3.0.6 Released
John T. Haller
Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:21:08 GMT

I updated FileZilla yesterday. I was using version 2. I manually fixed my site profiles since it did not import the entries I had for the default local and remote directories. Everything is working and it looks great!

Truecrypt 5.0

We are pleased to announce that TrueCrypt 5.0 has been released. Among the new features are the ability to encrypt a system partition or entire system drive (i.e. a drive where Windows is installed) with pre-boot authentication, pipelined operations increasing read/write speed by up to 100%, Mac OS X version, graphical interface for the Linux version…

Article about Truecrypt 5.0 at msfn.org
More info about Truecrypt can be found at their web site, www.truecrypt.org. 
Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:38:13 GMT

I did not have any problems with the previous version. I has been rock solid for me. One of the new features is the capability to encrypt a system partition/drive (i.e. a partition/drive where Windows is installed) with pre-boot authentication. Like BitLocker that is included with some versions of Vista, this feature can greatly reduce the liability to a business stemming from a lost or stolen computer. This new feature along with some promised speed improvements make this update pretty interesting.

Nimble Method: Garbage Collection is Why Ruby on Rails is Slow: Patches to Improve Performance 5x; Memory Profiling

 

  • The News: Ruby on Rails performance is dominated by garbage collection. We present a set of patches to greatly improve Rails performance and show how to profile memory usage to get further performance gains.

  • What’s at Stake: Rails is slow for many uses and did not lend itself well to optimization. Significant performance gains could only be achieved at application level at large development cost.

  • The Upside:

    • 5x potential performance gains;
    • easy way to identify whether GC is a bottleneck;
    • deterministic process to fix memory bottlenecks;
    • set of canned patches to solve the biggest problems;
    • you can help

Nimble Method: Garbage Collection is Why Ruby on Rails is Slow: Patches to Improve Performance 5x; Memory Profiling
arunthampi
Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:30:00 GMT

Okay, a couple of weeks ago I installed Ruby so that I could run Metasploit. Installing Ruby was a challenge since I needed to install several dependencies so that I could install RubyGems. Fortunately Simon had the answer. When I cranked up the GUI version of Metasploit, the GUI seemed slow and the console messages showed Ruby to be busier than I thought it should be. I hadn’t asked it do anything yet.  Maybe this will help! Then again maybe if I upgrade to the latest version of Metasploit(3.1) will help.

KeePassX – The Official KeePassX Homepage

KeePassX – The Official KeePassX Homepage

KeePassX saves many different information e.g. user names, passwords, urls, attachmets and comments in one single database.

Yesterday I got around to installing KeePassX on my Centos server. The rpm version worked fine but I had to manually create a menu item. For fun I downloaded the new versions of the KeePassX icon. For a very brief time I thought about compiling KeePassX from source code but it looks like I will have to do a lot of work. It uses the QT library and Qmake. I would prefer if I could set it up in Eclipse but that looks complicated.

KeePassX is a port of KeePass and it read the KeePass database on my USB stick without a problem. It maintains the same look and feel as the original program so that is a big advantage on the learning curve for me. KeePassX has everything I use except for the global auto-type hot key and the plugins.

Javascript Code Highlighter: Chili vs SyntaxHighlighter :: PseudoCoder.com

Today I tried to get Chili to work on this blog. I post code occasionally and Chili was appealing to me since it uses jQuery for most of the heavy lifting. I was hopeful that Chili would be quick and incrementally increase the amount of JavaScript downloaded. Chili didn’t work for me. It had syntax errors in the JavaScript. My debugging skills were not finding any quick answers so I decided to give plan SyntaxHighlighter a try.

From the post it looked like SyntaxHighlighter was going to be a bear to install so I decided to check the WordPress plugins web site for possible alternatives. Guess what I found, SyntaxHighlighter-Plus! This recently updated plugin uses the SyntaxHighlighter JavaScript package by Alex Gorbatchev and makes installing a syntax highlighter a snap. The instructions are a little sparse on how to use it but I converted several existing code snippets to use the plugin. They looked good after I figured out how to get around the automatic encoding of HTML entities. The first time the editor encodes those special characters it was nice. The less than character becomes <. The second time it encodes the characters, it created a mess. The less than character becomes <. I guess I should turn off the visual editor again. I also had to hand tune the CSS to get around some alignment issues.

Overall I give the plugin a thumbs up based on ease of installation and the light load it added, ~25K bytes. Editing a post is still a problem but I can work around that problem.

Javascript Code Highlighter: Chili vs SyntaxHighlighter :: PseudoCoder.com

Shadowbox.js Media Viewer

thumbnail

 

Shadowbox.js Media Viewer
I_CRE8
Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

This looks interesting but it is considerably larger than my current jQuery lightbox plugin. Since I do not use flash or the other media the plugin supports, this plugin has limited benefits for my personal use and most of the web sites I maintain. Maybe sometime in the near future I will need it.