Easy upgrade – no known problems at this stage. All plugins still working.
Google’s Waving
Word count: 548 |
Posted on December
19th,
2009
Those nice people at Google sent me an invitation to use GoogleWave and I am now in the very early stages of working out what it can and cannot do.
I would have to say, it looks very cool so far with a wide range of capabilities and varying options as to how it can be utilised. For some time, I have been after a tool that will help me with my email control [I currently use Gmail as my main account with others being forwarded to this address], help me to keep the communication channels open with all I know – including but separate – colleagues, family, friends, clients, acquaintances an new people I meet almost daily.
Hopefully Google Wave is this tool.
It comes with quite a bit of helpful documentation in the form of emails and correspondence built-in to the product itself and also includes self-help type videos and simple examples of what can be attained using the various tools it offers.
So, what can Google Wave do exactly? Here is a copy of what they say themselves….
———-
There are tons of ways to use Google Wave–here are just a few examples to get you thinking.
Organizing events
Keep a single copy of ideas, suggested itinerary, menu and RSVPs, rather than using many different tools. Use gadgets to add weather, maps and more to the event.
Meeting notes
Prepare a meeting agenda together, share the burden of taking notes and record decisions so you all leave on the same page (we call it being on the same wave). Team members can follow the minutes in real time, or review the history using Playback. The conversation can continue in the wave long after the meeting is over.
Group reports and writing projects
Collaboratively work in real time to draft content, discuss and solicit feedback all in one place rather than sending email attachments and creating multiple copies that get out of sync.
Brainstorming
Bring lots of people into a wave to brainstorm – live concurrent editing makes the quantity of ideas grow quickly! It is easy to add rich content like videos, images, URLs or even links to other waves. Discussion ensues. Etiquettes form. Then work together to distill down to the good ideas.
Photo sharing
Drag and drop photos from your desktop into a wave. Share with others. Use the slideshow viewer. Everyone on the wave can add their photos, too. It is easy to make a group photo album in Google Wave.
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I have a few invites [7 left] and may [not sure yet] give some away to those people who can convince me to do so. All in all it looks like a fantastic new and innovative way to move forward and being a big fan of google’s products already, I have no doubt it will exceed my expectations.
Update: I am trying to set up a Google Wave page on this site with a public wave embedded [link]. It looks like it is definitely possible, but having trouble with it so far. I have installed the Wavr plugin and have set up a public wave successfully. So far though, adding the required shortcode and/or the script option has not given me any positive results. If you happen to read this and have some useful insights, please let me know. Thanks.
CSS Resources
Word count: 43 |
Posted on December
13th,
2009
Yes, it’s that time again – had a moment to tidy up some bookmarks and as usual, here are some I thought others may find useful….
http://www.noupe.com/design/101-css-techniques-of-all-time-part-1.html
http://webdeveloperplus.com/css/15-time-saving-css-tools/
http://css-tricks.com/snippets/
http://webdesignfan.com/15-excellent-websites-to-learn-css/
http://lesliefranke.com/files/reference/csscheatsheet.html
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/css-decorative-gallery/
http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/10-astonishing-css-hacks-and-techniques
http://devsnippets.com/csstechniques/malo-css-library.html
http://cssglobe.com/lab/textgradient/
http://reference.sitepoint.com/css
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/
http://www.webappers.com/category/components/menu/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/18/7-principles-of-clean-and-optimized-css-code/
A Complex Project Using WordPress
Word count: 829 |
Posted on May
28th,
2009
I was recently approached by a friend and they asked me if I would be interested in setting up a new web site for them. As always, I complied and then they gave me the guidelines and specifications as follows:
1. The website was to be a bartering site and the idea was that users would add their details to the website as a means of offering their services and/or products. How I made it and what software I used was totally up to me, although knowing I was a ‘WordPress Pimp’ for most of my site creations, my friend did ask that it was not to look or work like a blog and that people could not easily see that it was a WordPress site. It needed to look professional and yet be very user friendly as well. He wanted it to run as a CMS.
2. There needed to be a login access point available via all pages throughout the site which contained username and password textboxes. Further to this, it was necessary that once the user logged in they were taken directly to a specific front-end page within the site. There was no need for users to access the admin area or backend at all.
3. Once the user logged in the login textbox would be replaced with a ‘Welcome [username]‘ and the option to logout as well. It also needed to be made perfectly clear that they were now logged in and were accessing as a member, as opposed to a guest.
4. Each user’s details needed to be set out in specific format which was consistent throughout the site. A mock PSD file was given to me showing the overall site ‘look’, including the front page, user details page [profile], search page and information pages. Each page had its own set of functions to include and each users details would be a page that could be read by other members. It was to contain all the details of what they offered and what they wanted, plus contact details, an image, and it needed to have keywords specific to each profile
5. Guest were to be allowed access to a few pages throughout the site but members could access 99% of the site. Admins needed full access to everything but they were not overtly website savvy so it needed to be user-friendly for them to manage – without having to read lots of tutorials etc.
6. The details the users provided had 2 distinct parts. a] Details of what they offered in terms of bartering and b] details of what they wanted to barter for in return.
7. The search functions needed to be good enough to cater for complete searches, searches for what was offered and searches for what was wanted.
8. The site had to be quick loading and able to cater for upwards of thousands of users within the database, with possibly hundreds+ online at any given moment.
9. Each page required different set of functions, and in addition the sidebars also needed to have their own set of different functions, on different pages and posts too.
10. SEO was an important consideration and had to be dealt with in the best possible way.
And that was the basic starting point.
Now I have to admit, a few of these specifications had me thinking quite a bit as to whether or not WordPress was a good option for this particular project. But I like a challenge and so I did a quick bit of research, sat down and thought about the best way to go about a few of the major requirements and then I dug my boots in and went for it.
Of course, the great aspect of opting for using WordPress is the sheer amount of plugins that are available, mainly because of the large volume of people using this product.
In all honesty, I would have to say that this has not been an easy project and at times, I was pulling my hair out wondering how I was going to accomplish some of the elements needed, but I am happy to report that as of now, it is all completed.
I have learned quite a bit about some parts of WordPress that I have never really touched upon before, had to find and then ‘hack’ some of the plugins I decided to use for the varying areas, and perhaps most significantly, had to do all of this within a very short time frame.
If nothing else, this project really has proven to me that WordPress certainly is a very flexible product and that it can be used in many different ways.
For those of you who think that some of the elements involved within this project would be useful to you, just let me know via the comment section and I will help out where I can.
I am also considering packaging the whole thing and making it available for others too, but still not sure as to whether this is a good idea or not.
Theme Footer Spam: How to remove
Word count: 659 |
Posted on May
19th,
2009
I was recently working on a site for a client who had chosen a theme they liked and then hired my services to individualise it for them. The basic structure they preferred was in place, but they wanted to change the ‘look’, add in some further functionality, and make it so that the theme was more suited to their particular style. I find that this type of work is all pretty much the norm for many clients and all was going well with this project until I tackled the footer and noticed that this was one of those themes [which are becoming more and more prevalent] that contained some script/coding, which meant that the user could not remove the link back to the theme design author.
Now, I am all for giving credit where credit is due and in 99% of cases I do leave the link to the theme designer in place. Obviously, some clients specifically ask to have this removed, however in this instance, it was not so much that it was linking back to the theme author, but rather, that it was full of links and references which were dubiously ’spam’ focussed.
So, into the footer file I dived, expecting to find the normal layout and a href’’s which could be easily changed. And this is where the trouble started. Instead of the file displaying PHP and HTML code, it simply contained a long string of letters and numbers all wrapped very neatly inside one set of PHP tags, such as this example below.
?php $E7dab924f505e1bffgh8a0292fa5883a9746=’dZDBasMwDIbP81OIPEB82Wm4Lmwt7Lw6jdelZiJRY
4trHVQMoefs4oZQymi2RJ/2fxH636iSfjeAV2h25KSah0Vpls1ec1UxneUxWOcx9JIJe0sqMKOE2pOBwCwYI
RZ3JgaLGOHI8o7VWprFSMbk2oKVyFU6y9UgbBF5oOnRfJL1o7Cp4btv0kW4+VsbMXqgKnfQAfhAHOVRrT
aLTwBX8BHB0jx7VpForyQI1p6ewrxhlDKvQbBG8Fq/8Hh7fnXar3K4bKbfvEhUZJZdsVyuhmTDNMN8dacc+
PNCS3WaO9LOHurTlmn9U3′;echo(gzinflate(base64_decode($E7dab924f505ed4j1bf8a0292fa5883a9
746))); ?
Removing the code does nothing more than destroy the footer completely and trying to leave it in place and work around it, also has it’s fair share of other issues, so what to do to make this a working footer file? Now I would imagine there may be several methods of choice at this point, with the dissection of the theme functions php file – in unison with hacking the footer file – probably sitting at the top of the ladder. The trouble with this, was I did not have the time to spend going down this road, so I opted for something else.
What if I was to bypass the footer call completely, I thought to myself? And that is exactly what I did. In typical fashion the footer was being called from all of the major post and page files by using the standard code: <? php get_footer(); ? >
So, in order to by bypass it I created a new footer file, named it footer_new.php and then simply dropped in a new call using the following code instead: < ? php include(‘templates/footer_new.php’); ? >
I prefer to keep additional customised pages in a templates folder, so that is why you see the reference to ‘templates’ in the code, but this can work just as well using any other named folder or you can place it straight into the theme root directory just as easily too.
Note too: That solved the problem of the footer being uneditable, but as I do not like to leave code sitting on a site that I have no real idea as to what it is doing, I also opened the functions.php and removed the same lengthy string of code as was found in the footer, and just to be safe, also deleted the original footer.php file.
If you know of an easier method, then please do let me know, but for now, at least this appears to have resolved the problem and given me full control over the site as it should have been in the first place. Another factor that may need to be considered here, especially in light of the fact we do not know exactly what this code is doing in its entirety, is that your site could well be compromised. Again, just to be safe, I changed the login passwords [after removing the code] in order to prevent any further problems.
Current Work in Progress: 12-05-2009
Word count: 32 |
Posted on May
12th,
2009
Client Four – Set up of WP as a CMS – complete overhaul of backend panel to cater for large user database – redo backend interface. Adding complex role and login features.
You may have already guessed - my name is James. I kind of 'live' on the Net. I fix sites, I build sites, I hack sites [ummm. maybe I should re-word that]. I 'hack' code until it does what I want it to do...
