Open Source Programming

Protothreads for UNIX

2009-02-09T01:16:00.000-08:00

Protothreads are a type of extremely lightweight threads - each protothread requires only two bytes of memory - that are usually used for embedded firmware programming, where memory is at a premium. Protothreads combine the low overhead with event-driven programming with the algorithmic clarity of threaded programming.

Larry Ruane from LeftHand Networks Inc. has written a protothreads library for Unix systems that, unlike Adam Dunkels' original library, contains a complete scheduler that allows several protothreads to run inside a regular thread. Ruane's protothreads are implemented in less than 400 lines of C code using gcc's labels-as-values feature. The project wiki has a thorough explanation of how protothreads work and how they are intended to be used. The open source code can be downloaded from the project's SourceForge page.

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Joomla! 1.5 FAQ:Where is the Static Content Item?

2009-01-29T01:17:00.000-08:00

Before Joomla! 1.5, the so called Mambo-Joomla connection version, there were two separate process of creating a content item.

Remember the two Types of Content Items for the “Mambo-Joomla connection version? They were known as Static Content Item usually used for About Us and the “Duh” Content Item which is associated with Sections and Categories …

Hands-on! exercise:
Create a Static Content Item? (About us | Mission Vision | Permanent Information
Create “Duh!” Content Item? (Ever changing contents, company updates)

With Joomla 1.5, the two entities have been combined. No more Static and no more “Duh” Content Item.

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How to Move Your Joomla! Site to a New Server

2009-01-29T01:04:00.000-08:00

Why not use a fresh install?

In my case, I probably could have. I only had about 4 or 5 articles on the test site, and I am using relatively few 3rd party CMT's (JomComment, TagBot, and JoomlaXplorer). But, I decided it would be easier just to move the installation I had to the new server, so I did.

You will want to move your Joomla! installation rather than re-install if you fit one or all of the following parameters:
Your site has accumulated a large amount of data in the database over time (sections, categories, content items, contacts, newsfeeds, etc.).
Your site uses multiple 3rd-part extensions already configured and/or customized for your site.

You just feel like trying it out to see if you can do it.

Step 1: Backup everything!
The first thing you want to do is backup all files within your Joomla! installation. Create a folder on your local system, and download all files to that folder using your ftp client application. I used FileZilla as my ftp client application to download all of my files to a folder on my desktop I named "howtojoomla".

Step 2: Export your database
Note: For this step, it really helps if you have phpMyAdmin installed on your server. Most hosting companies have phpMyAdmin already installed. If you are unsure, ask your hosting provider.

The second thing you need to do is export your Joomla! database. The best thing to do is to export it into an SQL file, which makes importing it easier in a later step. An SQL file will contain all of the necessary SQL commands for creating your database tables and filling them with your data. Be sure you export the entire database.

Step 3: Modify configuration.php
This step is very important. Go to the folder on your local system to which you downloaded all of your Joomla! files. In the first level folder, you will find the file named "configuration.php". Open this file with a text editor and make the necessary changes. At the very least, you will probably need to change the following parameters:
$mosConfig_absolute_path: This is the absolute server path to your new Joomla! installation. It will probably look something like "/path/to/joomla/installation".
$mosConfig_cachepath: This is the absolute server path to the cache for your Joomla! installation. It will probably look something like "/path/to/joomla/installation/cache".
$mosConfig_live_site: This is your website's url. It will be something like "http://www.yoursite.com".
$mosConfig_host: This is the location of the server that hosts your MySQL database. For most instances, this value will be "localhost". If you are unsure, ask your hosting provider.
$mosConfig_db: This is the name of your MySQL database.
$mosConfig_user: This is the database user name. Make sure this user has all privileges on your database.
$mosConfig_password: This is the password for your MySQL database user.

Step 4: Upload all of your files to your new server
Using an ftp client application (like FileZilla), upload all of your files to the location on your new server where you want to install Joomla!.

Step 5: Import your database to your new MySQL server
Using phpMyAdmin (or console commands if you are an advanced database administrator) and the SQL file you generated in step 2, import your old database into your new database.

Step 6: Test your new installation
Your move should now be complete, but please don't take my word for it. Test your site to make sure that everything is in it's proper place and working the way you expect it to. For example, if you did not use relative url's for your links on your old site, they will not work properly on your new site.

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Firefox -Features and advantages

2009-01-26T23:10:00.000-08:00

Firefox 3 is relatively a new software. With recent improvements, the browser has gained immense popularity. The biggest advantage of using this software is that it has a small installation, multiple shortcuts features, tabbed browsing, integrated Google search, large viewing area, integrated popup ad blocking, friendly design, clean interface and no noticeable security holes. Firefox 3 will also work well with your Outlook email, browser plugins like Shockware. In spite of its small flaws, the browser is excellent.

Firefox pros: Firefox is amazingly lean: If you download and install Firefox , it will just take around 4.9MB of disk space. That is why many prefer Firefox when it comes to downloading a browser as it does not consume lot of disk space. In short, Firefox doesn't suffer from the flaw of being overweight. This 4.9MB install doesn't include plugins like Flash player, Shockwave, Java virtual machine, but these features can always be added through minimum effort.

Firefox supports user keystrokes and shortcuts: Both power users and novices find shortcuts like CTRL-Enter for completing URLs, “Type Ahead” and CTRL-T for launching new tabs. You will definitely find that Firefox is far better than its competitors.

Integrated popup blocking: With Firefox, you won't be able to see those popup ads as Firefox shuts down those advertisement for you. There is absolutely no need for installing 3rd party software. Just set the Firefox options to prevent pop-ups.

Firefox can also prevent those annoying Javascript code: Firefox prevents from moving or resizing your window and hiding the status bar.

Larger viewing area: With smaller toolbars, you can fit 10 percent more surface area. Isn't that amazing?
Nifty bookmarking features: If you like a particular site, you can always bookmark that site as well as organize multiple tabs.

The best feature of Firefox are as follows:

Tabbed browsing: This feature will allow to open multiple windows in one browser at once. Now there is no need to download 40 Megabytes of browser code every time, you want to open a new website. Just use this tabbed browsing feature to open a new website in the same window.

Each new tab will add less than 1 megabyte of overhead load. You have to just press Ctrl-T to open Google Window, a news window, a Hotmail window, multiple browsing screens and even Iceberggradio.com. This is especially useful for those on dial up who wish to multi-task. For instance you can check your email while waiting to open slow pages of some other website. Firefox also allows creation and saving of a large number of window tabs than any other web browser does. People who are professional web surfers find this feature extremely useful.

Firefox is a great browsing tool and there is ample evidence to prove it. Although, there are issues with Firefox, they are small and not serious. These deficiencies are negligible and your work will hardly get affected even if these issues are present in your Firefox. Even if these glitches are there, you can easily resolve them by following some simple steps.

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10 Handy Video plugins for WordPress

2009-01-26T02:27:00.000-08:00

1. Viper’s Video Quicktags
This plugin adds on new buttons to the rich text editor on WordPress. In order to embed a video, you just need to paste the video URL into the prompt box. With this plugin you can also fully configure the width, height, colors and alignment on the page.

2. Smart YouTube
The main function of the plugin is to correctly embed YouTube videos into your blog post. It’s designed to be small and fast with customizable options for colors, border, full screen etc.

Don’t worry about the visual mode messing it up.

3. Interactive Video Plugin
Apart from video embed this plugin also includes the ability to upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix content with an online video editor. You can even enable video responses, manage and track your video content.

Includes custom sizing of the video player, advanced sharing options and allow readers and subscribers to add video and audio comments.

4. Embedded Video
Using this plugin the videos can be integrated from external sites or they can be uploaded to the web server or a remote server and integrated as well. Additionally, a corresponding link to the video on the particular video page or a download link to the local file can be generated automatically, if demanded.

5. Video Widget
In order to embed videos using this plugin only the video id is required and no HTML code to paste.

6. Flash Video Player
This plugin allows the addition of videos into WordPress by using a menu with post-level overrides for customization of size, background color etc.

7. Video Embedder
To embed a video using this plugin, all you need is the ID of the video. With this plugin you can manage the settings for all of your embedded movies from the WordPress settings for Video Embedder, the properties for all the movies will be updated instantly as soon as you save the settings.

8. EasyTube
This plugin allows you to easily embed YouTube and Google Videos using one simple tag and places a preview image of the YouTube videos in your RSS feed linked to the video.

9. Youtuber
This plugin lets you embed YouTube videos in your posts very easily using simple tags.

It also includes an option to set the width and height of the videos.

10. FLV Embed
This plugin supports video sitemap generation, includes options such as auto start and menu control bar. It also supports text only output for RSS that prompt readers to visit the original post for Flash content.

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Google offers help transplanting your blog

2009-01-23T02:18:00.000-08:00

Google on Friday released an open-source project, Google Blog Converters, intended to help people move their blogs from one service to another.

There are a number of popular publishing systems for housing blogs, some of them services and some of them software people can run on their own servers. But if you want to change infrastructure, it's rough going. Information isn't necessarily locked up and inaccessible, but the practical barriers of moving it to a new publishing system are high.

Google, which actually has a "data liberation team," announced the Blog Converters project to deal with the situation. It released a collection of libraries and scripts, written in the Python language, that converts between the export formats of LiveJournal, MovableType, WordPress, and Google's own Blogger service, said J.J. Lueck of the team in a blog posting about the Blog Converters project.

That means that a person could convert an exported file into a format another blog system comprehends, permitting the data to be imported into the new system. That could make it easier for a person to move to Google's own service--but also to move off it.

Of course, you'll have to be proficient in running Python scripts to use the technology. But it could get easier soon: Google said the scripts can be hosted on Google App Engine, its service for running Web-based applications written in Python, so perhaps somebody will set up some tools to make blog migration easier for the non-programmers out there.

Future versions of the technology will support the BlogML data format and a mechanism to synchronize blogs with services that have an API (application programming interface) for accessing data but not import-export abilities.

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Basics of looping in PHP

2009-01-22T01:05:00.000-08:00

Loops are an integral part of PHP, and many other programming languages for that matter, the basics covered here would apply to javascript as well, even the code is very similar. A loop is simply a block of code that executes multiple times, controlled either directly, by explicitly telling the script to execute “X” times, or by using a variable, telling the script to execute “as many times as the exact hour at the time of viewing” for example.

So why do we use loops? There are hundreds and hundreds of reasons, the widest usage is probably to cycle through values of some sort of data. For example, you might be writing a messaging system in PHP, which would allow users of your website to send private messages to each other once they register. You would write a MySQL query which would pull all the user’s letter from the database. To show all the letters you would use a loop to show all the rows of the query (all the separate messages) on a page.

To create a loop you need to add some rules which will dictate how the loop should behave. Usually we need to give three values, the starting value of the counter (which tells the loop how many times it has executed), an ending value (which tells the script to stop looping if it is reached) and an increment, which deals with changing the starting counter value in some way (so that it eventually reaches the end value, hence ending the loop).

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Google Blog Converters 1.0 Released

2009-01-21T01:50:00.000-08:00

Blog authors around the world, Google would like to remind you that it's your blog, your data. Now that Blogger allows users the ability to export all contents of their blog, the Data Liberation team would like to announce the Google Blog Converters project. This new Open Source project provides the ability to easily move blog posts and comments from service to service. This initial release provides Python libraries and runnable scripts that convert between the export formats of Blogger, LiveJournal, MovableType, and WordPress.

In addition, the source code includes templates for hosting these conversions on Google App Engine. Future additions to the project will include support for BlogML and synchronization tools between various services that do not provide a import/export feature but do provide APIs for accessing and modifying blog contents.

We're excited to provide this level of control for your personal blog data. Contributions to the project are always welcomed and encouraged, so check out our source code (download, 2.7 MB zipped) and let us know what you think. We look forward to your feedback in our discussion group.

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Google Helping Bloggers with Data Portability

2009-01-19T00:27:00.001-08:00

Want to move your blog to another publishing platform? Well now Google has made it easier for you. Last Friday, the Data Liberation Team announced the Google Blog Converters project on their Open Source Blog.

Google made data portability a lot easier for Blogger users a month ago and with this announcement it appears they are offering easier portability solutions to WordPress, Movable Type, and LiveJournal users as well.

Friday's release provides Python libraries and runnable scripts that convert between the export formats of the above platforms. Future plans include synchronization tools between services that don't offer import/export features as well as support for BlogML.

Google has also released templates for hosting the conversions on Google App Engine.

Take a look at the examples hosted on Google App Engine:
- Blogger to WordPress
- WordPress to Blogger
- LiveJournal to Blogger

But beware the caveat noted in the readme file:
"There is a limit to the size of a downloaded file on appspot.com of 1 MB of data. Thus, these hosted applications should only be used for reference or for the conversion of small blog export files."

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Using WordPress For Web Sites And Blogs

2009-01-16T22:08:00.000-08:00

How WordPress Works:
WordPress is a simple download from wordpress.org, where the latest version is always available. WordPress is used as a web application so it’s uploaded onto the Internet, and not installed on a user’s computer. The files are uploaded to any hosting service that provides PHP and MySQL databases, and can be configured in a matter of moments. Once installed, the program allows users to write posts or pages for their own web site by using their web browser. There are two design themes that come with the installation. And that’s the basics. But there’s so much more. Much more.

Simple for Simple Users, Powerful for Professional Developers
If someone wants a simple blog setup, all they need to do is configure one file for the database settings, upload the WordPress files to their hosting server, and start blogging.

Users can take advantage of features designed to make site management easier, such as “widgets” which give control over how items in a sidebar can be customized and rearranged. Custom features can added to WordPress through the use of “plug-ins”. Developers have created many easy to use plug-ins such as polling features, Flickr viewers, and more.

If the two included themes aren’t preferred, there are literally thousands of themes available from the WordPress site, or through the sites of many users. It’s a simple as downloading the theme, placing it in the appropriate folder on the server and choosing it on the “dashboard”, the WordPress control panel. Different themes offer options such as more columns, artistic backgrounds, fancy headings, clever type treatments, and virtually anything that can be imagined.

Professional developers use WordPress for many commercial web sites, as well. Many sites for large corporations have been developed using the powerful database-driven capabilities of WordPress. By understanding the coding languages of PHP, CSS, and XHTML, it’s possible to create just about anything with WordPress for a wide variety of applications.

Supported by an Avid Community
WordPress is Open Source software. What that means is that it’s open to development from anyone who wishes to contribute. It’s not produced by a commercial software company. A large community of users and developers work with the program to improve its features and make it better for everyone from developers to writers to readers.

A support forum exists on the WordPress site to help users and developers work through issues to get their sites working should any needs arise. There are many web sites devoted to WordPress development and use, so answers to most questions can be found in a number of ways.

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Facebook Connect Plugin for Drupal Launches

2009-01-15T22:43:00.000-08:00

La Netscouande, a French internet agency, has released the first version of a Facebook Connect plugin for Drupal. I have a feeling that this is going to obtain a lot of traction. This is one of the first content platforms aside from Wordpress that has an easy to use Connect module. As far as I can tell it enables basic login/authorization capabilities via the module.

With this announcement, the number of Facebook Connect implementations will most definitely jump over the coming weeks. Drupal is one of the most popular open-source content management systems on the web. While I’ve developed Drupal sites in the past, I haven’t had the opportunity to implement this service myself so I’m not sure how easy to use it actually is for developers.

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Push Your Web Design Into The Future With CSS3

2009-01-12T22:51:00.000-08:00

There are exciting new features in the pipeline for Cascading Style Sheets that will allow for an explosion of creativity in Web design. These features include CSS styling rules that are being released with the upcoming CSS3 specification.

Realistically, you won't be able to use these on your everyday client projects for another few years, but for design blogs and websites aimed at the Web design community, these features can help you push the boundaries of modern Web design today, adding that extra spice to your design and helping the industry move forward. Here are five techniques snatched from the future that you can put into practice in your website designs today.

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Microsoft launches into crowdsourcing

2009-01-11T21:44:00.000-08:00

Even Microsoft embraced crowdsourcing as a business model. Task Market, a new crowdsourcing platform has been launched by Microsoft. The new service is aimed at businesses, and specifically buyers and suppliers of business-oriented services such as design, copywriting, website development etc.

The way it works is that buyers outsource a task to the crowd by way of posting a brief online. This, along with a price guide showing how much they are willing to pay, provides the call to action for potential suppliers.

The idea isn’t new, neither is the way the service has been designed, ie Software-as-a-Service. But we’ve a feeling that with the might of Microsoft behind it, we may be hearing about it more and more.

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FreshBooks time tracking iPhone app is now open sourced!

2009-01-08T21:55:00.000-08:00

Many an iPhone enthusiast (like this writer) have attempted to write a native iPhone app. But many of them (like this writer) have failed to do so due to the fact that there aren’t many native iPhone apps examples available.

Thankfully, there is now some hope for the otherwise hopeless iPhone programmer wannabes, since the folks behind FreshBooks, a time tracking app for the iPhone, have decided to give us all a gift for Macworld 2009 and have released the source code of their program. Now anyone can download the open source of FreshBooks and tinker with it, thus improving their iPhone programming skills and getting to modify an already working native iPhone app.

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Bring me a Drupal add-on for Firefox

2009-01-07T22:48:00.000-08:00

Why is it that Firefox has a debugging add-on that supports Drupal development but we yet have to see a Drupal add-on that supports writing for a Drupal site? It's in times like this I so wish I were a coder.

The problem arises with the myriad of input formats Drupal has just by default (forum, blog, story) that gets complicated when you then throw in the forms for Event and or Calendar, Image, Audio, Video, Storylink, Quotes, Recipes, and all the customized formats possible with the Content Construction Kit (aka, CCK).

And then there's the little detail of taxonomies.

ScribeFire works amazingly well just for the blog, page, story, formats AND only if you have a relatively small amount of categories (in the low hundreds). If you have more than 300 categories, the add-on is incapable of reading them all. Not only that, when it does read the categories it outputs them as selections --it really doesn't allow you to search through all your categories and choose only the ones you need. It neither allows you to add new ones on the fly.

This is the problem that arises from trying to make a tool that is something for everybody. It works well with WordPress and Blogger and Movabletype/Typepad blogs because they all have very similar information architectures. Drupal is a beast on its own and that's why it needs its own set of "off-site" blogging tools.

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3 Reasons WordPress over Blogger

2009-01-06T22:59:00.000-08:00

Their have been a lot of bloggers that started out using blogger as their blog platform. Soon after they got going they found that they were limited in capacity. Most decided they wanted something more and that was found in the WordPress blogging platform. Why WordPress? Well you can read more about the features on the official site WordPress.org but here are three great reasons:

1. Power: Oh more power! The full control you have with WordPress is totally amazing. You can design your own templates, customize existing ones, add third party plugins, and add with little work. Nothing will beat WordPress in terms of control and power.

2. Templates: The large amount of free templates for the WordPress platform is awesome. You can find new templates for free and upload them with no problem at all. Better yet, you can have multiple themes uploaded at once and switch between them with the click of a button.

3. Open Source: WordPress is open source and is constantly being improved by the community. You will never have to pay for the platform software and the updates can be made with ease (automatic).

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How Can Wordpress Make You Money?

2009-01-06T22:48:00.000-08:00

Wordpress is a publishing platform for open source blogs with emphasis on all web standards. It is easily available on internet. You can download Wordpress software and start blogging instantly. One attracting feature of this application is that it is available free of cost.

Wordpress provide you the flexibility that you can write either pages or Post. However, there is a some difference between the two. For example, while writing a blog you write a post which are displayed in reverse chronological order. In contrast to Post, pages are specially designed to collect information from you like your contact no, email-id, name etc. Pages are usually displayed apart from your normal post when someone want to know more about the author of the post.

To put up a blog post, you will need to log on to the software you downloaded. Once youave logged in, you can put up a new post in a couple of different ways. The first is to choose the Post tab and click on aadd new link.a A new window will open to add a new post. If youad prefer, you can also use the Quickpress module from the Dashboard. The third way is to choose the new post link from the Admin bar, and start writing.

There are in general many ways of adding a new post. The first one is that after logging in Wordpress, select the Post tab and click on add new link which will open a new window for adding a new post. Second option is to make use of Quickpress module available on the Dashboard.

Each post should be given a catchy title. You should also spend some time coming up with appropriate tags. Wordpress offers a multitude of categories. Put some effort into this because readers use these to search through posts and organize their reading.

A great trick many Wordpress users like is to schedule their posts. You can set Wordpress to put up a new post at whatever time you like. This is helpful if you write a bunch of posts at once. You donat have to put them all up right away. Stagger them over a day, or even a week. Add some information to your author profile, and you can also check to see if your posts have gone up. User plug-ins allow you to modify the appearance of your page.

Wordpress has an amazing feature. They call it their affiliate marketing program. You can earn money by writing good posts with links to Wordpress affiliates embedded in them. They pay you real money for the sales that come from this.

Get readers to start coming to your blog, and if a lot of people start coming to read your posts with affiliate links, you could start earning money. Many other Wordpress users have used this technique to start a home-based internet business. Itas easy. It can be fun. And if you do it right, it will be lucrative.

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How to build your own Google Android app

2009-01-05T22:59:00.000-08:00

Google's Android mobile development platform has rightly caused a stir.

Based on Linux and with built-in 3D, SMS and web browsing courtesy of WebKit, it's an entirely self-contained and free mobile operating system.

Though there are only a few devices that currently support Android out of the box, it's designed as an open, free platform to simplify the process of programming mobile applications on Java.

Getting started

The Android SDK is easily installed, though it's worth noting a couple of things before starting. The latest version can be found at http://code.google.com/android/download.html.

The Windows version is archived in a zip file. We'd advise extracting the archive to the root of your main hard drive, taking care to maintain its folder hierarchy. Once extracted, you'll have a folder named something like 'android-sdk-windows-1.0_r1'.

We'll be using an IDE – the open-source development environment Eclipse – to examine and develop apps, so keep the path and path name simple. Rename the main folder 'android-sdk'.

You'll be adding the SDK path to Eclipse when we install it, but you can protect against problems by adding the path to Windows' system settings. Right-click on the My Computer icon, choose 'Properties' and click 'Advanced'. Click the 'Environment Variables' button. In the 'System Variable' section, click 'New' and create a new variable named 'android', giving the path 'c:\android-sdk\ tools', where 'c' is your main drive.

Android's application programming framework sits on top of Java – so you'll need to install the Java SE Development Kit (JDK) 6 before you go any further. The specs call for Sun JRE 5 or 6 too. You'll find the full package for Windows and other OSes at www.developers.sun.com/javase/downloads. By default, the JDK will install into the Program Files folder. Simplify folder names and move to the root of your local machine to ensure that all of your command line tools work properly.

Google recommends Eclipse as the IDE for Android, and the tools it supplies for the platform provide tight integration with the SDK. To get started with the program, grab it from www.eclipse.org/downloads. There are several versions listed, but we suggest you use the Eclipse for Java EE Developers, because it includes WST (Web Standards Tools), a set of components for working with web scripting languages in Java.

Again, install Eclipse in the root directory of your hard drive rather than your Program Files folder; this makes it easier to set up paths to the IDE and reduces the likelihood of errors caused by calls to DOS-based SDK components. The archive simply extracts – there is no installer. You can create a shortcut to the Eclipse runtime by selecting 'eclipse.exe' and [ALT]+dragging a copy to your desktop or Start menu.

Once Eclipse is installed, you can add the Android tools that are required to develop and work with existing apps. These integrate some Android SDK components into Eclipse. Start the program, then go to 'Help | Software Updates'. Select the Available Software tab.

Choose 'Add Site', type in the full URL (https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse) and then click 'OK'. The 'Software Updates and Add-ons' window should update, showing the newly entered URL. Open the hierarchy by clicking the '+' sign and then check the box next to 'Developer Tools'. Click 'Install'.

In the next window, check both 'Android Developer Tools' and 'Android Editors', then click 'Finish'. Finally, restart Eclipse.

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Adventure PHP Framework 1.8 now runs under LGPL 3

2009-01-05T22:47:00.001-08:00

A first release candidate for version 1.8 of the Adventure PHP Framework has been announced. The version released for production environments now runs under a new licence model, LGPL 3. The aim is to enable enterprise clients to use the framework for closed-source applications, or under their own licence.

Besides the revision of proven components and some bugfixes, new productivity tools have been added. These include the AdvancedLogger for advanced logging tasks, the taglib for the global reuse of template fragments, taglibs for delivering GUI elements directly from the application's namespace, and eZ-Style templates to allow template translation, using special tags and XML files. Further productivity tools can be found in the documentation in the Special taglibs section.

The Adventure PHP Framework is intended to help developers implement object-oriented, generic and reusable PHP web applications in compliance with known and approved OO design patterns.

Top 10 Joomla! SEO Tips and Tricks

2009-01-02T22:45:00.000-08:00

This is the best ways to improve your Joomla SEO.

1) Don't install any sample data while you set up a Joomla! site.,
2) Your Site Name should be your site’s name,
3) Turn off your PDF links,
4) Don't waste your site's link juice includes lots of social bookmarking links,
5) Redirect the www and non-www versions of your site to the same place,
6) Turn on your cache,
7) Enter a full description for all your sections and categories,
8) Less is often more: fewer pp can have better SEO than too many junk pp.,
9) Empty your global configuration metadata,
10) Be confident of Joomla's capabilities.

Uses for Joomla in Corporate America

2009-01-02T21:46:00.000-08:00

The basic package for Joomla can be easily installed by people that are not knowledgeable of anything that deals with computers or the internet. Corporate America functions on numbers that are related to revenues, and the multimedia software programs can be modified to keep track of record sales if the need arises.

There is a large group of individuals that live their life creating programming codes that are based on the Joomla software, and these creative people want to share their creative endeavors with the rest of the world. The core management software team online mba course organizes and updates Joomla throughout the year, is not focused on profits but they are focused on making sure that the open source standing that Joomla is made from continues for many years to come.

Corporations work on some of the same concepts that the developers for Joomla do. They both have instituted training programs, and will routinely offer clients and guests the opportunity to use online mba course product free of charge. Joomla is very popular because it is free, and that is the way that the developers want to keep it. The training programs for Joomla ensure that every user has a positive experience.

Positive experiences can produce outstanding results in both worlds. Some of the best computer programming occurs online mba program a developer is relaxed and happy about the job he has undertaken. As evidenced by the surmountable amount of extensions that are available for download, the developers at Joomla are very happy.

This in turn makes Corporations very happy because they have more opportunities to take advantage of free extension programs that might help them with their inventory control systems, or help them online computer courses an exquisite product catalog that can be displayed on the internet and incorporated with the corporate ecommerce website.

Corporate America might not be aware of Joomla but they have been ready for the large number of choices that are offered by this outstanding content management system. The easy installation and user friendly online mba program might make some corporate shake their heads in wonder. Some corporations might feel that their requirements and needs can never be met through an online software application, and are jubilant when they find out that they have been wrong for a long time.

Some corporations use the Joomla templates to collect data on all of the visitors to their websites, and other areas of the corporation at a higher level might use the reporting tools to keep tabs on their bottom line and know in an instant if their quarterly projection on profits needs to be adjusted or left where they are online mba program another few months. They might choose one of the extensions files of Joomla as a banner advertising system that will increase their profits further than recent projections and corporations like that aspect of Joomla very well indeed.

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Ten Things To Do When Choosing a Web Designer

2009-01-02T21:00:00.000-08:00

1.Surf the web. The odds are there are dozens of sites that you admire, or that do something similar to what you hope to achieve and do it well. Find them, study them, and take some notes. Write down what you like, and what you don’t like - and why. Keep a file.

2.As you surf these sites, make note of the credits at the bottom. See who designed them, and if possible check out those designer’s websites for a portfolio of their other work.

3.Cruise the premium Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla theme sites if you choose one of these platforms. Find out what theme is in use on the sites you like, and who designed the theme. It may be that you will end up buying a theme you like and reducing the role of your designer to customizing it.

4.If you have friends who have web sites you admire, question them on their choice of platform, designer, theme, etc. Ask about functionality. If there is something you’d like to have that you don’t see, ask about that as well.

5.When you have settled on what you want to do, get at least three designers to look at what you have, and what you want, and provide you quotes. In the quotes make sure they include costs for training you on use and maintenance, for updates to the site, and for emergency troubleshooting. As you communicate with them, take note of how quickly they answer, and how helpful they are. You may be working with them for a while.

6.Avoid trying to be “too cool” with your website - particularly if you aren’t independely wealthy. Flash and crazy color schemes, and animated gifs all may seem like a “way-cool” idea when you first see them. In most cases they distract people from the focus of your site.

7.Keep it as professional as you can. Weigh each feature you intend to include for its usefulness and utility. It’s okay to have a few “fun” things but don’t let them overshadow your reason for having the site.

8.Build your site around your content. Whatever it is you intend to promote, sell, share, or advertise, try to put your mind in a place where you can imagine coming to the site as a user, customer, etc. and design it the way you would want to see it if someone else built it.

9.Your front page should provide access to every important aspect of your site, and should do so without the necessity of scrolling. Don’t hide anything you really want people to see, the average surfer won’t click through to something they have to work to find.

10.Do not be intimidated by your designer. It’s easy to let them make your decsisions for you, to make you feel inadequate for your inability to do things on your own, and in general to take over your project. You are hiring them to build YOUR site…remember that, while you are collaborating, you are in charge of the project, and it is - ultimately - your design and thoughts that should be reflected in the final outcome.

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Drupal Administration theme 1.0 released for Drupal 5 and 6

2009-01-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

The Drupal 5 version gives you the possibility to use the administration theme when editing posts. This feature was introduced in Drupal 6 core and is with this module now available in Drupal 5.

Use the administration theme on more pages then possible with Drupal 5 or Drupal 6 core. You can allow the theme on a predefined set of pages and on a custom set of pages. The inverse is also possible: specifying a set of custom pages on which you don't want to use the theme. An example of this might be that you want to use the administration theme (all pages having a path starting with "admin" (admin/*)) but not on "admin/content/node".

Hooks! All modules can now add some pages to the administration theme settings page using the hook_admin_theme hook. By doing so you give inexperienced users the possibility to just tick a checkbox to use the administration theme.

A permission is introduced to allow or disallow certain users to use the administration theme.

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7 Essential Tips to Avoid Your Mails Reach Customers’/ Subscribers’ Spam Folders

2008-12-26T01:32:00.000-08:00

1. A Meaningful Sender name
There is a saying that, There is never a second chance to first impression. People after opening an unknown email wants to see the sender's name first before going through the content. If it is as greek as xxx3434@myisp.com then he will mark it as spam without even thinking for a second. Use a sender name that’s simple, easily recognized, and expected by the subscribers. Make sure that your From email address is recognized as well because some email applications such as AOL display only the sender email address, not the name.

2. Constructive and Informative Subject Name
Don't present yourself stupid even before delivering about your product or information. A message with a vague Subject line like "super offer for you!!!" will absolutely be reported as spam. You can make your email recognizable by including your company or newsletter name in brackets at the beginning of your subject lines, for example "[Taragana]: The best software and technology service provider".

3. Whitelist your domain through the Recipients
This will prevent a user-based filter from flagging your message as spam and either moving it to the spam folder or inserting “[SPAM]” to the message Subject. You can include the instructions on whitelisting your domain or email address in the Email Admin Centre area.

4. Don't Make Your Content Look Like a Typical Spam
Try not to use garish, bold fonts; large, red letters, and the like. A message with a clean, readable design is not likely to be taken for spam. Remember, simplicity is a virtue that never goes unattended.

5. Don’t send mails too often
If the recipients used to receive your newsletter once a week or month, don’t suddenly start emailing every other day.

6. Strictly Maintain Subscriber's Preference
Respect the subscriber’s preferences. If the subscriber opted in to receive your “Tips & News” newsletter, don’t send them e-commerce and promotion messages, unless they clearly requested them. This will by no way be a healthy promotion for your company but you will lose the penny you had.

7. Remind the recipient about subscription
Many subscribers receive dozens of commercial email messages every day and they may forget they signed up for your newsletter. It’s reasonable to add to your Email Admin Center the information about the user’s subscription: subscriber’s email address, opt-in date, and newsletter he/she subscribed to.

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All in One Video Plugin For Wordpress

2008-12-26T01:16:00.000-08:00

Kaltura has recently released version 2.1 of its Wordpress plugin, the All in one Video Pack. This plugin for Wordpress 2.5 or higher allows you to do a great deal of things with Wordpress and rich media including the ability to upload or import a video into your post. You can even record it straight from your webcam to the post if you so wish.

Aside from the standard posting of content to the web, the Kaltura All in One Video Pack plugin lets you edit and remix video thanks to their online video editor. The plugin allows video in various formats including audio, photos and videos in over 150 formats and codecs. You can also import content from a variety of media sharing sites including:

- YouTube
- MySpace
- Flickr
- CCMixter
- Jamendo
- New York Public Library
- Any URL on the web

The plugin isn’t just about watching video and other media, it’s also about interacting. It gives your viewers the ability to reply in video or audio form and participate in collaborative videos.

The plugin gives you tracking abilities as well, thanks to the management console. The plugin is Widget ready and offers a sidebar that shows thumbnails of the latest videos and comments.

In regards to the look and feel, the plugin gives you three options for the appearance of the player and you can customize the size of the player to fit your site.

Future Expansion

Kaltura is also continuing development on the plugin to include the ability to create, manage and display playlists, podcast playing and recording, video galleries and more advanced features for the player like subtitles, downloads, credits and more.

Why it’s important to you?

Wordpress is used in over three million blogs and websites online. It’s one of the easiest content management systems to install, administer and customize. With its vast array of plugins to extend the basic functionality of the package it is able to do a large amount of things many people want. This plugin gives Wordpress a massive boost in the multimedia category. However, it appears that there’s no way to monetize the videos you show yet aside from standard banner advertising. It doesn’t say anything about being able to include video ads but hopefully they’ll look into ways to include this in the future. When the video playlist features are in place you might be able to create a playlist that shows ads mid-roll so to speak by placing them in between chapters or other videos.

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Three Important Tips to Write PHP Code Defensively

2008-12-25T22:28:00.000-08:00

The phenomenal growth of PHP applications has also led to a mushrooming of increased quantum of malicious activity. It thus becomes imperative that you write secure PHP code to protect your website. Here are some tips for the same.

The three most vulnerable aspects of PHP that can become easily accessible to anyone are XSS (Cross Site Scripting), Global Variables and SQL code.

XSS

The growth of XSS has followed a steady growth in the use of AJAX. Cross Site Scripting, for instance is used when you create a Comment section in your website. If the commentator has to log in to comment, his login information gets stored in a cookie. As the JavaScript code is generally run whenever a person writes the comment, there is a pretty good chance of the contents of the cookie being accessible to a remote server handled by a malicious user.

To counter this, make a habit of including filters whenever you request for random information. Use the die() function to exit from the task whenever the filters detect an unqualified input. The details that are typed are first filtered and then sent to the website’s database. Again the information is filtered before it is output.
//A good filter program that validates data, prevents XSS attack and
//preempts white lists would look like this
echo 'this is what you input';
echo htmlentities($_POST['myInfo']);
?>

Global Variables

The PHP feature “Register Globals” leads to a palpable lacuna in programming safety. Once this feature is activated in PHP configuration file, even a single variable that is to uninitialized, can lead to a great security flaw. For instance
if (is_admin()) ( $authorized=true; )
if ($authorized) ( include "/very/sensitive/data.php"; )
?>

When you run the file, because of non-initialization the user may not be verified, resulting in anyone accessing the administrative control! To counter this, you should disable Register Globals, initialize variables use localized variables and as far as possible within the programs.

SQL Code

The SQL code is vulnerable to malicious users just like XSS feature. To write a secure SQL code you need to remember a couple of things. First avoid using dynamic code and second, if dynamic code in inevitable then do not have direct input into the tables.

For instance, a code like this will take care of the sql security
if ($_POST['submit'] == 'Save') {
if (isset($_POST['acct_num']) &&
isValidAccountNumber($_POST['acc_num'])) {
$link = mysql_connect ('hostname', 'user', 'password')
or die('Could not connect to DB');
...
}
}

Preferably have a database to select user name so that any other entry (like “bingo” or ‘blah blah’) can be swiftly detected. A simple way of preventing SQL security lapse is by typecasting the data so that input is effectively monitored. You can also make use of the versatile “mysql_real_escape_string”. This function can successfully filter symbols and contain SQL security flaws.

These three are the most significant to create a secure PHP code. Apart from this, you should also ensure that
- The system is well protected
- Files and database are protected.
- Posts are verified
- Input is always validated

Input validation is the key to secure programming. Make a habit of allowing only the right input into your system. A systematic approach to PHP, keeping in mind the pitfalls, can guard the program against most flaws and malicious attacks.

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Will Google and Microsoft Own the Web?

2008-12-23T02:05:00.000-08:00

It's something of an open secret that Mozilla, the organization behind the open source Firefox Web browser, gets most of its funding from Google -- 91 percent, to be exact. The deal gives Google top placement in Firefox's search engine bar. But now that Google is also shipping Chrome, its own branded browser, some critics are asking whether the search engine giant's deep pockets have allowed it to gain too much influence over the Web browser market.

This week, Mozilla CEO John Lilly admitted that his organization's relationship with Google is "more complicated than it used to be" in light of the current funding arrangement. But Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz goes even further, claiming that because the market is controlled by just a few giant companies -- namely Google and Microsoft -- the Web browser has become "hostile territory" for application developers. Could the days of an open Web be coming to an end?

The technologies used to build Web pages -- including HTML, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) -- are all open standards, maintained by industry consortia. No one company owns them. But experimental features often appear in new browser releases first, then are integrated into the official standards later. One example is Google's Gears technology, which is built into Chrome and is available as a plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Gears is widely expected to influence the upcoming HTML 5 standard.

That's all well and good, except that arguably only Microsoft can compete with Google's share of the browser market. For example, Opera is a longstanding alternative browser that is often praised for its compliance with Web standards, but its market share is but a fraction of that of Firefox or IE. Because of Opera's narrower reach, a new feature introduced in Opera might be seen as less significant, and therefore be less likely to become part of the public standards.

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Open source development - the recent trend in IT

2008-12-23T01:36:00.000-08:00

An Open source software is the one whose codes are available free and is open to all. Anyone can get those codes, modify them and use for coding similar kinds of application.

In an IT industry the same thing happens. Once a developer gains knowledge in programming, he doesn't sit and right 1000 lines of codes but searches for similar kind of codes and modify them to his requirement.

Open source development has attained its peak as more number of codes on various applications are available online. This has come to break the copyright issues. many online communities are there to guide the young developers so that they get in touch with experts and analysts in that field.

Google has come out with an establishment for open source development known as the Google Summer of Code that offers stipends to those willing to do projects to their mentor companies with the open source codes available.This is a good way to earn money and alo make learning process to be more practical.

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How To Use the New Dashboard in Wordpress 2.7 Admin

2008-12-23T00:39:00.000-08:00

The biggest difference you will see after Upgrading to Wordpress 2.7 is the new Dashboard in the administrators area. Just login to your new or upgraded Wordpress 2.7 website and you will see what I mean!

The whole Dashboard has been radically designed by the developers at Wordpress and a very good job they have done on it. It may take you a while to get used to, but you will soon be wondering how you ever got by without it.
Introduction To The Wordpress 2.7 Dashboard

When you log in as the Wordpress administrator at your website (yourdomain.com/wp-admin) you will see a very different layout than that in previous versions.

The major benefits from a user perspective are that the newly designed Dashboard has much more funtionality then before and can be totally customised by you to suit your style and method of work.

Movable, Collapsible and Hideable Screen Component Modules

Just like the way that more recnt version of Wordpress have allowed you to move the positions of widgets in sidebars, you can now rearrange the modules within the central area of the dashboard screen.

Just grab the heading of any module with your mouse and drag the module to it’s new location in the dashboard (click on the heading and hold down the click while moving the cursor with your mouse).

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5 reasons to open a twitter account for your online business

2008-12-22T03:36:00.000-08:00

1. Share with anyone in doubt of what you’re doing.

If you’re like me, and you tell those around you that you’ve decided to take the path of a big web idea, chances are they will laugh at you and think you’ve gone crazy. I’ve had countless co-workers, family members and such tell me I was a ‘dreamer’. As Lance Armstrong said after one win, “I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t dream”.

A lot of people in this world assume. I believe life hard is because of misinformation. I mean, imagine a perfect world, if all things were accurate and truthful, finding solutions to problems would be as easy as grabbing your left and right sock, or chopsticks. But assumptions people make are not facts, and thus, add to our misinformed world. So to reduce this, you’re now the source, the truth, the authority to what you’re doing. If there are those that want to spite you, it’ll be harder for them to do when they see your app’s twitter.

2. Building your SEO

I’m assuming you will be busy posting your updates, getting the word out like putting your twitter link in your email signatures, making announcements in your social networks about following you, etc. But with all those keywords that are important to you, Twitter’ll be another external link with all of this content all indexed in mighty Google. Your twitter account will have a great pagerank when you start getting active too! Doing it for the SEO alone would be worthwhile!

3. Updated news

When building your web app, it’ll be one less functionality you’ll have to implement: the update section. Just use twitter! and use a plugin like Twitter Tool embedded in your wordpress blog for your main content. 140 characters should be enough to say ‘selection menu on blah page is now fixed, thanks steve‘

4. What are you doing?

These are the words that face you when you login to your twitter. It’s one thing if you’ve logged into your general account and you see this question. It’s another when you’ve logged in to your business’s twitter account and facing you is this question. In that sense, Twitter is like a virtual overbearing Steve Jobs boss! (without the following mental abuse!)

5. Motivate yourself

You’ve got followers now who probably won’t be customers. They’re following you for a different reason. Perhaps they want to see your tenacity and drive and lead by example. Energy flows back and forth and any source for pushing yourself is well worth it.

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Google reveals upcoming Android features

2008-12-22T03:06:00.000-08:00

Android is in the process of being turned by Google from its own development project into open source. This week, some of the changes made to the mobile operating system by a private group of developers came to light in Cupcake--the Android code the group shares with the outside world. Now, according to the Android road map, the Cupcake enhancements have started to be merged into the wider, open-source Android project.

The private development branch will continue to operate, and the current merging of the new features into the master Android branch will be completed in early January.

Some of the changes coming to Android are bug fixes, affecting elements such as e-mail, conversation-list scrolling, and the alarm clock. Several new features are, however, also being added--for example, the ability to save MMS attachments. The Linux kernel upon which Android runs has been upgraded to version 2.6.27, and "basic x86 support" has been added.

The WebKit browser core has been updated, and support for the new SquirrelFish JavaScript engine has been added. The browser will now support cutting and pasting, and will also include a find function.

Android's camera functionality has received a major boost, with the addition of video capture. Download functionality has also been enhanced; applications can pause their downloads, and interrupted downloads can now be resumed instead of failing.

Virtual keyboards will also become possible, and third-party developers will be given the application programming interfaces to create their own input methods. A new API for speech recognition is also included, as is A2DP stereo Bluetooth support.

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Yahoo competes to be less-evil

2008-12-22T02:53:00.000-08:00

Is it time for fans of open source to switch their affections from Google to Yahoo?

It’s a question worth asking, and one Yahoo wants asked, as it unveils its Open Strategy and starts taking some bows for what it has already done.

In particular we want to note the Yahoo User Interface library, hailed this week as one of the 25 most secure open source projects by Palamida.

While most reporters have been obsessed with talking about Yahoo’s on-off relationships with Google and Microsoft, the company has been quietly earning its open source stripes in many ways.

Yes, Yahoo hopes to earn money through closer relationships with social networks and projects like Wordpress, but if you want sackcloth you’re into FOSS, not open source.

It’s also true that Yahoo’s moves can be compared to those of Sun a few years ago. It may not work. On the other hand it may help Yahoo survive.

What is important is that there is now competition for open source attention, and loyalty, in the search engine sphere. That should, over time, benefit everyone.

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What do you most dislike about PHP?

2008-12-18T02:25:00.000-08:00

The title of this post is probably a little bit flamebait-ish, but I’m actually genuinely interested to get the Internet’s opinion on the following:

Pick any three aspects of PHP that makes you feel dirty as a developer, and post them as a comment here.

For me it’s:
- The standard library is a huge, monolithic mess. This has been covered before, so I won’t beat a dead horse. I’d love to see the standard library reorganized and some sanity introduced around the naming of certain aspects.

- Superglobals because they behave weirdly in certain scenarios and make unit testing a pain in the ass.

- omg\namespace\separator\is\Backslash, which has effectively killed this long-awaited feature for me.

Again, I don’t intend for this to be about hating on PHP or its developers (read: comments that don’t contribute anything meaningful to the discussion won’t see the light of day). Instead, I want to formalize what causes people pain when working with PHP today. Who knows — maybe somebody, somewhere will listen?

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Linux Vs Bsd

2008-12-18T01:13:00.000-08:00

Differences between BSD and Linux

1) BSD license allows users/companies to modify a program’s source code and not to release changes to the public. In other words, BSD licenses allow commercial use and incorporation of a code into proprietary commercial products. This is how Microsoft incorporated BSD networking into their products and how Mac OS X earns money through muscles of FreeBSD.

Linux uses GPL license for most of the time (applications in Linux can also have a BSD license - or any license; it is up to developers how they decide). With a GPL-licensed program anybody can change the source code, but he or she MUST share it with the Open Source community to make sure that everybody will benefit from such a change.

2) BSD has the so-called “core system” (without packages). The core system consists of basic utilities (like ssh, fdisk, various commands like chmod or sysctl, manual pages, etc.) and anything beyond this is strictly seen as an add-on. Linux (not only the kernel, of course) is usually packaged as the whole system where this difference is not seen.

3) On BSD systems, all add-on packages are strictly installed into the /usr/local directory: documents to user/local/share/docs/application_name; themes and other things to /usr/local/share/application_name; binaries to /usr/local/bin/application_name. By application_name we mean a program’s name, so if you install IceWM, for example, its binary will be here: /usr/local/bin/icewm. With Linux, on the other hand, all applications get mostly installed into the /usr/bin directory.

4) BSD systems use the system of “ports”, which are fingerprints of applications in the /usr/ports directory, where a user may “cd” and execute a make command, which will download, via a directive contained in such a fingerprint’s code, the application’s source and the system will compile it as well. “Ports” are actually add-on packages for BSD systems and they are also packaged in packages repository of a concrete BSD system. They can be installed as binaries, too, with use of the “pkg_add” either directly from the Internet or locally. But “ports” have that advantage that if an author of any package makes a new version, a user can immediately get its newest/updated version. Packages released for a particular BSD version (like OpenBSD 4.1) are not updated and users have to wait for a new BSD release (like OpenBSD 4.2).

5) BSD systems have also their stable version. With FreeBSD, for example, you have a FreeBSD-Release (a version that can be used normally), FreeBSD-Stable (system more profoundly audited for bugs and security holes), and a development version - Current, which is not stable and not recommended for a regular use. Some Linux distributions started to imitate this philosophy, but with BSD systems this way of making distributions has become a rule.

6) Of course, the kernel is absolutely different.

7) BSD has FFS file system; it is the only file system on BSD’s contrary to Linux, where you can use dozens of file systems like ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, XFS, etc.

ReaD More..

WordPress Plugin Releases for 12/16

2008-12-17T00:58:00.000-08:00

WP-Twitip-ID
This plugin takes the pain out of adding another field to your comment form for users to enter their twitter username to be displayed as a link to follow them via their twitter page.

Media Tags
With this plugin you can now add tags to your media attachments. You can tag Word document, PDF documents basically anything you upload via the standard WordPress Media upload tool.

CrossPress
Automatically, cross-posting to associated site/blog to enabling the post-via-email option with PIN code e.g. multiply.com, livejournal.com, blogspot.

Hackadelic Sliding Notes
Ajax sliders for content fragments. Fancy replacement for foot- and other notes.

GoogleMapper
This plugin allows a WordPress Site Admin to enter locations of stores etc into the db. The user can then search for the closest location.

Facebook Posted Items
This plugin fetches posted items from Facebook and displays them in an unordered list with proper links and comments.

Updated Plugins

Sensitive Tag Cloud
This WordPress plugin provides a configurable tag cloud that shows tags depending of the current context only.

RelatedPosts
This WordPress plugin provides multiple options to show the via tags related posts of a post. It contains a sidebar widget that is only visible when viewing a single post and displays a list of posts that are related with the current post via the tags.

wpSEO
The wpSEO plugin helps you to optimize your blog for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes by eliminating issues with duplicate content and specifying meta tags and page titles for the different pages of your blog. You can also specify your meta tags and page titles manually.

GD Star Rating
GD Star Rating is post, page and comment rating plugin for WordPress. Plugin supports different image sets, rating moderation, vote rules, time restricted voting, templates, trend calculations, has a widgets build in and shortcode support.

Smooth Scrolling Links
This plug in uses the JavaScript provided by Stuart Langridge called Smooth scroll, which effectively adds a special effect to your “self” links. Self links means the links which are targeting to the same page with various locations like top, bottom or specific in page links.

Moodlight
Moodlight allows your visitors to add their mood on posts via comments.

Simple Google Sitemap
Creates an XML Sitemap, containing Homepage, Articles and Pages.

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Twitter for Blog Promotion

2008-12-17T00:44:00.000-08:00

Twittering, or using the twitter.com social networking site, isn’t just for fun (although it is terribly addictive). It’s also a great way to promote your blog. You can do that in a few simple and short steps:

Find like-minded people and follow them. Look in particular for people with terms related to your blog in their bio or name. You’ll have to be pretty general here since people don’t get much space on Twitter. Once you follow enough people like you, you should start getting people interested in your topic following you.

Encourage people who visit your blog to follow you on Twitter. This isn’t the only way to get return visitation (RSS feeds and use of sites like Feedburner are great!). But if you have a blog visitor who’s a Twitter junkie and likes your blog, they probably will click your Twitter badge and follow you.

When you have a new blog post, Twitter it. You won’t have room for much, but you can simply post your post header and the link.

Keep an eye on your referrals and see how effective Twittering is. If you find you’re getting even a few visits a day, it’s probably worth the effort. If you’ve actively sought out people who might be interested in your niche or topic, those are probably high-quality visitors who will visit your site again and might even comment.

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Yahoo Lets Developers Help Deliver The Mail

2008-12-17T00:40:00.000-08:00

Yahoo made good on its promise to embrace an open-source strategy by rolling out enhancements to Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Toolbar this week, both of which are part of its Yahoo Open Source Strategy. The goal behind the Yahoo Open Source Strategy is to welcome independent developers into the fold while simultaneously positioning Yahoo as something of a social network.

The new and improved Yahoo Mail—which initially is being rolled out to a limited number of users in the U.S. and Australia—embraces social media. It's being billed by the company as a "smarter" mailbox that streamlines information and highlights other friendly Yahoo users' activities.

The company promises that the new version of its e-mail application will "surface messages, information and activity updates from people users care about most, as well as an updated inbox and folder view that filters messages from those personal connections."

The nuts and bolts of the Yahoo Mail include connections where—much like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter— users can connect with friends who use the service and designate their activity as important. The upshot, it seems, is that their activity, messages and updates will be flagged and given priority on the Yahoo Mail homescreen. The types of "activity" that Yahoo will highlight for users include interactions with Yahoo profile updates, Yahoo Buzz and TV, and music and travel selections friends are reading or talking about.

The open-source angle of the Yahoo Open Source Strategy will also come into play on the e-mail homescreen, with the search engine company allowing a limited number of third-party developers to create applications that will live in the Yahoo mail screen. Think Google Labs for Gmail or the App Store for Apple's iPhone. Yahoo hopes that by making its start page less static that users will choose to talk, share and interact with friends on their pages instead of surfing over to an established network like Facebook.

Another prong of Yahoo's Open Source Strategy is the Yahoo Toolbar, which also launched this week. The idea behind the toolbar is to give users immediate access and notifications to things like e-mail alerts, favorite Web sites and instant Web search.

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Check out Broken Backlinks using Google Webmaster Tool

2008-12-16T02:36:00.000-08:00

Google rocks the web world, do you guys have any doubt? No! right!, Google has introduced a new feature which lets us to view Broken Backlinks which are present in our sites, this awesome new feature has been introduced in Google Webmaster Tools.

If you want to know more about this and would like to check your sites for any Broken Backlinks, then please do click on this URL - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dashboard obviously one should have Google account to login to the webmasters site. And if you would like to try your luck with zero broken backlinks on your site, then follow these steps.

- Once you login to the site, the above URL will take you to the dashboard, where in you can find your list of sites which you have added earlier (or even you can add the same).

- Click on Diagnostics, then Web crawl, once you are in Web crawl page you can see a table which depicts the Errors for URL’s in Sitemaps and respective options.

By this you can check the respective errors and just rectify those Broken Backlinks and make your website 100% error free.

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Top 10 Websites of 2008

2008-12-16T02:05:00.000-08:00

2008 has seen the rise of yet more interactive applications and websites online as the web creeps closer and closer to having sites as interactive as desktop applications. Here’s my top 10 websites that I have been visiting and using over the past 12 months.

bbc.co.uk:

The redesign of the BBC’s website was probably the most talked about redesign of the year and with good reason. The BBC had not redesigned their wesite homepage for the previous 5 years and what a difference it has made. Now a fully interactive and customisable homepage, along with the iPlayer’s website it has become one of my most visited sites of the year and my number one source for news.

nettuts.com:

For me the best resource for online tutorials on the web. There are a huge number of tutorials taking you from the basics of the web up to more advanced techniques and tutorials. The diverse range of quality material on this site combined with updated which are nearly daily makes it my number one choice for tutorials on the web.

css-tricks.com:

CSS Tricks and CSS for Lunch (a close second) are my two favourite CSS sites of the year for 2008. CSS Tricks wins this one because of the quantity of content. Run by Chris Coyier, a web designer from Madison, Wisconsin who works for Chatman Design.

smashing magazine:

Smashing magazine is a great resource for inspiration. Subscribe to their feed and you’ll find a one stop shop for the best resources, designs, lists of tutorials and inspiration online.

last.fm:

Last.fm has been one of my top sites for a few years now. With a new design and ever growing community and content the site has now developed into something special. For me the main use of the site is not actually for finding new music. Instead I use it to find out events that are on in my area from recommendations that last.fm makes based on the music both myself and my neighbours have listened to.

facebook.com

I’m not the biggest user of Facebook but the redesign put the site back on track. For a time it was looking like going down the road of such sites as MySpace and Bebo with content and design all over the place. Fortunately, for now, Facebook has managed to keep this in check.

boagworld.com

The longest running webdesign podcast and the first web design podcast I started listening to, Boagworld has become an inspirational resource for many web designers. Run by Paul Boag, the site has recently won an award for the best Podcast from .Net Magazine. A quick look at the forums on the site will show how strong the community in the site has become.

wordpress.com

Now not only a leader in open source blogging software but also contending as a content management application Wordpress has just released version 2.7 which is a fully polished blogging platform now with, in my opinion, the most usable content management interface open source platform.

themeforest.net:

A new site online this year is Themeforest. Run by the Envato network (the same network as nettuts), Theme Forest has an array of templates for websites, blogs and content management systems.

99designs.com:

Another money making site for designers is 99designs.com. Someone will post a design brief online as a competition for designers to submit their work. After the contest is over the winning designer will be paid the prize money.

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Use of dynamic languages will rise in 2009

2008-12-16T01:59:00.000-08:00

What used to be a programming tool for small jobs is mainstream in Asia as over 88 percent of developers say they use some dynamic language some of the time and over 40 percent use one more than half of the time.

Javascript is by far the most widely used dynamic language, although 45 percent of developers in Asia who use dynamic languages now use PHP in some of their projects.

"Software developers are always looking for ways to shed unneeded complexity and outdated methodologies and move to approaches that make programming simpler and faster especially as more and more development is web-centric," said John Andrews, president and CEO of Evans Data. "The high use of dynamic languages in Asia Pacific is consistent with the high concentration of web application development being conducted in that region."

Other highlights of this survey of over 400 software developers in the Asia-Pacific region include:

* Cloud computing is on the rise, with over one in five Asian developers planning to launch cloud projects within the next 6 months.

* Sixty percent of developers in the Asia region expect their development for mobile devices to increase

* Intel dominates the development market with more than twice as many developers targeting the Intel processors as AMD processors.

Developers predict their use of dynamic languages will remain the same next year as this year, except that Perl is expected to decline and Actionscript, the basis for Flash development, will increase.

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Wordpress + Joomla = ?

2008-12-16T01:00:00.000-08:00

Wordpress is without any doubt the biggest (open source) blogging platform. Well known for it's ease of installation, ease of use and of course the incredible amount of extensions that are available. Joomla! on the other hand is a very powerfull system made out of a fully object oriented (and pattern based) application framework, and on top of that the well known CMS. Joomla! is extremely extensible, thousands of templates and extensions are available. And while it is perfectly possible to create a blogging site (JFoobar is just an example of that), Wordpress is without any discussion easier to set up and use as blogging solution. It holds way more features by default for blogging then Joomla! In short, it is more difficult to create a blogging solution in Joomla! (although far from impossible).

Past week I joined twitter...not really certain how it works, but I must admit I have found some interesting information there so for now it seems worth while the effort. Today a post about combining Joomla! and Wordpress was posted on the corephp website.

Shortly after the creation of the Joomla! project the first core team used a Wordpress bridge for blogging, so the concept is certainly not new. In the mean while the core team blogs have moved to the leadership area on the community site using a very basic Joomla! installation and a professional commenting solution. The question is why you would use the Wordpress platform and an extension to bridge between the two?

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Checklist For Choosing Open Source Software

2008-12-14T22:21:00.000-08:00

As a small business owner funds are tight, so the last thing you want to do is invest in lots of new software. Fortunately, you may not have to.

A growing movement in the online world is the Open Source Movement. Open Source developers write programs, plugins, and internet scripts and distribute them, and the source code used to create them, for free. Chances are you’ve already heard of some of them. For example, Wordpress is open source, as is Open Office (an open source clone of Microsoft Office).

As a small business owner open source software can be a tremendous asset. Because it is free it gives you a chance to spend your limited resources elsewhere, instead of investing in expensive software. However, open source software isn’t without it’s drawbacks. Here are 5 things you should always check when investigating a promising piece of open source software:

1. Does it have the features you need? Because open source software is developed by individuals or small organizations, it often does not have all the same features as similar commercial applications. If you don’t need those features, then this isn’t an issue. But don’t take the time to download, install, and learn a new software if it isn’t going to meet your business needs.

2. Does it have good documentation? Another result of the part-time nature of open source development is that even some of the best open source softwares do not have complete documentation. When looking at a new open source project, take a good look at the documentation offered and try to get a feel for whether it will answer your questions about using the software. Other things to look for are project forums, wikis, and FAQ’s. All these places can provide answers to questions you may have, or allow you to ask your own. If you can’t find enough documentation for an open source project, it may be worth looking elsewhere. No matter how good a program is, it’s worth your time if you can’t figure out how to use it.

3. How easy is the program to edit? What do programmers have to say about the code? One of the greatest strengths of open source programs is that the source code comes with them. This means that if you find a piece of software that you really like, but need just one more feature, chances are good you can hire a programmer to add that feature for you. Be aware, however, that some programs are written better than others. If the source code you get is messy, inefficient, or just hard to understand it may not be worth your money to hire a programmer to make even small modifications.

4. How does it communicate with other programs or formats your business uses? Even if a program does exactly what you need it to do, it may not communicate with other programs your business has to use every day. For example, a word processor would not be much use if it could not read and save Microsoft Word Documents. If there are programs or certain formats that everybody in your business or industry uses, be sure the open source program you are looking at supports them.

5. Finally, What do other users think of the program? Take some time to browse the web and look for reviews, critiques, or discussions about the software you’re looking at using. Sometimes open source programs may look good, but be filled with bugs. Others may work, but have poor user interfaces that make it hard to work with them. The best way to get an idea of whether an open source program is worth using in your business is to find out what others are saying about it. If you find lots of positive reviews, especially from people in a similar industry to yours, than you’re likely on the right track. If all you find are complaints, steer clear.

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The End of Twitter?

2008-12-14T21:54:00.000-08:00

If you work in an internet related field (programming, designing, administrating, etc) you’ve probably heard of the “micro-blogging” service Twitter. For those who don’t know what it is, Twitter is a social networking site where users share “Tweets” (140 character messages) with each other and the world at large. As is the case with many new internet technologies however, Twitter has it’s shortfalls, and it might not be long before newer micro-blogging services take over.

One such new micro-blogging service is identi.ca. Even though identi.ca doesn’t have as many users or features as Twitter (yet!), it does some things Twitter does not.

1) REALLY easy setup.

Identi.ca supports OpenID*. Since I already have an OpenID set up, I used it to register my new Identi.ca account. All I had to do was enter my OpenID, approve identi.ca, and choose a nickname. That’s IT! No adding mundane details like my name or e-mail address… all that was pulled from my OpenID automatically.

Of course, if you don’t have OpenID you can still register at Identi.ca normally, and the process looks simple and easy.

2) IM and Text Message support.

When I first started using twitter, I could “tweet” using an instant messaging program. Unfortunately, this functionality soon disappeared, with little explanation as to where it had gone or when it was coming back. Likewise, one of the strongest features of Twitter is the ability to receive tweets from people you’re following on your cell phone as text messages. In the USA this works fine, but here in Canada Twitter has had to disable the service due to excessive costs from the cell phone companies.

Identi.ca seems to have neatly avoided both problems. As of right now at least they have an IM service that works and they’re using e-mail to SMS for their text messaging. e-Mail to SMS doesn’t cost them anything - the fees are passed on to the user. I looked into it and for me it would be a $5 a month upgrade, or 15 cents per message received. This is a bit of a pain, but at least the option is there.

3) Interfaces with Twitter.

Identi.ca interfaces well with twitter, so if you’re switching over you don’t need to worry about people missing your Tweets. Just add your twitter username and password to Identi.ca, and anything you post to identi.ca is copied to Twitter. Win / Win!

4) Identi.ca is Open Source.

Rather than being a closed platform like Twitter, Identi.ca is built on open source software and works with an open source license. This, combined with support for FOAF files*, Microformats*, and OAuth* means that other webmasters can set up their own micro-blogging systems, and fully integrate back to Identi.ca.

In short, Identi.ca takes sharing what you’re doing right now to a whole new level, and its smart business plan and open licensing agreements mean that it will continue to expand long after Twitter has died. If you’re just thinking about getting into the micro-blogging world, take Identi.ca for a spin. As with Facebook / Myspace, sometimes in the internet world “the second mouse gets the cheese”.

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Christmas Joomla Theme

2008-12-14T21:49:00.000-08:00

Rise of Technology is a Christmas joomla theme which will meet most sophisticated requirements as far as the look and feel of a website. The template’s lovely 3D color schemes and thought-out layout structure are just the reasons why this template is a top choice for all Joomla fans.

Supported features:
Joomla 1.5 Compatibility
3-columns Support
Various promo/logo area options
Various color schemes – blue/orange, green/orange, etc.
Two pre-defined sections (USER 1 and USER 2) for posting Latest News, Archive, Polls, etc.
Many other useful options

To make use of our new Rise of Technology Joomla 1.5 template you should follow a few easy steps:
1. Download the template and unpack it;
2. Upload it into your your-joomla1.5.x-installation/templates/ directory via FTP or by browsing the template’s zip archive from Extensions » Install/Uninstall and pushing the Upload File & Install button;
3. Set the template as default from Extensions » Template Manager, by selecting it and pushing the Default button.

Download Christmas Theme

10 Advanced PHP Tips To Improve Your Programming

2008-12-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

PHP programming has climbed rapidly since its humble beginnings in 1995. Since then, PHP has become the most popular programming language for Web applications. Many popular websites are powered by PHP, and an overwhelming majority of scripts and Web projects are built with the popular language.

Because of PHP’s huge popularity, it has become almost impossible for Web developers not to have at least a working knowledge of PHP. This tutorial is aimed at people who are just past the beginning stages of learning PHP and are ready to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty with the language. Listed below are 10 excellent techniques that PHP developers should learn and use every time they program. These tips will speed up proficiency and make the code much more responsive, cleaner and more optimized for performance.

1. Use an SQL Injection Cheat Sheet
2. Know the Difference Between Comparison Operators
3. Shortcut the else
4. Drop those Brackets
5. Favour str_replace() over ereg_replace() and preg_replace()
6. Use Ternary Operators
7. Memcached
8. Use a Framework
9. Use the Suppression Operator Correctly
10. Use isset instead of strlen

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Wordpress Plugins - A Look At Whats Available

2008-12-14T21:21:00.000-08:00

Wordpress first appeared in 2003 as is now used on thousands of websites. It is a simple open source blogging tool which is offered in two ways, either the hosted option or the free software download option.

Wordpress offers many additional features which are otherwise know as wordpress plugins. These wordpress plugins allow you to customise your blog to suit both the audience and the genre of your website.

There are so many wordpress plugins to choose from, if you are new to blogging you may not know which ones will work best for you. Here is a list and explanation on just some of the most popular wordpress plugins available.

Top Wordpress Plugins:

All in one SEO pack - this wordpress plug in helps optomize your titles for search engines as well as generating automatic META tags.

It gives you the opportunity to override titles and set any META keywords and description you want. Depending on the version of wordpress you are currently using ie 2.3 you can simply install this wordpress plugin and it will work straight away.

Akismet - this is a fantastic tool which helps sort out the clutter of spam. Once installed, this wordpress plugin will check all of your comments against the Akismet web service to analyze if they look like spam or something genuine, it then allows you to review what has been found in the comments secion of your wordpress blog so that you can decide if you want to delete it or not.

Wordpress Stats - although there are many ways to capture data and stats regarding your website, most offer too much information especially if you are new to blogging. The wordpress stats system has been specially designed to focus on the most popular information a blogger needs.

Twitter Tools - this plugin intergrates your Twitter account with your wordpress blog. Twitter is a free micro-blogging and social networking service.

Get Recent Comments - This plugin gives you full control over the aperance of excerpts of comments that are shown in your sidebar. You can determine the order, the number of excerpts and the length.

DMSGuestbook - This guestbook can be easily customized allowing you to change not only the color but allows you to set mandatory fields where a user must fill out certain information. You can fully manage the user entries and edit/remove posts before they are shown.

All In One Video Pack - This wordpress plugin offers every functionality you need for video and rich-media. It allows you to record/upload and import videos straight to your chosen post.

Each wordpress plugin has its own unique advantages and can really help to turn your blog into something user friendly. With so many plugins to choose from it is worth spending a bit of time searching through what is on offer and selecting the plugins that will benefit both you, your site and your readers.

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WordPress Is Tops for 2009

2008-12-14T21:15:00.000-08:00

WordPress 2.5 won .net magazine’s Open source application of the year for 2009 (issue 184). WordPress is an awesome blogging platform and CMS. It deserves all the accolades it receives.

Version 2.7 is better yet (I upgraded three blogs in the past day). Thanks a bunch, Matt. And congratulations.

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Open-Source Uru is Coming

2008-12-12T23:50:00.000-08:00

As for the announcement itself, I’m elated but not necessarily surprised. Given the pre-announcement, it seemed impossible for it to be truly bad news (i.e. “Uru’s dead, we’re keeping the body. Shoo”). It seemed equally impossible for it to be radically good news (i.e.”Valve has hired us to produce the next few Portal games as well as the rest of the Half Life series, Cyan’s set for life and Uru will return with all the ponies you can imagine”). Given the push for and interest in open-source, it’s good to see Cyan taking the initiative (relatively. Only a few months since it was first talked about often on the forums compared to the years it took for UCC to take hold).

It will not be easy. People will and do have wildly different expectations. Some see it as the paradise they’ve wanted. A place where no one needs to feel sidelined because there will be a place for everyone. Some see it as a failure of their dreams. A place which will likely have no Cyan content, at least for now. Still others see it as just a place to gather and have fun. I think those people will be the ones who see the greatest benefit from this new Uru. It won’t be those who are elated but likely over-estimating Cyan’s open-ness. It won’t be those fearing a shattered community. Those two sides, as well as many others, will likely fight. Particularly if we try to make the Uru we like THE Uru. No, the ones who will have the most fun will be the people who just gather, no matter where they are.

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New Launchpad plugins for Drupal

2008-12-12T01:40:00.000-08:00

Free software development is an essentially social activity and we’ve built Launchpad to help those interactions — both between people and projects — along the way.

By working on free software through Launchpad you build a picture not only of what you’ve done — reporting bugs, creating branches of code, etc. — but your team memberships can also show what roles you have in different free software communities.

Part of what we’ve been doing recently is to open Launchpad to make it far easier to use that information elsewhere; in particular, the web services API, the bug tracker plugin API and Launchpad becoming an OpenID provider.

Today we’re releasing two modules for Drupal 5.x under the AGPL:
openid-launchpad: delegate your Drupal site’s user authentication to Launchpad
openid-teams: assign Drupal roles to logged-in users based on their membership of specific Launchpad teams.

Using these modules, you can create a Drupal site that makes use of each person’s participation in your community, as reflected in Launchpad. For example, if you want to allow only members of a core development team to post release announcements to your project website all you need do is create a Drupal role with those permissions and then assign it to the Launchpad team of your project’s developers.

The Ubuntu Fridge news site is one of the first sites to use the modules. It passes user authentication to Launchpad and also grants an editor role to members of the Ubuntu Fridge Editors team in Launchpad.

To use the modules you’ll need to be running Drupal 5.x and also be using our modified version of the Drupal OpenID module (GPL). Full setup details are available in our help guide.

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Google Chrome: A Point of Departure

2008-12-12T01:24:00.000-08:00

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Chrome officially got ratcheted up to a 1.0 release earlier today. The feature set may be meager compared to Firefox (e.g.: no plugins, yet), but it's only a starting point. And not just for something to be decked out with plugins, either.

This all started with some thought about the whole concept of "small is beautiful" or "less is more" -- however you want to put it -- in programming. It's a good place to start, but you can't always stay there. Users badger the programmers for this or that pet feature, and before long what started as a lean-and-mean piece of work has become top-heavy and potentially unstable. And soon a competitor comes along, someone who's stuck with the original plan of Keep It Simple, Silly, and you're back to where you started.

Here's where I think open source can be a big help, and I'll start with an open source project that's been constantly accused of succumbing to unneeded bloat: Firefox. It's not hard to expand on the core functionality of Firefox by writing extensions, but throw in too many and problems can arise. The folks at Flock took the Firefox source code and added a whole slew of social-networking extensions that would nominally be accomplished through plugins, but integrated them into the core as cleanly and efficiently as possible. If you want all that stuff, pick Flock; if you want to go with the original, go with Firefox. And any fixes that benefit one can in theory (and, typically, in practice) benefit both.

I'm seeing a similar future for Chrome, too. Rather than have a one-size-fits-all version, the Chrome we're getting now is going to be a point of departure for other projects that see the browser as a malleable vehicle, not a fixed destination. The same could be said of any number of other programs that serve as a major focal point for open source activity: OpenOffice, for instance, already has some of this going on with Symphony.

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New WordPress 2.7 Paves the Way for WordPress Social Networks

2008-12-12T01:17:00.000-08:00

The popular open source blogging software WordPress has officially released version 2.7, a significant upgrade that makes huge improvements to the user interface, and, more importantly, according to founder Matt Mullenweg, the new code lays the groundwork for WordPress to expand further into the social networking realm.

Automattic, WordPress' parent company, has been working for to expand and integrate the social network features of the BuddyPress plugin ever since BuddyPress creator Andy Peatling joined Automattic earlier this year. While WordPress remains vague about its goals for BuddyPress, clearly, with competitor Movable Type already well on its way to creating an out-of-the-box social network tool, WordPress would like to offer something similar.

Mullenweg writes in the announcement of WordPress 2.7 that the new framework has stripped out the cruft of earlier releases and leaves a "foundation to build tomorrow's WordPress on, to express ideas we haven't been able to before."

Will tomorrow's WordPress include the ability to build your own Facebook? BuddyPress is already available as a development release, but it doesn't look like there will be any major changes or new features to coincide with today's WordPress update.

But for now at least WordPress fans can take advantage of the redesigned WordPress 2.7 interface which makes managing your blog quite a bit easier.

Of course the last time WordPress tinkered with the publishing interface (in version 2.5), the always vocal blogging community reacted negatively, calling it a step backwards. This time though, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who thinks the new interface is anything but stunning.

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WordPress 2.7: If You Don't Like It, Change It

2008-12-12T00:51:00.001-08:00

The last time WordPress - the popular open source blogging platform - changed their user interface, they got a reaction. And it wasn't positive. Even diehard fans were questioning the reasoning behind the changes, trying to figure out ways to work within the new construct, or simply throwing their hands up in despair. So, it comes as little surprise that the latest release, WordPress 2.7 - codenamed "Coltrane" - has had a great deal of time and energy focused on improving that interface. But could the WordPress development team win back the adoration of those angry users with yet another interface change?

If the initial reactions are any indication, the answer would be yes. Now, those same users who were hating WordPress 2.5 are gushing that WordPress 2.7 interface "reeks of pure awesome."

Personally, I experienced a similar reaction when I saw Coltrane demoed in front of the WordCamp Portland crowd in September. Jaws were dropping. I swear there were "Oohs," "Ahs," and spontaneous applause. (Which I guess is appropriate for a release named after a jazz legend.) Everyone - from new user to WordPress developer - was downright giddy.

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Tips to Improve Joomla Performance

2008-12-11T03:02:00.000-08:00

When you are using the Joomla content management system, the overall site performance could be affected by various factors. Moreover, if you have many site users, the page loading speed could be influenced by the simultaneous number of MySQL database queries.

In order to obtain the best results for the page loading speed (which is a key factor for the search engines rankings) and to maintain the best performance of your Joomla website, there are a few tips that could help you.

Enabling the Cache for Joomla

When you are using the Joomla content management system, the overall site performance could be affected by various factors. Moreover, if you have many site users, the page loading speed could be influenced by the simultaneous number of MySQL database queries. In order to obtain the best results for the page loading speed (which is a key factor for the search engines rankings) and to maintain the best performance of your Joomla website, there are a few tips that could help you.

The
recent studies show that Joomla is twice as fast when used with PHP 5.2.3 in comparison with PHP 4.4, as a consequence the use of the last PHP version (which is definitely improved) will always offer you the optimal Joomla performance.

If you turn on caching on the Cache tab from Joomla Global Configuration in Administration Panel, then static files or a cache of your website will be created. The file caching allows the system to find a certain page directly from hard disk and removes the delay induced by a MySQL query to retrieve the same page in the database. The speed of page loading will also be increased by enabling caching.

On the Cache tab, when enabling caching, you must not modify the default cache folder, but you can set a lower value for the cache time if you update the site contents often and a higher value if the content is changed rarely. There are also many modules from Joomla structure that support caching. It is recommended to enable caching for those modules. There are also components that improve the page caching process, such as Ircmaxell’s Page Cache.This component will have visible effects on page load speed in case of website with high traffic.

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Tips for Google CSE plugin for Drupal

2008-12-11T02:39:00.000-08:00

Drupal, there are a few things you can do to make life easier for your visitors:
Add some rewrite rules (to the .htaccess file) to redirect requests for the old search engine to the new one. This can help visitors who know how Drupal works and were typing their search manually, etc.

RewriteRule ^search$ /search/google [R=301,NC,L]
RewriteRule ^search/node$ /search/google [R=301,NC,L]
RewriteRule ^search/node/(.*)$ /search/google?query=$1 [R=301,NC,L]
RewriteRule ^search/taxonomy_search$ /search/google [R=301,NC,L]
RewriteRule ^search/taxonomy_search/(.*)$ /search/google?query=$1 [R=301,NC,L]
Disable the built-in search engine module to reduce memory overhead and speed up page requests.

Use some CSS to hide the google.com background image added to the search boxes:
input.form-text {
background-image: none !important;
}
If you have custom search boxes replace them with code that calls the Google CSE engine, i.e.:

Put together this can make the GoogleCSE almost(*) completely transparent to your visitors.

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Wordpress could face serious competition - from Microsoft

2008-12-11T02:13:00.000-08:00

Now before you begin laughing your asses off at me take a deep breath and get your Wordpress love back where it belongs. Calmed down? Good, now let’s get on with the info shall we.

According to Ed Bott Microsoft has entered the field of blogging platform software with it’s first generation release of Oxite. Of course folks will be quick to point out the fallacies of going with any first generation Microsoft anything. However this release of Oxite must be fairly stable since they are using it to power the MIX Online site.

From what I read on the Learn More About Oxite page the platform appears to be covering all the bases when it comes to a feature list. From being able to have seperate pages as well as your blog entries right up to supporting multi-author setups right out of the box.

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Upgrading to Wordpress 2.7

2008-12-11T02:03:00.000-08:00

Wordpress 2.7 has just been released. James is doing some testing on the upgrade and will apply it to all OM4 sites soon as the testing is finished.

There are a lot of new features that you will notice when using your dashboard that will make it faster and easier to update your website:
overall you can complete tasks faster (less clicks)
the Page Editor is customisable so you can put the buttons you use most frequently where you want them
your dashboard can be arranged with drag and drop
comments are now threaded and you can reply to comments from your dashboard

I’ve included a link to the Wordpress video at the end of this post if you want to see a demonstration.

When we first started working with Wordpress it was relatively new. Some people looked at me a bit strangely when they asked what we were building our web platform on and I said Wordpress. Even if they had heard of it, it was open source, and not everyone gets the idea of open source.

Wordpress has proven to be an exceptional platform for business websites.

One reason is that it is used by so many people. Over 3 million people downloaded version 2.6 (to install on their own server), and almost 5 million blogs run on Wordpress via Wordpress.com. With such a large user community, bugs get ironed out quickly. One of the more popular Wordpress plugins has been downloaded almost a million times.

According to Wordpress, for release 2.7 “over 150 people contributed code directly to the release, our highest ever, with many tens of thousands more participating in the polls, surveys, tests, mailing lists, and other feedback mechanisms the WordPress dev team used in putting this release together.”

So in hindsight, choosing to build our business website platform on Wordpress looks like a pretty good decision. By running on Wordpress, you will continue to benefit from the R&D and testing that goes into the platform, and we can focus on configuring it to work as a platform to run a small business online.

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Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 available and Google Chrome out of Beta

2008-12-10T22:25:00.000-08:00

Mozilla has announced Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for testing. Firefox 3.1 beta 3 is scheduled for release in February 2009. The final version will follow shortly after.

Like Google Chrome this version will have a private browsing mode and the javascript engine has been tuned for speed.

CNet tested Firefox's JavaScript benchmarks and according to them the new TraceMonkey engine was comparable to Chrome's new V8 JavaScript engine while PC Magazine ran the same tests and found Firefox's engine faster than Chrome but says the speed difference between the engines is quite minimal. It does seem, that Firefox 3.1 will be a speedier browsing experience than older FF versions which is great news for all of us using this browser of course.

News on the Google Chrome front appeared on Techcrunch, the browser will be taken out of Beta so Google must be pretty confident it is ready and there must be a serious amount of Chrome users.

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Microsoft squeezes out Oxite 'open source' blogger platform

2008-12-10T22:04:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has released alpha code for an "open source" blogging platform dubbed Oxite.

Redmond will be hoping the platform – which sounds like a spotty teen's best friend to us – will compete with the likes of market big boys Wordpress and Google’s Blogger.

But many will argue that now is an odd time for the firm to be developing its own blogging platform. However, Microsoft is on its somewhat kamikaze mission to become a force in the Web 2.0 world – whatever the cost.

The company’s developer evangelist Jeff Sandquist claimed that “Oxite, is an open source, standards compliant, and highly extensible content management platform that can run anything from blogs to big web sites.”

But, as we’ve previously reported, Microsoft’s CodePlex site, where the code was published, hasn’t exactly fared well when scrutinised about its open source claims.

Just last month Microsoft said its CodePlex site would be revised before the year's out to signpost genuinely open source projects, after the company got itself in hot water.

Sandquist said the code, which was built using ASP.NET Model View Controller, currently on offer is merely a “lightweight sample” for developers to play with.

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Google's 'Native Client' is a Go on Mac OS X

2008-12-09T22:53:00.000-08:00

Google has released an alternative to Microsoft's ActiveX, the component object model (COM) used by developers to create software components with particular functions or sets of functions. The tool will run on Mac OS X, web experts say, allowing developers to write more powerful applications that can work directly with the operating system, rather than through a browser.

Reports say that Native Client looks similar to Microsoft's ActiveX technology, but it also resembles an Adobe technology, called Alchemy. Alchemy is a research project that allows users to compile C and C++ code that is targeted to run on the open-source ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2).

Native Client was released by Google engineers under an open-source software license. While still in the early stages of development, Google says it can help web developers create faster and more responsive web apps. For example, Native Client could be used to speed up a photo-sharing website. Memeo Share, an app we covered in one of our weekly Mac picks, is akin to the concept.

Google spokesman Brad Chen wrote on a company blog that "Modern PCs can execute billions of instructions per second, but today's web applications can access only a small fraction of this computational power," suggesting the imminent adoption of the Native Client sometime in the future.

Still, Google doesn't expect the software to be widely used just yet. "Native Client is a research technology, so the goal of this release is to expose it to the research, security and open source communities for their feedback and contributions," a Google spokeswoman said.

Robert Hansen, CEO of security consultancy SecTheory, chimed in adding that "Google is clearly reaching for ways to take more control over the desktop, the web browser and user content. Native Client appears to be another way to reach into people's computers and use as many resources as possible. It's not a matter of whether it can be done. It's a question of if it should be done. We haven't even solved yesterday's problems yet, let alone another ActiveX clone."

Apple has more ambitious plans in tapping unused processing power. Those include a certain "OpenCL" standard, that has been recently ratified and fully disclosed. The open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors should enable developers to take better advantage of existing hardware (GPUs, CPUs) to deliver faster software performance for the end-user.

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Zend Delivers New PHP Engine for IBM Servers

2008-12-09T22:31:00.000-08:00

IBM and Zend last week announced the availability of a new PHP package, called Zend Core for IBM, which brings iSeries shops an inexpensive and easy-to-use tool for building dynamic, database-driven Web applications. While it’s not the first version of the open-source, server-side scripting language for the iSeries, the new PHP implementation brings advantages, such as technical support through the newly announced Zend Network, and the choice of using either DB2/400 or the embedded Cloudscape database.

PHP is one of the most popular languages (possibly the most popular) for creating and maintaining Web sites. According to a PHP usage survey for July, more than 21 million Internet domains are currently running PHP. This is out of a total of 68 million current Internet domains in the known universe, according to the Web site watchers at Netcraft. PHP, which is closely integrated with the Apache Web server and can run as an Apache module, is most commonly deployed with Apache, which powers 70 percent of the world’s Web sites, or about 48 million domains.

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haXe, an open source programming language

2008-12-09T22:25:00.000-08:00

haXe (pronounced as hex) is an open source programming language.

While most of the other languages are bound to their own platform (Java to the JVM, C# to .Net, ActionScript to the Flash Player), haXe is a multiplatform language.

It means that you can use haXe to target the following platforms :

Javascript : You can compile a haXe program to a single .js file. You can access the typed browser DOM APIs with autocompletion support, and all the dependencies are resolved at compilation time.

Flash : You can compile a haXe program to a .swf file. haXe can compile for Flash Players 6 to 10, with either “old” Flash<8 API or newest AS3/Flash9+ API. haXe offers very good performance and language features to develop Flash content.

PHP : You can compile a haXe program to .php files. This enable you to use a high level strictly-typed language such as haXe while keeping full compatibility with your existing server platform and libraries.

NekoVM : You can compile a haXe program to NekoVM bytecode. This can be used for server-side programming such as dynamic webpages (using mod_neko for Apache) and also for commandline or desktop applications, since the NekoVM can be embedded and extended with some other DLL.

C++ : Currently in testing, with the right build of haXe from Hugh Sanderson, you can now output your haXe applications to pure C++ source code, complete with makefiles.

The idea behind haXe is to let the developer choose the best platform to do a given job. In general, this is not easy to do because every new platform comes with its own programming language.

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Creating the Student Blog in Drupal using Cloning

2008-12-09T22:19:00.000-08:00

Blogging in Drupal encompasses a range of learning activities. When incorporated into a course as a regular part of the coursework, blogs provide an incredibly powerful means of tracking student growth. For students who are disorganized (that is, students whose backpacks resemble tumbleweed), the blog can also be an organizational tool. Most importantly, though, blogs create a record of student work that can be accessed at any time. As such, blogs provide a convenient window into both process (how students work) and product (the end results of student work). In this article Bill Fitzgerald, we will see how to create a student blog.

For the purpose of this article we will clone the already existing Teacher Blog and create the Student Blog.

Setting Up the Student Blog

To create the student blog, we need to do two things:

- Give users in the student role permissions over the blog post content type.
- Clone the teacher_blog view, and edit it to display student blog posts.

Assigning Permissions

To allow students to blog in the site, we need to allow users in the student role the ability to create blog posts. Click the Administer | User management | Roles link, or navigate to admin/user/roles. Click the link to edit permissions for the student role.

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Drupal: Making Life Easier with Installation Profiles

2008-12-09T22:15:00.000-08:00

This is the first in a series of blog posts we'll be writing about Drupal, the open-source Web content management platform that I have come to know and love over the past year or so. If you have used Drupal, if you are evaluating different CMS solutions out there, or if you don't know what I'm talking about, read on and keep checking back for more posts about this popular and powerful community-driven software.

For this first post, I will skip over the question "What is Drupal?" and let you visit drupal.org to get some basic information for yourself. Once you have that, come on back...

OK. You're back. Let's get started.

So, what's the first thing you do with software? You install it. Right! This process for Drupal has a few requirements, which I will gloss over in this post, but if you've run any LAMP-based software, you should be good to go (see "Helpful Links" below). Now, whether you're new to Drupal or you've gone thru the installation process many (MANY) times, you should know that Drupal has a very helpful aspect built right into its core: Installation Profiles.

An installation profile "turns on" functionality and pre-configures a Drupal installation so that, instead of starting with a blank slate after install, you have a customized installation tailored to your needs and closer to being production-ready. For a developer, this is an ideal scenario - installation profiles help us eliminate redundancy in our work. Because, really, who wants to do the same ten or twenty tasks every time you start a new project? I sure as heck don't. Also, for a Drupal newcomer (welcome!), finding an installation profile can be helpful to jump-start your site.

Drupal has a directory of contributed installation profiles here. You may find a helpful profile in this list that fits the kind of site you want to build. However, if you don't find the perfect profile, or if you find one that's good but outdated, don't despair! Look for a similar profile, or go ahead and download the outdated one. Install Drupal using that profile, play around with it, and look at the list of modules used. From that pre-configured site, even if you don't end up keeping the installation, you will have an idea of the settings and modules you will want to use on your actual site.

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Microsoft to relaunch Live.com as a Facebook style social networking site

2008-12-09T21:51:00.000-08:00

Microsoft will relaunch its Live.com search site as a search + social networking site in something that looks like Facebook.

The new Live.com will be focused on social interactions around Windows Live Messenger (previously MSN Messenger) complete with user profiles. Tightly integrated into the new site will be Hotmail/ Live.com email as well.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft will make it easier for users to maintain a single list of online friends, from which they can address emails, send instant messages and view activity updates through the new Facebook-like “feed” feature that shows, for example, new photos that friends have posted online and short messages they’ve broadcast through Twitter.

Facebook or FriendFeed style, users will be able to import content from external sources such as Flickr, or any service that has an RSS feed.

Microsoft is claiming that the changes are in response to “the proliferation of online communications services…frustrating many users by forcing them to create and manage instant messaging buddy lists, email address books and social network friend lists in information silos.”

It’s a nice line, but this screams social networking wannabe, not that that’s a bad thing given Microsoft has been sitting on a massive untapped user base in instant messaging which it has so far failed to really offer much extra to. Whether this is a serious challenge to Facebook is yet to be seen, but finally Microsoft may be getting serious about social networking, and while we may be naturally skeptical about their changes, Windows Live IM users are over 100 million, and even if they convert a small percentage, they’re the sort of numbers you can confidently apply the label FTW to.

Read more...

Microsoft launches open-source blogging platform

2008-12-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

On Monday, Microsoft launched Oxite, an open-source blogging platform.

However, the software maker was quick to underline that the product is aimed at developers and not intended to directly compete with popular blogging software such as WordPress or Movable Type.

Microsoft posted the Oxite code on its CodePlex Web site on Friday and made an official announcement on Monday. The software, described as an alpha release, is available under the Microsoft Public License, one of Microsoft’s OSI-certified open-source licenses.

Oxite is a standards-compliant, extensible content-management system designed to support either blogs or larger Web sites, Microsoft said. The platform includes support for features such as pingbacks, trackbacks, anonymous or authenticated commenting, gravatars (globally recognized avatars), and RSS feeds at any page level, the company said.

Users can create and edit a set of pages on a site, add customized HTML into pages, and support multiple blogs on a single site.

Oxite is also able to integrate with Microsoft developer software such as ASP.Net MVC, Visual Studio Team Suite, and Background Services Architecture. The project began as a way of demonstrating the capabilities of ASP.Net MVC to developers, Microsoft said.

The Web site for Mix Online was built using Oxite, and Microsoft is providing the Mix Online Web site code for developers to learn from. Mix Online is the online community centered on Microsoft’s Mix Web developer conference.

Oxite is not a direct competitor to existing, established blogging systems, nor is it intended to challenge Microsoft’s own SharePoint, which includes content-management-system capabilities, according to Oxite project coordinator Erik Porter.

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WordPress.com Goes Gravatar Crazy

2008-12-08T23:25:00.000-08:00

The old avatar tool in your WordPress.com profiles has been replaced with your current Gravatar (left.) If you click on that icon you’ll be taken to Gravatar.com (and automatically logged into your account) where you can easily change your image (right). You can upload an image from your computer, paste in a link to an image on the internet, or even take a picture of yourself using your computers webcam. Cropping and rating your images are as easy as ever. After you finish your new image will automatically attach to your email address (assuming you only have one email address on your account,) or you will be presented with a simple-as-pie list of your email addresses, and you can attach the new image to any or all of them! Just close the Gravatar window when you’re done.

Of course all of the standard Gravatar features are available to you. Upload as many images as you wish, switch them as often as you like, add as many email addresses as you want to your account, and more features still in the works.

If you find that you have an “old” image for your Gravatar, simply click on the link to change it and then click on the “Use your last WordPress.com Avatar” link to get the new one back. There are bound to be some small hiccups here and there. Just let Support know when something doesn’t work quite right, and we’ll get everything ironed out in no time.

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WordPress.com gets WordPress 2.7 features

2008-12-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

Automattic has now implemented the WP 2.7 edition on their WordPress.com blogging portal.

The final version of WP 2.7 is not yet released though users can get their hands on a near release RC edition.

This hints at the possibility of near future release of version 2.7 for the self hosted version users.

WordPress 2.7 is a major update to this popular open source blogging platform. Some users might admit that it could have been the version 3 of WordPress.

The back end has been massively updated to make it more user friendly. They have totally revamped the editing screen compared to previous version.

We have been using the RC version of WP 2.7 since quite sometime and we like what we see.

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Why Joomla Web Designing is a Better Option?

2008-12-08T22:53:00.000-08:00

Joomla CMS is the latest rage in website designing. It is getting popularity due to its easy accessibility and dynamic features.

Hurray! I just completed creating a new website and that too ALL By my Own. Well thats the kind of freedom Joomla web designing has provided you. Your website will look and feel exactly the way you like it. You need not worry about designers fussing over your ideas, or the exuberant cost that you have to pay for good website designing.

Joomla Web Designing is a the easiest way so for being introduced for CMS (Content Mangement system of a website). For those who are still unaware of what Joomla exactly is, let me tell you, that Joomla is an open source content management system, that is used to build a website and used henceforth, for any editing that the website might require.

Small and Medium sized businesses that develop a medium sized website, are really really fond of this easy to use web designing technique. It is most suitable for those websites, that have a lot of content in their site, which needs regular changing and editing. Corporate websites, institutions, portals, and several others have used Joomla we designing successfully and have also declared it as the best web designing tool so far.

The reason why Joomla has been recognized with the best tool award is that it has an active community working for it and supporting it continuously. There are many plug-ins and extensions that come along with the Joomla package, to expand the functionalities of this CMS system. With Joomla you can make a simple 3-4 page website (the way I did for an experiment) or you can also create a forum or a blog from it. Manage client contacts, online library of documents, podcasts, calendars, gallery, booking system or videos.

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The Pros and Cons of Using Joomla!

2008-12-08T22:48:00.000-08:00

For those of you who have not heard of Joomla!, it is a content management system that allows one to build a complex web portal without the need of advanced web programming knowledge. You download it, install it, add a template then enrich the CMS with extensions. This way you can transform your site into a webshop, link directory, photo gallery and pretty much anything you set your mind to. But like any other CMS, Joomla! is not perfect.

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Content Search SEO Plugin for Joomla

2008-12-08T22:29:00.000-08:00

A very useful joomla search SEO Plugin, it is based on the official search content plugin, and add some seo features. It will generate page title, meta description and meta keywords dynamicly according to the search keywords and search results.

Download plugin..

Some Interesting Joomla Facts

2008-12-08T21:50:00.000-08:00

Joomla is an award winning open source content management system (CMS) that allows users to rapidly build websites even without any skill in web designing. Joomla acts as an easy interface that separates the complexities of updating web content from the novice user. It can help in adding features to an existing site like Blog, Forum, Gallery, Shopping Cart, guestbook etc. Joomla organizes website content as Sections, Categories, and Content Items and this data is stored in a mySQL database.

The Joomla Template

Joomla is an award winning open source content management system (CMS) that allows users to rapidly build websites even without any skill in web designing. Though it is open source it nevertheless comes built-in with a lot of free and commercial extensions. With Joomla you don’t need specialists to maintain web pages, as in the case of HTML. In this way, Joomla has created a revolution in the world of web designing. Let us see more about this software in the following article.

Joomla acts as an easy interface that separates the complexities of updating web content from the novice user. It can help in adding features to an existing site like Blog, Forum, Gallery, Shopping Cart, guestbook etc. Joomla organizes website content as Sections, Categories, and Content Items and this data is stored in a mySQL database. What joomla does is it acts as a graphic user interface for this database. Joomla template uses HTML with PHP hooks that contains information on where particular parts of the content should be placed. Joomla’s core engine uses this information from the database and uses it in the template file to produce a webpage.

A Joomla template is divided into a number of zones. Each zone has a position name called module positions E.g. left, right, top, bottom, user1, user2, etc. The template designer can assign the modules to a certain position by adjusting the module parameters. In this way the we can define to which zone the module will belong to. The user can then assign some content to one of these positions. So all you need to know is how to install Joomla to create a free template and build your own website. You will never need HTML knowledge or help from a web designer.

Joomla has something called Components which are actually add-on programs that add additional functionality whose administrative features are integrated in the Joomla Administrator. Another Joomla term is Mambot, a script that is run just before rendering the content for doing any final changes before outputting your website.

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Open docx Files in Firefox Without Office 2007

2008-12-08T02:00:00.000-08:00

OpenXML viewer plug-in (download link) allows you to read docx files inside the Firefox browser just like any other HTML web page while retaining all the text formatting and layout.
Moreover, there’s a command-line version of OpenXML viewer (download link) available for converting docx documents into HTML files that you may then open in any other web browser.

The OpenXML Document Viewer project is an outcome of the feedback from participants of a series of Document Interoperability Initiative workshops. The main goal of the OpenXML Document Viewer project is to create software tools, plus guidance, showing how documents created using Open XML Format can be translated to HTML. As a result, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Solutions Integrators & Mobile Solution providers can use these tools to enable their customers view Open XML documents on heterogeneous platforms and browser applications. The OpenXML Viewer is available under the open source Microsoft Public License (MS-PL), which allows anyone to use the tools, submit bugs and feedback, or contribute to the project.

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Data Services Made Easy for Adobe Flex Applications

2008-12-08T01:28:00.000-08:00

The approach discussed here provides a more intuitive solution to generate ActionScript classes on the Flex side that are direct counterparts of the enterprise object classes in the back-end server. This way the Flex environment just becomes an extension of the back-end server and the Flex UI gets access to back-end objects. The infrastructure to make remote calls to the back-end server is taken care of by the framework that marshals objects to the back-end to make service calls and un-marshals the results to ActionScript objects transparently so the developer can concentrate just on the UI logic.

Adobe provides Flex Data Services (FDS) that also provides a robust data services solution but costs a huge license fee and ties to proprietary Adobe technology. The new approach discussed here provides a clean, efficient way for back-end integration based on open source technologies like e4x and XML. This approach is suitable for any project implementing Flex for UI with J2EE/Web Services at the back-end. Moreover, this approach doesn't need to be deployed on the server side, which makes it a better solution than FDS while programming the UI for already-deployed production applications.

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Sun's JavaFX Scripting Tools Counter Ajax, Flex

2008-12-08T01:15:00.000-08:00

Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: JAVA) is launching its JavaFX scripting language for building rich Internet applications to rival those built with Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE)'s Flex, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Silverlight, and open source Ajax. It will also answer a need for flexible, adaptable user interfaces for smartphones and other mobile devices.

JavaFX won't replace other ways of building Java user interfaces, such as the Java programmer's Swing component set. Instead, it will sit on top of Swing and other Java components to make it easier for designers, content creators, and scripting language users -- a less programming literate group than Java Enterprise Edition developers -- to build interactive Web applications. With JavaFX, a Web site visitor can click on a particular subject on a Web page, watch it fade, and get the next desired information presentation filling his screen through a background reloading process.

"This is the biggest innovation to come to the Java platform in years. It's really allowing the Web design community, the Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator users, to come into the fold," said Eric Klein, VP of Java marketing, in an interview.

"It brings us into the same space as Adobe Flex and (open source) Ajax," he added.

As a scripting language, JavaFX will have simplified syntax and logic to build the common menus, buttons, and interactive elements of a Web application interface. Beneath the surface, JavaFX will be invoking Swing and Java application logic to deliver what the end user wants. In part, the Sun move is an acknowledgement of the usefulness of Perl, Python, and PHP, all open source Web scripting languages that are often used by those who have adapted to the loosely coupled techniques of Web development and fall short full Java programming skills.

Scripting languages are both easier to learn and less stringent in what types of data may be used with them. Java is strongly typed; when Java logic calls for a variable, a compiler checks to see that only a strictly defined type of data is used with the statement, such as a five-digit number for a ZIP code. While the characteristic provides safeguards, it can make it more difficult to get dissimilar parts of a Web site to work together.

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WordPress.com gets WordPress 2.7 features

2008-12-08T01:12:00.000-08:00

How To: Integrating Amazon CDN in 4 Simple Steps

2008-12-08T01:04:00.000-08:00

4 Steps to Integrate Amazon CloudFront

We aren't going to focus on the exact coding required to integrate with CloudFront -- Amazon does a fine job of this themselves. What we want is to explain the steps you would take and point out things that you need to be aware of before taking the next step of actually getting started.

Here are the steps at a glance:
Get and set up Amazon S3 and CloudFront accounts
Create your Amazon S3 bucket
Create your distribution and get domain name
Decide what you want to use CloudFront for and create the appropriate links

Step 1: Setting Up your Amazon S3 and CloudFront Accounts

To access any web service AWS offers, you must first create an AWS account. This account is required to use any of the AWS products. Signing up provides you with a couple of access key identifiers (Access Key ID and Secret Access Key) which are required to sign up for S3 and CloudFront.

The Access Key ID is used to identify yourself as the true sender of requests and the Secret Access Key is a secure key that only you see. Because the Access Key is not a secure key, you create a digital signature using your secret key that helps confirm you are the true requester.

You will need to place these keys somewhere in code files to be used when coding to talk to the web services for either S3 or CloudFront.

Once you have the AWS account, you can then sign up for both Amazon S3 and CloudFront.

You need to sign up for Amazon S3 because this is where you will store your objects for CloudFront to access (your Origin Server).

Step 2: Creating your Amazon S3 Bucket

Now you are getting into the coding aspect of setting up this service. You can develop your applications in any number of programming languages and access the Amazon Web Services. Amazon provides a number of language specific toolkits to help you work with their web services -- so you aren't starting from scratch. Toolkits for PHP, Java, C# and Perl are available for helping you integrate S3 web service requests.

Read More..

Drupal better than Wordpress??

2008-12-05T23:17:00.000-08:00

Couple of days ago, there is a comment about why one commentator had moved to Drupal from Wordpress.

And coincidentally, I came across 1 article from Drupal blog, where one blog moved to Drupal from Wordpress due to performance issue.

So is Wordpress that bad?? Full of spams & is not scallable??

On the first claim, I see it merely as a frustration with the number of spams, and no statistical evident to support his claim. I’ve been a Wordpress user for 1.7 years. Along the way I got 75k spams (not much for certain blogs), but Akismet works well protecting my blog. So no fuss here.. The spam goes to ‘thrash’ directly.

1 thing that needs to keep in mind is, Wordpress is the most widely used CMS. Due to its popularity, which means more blogs built with its platform, compared to its nearest competitor; and hence there are huge chances for spammers to take advantage over it by inventing different ways of flooding the blog with spams (don’t you want to invent 1 thing and impact more things than what you could do with the second most thing).

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Five good programming habits in PHP

2008-12-05T22:19:00.000-08:00

Just like any language, developers can write code in PHP that ranges in quality from truly awful to very good. Learn good programming habits that can help you bridge the productivity gap.

Depending on whom you ask, the difference between a good developer and an excellent developer, in terms of productivity, is a factor of 10 to 20. An excellent developer is more productive because of his experience and good habits. When poor programming habits sneak into your code, they're a drain on productivity. This article demonstrates some good programming habits that can make you a better programmer.

In addition to enabling you to build code more productively, these habits can help you build code sustainable for an application's lifetime. Any code you write is likely to spend most of its lifetime in maintenance; application maintenance is a large expense. Establishing good coding habits will enhance design factors like modularity, and your code will be easier to understand and, thus, easier and cheaper to maintain.

Bad coding habits seem to accompany defects in code and can cause code to be difficult to change without introducing new defects. The following five good habits, when applied to your PHP code, will help you avoid these pitfalls:

1. Use good naming.
2. Take smaller bites.
3. Document your code.
4. Handle error conditions.
5. Never, ever, copy and paste.

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Google, Wordpress Also Forcing Hex Code Takedowns?

2008-12-05T22:16:00.000-08:00

Digg isn't the only major website to have forced users to remove a banned HD-DVD hex code: Google is doing it too.

On April 27, an unnamed user received a takedown notice from Google stating that one of his publicly-available Google Notebook pages contained material that infringed a copyright. The material? A sequence of hex codes used for decrypting HD-DVD movies. His notebook item linked to a Digg page covering the banned code.

Google's note stated that it would delete the user's entire notebook if the offending entry was not removed by April 30. Google also noted that it was doing this in compliance with the Digital Milennium Copyright Act, in response to a takedown notice it had received. Interestingly, the Google email stated that the notice they'd received would be posted to ChillingEffects.org. (The C&D notice appears to be this one.)

The user started a WordPress blog and posted the takedown notice, along with the offending code. As of today that blog is itself gone, with a note saying that the authors of the blog have deleted it. However, you can still see it in Google's cache -- for now. Was it removed in response to a takedown notice from WordPress? Let us know if you have information on this.

In the meantime, it appears that Google has not yet made good on its threat. The offending notebook page -- including the banned code -- is still online.

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WordPress.com Snags Pre-release Features

2008-12-05T21:55:00.000-08:00

Popular blogging software WordPress's latest version, a JavaScript-heavy, major update, has officially been released to the WordPress.com site. Millions of bloggers now automatically have access to the new features before the official release. Those who host their own copy of WordPress can nevertheless see the new version by downloading the preview version.

By upgrading the WordPress.com site, Automattic, the company behind WordPress, is signaling that it thinks the latest version of the open source software is ready for general use. The full release of the installable version is expected next week.

Among the largest changes is the updated, Ajaxified dashboard. Modules can be dragged around to organize the page. Plus, there is quick access to common tasks, such as writing posts and replying to comments.

Read More..

Open-source Developers Set out Software Road Map for 2020

2008-12-05T21:20:00.000-08:00

A group of open-source software advocates set out a road map for the software industry through 2020 at the Open World Forum conference in Paris on Tuesday.

The authors of the report, "2020 FLOSS Roadmap", made a number of predictions about the role of free, libre and open-source software (FLOSS) in 2020, and 80 recommendations for the industry. Their use of the French word "libre" (free as in unfettered) clears up the ambiguity inherent in the English word "free," which can also mean without cost.

They painted a rosy vision of 2020 in which FLOSS will have entered the mainstream of the software industry and contributed to reducing the digital divide between rich and poor. Social networks will rely on ubiquitous, open cloud-computing services and will allow people to interact not just with friends, but also with governments and businesses, they said. CIOs wary of vendor lock-in will champion the use of FLOSS, and such software will be at the heart of green data centers and other business models with low ecological impacts, they said.

Reaching this computing nirvana, however, will require action -- and not just by bearded geeks. Investors, legislators, educators, electors and even consumers also have a role to play, according to the report's authors.

Governments must favor open standards and open services, they said. This is not just a matter of ideology, but also of necessity if data is to be exchanged between different services and systems.

This requires a stable and neutral legal context in which a clear definition of open standards and services can be made and imposed, they said. Clear legal frameworks could also help avoid the proliferation of software licenses, they said.

Investors, whether state or private, should fund research leading to the development of strategic FLOSS technologies, and governments and businesses should set up academic and professional training programs to educate a new generation of software developers about FLOSS.

There are some risks ahead, said the authors, including experts from Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Spain and the U.S., although the majority of them are French.

Among those risks, the use of cloud-computing capacity on the scale required by some government systems will result in an over-reliance on a small group of powerful suppliers. That could signal a return to the era of monopolies in some markets, with the risk that entire countries could be held ransom by their service providers, the authors warned. In addition, organizations unable to pay the price for these elite services could be left running on unreliable, or unsecure, second-class systems.

Read more..

Magento is a new open-source eCommerce platform

2008-12-03T01:50:00.000-08:00

Magento is a new open-source eCommerce platform that has a main goal of providing webmasters or online store owners with a remarkably wide range of customization and fine-tuning capabilities.

The requirement for every enterprise in implementing e-commerce solutions is so diverse that flexibility and scalability play a very important role and Magento is a platform, which offers flexibility and unprecedented control

Looking for magento developer? You have found the right place.
We have team expert magento developers who keep themselves updated with upcoming features in magento and guarantees to serve with their technological expertise.

Our Magento e Commerce Customization services include:

Magento e Commerce Design & Development
Magento Themes Design
Customized Magento Themes Design & Integration
Magento Themes Development based on existing design
Website Development / Online Store Development using Magento
Marketing Promotion
Search Engine Optimization for Online Store using Magento
Custom Landing Page Design
Buttons, Widgets and Special Effects
Payment Gateway Integration
Shipping Methods
CMS pages
Magneto Skinning
Magento Store Management Training
Magento Backend Training

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Google Chrome Browser To Support Customization

2008-12-02T02:07:00.000-08:00

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has launched an effort to make it possible for developers to offer ad-blocking and other extensions for Chrome, a move that would give the Google Web browser the same level of customization as Mozilla Firefox.

The ability to install third-party applications that add capabilities chosen by users, but not provided by Mozilla, is a key reason for the open source browser's popularity. Google is apparently borrowing from that playbook in proposing the extension system to Chromium, the open source project behind the development of Chrome.

Google's proposal was introduced over the weekend in a blog post from Aaron Boodman, a Google programmer working on Chrome. The design document outlines areas that would have to be addressed, such as application programming interfaces to connect extensions to the Chrome engine.

Under the heading "use cases," Google lists some types of extensions that the company would like to support in Chrome, such as ad and flash blockers. Google makes its money from selling Web advertising but has decided not to ignore two of the most popular Firefox extensions. Other third-party apps Google says it would support include bookmarking/navigation tools, download helpers, and privacy and parental controls.

Having an add-on system from Chrome tops users' wish list. "If I can't even add a third-party extension, this browser won't stay long on my computer," one person wrote on the Chromium forum.

Google did not set a timetable for releasing an extension system for Chrome, but the design documentation for Chromium developers indicates the search engine has already started to work on the technology.

Read More..Google's proposal was introduced over the weekend in a blog post from Aaron Boodman, a Google programmer working on Chrome. The design document outlines areas that would have to be addressed, such as application programming interfaces to connect extensions to the Chrome engine.

Under the heading "use cases," Google lists some types of extensions that the company would like to support in Chrome, such as ad and flash blockers. Google makes its money from selling Web advertising but has decided not to ignore two of the most popular Firefox extensions. Other third-party apps Google says it would support include bookmarking/navigation tools, download helpers, and privacy and parental controls.

Having an add-on system from Chrome tops users' wish list. "If I can't even add a third-party extension, this browser won't stay long on my computer," one person wrote on the Chromium forum.

Google did not set a timetable for releasing an extension system for Chrome, but the design documentation for Chromium developers indicates the search engine has already started to work on the technology.

Read More..

Drupal Wins Two Awards For Best CMS Of 2008

2008-12-02T01:51:00.000-08:00

Drupal the open source CMS system has this year scooped two separate prestigious awards for Best CMS system of 2008, picking up both The Open Source CMS Award for 2008 along with the Packt Publishing Best PHP Open Source CMS for 2008.

The Drupal Association has announced that Drupal has won two prestigious Packt Publishing 2008 Open Source CMS Awards this week - the Overall 2008 Open Source CMS Award and the Best PHP Open Source CMS. This marks the second consecutive year that Drupal has won Packt Publishing’s Overall Open Source CMS award. In addition, on Monday, Packt Publishing recognized leading Drupal contributor Earl Miles as a 2008 Open Source CMS Most Valued Person (MVP). Drupal won the awards in both the popular vote and the judges selection.

Read More...

Ways to edit Joomla templates

2008-12-02T01:46:00.000-08:00

You must have read a lot about editing a Joomla template. Here is how actually you can do this.

Prior to actually editing Joomla templates, you need to ask yourself why do you want to change or edit it. PinPoint what you actually want to change. Once you have come out with a conclusion, you can start off with your task.

Steps to follow:

Make a copy:
The wisest thing to do when editing the original Joomla templates is to make a copy of the original template. This will help you a lot in changing the original templates. There are many reasons available online for this.

Change the images:
When using Joomla templates; you would like to change some of the images that are already used as well as logos with your own. This is very easy to do. You don’t have to do much work when changing your images. In fact, you need to spend money when changing the whole of template to match your images. In case, you replace images, the best thing to do is to replace these with images of the same size.

Changing the content:
The content and the design of Joomla templates is completely separated. The content is actually present in the file ‘index.php’ and the design is in one or more of the CSS-files.

Change the style:
You need to change the CSS files. Here, you may have to edit more than one CSS files.

Changing Joomla templates is not easy if you follow all the instructions mentioned above.

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How to build a better RSS feed for your Joomla Blog

2008-12-02T01:29:00.000-08:00

If you have already worked with Joomla, then you must be knowing about its’ syndication function. In case, you are not, you can go and publish the module known as ‘syndication’. However, you must have also seen it on the FrontPage and after an all-new Joomla installation.

Here are some ways to improve your Joomla Blog feeds:

- First, you can use a superb component known as DS-Syndication.
- DS-syndication is installed just as a normal component and thereafter comes with some superb features such as a button maker for all your RSS Icons.
- See how to get to the screen and then think of using some of the settings.
- Here, you will get a huge screen with lots of settings.
- You would get a lot of settings to choose from.
- The settings you get are as given below:
- RSS Type:
You can either leave this on set it to RSS2.0.
- Number of messages:
Set to what you exactly want. If it is for SEO purpose, opt for a number such as 12 or highest.
- FrontPage Only:
Try setting it to a ‘No’. This should be the case unless you really want a special FrontPage feed.
- Section:
This is where you can actually make a difference. Here, you need to opt for a section you have created for blogging.
- Exclusion:
In case, you really like, you can exclude a category from getting into the feed.

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Giving up on a local WordPress install on Mac.

2008-12-01T01:26:00.000-08:00

WordPress is nice, but setting up a local instance in a nonstandard environment is more trouble than it's worth. WordPress was designed for shared-hosting environments that have a classic "LAMP" application stack preconfigured (Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP). It was specifically not designed to run on a wide variety of server environments.

Fortunately, for the kind of work I want to do (blog template design) there are acceptable workarounds. But this latest encounter with the MySQL and PHP ecosystems has left me, once again, sorely tempted to just build my own blogging system.

Read on if you want to geek out on some of the details. If you just want the conclusion, it is: use a standard virtual machine (VM) or set up a sandbox blog in a shared environment. Either one of those will work well enough, and the VM approach is probably the closest you'll get to a "safe" install. Unless you're being paid for the setup time, I strongly advise against trying to make it work locally in anything but a stock configuration.

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PHP V5 and Object-Oriented Programming

2008-12-01T01:18:00.000-08:00

"When PHP V5 was released in 2004, it was a giant leap forward compared to what PHP V4 provided in regards to object-oriented programming (OOP) and design. It added several needed improvements, such as class visibility, proper constructors and destructors, type hinting, and a class-reflection API. It opened the door for advanced objected-oriented programming in PHP, and allowed you to implement many design patterns much easier, along with better design classes and APIs.

"In PHP V5.3, many incremental additions have been made to enhance OOP. These improvements have been in the realm of syntax additions and performance improvements. To begin, let's look at the new features available with static methods and members.

"Improved static method and member handling
One useful addition made in PHP V5 was the ability to specify a method or member of a class as static (PHP V4 did support static access to methods and members of class, but not the ability to specify that the method or member is designed for static access). Static access is especially useful for implementing the singleton design pattern, where only one instance of class exists."

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Installing Drupal on Ubuntu (Gutsy) in a few easy steps

2008-12-01T01:06:00.000-08:00

Drupal is a great solution if you’re looking for a CMS system. In order to sneakily install LAMP with the minimum of fuss, I usually just install mod php and mod mysql (the apache related modules for php and mysql respectively) and that triggers pretty much everything else to be pulled automatically! So, from the command line…

sudo aptitude install libapache2-mod-php5

sudo aptitude install php5-mysql

… should give you Apache, MySQL and PHP in one fell swoop. Just to be sure that all is well run the following install commands

sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo apt-get install php5
sudo apt-get install php5-mysql

Then download and install Drupal (version 6.6 at time of writing) at http://drupal.org and follow their install guide.

One final tip, if there’s any problem with your apache installation’s configuration, you can install phpMyAdmin in order to plough through these problems as it will supply its own configuration. For example, I got the database configuration error when I was trying to connect to my database for the first time using Drupal

“Your web server does not appear to support any common database types. Check with your hosting provider to see if they offer any databases that Drupal supports.”

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Drupal in Education and E-Learning Now Available

2008-12-01T00:57:00.000-08:00

Drupal for Education and E-Learning is now available from Packt Publishing. This book covers Drupal 6, and describes how to build a community site to support teaching and learning. This book is designed for people new to Drupal, with no prior development experience. The hands-on, step-by-step instructions guide you through installing Drupal, configuring contributed modules and themes, and working with some of Drupal’s most useful and powerful modules, including CCK, Views, and Organic Groups. The book also covers site maintenance, upgrades, and backups – these essential steps, while not as fun as site building, are essential for keeping your site and data secure.

Additionally, the book covers some of the basics of when to use different types of resources in the classroom. Frequently, people talk about incorporating video, or audio, or social bookmarks, etc, into the classroom, but they never discuss effective uses of these tools. While this book is not exhaustive in these discussions, I attempted to create some context around creative and effective use of the social web in a learning environment.

On a related note, we have also decided to be more organized and systematic with regards to putting out occasional tutorials. They will be collected under the tutorials tag, and can be seen at http://funnymonkey.com/tutorials (or subscribed to via rss).

For people new to Drupal, Drupal in Education and E-Learning includes details on:

1.Drupal terminology;
2.User creation;
3.Role based access control;
4.Installing modules and themes;
5.Using taxonomy to categorize posts
6.Backing up and upgrading your site.

Using the menu and block system to simplify and streamline the navigation of your site.

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Why should you write Joomla Blogs?

2008-12-01T00:44:00.000-08:00

Many people are starting up new websites everyday and these people have gotten content management programs in order to help them build their websites. There are many content management programs that are on the market today in order for people to choose from. If you have tried the Joomla content management program and have good success with it, you should definitely write Joomla Blogs about your experience with the product in order to possibly help those people who are still in search for their own content management software program. You blogs could help them to find the type of program that they need the same way that you found it.

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Joomla! Joins Another List of Winners

2008-11-30T23:03:00.000-08:00

EContent today published their EContent 100 List of Companies that Matter Most in the Digital Content Industry. You can see us right here under Open Source Matters along with other notable open source friends like Drupal and Wordpress. The EContent 100 winners will be honored at the Buying & Selling eContent Conference next April 5-6 in Scottsdale, AZ.

There are a variety of categories: classification & taxonomy; collaboration; content commerce; content creation, production, & digital publishing; content delivery; content management; content security; fee-based info services; intranets & portals; mobile content; search engines & technologies; and social media.

EContent said, "We are proud of this list and of the companies on it. Members of the EContent 100 List are the companies empowering the content that fuels business today. We hope that our readers find the list as valuable as we did the process of creating it." The Joomla Project is honored to be recognized as a high-calibre business solution.

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Java and Linux - an open marriage in search of success

2008-11-30T22:47:00.000-08:00

In 2004 Eric Raymond wrote an open letter to Sun Microsystems' then chief executive officer Scott McNealy demanding Sun open up their core Java intellectual property and allow anyone do whatever they damn well please with it.

That other pillar of open source, and creator of the GNU Project Richard Stallman, meanwhile, became one of Java's loudest opponents - sternly advising people not to install the closed-source evil that was Java, and giving Java as a dire example of corporate lock-in.

Two years later Sun silenced the the baying crowd with OpenJDK - an open-source project based on Sun's closed-JDK codebase.

Sun also released Java Standard Edition (Java SE) for the desktop, Java Mobile Edition (Java ME) for mobile devices and Glassfish - Sun's implementation of Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) - under GNU General Public License v2 (GPLv2). Sun said GPLv2 would achieve the objectives of "driving more volume and adoption for Java and maintaining the 'write once run anywhere compatibility' promise."

Sun has spent much of the intervening period talking about how OpenJDK would make it easier to distribute Java with Linux, putting Java into new markets and on platforms, and into the hands of new developers. Stallman, himself, was sufficiently impressed by the move.

Two years on, has Sun's move changed anything other than end the shouting war over whether to open-source Java?

Sun's chief open-source officer Simon Phipps told The Reg that OpenJDK is doing "at least as well as I hoped." Sun could hardly have done any worse.

But has the move improved the life of Joe the Programmer, the everyday coder? "If you're an everyday developer programming under Windows writing everyday programs, you'll probably see no visible differences. But a tools developer will see a huge difference, as their market has suddenly grown hugely," Phipps said.

In other words, their tools will now be easily available on Linux as well as Windows.

Java goes further

The addressable market is certainly bigger. OpenJDK is now included in the top four FOSS GNU Linux distributions - Fedora 10, the Ubuntu main repository starting with version 8.10, OpenSUSE 11, and the planned Lenny version of Debian. It's also available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL5) and CentOS 5. Sun, meanwhile, claims success by download on Glassfish: eight million downloads and 250,000 "product registrations" in the last 12 months.

OK, so OpenJDK ships with top Linux distros - job done? Not quite. Java might ship with certain distros, but there is no single version of Java, or set of Java APIs or libraries, certified as 100-per-cent Linux compatible. That makes the job of installing it and administering Java on Linux a headache and creates portability hurdles for application developers writing software for different Linuxes.

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20 Reasons Why I Choose WordPress

2008-11-30T22:24:00.000-08:00

1. WordPress is Free
Whether you are using a hosted WordPress.com or opt to install the script on your own web server, WordPress is made available gratis. It costs you nothing to use. Who says “There is no free lunch in this world?

2. Easy to Setup
Installing WordPress is super fast and super easy. In fact, the process is much simpler if you’re using Fantastico autoinstaller that comes pre-installed with your hosting package. It doesn’t get any easier than that. If you need help with WordPress setup, ask and thou shall receive.

3. Themes Availability
You don’t like the look of your default theme? There are plenty of great design themes available for you to choose from. It doesn’t matter what your preference is, there is always one for you that suits your taste and personality.

If budget isn’t an issue, do yourself a favor and differentiate your blog with a premium theme.

4. Plug-ins Do Wonder
Without any doubt, the primary reason I choose WordPress over any other blogging platforms is the limitless possibility I could extend its functionality using a wide array of plug-ins which are continually built to make WordPress the best it can be for the blogging community at large. Best of all, all these plug-ins are free to use.

5. No-Fuss Maintenance
With WordPress Automatic Upgrade plug-in, I can always be sure of running the latest software in case of any upgrade. The process has been simplified and automated without the need to go through the individual upgrade steps.

6. No Programming Skill
WordPress can be used out-of-the-box without any programming skill that even the greenest of newbies couldn’t screw it up! Though a little knowledge in HTML or PHP might be an advantage, albeit not a necessity.

7. User-Friendly
WordPress Admin dashboard is one of the most user-friendly interface you can find. Whether you need to write a post or manage your settings, navigation hasn’t been that simpler, hasn’t it? As if that’s already good enough, the upcoming WordPress Version 2.7 gets even better and sleeker.

8. Open Source
Being an open source platform, in theory WordPress will have a better software development model which is good from users’ perspective. There will always be a continual improvement to its platform.

9. Customizable
Since WordPress platform function in a template-based structure, customization has never been easier. A typical blog structure consists of header, content, sidebar and footer. Any change to its template can be conveniently done right from the Admin Dashboard. I was pretty much impressed with it in the beginning.

10. Hassle-free Integration
If you do have an existing static website, now is the time you should consider WordPress to power your site. I can’t think of any other Content Management System (CMS) that is comparable to WordPress.

Do you know you can easily integrate WordPress pages seamlessly into your existing website? I’ve done it on numerous occasions for my clients.

11. Ease of Migration
The process of migration is as easy as telling WordPress which blogging platform to access and import from. All your posts and comments in another platform will be migrated in a relatively easy process. Go to ‘Import ‘ under ‘Manage’ on your Admin Dashboard.

12. SEO-Friendly
With the built-in auto-ping feature in WordPress and coupled with the use of Google XML Sitemaps plug-in, it takes minimal efforts to get indexed by search engines. In fact, Google loves blogs powered by WordPress. In case you aren’t aware, here’s 15 SEO Tips for Beginners.

13. Good Community Support
Due to its popularity, the solution to any WordPress problem is just by googling the question. Well, at least that’s what I usually do. There are just too many discussions on WordPress-related issues on various forums and discussion groups that a typical answer to any question can be readily available at the click of a mouse.

14. Monetize
For a long time, Google Adsense has been the preferred choice for blog monetization. With the availability of WordPress plug-ins, monetizing a blog is just as simple as pie.

Though I believe blogspot manages and integrates Google Adsense better than WordPress.

15. Statisticize
Checking my stats is easy with Google Analytic. All I need is to create an account and place the code conveniently at the footer.php. As a matter of practice, it is one of the first things I do on my post-install checklist.

16. Multi-Lingual
By default WordPress is in English, however the software has built-in capability that supports localization in any other languages. Learn how To Install WordPress in Your Language.

17. More Dofollow on WordPress
Probably it is much easier to remove the nofollow tag on WordPress than other blogging platforms. I could be wrong but more often than not, more and more blogs powered by WordPress are adopting the dofollow concept if you ask me.

18. Better Time Management
What I love about WordPress is the fact I could easily schedule my post to be published at a later date with post-time stamp. As such, I could manage my time better and more efficiently. Write today, post tomorrow.

19. Multi-User Environment
WordPress is not limited to just one user. It works in a multi-user environment where two or more people could collaborate on a single project using WordPress. How ’bout that?

20. If You Can Beat Them, You Join Them
If the majority of probloggers like Darren from Problogger, John Chow, Jeremy, to name a few, are using WordPress, it’s much safer to place your bet on WordPress than any other blogging platforms. If you can’t beat them, you’re better off joining them. Unless, you are as famous as Seth Godin.

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Motivation in open source

2008-11-28T23:25:00.000-08:00

As my focus was mainly on discussing about open source projects, while I was preparing my presentation, I made a thinking exercise. And I noted down the motivational factors for developing open source applications. Let’s go through the list.

* Passion. Remember that most of you are working in this field because you like it. Sometimes developers get to work in a company and in a project that they actually don’t like. Open source is their chance to do what they like. So, even tough this takes extra time and effort, the moral satisfaction pays it off. Keep the fire burning with Open Source!

* Educational. Working in an open source is the best way to keep you up-to-date with the latest technologies. Due to economical reasons, the projects developed in closed profit-based organizations, are not up-to-date with the last technologies. Keep learning with Open Source!

* Portfolio. What you developed as open source could be a very good showcase to obtain a better job. If you don’t have yet industry practical experience, this can compensate. Show off your Open Source!

* Status. There is a special pride of being a member in a successful open source community. Be proud with your Open Source!

* Need. This is actually one of the main reasons for developing open source applications. Either there isn’t a software solution for your problem or it is too expensive, you can always make your own or contribute to other people effort to do it. Use Open Source!

* Influence. This is somehow related to need. Because a company is needing some features in an open source application, they encourage their employees to take an active role in the development of it. In this way they can easily influence the direction in which the open source project is heading. Influence your Open Source!

* Altruism/Knowledge sharing. Some people simply do it because is the right and moral thing to do. They used and enjoyed open source and now it’s time to give something back. Share by Open Source!

* Quality. I know that it may sound like a paradox, but I really think that a successful open source project has a higher quality than a successful closed, private one. Usually an open source project has a more varied and wide pool of users. It means that it also have a wider pool of critics. Moreover, the commercial products will have to constantly improve because of the competition. Improve Open Source!

* Economical. Open source is not entirely free. And here we have to talk about cost reduction and profit.

Cost reduction. A company can develop a project, but due to the lack of resources, they decide to make it open source. If the project is not on their portfolio, but it was merely developed as a library for other projects or to support the internal infrastructure, this is a very good choice. Their business won’t be affected, but their winnings could be huge. In the first place, they win a huge amount of users, which are actually free ad-hoc testers. As the project is growing they can also gain developers or other specialists, thus tremendously decreasing the maintenance costs.

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Does Google Hate WordPress and Other Blog Platforms?

2008-11-28T23:23:00.000-08:00

Doing a simple search for the term blog reveals some interesting information found in the SERP. There is absolutely no mention of WordPress or any other blog publishing platform. Yet, there are three instances of Google mentioned.

Ironically, after allowing Google to track my web history, doing the same search logged into iGoogle, one would think that the results would be more "personalized" based off my previous browsing history and also due to the fact that visiting WordPress.org is one of my top most visited sites while logged in.

To no avail, the SERP still included three instances of Google with no listing of WordPress, TypePad or any other alternative blog publishing software. To further my research, I searched for the term: create a blog, and found that three of the top ten results show Blogger.com and once again, no instance of WordPress.

What are your thoughts about this? Does Google hate WordPress and other blog platforms? Is this a way of Google attempting to lessen the number of new bloggers from using more powerful platforms which in return make Google's job controlling them more difficult? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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Apple attacks open source iTunes replacements

2008-11-28T23:21:00.000-08:00

Apple’s moderately popular ipod line has always been a POS. It’s overpriced, uner featured, and generally overrated. It is an expensive toy that has limited use, not being able to open up most media formats known to man (such as .wav or .ogg). Next, if you want to actually plug it into a computer (that is, a real computer, not a boat anchor), you’ll need to use a special proprietary cable that manages to connect to; usb. Why couldn’t they have put in a mini usb connector? Anyway, your computer mounts the device and hey presto, since you don’t have iTunes installed, (and on Linux, can’t), then tough luck, you can’t use it for anything. But wait, a brave team cracked the retarted and useless database system, and miraculously, you can now use the device with a decent media player (sich as Winamp, Songbird, AmaroK, etc).

Apple doesn’t like this. They assembled their own crack team of anti-compatibility experts, bringing together the top minds in the field (and then some), creating a newer, and crappier system that messes up your media in a different way to before. Now, if you bought a new generation of i stuff, you won’t be able to use it with a decent player. Sucks to be you. But, again, a group of people have gotten together, and have started sharing ideas on how to crack this new annoyance. (But not to crack the also irritating DRM).

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WordPress update kyboshes XSS flaw

2008-11-28T23:18:00.000-08:00

WordPress has fixed a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in its blogging software.

Version 2.6.5 also addresses three unrelated performance and stability bugs with the open source package. The XSS fixed by the latest version of the software is limited to particular setups involving IP-based virtual servers running on Apache 2.x.

In those setups it might be possible for hackers to rig systems so that they serve up malicious Java Script from domains under their control, as explained in an advisory by WordPress here.

WordPress has jumped from version 2.6.3 to 2.6.5 of the software in order to avoid confusion with 2.6.4, a fake version recently offered up by black hats via a bogus site. Sysadmins were directed to download the backdoor-rigged code earlier this month by hackers exploiting vulnerabilities in the blogging package.

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Ultra Light Startups: Open Source Content Management Systems

2008-11-28T23:14:00.001-08:00

"The cost of launching a tech venture is continually falling, due to a large number of interrelated technical, social, and financial factors." - The statement couldn't be more true, it's simply becoming easier and less expensive to build and launch a startup compared to 5 years ago, or even last year. It's part of the reason why there are more startups founded in undergraduate universities, business grad schools, and by young entrepreneurs who have small savings, if any, to seed their ideas. At the same time, some of these early stage companies create very viable and attractive investment opportunities for venture capitalists. Earlier this week, I spoke with Bijan Sabet, General Partner at Spark Capital who not only agrees that "students make for great investments", but also invests in those young entrepreneurs. He's led investments in Tumblr, which was started by David Karp when he was 19, and Twitter.

The notion that startups could be started with little startup capital spurred Graham Lawlor (currently studying for his masters at NYU), to found the Ultra Light Startups group. (I was fortunate to meet Graham a short while back at the Web 2.0 conference in New York City. We kept in touch because our common interests and that our two projects have a lot in common.) Graham describes Ultra Light Startups as "a group of entrepreneurs who explore these perpetually evolving factors and refine techniques to launch technology ventures - minimizing cost and time associated with testing ideas in the marketplace." I absolutely love the idea and have given thought to helping him start one in Boston, but I just haven't had time to give it as much attention as I would like.

The startup group meets once a month and hosts on average 30-50 tech entrepreneurs who come to actively share ideas, network, and participate in discussions that focus on a particular "ultra light startup" technique. Last month, they ran one on SEO and SEM. On December 4th, they'll have a panel and forum discussing open source content management systems, such as Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress, and how you can utilize them for your startup. Part of my job at Acquia is to discuss prospects' web initiatives and how Drupal can help them build their websites, whether its a large media site, social network, or application. I have talked to a large number of startups who are using Drupal not only because it saves them time and money, but because it is a very extensible and powerful open source platform. Open source strategies have proven to be critical underpinnings of some of todays most successful companies...Google leverages OS and many applications on the web are built off PHP, just look at Facebook.

What are the characteristics of an Ultra Light Startup?

* Low permanent headcount, low overhead, low budget
* The use of outsourcing, offshoring and outsourcing marketplaces (e.g. Guru.com, Elance, oDesk)
* Use of off-the-shelf and open source software and platforms (e.g. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, MediaWiki) and their ecosystems
* Minimizing hardware costs and maximizing flexibility with cloud/network computing
* Leveraging infrastructure and communities provided by the diverse set of existing and social platforms and devices
* Viral/guerilla/social marketing
* Any other low-cost, high-flexibility techniques

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Updating Drupal 5 Modules to Drupal 6

2008-11-28T23:09:00.000-08:00

About 5 months ago I was worried when the department I was working with in NYC was getting ready to migrate sites from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6. I had started working with Drupal during the late 4.6 days but wasn't really a developer until a few months into Drupal 5. Even then I was making beginner mistakes of hackng modules (but not core) to get my desired results.

Fast Forward 1 year and a few months, after hours of reading other people code, blog post, going to DrupalCamps, DrupalCons, and Lullabot trainings, I finally feel comfortable developing in Drupal 5. Of course this is all in relativity, you have modules like Views and Panels which remind you there is so much more to learn.

I moved onto a new position here in San Francisco right before major migrations started at the other company. I'm thinking "Phew, saved my ass from having to do that, more Drupal 5 sites here I come." But sure enough, after a few months the overwhelming power of Drupal 6 came along and of course this new platform I'm working with is needing to be upgraded.

Because the Drupal community is so awesome (understatement), a majority of contrib modules have already been migrated. We're basically building the platform from the ground up and eventually migrating old sites to the new platform when all custom pieces are in place and well tested. Till then we're able to release new sites based on Drupal 6 that aren't dependent on all features from the previous platform. The flexibility of this is great for numerous reasons and the person streamlining this process has done a great job of laying out the groundwork to build upon.

Custom modules appear to be the only things we needed to migrate to D6. It finally felt like enough time had been provided to learn the major changes that effect modules from D5 to D6. Well, it appears not much time was needed at all. With the assistance of Coder module, I began seeing a pattern of; change hook_menu, fix l() and url(), use menu_get_object(), hook_form_alter() with $form_states. I'm sure there's plenty more but these appeared to be most common.

So i'm gaining confidence in the types of changes being made using Coder for module upgrades. I've heard of a module called Deadwood that will do most of these changes automatically. After dropping a Drupal 5 module into a deadwood folder in the files directory clicking a few buttons a Drupal 6 module would magically appear in a goodwood folder. This worked great, the easy stuff that I was accustomed to was getting done and I would spend a just little more time using Coder to catch some things that were missed.

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