Internet Tips
Hosting: use the coupon code "FREE30DOLLARS" at Dreamhost for a $30 savings on hosting setup - all that is needed for a beginning LAMP solution or a website, gallery, blog, etc.
The following resources may help with the evaluatation of a site:
- How to remove the "This site may harm your computer".
- How to prevent your site from getting hacked. How to repair a damaged site.
All too often one is forced to see how web pages render in that awful IE product, especially the dreaded IE6.. To see how a page loads in that monstrosity you can use netrenderer to render the page virtually, and give you a snapshot, nice! in all flavors of IE.
Easyphp is a great app for windows users - To setup easyphp to use short tags, edit php.ini:
short_open_tag = On
There's also XAMP for windows users, and MAMP for OSX, and this article: 25 Important Web Design Tools, has good info as well.
Wordpress Tips
When plugins fail to install and or upgrade, it's likely one (or more) of the following issues:
-
the host does not have .php5 handler in the default .htaccess file, solved by adding:
AddType x-mapp-php5 .phpto it.
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php - No write permissions on the wp-content folder (chmod 755 wp-content)
- A folder named "upgrade" in the default folder, which trips up subsequent update/upgrade attempts (rmdir upgrade)
- Permalinks and/or slugs not updating for ya? It's likely a recycling / trash issue - look in the trash for other items using same terms for the conflict.
OsCommerce Tips
When moving the site, or changing the installs, the store's url will sometimes need to be changed. I never found a UI to make these changes - perhaps it's there and i just could never locate it? no matter, cuz all ya need to do is edit 2 files:
- includes/configure.php
- admin/includes/configure.php
and make the necessary changes to the strings contained therein.
PHP / HTML tricks:
to get the current year, say in a footer, use
<? echo date("Y"); ?>
