Internet Tips

Hosting: need a discount code for web-hosting?  Simply 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.

Website Resources

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.
• Website Scanners:
  • Sucuri.net site scan.
  • URLvoid.com
• Web-sniffer.net - handy for http headers, and a buncha other stuff.
• Hurricane electric's awesome suite of bgp internet tools.

Network Resources

• java-based network analyzer - gives all sorts of useful info

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 - is nice!  in all flavors of IE, and more.

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. 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:

1. the host does not have .php5 handler in the default .htaccess file, solved by adding:

   AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
   AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

   to it.

2. No write permissions on the wp-content folder (chmod 755 wp-content)
3. A folder named "upgrade" in the default folder, which trips up subsequent update/upgrade attempts (rmdir upgrade)
4. 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.
5. Recommended Wordpress plugins:

• Akismet
• All in one SEO Pack
• Bulletproof Security
• Page Tagger
• TinyMCE Advanced
• Theme my login
• Google Analytics, Google XML Sitemaps
• Eli's related posts and footer links & widget
• Tweet, Like, Google +1, and Share
• Wordpress File Monitor

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment on this page - it's always nice to get turned onto a useful plugin.

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:

1. includes/configure.php
2. 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"); ?>