Switching PHP Versions using your .htaccess file
February 26, 2007
I recently decided to install an open-source application by the name of “ActiveCollab” to play around with a little bit and get to know a bit better. ActiveCollab is similar to BaseCamp (both are project management tools) so I decided to give it a shot. I thought that GoDaddy would have me on the latest version of PHP (5 that is) and ended up getting an error when I tried to install ActiveCollab for use with PureWebAnalytics. The error pretty much told me “Sorry buddy… your version of PHP sucks and is too old”. Needless to say I was surprised… but not defeated.
I contacted GoDaddy’s tech support, which are great as usual to work with and figured out that the problem lay with my .htaccess file in the root directory of my site. The .htaccess file for those of you who are unsure as to what it is; is a file that tells your server how make configuration changes. The idea that it allows you to set commands for the server to make changes to its configuration. In this case I wanted to have all .php files recognized as PHP 5 and not the server default of PHP4 which is what they were at before I made this change. The change to the .htaccess file looks like this…
… talk about an easy fix eh? Have fun with those big old nasty .htaccess files.
Luc
Why Script.aculo.us is delicious?
February 23, 2007
Over the past few months I keep hearing more and more about AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript) and I must admit after looking at the various frameworks that are coming out these days it is becoming an interesting language of choice to study and learn more about. I am going to focus on one of these libraries today better known as Script.aculo.us.
What is Script.aculo.us?
Script.aculo.us is an AJAX framework that was developed a client-side language to make it easier for websites to process data so that when a function is performed you don’t have to reload the entire webpage to complete processing for the function.
Installing Script.aculo.us
First off you have to choose a directory to put your JavaScript into and you should be good to go. See the diagram below…
… Installation of the Script.aculo.us framework is real simple. Of course you can always make it more complex but I say why bother? Keep it simple stupid!
Lucas
Setting up Shop in WordPress
February 19, 2007
The Name of this hot little gem is WP e-Commerce Lite. There are a number of builds that the creators are planning to release in the near future, that include features like…
- Full image display using Lightbox
- Multiple payment options per shop
- Able to send newsletters to customers
- Various Page Layout options
- Plus a ton more features
If you are a Gold Member, which costs about $15 (I know it’s a lot of money 
), you get a lot more options and special built in features that aren’t available in the base version. What is cool is how they choose to give screenshots of the functionality of the plug-in which you can see right here…
The problem it this point is with Shipping and Taxes which is at the heart of any good payment application seems to be missing from older versions of WP e-Commerce Lite. I believe that the latest version has this capability working currently for
If you’ve had a different experience with this WordPress Plug-in please share. If you’d like to recommend a Plug-in that you think works better feel free to tell us about it.
Luc
Adding a Custom CSS to WordPress
February 16, 2007
I was having a look through Chris Pearson’s Blog today and found a pretty interesting article that he recently wrote about proofing CSS Styles for the future. I’ve been working with and playing around with WordPress for about the past 8 months and in that time I’ve learned a great deal about this CMS (Content Management System).
I am personally using the Glued Ideas Subtle Theme on PureWebAnalytics and while I have not done that much to change it as of yet I’ve got some plans for future changes to the CSS.
The hardest areas of WordPress and in my opinion and what separates the men from boys and the women from girls are themes and more importantly custom theme development. With every new release of WordPress the base theme framework changes, sometimes for the better and sometimes not. Things are added and taken away and if you are supporting clients running an application like WordPress then you can see how this costs money and time to go back and fix.
Chris Pearson, a forward thinking kind of guy that he is has developed a great work-around for this which basically allows you to create a Custom CSS file that regardless of how you install or when you install it; it keeps your theme as fresh as the day you first built it.
I really enjoyed reading Chris’ article and his site has a terrific wealth of knowledge related to web design and development. It’s definitely worth checking out!
Luc
A little LightBox to lighten up your day
February 13, 2007
I found this snappy tool called LightBox over the weekend and really wanted to test it out. For those of you unsure of what LightBox is and what it does please click the image below to see a sample.
As I talked about the other day in my CSS article, Lightbox, is a JavaScript/AJAX component used to give a slicker look and feel to Overlay Images on a website. I’d always wondered what created those sexy image overlays on sites like SitePoint.com so when I found this I was more then happy to play around with it.
Installing LightBox in WordPress is pretty damn simple because a number of people have built plugins for WordPress to use this awesome. The one that I used can be found at 4mj.it. It’s as simple to install as loading the files you have downloaded to your /wp-content/plugins directory and then activating them in Wordpress in the Plugins section. Next simply apply the following code to the image you want to use, with the correct path and you should be good to go.
<a href=”images/image-1.jpg” rel=”lightbox” title=”my caption”>my funky image #1</a>
You can swap out the image path for your own and just keep the rel=”lightbox” and you can add any images with this feature into your site. If you want to load a group of photos the easiest way to do that is to use this way of coding them…
<a href=”images/image-1.jpg” rel=”lightbox[roadtrip]”>my funky image #1</a>
<a href=”images/image-2.jpg” rel=”lightbox[roadtrip]”>my funky image #2</a>
<a href=”images/image-3.jpg” rel=”lightbox[roadtrip]”>my funky image #3</a>
And so on…
In this case you would simply rel=”lightbox[roadtrip]” and use it for what ever images you’d like to create using LightBox as a grouping of images. This becomes a great thing when you are dealing with galleries that you want to use LightBox with this function is a perfect fit.
Lucas
