Bitnami

If I weren’t so happy with the Uniform Server, I’d start using the Bitnami stacks. Hmmm … but they are hefty, my word! Not surprising, since the complete WAMP/MAMP/LAMP infrastructure is built in.
Alternatively, you can download your infrastructure stack, and then install individual app modules on top.

I know from past experience how much can go wrong with these all-in-one stacks … so I’ll stick to what works. I have the additional convenience of running TortoiseSVN via Windows Explorer; from inside my Uniform Server www folder I can simply via right-click invoke the Tortoise menu and browse Subversion repositories, and grab any software files available. Not surprisingly, I favour apps that keep a SVN repo.

Filed under: Servers, Web Apps, Web Development , bitnami

WooThemes 4-for-1 Special

Here’s how I got my 4 themes: My lucky night.

After over 2 years away from WordPress workings, I quickly figured out that with my limited time there’s no way I would be able to catch up with all the new, and more complex, innards of WP, and manage to construct a decent website.

I had a quick look around the ‘premium’ professional WP theme services (and there’s some good stuff out there) as well as the few still-free themes or theme frameworks that look professional (Carrington and Thematic caught my eye).

In the end, I settled on WooThemes who impressed me (as far as one can tell without actual access to the themes!) with their combination of feature-rich as well as eye-catching, balanced design. The fact that I got more bonus themes than I had bargained on is … an extra bonus!

Filed under: Blog Tools, Web Development, WordPress

Uniform Server is still awesome

I stepped away from web design well over 2 years ago … and felt relief.
Now chance and circumstance has thrown me back into the fray and I find I still have that old excitement and enthusiasm. IOW: I’m having a ball.

UniServer is now up to version 4.2 (Mona) and as good as ever. I love having that option of doing dev work with WordPress or other software on my own box, esp. during times when broadband crawls to a halt here in the Kiwi provinces.

Filed under: Servers, Web Development , UniformServer

The Uniform Server is simply Awesome

I’m a masochist at heart.

I used to install everything, bit by bit, configure, test, tweak … until I had a complete WAMP localhost development server. The 4 cornerstones: Apache, mySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, and even ActivePerl.

Then there were the upgrades. Hours and hours of tedious fun.
After a while, the fun factor began to wear rather thin. By the time Apache 2.2 and PHP5 were out, I’d had enough.
Also, the whole shebang was pretty slow. Working with WordPress and a collection of themes, the lag in execution was approaching snail pace. It was faster working online, on my webhost server.

I had never been a fan of WAMP kits. They were usually ugly to install, never worked just right; even caused problems. I was a DIY woman, after all, and proud of it!

Well, no longer. I actually have work to do, and would also like to take the dogs out for their walks.

I looked at XAMPP, and it was pretty good, but still didn’t convince me entirely.

Then I discovered the UniServer – and you know when it’s love at first sight. Version 3.2 worked out of the box for me; and the current 3.3 does so too (both on the laptop and the desktop).

The Uniform Server is incredibly lean, runs much much faster than my painstakingly cobbled-together hand-crafted WAMP system, is simply clever in design … and doesn’t require any installation apart from unzipping the file somewhere!
You can take it with you on a USB flash drive.

I finally spend time again doing development work locally, and enjoy it. Because I don’t have to even think about localhost. It’s just there and simply works.

Filed under: Servers, Software, Web Development

Firefox WordPress.com Sidebar Widget

Ruff has concocted a neat sidebar widget which allows you to post to your WP.com blog straight from the Firefox sidebar.

Filed under: FireFox, Wordpress.com

Etomite: How to add the MySQLDumper Snippet via phpMyAdmin

I am trying to add functionality to a client’s Etomite site, and a script allowing quick and easy database backup through a webpage interface is a real must. Of course, WordPress2 has this built into the admin panel … but I digress.

I was unable to save the code snippet via the Etomite admin, and got the helpful suggestion in the Etomite forum to try adding the code directly into the database using phpMyAdmin. This worked a treat.

For those who would like to do the same, but are not very familiar with phpMyAdmin, here are a couple of screenshots and steps to help. But please, be careful!

Filed under: CMS

Opera 9: one plus, one minus

So far, this is what I really notice: Opera 9 is very ver fast – both launching and retrieving web pages. And, compared with Firefox, it consumes only half the system resources; with equal numbers of tabs open, Firefox packs a wolloping 100,000KB, whereas Opera makes do with about 50,000KB (according to the Windows Task Manager -> Processes – Mem Usage).

But … on the downside, Opera still has huge display issues. Some web sites are not really usable – Google Mail would be the most glaring example. Boy, do they need to work on that back in Norway.

Filed under: Browsers, FireFox, Opera

Sample the Icon Buffet

It’s one of those wonderful services I’ve been using for a while – it’s time I should mention it.

IconBuffet gives you access you loads (and I mean LOADS) of truly beautiful and professionally-designed icons. I haven’t had any spam from them – just notifications of new icon sets.
If you have friends who are IconBuffet members as well, you can exchange icons – IOW you can collect sets you may not have snagged before.

Oh, I know… it sounds kinda naff.
But honestly, give it a try. It works and it’s wonderful.

Filed under: Graphics

SPIP Redux

I wrote back in January a bit about a French CMS called SPIP. Well, I sure don’t have time right now to evaluate anything thoroughly … but did take another peek today and must say I’m intrigued.

Filed under: CMS

Widgety-doo-dah, widgety-day

I really thought I was going to leave all this stuff for a while and concentrate on more pressing domestic tasks … and then, along comes a Widgets plugin which of course cries out for fooling around with.

Filed under: WordPress

Dabbling with Photopress 0.9.4

Unfortunately, photopress 0.9.2 stopped working properly when I updated my WP installation at my PinkBat personal blog via SVN to the latest trunk (revision 5542). So I decided to give 0.9.4 a try …

Yay, it’s working!

However, I continue to have the same issue that’s plagued me for a long time now: If I try to use the Photopress option “use permalinks” (my preference), it doesn’t work. Clicking on the thumbnail (which should take you to the full image) merely causes the page to be reloaded (but with the correct image URL in the browser address bar!).

I have finally worked out that there seems to be some mysterious link between this permalink option and the option Link to album ("The code for inserted images can point to the image in the album or straight to a popup containing the image").

Permalinks do work – but only if I have this Link to album option set to "No".
If I want to point to the images in the album, I have to disable permalinks.
I would dearly love to be able to have both permalinks as well as the album link enabled and working correctly.

Filed under: WordPress

WP 2.0 Theme Competition

The competition is now closed and 188 themes are available for download.
Well, theoretically … there seem to be server problems; and the download facility at uploading.com is incredibly tacky and only worked the second time round.

Filed under: WordPress