Tips and Tricks About Computers, Web Development, Linux, the Internet and the Like
Web Applications
Do you know how to create your own wordpress template?
Jan 8th
I don’t but I’m giving it a shot for the first time! I’m starting from scratch, building an XHTML compliant template the way I like it, then through some reverse engineering / tutorials, I will pass the data I need to my template files. I’m pretty excited!
Here’s a sneak peak:
I’ve been busy with some design work the past few days, finishing up a few more entrecards and working close with clients to get a design that properly represents their business:
The ninjaz have been making some headway and we’re testing out a new host for ~5 game servers which will run NANL configs on. I go back to school in less than a week.
WP-Cache – Are you using it?
Jan 6th
I’m a bit surprised at the number of blogs I come across that fail to load. A lot of the times, this can be fixed with a simple plugin call WP-Cache. WP-Cache will save a copy (cache) a WordPress page the first time a user visits the page. This greatly reduces the overhead as it doesn’t need to run through all the php code and connect to the database on every page call.
It’s a very simple install, just upload the contents of the zip to your plugins directory and activate it. A new menu will appear under your options tab giving you filtering options.
And you can check the status of your cache at anytime, deleting files when necessary.
This plugin is simple and useful. It should be integrated into the project.
Please refer to the README.txt if you’re having trouble.
It’s important to note… that if you have this installed and you’re making template changes, you will need to disable the cache or clear it every time to see the changes in real time.
I Have Entrecard Seller Status!
Jan 2nd
I’m proud to announce that I’m one of the Entrecard users with seller status. I will begin selling Card Redesigns, Quality reviews, Ad space shortly and possibly some t-shirts in the future.
To give you an idea of the quality of my work, here are two cards I’ve designed for forum goers who took advantage of my free offer. There are 2 spots left… if you’re interested, act fast. Otherwise, it’ll cost you 400 Credits.
Congratulations to the rest of the winners and too readers uninterested in Entrecard, I have some more how-tos and lifehacks on the way!
I you’d like a check check out My Entrecard Page.
Happy New Years 2008!
How about this for Entrecard?
Dec 28th
Entrecard users knew from the start that not everyone was in it for the same reasons and lets face it, there are some blogs we’d rather not waste our time viewing. Blogs that waste our time trying to get rich off their garbage content. Unfortunately, the only system in place as of now, is reviews. Unfortunately, these were being gamed until recently.
So Tyler, what do you suggest?
Well, I wouldn’t want to tamper with the one-click drop method because that would be silly but I want to integrate something into the widget so a user can tell a lot about a blog just by being at said blog.
My proposal is a system such as this:
With this integrated voting system, it will be easier for other bloggers to know if it’s a reputable source or just some more internet garbage so some degree. In an ideal world, there would be some crazy algorithms to back this thing up to prevent gaming but I’ll leave that logic to the Entrecard guys if they like my idea!
Another approach Entrecard can take to limit the amount of abuse would be some additions to the forum. Staying true to the proud design of Entrecard, I’ve crafted my idea of a simple solution.
The reputation would preferably use some ajax that would pop up with a box to fill in a reason. Reporting posts would help admins moderate the forum. A quick link to message a user would be handy as would the edit post button.
What do you all think?
Edit: There is a thread on the Entrecard Forums that answers some FUD related questions.
Google, I love you but wtf?
Dec 27th
There is something Google did a while back that ruffled my feathers a bit. When they updated their style to move the bar to the top. They removed a feature I used quite often.
Say I want to search for “Tyler Mulligan”
but last second I decide I’d rather see my sexy mug than a bunch of text. When you change your search type (i.e. web to images), your search string disappears!
Am I alone in missing this feature? Certain other search engines don’t have this problem.
Entrecard – Introducing Stores
Dec 26th
Entrecard has announced it’s addition of the ‘Store’ module which uses EC credits as currency. Currently, Entrecard is the only seller, offering a few things to promote your blog faster but they are planning on giving users seller status in the future. If I were to have a store it would benefit both Entrecard any myself as I would offer not only adspace on my blog but quality reviews and business card redesigns.
A rough idea of what I would sell:
- 20 Card Redesigns at 400 Credits a pop
- Quality reviews at 500 credits a pop (a note about this, by quality, I mean in my writing. If your site sucks, I’ll say so. I’m not going to help promote internet garbage.)
- Ad space on my blog, 2 weeks for 2500 credits / 1 month for 4000
- T-shirts with on line creative says fresh out a book of ideas I’ve been compiling for a few months… the price of these is undetermined at this moment.
If you aren’t familiar with entrecard, check it out below.
Getting Entrecard to Work with Blogger
Dec 11th
Just the other day, I was trying to integrate Entrecard into one of my Blogger accounts and it didn’t work. The reason for this, is google’s very strict about their document validity, while Entrecard has seemingly over-looked a common HTML markup mistake. The use of an ampersand, rather than html entity:
Theirs:
<script src="http://entrecard.s3.amazonaws.com/widget.js?user_id=629&type=standard_200" type="text/javascript" id="ecard_widget"></script>
Valid:
<script src="http://entrecard.s3.amazonaws.com/widget.js?user_id=629&type=standard_200" type="text/javascript" id="ecard_widget"></script>
Note: don’t just copy that code and use it in your blog… unless you want to display my card!
XEPIC – Facebook Application
Dec 2nd
After going to GameDev ’07 at Harvard with James Lindsay on Saturday, I got some motivation and decided to get my feet wet with the facebook api. I have created my first application which pulls pictures from the website www.xepic.net and displays them in your profile like so:
If you’d like to try out my application, you can find it here.
