Blue Crescent Technologies Tech Blog

Add image gallery to Wordpress

DA Williams — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 23:14:47 +0000

A client wanted a photo gallery added to their WP site I created and maintained. Since it is not integrated into WP yet, I hit Google gods for answers. I was banging my head around with javascript galleries and galleries such as Exhibit, but they just did not fit the look I had build for the site. Then I came across SPG (simple php gallery) and said finally, the solution! I knew I was speaking to soon when I said it:sad:….. not compatible with WP 1.5 out of the box. I wanted to integrate SPG into my theme. I spent two days trying to figure out how to make it work before I bowed to the Google gods again for devine guidance. And behold, a scroll of wisdom was bestowed upon me :shock:… Shayne Sweeney with the 4 step tutorial to integrate SPG into your WP 1.5 theme. Cruised along, followed the steps, got the gallery integrated when I noticed that it completely screwed up the sidebar in IE So I hit the WP forum for a solution to find that no one had a true answer because it was theme dependent. So after using my CSS/PHP novice skills, I finally got SPG integrated into my WP 1.5 theme by all enclosing the the SPG code in the theme’s

code, some visual customization and done.

Here is the final product.

Site stats using AWStats

DA Williams — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 18:19:29 +0000

My cleints began looking for web site stats, particularly, accurate hit counts, who visits, and the country of origin. My first thought is of course, how can set this up for free? You know I Googled my thoughts. I came up with “free services”, but that did not meet all those needs.

Then I came across AWSTATS. It provided everything I needed and more. Although it is setup for UNIX and Apache and apache log files, it was no problems setting it up for IIS5 logfiles and Windows 2000 server. It has instructions on adjusting your IIS logfiles. The instructions themselves are straightforward and clear and it will take about 10 minutes for the initial setup of AWStats. The best thing is that one install can be used for multiple websites with a setup per website.

This software is also customizable with the ablility to show only certain charts, exclude files/directories from be added in the stats, and the ability to add your own logo to the header, just to name a few.

AWStats also gives you the ability to completely automate the updating of the stats. This will involve the use of the scheduler of your choice and the creation of a small batch file.

Here are my web stats for Tech Blog starting at date April 21, 2005

Symantec Antivirus 8.x Corporate and Windows XP SP2

DA Williams — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 03:52:07 +0000

Configure your FireWall Port to work with Symantec AntiVirus

Quick Listing

Open the following ports to enable Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition and LiveUpdate to work correctly:

UDP port 38293 — Intel PDS listening for ping packets
UDP port 2967 — RTVScan request to Winsock
TCP ports — 80, 21, 443 - LiveUpdate

(more…)

Wordpress layout -vs- Kubrick -vs- Atthe404, a newbie perspective

DA Williams — Sat, 04 Sep 2004 18:38:11 +0000

I have been doing this WP thing for about 2 months now. Over that time I have learned to decipher WP’s style CSS and index.php to get some good customizations out. But it took a lot of deciphering. I can honestly say from newbie experience that customizing WP styles in its current form is painful. Apparently the WP community knows this but it is the law of the land for now. (more…)

Windows 2000 server crash and recovery

DA Williams — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 02:51:14 +0000

Today while in the process of getting graphics done for a client, I am told that the website I am referring is down. I had my offspring all day so I did not check my servers. Sure enough, my Windows 2000 Web server had crashed. I removed the offending CPU fan and rebooted only to run up on this error:

I spend the better part of 3 hours trying to find a solution. I could not do a dirty install because windows could not find the OS on the drive. Would not perform a clean install because I would spend 2 days getting this server back online. So I hit Google for solutions. After some floundering I found that I could copy the system file from the c:/winnt/repair folder from the recovery console. Launched repair console, tried to copy my system file, got “file cannot be copied” error. I used ERD Commander by Winternals to get into the server and copy the file, and that failed!:evil: Now I’m pissed because I think I have to do a clean install on this server. One more swipe at Google and I discovered that I did not perform a checkdisk in the recovery console

I got into the recovery console once again and ran the checkdisk command:

chkdsk /r /p

/r Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information (implies /p).

Let that run for about 40 minutes and done Server back in operation.

Custom photo gallery using Coppermine on WIMP

DA Williams — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 01:09:56 +0000

You know I did the necessary homework first. Since I took the paintaking task of installing MySQL, I wanted my gallery to be database driven. I compared just adding images to posts, versus using Pictorialis II versus using Coppermine. (more…)

Microsoft To Delay Automatic XP SP2 Updates

DA Williams — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 17:01:05 +0000

Microsoft has announced it will delay by slightly more than a week the planned distribution of the security service pack via automatic update. Corporations, as has become clear, are in no hurry to install SP2; companies want the ability to prevent employees from downloading it in an overzealous attempt to secure their networks… (full USA Today article)

In my IT conference this week, I brought up this exact issue for the clients we serve. The problem lies in the point the user can unknowingly fully open their workstations up to attack as user is given more control over virus and firewall protection. As I was stating this fact on Monday, Microsoft release the notice of the delay via email. Here is the quoted email:
(more…)

Windows XP SP2 Reviews and Comments

DA Williams — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:53:01 +0000

I have been reading over Windows Xp SP2 release. The main thing at this point is that it is only avaliable for full download, which is about 266MB. It will be made available for automatic update and windows updates in the near future. The reviews at this point have been all good. The software currently includes:
(more…)

Tabs, CSS and WordPress

DA Williams — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 18:18:29 +0000

I always liked tabs in websites. Yes, they are unnecessary, but for me, they add that extra “look”:smile:
So once again, I ventured on my Google quest for ‘tabs wordpress’. Did the normal reading and testing and crashing and burning becuase I was learning CSS on the fly. I found out that tabs had nothing to do with WordPress and everything to with CSS coding. So I knew I had to find a simple examples that I could learn from and not get lost in the process. I found simple tab navigation examples on Keith Devens’ blog.
I read over Dive into Mark’s Pure CSS tabs and Clagnut’s CSS-driven tabs. In Mark’s version, you have to edit both the css and the php pages if you want it fully functional for every link you add/subtract. In Clagnut’s version, only editting the php pages are necessary for every link you add/subtract and it is a slightly simpler script. Therefore I went with Clagnut:smile:

My example is here

Try and enjoy both!

Plugin added: psnGallery 1.2.2 for Coppermine

DA Williams — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 17:40:44 +0000

Installation for psnGallery 1.2.2 was straightforward, but its execution was not! Once again, a newbie is floundering trying to figure out how a plugin work:evil:
After a half hour of reading and rereading the instructions and crashing the site for answers, I hit my good friend Google for answer. I was finally able to pull up POST TAG usage instructions from his orignal website that fully described who/what/when/where/why/how of the psngallery2 1.0 Why did he not include these instructions in updated versions:?:
Is it just assumed the same people are using his plugin and no one new would venture to try it out

Here are the post tags, if for nobody but my own sanity. Read the updated versions of the software for the latest tags that have been added and its usage will make much more sense to you now:!:

Developers and Programmers: PLEASE STOP ASSUMING YOU ARE WORKING WITH YOUR NORMAL CROWD. Let’s assume there are newbies out there and make these instructions a little more complete and in one place for every version.

TIA
DA Williams