Short Term/Hourly Rate XHTML/Javascript/PHP Custom Coding Contract

(urgent job bespoke website | going live deadline is June 27th, 2011)

Requires:

• XHTML with semantic markup

• Outstanding Javascript utilising:

  • Prototype
  • Scriptaculous
  • No jQuery is used or will be used

• PHP

  • Object Oriented Programming
  • MySQL backend

• Will need to work from an existing Subversion (SVN) code repository

On-Shore workers only please (Timezone Sydney)

Contact Viv (tigtog) via VIVidWeb Services

tigtog.net’s VIVidWeb forums

I’m happy to be the main answerer for people’s questions at first (by dint mostly of linking to existing excellent tutorials most likely), but I’m hoping to build a community of helpful people there eventually.  If being part of such appeals to you, please come along and join.

N.B. Membership to the forums must be approved, and the discussions will be moderated.  Be kind or be binned.

If anyone is wondering why pretty much the only thing I ever mention on Facebook has to do with sharing comedy links (with occasional politics links once in a while)? It’s because if it wasn’t for my comedy-blogging need to keep in touch with what comedians are up to, I’d have left the damn site long ago.

The new “Places” feature is yet another form of geotagging that lets everybody in the world know where you are, and which you can limit to “Friends only” or “Only Me” by going to the Privacy settings, but which you cannot turn off entirely.

Lifehacker shows you how to turn off the “Places” “feature” so that you can at least stop your location being inadvertently shared to strangers by your FB friends:

Keep in mind that any friend could potentially check you in anywhere. You don’t actually have to be there. If you don’t want anyone playing a practical joke and checking you in to a strip club, for example, this is a good thing to turn off.

You will need to edit your own Privacy Settings AND your Application Settings to ensure that your location information can’t be inadvertently shared with FB apps your friends are using.

Obviously, the other thing to double-check is whether your smartphone, should you have one, is broadcasting your location to everybody in your contacts and shared apps lists for all sorts of other networks, not just FB. I don’t find having the locator enabled is much of a help even when I’m looking at a map app, so I certainly can’t see the point of it otherwise.

Hide unwanted comments without deleting them. Edit the comment and wrap the offending text in [shush][/shush].
(Example: [shush]FIRST!!![/shush])

Readers can choose to read the hidden comment by clicking on the “Show” link.

ShushThatNoise plugin in action

Bonus: You can also use this shortcode in your posts as a “Spoiler” hider.

I like the idea of being able to use it as a spoiler hider. Let’s test that feature:

For Blog Authors:

N.B. It’s worth noting that some of the short HTMLHyper Text Markup Language - the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document. tags (<i> <u> <s> etc) seem to be deprecated i.e. not all new browsers render them, so it’s often better to use the XHTML tags ( <em> <strong> etc) – except on platforms that don’t accept them, of course.

• Basic HTMLHyper Text Markup Language - the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document. for Bloggers.
  - from 2007, but excellent introduction
• Basic Blog HTMLHyper Text Markup Language - the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document. Language
  - introduction with a table listing TAG-ACTION-EXAMPLE for simple formatting
• Blogger HTMLHyper Text Markup Language - the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document. Tutorial
  - typically good introduction from eHow
• Basic HTMLHyper Text Markup Language - the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document. tag for bloggers
  - simple list of tags with formatting actions
• HTMLHyper Text Markup Language - the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document. Text Formatting
  - W3Schools is the best all-round resource, with widgets that allow you to test the code for yourself on their site – not much on detailed explanations though.

For Blog Commentors

In WordPress, the blog authors can use a wide range of HTMLHyper Text Markup Language - the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document. tags, while blog commentor’s options are restricted to some basic formatting tags. Other blogging systems similarly restrict the markup allowed in comments, in order to limit potential avenues for exploits.

• HtmlHyper Text Markup Language - the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document. allowed in comments #2

Most of the articles listed above offer links to more advanced tutorials at the end of their own tute.

This method is only needed if you don’t have full server access to take a MySQL dump and a wpWordPress publishing platform-content dump in order to migrate a blog using PHPMyAdmin or equivalent.

Dennis’ post shows how you can still migrate a very large blog using the native WordPress export feature, splitting the export .xmlExtensible Markup Language - a set of rules for coding documents electronically (because it focuses on simplicity, generality and usability across a wide range of applications it now underlies many popular web services and computing tools) file into smaller components using a WXR splitter, then using the native WordPress import feature to upload the archives.

It’s tedious as hell, but it does work.

It’s obviously not quite as obvious as it could be.

I tend to get this mostly from users who need to gain admin/editor/author access to a group blog created by somebody else. New users have to create a wordpress.com account to become an author, the administrator cannot just add them as a user manually as they can on a self-hosted blog. The usernames generated by wordpress.com appear to be getting longer and more randomly generated, which is A Good Thing for security but not so good for displaying on the blog, and people appear to be unclear on how to change the name that is displayed to readers of the blog.

Luckily editing your display name is pretty easy :-

Click to enlarge

The Personal Settings option in the Users section allows one to remove the visual editor option (for those who prefer to write directly in HTMLHyper Text Markup Language - the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document.), to push Twitter status updates to one’s blog, and more.

The new features to look forward to:

• WordPress and WordPress MU (multi-user) have merged, so that multiple blogs will be easy to run from a single install. So far this is not yet an automated process, but the idea is that once 3.0 is in general release this will be easy-peasy to manage. This should make it especially easy to integrate custom social networks around a WordPress install while still having an uncluttered main blog as the front page.
• Custom menus are going to be available. I’m curious to see just how many options are configurable here.
• Custom post types – this will essentially add a more Tumblr-like posting facility right out of the box, and should allow lots more options for themea code package that controls how a site looks through a stylesheet (may also have custom functions coding built in) designers with regard to both styling each post type and adding new post-types via functions.php. It’s also going to make it a lot easier for website producers to teach clients how to post their own content optimally-formatted with these options built-in – custom fields should now be incorporated into an intuitive menu for each post type instead of being a more complicated add-on option.

I’d be most interested to hear from anybody playing around with the Betas.

How to do it:

• Hybrid & Hybrid Child Themes

  Couldn’t be simpler. Go and create your default avatar (a grayscale or pale monochrome version of your favicon or site logo is a good idea for “branding”), go to your WPWordPress publishing platform admin Dashboard and upload it using Media » Add New, then add the full URL to the option in Appearance » Hybrid Settings. Voila!

• Standard WPWordPress publishing platform themes – up to 2.7

  (You really should upgrade for the new security features). This solution takes only a few lines of code in the comments.php file.

  
  <?php if(function_exists('get_avatar')) {
  echo get_avatar( $comment, $size = '70', $default = '<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/gravatar.pngPortable Network Graphic' );
  } ?>

• Standard WPWordPress publishing platform themes – 2.7+

From WPWordPress publishing platform 2.7+, the way that WordPress calls the comment-list has changed, so that the code above will not work if inserted into comments.php – there has to be code added to functions.php instead, and maybe just one little tweak to the array-call in comments.php to set the avatar size. If you are using one of the WordPress framework systems, the code may need adjusting to call framework hooks instead of standard WPWordPress publishing platform hooks (see next section).

Solution Source: first, add to functions.php (create it if it doesn’t already exist). This code assumes that you have uploaded your own custom gravatar image to a folder named ‘images’ in the themea code package that controls how a site looks through a stylesheet (may also have custom functions coding built in) directory – if you have uploaded the image elsewhere then change the code accordingly.

<php
function my_own_gravatar( $avatar_defaults ) {
    $myavatar = get_bloginfo('template_directory') . '/images/gravatar.pngPortable Network Graphic';
    $avatar_defaults[$myavatar] = 'GRAVATAR NAME DISPLAYED IN WORDPRESS';
    return $avatar_defaults;
}
add_filter( 'avatar_defaults', 'my_own_gravatar' );
?>

You should now see a new default avatar with the name you gave it in the code above added to the list (Mystery Man, Wavicon, Identicon etc) on the Settings » Discussion page. Select it as the default and save. Then there’s merely avatar size to consider, which is a simple array insertion into the comments.php file at the line where we see wp_list_comments :

<?php wp_list_comments(array('avatar_size'=>70, )); ?>

• Thesis

  If you are using a WordPress frameworkyou may need to alter the above code slightly to fit with the framework architecture. For Thesis you definitely need a slight change in the code. There’s a good post here but the code’s final line wasn’t quite right. A quick visit to the DIYThemes forums showed me that someone had come up with a fix:

  1. Upload your custom gravatar to the Thesis custom/images folder.
  2. Add the following lines to the Thesis custom_functions.php file.

  
      /* Add a Custom Default Gravatar */
      if ( !function_exists('custom_gravatar') ) {
      function custom_gravatar( $avatar_defaults ) {
      $myavatar = get_bloginfo('template_directory') . '/custom/images/IMAGENAME.pngPortable Network Graphic';
      $avatar_defaults[$myavatar] = 'MYDEFAULTGRAVATARNAME';
  
      return $avatar_defaults;
      }
      add_filter( 'avatar_defaults', 'custom_gravatar' );
      }

Choose the new default avatar from the Settings » Discussions page, and there you are. Gravatar size can be tweaked as desired.

For more distinctiveness, avatars can also be customised to have different styles for authors and admins. I’ll do a tutorial on that in the next week or so.