article-stack

If you are developing wordpress blog, you might need to do testing for registered users like

• Whether non registered users are able to view blocked posts
• Whether restricted contents are visible to members only.
• Which are options on dashboard accessible to various users?
• etc

Better you do all testing locally including user registration.
To register a user on local copy of your wordpress, either you need to configure SMTP server locally. So mails can be send from your machine. Or you can go for a very small trick mentioned below.

Locate php.ini which should exist on following path. I am assuming that you had installed Xampp on C drive.

C:\\php\php.ini
C:\\php\php5.ini
C:\\apache\bin\php.ini

Editing php.ini:
- Open php.ini file and uncomment the php_smtp.dll extension. This is required when sending emails to a remote server.
- Scroll down and find the following lines:

[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
;SMTP = localhost
;smtp_port = 25

; For Win32 only.
;sendmail_from = me@example.com

- From the lines above, uncomment SMTP, smtp_port and sendmail_from
directives, then add SMTP server, SMTP port number and your preferred email address to SMTP, smtp_port and sendmail_from directives respectively, your final code should be similar to the one below:

[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
SMTP = mail.server.com
smtp_port = 25

; For Win32 only.
sendmail_from = something@server.com

- Replace mail.server.com and something@server.com with correct values. The default
- Restart your server. That you can do from xampp controller.

Now you just need some application that can send e-mail from your PC. You can use wordpress for the same.

I had already provided sample database for inventory of goods and an analysis report too.

If you are developing an application for some transport company or for your personal practice then this sample file can help you. You can use this database file for personal or commercial purpose. I am providing this file specially to increase understanding about database designing. You can read analysis report & design for transport based application.

Download here
This area is protected to registered users only.

Like other articles of db files, I wrote this to provide free and sample database related to inventory. This database file is related to item and customer relationship. It’ll be very helpful if you are trying to solve previously written article on SQL exercise. Otherwise you can use this database to make any inventory project related to small firm or shops deal in selling and buying items.

This database file is available in MS Access format and contains some dummy data for practice. It contains around 4-5 tables. For more data, you would have to populate yourself. Feel free to use this database. And share it with me, if you do some update on it.

Download here
This area is protected to registered users only.

This article is written specially for students who are building an application or project for their own practice or as a college, school assignment. It might help you to improve your analysis level. Here, you will know

• How to relate tables?
• How to separate data into multiple tables?

It’ll help you to build project related to hotel management where people stays, check in and check out. It’ll not help you if you are building an application related to some restaurant.
If you need some more data base you can visit db files tag. My purpose is to make you concentrate on, how to retrieve data not to build data. If you have less time to develop complete your projects or assignment you can use ready to use code and applications from this site. Now the time is to go practically and improve your understanding in retrieval of data and SQL.

Download here
This area is protected to registered users only.

Let’s start

Develop your plugin and test it locally.

Notify WordPress team about your work

a. Create you account on wordpress .
b. Select “Add your plugin” from left menu. Fil basic information about your plugin or theme. So that wordpress team can access it and test it.

Wait for mail
Once your plugin is submitted to and tested by wordpress team you will get a mail. like this

    Your plugin hosting request has been approved.
    Within one hour, you will have access to your SVN repository at 

http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/YOUR-PLUGIN-NAME/

    with your WordPress.org/bbPress.org username and password (the same one you use on the forums).
    Here's some handy links to help you get started.
    Using Subversion with the WordPress Plugins Directory 

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/svn/

    FAQ about the WordPress Plugins Directory 

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/faq/

    WordPress Plugins Directory readme.txt standard 

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/readme.txt

    readme.txt validator: 

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/validator/

    Enjoy!

It may confuse you little bit. But forget it

4. Download “Tortoise SVN” from http://subversion.tigris.org/. [you may have to login to download it]

5. Once the installation is done.

1. Create a folder somewhere on your hard disk.
2. Right click on the folder. And select “Create repository here”.
3. Some folders will be created inside the folder you opted for repository.
4. Again right click on the same folder. And select “SVN Checkout”. [To know more in detail you may visit wordpress]
5. It will ask for login ID & Password. Use the id you use to login on wordpress plugin site.

6. Inside your plugin directory you will get three more folders

1. trunk
2. tags
3. branches

7. Copy your plugin files in “trunk” folder.(dont archive them)

8. Make a readme.txt to tell something about your plugin or theme. refer its format.

Note
To check whether contents of your readme.txt are valid or not. Go to read me validator. Here you can paste contents of readme.txt. And can validate it.

Extra files
Providing screenshots to viewers of your plugin is really a good idea. It may fascinate users to use your plugin. Take some screenshot. And place them into “tags” folder of your repository folder. And specify their path into readme.txt.

Note
tags folder contain a version folder like “/2.0/”. All files are placed only inside version folder. This version must be similar to the version specified in you readme.txt

Save your work

What else. Just right click on your repository folder and select “SVN Commit”. Your work will be uploaded to wordpress server. You may check it by following http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/YOUR-PLUGIN-NAME/

You may also refer my repository directory structure for further help.

I never suggest using PNG images since they are bigger in size and not compatible with many browsers. Although you can fix their appearance so their transparency can persist. But sometimes they are needful for web designers. So here I am mentioning some PNG fixes as per my experience.

These fixes may fix transparency of a PNG image. But you would have to test it with various version of internet browsers like IE 5,6,7 etc, various internet browsers like chrome, Firefox, epic, IE etc. And on various platform like Mac , Windows, Linux, Mobile OS.

Testing a page against so many browsers is really a tough job. Specially when you asked to test it on various platforms. You can use one click solution for this. It’ll not only save your time but money as well.

If you are wrodpress blogger then HITS- IE6 PNGFix might help you to fix PNG transparency in IE6. You may try it to other browsers as well. But author claims to fix in IE6 only.

1

This fix, based on jquery, is ultimate. It supports all version of IE above than 5.5 (including). Click on the image for online demo and how to use guide. You can directly download it from andreaseberhard.

twinhelix PNG fix claims to fix transparency problem of any PNG file as well as ALPHA problem. It supports all the images inserted on the HTML page using < img > or background images. Click on the image to visit their demo page and how to use guide. I am not sure this fix is compatible with CSS3. But I had tested it against EPIC and firefox. And found it effective.
You can download this fix directly from twinhelix.

Please report me if you find any link broken.

PNG transparency is not only the problem for web designers. There are some more problems related to margin, floats etc. These problems always make me worry. But I have cure for margin Fix and floating fix. Please let me know if you are facing any other CSS related issue. Moreover, CSS compatibility charts can help you giving an idea about what part or browser you are missing from testing your webpage. I would like to find out more effective solutions as well as improving my knowledge.

If you are planning to edit/create your own wordpress theme, XAMPP will be a best option to test it. Although creating WP themes using Artisteer is too easy and editing existing themes using ThemeDreamer is very simple. But how would they look in various browser is important. And at this point you need some platform where you can run wordpress.

Xampp will let you test your wordpress blog or any other PHP, JSP etc site locally. This tutorial will tell you about how to configure xampp and about how to configure wordpress on xampp.

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'putyourdbnamehere');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'usernamehere');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourpasswordhere');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Replace the above code with below code.

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'root');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', '');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

or 

http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/.

Finally, your local server is ready to run your blog. Now the turn is to install some themes and plug-ins. You may also need some sample posts if you want to save your time while testing.
You can try my plug-in initially. It’ll give you more options to test. Read other articles over wordpress. And remember to make a user locally to complete your testing.
If you had published your site and want to test its appearance on various browsers and platform the browsershots can help you.

Please leave your feed backs, suggestions and ideas for another easy setup of any blog.

If you already had read article over margin fix and float fix then you must be interested to test your website on various browsers, their versions and various platforms.
It is not easy to install all browsers on your local machine. Nor you can arrange many platforms. It’ll not only be expensive but time consuming. If you your website on one browser it must take 1 min on average.
Well!! I have a solution. Use browsershots. Browsershots lets you test any website online in few seconds.

It generates screen shot from various browsers on various platforms. You can select your desire platform, browser or their version.

Problems

1. You cannot test a site which is not published since you need to give URL of a site.
2. You might stick in queue. If there are many requests for a browser then it’ll put you in queue. You will have to revisit the site for screenshots. You need not to search again. Just use the URL looks like http://browsershots.org/http://article-stack.com/

Once you analyze generated screen shots, you might need CSS compatibility charts to identify the problem, if any and to fix them.

Google hosts some scripts at their server that you can refer on your site directly. It doesn’t only save bandwidth of your site but make you tension free to update java script versions.

CDN means content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) . You can host your site contents(static) like images, css, java script or flash files here. When someone visits your site, contents uploaded at some CDN would be downloaded on client side parallel. It saves bandwidth and reduce site loading time.

You can opt any java script framework mentioned below.

< script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
< script type="text/javascript"
src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.2/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
< script type="text/javascript"
src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/chrome-frame/1.0.2/CFInstall.min.js"></script>
< script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/swfobject/2.2/swfobject.js"></script>
< script type="text/javascript"
src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/mootools/1.2.4/mootools-yui-compressed.js"></script>
< script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/ext-core/3.1.0/ext-core.js"></script>
< script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/yui/2.8.1/build/yuiloader/yuiloader-min.js"></script>
< script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/prototype/1.6.1.0/prototype.js"></script>
< script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/scriptaculous/1.8.3/scriptaculous.js"></script>
< script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/dojo/1.4.3/dojo/dojo.xd.js"></script>

I seen people searching software or plug-in to save more than once images from a web page in one short. Or they manually right click on the image and save it. But if you are using Firefox then this tip can save your time & effort both. It’ll also help you to save embedded videos and background image of that page.

Generally, Background images are not saved when you save a web page.

Well!! First you need to visit that page from Firefox browser. Once it is opened. Go to TOOLS menu & select Page Info.
You’ll get a dialog box on your screen. This will give you some information about opened web page. You can see four tabs in that dialog box. GENERAL tab fetches information from page header. It arranges information and displays them properly. So you can read & understand it properly.

Next is MEDIA Tab. All embedded contents and images are listed here. You can select anyone of them to see their preview. You’ll find a “Save As” button o the preview area, to save selected item. You also can select multiple items from the list. And save them.