article-stack

Many people search for plugins to add support of jquery based thickbox. But do you know this is already included in your wordpress bundle. Let’s try

Suppose you want to open a webpage into thickbox. Just add following code at the end of last link we made above

&embedded=true&KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=400&width=650

And add following code to your anchor tag.

  class="thickbox"

For Example

For more guidance, refer jquery thickbox

I purchased the Rubik’s Cube a week ago. This could be a favorite time pass for me while traveling. I tried a lot but couldn’t solve it.

Had you stuck while solving a Rubik’s Cube?

Visit this online Rubik’s Cube solver. It can help you to solve 2x2x2, 3x3x3, 4x4x4 type of Rubik’s Cube. You just need to mark colors. And click on “solve” button. It’ll also tell you how did he solved your puzzle. So it is very good for learning.

If you don’t have rubik’s cube with you then you can play it there.

See the video tutorial for interactive learning.

If you are decorating kids room or thinking some innovative interior styles then this greeting card style might be a good option for you.

Take a big and colorful sheet. Cut and shape it. Stick the paper sheet in the corner or behind the door. So the flowers can be folded inside when someone close the door.

If you are not able to think any design then you can refer a greeting card. There are many greeting cards available in such format.

Ms Swati constructed a static website for their customer. She received hundreds of complaints within 1 hour of launching. All the complaints were related to mess-up design. She was the victim of compatibility issue of java script & CSS across many browsers and screen resolution.

Better solution is to use GIF images instead of PNG. Because their transparency is preserved across browsers. Or you can go for 2 color images for rounded corners. See the sample in side.

You can make images for corners using any image editor. Otherwise use online service for the same.

This online script let you generate any color images matching to your page background along with CSS code. So you can make any rounded corner box within some minutes.

I generally use long password including all sort of characters.
Yesterday I forgot the password of admin section of my site. But I supposed to log in anyhow since I was unable to do any activity. I decided to hack it.

Difficulties which were in front of me

But I hacked it….

Of course I’ll not tell you how. But there is a hint. You can find out the way in my previously published four articles. All are interrelated. And only one of them is tagged for hacking. One of them is tagged for online services. and rest you need to find

Example Text:

< a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack< /a>
< a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack< /a>
< a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack< /a>< a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack< /a>

Regular expression

	< a [a-zA-Z0-9\=\"\:\.\,\/\- ]*>.*<\/a>
or
        < a.*>.*<\/a>.

Output

[0] => Array
        (
            [0] => < a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack
            [1] => < a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack
            [2] => < a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack< a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack
        )

Improved Regular Expression

 < a [a-zA-Z0-9\=\"\:\.\,\/\- ]*>(.[^(<\/a>)])*.<\/a> 

Output

[0] => Array
        (
            [0] => < a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack< /a>
            [1] => < a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack< /a>
            [2] => < a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack< /a>
            [3] => < a href="http://article-stack.com">article-stack< /a>
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => ac
            [1] => ac
            [2] => ac
            [3] => ac
        )

You can do above task using some programming language like java, awk, PHP etc, or in any text editor.

Can you imagine the time when there will be no distance between virtual world and real world?

Just imagine about a paper with movable pictures that Harry Potter was reading. Or when you can feed contents of a paper into computer without scanner.

Just watch below video about future technology where you can control everything with your fingers.

There is common thinking in everyone’s mind that if you want to secure your wordpress blog then you must disable users to get registered on your site.

Registration on a site always attracts hackers. Many plug-ins may secure your blog. But some of them might be proved as a powerful & useful tool for hackers.

Here I am discussing about a plug-in which is very useful in point of security. But I used this to hack my own site.

Let’s do it.

http://localhost/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=WordPressFileMonitor&display=alertDesc

or
< your blog url >/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=WordPressFileMonitor&display=alertDesc

This hack will help you to collect more information about the site like latest changes, posts in draft, plug-in recently installed, theme, and various path along with file name.

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.

You’ll find many posts over wordpress security plug-ins. But I had excluded all plug-ins which do less work that you can do by changing some settings. Like creating .htaccess file etc.

I also not mentioned plug-ins related to SSL. SSL certificates let you connect to your server with encrypted channel which is very secure. You need to buy SSL certificate. You can use shared or private certificates. But in both cases you need to payment. Since most of the bloggers doesn’t go for buying SSL certificates. So I avoided them.

You can achieve full security by using very less number of plug-ins. Some of them are;

Akismet - It helps you to protect from SPAM. In simple words you can say. If someone comments on a post just for advertisement or uses offensive word then Akismet can stop them.

Block Bad Queries (BBQ) - I hope all of you are aware with SQL injection. SQL injections are nothing but some complex SQL queries written with the aim of breaking your site security. And to get internal information of your site database as much as possible. This plug-in can control SQL injection & base64 attacks till some extension.

Login LockDown - Login LockDown controls number of unsuccessful login attempts. So you ever be safe from brute force & dictionary attack.

WordPress File Monitor - As its name suggest, it monitors all files on your server. This plug-in tells you about what files are changed on your server. So that you can identify whether the mentioned files are changed by you or by some script.

I found that even twitter doesn’t use this fix and their background imposition on low resolution. see Twitter custom background on low resolution.

CSS ie used by twitter

body {
  background: #005687 url('http://a1.twimg.com/profile_background_images/79291092/twitter-theme-2.jpg') fixed no-repeat;

}

I tried auto margin and center attribute of background property, separately and together. But it hadn’t got it fixed. I also played with width and height properties. But nothing worked for me.

  container{height:100%;text-align:center;background: url(images/header.jpg) no-repeat center; height:634px; margin:0 auto;}

Now I set top attribute as follows and it got fixed.

container{background: url(images/header.jpg) no-repeat top ;}

If you are facing more display errors then refer CSS compatibility charts to know what properties or attributes you should avoid to use.

I hope this tip would be useful to big background sites.

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.

Have you ever faced problem related to your website appearance?

I went through this fix when my sister developed a site for a client. That site was coming properly in IE7 and Firefox. But it is messed up in IE 5.5, 6.
Floats & margins ever create appearance problem in IE. Luckily IE 7 is free from this till some extension.
Review the below code and its display in IE6 and in firefox, IE 7 and Epic. You’ll find that IE double the margin.

.floatbox {
  float: left;
  width: 150px;
  height: 150px;
  margin: 5px 0 5px 100px;
  display: inline;
  }

In IE6

In Firefox & IE7

Solution

Possible solution for the same is either you use padding instead of margin. But it is not possible all time. Another solution is to use padding and margin with some mathematics calculation such as left margin & right margin adjust both.
To read more about it and to fix it read The IE5/6 Doubled Float-Margin Bug. To understand concepts of floats read fix for floating div. You might need CSS compatibility charts to understand computability issues with other browsers.

I compiled above screen shot using some online tools since I was not having IE6 installed on my machine.

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>

Most of the video chat program requires webcam at both sides. If your friend wanna chat with you then both of you require webcam. Many of the chat programs let you chat but many of them limit you. This trick is just to bypass all limitations. For this you must have to learn how to share your PC with your friend over internet.

Now you can share your files with our friend. You can watch movie on his PC (require good speed internet connection) or can see him through his webcam itself.

It is very easy to share your PC with your friend without doing any settings. You just need to download Teamviewer on your PC. Once you had downloaded it.

1

Run Teamviewer installer file. It’ll ask you whether you want to install it or want to run it directly. Select RUN > Next. And Accept their agreement. See in below image.

2

Once you select RUN, it’ll give you an ID & Password that you can share with your friend. Otherwise ask your friend for the same. Take his ID and enter it into blanked ID box (appears in right side of below screenshot). You can notice into below screen shot. Click on “Connect to Partner” button.

Trouble shoot:

1. If TeamViewer is not generating ID & Password then might be your firewall, installed on your PC, has denied it to connect over internet. You’ll have to remove it from firewall’s entry. Or You will have to set its rule to ALLOW.
2. Might be Teamviewer is still trying to connect. Check whether you can see RIGHT sign symbol in left bottom of above screen shot. If not then have patient.