Gravatar is a very cool concept– have one universal avatar you can easily use to identify yourself across various sites. The way the “lookup” works through MD5 hashes is secure; I’m not worried about people discovering my email address through the system. I’ve hesitated using it however for another security concern… a social concern. » More: Gravatar Security, Socially
Archive for the ‘Website Development’ Category
Gravatar Security, Socially
February 27th, 2010No MX No Comment
September 14th, 2009While moderating comments on my most active site today I became annoyed at the number of people who leave comments with obviously fake email addresses. I haven’t gone to the extent of requiring people to validate their comment by sending them an email like other sites have– however it is something I’ve considered. This gave me the idea to write a very simple WordPress Plugin… No MX Records, no comment. » More: No MX No Comment
WP Super Cache Date Display Issue
July 10th, 2009The WP Super Cache plugin is finally playing well enough in my environment that I’ve been able to update from the ancient, abandoned WP-Cache plugin. I did notice however an issue with displaying dates in WordPress 2.8 and 2.8.1. The “Last” and “Next” Garbage Collection times are incorrect. Yet when I go to the WordPress Setting –> General page, the URC time and the Local Time are correct. It seems like the WP Super Cache plugin might be applying the UTC offset to the local time. » More: WP Super Cache Date Display Issue
Separate Feed Stats with AWStats
July 24th, 2006A bit more than a month ago I was listening to a podcast between Jeremy Wright and Tyme talking about blog networks. During the conversation the topic of feed statistics came up. Jeremy astutely mentioned how most website statistics programs count a “feed check” (my term) as a page view. This certainly isn’t desirable. Why?
» More: Separate Feed Stats with AWStats
Websites Getting Wider, 1024×768
March 31st, 2006I’ve noticed a trend recently, and I’m not sure I like it. More and more sites are being designed which will not fit within the width of an 800×600 screen. Many of Apple’s new pages include graphics that are much wider than 800 pixels, and CNN redesigned their site layout in the past few days which stretches way beyond 800 pixels.
Published browser statistics from the w3schools suggest that in January of 2006 20% of their users were still using a display resolution of 800×600. That is a huge number, especially for a technical website where their visitors are more likely to have newer technology and thus higher screen resolutions.
» More: Websites Getting Wider, 1024×768
OmniGraffle for Website Layout Development
February 18th, 2006
One thing I love about blogs is that every now and then someone mentions a tip which totally changes how you work. This happened to me yesterday. Peter over at The Blog Studio wrote about how to design a blog. And among the couple dozen juicy paragraphs in the article he wrote this.
I use a fabulous program called OmniGraffle (mac only) to play around with site layout and element hierarchy (more on this in a moment). I like to stay out of my graphics editor, since the potential to get sucked into designing visual elements is so strong. You really want to avoid jumping into the visual part of the design at this stage, since youll just end up getting lost.
AOL Feedback Loop Saves the Day
February 4th, 2006More than a year ago I signed up for the AOL Feedback Loop. This is a tool for network administrators to receive notification if any emails sent from your servers are reported as spam by AOL recipients.
Some of my clients run large, double-opt-in mailing lists. Frequently AOL members click on the ‘this is spam’ button to those emails. Probably they are trying to block emails from one specific person (which won’t work) and maybe sometimes they use it in an attempt to unsubscribe from the list (this doesn’t work either) instead of clicking on the simple link provided at the bottom of each message. (That does work.)
» More: AOL Feedback Loop Saves the Day
PHP MySQL Development with Dreamweaver
January 31st, 2006
Yesterday I had the opportunity to play around with a copy of Dreamweaver on a friend’s computer. Mainly I wanted to play around with the PHP/MySQL integration and see if I could develop a web-app via WYSIWYG. I didn’t hold high expectations.
If you want to learn PHP/MySQL, this isn’t the way to do it. Without a background in PHP/MySQL the learning curve to develop a simple web-app would have been difficult at best. The code it produced wasn’t even close to the way I would have written it, but it did work.
So why use it all? Well it was speedy. Once I figured out how to connect all of the dots developing a simple web-app was quite quick. If you are going beyond typical add records, update records, delete records you will probably need to code by hand.
» More: PHP MySQL Development with Dreamweaver
WordPress Plugin Security
January 16th, 2006
One of the RSS subscriptions I read every morning is the Secunia Security Advisories. This list tells me all of the new vulnerabilities discovered in software. Having my own small “hosting company” I keep tabs on all of the software I or my clients install on the server and compare that list to any security advisories Secunia releases.
Today, a popular WordPress Plug-in, WP-Stats appeared on the security advisory list. The vulnerability would allow someone smart and clever to make modifications to your site. That wouldn’t be good.
But this post isn’t about WP-Stats, rather about your own website security. Due to the easy installation and easy operation of WordPress (and many website scripts these days) the average website owner doesn’t pay enough attention to security.
» More: WordPress Plugin Security
Don’t Build Your Site Like SlopeTracker
September 16th, 2005I came across a site today with a very unique product. Basically it is a GPS receiver that you take long with you while skiing that is constantly logging your position. Then at the end of the day the data can be downloaded, analyzed, and printed showing you things like the number of runs you took, top speed, and a 3D map of your travels. Very cool!
What isn’t super cool is their website design. Actually the design itself is fine (actually good) however it was poorly implemented. They seem to have forgot many, many people still use dial-up modems. When designing pages I attempt to keep them all under 30 kb. Sometimes they go longer but 30 kb is my target. A 30 kb page will load in about eight seconds over dial-up. Tolerable.
» More: Don’t Build Your Site Like SlopeTracker
