Bewildered

When you want to stand up a new website, or modify your existing site, there are some things you should know. The first thing is to know how to find out if the name you want is available. Domain names are managed by a group of companies that have been approved as registrars. These companies make sure that names are uniquely owned. Any of these companies provide “look-up” service that you can use to check on whether a name is available. They also offer “whois” service to find out who currently owns a domain name.

I normally use the Network Solutions website. You just enter the name you are considering in the Web Address – Search for a Domain Name section and click “Search”. The results will tell you if that name is available in any of the Domain Extensions (i.e., .com, .net, .org). If you find the name you wanted is taken, you can use the “WHOIS Search” link at the bottom of the page to look up who owns it and when their ownership expires.

If you have or had someone buy your domain name for you, you should make sure that you are down as one of the contacts on that domain, otherwise it can be difficult to have changes made and you lose control of your own domain. For example, I developed a website for Exclusively You, LLC. If you do a WHOIS search on their domain, exclusivelyYouByTheBay.com, you will see that I am down as the Administrative contact, the owner of Exclusively You, Teri Walker is down as the Registrant, and the hosting company, Host Monster, is down as the Technical contact. This is important, there are a number of rules in place to keep your domain name from being “stolen” by an unauthorized person, but these same rules make it hard for you to change things about your own domain if you are not listed as a contact with the registrar. You also want to be notified if your domain registration is expiring (domain names can be bought for a single or multiple years).

Changes to the domain registration information might include needing to change the name servers if your website is moved to a new location (server or hosting company change), a person listed as a contact leaves the company and the contact information needs to be updated, a person listed as a contact is no longer in an active business relationship with you and the contact information needs to be updated or you need to update your contact information.

I had a client that had a fully developed, fully functional website that they wanted to be able to edit the text on. The site was beautifully done design wise, but in a style that did not lend itself to translation into a full CMS template based application. They were willing to change hosts if needed, but believing that there is no need to fix something that isn’t broken, I began looking into lightweight CMS options. I eliminated applications that are basically hosting systems and ones that require software installation on the server or require PHP on the server. I found a number of free applications that simply use ftp access, class definitions for editable areas and their own editor/manager interfaces.

The first one I looked at was PageLime. A beautiful, simple interface that literally allows you to give your client edit access to their site in a matter of minutes. It has the ability to allow previewing of changes prior to publishing. I liked that it allowed the user to navigate using the normal site navigation. Features to be checked further, content history and user permissions for edit and publish. Claims to encrypt stored data… this gives me warm fuzzies. 5GB, one admin account, unlimited user accounts and 3 sites are free. Branding and up to 50 sites for $19/month.

The next one I reviewed was CushyCMS. Very similar in basic ways to PageLime. Designer and Editor account types. Has a “Control Panel” page that lists pages added and account information. Supports revision history. Not as slick as PageLime, but looks like it supports all the aspects I need.  Unlimited sites and users are fee.  Branding for $28/month.

SimpleCMS was next. Wow…  it really is … simple.  Basic, straightforward, no gadgets.  One site for free, branding and 15 sites for $15/month, unlimited sites for $20/month.

I’m going to try out PageLime and see how it works for the client!

Recently I was working in some legacy code.  As with a lot of legacy code it had a basic page that stretched on forever making debugging and customization problematic.  In addition to yanking out blocks of code and using cfincludes, I wanted to shorten a brute force required field check.  It checked each required field and set an associated error variable, these variables are then used to highlight fields that are missing data.  To shorten the code I wanted to loop over these fields, creating the error field names on the fly.  Looping through a list of required field names required the evaluation of the field name, but then trying to set the errVariable I found this neat feature of CF…  you can’t use cfset to set an evaluation(variable), but you can cfset “variable” to value.  So while <cfset thisfield = evaluation(“err#shortname#”)> is illegal, you can <cfset “err#Trim(shortName)#” = “”>.  Very handy….

I often run into issues trying to import data from one database into the development database. In spite of selecting options for deleting rows from destination table and allowing the inserting of identity fields, the import fails with errors regarding trying to insert duplicate primary keys. Today I discovered that even though you can select multiple tables and edit mapping, selecting the desired options, it may not actually use those options. When I went back and went into each table separately, clicked on edit mappings, didn’t change anything, but then clicked Ok, then it worked as anticipated. Well at least now I know….

Being a developer with over 15 years of web development experience, when I get hired I tend to believe there is a recognition that I may know something about web pages and web applications… things like blinking text is bad; people don’t read 90% of the text on a webpage; utility trumps beauty (craigslist anyone); risk assessment is one of the most undervalued processes for web sites;  displaying credit card numbers is bad; everyone needs a disaster recovery plan; despite what marketers are taught, red is too harsh on computer screens for most websites and big picture thinking can save time and money, so take the time to think things through. I have learned over the years that most customers can be talked into a better solution then what they think they want, but part of that is learning to be strategic when you have to tell them no. Here is a great article, No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas.  This article by Whitney Hess makes some great points and has some great lessons.  Enjoy!

I am always suspicious when someone on the radio appeals to my emotions to get me to agree with them. Take the BP oil spill. I have heard so few facts about this incident it makes me wonder if anyone is looking for them. One, can someone explain, in basic intelligent terms, why stopping the leak is so hard… why they can’t blow something up or fill something with concrete… Two, I understand BP cut corners in safety and set up…. but were they short cuts that are standard for oil companies? I mean really…. every job has them… Three, what is with congress and the prez calling business people into their presence…. remember he isn’t a king and they aren’t the police…. Four, I understand there is oil the consistency of peanut butter hitting the coast… but what is the actual affect other then scaring tourists? how many animals are dying? what are the real (not knee jerk exaggeration) long term impacts? Five, does the oil breakdown or become diluted eventually? Six, I’ve heard the oil is going to circle Florida and come up the East Coast… I have a hard time with this…. there is an awful lot of water out there…. Seven, why can corporate guys say they want their life to get back to normal without it being an insult to everyone whose life has been “not normal”? They are people too. Eight, the prez looking for someone to blame seems immature and gauche …. but maybe that’s because I’m a mom and know what class looks like. Nine, do people really not understand that it isn’t easy to figure out who has really been affected and who is scamming … or just believe they deserve to be taken care of by their government? Ten, sorry… but I miss President Bush… he would explain things, not try to sell me a used car…. I mean a new program…. everytime he opened his mouth.

In Joomla, wanted to show date in article. I use the jumi plugin (http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/edition/custom-code-in-content/1023).
Create new jumi component with custom script created,’%m/%d/%Y’) ?> then in article {jumi [*3]} where 3 is the id of the jumi component.

To save an excel file as a CSV file with the delimiter of your choice, go to the control panel and select Regional and Language Options, then Customize this format. Change the list separator to the character of your choice. Apply the change. In Excel, save the file as a CSV file. It will use the windows default list separator you just set. After saving the file, change the list separator back.

As I experiment with CMS/blog software, one of the cool discoveries is blog posting by email… but how will it format? It is insane that we got back from Saint Croix just in time for a serious of snow storms…. some winters we barely get any snow…. I miss the palm trees and sunshine of Saint Croix….Cruzan Rum, Rob from Ohio, Shelly who is helping the homeless, Cheryl the bartender from New York, Adelle and John, Johnnie Redlocks, Valerie from the Whim Museum, Ted and Amy that were down for their son’s wedding, Freddie the ferry captain, Sam the Glass Man, Flash aka Rob, Crystal the bartender and Fawn the goat.

The WTOP headline is “Virginia governor race a snapshot of US attitudes”…. it then goes on to say that Virginia may be electing a Republican governor to follow the current Democrat governor.  They say that Virginia has done this switch regularly since 1997, picking a governor from the party opposite to the current President’s, but call it “Virginia’s new found swing-voting behavior”. New found? In 1997…

Then they talk about disillusioned voters and conclude this is something new … After highlighting the Virginia election and one in New Jersey, they draw the conclusion that the Viriginia election will “give important clues about the country’s collective state of mind.” Really?

According to Larry J. Sabato, Director, U.Va. Center for Politics over at The Crystal Ball website “the Old Dominion had voted for the gubernatorial nominee of the party opposite to the one controlling the White House” (http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/article.php?id=LJS2009091701) in the last 8 gubernatorial elections. Seems to me Virginia is just doing what they usually do…. and WTOP is desperately searching for a story…