grComputerWorks

OpenSUSE 16 Gnome Leap Post Install

2026-06-03T21:24:54.912+00:00

Dash2Panel Gnome Extension
Enable Flatpak
Vivaldi - remember for force dark mode toggle
Apostrophe
Where's YAST/Merlin to add packman?
Edge - there is a wrapper in flatpak
Myrlyn yast's replacement
Install Web Dev Pattern / LAMP
Geany
Uninstall Games

Free Tools I Use for Website Management

2025-10-31T02:30:00.003+00:00

These are tools that I use pretty regularly to create and test websites. I built this list to help content creators and contributors, and those who are not necessarily coders, to keep their sites up to standards.

For Content Creation

Tools to create clean html, alt text, and optimized images for optimized websites.

Word To HTML Cleaner https://wordhtml.com/

Copying code from Word, and other content, include AI code, can give you code with lots of stuff you don't want to enter into your CMS. Clean it up first.

Image to Text https://www.imagetotext.info/

Received the files you need in a pdf or image - convert it to text for editing, or the start of an alt text.

Upscale https://www.upscale.media/upload

Need to enlarge a small graphic or make it bigger to reframe? Upscale it, but watch for text that gets mangled.

Tiny PNG https://tinypng.com/

Optimize images, and choose the best format. Avif and Webp, the smallest, are finally common enough to use for most cases.

Remove BG https://www.remove.bg/

It's worth a try to remove the background from an image to get a transparent background. Sometimes it's not great, and you have to stick to having a background color with it.

For Stock Images

The first best choice is to use original images, unique to your website. Next best is good stock images. Avoid AI generated images for the environment, and for making you look less authentic.

For Online Image Editing

https://www.canva.com/ - decent free tier.
https://www.photopea.com/ - like photoshop for the web.

For Website Testing

Even when a site begins optimized, adding and editing text and images can let things slip without notice.

Page Speed https://pagespeed.web.dev/

It's better to use Lighthouse, built into Chrome Dev Tools https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/overview

Rich Snippet https://search.google.com/test/rich-results

When you have blog posts and product entries, you can use tags to optimize search and ai interpretation. Requires either built in support in your CMS, or editing html in source.

Open Graph Tag Checker https://www.opengraph.xyz/

Check how your page will appear shared on a link preview in social media sites, and that you have the correct information

Bonus:

Awesome Screenshots Browser Extension https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/

Makes it pretty easy to take a screenshot of an entire page. Available for Chrome and Firefox.

Pluck CMS turned 20 this year

2025-08-27T00:35:00.002+00:00

Pluck CMS is a simple, PHP file based cms. I have always had an interest in file based, simple website managers. Zip it up, expand it somewhere else. Easy.

The first version of pluck was released in 2005 under the name CMSsystem. It was a "one man project", and the code wasn't released under an open source license. Version 2 and 3 where released in 2005 and 2006 respectively, though the exact dates are unknown.[3]

4.2 was the first version with the name pluck, and also the first version released under the GNU General Public License.[3]

In 2014 the source code has been moved from launchpad to github. Bill Creswell joined to a development team.

https://github.com/pluck-cms/pluck/wiki/A-Little-History

I started playng with in in 2016, per wikipedia.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160414081146/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluck_(software)

Free To Use Images

2025-08-05T23:25:00.007+00:00

https://www.pexels.com/

https://www.shopify.com/stock-photos

https://pixabay.com/

https://unsplash.com/images/stock/royalty-free

https://stocksnap.io/

https://livelaugh.blog/posts/non-ai-images-for-blogs-websites/

[SOLVED] Gmail Web Client Won't Display My Email Content

2025-01-06T15:20:00.003+00:00

Using a email class to build email

/**

* @brief Set the message

* @param string $_message

public function setMessage($_message)

{

// check for straight text

$html = !strpos($_message,"<br") ? nl2br($_message) : $_message;

$text = str_replace('<p>', "\n\r", $_message);

$text = str_replace('</p>', "\n\r", $text);

$text = str_replace('<h1>', "\n\r", $text);

$text = str_replace('</h1>', "\n\r", $text);blog

$text = str_replace('<h2>', "\n\r", $text);

$text = str_replace('</h2>', "\n\r", $text);

// text email

$this->textHeader .= '--' . $this->textBoundary. "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= 'Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= 'Content-Disposition: inline' . "\r\n" . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= $text. "\r\n" . "\r\n";

// html email

$this->textHeader .= '--'.$this->textBoundary . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= 'Content-Disposition: inline' . "\r\n" . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= '<!DOCTYPE html>' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= '<html lang="en">' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= '<head>' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= '<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= '<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= '<style></style>' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= '</head>' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= '<body>' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= $html . "\r\n" . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= '</body>' . "\r\n";

$this->textHeader .= '</html>' . "\r\n";

//$this->textHeader .= "--".$this->textBoundary. "\r\n";

}

The extra message boundary was ignored by every tested email and client except gmail web.

The webclient chose to display the 'empty' section.

Solved: No prt-scrn Button on my Gnome Laptop

2024-12-02T23:48:00.009+00:00

All the prt-scrn shortcuts in Gnome don't help, when I don't have the button.

Screenshort-cut Gnome Shell Extention

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/6868/screenshort-cut/

And I use dash-to-panel, it works with that too.

Add your LinkedIn alt tags, or they will call you out.

2024-10-31T15:42:00.007+00:00

I'd like to encourage you to fill in the alt text on LinkedIn images.

LinkedIn, instead of properly just leaving the alt tag empty if no description, adds

alt="No alternative text description for this image"

LinkedIn is really calling you out to the visually impaired community.

How to Add LinkedIn Alt Text

File naming conventions

2024-10-17T14:03:00.003+00:00

"Can you help me understand what some IT best practices are regarding file naming conventions?

I love that I got asked that question. I didn't have any official answers, except what works for me.

So I looked it up and found these resources:

https://datamanagement.hms.harvard.edu/plan-design/file-naming-conventions

https://datacarpentry.org/rr-organization1/01-file-naming/index.html

This is just the top level info from the Harvard site

Some Good and Bad Examples:

File names with no naming convention:

- Test data 2016.xlsx

- Meeting notes Jan 17.doc

- Notes Eric.txt

- Final FINAL last version.docx

File names with a naming convention:

- 20160104_ProjectA_Ex1Test1_SmithE_v1.xlsx

- 20160104_ProjectA_MeetingNotes_SmithE_v2.docx

- ExperimentName_InstrumentName_CaptureTime_ImageID.tif

Some of their overall tips (each is explained more on their site)

Tips for File Naming

- Identify metadata (for example, date, sample, experiment)

- What information is needed to easily locate a specific file?

- Use versioning

- What comes first?

- Deliberately separate metadata elements

- Avoid spaces or special characters in your file names

Gimp Export Layers as PNG

2019-02-06T20:39:00.001+00:00

If PNG is an acceptable output format, one option is to export it as Open Raster (.ora), an open specification for layered-image files.

Export Image as Open Raster (.ora)

File -> Export As ...

myfile.ora

Open myfile.ora as an archive, with a program like file-roller or 7zip.

On Ubuntu:

$ file-roller myfile.ora

(alternatively)

$ unzip myfile.ora

Windows:
Rename extension .ora to .zip and extract all.

All your layers will be png images under /data, Extract them and use at will.

https://askubuntu.com/a/749561

Sidebar in Firefox

2019-01-11T14:35:00.000+00:00

One of the things I liked about Vivaldi is the website in sidebar. I use it so that I can compare a mobile version of a website and a desktop version side by side, often to take a screenshot.

Web page in sidebar shows mobile version,
and can be displayed next to full size

I didn't realize that you could do this with Firefox.

Open the page and save bookmark.
Open the bookmarks and right-click on the page you just saved.
Select 'Properties' and check 'Load this bookmark in the sidebar'

This bookmark will now always loaded in the sidebar.
You can resize the sidebar, or move to the right if that's your thing.

I create a separate folder for sidebar bookmarks, so I remember what to expect.

Abbreviated instructions based on: https://www.maketecheasier.com/load-web-pages-firefox-sidebar/

Firefox Gnome GTK Dark Theme

2018-06-13T16:00:00.001+00:00

1. type about:config in address bar
2. search for widget.chrome.allow-gtk-dark-theme
3. set to true
4. restart Firefox.

reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6wfehz/how_to_force_gtk_dark_theme_for_firefox

Windows 10 SendTo becomes Share

2018-02-16T00:05:00.002+00:00

Windows 10 'Right Click/Send To' doesn't work with the Mail app that windows 10 provides.

Bad Internet Advice: download Live Essentials

The internet is recommending downloading the old 'Live Essentials'.

(https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/windows-10-send-to-mail-recipient-error/)
Live Essentials has not received support or security updates since January 2017. Please don't do this.

Send a file with Mail

To use the 'Modern' Mail app to send a file,

Right click on the file
Choose share instead of send to
Choose the mail app.

This won't help with other applications like your scanner that want to use the 'registered email client'. To do this, download a real email program.

To use sendto, add a full fledged mail app

emClient

http://www.emclient.com/

A modern looking email program with a free license for personal use.

Thunderbird

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

An aged looking but functional free open source email program.

I would assume this issue is due to it being a Windows Universal Windows Platform app instead of a legacy mail program.

Ubuntu 17.10 Post Install

2017-11-09T13:50:00.000+00:00

Ubuntu has given up on Unity. I will miss the idea of an Ubuntu phone, but not Unity itself. Gnome is welcome.

Post Install:

- Remove Thunderbird and Install Evolution

a real email/calendar client, and evolution undergirds the email/calendaring anyhow.

- Gnome Tweaks

manage extensions, desktop settings,

- Chromium

Need a alternate browser for occasions, also, like the profile management for managing many sites google accounts

Development:

- Install keys

- Add sftp/smb bookmarks

- install geany ide

- Gnome Web

a webkit browser, a little more like Safari, for testing

- put terminal on dock

Optional:

- Extension dash to dock

Optional now that there is an ubuntu dock

Testing some simple cms systems

2016-12-19T00:58:00.002+00:00

I've been a fan of the flat file cms - simple, file base websites, not requiring a database. It's a nice way to, as I say, 'Throwup a website'.

In the past I have used getsimple, cmsimple, nibbleblog, pluck cms, and several others.

In addition to the low requirements and ease of these, is that with the exception of getsimple, they are available in softtaculous, which makes them even easier.

I had settled on Pluck CMS for quite a while. I liked the simplicity of installation, editing, and working with themes and plugins. In it's prime, I think it also had an way of installing updates. However, the developer moved on to other things, and after I time, I moved it to GitHub to at least keep it up.

As I dig through the code, some of the things that I would like to do with it may be beyond what I want to do.

So I have looked back through the flat file cms's and chose a few I am going to test.

Pluck CMS and CMSimple, two I have used in the past, and PluXML and Bludit, relative newcomers. I chose them based on having plugins, and themes available. The ones I have chose all have the ability to be used in other languages.

Since Softaculous is available for me, I used that installer. They provides for these and scores of others on their website https://www.softaculous.com/software/

Themes and Plugins

Pluck is older, and yet when the versions were updated, many themes where not updated, and so it is generally up to the user to do any theme modification. Plugins and themes are simple to create, but not many are available. Since there are no thumbnails, and no modern themes, starting is difficult. I picked the miniport theme from the release github site (you have to know what to download). I had a thumbnail that wasn't immediatly visible. There is a theme uploader, and applying is easy.

CMSimple has a plugins and modules, that appear to be provided by a web design shop in Denmark. The themes available are modern and responsive. Blog functionality appears to be a plug in. Couldn't find an uploader for themes.

PluXml has lots of themes displayed, with thumbnails. They appear to have several plugins. Documentation is mostly in French. Going to install, I find there is no upload/install for themes or plugins. Bummer and show stopper.

Bludit has a page of plugins, and a page of themes. Sadly they are without thumbnails or demo versions on the site. Looks like themes can be simple or complex by your choice. Sadly too, I find no uploader.

So I guess for now I stick with Pluck.

Install a self-signed certificate in ubuntu-based systems

2016-10-07T18:53:00.003+00:00

Install a self-signed certificate in ubuntu-based systems
http://askubuntu.com/questions/73287/how-do-i-install-a-root-certificate

Given a CA certificate file 'foo.crt', follow these steps to install it on Ubuntu:
First, copy your CA to dir /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/

sudo cp foo.crt /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/foo.crt

then, update CA store

sudo update-ca-certificates

That's all. You should get this output:

Updating certificates in /etc/ssl/certs... 1 added, 0 removed; done.
Running hooks in /etc/ca-certificates/update.d....
Adding debian:foo.pem
done.
done.

Timeclock image for silk icons

2016-10-04T13:22:00.001+00:00

Timeclock icon created to fit with FamFamFam Silk icon set
http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/

Stupid IE Tricks: ul list bullet displaying in IE

2016-01-06T16:31:00.001+00:00

In IE and Edge, to stop the bullets from displaying in my submenu list, required inline style.

 style="list-style: none;">

HT: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20356311/internet-explorer-11-ignores-list-stylenone-on-the-first-load

Elementary OS

2015-09-04T00:27:00.000+00:00

OpenSUSE with Gnome is still my workhorse, but my new casual driver laptop is using ElementaryOS - https://elementary.io/

It has an Ubuntu LTS base, so it's stable., and it comes with just a few applications (that I'm not crazy about) installed. (I find Midori to be slow, and I don't have much need for local mail/cal apps right now).

The Pantheon desktop is GTK+, but not Gnome Shell.
The file browser is nice, a fork off nautilus.
Nice Human Interface Guidelines (https://elementary.io/developer)

For more in depth, you can always research on Distrowatch http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=elementary

ISO to USB

2015-09-04T00:12:00.001+00:00

SUSE Studio ImageWriter is no longer supported for creating a live USB stick from a linux iso.

Now use ImageUSB

http://www.osforensics.com/tools/write-usb-images.html

Creating a module for Pluck CMS

2015-08-29T00:17:00.000+00:00

It's easy to think about just hacking a template to add some code to a website, but creating a module is easy enough, and much easier to maintain.

To illustrate how simple a module is:
For a plugin called 'simple':

Create a directory called 'simple'.

File 1 is simple.php - contains the plugin info

File 2 is simple.site.php contains the code

Server Time Zone to Local TimeZone in PHP

2015-08-17T17:14:00.002+00:00

Barbie would have said, 'Time Math is Hard'.

JS to get TZ

PHP:
$myTZ = 'America/New_York'; //time zone that date/time is stored in
$urTZ = $row['timezone']; // stored local
$local_time_in = new DateTime($row['time_in'], new DateTimeZone($myTZ));
$local_time_out = new DateTime($row['time_out'],new DateTimeZone($myTZ));
$local_time_in->setTimeZone(new DateTimeZone($urTZ));
$local_time_out->setTimeZone(new DateTimeZone($urTZ));
$row['local_time_in'] = $local_time_in->format('Y-m-d H:i T');
$row['local_time_out'] =$local_time_out->format('Y-m-d H:i T');

Windows 10 Preview - Initial Impressions

2015-01-27T11:47:00.001+00:00

Because...me. I am who I am, I installed the Windows 10 Preview

IE Spartan Browser with Confusing User Agent String on Bing

Overview

Installed the Windows 10 Preview on HP DM1 Netbook.

Downloaded file to add the option to Windows Update,

Update was about 2.8G and took about 3 hours. Kudos to the MS team, it was smooth and uneventful

Initial Impressions:

Windows 10 certainly seems to be a step down in appearance, Comparing W7 with W10, W7 seems polished. W10 uses continues blocks and childish colors like W8 did.

W10 is laggy thus far, with the menu and menu options, and the search options not always responding right away. Perhaps that's preview software for you.

So far all my software and drivers work, with the exception of the ATI startup app.

Feedback

I love the feedback mechanisms.When I chose Internet Explorer as my default browser, W10 asked me why.

I didn't know what to do with my screenshot, so I posted to OneNote, but couldn't export, so I sent feedback. As I typed in my complaint/suggesting, it brought up similar issues.

PoorMansStyleGuide.com

2015-01-03T16:51:00.000+00:00

Poor Man's Style Guide created the base html and markdown files to start a style guide, a great way to check out the appearance of your base css styles.

Linux Mint Cinnamon Post Install

2014-09-06T17:57:00.001+00:00

Metro Theme - gets rid of the ugly grey/black menus

http://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/themes/view/188

Cinna Dock Plus - Docky without all the dependencies
http://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/extensions/view/23

Default gnome icons to get rid of the green.
Themes/Other Settings

Opera (Developer) for Linux - Finally, Opera supporting linux again
http://www.opera.com/developer

OpenSUSE 13.1 Post Install

2014-07-12T21:47:00.002+00:00

UPDATE: Gist for Install https://gist.github.com/billymail/93f1d1a15c1839e49569

I can't help help it - with this little netbook, and the SSD, I try the latest Fedora, Ubuntu, Elementary OS, Linux Mint. I keep coming back to OpenSUSE Gnome, which is my daily driver at work.

OpenSUSE 13.1 install took less that 15 minutes on a netbook, with a USB stick and an SSD.

USB Installation: http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Live_USB_stick

Gnome Extensions

Messaging Menu
Dash to dock

Install Sonar Theme

Gnome3 Adwaita title bars are way two thick. Sonar puts a smaller/darker title bar.

Install Chromium and Midori

Midori does an adequate impression of Safari/iPhone rendering.

Install Geany and plugins

Great all-purpose code editor with symbol browser

GEdit

Don't forget the power of GEdit and external tools

Install dbvis

http://www.dbvis.com/

Nautilus

Ctrl-D to create your first bookmark, after that you can d-n-d.

Change the Nautilus location bar to show location instead of buttons:
> gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences always-use-location-entry true

Add back new document menu: touch /Templates/text.txt

Note: Screenshot behavior has changed. It downloads immediately instead of opening or putting into clipboard, but has a lot of options. SEE http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com/2012/11/screen-capture-in-gnome3.htmlfor more details.

WEB DEV

I was going to make a separate post about setting up my webdev environment, but openSUSE patterns make it too easy.

Install Pattern - Web and Lamp Server

Takes care of installing common php/mysql stuff, more.

Go to yast/http server to configure/start
It seems like it used to setup sftp/ssh for me, but struggling this time. I'm just using ftp.

PHP Extensions
phar
php openssl
mcrypt

Composer - https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer