I did have a small problem though that has taken some searching to resolve.

As soon as we switched over, I couldn’t connect to my VPS over SSH. I was getting the message:

ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

It turns out that this is due to the fact that the server contains the following entry in /etc/hosts.deny:

sshd: UNKNOWN

The OS does a Reverse DNS Lookup to check for bad domains and this line tells the system to reject connection requests to SSHd that don’t have a reverse DNS address.

So it seems that my new ISP hasn’t (yet?) registered a reverse DNS address whereas my previous ISP (PlusNet) did.

You can remove that entry but that has a security implication. The better fix is to add a line to /etc/hosts.allow:

ALL : 1.2.3.4

Where 1.2.3.4 should be replaced by the fixed IP address your ISP gives you. Visit WhatsMyIP.com to find out your address. If you don’t have a fixed address, you’ll probably have to do the alternative fix. The “ALL” keyword ensures that your location can access all services on the server.

I’ve made the change and it works fine. I’ve also raised a ticket to see if I will be getting a reverse DNS entry.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

It adds the ability to filter the post list based on a custom field that has been used in any of the posts at any time.

If a custom field is selected but no filter value is given, all posts that contain any value in the custom field are listed.

Whether or not a value is provided, if a custom field is selected, that field will be added to the tabular view of posts. The custom field column is also made sortable (as is the Category column).

The following code should be added to the functions.php for your theme – or better still to a sub-theme.

/**
 * We will only do the following if we are on an ADMIN page
 */
if ( is_admin() ) {

	/** --- Add select menu to filter by custom field in admin & add filtered column to display table ---
	 * Based on: @see http://wpsnipp.com/index.php/functions-php/add-select-menu-to-filter-by-custom-field-in-admin/
	 * NB: Only ba_admin_posts_filter COULD run outside the manage posts page which is why it has an extra restriction inside
	 * @since 1.3.0 IT - Initial version
	 * 	Tidied up & wrapped in is_admin test so only loaded on admin pages,
	 * 	Added wildcard filtering and fixed ambiguous IF code in ba_admin_posts_filter,
	 * 	Added sortable column code,
	 * 	by Julian Knight 2012-01-09
	 */
		function ba_admin_posts_filter( $query ) {
			global $pagenow;
			if ( is_admin() && $pagenow=='edit.php' && isset($_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME']) && $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'] != '') {
				$query->query_vars['meta_key'] = $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'];
				// JK: Don't actually need default value - changing filter type to LIKE shows all posts with selected custom field set to anything
				//$query->query_vars['meta_value'] = '%';
				// JK: Change filter type to 'LIKE' instead of '='
				//		Doesn't work properly, partly because WP seems to filter % and * from input fields at source.
				$query->query_vars['meta_compare'] = 'LIKE';
				if (isset($_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_VALUE']) && $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_VALUE'] != '') {
					$query->query_vars['meta_value'] = $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_VALUE'];
				}
			}
		}
		add_filter( 'parse_query', 'ba_admin_posts_filter' );
		function ba_admin_posts_filter_restrict_manage_posts() {
			global $wpdb;
			$sql = 'SELECT DISTINCT meta_key FROM '.$wpdb->postmeta.' ORDER BY 1';
			$fields = $wpdb->get_results($sql, ARRAY_N);
			printf( '<select name="ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME" title="%s"><option value="">%s</option>',
					translate('Choose a custom field name. Add value to filter. Blank value shows the column and all posts with any value. Change to 1st entry in list to remove the filter.', 'baapf'),
					translate('Filter By Custom Fields', 'baapf')
				   );
			$current = isset($_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'])? $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME']:'';
			$current_v = isset($_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_VALUE'])? $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_VALUE']:'';
			foreach ($fields as $field) {
				if (substr($field[0],0,1) != "_"){
				printf( '<option value="%s"%s>%s</option>',
						$field[0],
						$field[0] == $current? ' selected="selected"':'',
						$field[0]
					);
				}
			}
			printf( '</select> %s<input type="TEXT" name="ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_VALUE" value="%s" title="%s"/>',
					translate('Value:', 'baapf'),
					$current_v,
					translate('Leave blank to show all posts with the selected custom field set to SOMETHING. Does a wildcard search.', 'baapf')
				  );
		}
		add_action( 'restrict_manage_posts', 'ba_admin_posts_filter_restrict_manage_posts' );
		/* Register a custom column (based on: @see http://scribu.net/wordpress/custom-sortable-columns.html)
			and adds it to the edit-post page
			Changed to pick up the filter column specified above (if it is), if nothing selected, nothing is added
		 */
		function jk_custom_column_register( $columns ) {
			if ( isset($_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME']) && $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'] != '') {
				$columns[$_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME']] = __( $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'], 'my-plugin' );
			}
			return $columns;
		}
		add_filter( 'manage_edit-post_columns', 'jk_custom_column_register' );
		// Display the column content on the manage posts page
		function jk_custom_column_display( $column_name, $post_id ) {
			if ( isset($_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME']) && $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'] != '') {
				if ( $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'] != $column_name )
					return;

				$custcol = get_post_meta($post_id, $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'], true);
				if ( !$custcol )
					$custcol = '<em>' . __( 'undefined', 'my-plugin' ) . '</em>';

				echo $custcol;
			}
		}
		add_action( 'manage_posts_custom_column', 'jk_custom_column_display', 10, 2 );
		// How should WP sort this column?
		function jk_custom_column_orderby( $vars ) {
			if ( isset($_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME']) && $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'] != '') {
				if ( isset( $vars['orderby'] ) && $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'] == $vars['orderby'] ) {
					$vars = array_merge( $vars, array(
						'meta_key' => $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'],
						'orderby' => 'meta_value'  // 'meta_value_num' or 'meta_value'
					) );
				}
			}
			return $vars;
		}
		add_filter( 'request', 'jk_custom_column_orderby' );
		// Register some extra columns as sortable on the edit posts page
		function jk_column_register_sortable( $columns ) {
			if ( isset($_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME']) && $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'] != '') {
				$columns[$_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME']] = $_GET['ADMIN_FILTER_FIELD_NAME'];
			}
			$columns['categories'] = 'categories';
			// $columns['tags'] = 'tags'; // doesn't work correctly as tags are multi-valued?
			return $columns;
		}
		add_filter( 'manage_edit-post_sortable_columns', 'jk_column_register_sortable' );
	/** --- End of Filter Manage Post page by custom field --- **/

} // ---- End of is_admin ----

I’ve not included anything in this article that requires a monthly or annual cost. All the tools here are available for free at least with limited features. The feature lists given are for the free versions with paid-for key features noted where appropriate. I also note if any of the web sites are blocked by typical enterprise firewalls.

There is a lot more than what I’ve shared here, I’ll try to update this article from time-to-time.

Office Applications

Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations are the core of an office application suite. Additional tools might be included such as email, calendar, note taking, formula editing, diagrams, mind mapping.

• SSuite Office Software
  I’ve not tried this free, Microsoft Windows only, office suite but it certainly looks interesting.
• Microsoft Office
  I know that it may seem strange to include this in an article about low-cost solutions. However, you can get Microsoft Office at a very low price from a number of legitimate sources. These include enterprise licenses that allow home use and student licenses if you have a full-time student in the house. Cut-down versions of the MS Office suite are also often bundled with computer sales.
• Google Docs
  This free offering from Google provides a reasonable choice for straight-forward documents but may be blocked from some enterprise sites. You get 1GB of free space and can pay for more if you need it.
• Gliffy
  Web-based diagramming like a simple version of Microsoft Visio. Free version is limited to 1 user, 5 diagrams and 2mb storage. Otherwise a monthly fee is required starting at US$5 per month.
• Other options: Libre Office (forked version of OpenOffice, good enough for most people, not as good as MS Office), AbiWord, KOffice (Linux), iWork (Mac), …
• Options not to bother with: Microsoft Live – far too simplistic, unreliable logins, poor sharing compared to Google (though you do get 25GB of free space).

Web Conferencing

Should provide instant messaging, voice, video, whiteboard (shared drawing space) and desktop sharing between computers as a minimum. May also provide meeting management tools, recordings of meetings and other facilities. Will generally be web applications that just require a web browser to access though plugins such as Adobe Flash may also be required and some may provide specific mobile tools.

• AnyMeeting
  Web-based. Free, advert supported. Up to 200 attendees, 6-way video conferencing. Polls and surveys, invitations, registration forms, optionally charge attendees. Flexible audio options: audio broadcast, conference call, VoIP (computer microphone & headset)
• Vyew
  Web-based, requires Adobe Flash. Free, advert supported. Up to 10 attendees. Forums, record activity, shared annotation of documents. Additional attendees and other features available on premium versions requiring monthly fees.
• Other web-based alternatives: WebEx, GotoMeeting, GoToWebinar, Adobe Connect, Microsoft LiveMeeting.

Voice

Phone-to-phone voice calling.

• ChatTime
  An iPhone app that uses local access numbers in many countries allowing international calls at low rates. Doesn’t require 3G or data access. Note that they still recommend using local SIM cards when roaming. International calls between 2 ChatTime users do not incur additional charges (both users have to call their local ChatTime access numbers).

Project and Task Planning

Tools that help teams and organisations plan complex tasks.

• Asana
  Team and project online task manager. Free for up to 30 members. Calendar sync, mobile web compatible, multiple workspaces (project categories), multiple projects, email in (new tasks by email), receive email updates, activity feed for each task, SSL connection, iPhone app
• ReqMan
  Totally free, unlimited users and projects. Project planning, time management & recording, requirements gathering, questionaires, reporting, WIKI, workflow, change requests, test cases, issues.
• HappyToDos
  Online to-do and task management. Projects & tasks, estimate completion dates, estimate effort (hours), time reporting, team collaboration & file sharing.

Other Possibles

I’ve not yet looked at these but will do at some point

• zeropc.com (blocked at enterprise site as possible malware)
• https://podio.com/ (blocked at enterprise site as “Social Networking”)

Things to remember

When using web-based tools, remember that you may want more than connection security. Many tools claim to be “secure” by using SSL but that only secures the connection between you and them. Your data is unlikely to be stored encrypted on their servers and even when it is, it is even less likely that you can specify your own secure key so that server administrators at their end are prevented from accessing the data.

In addition, remember that there are rarely enforceable service level contracts with web suppliers, if their systems fail, or they themselves fail; your data is history.

The editor style sheet is called “editor-styles.css” and can be found in the root folder of the active theme along side the main style sheet “styles.css”.

There is a really simple way to make the editor content look more like the live and to include all of the styles from the main style sheet. Simply include the main style sheet at the top of the editor style sheet:

/* Start with the the theme styles */
@import url("style.css");

Then add an override for the content width to match your theme and force the background to be white (or to match your theme):

html .mceContentBody {
	max-width: 640px;
	background-color: white;
}

And there you have it. You might note that the editor style sheet for the twentyeleven theme is vastly more complex than this but I suspect that nearly all of the settings are already in the main style sheet and so are no longer required. You may of course find that you need to add a few more tweaks to cater for “edge cases”.

You might also note a number of articles on the web that suggest that you need to do this by an addition to your functions.php file like this:

// @since 1.2.0 IT, add theme styles to TinyMCE visual editor
add_action(‘after_theme_setup’,‘jk_theme_setup’);
function jk_theme_setup(){
	add_editor_style('style.css');
}

But in fact, this isn’t required if we simply change the editor style sheet as suggested which I think is much easier to manage and maintain.

In fact, Word not only has the simple wild cards (* and ?) but uses simplified Regular Expression (REGEX) searching.

In this article, I’ve put together a number of examples of advanced finds and replaces that I’ve found useful. I’ll update it from time to time.

Reference

[], groups (), repeats @, {}, anchors < > and exceptions !

^p (to find a paragraph mark) does not work when using wildcard searches. Use ^13 instead. But you cannot use ^13 in the “replace with” field, it doesn’t work.

Use ^2 to find a footnote mark

Word wildcard searches are “lazy” (they stop at the smallest possible match not the largest as most regular expression tools would).

Examples

Don’t forget to turn on “Use Wildcards” to use these examples. It is in the “More” part of the find and replace dialogs.

Remove leading multiple spaces

If you have ever pasted from an email or text document, you may have come across the problem of some indented and manually wrapped text:

Starting Line
   Indented line 1
   Indented line 2

You can find the leading multiple spaces with the code (note that there is a leading space):

 {2,}<

So selecting some text, putting this into the “find what” box and doing a “replace all” with nothing will remove all of the leading spaces in the selection. Actually it will remove everything that has at least 2 spaces followed by the start of a word.

Remove single paragraph marks to join lines

Search for: >^13 and replace with a single space.

Note that you can combine this in a single step with the previous example as (note again leading space):

 {2,}(<*>)^13

Though it should be noted that this can fail. For some reason if the last character on the line is a “/”, Word fails to find a match. Unexplained failures in Word’s find feature is not at all uncommon, it is rather buggy!

To replace manual line breaks instead of a paragraph mark, use ^| instead of ^13. The special characters can be inserted from the “Special” button but do note the warning in “Reference” above and in “What you cannot do!” below regarding some of the marks you cannot find.

What you cannot do!

Recently, I needed to replace a load of text in a very large table (around 100 pages). I knew that the text to replace all appeared at the end of table cells but I couldn’t immediately work out how to search for this. My first thought was to do:

(Done in 1.4a)^13

Which would find the text at the end of a paragraph. This didn’t work so I turned on the visual paragraph marks and saw what I should have already known – the end of a table cell does not have a paragraph mark. As you can see, it has a circular mark with 4 “tails” (sometimes referred to as a “Universal Currency Symbol”). This is an end-of-cell marker. The same symbol appears at the end of the row as well (the end-of-row marker).

Well, it turns out that you cannot search for this! Well, not outside of some VBA anyway. The character is actually an ASCII 07 so you should be able to do:

(Done in 1.4a)^07

And using Replace to add to the text, you would have been able to use:

\1 but there is still more to do

Which would have resulted in “Done in 1.4a but there is still more to do” wherever the original text appeared at the end of a cell.

Sadly though, wildcard searches don’t find end-of-cell marker.

Thankfully, there is another way that works for most searches.

*(Done in 1.4a)

Will find that text at the end of a cell. The leading * consumes all of the leading text in the cell forcing the search to occur at the end. Putting the * in brackets instead of the search text would allow the leading text to be retained in a replace. Putting both in separate brackets would allow the end text to be moved to the start of the cell with a replace string of:

\2 \1 

Links to more information

• TBC

Also added an HTML 5 logo.

Not so many IT architects and designers who deal with internal, enterprise systems are aware, though, that these laws and requirements also apply to internal systems.

Recently I’ve yet again seen a number of dreadfully designed user interfaces (UI) for enterprise systems that most certainly don’t meet usability standards let alone accessibility standards!

So here are a few links to information on standards and laws around accessibility – while most of these seem to be focused on web systems, lets remember that they do apply to internal and enterprise systems as well.

• Wikipedia: Web Accessibility
• W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) (from the web’s standards body)
• UK Central Office of Information (COI): Web Standards and Guidelines for UK government web sites
• There is also a British Standard for web accessibility BS8878. However, ridiculously, the British Standards Institute charge £100 for it! SO I won’t link to it but there are some web resources that summarise it, as always Google is your friend.
• Accessible Technology A guide for IT professionals (PDF)

The key regulations for UK organisations are:
• Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 & 2005
• Equality Act 2010 (supersedes the DDA)

One final note about designing to accessibility standards. Plenty has already been written on this subject and I don’t want to repeat that. Just to say that it is normal for web sites to be asked to meet W3C WCAG 2.0 level Double-A (AA) standards. However, you should not try to slavishly follow these standards. There are lots of grey areas. In particular, if you are using the online web validation tools, don’t worry too much if you get some minor failures. You need to test failing pages against accessibility devices rather than blindly following some written rules.

In this article I look at what has been lost and what you might be able to do about it, at least in the short term.

There are a number of lost capabilities that many people have been relying on

• The Sharing capability provided other Reader users the ability to see what you shared and you can see what they are sharing.
• Notes allowed you to add a note whether linked to an article or not. You also used to be able to add comments to shared articles

These things constituted an unofficial API into Google Reader and Google are busy ripping the heart of Reader and replacing most of the “social” aspect with links to Google+. So in the future, instead of marking an article as “Shared”, you will “+1″ it and it will appear in your Google+ feed instead of Google Reader. This change will be happening over the next month or so.

Thankfully, there are a few things that you can do, at least temporarily. There are a number of Google Reader specific URL’s that you can use to still access some of the information.

To make use of most of the following, you will need to know your Google Reader user ID which is a 20 digit number that you can see in your browsers address bar when using Reader, this is marked as <20DigitUserId> in the URL‘s below.

The following URL’s will show the various views in the normal web interface:

• Shared articles:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/broadcast
  No longer available directly from the web interface so it is uncertain how long this will stay usable. It would be sensible to export shared articles while you can using the JSON exports listed below.
• Your notes:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/created
  Again, no longer directly available, who knows when Google will disable this view. If you really want your notes, it would be sensible to export them while you have the chance (see the information on the JSON formats below).
• Your links:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/link
• Liked articles:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/like
• Stared articles:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/starred
• All unread articles:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/fresh
• All read articles:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/read
• All articles:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/reading-list
• Articles with a specific tag:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/label/<tagName>
  <tagName> is the name of the tag as it appears in your list
• All articles in a folder:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/label/<folderName>
  <folderName> is the name of the tag as it appears in your list. Note that folders and tags are designated in the same way.
• All articles in a specific RSS/ATOM feed:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/feed/<feedURL>
  <feedURL> is the full URL (including the scheme, e.g. http://)
• Friends comments (comments on articles you’ve shared):
  You can no longer access these at all from the web interface but the URL would have been:
  ATOM feed, just replace “view” with “atom” in the URL:
  http://www.google.co.uk/reader/atom/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/broadcast

  It is worth noting that the resulting ATOM feed contains <category> tags that define all of the feed types above, read, unread, having a note or comment, liked, shared, starred, tagged or in a folder. The <category> tags take the form:

  • <category term="user/<20DigitUserId>/label/<folderName>" scheme="http://www.google.com/reader/" label="<folderName>" />

  • <category term="user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/read" scheme="http://www.google.com/reader/" label="read" />

  • and so on.
  • In addition, then entry may also have <category> tags related to the original feed, e.g.

    <category term="Gadgets" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />

  Finally, in addition to having an ATOM feed for parsing with an RSS feed reader, you can also get a JSON formatted feed by replacing the “view” with “export/jas” in the URL’s given above. This gives output in JSON Activity Stream format. This isn’t as rich as Google’s own propriatory JSON format which can be accessed by replacing the “view” with “export/json“.

  The JSON formats also support some additional, optional parameters in the URL:

  • filename=<fileName>
    Default file name to save
  • likes=false
  • n=99999
    Maximum number of entries to include
  • verb=starred
    Not sure what this is. Verbs can be: starred, liked, shared, noted, shared
  • co=false
    Include Comments
  • hl=en
    Output Language

  
  

  
  ]]> http://it.knightnet.org.uk/2011/11/coping-google-reader.html/feed 0 http://it.knightnet.org.uk/2011/11/coping-google-reader.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MuchAdoAboutIT/~3/syjvxZYDPNU/blog-design-page.html http://it.knightnet.org.uk/2011/11/blog-design-page.html#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:59:55 +0000 Julian Knight http://it.knightnet.org.uk/?p=896 I’ve added a new page to this blog explaining the design of the site.

  
  

  
  ]]> http://it.knightnet.org.uk/2011/11/blog-design-page.html/feed 0 http://it.knightnet.org.uk/2011/11/blog-design-page.html