TQuizzle.com

Pit Bulls Are So Vicious

Wed, 06 Aug 2014 00:00:00 -0500

As a former pit bull owner I can attest, these dogs are NOT the vicious killers the mainstream media portrays them to be.

I mean, just look at these photos! Does this look like a vicious animal? I’d be more scared of a squirrel than a pit bull…but maybe that’s just me.

Remove Hidden .AppleDB, .AppleDouble, .AppleDesktop Folders from NFS/SMB Mounts

Sun, 27 Jul 2014 00:00:00 -0500

I got sick of my Mac always leaving behind trash on my Media server. So I created a little script to clean all those pesky files from my media mount.

There, now that’s much better.

Up on GitHub

Sat, 12 Jul 2014 00:00:00 -0500

I finally did it. I finally got around to putting TQuizzle.com up on GitHub. It wasn’t without some issues, but I can finally say that I did it.

Resources:

7 WordPress Plugins That Will Save You Time

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 00:00:00 -0500

7 WordPress Plugins That Will Save You Time (via Boxxbury Marketing)

Due to its ease of use, thousands of customizable themes, and functionality, WordPress is by far my favorite CMS (Content Management System) – especially for small businesses. The developer-created plugins is another reason why I switch each of my…

Must-Have Social Media Plugins for your WordPress Blog

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Must-Have Social Media Plugins for your WordPress Blog (via http://bosmol.com)

If you are into social media, your first objective will be to spread word about your business, products and services. These plugins can be included in your blog page itself. Plugins help your blog readers follow you on social media. When your blog is…

Clearing out the /boot partition on Ubuntu Server

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Recently I had an issue where I could no longer update packages. The system was responding normally, but after digging around, I found that the /boot partition was 100% full.

After digging around on Google for a while, I found this little gem.

This finds all the linux-image that are in your /boot partition and one-by-one removes them.

WordPress Most Popular Plugins (Infographic)

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0600

One reason WordPress is so successful as a blogging and CMS platform is due to the community of developers dedicated to making it great.

WordPress themes has a great infographic designed by “Charts” on 30 of the most successful plugins in the official database that exceeds 22,000 plugins.

Some of my favorites are listed below.

How To Move Critical Windows Folders to Other Local Disks

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0600

If you’ve ever needed or tried to move the C:\Users directory or other default Windows® directories to another place other than the default one, you know it can be quite difficult.

I’ve tried to Google this, and talk to others about doing it. What seemed to be such a simple request also seemed to be difficult to pull off. That’s when a brilliant (nearly the smartest man I know) told me about hard links & junction links in windows. Think of them like symbolic links in Mac or *nix systems.

C:\dira linked to C:\dirb
D:\dir1\ to C:\dir2\dir3

The great thing about using hard links in Windows is that it acts as if the data is still there. In the example above, when you’re browsing C:\dira the system will act as if you’re really in that directory when in all reality you’re browsing C:\dirb. Even the address bar will show that.

Thanks to an almost 3-year-old post on Lifehacker, I accomplished what I thought was only possible with tons of registry tweaking and tons of time spent in Safe Mode with a potentially unstable system afterward.

Real Reason Why

So the real reason I needed to so this is that I wanted to totally rebuild my system. New parts, new paint. Start from scratch and make this new Windows 7 installation as fast as it could be. Thanks to a good friend, I was given a small 30GB SSD. Now I could have run Windows on this just fine and had some programs installed there and others installed on another disk. Maybe even copied my music, downloaded programs, etc… to this other disk. But that requires that every time an installer runs I have to pay close attention to where it’s going. Every time a program wants to move data into the “My Documents” folder, I have to be mindful that I’m only dealing with about 18GB free after a clean install. That’s simply not enough. I’d run out in less than a few weeks and many times probably forget that these installers are putting all their files into the C:\Program Files directory.

Step-By-Step

So here’s the step-by-step instructions to moving just about any folder to another disk, especially those special Windows ones.

Install & Create Restore Point

Install a fresh copy of Windows 7 (or XP or 8, whatever you want)
Dont do anything else. Just leave it fresh and clean.
Create a Restore Point (just to play it safe)
1. Right Click “My Computer” and choose Properties
2. Choose “System Protection”
3. Select the “System Protection” Tab
4. Click Create
5. Type a description for this Restore
6. Click Create

System Recovery

Boot back up with the install DVD
Choose the appropriate language, currency & keyboard and click Next
At the screen where there is a large “Install Now” button, look just below it and click “Repair your computer”
You might be asked if you want to “Repair and Restart”, choose No.
Make sure that the OS that system recovery found is the one you just installed and that it’s selected. Click Next.
You’ll be presented with a few options…choose “Command Prompt”

Now here’s where we really get our hands dirty. Well, not really, but just a bit.

Find out which drives are what.

Install Drive: DVD
OS Drive: Source
Secondary Drive: Destination

On my computer, it was:

X: DVD Install Drive
E: Actual OS SSD Drive
D: Secondary Hard Drive

Copy Data & Create Hard Links

So at this point, you need to copy all the source data to the destination drive and create the hard links.

Using my drive letters above, here is how its done.

robocopy /copyall /mir /xj E:\Users D:\Users
robocopy /copyall /mir /xj “E:\Program Files” “D:\Program Files”
robocopy /copyall /mir /xj “E:\Program Files (x86)” “D:\Program Files (x86)”

/mir tells Robocopy to mirror the directories. This will copy all files and their permissions
/xj is very important as well as it tells Robocopy to now follow any junctions points it might meet when browsing these locations. Don’t Forget This

Now as long as no files failed to copy, we can proceed.

In order to create junctions or hard links, the source folder must not exist. This means that we now have to delete those directories we just copied.

rmdir /S /Q E:\Users
rmdir /S /Q “E:\Program Files”
rmdir /S /Q “E:\Program Files (x86)”

Now we create the NTFS Junction/symlinks

mklink /J E:\Users D:\Users
mklink /J “E:\Program Files” “D:\Program Files”
mklink /J “E:\Program Files (x86)” “D:\Program Files (x86)”

Now you’ve just moved all three of these folders from the Windows system disk to another disk.

Prove it to yourself

Now comes the proof. Change directories to E:\. Type dir and see what you see. You should see ” Users [D:\Users]”

Now restart your computer and you’re done.

Congratulations!

Update

A while after doing this Windows Update started failing on a few updates. I kept receiving the following error: Windows update error 80070011

I found that Microsoft® isn’t following those symlinks properly when it comes to certain security updates. I think had I only moved the “Users” directory all would be fine.

Google is my friend and I found out what needed to change in order for security updates to continue.
Basically, there are a few registry keys you’ll need to point to the “real” location of the Program Files directory because it wont follow the junction link.

Make these changes to: HKEY_LOCAL\_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\

Key Name	Old Data Value	New Data Value
CommonFilesDir	C:\Program Files\Common Files	D:\Program Files\Common Files
CommonFilesDir (x86)	C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files	D:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files
CommonW6432Dir	C:\Program Files\Common Files	D:\Program Files\Common Files
ProgramFilesDir	C:\Program Files	D:\Program Files
ProgramFilesDir (x86)	C:\Program Files (x86)	D:\Program Files (x86)
ProgramW6432Dir	C:\Program Files	D:\Program Files

After these changes are made, Windows should be able to update successfully.

AutoFocus Previous Post / Next Post Image Thumbnails

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0500

For a primer, you should check out my previous post on this topic. There will be some referencing it in this post.

It’s been a couple of years since that post and many things have changed.
The theme AutoFocus has gone through a number of changes. Alan has released a “Pro” (paid) version of the theme with tons of enhancements. He’s also stayed fairly current on releasing updates to the theme. Now both the lite and pro versions are at version 2.0.2 and come with some bells & whistles that just weren’t available when I started using Autofocus.

Even with all of those updates, enhancements, etc… I just didn’t like the direction AutoFocus was going. I was stuck in its 1.x days and loving the way it worked. I love the simplicity, lack of widgets, and overall minimalistic view of the theme. Needless to say, I never upgraded. I’ve made my own modifications to the theme throughout the time I’ve had it, and I like it just the way it is.

The New Issues

So as the title (and the previous post I wrote about it) would suggest, I thought that the single post pages needed the thumbnails of the previous and next posts. I just thought it looked funny without them. With this idea, I set off to make that happen.

Now while that was successful, many people in the comments of that post pointed out enhancements and fixes to my code. I welcomed that and modified it accordingly.

A couple of weeks ago while I was upgrading some other themes I was updating the very popular TimThumb script. It is used for dynamic re-sizing of images and has been very successful in doing so in many WordPress themes. I thought to myself, why not utilize this script in AutoFocus? Why didn’t I think of that before?

Now what I have is a post image thumbnail where I supply what I want TimThumb to resize the height to, and it adjusts the width proportionality. TimThumb also has a whole host of other settings it can do. I suggest you check it out and see for yourself.

The New Solution

So what I’ve done now is revamped the way the previous/next post thumbnail gets displayed as well as turning the code into a function so I can just plop it into my single.php file.

First things first, go grab TimThumb and copy it into your theme directory. Rename this file thumb.php (if you’re following my example exactly) or edit the call to it on line 18 and 36.
Paste the following function into your theme’s functions.php file. <pre class="brush: php; collapse: false; highlight: [16,17,18,19,20,21,22,34,35,36,37,38,39,40]; title: ; toolbar: false; wrap-lines: true; notranslate" title="">/* Previous / Next Post Image Thumbnails */

function tq_prev_next_post() {

	echo '&lt;div id="nav-below" class="navigation"&gt;';

	$previouspost = get_previous_post($in_same_cat, $excluded_categories);
 
	if ($previouspost != null) {
		echo '&lt;div class="nav-previous"&gt;';
		previous_post_link('%link &laquo; Previous');
		echo '&lt;div class="nav-excerpt"&gt;&lt;p&gt;';
 
		/* Show previous Post's Thumbnail */
		$tq_previouspost_img = get_post_meta($previouspost-&gt;ID, "image_url", $single = true);
		$tq_previouspost_img = get_bloginfo('template_url') . "/thumb.php?src=" . $tq_previouspost_img . "&h=150&q=70&s=1";
		$tq_previouspost_title = get_post($previouspost-&gt;ID);
		$tq_previouspost_title = $tq_previouspost_title-&gt;post_title;
		echo '&lt;img class="post-thumb alignleft size-thumbnail" src="' . $tq_previouspost_img . '" alt="' . $tq_previouspost_title . '" /&gt;';
		/* End previous thumbnail */			
 
		previous_post_excerpt();
		echo '&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;';
	} 
	$nextpost = get_next_post($in_same_cat, $excluded_categories);
 
	if ($nextpost != null) {
		echo '&lt;div class="nav-next"&gt;';
		next_post_link('&lt;span style="text-align:right;"&gt;Next &raquo; %link &lt;/span&gt;');
		echo '&lt;div class="nav-excerpt"&gt;&lt;p&gt;';
 
		/* Show Next Post's Thumbnail */
		$tq_nextpost_img = get_post_meta($nextpost-&gt;ID, "image_url", $single = true);
		$tq_nextpost_img = get_bloginfo('template_url') . "/thumb.php?src=" . $tq_nextpost_img . "&h=150&q=70&s=1";
		$tq_nextpost_title = get_post($nextpost-&gt;ID);
		$tq_nextpost_title = $tq_nextpost_title-&gt;post_title;
		echo '&lt;img class="post-thumb alignright size-thumbnail" src="' . $tq_nextpost_img . '" alt="' . $tq_nextpost_title . '" /&gt;';
		/* End Next thumbnail */			
 
		next_post_excerpt();
		echo '&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;';
	}
	echo '&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- #nav-below --&gt;'; }</pre>

Edit your single.php file. You’re going to replace the <pre class="brush: xml; light: true; title: ; notranslate" title=""><div id=”nav-below”> … </div></pre>

section with the function we just created. Replace it with <pre class="brush: php; light: true; title: ; notranslate" title=""><?php tq_prev_next_post(); ?></pre></li> </ol>

That’s it. Again it would be best if you have any questions to first look at my original post as to where these chunks of code go and how the overall code block should look.

Here’s what it looks like now.

You can also see it in action by visiting my Photoblog.
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11 Essential WordPress Plugins for September 2011

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

A friend started out today asking me if I had time for some WordPress input…specifically regarding backups and related plugins. I though to myself, maybe I should write up a small email to my buddy and mention all the plugins I think are essential. I did and that led to me thinking…”I should put this out for others.” He thought the same thing and suggested I turn it into something on my site.

So, I put some time into this list. I only suggest the plugins I think are the best in their respective categories, so with that, let the list begin.

SEO

WordPress SEO – All of Joost’s (@yoast) plugins are awesome. Follow his site, the guy is crazy smart.

The first true all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress, including on-page content analysis, XML sitemaps and much more.

Affiliate and Link Building

SEO Smart Links

SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.

Redirection

Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors.
This is where you can build “301″ redirects for your blog. (i.e. http://www.tquizzle.com/go/ramped/ -> https://www.myaffiliate.com/something.php?r=xxxxx – My link actually refers you to Robb Sutton’s Ramped Blogging eBook.)

Performance / Backup

W3 Total Cache

The highest rated and most complete WordPress performance plugin. Dramatically improve the speed and user experience of your site. Add browser, page, object and database caching as well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress.

WP-DBManager – All of Lester Chan’s (@gamerz) stuff is good. He’s been in the WP game a long time.

WP-DBManager Manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up, optimizing and repairing of database.

Random Useful Stuff

cforms

cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more.

Jetpack by WordPress.com

Bring the power of the WordPress.com cloud to your self-hosted WordPress. Jetpack enables you to connect your blog to a WordPress.com account to use the powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users.

Jetpack includes all of the following:

WordPress.com Stats – Simple, concise site stats w/ no load on your server.
Twitter Widget – Display the latest updates from a Twitter user inside your theme’s widgets.
Gravatar Hovercards – Show a pop-up business card of your users’ Gravatar profiles.
WP.me Shortlinks – Enable WP.me- powered shortlinks for your posts and pages.
Sharedaddy – Super-Duper sharing tool. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, etc…
LaTeX – Mark up your posts w/ the LaTeX markup language – mathematical equations for the geeks.
After the Deadline – Helps you write better by adding spell, style and grammar checking.
Shortcode Embeds – Easier embedding of things you’d embed. YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, etc.

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu – Ozh (@ozh) is another guy who’s been in the game a long time. Quality stuff, always.

All admin links available in a neat horizontal drop down menu. Saves lots of screen real estate!

Dean’s Permalinks Migration

With this plugin, you can safely change your permalink structure without breaking the old links to your website,and even doesn’t hurt your google pagerank. (Useful if you ever need to change your permalink structure, like I did.)

Photo Dropper

Lets you add Creative commons licensed Photos to Your Posts from Flickr. By activating this plugin you agree to be fully responsbile for adhering to Creative Commons licenses for all photos you post to your blog.

eCommerce

WP e-Commerce Plugin

WP e-Commerce is a free WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin that lets customers buy your products, services and digital downloads online. We make setting up a shop easy, and with over 1.3 Million downloads, we have unparalleled experience.

Mobile

WP-Touch

WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile devices.

That’s it for right now. Again, I think each one of these plugins is the best in its respective category and definitely worthy of a download to try it out.

Did I miss some great ones? Let me know in the comments what you think are some essential WordPress plugins.

TQuizzle.com

Pit Bulls Are So Vicious

Remove Hidden .AppleDB, .AppleDouble, .AppleDesktop Folders from NFS/SMB Mounts

Up on GitHub

Resources:

7 WordPress Plugins That Will Save You Time

Share this:

Must-Have Social Media Plugins for your WordPress Blog

Share this:

Clearing out the /boot partition on Ubuntu Server

WordPress Most Popular Plugins (Infographic)

Share this:

How To Move Critical Windows Folders to Other Local Disks

Real Reason Why

Step-By-Step

Install & Create Restore Point

System Recovery

Copy Data & Create Hard Links

Prove it to yourself

Update

AutoFocus Previous Post / Next Post Image Thumbnails

The New Issues

The New Solution

Share this:

11 Essential WordPress Plugins for September 2011

SEO

Affiliate and Link Building

Performance / Backup

Random Useful Stuff

eCommerce

Mobile

Share this: