Brent Roos

How To Add Google Plus To Reader Send To

2011-11-09T09:58:00.000-06:00

For some strange reason, Google Reader still does not include Google+ in the Send To options. However, it is dead easy to add it manually.

Just click on the Create a custom link link and add the following:

Name: Google+

URL: https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/confirm?url=${url}

Icon URL: http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=plus.google.com

That's it! Perhaps soon, Google will forget to neglect Google Reader and cross promote it's services.

How to Add a Span Tag to Primary Links in Drupal

2011-09-23T17:13:00.000-05:00

Drupal

Here is an easy tutorial on how to add span tags to Primary Links in Drupal. Honestly, you might find that Drupal may take a long time for you to grasp but once you understand it and realize how awesome is, I think you will use it more and more since it really allows you to create just about any kind of website you can think of. Anyway, here is the code:

// Wrap span tags around the anchor text in the primary menu.
$(document).ready(function(){
$("#block-menu-primary-links li a")
.wrapInner("" + "");
});

#block-menu-primary-links li a is simply the css tag, so depending on the theme being used, I imagine that it may need to be replaced or adjusted, but hey, how easy is that right?

You might wonder where in the world you are supposed to put this, right? Of course you are. Inside your themes folder, which is of course, inside sites --> all --> themes --> yourtheme (never, ever edit core themes), you can make a javascript file to place that code in. You will of course need to declare that in your .info file. The code to do that is for example:

scripts[] = script.js

It does not have to be like that. I have mine in my theme's root directory but you could put in for instance: yourtheme/js. Then you would declare it like:

scripts[] = js/script.js

Pretty simple right? Still stuck? Please, let me Google that for you!

A couple of quick notes on this. At this point you might be asking ,why would I need to add span tags to primary links in Drupal? That would be because you want to style the menu, specifically with buttons. Adding a span tag to primary links is the easiest way to style them and it is really quite easy as you can see.

This type of replacement can be used anywhere on the site. I'm sure you can come up with some cool examples. In the near future, I will write about some more ways you can use javascript to wrap span tags around an html element. If you know what you are doing, this can be very useful!

Easy Way to Install Drush On a Linux Server

2011-09-23T17:05:00.000-05:00

Drush Rocks!

What is Drush you ask?

Drush is a command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal, a veritable Swiss Army knife designed to make life easier for those of us who spend some of our working hours hacking away at the command prompt.

See http://drush.ws, the homepage for the Drush project. It contains many important resources for Drush users.

Why would I want to use Drush you ask? Well, because you can. You can save time. Once it is set up, it is extremely easy to do many things for Drupal CMS with a few keystrokes, rather than going to this page, checking that box, etc. It just makes the life of the Drupal developer more enjoyable. And it just works.

That said, it is very easy to install Drush on Linux. Here are the commands to install Drush:

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drush-All-versions-5.x-dev.tar.gz

tar -xvzf drush-All-versions-5.x-dev.tar.gz

rm drush-All-versions-5.x-dev.tar.gz

Then we will want to add an alias to our .bash_rc file so we can use Drush in any site root directory. So this is awesome for shared hosting for instance if you use BlueHost like me. More on that a bit later in the article.

nano .bashrc

Then add the following right underneath where it says # User specific aliases and functions

alias drush="~/drush/drush"

Then type ctrl+O to write to the file and then ctrl+X to exit Nano. Type drush to see if you get a list of commands. If all went well, you have Drush installed on your Linux server!

I just want to mention once again, that this works for shared hosting on BlueHost. If you have a dedicated server for your website at home, you really ought to consider BlueHost to host your site because it is cheap and secure. In addition to that, it is professional. Imagine you have a problem with your server at home. Do you have a static IP address? Do you have an uninterrupted power supply? Daily backups? CPanel for easy administration? Did you know that you may use one BlueHost account for as many sites as you need? In my humble opinion, BlueHost is by far the best choice for shared hosting. If you sign up by clicking on this link, you can start using Drush on BlueHost today!

All you have to do to use Drush on BlueHost is to first sign up for a BlueHost account. Then go into the CPanel, to the security section, then SSH. Once inside there, click enable ssh. Once that is all set up, simply log into your BlueHost account over ssh with the username and password that was first assigned to you. For instance:

ssh myusername@mywebsitename

If you are on Ubuntu Linux, make sure ssh is installed.

sudo apt-get install ssh

If you are using Windows, use PuTTY. If you are unsure about ssh commands, please, let me Google that for you! Once you are familiar with ssh, installing Drush on your local Linux server or on BlueHost will be a pretty straightforward process. Have fun!

New Blogger UI

2011-09-22T15:39:00.000-05:00

The new Blogger UI looks like the Android app. I like the adjustments that Google has made. Very clean and nice.

Google has gone out of their way as of late to improve the user experience. Many of their apps now sport a similar, modern interface.

When Companies Destroy Websites You No Longer Maintain

2011-08-31T17:26:00.000-05:00

Don't you just hate to see when you work for a company and build a website for their clients, and then a few years later (after you have moved on to bigger and better things in your career) you look at it and see that they have completely mangled it because the new designer can't figure out how to use a very simple CMS like Joomla or DotNetNuke? I am annoyed by this...I mean, if you cannot figure it out, read some documentation for crying out loud! That is one of the sole reasons to use standardized open source CMS systems is that they are very easy to learn because the documentation is everywhere! There really is no excuse for this but I will say that I am very glad to no longer be working for a company which would let this happen...a company with which their senior web "developer" only knows how to slice to tables and is completely reliant upon Dreamweaver to author a website and would look at me like I'm an idiot for not doing the same for my projects. Seriously, I'm not making it up! This person did not eve know simple css. Perhaps it is true that most people generally don't, but a senior web developer? And this person knew that I saw right through the B.S. and tried to sabotage projects of mine on more than one occasion. This person also accused me for sabotage because he or she could not figure out how to use Joomla and other standard applications and techniques to do things. I know for a fact that this company has angered a lot of clients and also has a very high turnover of employees. Maybe they just want to see what happens when you treat your client and employees like total crap.

This is motivation for me and my company to simply blow away the competition, because as president and owner of my web company, I would just never let this occur. It is embarrassing frankly, that a company which prides itself on web marketing could possibly allow this to happen.

This company I used to work for actually had the idea that there really is no business market for open source software and that it is not a robust solution to use it because the code is open to the public and owned and maintained by a community, rather than by a private company. All of this, despite the well known fact that many fortune 500 companies use it and the majority of all websites use Linux and Apache. Google, IBM, Oracle and Apple, just to name a few, use some type or derivative of free open source software. They must all be idiots! They saw it as "second-class" if you will, compared to their proprietary system, which by the way, they did not even actually own. It would make a little bit more sense if they actually owned it, but they had to pay a license fee to a third party developer for every website launched. Thus their overhead was transferred to to the client at a ridiculous price. Furthermore, the proprietary system mentioned, though argued by them to be the most "robust" content management system imaginable, was a buggy, quirky, inefficient and puny system. At the time, I was primarily developing on the Joomla platform, and for all of it's shortcomings, is vastly superior in every way to this crappy proprietary CMS they used. Since then I have found Drupal to better meet my needs for development, but I digress... It truly is the height of narcissism when you believe that your system is better to a system that millions of people use successfully all over the world, and of which there are literally hundreds of books and thousands of publications for. My perspective is, why reinvent the wheel? Why start from scratch? Why have to charge my clients more for a system that sucks compared to Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress, while also having to compile all training documentation? Why lock my clients in? Ah ha! That is the striking point...client lock in...

If you can lock your clients in, they are stuck with your company on your system forever...or not!

Can you imagine how insulted you would be if a company did that to you? Well, this company that I worked for in the past has done this, many times over. They manipulate the unknowing and naive client into thinking that their model platform is better than the rest and specifically suited toward their industry. All of that is complete baloney! Any CMS can be used for an industry if you know what you are doing. Can you blame them, after all, it is business? Sure I do! It is unethical and I can provide a much better system to clients without screwing them over.

It is a bit frustrating for me to witness this and at the same time encouraging too. I know that there is a much better, more ethical way to treat your clients and employees. It is with respect and giving them true information that will benefit their company, not just locking them into your system so you can bleed them dry and move on to the next victim.

New Peoria Web Solutions Website

2011-08-29T15:28:00.001-05:00

Peoria Web Solutions

Just got done with the new logo this last weekend and am now working on the new website. It's going to be cool...

Using the New Blogger Interface

2011-08-29T15:16:00.001-05:00

I'm loving the new Blogger interface! It is slick, modern and I am very impressed. As has always been the case with Blogger, it is elegant yet very simple. Everything just makes sense.

If you would like to use the new interface, head over to draft.blogger.com.

My little guy!

2011-07-31T15:16:00.000-05:00

How to burn a DVD From the Command Line on Linux

2011-06-18T16:04:00.000-05:00

Linux Command Line

Say you have a Linux server with a DVD burner and you want to use it for burning .iso files to DVD. Well, I have that need and thankfully it is dead simple to do in Ubuntu Server 10.04!

Firstly, sudo apt-get update && apt-get install dvd+rw-tools

The command to burn the .iso file is
growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=dvd.iso

So that's it! Happy burning! One thing I did was make an alias in my .bash_aliases file to make the command easier to remember. Here is an example:

alias myaliasname='growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=/path/to/iso/file.iso'

Okay, I might as well tell you what to do from here. Type the command

nano .bash_aliases

add the line

alias myaliasname='growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=/path/to/iso/file.iso'

Then issue the following command:

bash

Then type your aliased command to burn the DVD:

myaliasname

I have found that it is good to wait about 10 seconds after loading the DVD into the burner to issue the command, to give it time to read the disk sectors.

Why Did I Choose Blogger?

2011-06-18T15:39:00.000-05:00

So why did I decide to make a blog here on Blogger you ask? Well, why not? I happen to like Google software a lot and just see it as a good fit. It doesn't mean that I don't like WordPress too but figured I'd give this one a shot. Blogger is really good blogging software and does very well what it is intended to do -- blogging! WordPress has gotten big and bloated in many ways. I also love that Blogger is hosted for free and everything associated with it is free as well, including editing CSS and mapping a domain. WordPress.com charges a small fee for this, while not much, it still isn't free. You might say that I could host my own WordPress blog, but to that I will say, please refer to my sentence about the free hosting. Plus it's all integrated with my Google account, or as I like to call it Goocount.

Sweet Google Baseball Cap

Seriously though Google continues to crank out high quality software for free. By the way, you know what's funny? So many people are concerned about how much data Google collects and yet who does not want their website to be on top of Google? I know, a pretty silly double standard.

As an aside, Google sent me this sweet baseball cap for beta testing a top secret project they are developing. Pretty cool, eh?

Creating Blogger Templates With Firebug

2011-06-17T12:38:00.002-05:00

Hello fellow bloggers of the world! How many of you know how easy it is to edit your template? I started out with the vanilla Simple Template, and with the help of Firebug for Firefox and the Blogger Template Designer, I was able to create a totally new template. It was so easy, I can't believe it! I assumed it would be much more difficult. It was as easy as editing some css and I'm good to go!

Admittedly, I also had to edit some of the XML code from within the template itself. No big deal though. Once you see what everything does, it is pretty easy. Honestly, I see the XML code as much simpler to figure out than PHP code if you aren't already familiar. The XML is pretty much self explanatory.