CGP-tech

HTML 5 Video Formats, Browsers, Flash Fallback and Solutions

Neil Gee — Thu, 16 May 2013 06:41:21 -0400

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HTML 5 video is the future of online video but is currently not supported on older browsers, you still have to provide an alternative format for those older browsers and undoubtedly that will be Flash as a fall back method (other alternatives are QuickTime and Silverlight but Flash is more widespread). You need to support [...]

HTML 5 Video Formats, Browsers, Flash Fallback and Solutions is a post from: coolestguyplanettech.com

HTML 5 Video Formats, Browsers, Flash Fallback and Solutions Neil Gee

Find and replace text across a whole WordPress web site

Neil Gee — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:01:40 -0400

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You can do a find and replace for text or html code on a post or page across a whole WordPress site by using the mysql database that the site stores all its data in. First up you need to connect to the database, if you have a cPanel/Plesk style hosting typically you will have [...]

Find and replace text across a whole WordPress web site is a post from: coolestguyplanettech.com

Find and replace text across a whole WordPress web site Neil Gee

Making Images Responsive in Drupal 7, Remove inline width and height styling

Neil Gee — Sun, 12 May 2013 00:41:04 -0400

Making images in Drupal 7 optimised for responsive layout requires a CSS declaration to allow the scaling and a php function to remove existing inline styling width and height attributes.

CSS

The best CSS style on images to make them scale is

img {max-width:100px; height:auto;}

You may need to use the !important declaration if another CSS style is overriding.

It is best practice to optimise/size the image from the start at the widest width that you want it displayed as that way it will always fill its parent container reponsively but not exceed its physical width in pixels. (So you wont see it wider and abnormally big).

Preprocess PHP Function

By stripping out the inline width and height values of images that Drupal sets you will make your images responsive on more devices and older browsers. You can take advantage of one of the preprocessors that Drupal uses by adding a function in your template.php file in your theme folder, just add in the code below and swap out YOURTHEMENAME for your theme name.

// Remove Height and Width Inline Styles from Drupal Images
function YOURTHEMENAME_preprocess_image(&$variables) {
  foreach (array('width', 'height') as $key) {
    unset($variables[$key]);
  }
}

Thats all there is to it, now all your images will flex to fit.

Responsively Removing Width and Height Attributes on Images and wp-caption on WordPress

Neil Gee — Thu, 09 May 2013 01:58:41 -0400

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If you are looking to go responsive for images on your site and want a theme that responds to various devices such as tablets and mobiles there are a couple of issues to sort out with existing hard coded images that have hard coded inline style width and height attributes. In WordPress not only do you [...]

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Responsively Removing Width and Height Attributes on Images and wp-caption on WordPress Neil Gee

Installing phpMyAdmin on Mac OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion & 10.7, 10.6

Neil Gee — Wed, 08 May 2013 00:27:49 -0400

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To get simplified administration done and ‘command line’ free MySQL work, phpMyAdmin comes to the rescue, to get it running as part of your local development set up on OS X, a couple of steps need to be preconfigured. These steps will work on both Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.7 and 10.6 Snow [...]

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Installing phpMyAdmin on Mac OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion & 10.7, 10.6 Neil Gee

Clear the local DNS cache in OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion

Neil Gee — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:46:22 -0400

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When its just not giving you what you want – time to flush it How to clear the local DNS cache…. OSX 10.7 - 10.8 sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder OSX 10.5 – 10.6 sudo dscacheutil -flushcache Windows ipconfig /flushdns Linux (depending on what you’re running) /etc/init.d/named restart /etc/init.d/nscd restart Clear the local DNS cache [...]

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Clear the local DNS cache in OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion Neil Gee

Change and Update WordPress URLS in Database When Site is Moved to new Host

Neil Gee — Wed, 01 May 2013 22:46:41 -0400

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After migrating a WordPress site to a new URL either live or to a production or development server, the new URL strings in the mysql database need to be changed and updated in the various mysql database tables. This method just uses the whole mysql database rather than a WordPress export/import from within, and is best [...]

Change and Update WordPress URLS in Database When Site is Moved to new Host is a post from: coolestguyplanettech.com

Change and Update WordPress URLS in Database When Site is Moved to new Host Neil Gee

How to make your SSH Terminal shell sessions last longer on OSX

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 04:20:40 -0400

If you find that your SSH shell sessions to remote computers are timing out too quickly with the error "Write failed: Broken pipe", you can make a simple configuration to keep these sessions going as long as you have your terminal shell window running:

Upgrade MySQL Database from 5.5 to 5.6 on OSX 10.8 Mountan Lion

Neil Gee — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 05:26:38 -0400

MySQL version 5.6.10 is available for download for OSX, a double click and install is available named Mac OS X ver. 10.7 (x86, 64-bit), DMG Archive. (Don't worry about the 10.7 naming, Works fine in OSX 10.8)

Stop the MySQL Server

sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server stop

Download and Launch the DMG

There is no upgrade option in the installer and you are presented with the 3 installations:

All you need to install is the main mysql-5.6.......pkg, if you have previously installed the pref pane and start up script there is no need to reinstall.

Control/Right click the mysql-5.6...pkg to avoid the security GateKeeper. Follow the installation process.

Location of MySQL 5.6 Data

MySQL data and files will be stored at:

/usr/local/mysql-5.6.10-osx10.7-x86_64

and an 'mysql' directory alias is also created that points to the same location

/usr/local/mysql

which points to

mysql -> mysql-5.6.10-osx10.7-x86_64

Your previous installation is maintained and will be filed in the same location with the appropraite version you were using, like so:

/usr/local/mysql-5.5.13-osx10.6-x86_6

What needs to be done is to migrate the database and tables to the new version.

Migrate Databases

The key directory from the previous instance that needs to be copied is :

/usr/local/mysql-5.5.13-osx10.6-x86_64/data

So in this instance the previous mysql version was 5.5.13 - rename the new data directory and copy in the old one and fix file ownership tp MySQL:

Change Name of newer data directory

sudo mv /usr/local/mysql-5.6.10-osx10.7-x86_64/data /usr/local/mysql-5.6.10-osx10.7-x86_64/dataold

Copy Old Databases into new location

sudo cp -rf /usr/local/mysql-5.5.13-osx10.6-x86_64/data /usr/local/mysql-5.6.10-osx10.7-x86_64/

Set Correct Ownership to MySQL

sudo chown -R _mysql /usr/local/mysql-5.6.10-osx10.7-x86_64/data

Start MySQL and Repair

Now we need to start the MySQL database and run a repair/upgrade tool on the older databases

sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start

Run the Upgrade Tool

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_upgrade

If you get errors on the first run, run the command again

Restart MySQL

sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server restart

Check the Version

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql

Set MySQL Password

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'yourpasswordhere'

my.cnf

In the latest version of MySQL 5.6 there is a default 'my.cnf' file that the database references that is now stored in:

/usr/local/mysql-5.6.10-osx10.7-x86_64/my.cnf

So if you have made any customisations to the behaviour of MySQL then these will now need to be added in the new my.cnf file and make a copy to /etc so any global changes will be read in when MySQL is launched.

How do I know if my website has been hacked?

Neil Gee — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 22:04:34 -0400

If you think that your site may have been hacked but are not too sure - you can check to see what Google thinks at the following URL

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=mydomain.com

Just swap out mydomain.com with your actual domain name

What you will see from the returned page is if Google thinks its been hacked.

If your website has been hacked, you can see which pages have been infected via the Google Webmaster Tools, they hava a Malware section which will list all the pages - so if you haven't set your site up with Google WebMaster Tools do this as a first step. Once you have WebMaster Tools set up check the malware section to see what the damage is.

From this point you have a couple of choices based on your skill level, if you don't know how to fix the malware just copy the listed malware provided by Google and email it to your service provided and ask them to help or otherwise roll up your sleeves get access to your website via preferably the command line SSH or FTP and get ready to search and delete the malware code from the infected files.

WordPress SEO Settings Plugin 1.4 by Yoast, Set up SEO in the Best Way

Neil Gee — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 03:04:36 -0500

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WordPress SEO Settings Yoast v1.4 SEO in WordPress just doesn’t cut it until you use the powerful all singing and dancing WordPress SEO plugin from Yoast. WordPress SEO plugin by Joost De Valk is a powerhouse of a tool that deals with all the SEO configurables you could ever think of for a WordPress installation. [...]

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WordPress SEO Settings Plugin 1.4 by Yoast, Set up SEO in the Best Way Neil Gee

How to Install mcrypt for php on Mac OSX Lion 10.8 & 10.7 Development Server

Neil Gee — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 23:53:54 -0500

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The mcrypt extension is missing. Please check your PHP configuration. The above error appears after you successfully get phpMyAdmin up and running on OS X, generally you don’t have to worry about it, you only need to address the error if you are going to use a web application that requires it, for example Magento, the shopping [...]

How to Install mcrypt for php on Mac OSX Lion 10.8 & 10.7 Development Server is a post from: coolestguyplanettech.com

How to Install mcrypt for php on Mac OSX Lion 10.8 & 10.7 Development Server Neil Gee

Update Jailbroken iPhone to iOS 6.1.2 Untethered with evasi0n

Neil Gee — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 05:39:31 -0500

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This process upgrades your iOS jailbroken device to iOS 6.1.2 If you need your baseband preserved because you are on locked iphones and need the baseband to unlock with ultrasn0w then stay away from this and wait until the next version of redsn0w. For this jailbreak you will need to upgrade your jailbroken iPhone to [...]

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Update Jailbroken iPhone to iOS 6.1.2 Untethered with evasi0n Neil Gee

Upgrading Zen Theme and subthemes from 1.x to 2.x in Drupal 6

Neil Gee — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 21:52:34 -0500

This guide/reference deals with upgrading the Zen theme from 6.x-1.x to 6.x-2.x in Drupal 6.

The Zen 1.x theme in Drupal 6 does not need to be upgraded and carries on just fine, but the Zen 2.x version is a step in the direction of Drupal 7 and by upgrading just the Zen theme to 2.x whilst staying on Drupal 6 is a stepping stone in the bigger picture migration of a larger site from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7.

It allows you to prepare the site for half of the long and windy and bumpy migration journey and will focus just on the theme upgrade rather than the theme plus other Drupal 7 issues. Do this when you are in a calm state of mind.

The documentation on doing this is scarce, hence my draft. One of the biggest challenges in the upgrade of Zen from 1.x to 2.x is the change in region naming for some regions, this conforms to the new default regions as used by Drupal 7. This process will involve search and replacing certain CSS and Drupal custom template files and I guarantee that you will be hit with some 'left of field' challenges.

Because of this I strongly recommend creating a test site of your production site and doing the upgrade there first - sort out the issues and then you can apply the changes to the live site.

Creating a Drupal Test Site

Since there are many hosting soutions out there this guide does not go through this in details as your environment will no doubt be different to mine.

On a cPanel linux set up create a new domain like dev.yoursite.com and a mysql database and user, you can do this via the GUI in cPanel, note down the database, user and password
Export your database from yoursite.com as a mysql dump, you can do this via phpmyadmin
Import the database into your dev.yoursite.com mysql database
As root log into your server via command line and copy the contents of your live sites public_html to your test sites public_html - something like this:

cd /home/devsite/public_html

cp -rf /home/yoursite/public_html/* .

-Change you permissions as you copied as root

chown -R devsite:devsite *

- Change your Drupal settings.php file to reflect the new test db and user

nano sites/default/settings.php

- Change the string that supercedes $db_url to the values you took down in step 1

Thats all you need to do - now go to your dev site and it should be an exact replica - the only module that doesn't work is 'secure pages' for SSH, if you use it just remove it from your development site.

Upgrading Zen

Now working in your test site, download the latest Zen 2.x theme for Drupal 6 - load that into your themes directory, you will have to remove the older Zen theme as you can't run the two parallel.

With the Zen theme now in place the next step is to rename your old subtheme directory for backup and reference and start to create the new subtheme that references the new Zen.

Follow the subtheme creation by reading the readme in the zen/STARTERKIT/readme.txt directory, I have found it a lot easier to keep the same theme name as the older theme, especially if the theme path is used when linking images etc.

The key things to do here:

copy the STATERKIT directory to your theme folder one level up and rename it to your theme name
rename the STARTERKIT.info.txt to yourtheme.info
serach and replace STARTERKIT with yourthemename in template.php and theme-settings.php

Thats the subtheme and Zen ready to go - but your not going to like what it looks like right now - now we have to merge the old subtheme with the new.

Migrate Old Subtheme CSS & Javascript file to New Subtheme

Ok now in your new subtheme.info file you need to comment out any CSS files not required and declare in your custom CSS file from your old subtheme, move that old CSS file/files to the new location (previouly the CSS files where at the top level, now they have their own CSS folder):

themes/yourtheme/css/

Also declare and move in your javascript files and comment out any features/settings also in the .info file

themes/yourtheme/js/

Migrate Images

You will probably find that images are missing from the site - this will be due to the move of the CSS file, what I have found is easiest is to copy the images from the old subtheme into 2 locations in your new subtheme:

themes/yourtheme/css/images/

theme/yourtheme/images

Migrate Custom Content Type and Page Templates

Move any custom templates into:

themes/youtheme/templates

Add Header Back In

Add your header/logo image back in if it was set by the theme /admin/themes/settings/yourtheme and fill in the path - PATH TO CUSTOM LOGO

Uncheck the default logo box.

Region Name Changes

In Zen 2.x the regions are different than the previous version and are a step in the right direction of Drupal 7

Out goes sidebar-left and sidebar-right replaced by the not so intuitive sidebar-first and sidebar-second, navbar changes to navigation and closure_region to page_closure

The old Zen 1.x regions are:

regions[left]           = left sidebar
regions[right]          = right sidebar
regions[navbar]         = navigation bar
regions[content_top]    = content top
regions[content_bottom] = content bottom
regions[header]         = header
regions[footer]         = footer
regions[closure_region] = closure

The Zen 2.x regions are:

regions[sidebar_first]  = First sidebar
regions[sidebar_second] = Second sidebar
regions[navigation]     = Navigation bar
regions[highlight]      = Highlighted content
regions[content_top]    = Content top
regions[content_bottom] = Content bottom
regions[header]         = Header
regions[footer]         = Footer
regions[page_closure]   = Page closure

Adding Back In Custom Regions

Add any custom regions you had added on top of the default Zen 1.x regions back in to Zen 2.x by declaring them in the new .info theme, once declared they should show up on the blocks page.

Custom Template Variable Search and Replace

If you need to keep your custom templates you need to change certain variables to render the new region names:

$left -> $sidebar_first
$right -> $sidebar_second
$closure_region -> $page_closure
$navbar -> $navigation

Also very important one here, change your custom templates body classes from:

<body class="<?php print $body_classes; ?>">

<body class="<?php print $classes; ?>">

CSS Search and Replace

So crank open your custom CSS files and search and replace on these changed IDs and classes:

navbar -> navigation
sidebar-left -> sidebar-first
sidebar-right -> sidebar-second
.inner -> .section
#skip-to-nav styles -> #skip-link

Blocks

When I went to insepct my dev site my blocks were all over the shop - check your production site against your development and match the block locations back correctly.
A lot of my blocks ended up defaulting to the First_Sidebar region (which appears on the left) move these to Second_Sidebar (if your content is on the right). Check the rest of your blocks are set to the correct region.

Blocks in sidebar region - some of my titles were not displaying as h2 display in the block content - what was odd was they where in the block title field but where not being rendered - I had a custom block.php.tpl template and amended 2 variables to match the latest zen block variables:

$block->content to $content

$block->title to $title

But this still didn't fix - had to resave the block and then the title was rendered ok.

Custom Content Type Templates Not Working

If you previously had custom content type templates they will not be picked up in the new theme until you add a function back in the new template.php file to allow for template suggestions - add in this function:

function YOURTHEMENAME_preprocess_page(&$variables) {

if ($variables['node']->type != "") {

$variables['template_files'][] = "page-node-" . $variables['node']->type;
}
}

Add in your theme name and save and now your custom content type templates will be honoured - also if you had any other custom functions add them from your old template.php file to your new one.

Thats about it - hopefully some people will get some ideas or help from this- there are quite a few varied challenges to complete the process - best of luck!

What are SHSH Blobs

Neil Gee — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 03:19:25 -0500

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Sounds like a B-grade mess – from the iPhone, SHSH blobs! Whats it all about? SHSH blobs Looks exciting doesn’t it! Well thats what it looks like in a text editor, its a secure encrypted file known as a key, its about 4KB in size and is also known as a HASH signature which is [...]

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What are SHSH Blobs Neil Gee

Combining VOB files into one in Linux or OSX and convert to MP4

Neil Gee — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:07:06 -0500

So you need to combine multiple VOB files from a DVD VIDEO_TS folder into one and convert to MP4? One of the easiest and quickest ways to do this is a simple method on the command line to merge the files and then use a free video converter to change format.

Merging the VOBs

Launch your Terminal application in - Applications/Utilities/Terminals

Lets say your folder VIDEO_TS is on your desktop

Move into the folder:

cd ~/Desktop/VIDEO_TS/

Combine the VOB files with single spaces in between each VOB filename using the cat command (short for concatenate). The output command is the greater than sign '>' followed by the destination and merged filename. Output the merged file straight to the Desktop, a lot of the times when you copy the VIDEO_TS folder across to your desktop the permissions of the VIDEO_TS are set to read only so you can't write the merged file into the same directory - so in this example its output is set to the folder above which is the Desktop which is denoted by '../'.

cat VTS_05_1.VOB VTS_05_2.VOB > ../VTS_05.VOB

All you have to do is to change the VOB file names, just put them in the order you need them to follow in the merged file, put as many as you need to - just separate with space

Converting to MP4

Use the excellent Miro Video Converter to convert the VOB to MP4

How to Find and Delete Files in Directory Based on Modification Date

Neil Gee — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 02:21:18 -0500

How to find and delete files in a Linux directory based on when the file had been modified from a certain amount of days ago - this can be useful for dealing with directories with copious amounts of files like email boxes and log folders.

First to see the files modified or created based on a certain date:

find /path-to-directory -mtime +5 -exec ls -l {} \;

This will list all the files created or modified 5 days prior to the current date.

Then to remove the files

find /path-to-directory -mtime +5 -exec rm -f {} \;

This will remove all those files previously listed.

Alter the '-mtime' argument in the command to change the amount of days, by adjusting the figure after it. '+5' will preserve any files created/modified withiin the last 5 days and delete files modified older then 5 days ago.

Installing PEAR on OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion

Neil Gee — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 03:52:17 -0500

Installing PEAR on OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion

Check if you have it

pear version

If not, move into:

cd /usr/local

Get it

curl -O  http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar

Install It

sudo php -d detect_unicode=0 go-pear.phar

Click yes a couple of times during the install

Add PEAR to your PATH

cd 

vi .bashrc

vi .bash_profile

Add in to your PATH variable:

/Users/USERNAME/pear/bin

Refresh

source .bash_profile

Verify

pear version

Output should be

PEAR Version: 1.9.4
PHP Version: 5.3.15
Zend Engine Version: 2.3.0
Running on: Darwin neils-iMac.local 12.2.0 Darwin Kernel Version 12.2.0: Sat Aug 25 00:48:52 PDT 2012; root:xnu-2050.18.24~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Thats PEAR installed and ready.

iNode What You Did Last Summer

Neil Gee — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 22:22:47 -0500

How to find out how many inodes you are using on a hard disk or in a directory?

Most hosting plans have a limitation on inodes - so you need to know how many and where they are being used if you need to do some slashing.

To find the inode limit for your whole disk or VPS

df -i

Output will be similar to this:

Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on

/dev/vzfs            1000000  805718  194282   81% /

To find and display a well formatted summary of how many inodes are in a certain directory and list all the subdirectories - move into the directory and run:

echo "Detailed Inode usage for: $(pwd)" ; for d in `find -maxdepth 1 -type d |cut -d\/ -f2 |grep -xv . |sort`; do c=$(find $d |wc -l) ; printf "$c\t\t- $d\n" ; done ; printf "Total: \t\t$(find $(pwd) | wc -l)\n"

Output will be similar to below

Drupal SEO Settings - Configuring The Basics - All About Hiding the Node

Neil Gee — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 01:49:32 -0500

Ok so here is the roadtrip to optimal SEO settings and best practice for Drupal, going from setting the URLs to be search engine friendly, creating URL aliases, creating default templated URL aliases, setting up redirects from older URL aliases. Setting up Page Titles, Meta Tags and Canonical links - lets get started...

Clean URLs

Off the bat the URL default strings in Drupal are dynamic and have search engine unfriendliness > ?q=

http://mydomain.com/?q=node/3

To switch these to clean URLs, there is a setting in core Drupal that you can enable, at Admin>Configuration>Search and metadata >Clean URLs, just check that on.

This results in a cleaner SEO friendly format:

http://mydomain.com/node/3

URL Path Aliases Basic

Ok now our URLs look friendly but not very descriptive, you can get all your nodes indexed in the search engine but we need some better aliases than one 'node' word and number - there is an option to manually add an alias name to the node in the URL field at the bottom of a content template.

This results in an overall better result:

http://mydomain.com/hello-i-am-an-alias

You can manage the alias paths or even add them at Home » Administration » Configuration » Search and metadata » URL aliases

URL Path Aliases Advanced

There are 2 key Drupal modules token and pathauto that further extend URL paths and aliases functionality.

These modules work together, with pathauto functioning to alias the path of a formed URL to the actual node in Drupal, how it forms the URL in terms of text is from a pattern as assisted by token, which will typically be the title of the content page or article or from a number of variables.

So it would do the same thing as the basic alias by aliasing for example:

http://mydomain.com/hello-i-am-an-alias to http://mydomain.com/node/3

But the advanced part of pathauto is that it enables a 'pattern' tab back in the URL aliases section which can be used to set default URLs for content without you having to manually enter in the URL based on a pattern which you control and that also you can override manually.

So get to it at /admin/config/search/path/patterns.
It contains configurations for each content type you have as well as taxonomy and user nodes, you don't have to fill in each content type you can just fill in the default path for all content types which will be applied to all content types if the other content types are empty.

Note that your taxonomy tags and user account pages are also separate nodes which are indexed by the search engines and delivered in search results, so makes sense to put something worthwhile for these too.

So basically you set the pattern in each type by just click inserting or copying the Replacement Patterns (which are the tokens or variables), in what you want to be the default pattern of your URL, normally most sites will set the node title [node:title] as the URL and perhaps add in another variable before or after such as a date you can just daisy chain these variables after one another and if you decide to do that you should put in a hyphen '-' between variables otherwise they will run together, the defaults are pretty good:

Content Types

[node:title]

Taxonomy Terms

[term:vocabulary]/[term:name]

Authors/Users

users/[user:name]

So now each time a new content is created the variables from the patterns above will be used as the URL alias for the content, this is controlled by the 'URL path setting' at the bottom of the created new content, if the 'Generate automatic URL alias' is clicked the pattern will be used. (You can still uncheck it and manually add in the URL alias).

One of the dangerous sides to the automatic approach is that if you change the title of the content in the title field the URL will also change, which means that the previous URL will generate a 404 error which is not so cool, this has caught me out quite a few times as I stare at my 404s in my analytics software.

There are a couple of solutions to this either just uncheck 'Generate automatic URL alias' after the content is published or before you change the title. The issue sometimes is that you don't always remember to do that - this is where the redirect module comes to the rescue.

Redirect URL Aliases

The redirect module when installed is great, it will keep track of all the URL alias changes and redirect any incorrect or older incoming URL alias requests to the updated and current ones. So if you have your content to generate automatic aliases and you change the title which generates a new URL, redirect will remember the old URL and forward to the new without you having to remember.

You'll find the redirect data also down the bottom of the content page.

If you end up with too many redirections on a node the URL may not get resolved, just do some deletions from the redirects. This is a great module but beware that it is always preferable to stay with the original URL in particular if you have built up some SEO weight with it and also social media presence, for instance if you have a bunch of Facebook likes and you change URL - you will lose all the likes and have to start over.

Getting all Right in the Head

WIth the URL aliases under control, time to concentrate in the head section, what controls the page title tag in the head of the document?

By default Drupal uses the node title and the site name and site slogan separated by pipe symbols '|' - the site name and slogan are defined at admin/config/system/site-information. To gain better better control use the page_title module which also uses the previously installed token module.

Download and enable the module and go to configure it at admin/config/search/page-title

The settings here work similar to the patterns for the URL aliases, set the replacement patterns or tokens from a defined list in the 'Available Tokens List' at the bottom in the pattern input fields for the different content types, taxonomy and user nodes. For the content types you can just set the default which would apply to all or specify all the content types. The defaults are pretty good:

Default Content Type

[current-page:page-title] | [site:name]

Front (Home) Page

[site:name] | [site:slogan]

And maybe you can do something with your taxonomy titles like:

[term:name] | [term:vocabulary] | [site:name]

I am not too fussed about the user nodes and some just even prevent search engines from indexing these nodes.

Important thing is that page titles hold an important value in SEO, so craft them well, you can set any text you want as the defaults outside or the token available list, just add in regular text without the brackets []. Setting the page titles here will be a global effect on all created content but you can still overide the global settings at the node level.

Overiding Page Title Templates

To override the global settings you need to show the Page Title field linked to the content type - so back at the configuration of page titles admin/config/search/page-title

Click on 'Show Field' checkbox alongside a Content Type to show the Page Title field at the node level - then open your content.

And here you can overide the Page Title from the default set - a great thing here is that you get a running character count to show you the magic 70 character mark; which is the recommended setting that search engines actually take not of, you can add in more but the characters over 70 will have little effect on SEO.

Meta Tags

After the Page Titles are taken care off, you need to add in meta tags in the head for description, keywords, facebook opengraph and dublin core settings - this is all done by the metatag module. Install the module and you can edit global configurations at /admin/config/search/metatags same pattern emerging here, set the global configuration for front page, nodes, taxonomy and user content. Click on the overide to get into the details.

You can edit the content node type directly per each piece of content you create.

This without a doubt a powerhouse of a module - you can use this module without the previously mentioned page_title as it also can control the Page Title setting. As well as the standard tags you can also set the Open Graph and Dublin Core as well as set individual index and follow settings in the Advanced Tab

Duplicate Content

That's pretty much it, just one thing to tidy up which is the possibilty of duplicate content and canonical URLs. Canonical URLs are a meta tag setting displayed in the head as:

<link rel="canonical" href="/myurlalias" />

This is how it is displayed as the default in Drupal, as a relative URL, but after you add the metatag module it by default will display the URL as an absolute URL (see last field in the above pic) and below is how it is rendered:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://mydomain/myurlalias" />

This is considered better practice and what it does is tell the search engines which URL it should index and recognise if you need to add the same content on 2 or more different nodes on the same domain. Using the canonical tag tells the search engine - yes I am using duplicate content but don't penalise me, here is the right URL to index.

One last issue remains the node is still accessible as a node---

 http://mydomain.com/node/3

Which means that the search engines still are indexing the same content twice once as the node URL and the other as the alias URL.

A module to the rescue Global Redirect (globalredirect), install the module and enable, configure it from admin/config/system/globalredirect

There are quite a few settings here, check the documentation with the module to set to what meets your needs, the defaults are pretty good and it prevents the node URL from appearing, instead redirecting to the URL alias, there is no need to add the canonical link as this is already added if you have used the metatag module.

Thats pretty much it - now your URLs should be tamed and are a good base for your SEO settings.

How to set up Virtual Hosts in Apache on Mac OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion

Neil Gee — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 04:37:30 -0500

Setting up Virtual Hosts in Apache on Mac OSX Mountain Lion is straight forward after you have your local Web Development environment up and running - get your web development up and running first following the AMP stack guide here if required.

The process of setting up Virtual Hosts is done easier in the Terminal either using nano or vi with sudo or as a root user, or you can you a GUI visual editor like Text Wrangler which allows access to the /private/etc directory by clicking 'Show Everything" in the open dialog box.

Allow the vhosts configuration from the Apache configuration file httpd.conf

sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Search for 'vhosts' and uncomment the include line

# Virtual hosts

Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

This will allow usage of the httpd-vhosts.conf file, open this file to add in the vhost.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

An example in the file is given of the format required to add additional domains, just follow this to create your new virtual host:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host2.example.com
DocumentRoot "/usr/docs/dummy-host2.example.com"
ServerName dummy-host2.example.com
ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host2.example.com-error_log"
CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host2.example.com-access_log" common
</VirtualHost>

We can take this example and extend on it, if you wanted a domain named apple.com for example, you can copy the existing text block and edit to suit:

<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerName apple.com

    ServerAlias www.apple.com

    DocumentRoot "/Users/username/Sites/apple"

    ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/apple.com-error_log"

    CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/apple.com-access_log" common

    ServerAdmin neilgee@coolestguyplanettech.com

        <Directory "/Users/neilg/Sites/apple">

            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks

            AllowOverride All

            Order allow,deny

            Allow from all

        </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

So here I am creating a vhost for apple.com and making the document root in my Sites folder, (you can file it anywhere), in the text block above I have also added in some directory permissions and a server alias to also use the 'www' prefix, what you need to change is the document root location, email address and domain name to suit your needs. Finish and save the file.

Spoof Your IP address to the Domain

sudo nano /etc/hosts

Add the Domain to resolve to the local address

127.0.0.1 apple.com
127.0.0.1 www.apple.com

Restart Apache

sudo apachectl restart

Check out your local vhost domain in the browser

Losing Localhost

One caveat to note about virtual hosts is that once set up you lose your older document root previously at /LIbrary/WebServer/Documents or accessed in the browser at http://localhost what happens is that you get a 403 Forbidden Error. But the ~/username document root is still compatible.

To get around this, you need to add in a vhost for localhost and declare this vhost before any of the others, in the same file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Add in:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents/
</VirtualHost>

Then restart Apache and all should be good.

Install Joomla 3 on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 03:42:20 -0400

Joomla 3 on Mac OSX

How to install on OSX Mountain Lion 10.8, this guide will take you though installing the new Joomla CMS on top of an already built AMP stack in your environment. So if you need that sorted out first, here is a link to install Apache, MySQL, PHP and phpMyAdmin for OSX 10.8

Joomla 3 is new and not recommended for production sites until it reaches version 3.5, it is quite a major upgrade in terms of backend layout and function. It has default frontend and backend themes that are responsive to iPad and iPhone screen sizes and uses the bootstrap framework from Twitter.

Download Joomla 3

Find the SHA1-digest Checksum Hash for an OSX Downloaded Upgrade

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 01:55:27 -0400

To find a checksum hash file or SHA-1 digest code for an OS X upgrade or downloaded .dmg file:

1 - Download the .dmg

2 - Launch Terminal and at the command prompt:

Install Joomla 2.5 on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion with Apache MySQL & PHP

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 03:52:25 -0400

To get Joomla 2.5 quick and easily installed on top of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion for development or just to learn the CMS software you can install a pre-built application stack which includes all the needed web development components.

This guide is intended for those who just want to get the CMS system without worrying too much about installing and configuring Apache, MySQL and PHP or launching the Terminal.

Installing PostgreSQL database on OS X Lion 10.8 Mountain Lion configure phpPGadmin

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 05:46:00 -0400

This tutorial is a guide to install PostgreSQL database application OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion client and the client app pgAdmin and browser tool phpPgAdmin to interact with the databases.

The server version of OS X Mountain Lion (and Lion) comes with PostgreSQL database pre-installed replacing MySQL, there are two chains of thought on this, Apple's explanation is that PostgreSQL is a more versatile and powerful database that just suits their needs more and the conspiracists view is that since now MySQL is owned by Oracle it needs to be kept at arms length. Whatever the reason the client version of OSX requires a user install.

How to Write to NTFS External Disk Drives from OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 09:37:41 -0400

By default you can't write to Windows NTFS hard disk and USB drives as they appear as read only on the Desktop's of OS X users - which is a bit of a pain in the ass!

You can write to these disks with a few installs and tweaks in the Terminal, which will make all NTFS drives writeable - there are also some commercial point and click apps that can get the job done if you don't fancy wading into the Terminal.

This has been tested in both OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion and OS X 10.7 Lion.

This post has been updated March 2013 and uses the newer fuse4x version 0.9.2

No Video with Supported Format and Mime Type Found | Firefox OGG WebM

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 06:35:39 -0400

Firefox fails to display HTML 5 OGG and WebM video formats on the page and displays the error - "No Video with Supported Format and Mime Type Found"

The issue is that the web server doesn't quite know what to think of these formats and serves them out in the wrong type of format which the browser doesn't understand. What you need to do is add the correct file types of OGG and WebM for video to the Web Server for those file extensions. MP4 will be Ok as that fomat is more widely adopted.

How to Connect 2 Macs Using VNC on OS X Lion 10.7 Screen Sharing

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 12:05:18 -0400

OS X supports the protocol VNC - Virtual Network Computing to connect 2 remote computers which is done via 'Screen Sharing'

For the machine that you want to connect to you need to make sure it has screen sharing enabled.

Enable 'Screen Sharing' via the System Preferences under the Apple Menu.

Installing Homebrew on OS X Mountain Lion 10.8, Package Manager for Unix Tools

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 03:15:32 -0400

The easiest way to install various Unix tools and open source software onto OS X is via a package manager or repository, unfortunately OS X doesn't come with one, but fortunately there are some good folks that care. They come in the form of Homebrew.

Homebrew isn't the only option, also available is MacPorts and Fink but Homebrew is the newest and easiest of the trio.

Compatible in OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion...

Where is the iPhone iOS Simulator in Xcode 4.4

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 01:13:15 -0400

In Xcode 4.4.1 suite, the location of iOS iPhone simulator - is now too obvious, where is it?

Add a Label into a Text Input Field in a HTML Form

Thu, 24 May 2012 08:43:46 -0400

If you haven't got a lot of room in your HTML form to put a label above or next to a text input field - put the label inside the input field instead, with a couple of dynamic html attributes 'onblur' and 'onfocus' which changes the text dynamically based on the focus of the cursor in the text input fields.

Fastest Way to install Joomla 2.5.11 on Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8

Sat, 05 May 2012 05:33:51 -0400

Joomla 2.5.11 can be easily run off Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8, first up you need to have installed and running Apache, MySQL and PHP, and preferably 'phpmyadmin' once these applications are correctly installed running Joomla is a breeze.

If you don't have Apache/MySQL and PHP you can install everything along with Joomla in a stack builder point and click app - this makes the installation a lot easier and I would suggest that you try this first if you do not have an existing development environment. Otherwise follow the rest of the guide:

Download the latest version of Joomla currently at 2.5.11

Increase Upload Size for MySQL Database for cPanel and phpMyAdmin Server

Thu, 03 May 2012 02:06:19 -0400

cPanel/WHM Server imposes a limit on the size of a mysql database that can be imported into phpMyAdmin. The default size is 50MB.

The best way to navigate this limitation is to make some tweaks in the WHM interface. Sometimes editing a php.ini file doesn't make a difference.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 03:46:44 -0400

In WordPress the error "Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate xxxxx bytes) in /wp-admin/......." occurs it is a memory error relating to PHP.

Most hosting providers set this to a low level and when WordPress requires more memory to action a PHP request it results in a fatal error.

To fix

Virtually Running Windows 8 Preview on OS X Lion 10.7 Using VMWare Fusion

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 06:35:49 -0400

The next version of Windows is arriving, aptly named Windows 8 and there is a consumer preview which you can get your mitts on to check it out. You can use this preview version on OS X in a virtual environment - this is tested on Mac OSX 10.7 Lion with VMWare Fusion 4.1

Get Windows 8

- Download the consumer preview version from Microsoft as an iso format in 64bit

Adding CSS Class to Joomla Pages

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 04:45:20 -0500

To add CSS classes to articles in Joomla you can do so in the template index.php directly or you can add unique classes to categories that will only be displayed for articles linked to that category.

Adding a Page Class

Go to:

- Content > Menu > Menu Item where the item is for the article that you want to add a unique CSS class to.

- Edit the menu item

- On the right pane drop down "Page Display Options" go to "Page Class" here you can add in a class but put a leading space otherwise it will mash with the previous default class and you lose existing styling.

For example if the existing class is bodybg and you add in mynewclass without a leading space you end up with bodybgmynewclass which isn't going to help anyone.

How to Install and configure Magento 1.7.0 on Mac OS X Lion 10.7

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:11:51 -0500

To get Magento running in a OS X Lion environment you need Apache MySQL and PHP up and running and also mcrypt running.

Create a blank database in phpMyAdmin

Once these are done, download the latest stable release of Magento.

Install and Configure wget on OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 and fix SSL GNUTLS error

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:19:41 -0500

Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion comes with the command line utility called 'curl' which is a network transfer tool, it does not come with the popular 'wget', in fact 'curl' can probably get you by just fine, check man curl at the command line to see its usage.

Otherwise let's look at getting 'wget'...

To add and install wget to your system you need to download the source files, compile the code and make an install. To actually compile the code you need a compiler, unfortunately it doesn't come with OS X by default you need to install the free xcode suite from Apple which includes the GCC compiler. This process also works exactly the same in OSX 10.7.

How to get Javascript Working in Joomla Article Pages Editing TinyMCE

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:36:31 -0500

By default in Joomla 1.7 any Javascript scripts added into an article will fail when saved and strip out the javascript code entered.

To get it working you need to make some adjustments to the text editor that Joomla uses "TinyMCE".

Installing PostgreSQL database on OS X Lion 10.7 configure phpPGadmin

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 05:46:44 -0500

This tutorial is a guide to install PostgreSQL on OS X 10.7 Lion client and the client app pgAdmin and browser tool phpPgAdmin to interact with it.

OS X Lion Server is the first OS X operating system to make use of PostgreSQL database replacing MySQL, there are two chains of thought on this, Apple's explanation is that PostgreSQL is a more versatile and powerful database that just suits their needs more and the conspiracists view is that since now MySQL is owned by Oracle it needs to be kept at arms length.

Set Up Maintenance Page Allow only Certain IP Addresses Access Website

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:55:03 -0500

To allow only certain IP addresses access to a website and direct all other traffic to a maintenance page the following code can be used in a root level .htaccess file of the web site.

Create a 'maintenance.html' file and save in the web root level.

How to Protect the WordPress WP Admin Folder Using htaccess

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:38:54 -0500

To protect your WordPress wp-admin folder from everyone else apart from you, you can add a htaccess file in the /wp-admin folder to allow only access from your IP address and everyone else will be denied and receive a 'Page Not Found' 404 error.

Redirect one Domain to another WebSite using 301s in htaccess

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:17:57 -0500

When switching sites from an old domain to a new one or just doing a straight redirect, htaccess is your friend.

The code below will 301 redirect both the www and non-www version of 'olddomain.com' to the 'www' version of 'newdomain.com'.

Redirecting a Web Folder Directory to another Directory in htaccess

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:58:48 -0500

Using htaccess in your root level of your web server, how you redirect one page to another is:

RewriteRule ^url-string-to-redirect$ http://www.yourdomain.com/your-new-url-string [R=301,L]

Redirect a WebSite Canonically to Use http://www or Just http:// in .htaccess

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:58:14 -0500

To redirect all users to access your website with just the 'www' prefix, use the code below in your .htaccess site which needs to be filed in the root web directory of your web server:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Force a Directory Folder or WebSite to go over HTTPS SSL with htaccess

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:21:31 -0500

To force a website to use the secure protocol SSL running the whole site over HTTPS you can make a simple edit to the .htaccess file in the document root.

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R,L]

CGP-tech

HTML 5 Video Formats, Browsers, Flash Fallback and Solutions

Find and replace text across a whole WordPress web site

Making Images Responsive in Drupal 7, Remove inline width and height styling

CSS

Preprocess PHP Function

Tags:

Responsively Removing Width and Height Attributes on Images and wp-caption on WordPress

Installing phpMyAdmin on Mac OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion & 10.7, 10.6

Clear the local DNS cache in OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion

Change and Update WordPress URLS in Database When Site is Moved to new Host

How to make your SSH Terminal shell sessions last longer on OSX

Upgrade MySQL Database from 5.5 to 5.6 on OSX 10.8 Mountan Lion

Stop the MySQL Server

Download and Launch the DMG

Location of MySQL 5.6 Data

Migrate Databases

Change Name of newer data directory

Copy Old Databases into new location

Set Correct Ownership to MySQL

Start MySQL and Repair

Now we need to start the MySQL database and run a repair/upgrade tool on the older databases

Run the Upgrade Tool

Restart MySQL

Check the Version

Set MySQL Password

my.cnf

Tags:

How do I know if my website has been hacked?

Tags:

WordPress SEO Settings Plugin 1.4 by Yoast, Set up SEO in the Best Way

How to Install mcrypt for php on Mac OSX Lion 10.8 & 10.7 Development Server

Update Jailbroken iPhone to iOS 6.1.2 Untethered with evasi0n

Upgrading Zen Theme and subthemes from 1.x to 2.x in Drupal 6

Creating a Drupal Test Site

Upgrading Zen

Migrate Old Subtheme CSS & Javascript file to New Subtheme

Migrate Images

Migrate Custom Content Type and Page Templates

Add Header Back In

Region Name Changes

Adding Back In Custom Regions

Custom Template Variable Search and Replace

CSS Search and Replace

Blocks

Custom Content Type Templates Not Working

Tags:

What are SHSH Blobs

Combining VOB files into one in Linux or OSX and convert to MP4

Merging the VOBs

Converting to MP4

Tags:

How to Find and Delete Files in Directory Based on Modification Date

Tags:

Installing PEAR on OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion

Tags:

iNode What You Did Last Summer

How to find out how many inodes you are using on a hard disk or in a directory?

Tags:

Drupal SEO Settings - Configuring The Basics - All About Hiding the Node

Clean URLs

URL Path Aliases Basic

URL Path Aliases Advanced

Redirect URL Aliases

Getting all Right in the Head

Overiding Page Title Templates

Meta Tags

Duplicate Content

Tags:

How to set up Virtual Hosts in Apache on Mac OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion

Allow the vhosts configuration from the Apache configuration file httpd.conf

Search for 'vhosts' and uncomment the include line

Spoof Your IP address to the Domain

Restart Apache

Losing Localhost

Tags:

Install Joomla 3 on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

Joomla 3 on Mac OSX

Download Joomla 3

Find the SHA1-digest Checksum Hash for an OSX Downloaded Upgrade