Software Tutorials

Monetizing your self-hosted wordpress blog with the Amazon Link plugin for Wordpress

2012-04-13T10:12:00.001-07:00

The Amazon associate program is the grand-daddy of all affiliate programs. That program began in the late 1990's (?1998?) with the idea that individual website owners could place links to products being sold by amazon.com, and earn a sales commission. Today there are thousands of online stores with their own affiliate programs perhaps hoping to replicate Amazon's success that's in part due to

Implementing MySQL style AUTOINCREMENT in SQLite3

2012-01-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I wrote about implementing the MySQL enum datatype in SQLite3, and while that exploration turned out to be pretty simple someone tweeted a followup talking about how I needed to cover the AUTOINCREMENT feature as well. Studying my code I realized that indeed it would be necessary. Fortunately this came out to be very simple, much simpler than was implementing the enum datatype. To

Converting a MySQL enum for use in SQLite3

2012-01-06T21:11:00.000-08:00

I've got a database & website I want to move from using MySQL to using SQLite3. Well, I think I want to use SQLite3. Their document saying what sorts of uses make sense for SQLite3 are directly in line with my website, and I do want to remove some of the load off of my MySQL server so that it can have cycles free for more important purposes. However I've run into a couple troubles converting

Google's new 2-step verification process, and using it with 3rd party applications (like MarsEdit)

2011-12-11T10:52:00.001-08:00

Did you turn on 2-step verification recently in your gmail account, and then see MarsEdit stop working, and groan "NOW WHAT"? That's what I did recently, and fortunately there is a simple way to get 2-step verification to work with applications. The issue is that most (all?) applications do not know how to do the 2-step verification process and instead fail to log you in. By "application" I

Posting nicely formatted code snippets on blogger blogs, using

 and the SyntaxHighlighter javascript library

2011-11-28T15:17:00.001-08:00

In the past I've done my blogging on Drupal and enjoyed the contributed modules for generating syntax highlighting on code snippets. Now that I'm moving to Blogger one issue was how to best present code snippets on the blog. After some searching I've found a suitable method using a browser-side JavaScript library (Syntax Highlighter), and customizing the blogger theme with a small bit of code.

Successfully hosting Drupal on nginx on Dreamhost - a Dreamhost Drupal Hosting Adventure

2011-11-21T19:31:00.001-08:00

Among the standard performance recommendations for Drupal is to switch to the nginx web server. Because of nginx's design it's much more performant than Apache, supposedly. I don't know enough myself about nginx to say why it's better, other than having an understanding that nginx has an event-oriented architecture that's cleaner than Apache's. Every so often I get on a kick of trying to use

Correctly posting blog posts to a Blogger blog using the BloggerAPI

2011-10-30T21:25:00.001-07:00

Google conveniently provides a fair bit of documentation and example code to use the Blogger API and do things with blogspot.com based blogs. What I want to do in this post is walk through using the Blogger API to post blog entries to a blogger blog. The Blogger API is one of the standard blog API's and for example is directly supported in applications like MarsEdit (which I'm using to write

Correctly posting blog posts to a Blogger blog using the BloggerAPI

2011-10-29T12:30:00.001-07:00

Solving the "Save As.." WTF in Mac OS X Lion - why'd they kill Save As?

2011-10-05T10:02:00.001-07:00

Mac OSX Lion has arrived and I eventually got around to installing it yesterday. It seems to contain some goodness, along a few things that make me go "goodness gracious". Well, the words I'm using aren't always so kind as "goodness gracious" but this is a family oriented blog, so we'll not write the words I actually am saying sometimes. One issue is that Preview is crashing (often) while

Using WikiDot data forms and the pagepath feature to make a nice list of similar documents

2011-09-11T21:40:00.001-07:00

I'm getting started with using WikiDot and as an initial slightly complex task am using it to make a list of structured pages. WikiDot of course lets you create free-form pages with any content you want, but it also lets you create pages containing semi-structured data and present them pretty nicely. It also includes a "pagepath" feature that's supposed to create a hierarchical index of the

Make your own tiny URL service in Drupal with Shorten or ShURLy modules

2011-04-14T20:49:00.000-07:00

Short (or tiny) URL's are great for sharing links on various social media services. Twitter's 140 character limit places a premium on bytes better used for words than URL's, e-mail clients get hinky with long URL's, and so on. It's possible to use services like tinyurl.com or bit.ly to create your short links, but as Drupal users we have a powerful platform at

Setting up APC and Memcache on Dreamhost to support Drupal performance improvements

2011-03-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the performance of my websites, all of them Drupal powered, and all hosted on Dreamhost VPS. The latest step was to move over to PHP 5.3, use APC, use memcache, use the Drupal module for memcache, and oh I also installed the "upload progress" PECL module along the way to get a status report entry to shut up. There are two ways to get

Memory allocation peace of mind with running a Dreamhost VPS

2011-03-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

One way to get better performance on Dreamhost is to use their VPS solution. VPS (or Virtual Private Server) is a hosting solution for higher performance website needs. What Dreamhost brings to the table is a semi-managed VPS solution rather than the raw Linux VPS solution offered by other hosting providers. That's one of the advantages of using Dreamhost,

Gmail's new SmartLabel can mean missing important bulk/notification mail, here's how to avoid it with Smart Label Defang

2011-03-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

Google's GMAIL service recently rolled out a "SmartLabel" feature that automagically recognizes various kinds of bulk emails like mailing list conversations, notifications from various services, etc. When recognized it automatically adds a label to them (Bulk, Forums, Notifications, ...) and they don't show up in your main mailbox. I hadn't noticed this behavior

A success with Munin to monitor dreamhost VPS performance, versus the "manage resources" page on Dreamhost's control panels

2011-03-10T14:09:00.000-08:00

I have a website on a Dreamhost VPS which has performance problems (pages load slowly, etc) and am working through the known methods to speed up the site. It's a heavily used Drupal website that has a lot of logged-in users the latter meaning that the typical caching strategy won't work so well because the users are logged in. Anyway, I recently installed Munin

Implementing Facebook comment's on your website - should Disqus be afraid?

2011-03-07T08:35:00.000-08:00

Recently Facebook developed a new social plugin that allows a website to put up a facebook-powered comment box. For someone to leave a comment, they have to have a facebook account, and currently be logged-in to facebook. Any comments made in the comment box appear within their facebook activity stream (wall) and the comment thread which occurs over on

Use Munin to monitor a Dreamhost MySQL VPS

2011-02-19T15:46:00.000-08:00

Earlier I showed how to set up Munin on Dreamhost to monitor their VPS service (see: Monitor Dreamhost VPS performance, load, etc with munin). Among the available Munin plugin's is one to monitor MySQL. Out of the box it monitors the MySQL on the localhost, but if you have a Dreamhost MySQL VPS it's on a remote host and there are a few special considerations to

Monitor Dreamhost VPS performance, load, etc with munin

2011-02-19T13:46:00.000-08:00

Dreamhost has this wonderful virtual-private-server (VPS) offering that's pretty easy to use. They offer excellent hand-holding (administrative support) and the control panel offers a lot of flexibility. In the control panel is a section on VPS resources which graphs memory and load average. The resource graph is useful, almost. In fact, it's nice and

Review: Portland: Quest for the Livable City

2011-02-09T21:48:00.000-08:00

What's the correct vision for the best city? Is it endless expanses of detached single family homes, each with their own yard? Or is it walkable urban places, with stores and shops and interesting things within walking distance? That's the question explored in the movie, Portland: Quest for the Livable City. The setting is Portland Oregon, a well known Mecca for hip urban living, coffee

Stay sane while tracking news with google news and google reader

2011-01-24T11:52:00.000-08:00

Let's face it - the modern world and gizmo gadgetry is wonderful. With it we can track news, communicate with buddies around the world, or play a mean game of Angry Birds. But it can also quickly turn into information overload. One of my favorite tools for tracking news is the Google Alerts service (google.com/alerts). It tracks news and blog posts using their

WTF? Google BUZZ/Gmail class action lawsuit notification - ends up in SPAM folder of gmail account

2010-11-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

Wind ones memory back to the stone ages of last February. Some of us were pretty excited about this new thing Google launched, Buzz. (see Initial look at Google Buzz - the newest social networking service) But it quickly became a "meh" thing that hasn't taken hold in my life anyway. At the same time a bunch of people were in an uproar because Buzz insinuated

DropBox is an interesting solution to iPod/iPhone/Mac/etc file sharing

2010-10-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

Searching for a solution to Apple's stupid iTunes policy on uploading files from iPod or iPhone or iPad brought me to DropBox. I've heard of various geeks saying they use this app and it's cool, so thought to give it a whirl. It's actually useful for the problem at hand, namely image and video sharing between my iPod Touch and my Mac laptop. It's not quite what

How To Add A Successful Amazon Store To Your Blog

2010-09-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

Looking at methods to embed Amazon's aStore service onto a web site. Out of the box aStore takes your visitors to an amazon.com domain but that's not great because the visitors leave your website. It's better for sticktivity if nothing else if they were to remain on your domain. The method is essentially to use iFrame's.  link

Anti-AB32 initiative heading toward California ballot in November 2010

2010-05-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Núñez, Chapter 488, Statutes of 2006), puts into law a requirement to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This is more-or-less the Kyoto Protocol target and much stronger than the targets considered at the recently failed Copenhagen Summit. Given what this bill requires it is not surprising that a chorus of

Developing installation profiles | drupal.org

2010-04-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

link: http://drupal.org/node/159730