Hectorplus.com

Create your own blog with my FREE Drupal installation

hector — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:38:09 +0000

Have you ever wanted to start your very own blog but did not know how? Now you can! I will help you set it up for you and for free! One of the main reasons a lot of people do not start their blog is because they find it difficult set up. And when they hear terms like FTP, Modules, Themes, CPanel, Databases, and so on, they are completely discouraged to start their blog.

Many would be bloggers shy away from even attempting to start their blogs, again, because of the difficulty involved in setting it up. If you find yourself in this situation, you will be glad to hear about my FREE Drupal Blog Installation Service. Find out how to get your own FREE blog.

Firefox 4 slow? Make Firefox 4 faster

hector — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:55:48 +0000

Firefox 4, the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, was too slow for me. The browser looked good in design, so I upgraded it(regreted it), but in terms of browsing, it was slow, especially when opening new tabs, and got slower when I had several tabs opened.

Here how to make Firefox 4 faster:

Open a new tab in Firefox 4, type about:config. If you get a warning, just click the button.
Then type network.http.pipelining in the Filter bar.
Double click on network.http.pipelining, this will make the value to True.
Same with network.http.pipelining.maxrequests, double click on it, now enter a value of 8 or 10.

Other changes you could make in order to make Firefox 4 run faster:
network.http.max-connections, change it to 100.
network.http.max-connections-per-server, change it to 20.
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server, change it to 8.

Restart your Firefox 4 browser, you will notice that Firefox 4 is a bit faster. Opening a new window or tab should be faster. Pages should load faster in Firefox 4 now. It worked for me!

Dear Domain Registry of Canada

hector — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:44:24 +0000

Domain Registry of Canada, sounds like a huge company, or the body that manages all domains in Canada, however, this people just misguide the consumer. And their domain pricing is outrageous.

Let me tell you(Domain Registry of Canada/America or Liberty Domains) that I will not fall in your trap, nor I will ever ever pay $40/year bucks for registering a domain with you.

I am a reseller of domain names myself, and I can get you 3 domains for the same price you are charging your customers, and these includes all the perks and goodies.

Stop sending me unsolicited mails now!

Customizing a specific node in Drupal

hector — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 11:10:39 +0000

Here is a quick tutorial about customizing a single node in Drupal. There are many reasons you want to customize a node, could be a sponsors page, a product you are promoting, a splash page, just a few examples. You can see a working example of a node already customized here.

Our goal here is to remove the top part of the page, the left and side parts of the page. You can also remove bottom part of the page if you like. The node can be fully customized. At the end, you are left with just the page content.

I used the fusion theme in this example, you can achieve the same thing with any other theme.

1 - First create a page/story, or if you have one already, find its node ID(node/NODENUMBER)
2 - Open the file page.tpl.php
3 - Save It As page-node-NODENUMBER.tpl.php
4 - Remove the header Divs/header content
4 - Remove the left and right sidebars, in the Zen theme, they are called sidebar_first, sidebar_second. Remove the footer if you like.

Once you have modified the node, upload it to your current active theme. Then go to Site Configuration > Performance. Clear the cache.

Now go to the customized node. Just the content of the node shold be displayed. If it looks messed up - things are out of place, that means you have removed too much. Undo the changes, re-upload it. Keep modifying the template until you are happy with the results.

The Zen theme is easier to work with, I recommend it.

How to add the Facebook Like button to your theme

hector — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:07:42 +0000

It's been a while since I wrote a post here on my blog. I have been busy lately with some personal projects.

Let's get started. With the increasing popularity of Facebook social plugins, such as the Like button, many people wonder how to add the Like button to their theme. In this quick tutorial, I will show you how to add it in your Zen theme.

1. Open your Zen theme folder and locate the node.tpl.php. I am using version 2.0 of Zen, and I have my themes saved at sites/all/themes/zen/templates/

2. Once you find the template, find the following code
<?php print $links; ?>
Add the following, right below it(Type it!):

Replace example with your domain.

3. Now open your page.tpl.php template, it should be at the same location where the node.tpl.php, and add this in the HTML tag of your template:
xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml
It should look like this

4. Upload your page.tpl.php and your node.tpl.php to your server. Make sure you clear your cache, it's at site configuration / Performance / Clear cached data.

You will need to register your website on Facebook in order for the Faceook Like button to work. For Internet Explorer to show the Like button, you must complete step 3.

If you complete all the steps above, the Facebook Like button will show on every node in your Zen theme. A working example is here at Latino themed events.

How to add "Tweet This" to a node

hector — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:41:01 +0000

Ever wanted to add a "Tweet This" to your nodes? Here is how I did it at somoscanada.com. This short tutorial is for people using Drupal.

Open the file node.tpl.php, located under your active theme(sites > all > themes).

At line 96 approximately, add this code(you need to type it!), just before "<?php if ($terms): ?>">. And I am using the Zen theme:

Replace http://somoscanada.com to your domain.

I am using URL Alias(Path module), that's why you see "echo $node->path", it prints the node alias. If you are not using the Path module, then replace that with "php print $node->nid", it prints node/ID.

Last, upload the file node.tpl.php to your server. If you do not see that changes, go to "Site Information > Performance >", empty your cached data.

Google Wave Invites

hector — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:13:12 +0000

It's been almost a year now since Google unveiled Google Wave to a limited number of people. Google Wave is still in invitation only. I will not go into details about what Google Wave is, learn more about it here.

If you would like to give it a try, I am giving away some invites. I have given away a few ones, and it appears that the invites are sent out right away. Leave a comment and add your email or contact me here.

Update: May 19, 2010. Google Wave is now open to the general public.

Remove Bing as your default search engine in the address bar in Firefox

hector — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:39:28 +0000

Firefox is my favorite browser, i use it a lot for searching using the address bar, i would just type what i am looking for and i would get the results using Google Search.

Firefox uses Google as the default search engine. But recently, this changed, instead of Google search, i get Bing, the new(just the name) search engine from Microsoft.

If you are in the same scenario as me, let me show you how to change or remove Bing as the default search engine in the address bar.

Here's how. I am using quotes just for highlighting.

Open Firefox, in the address bar, type "about:config", if it does not work, add a space(push the Space Bar) after config "about:config ", then hit enter.

You will get a warning, accept it and continue, Now in the Filter bar, type "keyword.URL", double click on it, a window will pop up, enter the next text, then click OK after.

"http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q="

You don't even need to restart Firefox in order to test the changes.
You have changed from Bing to Google Search engine now.