Blake Imeson Innovatrepreneur» Blake Imeson Innovatrepreneur

Use Dropbox to Intake Client Files on Your WordPress Site

Blake Imeson — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:01:36 +0000

I recently had a client who needed to send me a lot of pictures and misc. files for a website build. It would have been cumbersome to email them all and thankfully I came across this marvelous solution from this post: Allow Anyone To Upload Files To a Folder in Your Dropbox Account. Major props to them for publishing the steps to do this.

I have tried to show my step-by-step process for doing this on a WordPress site. What this allowed me to do is create a page on our WordPress site that allows a client to upload files to us using a simple upload box.

When they upload them they are quickly put into any Dropboxes that we have set up.

Dropbox intro: Dropbox is a tool that allows me to have a folder on my computer and everything in it is synced online and then mirrored on any other computers I have Dropbox on. My business partner and I have a shared Dropbox folder for our company that contains all our client files.

If I add/edit anything it will update it online and on his computer within seconds. Complete with notifications. Did I mention it is free? You get 2gb of storage free but that can go up to 8gb by referring people.

Steps to Make this Happen

1. Sign up for Dropbox

2. Set up the "Intake" folder it can be named anything.

3. Download the files from this site - download the one under "Update" that says "New script" - it is a file called dupass.rar - this allows you to set a password.

4. Unrar the file and open index.php in a text editor

5. On line 27 change default to a password of your choice

27	$passw = "default"; //change this to a password of your choice.

6. On line 52 put in your username and password. It is in PHP so it will not be visible.

52	<span style="white-space: pre;"> span>$uploader = new DropboxUploader('you@youremail.com', 'yourpassword');// enter dropbox credentials

7. On line 75 you can change the folder files go into from "shared" to whatever folder you create. If it is a folder in dropbox put "yourfoldername" but if it is within that folder then put "yourfoldername/otherfolder"

75	<input style="display:none" type="text" name="dest" value="shared" />

8. Now to integrate it into WordPress - if your theme already has template files like a full-width file then you can just copy that and change the name to template-intakepage.php and then make sure it has something like:

/*Template Name: Client Home*/?>

at the top of the file. This file will likely have the usual WordPress calls to your header, sidebar, footer. You can also create a template file from index.php. For a good tutorial for creating and using this template file see this post on creating template files.

9. You now need to take the code you had changed in the index.php file - everything between the tags and paste it into the WordPress template somewhere probably after

  the_content(); ?>

10. Upload DropboxUploader.php to the same directory that your template file is. This should be your theme folder. /wp-content/themes/YourTheme/DropboxUploader.php

11. Now you need to have a page created in WordPress that is also using this template. Publish and it should be ready to take files that are uploaded and automatically put them in Dropbox.

Notes:

You could also make this page private in WordPress so that only logged in users can access it
You can change the CSS styling of the form, its messages and the button. I am still changing ours. I may move the password field around.
I would change the title of the form and wording of the message and the form button. No one needs to know it is Dropbox

Thanks again to Ampercent for this awesome script!

Let me know if you implement this or have any ideas for improvement.

Update: A friend of ours may be helping us whip up a WordPress plugin for this. Hang tight!

Update 2: It appears there is already some type of WordPress plugin for this. Anyone tried it?

How to install incompatible addons in Firefox 4 Beta

Blake Imeson — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:00:11 +0000

I just got the newest Firefox flavor, 4.0b2. If you want to enable using incompatible extensions, plugins, addons, etc... then you can just download this plugin for checking/reporting compatibility which will let you run addons that have yet to be updated. Enjoy!

Invoicing Sites - Best way to invoice clients?

Blake Imeson — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:29:36 +0000

Since we started our web development and web strategy company, LimeCuda, we have been trying out different ways of invoicing clients and doing accounting online. I have tried at least a dozen and am getting close to finding the perfect solution.

I decided to throw them out to you all and see if there are any you like particularly or ones I have missed. Suggestions?

I am leaning towards these first ones particularly.

As you can see this is a crowded space! I may end up doing a review post of all invoicing apps.

WordPress Redirection Plugin - Home Page Redirect Problem / Bug

Blake Imeson — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:56:52 +0000

I came across a bug in WordPress 3.0 with the wonderful Redirection plugin. When you create a new post/page it will somehow add a redirect that makes the home page redirect to the new post/page.

What happens is that it creates a redirect automatically in the Modified posts group.

Tools>>Redirection>>Groups>>Modified posts

Just delete the redirect that has been created to "/" and it should be fine.

This solves the Redirection plugin bug, problem, issue, whatever. This only happens with newly published posts / pages. Hopefully they will fix this awesome WordPress plugin soon.

Resources

Fix For Home Page Redirects To Newly Published Pages Problem After Upgrading To WordPress 3.0

Korean Ramen Noodles - Best way to buy online

Blake Imeson — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:38:46 +0000

I am addicted to Korean ramen noodles. There I admitted it. First step to recovery.

During college I was introduced to these amazing ramen noodles which are unlike any other ramen you will ever have. Some Asian friends of mine discovered that you could buy them directly from Amazon and they are cheaper than most international food stores. You can even "subscribe" to them on Amazon and they are periodically sent to you and at a 15% discount.

Since then I have probably bought 7 boxes in the last 4 years and of course shared with friends. Each box from Amazon has 20 servings. My Korean friends all say this is their fav ramen noodle brand.

Caveat emptor: they are spicy!

Comment below if you have tried these awesome ramen noodles!

Blogoff!

Blake Imeson — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:15:26 +0000

I have thrown down the gauntlet and challenged my good friend and business partner, David Kuhta, to a blogoff.

The rules:

For the month of July the site with the most traffic as defined by pageviews wins

I will be blogging from blakeimeson.com and David from davidkuhta.com

Nothing like a good competition to get us both back into the habit of blogging good stuff.

Help me out and read/share my stuff :)

Related posts:
Incuba8 Conference

Enable WordPress Multisite with Subdomains (HostGator)

Blake Imeson — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 20:04:38 +0000
After a bit of tinkering I have gotten WordPress multisite to work on a HostGator server setup. I am running WordPress 3.0 RC3. After some simple editing on the wp-config.php file and the .htaccess file I added a wildcard DNS by adding a subdomain with just an asterix * and that allows WordPress to create the subdomains for multisite. Here is how to get it to work…
Step 1
Login to cPanel (something like .com/cpanel ) Go to subdomains and add one with just an asterix.
Step 2
Add this into wp-config.php to enable multisite.
define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

Step 3
Login to your WordPress dashboard and go to Tools>>Network (.com/wp-admin/network.php) You will then see the following type of instructions.
Step 4
Add a directory named blogs.dir to the wp-content directory. It should look like /public_html/wp-content/blogs.dir The CHMOD write permissions should be something like 755 to allow the server to write to the directory.
Step 5
Add what they tell you to add into the wp-config.php file Mine looked like this:
define( 'MULTISITE', true ); define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true ); $base = '/'; define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'limecuda.com' ); define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' ); define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 ); define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
Make sure that SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL is set at true.
Step 6
Add what they tell you to add into the .htaccess file. Mine looked like this:
RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] # uploaded files RewriteRule ^files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$1 [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d RewriteRule ^ - [L] RewriteRule . index.php [L]

Step 7
I don’t know. Go start adding some sites on to your install. :) Any questions?
Further Reading

WordPress 3.0 Walkthrough: Getting Started with Multisite

What To Do Or Consider After You Enable Multisite In WordPress

Common WordPress Multisite Problems and Solutions

Related posts:
Use Dropbox to Intake Client Files on Your WordPress Site

Backup WordPress = 2 Plugins + Gmail

Incuba8 Conference

Blake Imeson — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:19:38 +0000

Just a quick note to share that my good friend and new business partner David Kuhta and I are going to give a presentation on WordPress at the Incuba8 Business Startup Conference which is going on from January 22-23.

If you are in the area let us know!

Related posts:
Blogoff!

AlphaLab Entrepreneur Shares Startup Tips

PodCamp3 in Pittsburgh, be there!

Rollip, Image Effects – Pro Accounts Giveaway!

Blake Imeson — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:42:54 +0000

So today I have something special to give away to readers of my blog.

Rollip allows you to easily add cool image effects to your pictures. I messed around with it for awhile and here are some examples of what it can do:

So these are some fun pictures of me goofing around with a light bulb, good idea? Narcissistic?…nah.

There are 40 some effects that you can put on a photo, from Sepia, BW, Bold, Vintage, Stylized lens, etc. The vintage/Polaroid type effects are the coolest and make very sentimental-feeling photos.

I think this is a really fun tool and lets you quickly add very professional looking effects to even mediocre photos. It was almost too fun. I actually used the “classic” one for my Facebook profile pic.

Improvements that might make a cool product even cooler:

Upload one photo and see mini-versions of each effect

Batch processing for pro-photographers

Another photo-effect preview option other than a building to see the image effects (person maybe?)

How bout some Tweets guys? Props for a Flickr photo group.

Click here to claim your pro account. There are only 15 Pro accounts so first come, first served. Good for processing 30 high quality photos.

Let me know what you think of the service!

AlphaLab Entrepreneur Shares Startup Tips

Blake Imeson — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 19:21:29 +0000

AlphaLab is a startup incubator in Pittsburgh. I got to go see their "demo day" last year.

It was really fun to see all the innovative companies. One of the most awesome presenters and coolest products was "the Resumator"

The brains behind the startup, Don Charleton, has written a very insightful post about his experience with the startup.
Quick preview of his 7 Lessons Learned:
Lesson 1: Even a small amount of operating capital from an investment can be extremely useful.

Lesson 2: Startup programs accelerate your understanding of the investment world.

Lesson 3: Developers succeed in startup programs. Business people fail.
.... Now go read the rest!
Just looked through his blog and there are a couple other interesting posts:

How to Create a Great Startup Office Space on a Bootstrap Budget

The Official Curriculum for Your Degree in Startups (really awesome post I must say)

Is That New Feature a Deal Breaker, Deal Maker, Or No Big Deal?

Related posts:
If You Could Only Read One Blog... Which One Makes the Cut?

Blake Imeson *Innovatrepreneur» Blake Imeson *Innovatrepreneur

Use Dropbox to Intake Client Files on Your WordPress Site

Steps to Make this Happen

Notes:

How to install incompatible addons in Firefox 4 Beta

Invoicing Sites - Best way to invoice clients?

WordPress Redirection Plugin - Home Page Redirect Problem / Bug

Resources

Korean Ramen Noodles - Best way to buy online

Blogoff!

Enable WordPress Multisite with Subdomains (HostGator)

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Further Reading

Incuba8 Conference

Rollip, Image Effects – Pro Accounts Giveaway!

AlphaLab Entrepreneur Shares Startup Tips

Lesson 1: Even a small amount of operating capital from an investment can be extremely useful.

Lesson 2: Startup programs accelerate your understanding of the investment world.

Lesson 3: Developers succeed in startup programs. Business people fail.

Blake Imeson Innovatrepreneur» Blake Imeson Innovatrepreneur