Simply add this to your theme’s functions.php file, or if your theme doesn’t have a functions.php file, create one, and add the following also available as a zip: Add Style to New/Updates posts.

function pp_get_post_status() {
global $post;
//begin config Vars
$old_days = 2; //set how many days a post is considered "new"
$up_days = 1; //set how many days a post is considered "updated"
$new_class = 'new'; //class you want applied for posts considered "new"
$up_class = 'updated'; //class you want applied for posts considered "updated"
$class_tag = ''; //set default class, if any
//end config


$cur_time = time(); //get current system time
$post_age = $cur_time - get_the_time('U', $post->ID); //determine posts' age
$up_age = $cur_time - get_the_modified_time('U', $post->ID); //determine last update age
if($post_age < ($old_days * 86400)) {$class_tag = ' ' . $new_class;} //if post is newer than n days, apply "new"
elseif($up_age < ($up_days * 86400)) {$class_tag = ' ' . $up_class;} //if post older than n days, but updated within n days, apply "updated
echo $class_tag;
}

You can call it from within the loop, here is an example where it’s adding a class to the div containing the post, you could use it in any CSS class declaration. You will notice that it automatically adds the space between any existing classes and the class it adds.

<div class="article<?php pp_get_post_status(); ?>">

You could then use the CSS selector:
.article .new {style here}
for new posts and:
.article .updated {style here}
for updated posts.

I was out in the street taking photos, while my sweetie fled to the local storm shelter, which brings me to my main point: I LOVE Google voice, both because it lets me route calls between my contact number, and because it’s VERY entertaining. Here is the message (according to google voice transcriptions) that Shelli left on my phone.

Okay, and we are in a storm shelter. Andy Myer with me. My i think and I just laugh neat. I’m calling in thing and myneer. Anyway, it’s me. Capital last day to turn on the death wheel drive 9 in the back of the house vote like the last and it’s got a little refill, bureck so that’s what we are he. Anna, you can. Downtown take a few weeks of those of us while yet, hi bye.

I can’t believe I missed the last day to turn on the death wheel drive!!

Here are some of the pics I took:

Photobucket automagically generates thumbnails of images uploaded, stored with the prefix ‘th_’ appended to the file name, thus ‘my_image.jpg’ becomes ‘th_my_image.jpg’ I modified the script so that it found two separate elements, the url path, and the image file name, allowing us to concatenate them together, with the ‘th_’ prefix stuck between. this script should go in you ‘functions.php‘ file in the root of your theme.

Using <?php photobucket_thumbnail() ?> anywhere within the WP loop, will return the URL for the thumbnail of the first image in the post, so long as it’s from photobucket.

Updated: I have modified the script heavily, and added more comments in the code. Now I only retrieve one tweet from each user, then sort those tweets by date. The WordPress function I wrote now retrieves tweets until a certain number of characters is obtained, attempting to fill an area with tweets, regardless of individual tweet length.

Here is the code that creates the RSS feed:

I then created a shortcode in my functions.php file in my WordPress theme, using this code:

sudo apt-get install httperf

@nicoalaryjr wanted to know what the performance benefits of moving from his current hosting provider to Dreamhost, the hosting provider I use for this blog. The results were partly expected, and partly surprising, with the one anomaly being that Dreamhost seems to have one connection out of a thousand that it just drops the ball on. The real performance metric to look at here is the median response time, which, with 50 requests per second (RS), Dreamhost was 30X faster than his existing hosting! Even at 10 RS, Dreamhost was 7.5X faster.

The really surprising results were the Dreamhost VPS tests. With the default RAM value of 2300MB, at 50 RS, it was nearly 50X SLOWER than shared hosting. Even at 10 RS, it was 14X slower. With the minimum RAM of 150MB, performance is completely unnacceptable. What’s going on here? I can only theorize, but I would like to know the true reason. If anyone has some insight here please comment and let me know. The only theory I can come up with is that CPU throttling is dynamic on the shared hosting, as opposed to being given a static slice of CPU with VPS, therefore, with the short duration of the tests, throttling did not kick in on the shared account.

Let me know what you think!
BTW favorite sexlab.tv video? The Spiderman, it’s hilarious!!

Here is the link to the actual test results: Hosting Provider First Byte Response Benchmarking Results

Here are the Ingredients you need:

• 2 cups of All Purpose Flour
• 3/4 cups of Sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of Baking Powder
• 1/4 Pound (1 stick) of Butter (room temperature)
• 2 Large Eggs
• 1 cup of Pistachios
• 1 cup of Dried Sweetened Cranberries (Craisins)
• 2 teaspoons of Lemon Zest
• 1/4 teaspoon of Salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat Sugar, Eggs, Salt, Zest, and Butter to a even consistency. Mix Flour and Baking Powder in a separate bowl, then add to Sugar and Butter mixture. Fold in Pistachios and Cranberries until evenly distibuted. Spread Dough on Baking Parchment, making a loaf about 8″ wide and 1″ high in the center. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown. Allow Loaf to cool to room temperature, then cut into slices approximately 1″ wide. Place slices on their sides an place back in the oven for 5-10 minutes, until cut edged firm up. Flip slices and cook another 5-10 minutes. Allow to cool before storing, makes 10-15 slices.

For a twist, substitute a 1/4 cup of flour for cocoa powder, and switch the Lemon zest for about double the amount of equal parts Orange and Tangerine Zest.

One of my newer clients came to me with some interesting needs, they are an all-volunteer organization with multiple project-groups and over 300 volunteers. They needed a solution for collaborative project planning (preferably web-based) and volunteer resource management. It turns out that managing people you pay is not that different from managing people you don’t.

I found the Open-Source project OrangeHRM (Human Resources Management) to cover all the requirements we could throw at it. One of the biggest challenges with volunteers, is matching tasks to those with the right experience. OrangeHRM allows us to track individuals’ skill-sets, and match a given task to the available volunteers. This greatly simplifies task delegation, and keeps you from overwhelming a volunteer with tasks outside of their skill set.

For Collaborative Project management, the Open-Source dotProject looks to fit the bill, offering web-based project management with a robust feature-set. While not as polished as some of the commercial SaaS packages, like BaseCamp, dotProject has all the functionality you need to facilitate team managed project planning.

I think between these two packages, I will be able to provide a solution that is both Open-Source, as well as best-in-class. If you are here looking for software to help organize your civic group, I would also recommend you check out CiviCRM, a really neat module that integrates with both of the major OSS CMS platforms, Drupal and Joomla. Most of us know CRM to mean “Customer Relationship Management,” CiviCRM touts itself as a “Constituent Relationship Management” package. While not offering the functionality I needed in this project, CiviCRM did have some interesting features, donation management not in the least. (Plus their logo is cool)

The features I added to the script were a GUI way to supply the root domain for the WordPress install, and some general debugging. I may end up making this automatically populate from the database, for now I’ll leave it manual. Functioning manually, you can specify a domain, even while running the script on a test environment, which I recommend.

Remember, I can not be held liable for any negative effects this has on your data! Always use a testing environment when performing actions such as these with your data, backup the backup of the backup! The Categories still do not apply to the posts, but it does import them.

Here are the steps I used to get the Pixelpost to WordPress script to work:

1. Download the script from here: Pixelpost to WordPress Import Script.
2. Install the script in the “wp-admin/import/” folder.
3. Copy your images into the root of the “wp-content/uploads/” folder.
4. In the Dashboard, go to the Tools>Import page.
5. Select “Pixelpost” from the list of databases available for import.
6. Provide the login info for the database your Pixelpost data is in. Also specify the domain name you will be using with WordPress, this will ensure the photos show up in the posts.
7. Click “Import Categories”
8. Verify the number of Categories imported, then click “Import Posts” (This may take a few minutes, don’t click the button again, and don’t refresh the browser, it will let you know when it’s done.)
9. Verify the number of posts imported, then click “Import Comments” (This may take a few minutes, don’t click the button again, and don’t refresh the browser, it will let you know when it’s done.)
10. You’re set! Click “Visit Site” at the top of the page to verify the import completed successfully.

Here are some tips: From what I read, this works best with an empty WordPress DB, it’s best to set up a test environment if you have an existing WordPress installation, import the pixel post into your test environment, the use the mature, XML based, WordPress import/export to move them into your existing WordPress installation.

@acedrew

What’s the best marketing tool for small business?

I asked this question of Bizniche2Bizniches‘s @kendamorrison, her answer:

YOU!

She responded in a blog post that covers how you can use your heart, eyes, hands, and feet to market yourself in your community. Don’t take my word for it, go check it out for yourself here: http://www.bizniche2bizniche.com/?p=392 These are thing we all probably already know, but it seems we always need to hear them again!

I should start by saying this is not in any way endorsed by the twitter user TheBloggess, I simply thought that if bloggers had a deity, it would be a woman. (Just like Christians) If you’ve never heard of Zemanta, don’t feel bad, neither had I until this week. I found this great tool while looking for something to find all of the phrases in my post that corresponded to wikipedia articles and create links to the articles, Zemanta does this and a lot more!

Zemanta finds context sensitive links, images, and even other blog entries that relate to the post you’re working on. It’s quick, easy, and free! Check it out at zemanta.com