Sevenpixels

XenForo Add-on – Thread Redirect

Donnie La Curan — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:36:45 +0000

XenForo is an awesome forum software. It’s easy to use, navigate, administrate, moderate … whatever you need to do. One feature that XenForo has is the ability to make a forum act as a link. This is very useful. My only problem was that it showed up as a forum or subforum. I wanted to have a thread show up as a link. With no add-on currently available I jumped in and wrote one. This is based on the thread redirection system already built into XenForo when you move a thread from one forum to another.

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/sevenpixels-thread-redirection.25717/

Tested On

v1.1.1
v1.1.0

Known Issues

Once you make a thread and set the redirection URL you can’t edit the URL, you have to delete the thread and start again.
Clicks on the link don’t count as a view for the thread.
Thread’s don’t show up under a forum’s activity.

Changelog

09 January 2012 – Initial Release v1.0

XenForo Add-on – Thread Redirect is brought to you by Sevenpixels - Web Design in Auburn, AL and Albany, GA

Movember is here and I’m rockin’ the trucker

Donnie La Curan — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:08:45 +0000

During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in the US and around the world. With their Mo’s, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. So here I am rockin’ a trucker mustache this year. You can watch my progress on my Facebook page or on my Mo Space page. I’m taking a picture daily.

What can you do to help? Well, if you happen to be feeling generous you can head on over to my Mo Space page and make a donation. Ahh, you’re all out of money. No problem, I understand. In that case you can head on over to the Storwell Movember contest page and vote for me! The person with the highest number of votes will get $500 donated to their Movember account by the awesome people over at Storwell.

Honestly, everyone is going to come out a winner. Money is raised for men’s health and that’s all that really matters! That said, go vote for me … or else!

Movember is here and I’m rockin’ the trucker is brought to you by Sevenpixels - Web Design in Auburn, AL and Albany, GA

Surf the web together

Donnie La Curan — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:10:41 +0000

I ran across Channel.me the other day and think this is an amazing tool. Channel.me allows you to view a website simultaneously other people. You can view their cursor location and post sticky notes up for everyone to see.

This will be a very useful tool for my clients. I can connect and show them things without hoping they know what I’m talking about. I’ll just place a sticky note on the exact spot. This works out great, especially for clients who may not be local. It brings people one step closer together to browsing the web simultaneously

Surf the web together is brought to you by Sevenpixels - Web Design in Auburn, AL and Albany, GA

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

Donnie La Curan — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:47:21 +0000

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” – Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011 is brought to you by Sevenpixels - Web Design in Auburn, AL and Albany, GA

Backup WordPress to Dropbox

Donnie La Curan — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:41:30 +0000

Having a backup of your site is extremely important. Lots of web hosts run their own backups, but you don’t always want to rely on them. Here is a simple solution that costs absolutely nothing. The plugin requires you to have PHP 5.2 or higher and you have to have a Dropbox account.

The setup is completed in 5 easy steps!

Step 1 – Sign up for a Dropbox account.
Step 2 – Download the WordPress plugin. (latest version zip file)
Step 3 – The plugin will ask you to authorize the plugin with Dropbox.
Step 4 – A new window open where Dropbox will ask you to authenticate in order allow this plugin access to your Dropbox.
Step 5 – Once you have granted access to the plugin click continue to setup your backup

I would set it up to run a backup every week. Daily might be too much, but then again if the data is really important to you … you might want to do daily backups. As much as I don’t want to rely on the web hosts backup files, I do to an extent. I figure weekly backups on my end are enough just incase the host lost the backups they have. Depending on how often you update your site, and other factors, increasing or decreasing that frequency could help.

The other great thing about this backup is the backup will be stored in multiple locations. Dropbox stores your files on the web, and it will also sync your files to any computer that you have the Dropbox app installed on. This ends up being perfect for me since I have Dropbox installed on all of my machines. No matter which machine I get on, I know I will have the latest backup of my site.

Backup WordPress to Dropbox is brought to you by Sevenpixels - Web Design in Auburn, AL and Albany, GA

Tomorrow Color Scheme

Donnie La Curan — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:03:37 +0000

The Tomorrow Color scheme is a must have. I am currently using the Tomorrow Night color scheme. It’s very easy on the eyes and doesn’t cause me to strain. Note, I didn’t create this theme, but I do use it. Below is an excerpt from the readme included in the download.

After having spent over five years using, tweaking and refining a personal editor theme I decided it was time to release “Tomorrow Theme” – a bright theme with pastel colours and sensible syntax highlighting.

A theme should not get in your way but should aid your programming with easily identifiable colours that add meaning and enhance legibility. This was the main focus when developing Tomorrow.

Supported Editors

TextMate
Vim (Full-colour and 256-colour)
GNU Emacs
Xcode 4
Coda
Eclipse
Sublime Text 2 (Uses TextMate Themes)
Redcar (Uses TextMate Themes)
E TextEditor (Uses TextMate Themes)
SubEthaEdit (Uses Coda Themes)
BBEdit

Tomorrow Color Scheme is brought to you by Sevenpixels - Web Design in Auburn, AL and Albany, GA

WordPress Plugins Used on Sevenpixels

Donnie La Curan — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:50:38 +0000

Here is a list of the plugins that I use on Sevenpixels. A lot of time was spent going through plugins trying to find the ones that offered the functionality I was looking for, but didn’t effect performance greatly. Loading tons of plugins was out of the question, so I went with just a few core plugins to assist me. I’m still looking over everything that’s out there to see what up and coming plugins might add a neat feature to my site. But for now, this little bunch does a tremendous job.

What plugins do you find yourself consistently installing on WordPress sites you develop? Do you limit yourself to the number of plugins that you will run on a site, or do you just load what you want?

WordPress Plugins Used on Sevenpixels is brought to you by Sevenpixels - Web Design in Auburn, AL and Albany, GA

Text CAPTCHA Logic Questions

Donnie La Curan — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:46:26 +0000

So I’ve been looking for some alternatives to the standard reCAPTCHA. I eventually stumbled upon a service called textCAPTCHA. This service provides text questions and answers.

A text CAPTCHA is more accessible to visually impaired users than their image-based alternatives. To defeat OCR scanning, image CAPTCHAs have to distort the letters used, and they can be tricky to decipher!

The problem with text CAPTCHAs is that they provide inherently more information than a distorted image. They are parseable, under the right conditions solveable. With the advent of contextual parsing tools such as Wolfram Alpha, such simple logic puzzles have become easier to solve programatically.

Which do you prefer? Going with reCAPTCHA, textCAPTCHA, or something else like KittenAuth? Do you use a combination of CAPTCHA’s, just one, or none at all? What other methods do you use to stop bots from submitting your form?

What are some of the text CAPTCHA questions that you use for your site?

Text CAPTCHA Logic Questions is brought to you by Sevenpixels - Web Design in Auburn, AL and Albany, GA

Useful .htaccess Snippets

Donnie La Curan — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 20:25:05 +0000

I was just reading a post over on Cats Who Code that had a handful of useful .htaccess snippets. The list is actually pretty good. While you may not use all of them on a site, you will probably use some of them here and there. Definitely not a bad idea to keep this list handy. Here is a list of the snippets.

Remove www in url
Prevent hotlinking
Redirect all WordPress feeds to feedburner
Create custom error pages
Force download of specific files
Log PHP errors
Remove file extensions from urls
Prevent directory listing
Reduce pages weight by compressing static data

What other .htaccess snippets do you like to use when you build sites?

Useful .htaccess Snippets is brought to you by Sevenpixels - Web Design in Auburn, AL and Albany, GA

Solarized Color Palette

Donnie La Curan — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:10:42 +0000

I came across this color palette and have found it tremendously useful. It’s very easy on your eyes and looks great. There is a light and a dark version, so pick the version you want. I was very pleased to see that someone released the palette to import into Coda.

Solarized is a sixteen color palette (eight monotones, eight accent colors) designed for use with terminal and gui applications. It has several unique properties. I designed this colorscheme with both precise CIELAB lightness relationships and a refined set of hues based on fixed color wheel relationships. It has been tested extensively in real world use on color calibrated displays (as well as uncalibrated/intentionally miscalibrated displays) and in a variety of lighting conditions.

The full git repository is at: https://github.com/altercation/solarized Get it using the following command:

$ git clone git://github.com/altercation/solarized.git

You can clone repositories specific to many of the application specific color themes.

Solarized Color Palette is brought to you by Sevenpixels - Web Design in Auburn, AL and Albany, GA