Version Control

Do you currently use some kind of version control?

Yes I have used some kinds of version control. Where I work we use a program called TortoiseSVN. It integrates into our browser as well with a firefox extension. We log into our main center, we can then view the individual projects. Once you’ve chosen a project you have a checkin and checkout feature. If you use the checkout feature it pops up showing the repository and asks you to choose a spot to checck out. Once you chose a directory it remembers this spot and highlights the folder on your local computer. Then from that point out you can just right click your folder and choose commit to upload newer versions back into the repository.

If not, how important do you think it is to get some kind of version control set up as you move forward?

I do use a SVN feature, but I’d still like to answer this. I think its very important if you’re working in a group of designers/programmers. As this allows also allows someone to make a mistake but still have backups in the repository. You also have a nice convenient way for everyone to access all files and work together on projects as well as see how everything is progressing.

Did you try to install version control software? If so, describe the process.

I installed this a while ago, like a year. I barely remember it. TortoiseSVN was fairly easy from what I remember. We first downloaded an extension for firefox which self installed. We downloaded ToroiseSVN and it came pre configured I assume as I didnt have to change anything. As the firefox extension handles all the server information after we log into a specific project and choose checkin/out.

Tell us about any other version control solutions you may find, commercial or open source. (Hint: some online project managment services offer this!).
There appears to many different SVN solutions by google, github, bitbucket, launchpad, unfuddle, most of these are free as well. I’m not sure how they perform but just some that I’ve seen mentioned before.

My Supermodel

I’ve been working with a lot of cakephp(php framework) lately. Well not working with it but trying to learn it for my job, so far its going rather well. Someone I’ve been following is David Golding:

http://www.davidgolding.net/

He’s a well known php developer/cakephp and author.

• Is there a blog? Yes
• Twitter? He does not advertise his twitter account on his blog.
• Tutorials? (either for personal site or for other sites/resources) Yes, he has great video screencasts about cakephp.
• Message board presence? Yes, he has a message board in which he has replied to visitors.
• Facebook? He does not advertise one on his blog.
• LinkedIn? He has an article about building links and using LinkedIn but I’m not sure if he uses it.
• Classes or presentations? He has screencast presentations. I dont think he has classes
• Other? He’s an author of a Cakephp book.

His blog is very effective for him I believe. He uses it to provide useful information about php and cakephp topics. He also updates his users on changes to his book.

His screencasts are also a really good addition to his site which would bring his visitors back just to reference these. They cover some great topics that beginning cakephp developers would need to know like scaffolding, understanding mvc, using bake to get the basic structure of your models, views, and controllers built quickly.

Since he does answer his visitors questions in his forum I think that helps to build his credibility showing he’s around. He even answers his contact forms personally, or at least I think it was him. As I emailed him with some questions and he responded back to me within a half hour!

Lastly, he is an author of cakephp. Having a book in the field of php is great marketing for him as I’m sure it brings in lots of visitors to his website and blog.

Backing up my Joomla site

So I’ve been trying to backup my Joomla site for about 2 weeks now. I don’t understand why it wont work. I first opened up my ftp program made a folder called /backup on my remote server, copied all of the files from my /store directory, /store is my joomla site, then I pasted it into /backup. Throughout the whole copying time it kept coming across certain files, for instance .tmp files that it said it couldn’t copy paste for some reason. I had to sit there, it took about 5 hours, cause I had to keep hitting the “ok” button for it to continue. Once it finished I made a copy of my database, exported it and imported it into a database. I tried to load the website and I keep getting this error:

Fatal error: Class jparameter: Cannot inherit from undefined class jregistry in /homepages/37/d158680450/htdocs/Andrew/backup/libraries/joomla/html/parameter.php on line 30

So I just decided to do a “get” of my whole site instead. This time there were no problems it got the website just fine. I imported the sql into my localdatabase and my local /backup of the site works great as you can see here:

So now I clear out the /backup folder on the remote side and put all of the local /backup files online. I try to load the website and it still gives me this error. I’ve tried this about 4 times getting and putting. It works on my localhost but not online I don’t understand why. The main /store that I’m getting the files from work, it’s mind boggling I’m very frustrated with the whole thing.

Week 9: Installing a Theme

So I had already installed a theme way back in like week 2 or 3. For some reason I thought we had to back then.

I installed a theme called Dark Blue. Basically you just download a zip file, go to extensions in the Joomla menu and upload it and Joomla does the rest. Then you have to select that theme to make it active inside the template manager and that’s it.

I did make a few changes to the css file, as in I changed the background header graphic to something else but it didn’t match well to the rest of the site. So I put it back to normal. But I did change the logo itself to my own simple logo that I made. You can find the spot to upload images for this inside the template/images folders. You put your logo in there and rename it inside the html for the template so that the template can find your logo.

I remember it not being very hard at all. I”ve been very pleased with how easy Joomla makes everything and its all very straightforward.

I would like to make a few more changes to this template though, I want to increase the fontsize as I think it’s too small and a little hard to read.

Week 7: SEO Friendly URLS fixed

Ok, I figured out why my seo friendly urls feature in joomla wouldnt work. It’s because I installed joomla and configured offline then uploaded online.

When you do this certain settings get set and you cant rewrite url paths. So what I had to do was:

1. in the root directory of joomla rename my htaccess.txt to .htaccess
2. find the RewriteBase / and uncomment it.
3. then if you placed Joomla in a subdirectory not directly in your root you have to change that base path to /yourDirectory, in my case I changed it to:

RewriteBase /store

I then went back in and reenabled SEO friendly links, the apache mod rewrite and suffixes and it all works now. I have normal urls, shorter urls, and they display the .html extensions.

This may be helpful to you guys:

I’ll post this all on my blog too!

Week 7: SEO Plan

1. So something I noticed is that Joomla by default is setting my logo as a H1.  This isnt really a problem though although I realized that I didnt set any of my headings properly, I just kept them as paragraphs and bolded them. So I need to make those changes to my headings to make them h1 headings.

2. In the global configuration area I was able to set my global meta tag description and global meta tag keywords properly. By default they are set to Joomla descriptions and keywords. I changed these to match my site.

3. In the global configuration of Joomla there is a setting that enable SEO friendly links. By default it is not this way, so I enabled that feature! But now my website is not working, the links have changed and when I try to make set the links for the main menu it’s still not working kind of like the paths arent updating. Only my home page works now. I dont understand why.

4.  I was trying to enabled apache mod_rewrite as well in the global configurations to give a cleaner and better seo link. It requires that I rename my htaccess.txt to .htaccess.

5. Another good thing to do for SEO is to make sure that file name extensions show, by default Joomla does not do this. In the global config area I was able to enable this.

Week 7: SEO Resource

I first learned about SEO from sitesell.com. They were the main reason I did my initial hosting there because of the amount of information they give on SEO. They clued me on the best thing to do is to have high quality, keyword focused content. Because if you dont have the quality incoming links the only thing that can get you into the search engine(besides spending money) is to have good content.

They have tons of free resources, the readings are great even if you don’t plan to use SBI:

The action guide is the meat of it all, it has great information on SEO techniques specifically SEO for content writing and choosing a niche: http://actionguide.sitesell.com/

This book make your content presell is also very excellent for content: http://mycps.sitesell.com/download/mycps-sbi.pdf

Week 6: Security Hacking Story

I did some research and found out that Al Gores WordPress blog had been hacked a while back during the time when his “Inconvenient Truth” documentary came out.

The hackers really didn’t hurt the blog though or steal any information. A popular thing that some companies are doing in order to boost their page rank for their own websites is to hack a highly ranked page put in some back links to their website and voila they get a higher page rank since someone linked to them, even better when the person that is linking to them has a really high page rank themselves, just like Al Gores blog did.

So, there it was on Al Gores blog, several links to a bunch of different pharmaceuticals, brand names such as Viagra and buy Valium online. I guess most users weren’t able to even see these links though, they were just inside the source code. Luckily though the whole website wasnt hacked only the blog section.

The details on how they did it were not very specific. They said that the hackers were using an exploit that is known to be used on the WordPress blogging software this flaw is how they were able to hack inside of his blog and add some spam links to their site.

Week 6: New Module

So I needed a way for people to contact me and I searched around for a free contact form. I found one called Rapid Contact. It works very well I can edit the length of the fields, it even has a captcha security type of question feature to prevent spam. It had many different layout options to where I could make it show up on all pages in the side bar, but I chose to put it on just one page called Contact Us.  I tested it out and it works great. Im satisfied with it for now.

Week 6: New Changes

So, when I first began this class I had 2 different websites in mind that I wanted to create. First I wanted to make a place that I could offer many different web design services available and easier to buy. The second thing that I wanted to offer was being able to take someones design whether it a image, psd, or whatever and convert it to xhtml/css for them. I’m very good with xhtml and css and I’ve seen other sites that offer it as well and I thought it could be a good site to make for this class.

But I chose to go for offering many different web design services simply because I thought it would be easier. But over the past two weeks I changed my mind. I wrote up some content, a very simple logo, and I changed my whole Joomla site around. All new pages, new content, new products to meet this new site. Its the same URL:

http://andrewperkins.net/store/

Just now the site is called “Code my Design”. I put a lot of more work in order to change things around, switching categories, making the 3 new products, writing the small amount of content, the new logo, changing the links, adding internal links, setting up the shopping cart and products on the services page, and a new contact module I installed. I’ll talk about that though in another article shortly.