Webputzer.com

May

Add A Facebook “Face Block” to any site

I’m cranky – I wasted far too much time screwing around with this, and, it proved to very simple. However, directions on Facebook, YouTube, etc. – contained confusing information. Maybe I’m an idiot. Anyway, if I don’t write this down I’ll forget what I did. All I wanted to do was have a block of faces on a damned mattress website populated with Facebook “Like” people – we’ve all seen these things, right? First of all, as of May 2012, people cannot be fans of Facebook people – they can be fans of a business, or, organizational Facebook page (eg. a fan club page, your business’s name – whatever). I’m not sure, but I don’t think that it’s always been that way (hey..I could be wrong). Maybe it’s always been that way – that’s neither here nor there, at the the moment… Like I’ve said, it’s entirely possible that I’m an idiot…. Anyway, the first thing you need to do is create the darned Facebook, non-personal, account. You just go here and choose “business”, or, whatever best describes your little enterprise. Once you’ve got your Facebook page online you’ll want to note the URL – it will be something like this (this is the one for the mattress store….):
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wholesale-Warehouse/372502046133637

If your page is PHP: Create a PHP include with the following text, but replace the long string of digits which identifies your account with the correct numbers (they’re at the end of of your URL) – in other words, in this example replace 372502046133637 with the numbers at the end of your own Facebook page. Also, replace the link with the link to your page. Finally, replace text that says “Wholesale Warehouse”, in the example (of course). Then, just call the include where you want this to appear. You can set the height and width to whatever, change the font’s color and size, etc.
```
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.ak.connect.facebook.
com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php/es_ES"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">FB.init("85f99e349791fba80385d3d4cf738487");
</script>

<fb:fan profile_id="372502046133637" stream="0" connections="9"
logobar="1" width="280" height="320"></fb:fan>

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wholesale-Warehouse/372502046133637">
<font face=arial><font size=2>Wholesale Warehouse
on Facebook</font face></font size>
```
If your page is NOT PHP: Do exactly what’s above, except put the first two lines of javascript in the head section of your page, and, put the rest where you want this thing to appear…..that’s it.

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May

Qmail Toaster on Centos 5.5 – automated install

I’m a compulsive computer tinkerer and enjoy building, and, running my own web and email servers. I run both Linux and Windows servers from various locations. Recently I assembled a Qmail Toaster package for Linux (Centos 5.5) which can be installed – almost 100 percent – via four simple shell scripts. It uses a couple of packages which are out-of-date, a bit, but the whole thing runs fine and installs easily. This installation includes John Simpson’s validrcppto patch, and all protocols (SMTP, pop3, and IMAP) are secured with SSL – so there’s no backscatter and everything is secure via SSL. The first three scripts require virtually no modification at all – script four needs to be edited so that the paths to the Apache web server are correct. The scripts start and stop, tell you what’s happening, ask you for input, etc. They really speed up the process of replicating – or building – my email server. I really did this for myself (I just wanted to get organized) – but I thought someone else might find it useful. You can also download the tarball and copy and paste the commands from the web – but simply running the scripts is a helluva lot less headache. You can download the tarball and check it all out at the link below – and I’ll probably add some further information to this page, soon:

http://www.webputzer.com/toaster

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April

Best documented UFO sighting ever

While this site is devoted, mostly, to my ramblings about tech stuff (about which I’m really not all that darned savvy) and dog pics, there is also an article about a very weird UFO sighting I experienced. I don’t beat around the bush: I think that UFOs, in many cases, represent non-human technology. I know that a lot of smart people contend that this idea is “unproven” and/or just a load of rubbish. Because of my own experience, I think that those people are really on the wrong track. You can read my article by clicking the tab at the top of this page (“A UFO Tale”). Anyway….

Most UFO “debunkers” (critics of the idea that aliens might be visiting earth) cite the lack of physical evidence to prove the truth of the idea, and, the fact that some schmoe in Podunk, Idaho telling a story simply doesn’t make it true.

The Rendlesham Forest Case

In fact, the skeptics – or debunkers – simply ignore the most compelling cases. And as I’ve intimated, they often attack the reliability of the witnesses. Well, kids, the Rendlesham Forest UFO case presents a real problem for skeptics from a variety of perspectives. In the late 70′s and early 80′s the United States maintained a military base in England which was stockpiled with a mountain of nuclear weapons – in direct violation of treaties the United States had with England, and, The Soviet Union; this was a base that was about as top secret as “top secret” can get. And the Air Force staff at that base were arguably the best that the US military could assemble. In fact, the military police at the base were given monthly quizzes in which they were shown black outlines of every known aircraft. If they couldn’t identify everything known to fly on the planet Earth, from a black outline, they lost their jobs. Anyway, thanks to Leslie Kean, we have the following. If this doesn’t make you wonder, I don’t know what could.

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April

Bogus email about “Counter Trerorism”

And the title is not a typo – that’s actually how the damned thing was spelled! I got two of these emails, today, with .zip files attached. I may actually save the zip files and open them in something like XP, running in VMware, to watch my virtual installation of XP explode. You’d think that anyone who would take the time to write, and distribute a virus via email would take the time to spell more than 75% of the words correctly. Argh! I’m not really concerned that last year five in ten “emploeyes” flunked some test – this obviously isn’t for me, since I don’t have a job (this email isn’t genuinely for anybody). And if ya’ get this, and open the attachment, you shouldn’t have a job, either…….you’re too stupid. The attachment, by the way, is called “Fire Safety Guidance.pdf.zip“.

Here’s the actual contents – geesh! At the very least it seems like they would have used some sort of spell checker. ACK!

“Dear Associates

It might be useful for you to know that we are having a joint event with Fire and Counter Trerorism Safety inclduing 4 written tests on Thursday. Last year five in ten emploeyes suvreyed could not pass the Fire Safety test. Each of you will find enclosed a Fire Instruction Notices and your role descrpition. Please take a look at the enclosed materials before April.

Kind regards,
April
Department of Human Resources”

Thanks for the heads up, “April” (or Achmed – or whatever the hell your real name is…). I’m on it, baby.

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April

Tomorrow is trash day….

it’s Wednesday evening…and the blood is coursing hard, through my varicose veins.

So I Googled my own website – webputzer.com – and found some nifty site that anaylyzes your web site and tells you what’s good, and, what’s bad about your site. They give your site a numerical score, and mine wasn’t so hot (wow – this is like high school, all over again…..). One of the major complaints it had, about this site, is that I don’t add content often enough. Hey – I’m old and tired, already….OKAY???!! It seems like Google (and the rest of those guys) would take stuff like that into account. I mean, based on what I’ve read in the news they know everything there is to know about me, right? So, feelin’ the heat I racked my brain and this is all I could come up with on short notice (I have a very small life): tomorrow is trash day. That’s really the best I’ve got – maybe the garbage guys will strike and this will turn out to be an incredibly hot, blog topic. I dunno. Anyway, there’s always a lot of excitement, around my house, when the trash man is coming the following day. My Mexican wife screams, repeatedly, that I’d better take out the trash (she gets really excited). She gets so excited – and she’s so oblivious to her surroundings – that she usually screams for me to take it out hours after I’ve already taken it out (“I’ve told you three times, I DID!”). All of the stray dogs and cats, here in the hood, are jazzed out of their heads at the prospect of an incredible smorgasbord – it’s quite a day!

So here’s some new CONTENT, okay?!! And, to make this post a veritable multi-media extravaganza, I found a great pic of some folks who – like me – really like to make a damned party out of trash day… You can almost SMELL THE EXCITEMENT (ugh!). Anyway – you guys keep blogging – I’m gonna take out the trash and grab a nap…… Stay tuned – I’ll let everyone know how it all panned out.

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April

Enable search engine friendly URLs in WordPress, on Apache

Okay – this is the kinda thing that ‘ol Guy will forget (in an instant) if I don’t make a few notes…. I’m 60, and my brain has calcified. Here’s the deal: WordPress gives you an option, in the admin area, to enable permalinks in various formats. If you fail to do some jerking around, here, the URLs associated with your posts and pages will have cryptic, meaningless, numerical names. In other words, if I write a page called “The Joy of Sects” (who doesn’t like great sects, right?), the URL (without this futzing), will be something like “http://www.webputzer/com/p?=7301″ – or some crazy thing…. If I enable this re-writing of my links, the link will be something like “http://www.webputzer.com/the-joy-of-sects”. Obviously, this makes it much simpler for search engines to properly index your pages. Anyway, I’d read various suggestions for enabling “pretty URLs on WordPress” (that’s what they’re often called) and this is what I did to make them work. I think that you can use a variety of different strings for the custom structure (see below). The key to all of this is to have mod_rewrite enabled on the Apache web server; and, by the way, while there’s a workaround (which I haven’t tried, yet) there’s no such thing as mod_rewrite on IIS . If you’re using IIS, you can get pretty URLs working – but, from what I’ve read, it’s a bit of a pain. You’ll notice that this site – running from IIS 6 and Server 2003 – does not have pretty URLs enabled. This stupid site gets quite a bit of traffic and I haven’t had the courage to try and enable this, yet (I could destroy the place!). Anyway, on Apache, do this:

FIRST:In your Admin area go to Settings > Permalinks. Under “permalinks” choose “Custom Structure” – and use the following syntax:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%post_id%/
(the above is at your discretion – you can use different parameters, or, syntax)

SECOND: Now, add the following to an .htaccess file in the document root of your site:

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

I did the above, reloaded my WordPress sites (running on Apache), and voila! My funky, old, numerical page and post URLS had new and meaningful names. That’s all there was to it, kids.

Notes on creating an .htaccess file

I run my own web server(s) so creating a .htaccess file is pretty simple. If your on Linux, running your own server, etc. you certainly know how to create an .htaccess file (I use VI). Anyway, if you’re on Windows, and you’re using a remote web host, this is how it’s done: open Notepad, create the file, and choose “Save As”, then use quotation marks around the file. In other words, save it as “.htaccess”. On Windows, the quotation marks indicate that you want the file saved with exactly the name you’ve typed – in this case, the word “htaccess”, preceded by a period. To be completely clear, Windows will not save the file name with the quotation marks; if you use the quotation marks it will save the file as .htaccess. Then, just upload the file to the document root of your WordPress installation. ALSO – and I’m not 100% certain of this – I think you may have to have your Windows PC set to allow the viewing of hidden files, in order to see this this file. Windows recognizes it as a system file and may hide it from view, otherwise. This is an option which is set in different places, on different versions of Windows; if ya’ can’t find it, Google the darned thing. And, maybe the file will be visible, anyway (I really can’t recall).

UPDATE: I recently ran into a problem with this and I was getting an “internal server error“, when I added this .htaccess file to a new WordPress site. I found that the following code, in the httpd-vhosts.conf file, was required – I think that the problem was the “Order” section – actually, I can’t recall at the moment. I’ve got a ton of virtual hosts and my httpd-vhost.con file is a mile long. I had some directive buggered. Anyway, this is the syntax which worked:

<Directory "/usr/local/apache2/yoursite/htdocs">
   Options +Includes
   AllowOverride all
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
  </Directory>

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April

Elegant Themes Review – a lotta bang for your buck

If you’re in the market for a great selection of premium WordPress themes – all at an affordable price – I can highly recommend the Elegant Themes package. By the way, I’m not using an Elegant Theme on this blog because – to be honest – this is just a place where I park random ideas and notes and I really don’t care, very much, about how it looks. I actually may, eventually, “jazz” this thing up with a better theme. Basically, I just haven’t gotten around to doing a makeover on this site. Anyway, if you surf around this blog you’ll find that I’m not in the business of endorsing products. Maybe I can get ‘em to pay me for this! Probably not. Anyway, I was genuinely impressed with the value of this package to the extent that I thought I decided to write something.

My Perspective
Myself and a business partner purchased the developer’s license from Elegant Themes about four months ago. We also purchased some theme packages from some other outfits. The Elegant Themes package was, by far, the most bang for the buck. It included a great selection of themes which were easy to implement and use – and the support was excellent. I’m not going to bash anyone, here, but suffice it to say that I couldn’t say the same sorts of positive things about the other theme packages we purchased. And while I have a reasonable frame of reference I don’t have years and years of experience with WordPress; I’m sure that there are some other great packages, out there, with which I’m unfamiliar. If you’ve found another theme package that you felt was good (or bad), feel free to leave a comment.

Pricing, etc.
For $39.00 per year you can get a standard membership and you can use use any – or all – of the 70+ themes currently offered by Elegant Themes on any of your WordPress blogs. By the way, since my partner and I made our purchase (just a few months ago) there have already been couple of new themes added. It appears that they crank out new themes with a fair amount of regularity. I believe the number of themes currently available is 74. And, Elegant Themes offers a 30-day, money back guarantee. While I’d would presume that not too many people won’t be pleased with what they’re getting (for $39.00!) it’s good to know that you can get a refund. Honestly, I can’t imagine anyone would buy this package and be disappointed. Recently Elegant Themes began offering a developer’s license. The way that works is this: you need to have a standard license (at a rate of $39.00 per year) and pay a one time, additional fee of $89.00. This allows developers to use Elegant Themes on as many client’s sites, and as often, as they wish. I’m not sure why (it seems pretty straightfoward to me) but on the Elegant Themes site there seemed to some confusion as to how this worked.
From Elegant Themes:

“You still need to have a normal subscription active in order to retain access to the member’s area. The $89 one time fee is in addition to your normal subscription, and gives you permission to use the themes on your client’s sites.”

The bottom line is this: while the core features of WordPress are GPL and free to anyone, the designs produced by Elegant Themes are subject to copyright. The terms of their standard license are such that you can use as many of them, as often as you like, on your own sites. If you’re developing sites for other people – and wish to stay on the right side of the law – you need a developer’s license. That’s it.

What you get – short version
In the proverbial “nutshell”, here’s what you get for 39 bucks:
> Access to over 70 premium WordPress Themes
> Most themes include Java sliders and a lot of other, nice features
> They’ve got a great variety of themes – and, really, they’re all excellent
> A very easy-to-use admin area called the “Epanel” – makes customizing your theme simple
> Support from the developer’s, and, the Elegant Themes forum (I’ve had good experiences with both).

Customization is relatively intuitive
One thing that I liked about these themes, in particular, is this: I’m terrible about reading documentation. I’m old, I’m tired, and I’m always going 1000 different directions. And please, hear this, loud and clear: I am NOT saying, “Hey – buy these and don’t bother to read the documentation.”, or, “You really don’t need to read the documentation….”. If you don’t read the documentation, you could end up driving people on the forum insane. I can imagine someone from Elegant Themes finding this post and screaming, “Hey – don’t tell people that!”. My point is, simply, that while these themes are highly configurable and incorporate some high end features they also include something called the “Epanel” – an extremely intuitive interface by which they can be customized. In other words, when you install an Elegant Theme it installs their propietary Epanel as part of the theme (in your administrative back-end). While you should certainly read the documentation for these things, to be perfectly honest, I think most people will find that they can figure out out how to do basic customizations to their themes by simply fiddling with the Epanel control center. That was my experience, anyway. So, the Epanel is very very intuitive, which is good – but you still should look at the documentation!

The Epanel looks like this:

Anyway, if you’d like to dress up your WordPress blog with a “killa” theme, I’d suggest dropping by the Elegant Theme site and taking a look – I think you’ll be impressed…..!

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April

Meaningless puppy video

Her name is “Angel” – but the mail lady doesn’t think she’s an Angel. In fact, if she’s ever on the porch, again, when the mail lady comes we get no more mail (honest). Angel is thoroughly convinced that the ‘ol mail lady is “up to something”….. Argh – a funny little pup.

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March

Removing links in WordPress default widget

Argh – if I don’t write this down I’ll never remember it – and Google searches brought up all kinds of weird data, not related to what I was trying to accomplish. I just wanted to get rid of the some of the links – for instance, the one to WordPress.org – that appear on the main page of a default WordPress installation. Here’s the deal: open includes/default-widgets.php. Search the text for “wordpress.org” and you’ll find the links – just remove what you don’t want….. Theoretically, I guess, you could add links. Anyway, that’s where the data is stored.

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March

One tough ‘ol guy – fightin’ to hang….

This is T.J. – my oldest, and smallest, buddy…among a few pets. He’s 13 and has a bad heart and no teeth. And he’s not doing very well, today. If he leaves before I do the world will be a much chillier place…. I love his crazy little butt, a lot…. He’s been having seizures, from his heart problems, since 2009. He had a bad one 2 nights ago – today, he doesn’t wanna eat. He’s done that before and just snapped out of it. I hope he bounces back… He’s a fun, goofy, son-of-a-gun who went to work with me, in a mattress store, everyday for 5 or 6 years…