HAMNEGGS.NET

Wordpress and Subdomains

elizabeth — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:58:50 +0000

The primary domain for my hosting account is “jill.com”. I add another domain to my hosting account called “jack.com”. And since my awesome hosting company (bluehost) lets me host multiple domains on my one account, I can build sites for jill.com and jack.com and no one will know that they both come from the same account. Jack.com is an “addon” domain, and it’s assigned a specific folder. If I want to make this a wordpress site I simply install wp inside that folder. The wp url will be jack.com and the blog address will be jack.com. The index.php and htaccess files can stay in this folder. This is different than assigning your wp installation a subfolder. In that case, you do have to change the url and blog address, and index.php and htaccess files according to these instructions: http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory Thinking about an addondomain which IS it’s own folder in the same way you’d think about stuffing wp into it’s own folder is an easy mistake to make, and one that can cause many mild annoyances.

Let’s get something up now!

elizabeth — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:28:23 +0000

Single Page Site for Small Business

elizabeth — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:44:30 +0000

Single-page online presence

Visit site »

I created a single page web site using the photos and copy that Kegs & Kans submitted.

I created a wireframe to make sure we had a place for all of their content, a design that I built in Photoshop, and then I coded the site using standards-based CSS and HTML.

I worked with lojic.com, who put me in contact with Kegs & Kans, and is hosting the site.

Backupify Is Super Awesome

elizabeth — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:21:03 +0000

I needed to backup my clients’ blogs which means the database and the theme. I can do both on a nightly basis with backupify.com. Currently I’m only backing up 6 sites or so, and am able to use a free account which allows for 2GB of data, but if I continue to love it as much as I currently do, I may use a paid plan. I suppose I could open an account for each client, but that seems like yet another account for people who have other things to do. I’m doing it gratis currently as a test, but will have to add it as a managed service down the road. Now, how do I backup those annoying framework settings???? I suppose that’s all manual.

My Memory is Terrible

elizabeth — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:08:23 +0000

The purpose of this blog is to document things I think I’ll need to reference in the future. You may not find it at all helpful, and that’s ok.

FastCGI Conflicts with WordPress

elizabeth — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:57:07 +0000

I just visited a couple of my newly launched sites (ipacknc.com and hillsboroughselfstorage.com) to tie up some loose ends only to find a 500 error. What? A week after launch and they’re already down? They’re hosted on GoDaddy, and since this is the first time I’ve worked with GoDaddy and since their site is a labyrinth that I still don’t understand (seriously, does anyone else feel like their site is unmanageable) I decided to call tech support. Anyway, the tech guy was very nice and was able to get the site back up in minutes by eliminating FastCGI from the site. We basically changed PHP4 + FastCGI to PHP4 and PHP5 + FastCGI to PHP5. This kind of stuff happens, and I don’t know enough to blame GoDaddy or WordPress. But on this level of site where you sort of “set it and forget it” how are you to keep track of whether it’s up or not. I’m sure there’s some kind of alert software out there that can scan multiple domains on different servers, but a cursory search didn’t find anything that I could run on my Mac. I’m thinking this may be a service that falls under site management in addition to backups and upgrades.

If you’re willing to roll up your sleeves, you can make your own site.

elizabeth — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:25:02 +0000

Building a totally customized website is a time intensive project that requires tons of decisions, and a great deal of work by the designer and the client. Think about building a house from the ground up – you have to select every piece from roofing material to door knobs and even door stops. Websites aren’t so different, and they’re just as personal. Sometimes you’re ready to make a from-the-ground-up commitment, and sometimes you’re not. If you’re not ready to lay out the cash, you may be ready to roll up your sleeves and build your own site using any of the available tools. You could go to one of the many sites that charge per month for a website you can build yourself but that’s another monthly charge and why would you do that when there are other options? One alternative is to use the ‘lite’ version of WordPress at wordpress.com. What originally began as a blogging platform has become a content management system – something you can update without knowing how to code websites. With a few configuration changes (i.e. checking of boxes) you can make your site look like a site rather than a blog. Since WP is so incredibly popular, people are constantly coming up with new themes (designs) that you can use. Some are free, some are available for a fee, but you’ll find something you like. It’s also possible to customize your own domain name for a small fee. Regardless, it’s much better than paying a monthly charge.

WordPress is one of many options for DIY websites, and I’m calling it out only because I know it the best. Just make sure that you don’t end up at wordpress.org, because that’s much more than a weekend project.

If you really want to take it up a notch you can hire a designer to come up with some cool graphics to customize your site, or to help you with plug-ins and widgets. There are so many options. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to chat about it.

Remove those pesky dotted lines around image links

elizabeth — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:22:32 +0000

This is what I’m talking about:

Dotted lines around active image before and after.

It’s so easy and it makes such a difference. Put this li’l gem in your stylesheet and say goodbye: * { outline: none; } I guess I kind of get it – the browsers are making it apparent when you select an active area. But isn’t it the designer’s job to do that?

New Go-To Slider

elizabeth — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:30:49 +0000

This is the best: Smooth Slider It works as a post/content slider, and has settings to remove the post text to become an image slider. Simply create a new post with the image in the body and you’re set. In order to make it show up on my home page, I created a new template for Home and inserted the following php:

if ( function_exists( 'get_smooth_slider_cat' ) ) {
  get_smooth_slider_cat('spotlight'); }

I also created a category called ’spotlight’ to make sure only posts in that category would display. It just works!

WP Minify

elizabeth — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:49:57 +0000

I needed to make the pages of a site with many http request (17 javascript, and 5 css) load faster. I found WP_Minify, and it cut the load time in half.