Unicode can be an issue that's hard to resolve, so it's guide to use the guidance in this document and ALWAYS use unicode where possible.

via HOWTO Use UTF-8 Throughout Your Web Stack

#development

After publishing the previous article about serve.sh - the shell script I created to easily serve websites in development - I made some changes to make it easier to run it from the terminal, for example over ssh. I thought I'd share it with you.

One of the problems with the original script was that it was optimized for a GUI setting - ie. start the script by clicking on it from the desktop. However usually I want to run it from the terminal. I don't like typing so I added code to make the script available from any directory to the ~/.bashrc:

export PATH=$PATH:~/bin

Then moved it to that path and renamed it to shave another 3 characters off the syntax:

mv ~/Desktop/serve.sh ~/bin/serve

In addition I noticed that prompting which site should be served was just a workaround for commandline arguments, which are now added. It doesn't check that you entered an argument though. So the new script now requires you to specify which directory you want to serve: to serve the current directory simply run:

serve .

Latest script contents:

#!/bin/bash
my_path=`readlink -f $1`
sudo rm /var/www
sudo ln -s $my_path /var/www
echo Now serving $my_path...

#development #linux

I am experimenting with using a Linux virtual machine as my web development environment of choice. I store the vm on a removable drive so that I can develop from any location, without having to setup a working environment. Previously I had to check out the repositories, setup a local webserver and I had trouble keeping things working, because every configuration change had to be applied in every location. Now it is all centralized and my life is simpler.

The aim is to make working on projects as easy as possible. I have all projects checked out in a folder called /var/sites. They are mostly PHP projects and because of my shared hosting environment they share a single apache configuration. How can I easily serve them? Having seperate virtualhosts for each project would result in me having to make manual changes on every location again, so this was not the way to go.

Instead I created a simple shell script that creates a symbolic link from the Apache's webroot to the project I am working on:

[gallery link="file"]

#!/bin/bash
echo "Available sites:"
ls  /var/sites

echo
echo -n "Type site to serve: "
read site
if [ -z "$site" ]
then
exit
fi

sudo rm /var/www
sudo ln -s /var/sites/$site /var/www

#development #linux

Next week we're turning off our old intranet site so I have setup a "Migration Switch" and a redirection page so that from the moment we turn off the site people will not be able to access it. Because if we actually turn off the site we would receive phonecalls with people needing access to their lost data, and because certain parts of the old intranet are reused in our new one, we instead check if the page is embedded, and if it's not check that the user is on a whitelist of specifically allowed users (us). If this is not the case we redirect them.

Next week we will remove all navigation links to the old intranet, turn on the switch, and remove the documents from the search indexer on the (new) intranet. There must be better terminology for old and new intranet.

Hopefully this will ensure that everything works smoothly.

#development

Do not use capitals for repository names!
Because when checking out a working copy you will have to specify the respository url case sensitive. Failing to provide the correct case sensitive name result in things might appear to work but you might get access forbidden messages for certain users in some point, and other mysterious errors, such as the svn commit error below:

access to '/svn/project/!svn/act/c50e0f11-eec3-154a-9695-20ec222ad7f3' forbidden

#development

Made few tweaks to improve the blog in preperation for several drafts I'm currently working on. Here's a quick rundown for everyone that's interested in the wordpress blog platform.

• Related Posts should show up to 5 related posts without too many false positives on single article pages. I like how this plugin scores posts on relativity and that I can set it to show nothing when no posts are related, which keeps the interface clutter to a minimum.
• A single easy recognisable block of Google Adsense adverts has been added to single articles. You won't see it if you have Adblock Plus installed like myself, but it should give helpful suggestions on articles with a single subject and support hosting costs in the process.
• Template tweak: Moved post-meta-information from under the title to the footer (tag/cat info) so that the header is better connected with the body of the post. There's enough clutter on other sites.
• I've visually combined  categories and tags underneath articles. Category are used for url purposes and tags  to facilitate cross linking of subjects. No need for two lists.
• I added a tagcloud to the site so you can browse the site and discover some other articles. I don't think browsing by time and month is useful to many people so that's been removed from the site. The only concern I have at the moment is that the cloud would grow to too big a list, so in the future I might just show the top 7 tags used. For now that's not a problem.
• PHP Speedy. This is the most important reason why the site is so snippy.

There's more but I'll save them for another time.

#development

Acquiring feedback on web projects can be harder than you'd think, especially when you're working on internal projects that don't get discussed on outside your organization. By making feedback a fun, easy and rewarding thing to do more people might be encouraged to help us and put in the effort.

I'm sure some of you are in a similar situation: you launch a project and silence follows. Trivial problems might emerge but a there's no general response to the long hours you put in. That makes it much harder to evaluate the project and set a schedule for future developments.

To help with this we've created a UserVoice page. Let's describe it as a digg-like FAQ. People are encouraged to leave a message, can vote on feedback they find important, and always have the full picture of what the development is focused on. Developers act on the consensus and theoretically will work on solving the most urgent issues.

Of course this model will work best when both users and developers care enough to communicate. So Uservoice is engineered to make it trivial to leave a message. It can be easily integrated into an existing site. Some functionality requires a user account, which is a stumbling block. But you can leave feedback without it, which is a bonus. Oh and it doesn't integrate with any bug trackers which is a shame.

Will it work and will there be enough participation? Ask me again in 6 months time. I'm not sure how to make it any easier though.

#technology

Brian Wood presents an excellent Dreamweaver tips video on Youtube. Many people just use DW as a text-editor but it's capable of a lot more even in code view. The following video might open your eyes:

Very nice.

#development

Don't call your submit button 'submit' if you want to change the submit event with Javascript:

If you do, the browser (please read “Firefox 1.5 or IE 6? - that’s what I tested at the moment) will consider submit is an object. And an object is not a function (although you might enjoy later on the paradox that a function is an object).

Source [webprodevelopment.com]

#development