denyerec.co.uk

I’ve been meddling today with a “websize” button, the kind you commonly see linking blogs and sites all over the place. Why? Well, for a little bit of cross-linking promotion of course. If you host a site and would like to link me with my button (Which I’ll always appreciate), you can simply right click below and link from my server if you wish, or copy it off to your own space and link it there.

It’s been passed on to sigring, which was brought to my attention by a chap called Phunky in the Quakenet #webdev channel. Hopefully get some feedback from them soon…

Today I ‘installed’ a stats utility for my website called BBClone and it’s really rather good! I say ‘installed’ because truly, it was the most painless thing I’ve ever done to this website. Couple of clicks, a couple of pre-defined lines of code to add to the pages I wanted tracking and bingo, full stats. I’m not sure if I want to publicise the URL for the stats page or not but I have to say I’ve been surprised by the results. So far I’ve had unique hits from places as far afield as Japan and Hungary, way to go me!

Sadly Internet Explorer is capping out the most used browser stats, which is a crying, crying shame. Please, people, do something good today. I may consider killing a kitten for every hit via Internet Explorer, but I don’t think I could find that many cats at short notice.

Shadow, a friend of mine from quakenet channel #Webdev, was asking about the themes (As well as pointing out something on the comments page, which I’ve updated so thanks for that.) and why is my site now sporting a fixed theme with some bright orange bits (That incidentally he doesn’t like, but loads of people seem to prefer… C’est la vie.).

Well, the answer is that WordPress 1.0.1 did something queer with their configuration script which means my old method for setting the theme in a cookie no longer worked. People have told me to fix it using ob_start() buffers but so far this has only served to utterly confuse matters. This is further complicated by the abomination which is my CSS file. CSS is great, but thanks to the “learning experience” approach of my website, it’s out of control. Way, way out.

Why don’t I fix it? I need to. I also need to re-write my gallery admin code because people are asking me about whether they can use it too which, right now, they can’t because it was, again, a learn-as-you-go site. Thing is, no-one is going to pay me to fix it up and the infernal beast known only as “The Landlord” demands that I spend my time on more profitable endeavours. I think I’ll set aside an hour a day to devote to redevelopment and get things done, else it’s going to be this way forever. Nuts.

I wonder sometimes whether people overlook the gallery. I hope they don’t because that’s really the only reason I’m here! In an effort to help people keep up with the latest photos, photo’s younger than 10 days will appear with a natty little thing by them in the “Latest Photo’s” list just to the right there…

Before now, uploading more than one photo meant that the first up would disappear without acknowledgement into the “5 most recent” list, and not get the attention it should. I hope this helps fix the problem. I may even make it cookie based, so all new photos will shout at you the first time, and not afterward, but that would take a lot of effort and my time is better spent elsewhere. I may consider putting different colours up for photos of my GF, but they mysteriously attract more attention than anything anyway…

Media Manager 1.1
I’ve added multinational support.
It should work.
If not.
Contact Me.

A Media Manager Pseudo Haiku, by Denyerec

(At least I got it in in 17 syllables, even if my meter is out…)

Well, I’ve finally managed to drag my script screaming into WordPress 1.0.1 territory and it wasn’t nearly as hard as it probably should have been.

I did, however, manage to delete half of my htdocs folder thanks to a bit of a slip with the old FTP program. This is bad, as I lost my .htaccess files and I have NO idea what on earth was in it before it died.

I’ll re-write it as soon as I remember what it did.

Also the theme switching is in for an overhaul because some bright spark at WordPress HQ had the blog header file send out headers, meaning that cookie-setting on the main site is now a no-go. I’m looking for a workaround that won’t do too much damage to the WP backend. More to come.

I’ve been here for ages, and only just discovered this…
Read the rest of this entry »

Today I think my website suffered its first illegitimate comment attack, just the one comment from a chap calling himself ‘Jude’ and prepresenting some insurance company. His comment was on the MS At The Wheel post, about MS using their OS to control drive-by-wire cars. It simply had a link to, I assume, his sponsor or company website, though he might have been making a funny by saying if you drive an MS controlled car, you need life insurance… (The angle I’d rather take!)
I’ve left the comment, but de-activated the link. Feel free to paste it in to your browsers and have a look though. Article here.