Pixel Surfers » what not to do

Woo Hoo! I’m back up again.

Elaine — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:27:39 +0000

I haven’t been paying much attention to my own sites over the last year or so. Which is why it just so happened that all of my sites on one server were hacked! I think I had an insecure password, and they made a mess of everything by inserting Javascript trojans in every .php and .html index file in first and second level directories. I’ve lost a couple of posted in the database mix-up, but I think I can continue on from here. Ugh.

URL faux pas

Elaine — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 05:49:31 +0000

My sister, who is studying graphic design in the Yukon, just sent me this list of URL choices that should have been vetted a little more thoroughly before being decided upon by the marketing team. Now, I like URLs without underscores and dashes because they are harder to remember, but a few well-placed dashes may have saved them from being so disastrously misread. Pretty hilarious, but I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible!

1. Who Represents is where you can find the name of the agent that represents any celebrity. Their Web site is www.whorepresents.com

2. Experts Exchange is a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at www.expertsexchange.com

3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at www.penisland.net

4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at www.therapistfinder.com

5. And don’t forget the Mole Station Native Nursery in New South Wales, www.molestationnursery.com

6. If you’re looking for IP computer software, there’s always www.ipanywhere.com

7. And the designers at Speed of Art await you at their wacky Web site, www.speedofart.com

Two steps forward, one step back…no wait! I gotta sit down

Elaine — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:04:48 +0000

I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post (yikes!). A lot has been going on. I crashed and burned with my pre-school site; I basically decided that I had to start a Drupal install again from scratch. I now have to hand-code a static site for my client that I will later (much later) convert to Drupal. I did finally manage to get onto the Drupal IRC chatrooms. I had just never used IRC before, and after trying to configure Trillian and messing around with MirandaIM, I finally got going with Chatzilla, a plugin for Firefox that works well enough for me.

Was I ever glad I tried IRC. It is good to get in the habit of watching what folks are doing/talking about out there, and a very nice user (EclipseGC) took me through a personal walkthrough of how to use phptemplate to theme Drupal. It’s not nearly as complicated as I thought it was (I’m beginning to think I have a mental block against Drupal, lol). It was a great mini-tutorial and it was just what I needed for the light to “go on” and get me started theming for real. You too can IRC with drupalers on freenode in the channels #drupal-support and #drupal-dojo.

I’ve also been searching for an e-commerce solution for a potential customer who has a simple site in desperate need of a redesign. Of course, the first thing I thought of was using Drupal with a very promising cart module called Ubercart. After I crashed and burned trying to set up the pre-school site, though, I thought no way would it work; I needed a lot more experience before I tackled an e-commerce project with Drupal. I started to look for a cart solution that would allow me to plug “buy it now” buttons onto an existing site and provide a cart backend. I thought it would be a fairly simple thing to track down and I started to search for options. Easy, ha! Everything I found had a serious down-side, like monthly rental and hosting charges (RomanCart), or it required a desktop application to work (Cartit), or lacked enough payment gateways (NOP). The only other solution I found that was a definite “maybe” was Cartweaver, a PHP cart/extension for Dreamweaver. But 1) it costs $250 and 2) I’m not all that fond of Dreamweaver. It’s OK, but I don’t really want to invest, monetarily or time-wise, in aquiring and learning a system that isn’t something I know I will use. Sigh.

The funny thing is, after that mini-tut in Drupal theming, and after coming across a series of instructions on creating a brochure site in Drupal, I have come to the realization that I am going to have to bite the bullet and, if you haven’t guessed by now, do it Drupal after all. Whew. Can I sit down now? I’m dizzy.