Troy Thompson

Web Developer

  1. WordPress Minor update, and why I love SVN

    Published
    Feb 07 2008
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    So a minor WordPress released an update 3 days ago. If you don't update, one could use xmlrpc.php to edit posts on your blog, too bad a majority of WordPress users do not know it or can't be troubled to upgrade.

    Honestly, if I were on 2.3.2 and didn't have SVN I probably would not upgrade either.

    However, I was able to upgrade 3 sites in less than 10 minutes with SVN. :-)

    Note, I use the branch and not the trunk, there is a misconception that if you're using SVN WordPress you're using bleeding edge software that is unstable.
    Even the WordPress Subversion Access page shows an example of checking out from the trunk, which is a bad idea unless your developing a plugin for a later version of WordPress.

    The WordPress branch has been stable for me so far, but I only update when I hear an announcement or I'm feeling experimental.

    You can also use svn externals to automatically update plugins.

    Just navigate to wordpress plugins directory
    type “svn pe svn:externals .”
    e.g.
    akismet http://svn.wp-plugins.org/akismet/trunk/
    audit-trail http://svn.wp-plugins.org/audit-trail/trunk/
    etc.

    Save, then "svn up".

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  2. Link for Borders Coupons

    Published
    Jan 25 2008
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    So I was looking at my email, and I get Borders coupons constantly. Instead of wading through my email for coupons, so I figured I might as well make a bookmark to see all available coupons.

    Use the following Google search query to get Borders Coupons:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:bordersmedia.com/coup/&num=100&as_qdr=m&filter=0

    Enjoy.

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  3. Collapsible Nested ULs with jQuery

    Published
    Jan 17 2008
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    This is a quick demo showing one how to expand and collapse menus of unlimited depth with jQuery.

    (more...)

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  4. Roo, FasterCSV alternative?

    Published
    Jan 16 2008
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    I just discovered Roo on RubyForge. Looking at the documentation it looks like a FasterCSV alternative.

    This gem allows you to access the content of

    • Open-office spreadsheets (.ods)
    • Excel spreadsheets (.xls)
    • Google (online) spreadsheets

    I can not see it replacing FasterCSV at the moment, as a lot of the features presented are available through FasterCSV.

    In my mind, the only thing separating this from FasterCSV is the ability to save your spreadsheets to Google Docs. This is cool because one could share a spreadsheet with a customer, and write generated reports to it for automated reporting.

    I happen to store all my hours worked in a Google document, so this would be great for generating excel reports by month to give to my employer.

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  5. SSH Keypairs for Easy Login

    Published
    Jan 02 2008
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    Tired of entering your password everytime you want to connect to a server? Me too, read this.

    Creating your public Key

    1. On your local machine.
    2. Open Terminal.
    3. ssh-keygen
    4. Hit enter when asked for filename or password

    Creating Server Aliases

    1. Edit ~/.ssh/config file
    2. Add the following:
      Host ALIAS
      HostName HOST.COM
      User USER
    3. Save

    Adding Key to Authorized Keys on Server

    1. scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ALIAS:
    2. ssh ALIAS
    3. Enter password when prompted.
    4. mkdir .ssh
    5. chmod 700 .ssh
    6. cd .ssh
    7. touch authorized_keys
    8. chmod 600 authorized_keys
    9. cat ~/id_rsa.pub >> authorized_keys

    Now you should be able to do ... ssh ALIAS and instantly login to your server.

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