Jean Galea» Web Development Archives – Jean Galea – Internet Consultant in Malta | WordPress Expert

Website Uptime/Downtime Monitoring Tools

Jean Galea — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:15:46 +0000

Downloadable Software – FREE

http://website-monitor.org/website-monitoring-screens.php

Online Services - FREE

http://basicstate.com

PHP Script – FREE

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpwatch – MY FAVOURITE

http://www.mcmwebsite.com/free-website-monitoring-software.html

http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/how-to-easily-monitor-your-web-server-using-php

PHP Script – Paid

http://www.monitorscript.com/

Tips for Converting PSDs to XHTML

Jean Galea — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 08:57:53 +0000

Converting a PSD to XHTML + CSS with pixel perfect precision can be quite a job, especially if the design is complex. The link below gives alot of useful tips that will shorten your conversion time and make your job more pleasant. It also mentions quite an interesting plugin which helps you overlay a design over the top of developed XHTML so you can see the results in real time.

http://hokuten.net/2010/tips-faster-psd-html-conversions/

Script Libraries are now just a click away

Jean Galea — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:15:33 +0000

http://scriptsrc.net/

JQuery Mouseover Fade Effect

Jean Galea — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:36:49 +0000

Here’s a cool tutorial for a fade effect in jquery. You can use it to fade black and white images into coloured versions. Also includes a tip to modify it in order to make it work with WordPress.

http://bavotasan.com/tutorials/creating-a-jquery-mouseover-fade-effect/

Setting up WordPress Virtual Hosts with XAMPP

Jean Galea — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:28:58 +0000

I like to set up virtual hosts to set my local site in the exact configuration I will be using on the live server. This is also helpful when working with WordPress, as in this way I don’t have to stay changing URLs when uploading to the live site.

First up, find the hosts file on your Windows system, and add the following lines at the bottom of the file:

127.0.0.1 yoursite.com
127.0.0.1 www.yoursite.com

I would like to access my site both with the www and without, so I include them both. Save the hosts file and close it.

Now go to your Apache folder in XAMPP and locate the conf files. The are usually located at <>\xampp\apache\conf\extra

Open the file named httpd-vhosts.conf with a text editor (Notepad or Textpad for example).

Find this line ##NameVirtualHost *:80 and change it to NameVirtualHost *:80, thus we have activated it.

Now your final step is to adjust the following code as per your installation (make sure you have the directory letter right and the address to your site correct), then paste it at the bottom of the file:

DocumentRoot “E:/xampp/htdocs/”
ServerName localhost
ServerAlias localhost

DocumentRoot “E:/xampp/htdocs/yoursite”
ServerName www.yoursite.com
ServerAlias www.yoursite.com

DocumentRoot “E:/xampp/htdocs/yoursite”
ServerName yoursite.com
ServerAlias yoursite.com

That should be it! Restart your server and everything should be working fine.

Some other guides:

This guide shows you how to do this in Windows XP, but you can also easily find how to do this on other Windows OS by doing a quick search on Google for “Windows (your version) hosts file location”

http://www.tildemark.com/software/servers/setting-up-virtual-hosts-with-xampp-running-on-windows-xp.html

If that doesn’t work for you, try following the instructions here:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/569991.html

RegEx Builders

Jean Galea — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:27:27 +0000

Need a little help in building your Regular Expressions? Check out the following tools, one is online while the other can be downloaded.

http://gskinner.com/RegExr/

http://www.ultrapico.com/ExpressoDownload.htm

Web Development online tools and generators

Resources for Learning About Grid Based Web Design

Jean Galea — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:08:18 +0000

http://www.noupe.com/design/ultimate-guide-to-grid-based-web-design.html

http://www.designbygrid.com/

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/resources-grid-based-design/

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/settingtypeontheweb

CSS and PSD Grids

http://960.gs/

http://www.1kbgrid.com/

Setting up Your Computer For WordPress Development

Jean Galea — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:50:47 +0000

When developing a new WordPress website, or any PHP work for that matter, it is important to have a localhost installation of PHP, MySQL, and Apache. These can all be handled very easily using the Uniform Server, or alternatively using XAMPP. I prefer the interface and lower footprint that Uniform Server offers, and have used it without any problem for many years now.

Just got my Dreamweaver CS4 ACE Certification

Jean Galea — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:41:11 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Today I successfully sat for the Adobe Dreamweaver Certified Expert exam, provided by Adobe, the developers of Dreamweaver CS4. It was a very challenging exam and requires you to know the software inside out. Many of the questions (multiple choice) require knowledge of the menus and panel of Dreamweaver, as they will ask you how actions can be performed through the menus or even keyboard shortcuts. I’ve been using Dreamweaver for around 10 years now and I still had to brush up on those areas of the package which I don’t use very often, such as templates and the dynamic data wizards (recordsets and the like).

I would therefore only recommend this exam to seasoned web developers who have been using Dreamweaver for quite some time. In my opinion this is overkill for a newcomer to web development, the Adobe Certified Associate would be much better suited for that level.

To pass the exam I used a combination of practicing with the software itself, reading the user manual as well as Adobe’s own Classroom in a Book, plus some practice tests from www.examaids.com. The questions in these practice tests are similar to the actual test, although I didn’t find any exact questions, which makes them different from the brain dump pdfs one can also find on other sites.

All in all I am satisfied with my new certification, it has certainly spurred me on to learn some new tricks with Dreamweaver, which I can now count on when developing new websites, as well as having another important certification to help promote my web development skills.

Automated CPanel Backups for multiple sites

Jean Galea — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:57:47 +0000

I’ve just discovered a very useful tool for all website owners and hosting resellers, read on…

Someone has finally made it easy to backup your website files and databases without needing to log into your cPanel control panel every single time.

Backup Smart is the name of this incredible time saver, check out the free fully-functional 7 day trial and see for yourself why this is one essential tool you should have.

Gone are the days when you forget to backup or run out of time to backup your precious data.

Think about this for a moment…

What happens when your web host has a failure and your account get’s damaged or worse case scenario, the web host loses everything.?

Do you rely on your web host to take backups for you? Check the fine print of most web hosts terms of service and they will state that they are not responsible for your data, even if it’s their fault. Great isn’t it.

So what’s the solution. Simple. Backup your data regularly.

Let me tell you how to do it on cPanel web servers, it’s quite labour intensive.

a) Go to your http://yourwebsite.com:2082 and enter in your login credentials.
b) Go to the Backup icon (will look different depending on your cPanel theme)
c) Click on the link to download the home directory backup (this will take all your files)
d) Click on the links to download your databases
e) Click on the links to download your email filters or email aliases

Now do that once a week or month for your home directory (files) and everyday for your databases like WordPress, Forums, Shopping Carts, Email Lists.

No thanks I have better things to do with my time.

That’s where Backup Smart comes in. It’s a desktop software application that runs on Windows and MAC OSX. It automates the whole backup process I’ve just outlined for you.

You just set it and forget it. Backups are done on a schedule set by you, it’s just so easy.

If you even have just one website with a database then you need this software to protect your assests. But if you have more than one website on different servers with multiple databases then this software is a huge time saver and you’ll wonder how you ever did without it.

Check out all the details at www.backup-smart.com

Hope you find this useful!