Chris Jean :: Page 12

WordPress as a Web Application Framework

WordPress may at its core be a blogging platform. I know that Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, wants to keep all development of WordPress focused on blogging. I also know that WordPress is and will always be primarily used for blogging. However, as I work more and more with WordPress, I’ve come to see WordPress in a different light.

There are those that want to use WordPress as a full web publishing platform and not just a blogging platform. With the right kind of theme and plugins, using WordPress in this way can produce great results. Again, I see WordPress in an even more abstract view than as just a web publishing platform.

How do I see WordPress then? Frankly, I see it as an incredibly-flexible web application framework that can be used to develop seemingly unlimited types of applications.

Categories Development, WordPress
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gaarai.com Gets a New Theme

After working on a new theme off and on for over a month, I’ve finally settled on a look and decided to update the site.

My old theme was a slight modification of the fSpring theme by Fredrik Fahlstad. I still think that it’s a very nice design, but I decided that it was time for a change.

Categories Random Ramblings, WordPress
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Woopra Review

I’ve been running Woopra stats on this site since August 1, 2008. I got into the beta program really early since I was at WordCamp Dallas, where some of the initial beta codes were given out. I also had the pleasure of meeting John Pozadzides who is the founder of Woopra.

Since I’ve been using Woopra for half a year now, I’d like to give a review of what I like and dislike about it.

About Woopra

For those of you who don’t know anything about Woopra, here’s a bit of info. Woopra is a very new site statistics and visitor analytics tools. It is so new in fact, that it is still very much in beta.

Woopra aims to revolutionize the way we think of stats in relation to our site. Rather than being purely a historical tool, as most of the other stat gathering tools are, Woopra provides the ability to see what is happening on your site in real time. There is a Live tab that will show you visitors that are active on your site, where each visitor is located in the world, how each visitor got to the site, what pages they’ve navigated to, any external links they’ve clicked on, and even gives you the ability to open up a live chat with an individual visitor.

Categories Random Ramblings, WordPress
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Change Google favicon Back

Google’s original capital G favicon was around for, I don’t know, forever. Around June, they changed it to a lowercase g. I know that many people threw up their hands in disgust, but I actually liked it. It looked very clean and neat. However, they recently changed the favicon yet again.

Now Google’s favicon is this very colorful icon with green, blue, yellow, and red colors from their logo. I don’t necessarily dislike this new favicon, but I simply don’t and can’t associate it with Google. Google has always been represented by clean simplicity. They don’t need wizbang fancy images because they are simply good and don’t need to be fancy to attract people.

I think that’s why I liked the simple blue and white icon, even when they changed it. It was simple, to the point, laconic even; It was, in a word: Google.

Now when I have numerous Google tabs open, I look up at my tabs and just can’t help but think, “what is that site and why do I so many tabs of it?” I tried getting used to it, but I simply cannot. So, I decided that I would find a way to do something about it.

Categories Tips 'n Tricks
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How to Find Hardware Devices in Ubuntu Linux with lshw

Don’t you hate when you need to know and exact model of a specific hardware component but don’t want to open up the machine or find the original documentation on it? Never fear, Linux has you covered.

There are a variety of ways to find out what kind of hardware you’re running, but one of the easiest ways that gives you large amounts of valuable data is to use lshw (Hardware Lister). I’m running Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex), and lshw is installed by default. You can test if you have lshw installed on you system by running the following command:

[chris@home ~]$ sudo lshw

If you get a large listing spewed out on your terminal, you’re good to go. Skip down to the Using lshw section. If you run the lshw command and get a “bash: lshw: command not found” error, you should be able to install lshw using your system’s package manager easily.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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grep – Why I Love Linux

This is part one of what will likely turn into a long running series of posts on Why I Love Linux (WILL). The idea of WILL is to share little bits of what makes me love working with Linux. These could be small simple things such as a little feature here or there, the design concept behind Linux, or some other random thing.

I hope that by sharing what it is that I love about Linux, readers can learn a thing or two along the way.

To kick off this new series, I’m going to talk about one of the first command line tools that you should familiarize yourself with in Linux: grep.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Using the Same Keyboard and Mouse for Multiple Computers

I have a large number of computers. At my desk at home, I have two computers, Lumiere and Samus. I’ll often set up my office laptop, Rommie, on my desk as well.

I have a KVM hooked up between Lumiere and Samus, but I don’t use the video switching part as Lumiere has a dedicated 24″ LCD and Samus has a dedicated 24″ and 19″ LCDs. So, I use the KVM to do nothing more than switch the keyboard and mouse back and forth.

Things get more complicated with the addition of the laptop. Now I have another keyboard and a trackpad instead of another mouse. Thus, I’m always switching the KVM over between the two systems as well as moving my hand from the keyboard and mouse to the laptop and back again. There has to be a better way. Fortunately, there is.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Fix Backspace in VIM

Here’s a quick tip for those who may use VIM to edit files locally or remotely. If you are having problems getting your backspace to work (I.E. backspace doesn’t work at all in VIM), then the following tip is for you.

I found out that this is really easy to fix. When you edit a document, type in the following:

:set bs=2

Then hit enter. Now try to use your backspace key while in insert mode.

Once you confirmed that this works for you, add this option to your .vimrc file:

```
vi ~/.vimrc
```
Add
```
set bs=2
```
Save and close file

This will set your user to have that option set by default when you edit documents.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (1)

Accessing Your Home Network Away From Home

I wanted to be able to access my home network from outside the home. My internet connection has a dynamic IP. This means that my home’s IP address on the web can change at any time. So the question is how do you connect to something that is constantly changing location?

The answer is easy, use a Dynamic DNS service. There are a variety of these services: No-IP, DynDNS, zoneedit, FreeDNS, etc. Each of these sites that I’ve listed offers free Dynamic DNS service.

So what is Dynamic DNS? It would probably be best to first define what DNS is and then what makes Dynamic DNS different.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Intermediate Books on Linux are Lacking

I’m very new to running Linux as a desktop OS, but I am by no means new to running Linux itself. I’ve managed Linux servers in a professional capacity for more than five years, so I have a healthy foundation on how to work with it, but I don’t know how to use it day in and day out as my entire computing experience. That being the case, I started to look for books that would help me out.

I primarily limited my search to Ubuntu books (in hindsight, maybe that was my issue). Off to Barnes & Noble I went in search of a great book to bring me deeper into Ubuntu.

Categories Linux, Videos
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