Blog entries tagged development

Conflict between Skype and XAMPP/WAMP in Windows Vista

Jen Kramer — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:54:21 +0100

For those of you still running Windows Vista, be aware of an interesting conflict between Skype and WAMP or XAMPP.

WAMP stands for Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It's used for running software like Joomla on your local computer, generally for development purposes. XAMPP stands for any operating system (they have versions for Mac and PC), Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl.

If you load Skype first (or if it's already running), and then you try to turn on WAMP or XAMPP, all you'll see...

What's your problem?

Bill Tomczak — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:35:04 +0100

We've been working on a rather largish site recently and over the course of recent weeks, I have been reminded of a lesson learned way back in my dark ages when I was designing desktop database applications.

When developing any application but especially a customized application designed for a specific person or company, it can be easy to confuse problems with solutions. In that database I designed so many years ago, the client had been doing things largely on paper for a very long tim...

Blacklisting and Whitelisting HTML Tags in Joomla 1.5.8

Jen Kramer — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:00:00 +0100

I really love Joomla! User Group New England. We meet the 3rd Wednesday of each month. And it's amazing what happens when you put so many intelligent people in one room -- the problems we solve!

Earlier that day, I was working on a site that had just been upgraded to Joomla 1.5.8. I noticed that a script tag I had included in a piece of content was getting stripped out when I saved the article.

Step 1: examine the wysiwyg pro settings. Wysiwyg Pro is our prefered editor for Joomla...

Your Online Reputation

Samantha Bovat — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

As they say, reputation is everything. And while there's an opportunity to make a great impression with a beautiful website, there are plenty of things you can do that will turn off your visitors.

Sites should be quick to load, easy to use, get your visitor in to the information they require and get them out. It's that simple. Sites like this let visitors know that the organization respects their time. The organization wants to help the visitor get great customer service — even i...

Launched! WineMaker Magazine!

Jen Kramer — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0100

We are thrilled to announce that we've launched a HUGE site we've been working on for the last few months, WineMaker Magazine.

WineMaker Magazine started in 1998, and it's about how to make wine at home, whether you start with fresh grapes, or whether you start with a kit. The main goal for the website is to push subscriptions and sell back issues of the magazine. The content surrounding that supports those goals.

Because the site supports a magazine, it should contain...

404 page not found handling

Bill Tomczak — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Once we had decided against using sh404sef, we were still left with the need to handle '404 Page Not Found' errors. Clear and explicit information on this wasn't particularly easy to find, so I thought I'd document how we did it here.

In J!15, errors are normally handled by - surprise! - a template file. Look in the the system template folder for the file error.php. Standard J!15 error handling sends the user to this page for any unrecoverable error. Including 404 errors. If you c...

sh404SEF and some other extensions

Bill Tomczak — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Oh gosh! Been awhile since I wrote here. We've been completely swamped by the impending launch of one of the most complex sites I've worked on. We're using a bunch of extensions with a variety of compliance to Joomla 1.5 coding standards. None of them perfect, but some pretty darn close.

Joomsuite has been a mixed blessing. Having the code encrypted makes it more difficult for me to be excited about it. The idea is fantastic, but I'm finding it's capabilities - at least for our pu...