Anyway I just “cracked open” the PDF tutorial I downloaded online. Yeah, I read more e-books these days then their hard copy counterparts. It’s more convenient and instantaneous.

So here I am on chapter 1 dealing with the general syntaxes, getting from a keyboard input and putting out that info on a screen.  I just need three function “gets()” for the input,  ”print” and “puts”  from the output.

The only difference between print (“….”) and puts(“…”) is  the ladder adds a linefeed at the end of the output while the former doesn’t.

Coming from languages such as C++, C#, Javascript and PHP I always expect a semi column (;) at the end of each statement. That’ not the case with Ruby.

Declaring a typical variable – a string or  a number – is straightforward in Ruby. Not need to specify the variable data type like in C++ or prepend the dollar sign ($) like in PHP or PERL.

Embedding a variable or an expression in a string is somewhat interesting. Let’s assume you have variable:
firstname=”John”

To embed that variable – even an expression –  to the displayed result you would write:
print(“My name is #{firstname}”)

It’s not that different from PHP except the use of the # sign preceding the variable or expression to evaluate.
Of course the expression above will replace the embedded variable by its actual value “John”  only when the string to be printed (on the screen) is between double quotes. The result will be different is we use single quotes  instead.

Now a mistake I will be making for sure is always “prepending” the $ to a variable name. The dollar $  in Ruby is reserved for global variables. meaning those variable not limited with a function or block.

I had a brief overview of classes and objects: instance variables, functions, the initialize and inspect methods. Usually those concepts come up several chapter later in most tutorials. However the author of this Ruby tutorial certainly decided to peak my interest from the get go and now I need to learn more about  how Ruby tackles the Object Oriented Programming concept.

I have to say after finishing this first chapter I am a little but uneasy about the new syntaxes but also intrigued enough to keep me going to the next chapter.

I started with Ruby 5 days ago and I am already on chapter 6. I will try at he best of my availability to regularly posts my notes during this learning process. Hopefully I can start with Python early December.

So stay tuned.

Thanks to the open-source community, you can instead use  a browser extension published by “kalehrish”. Here is a link to that PageRank Extension for Google Chrome. I just downloaded and installed it. As far as I know, it integrates well with Google Chrome 4.0.249.78 (36714) for PC.  I did not get a chance to check how it would behave on a Mac.
It works like a charm for me and it’s very lightweight.

A while back, Google  removed PageRank from the Webmaster Tools section of its website. The big G also informed us that little green bar is not as important as we might think. Indeed the PageRank is not all there to SEO but that green bar is an indicator of the quantity & quality of inbound links to a given web page.

We know that search engines put more emphasis on relevance of the page content to the search query for ranking. But all things being equal, the higher the Pagerank, the better the page placement in search engines results.

Another option is the Kuber PageRank Checker. It not only display the Pagerank  beside the address box but it also show the Alexa rank and a whois link when clicked: talk about killing three birds with one stone.

1. First we set a PHP variable
   $validlogin=false;
   This variable will later determine whether the user will be able to see the webpage info or will be presented with a login form.Then define an array containing the values of passwords to be given to people you would like to grant access to the web page.

   $thepasses=array(‘pass1′, ‘pass2, ‘pass3′);

   pass1, pass2 and pass3 being the password you would like to set.

2. Then we create an authentication process that uses a cookie.
   It compare the cookie value previously store in the user’s computer after the login to a preset value. In this case the cookie variable is “validlogin” and the value tested against is  ‘userOK’. Feel free to define your very own cookie variable and default value.

   If the current user is already logged in sucessfully then s/he will no longer need to login again for the lifetime of the cookie which  we will define later.

   if (isset($_COOKIE['validlogin']) && $_COOKIE['validlogin']==’userOK’){
   $validlogin=true;
   }

3. A second authentication step will be taken if no cookie is found or if the cookie  does not match the value we are looking for.
   In that case we check to see if the visitor has submitted the login form and the password submitted is in the array of password defined earlier:

   else if(isset($_POST['userpass']) && $_POST['userpass']!=”){
   foreach($thepasses as $key=>$value){
   if(trim($_POST['userpass'])==$value){
   $validlogin=true;
   break;
   }//end if
   }//end foreach loop
   }//end else

   As one can see the foreach loop goes through the array of passwords to see if any of those value matched te password submitted through the login form.  You can also use the PHP function in_array() to determine wether the submitted password matches any values in the array “$thepasses“.
   If a match is found then a “true” value is assigned to the variable $validlogin and we can safely end the loop otherwise “$validlogin” will remain “false”.

4. Once the $validlogin variable is “true” then we can set a cookie to store an authentication parameter in the user computer. This prevent the system from asking the visitor to login everytime s/he refreshes or reload the page or come back to the site after a short period of time:if($validlogin){
   setcookie(‘validlogin’, ‘userOK’, time()+3600);
   }

   This set a cookie named “validlogin” with a value “userOK” that will persist for 1 hour (3600 seconds). You can increase that value to any amount you deem reasonable enough. The cookie lifetime will be increased whenever the logged user reloads the page or revisits that web page: that resets the cookie for another hour.

5. Inside the actual web page (between the opening <body> and closing </body> HTML tags you can now insert the logic that would either display the web page information if “$validlogin” is “true” otherwise the visitor will be presented a login form:<?php if($validlogin){ ?>
   The web page information you would like to shar goes here
   …..
   <?php } else { ?>
   The login form goes here. The only restriction is for the password field name to be “userpass”
   ……
   <?php } ?>

You can see the entire code here.
All you need is just copy, paste and save the file with the extension  ”php” (i.e. privatepage.php)

First you need to weed out SPAM, then sort the remaining message either by sender, try to spot the most interesting subject line or maybe just click on the very first message then read through.

If you use email as the primary mean of communication with your clients, partners or other associates as I do then you understand how important is it to keep your inbox clean to receive only emails related to your business. Keeping your email address private is the best way to fight against SPAM.

As the saying goes, do not mix business and pleasure. Well, I can also add do not mix business with family as far as email goes.

My point is, do not use the same email address for your business  communications  and for keeping in touch with your friends or relatives.

And you know what, you could even do better by separating those two groups as well.  Get different email addresses for friends and relatives. That way you can always be assured your family dirty laundry and drama will not spill over to your friends when you accidentally hit the dreadful “Reply All” link.

I cannot recall how many times I started exchanging emails with a long lost friend who soon afterwards start sending me jokes, chain letters and more.

The worst part is those very same messages are sent in bulk as Carbon Copies (CC) to all her/his contact list with my email address in plain sight for just someone  in that network of “friends” to harvest and start spamming the rest of us.

Online people networks are not that different from their offline counterparts. Most of the time keeping them separate is a must.

So please ask my permission first before sharing my email address with a third party be it a relative, an acquaintance or a business partner.
My  privacy is paramount online and offline.

A quick question for you…I’m wondering about the differences between using tables, layers, and floating divs (is that what you call what we used yesterday with CSS?) When would someone want to use one vs. the others? Layers seem to be the easiest way to create your layout the way you want it, but I’m wondering what the drawbacks are to that? Also wondering how you might combine two or more methods to create your layout?

Thanks again Alex!
It was great to work with you…

Here is in a nutshell my response:

Tables are more appropriate to present a grid-layout data just as you would display data in an Excel spreadsheet with rows and columns. As you will notice in the index.html file inside the portfolio folder, we use a table to display the content of that page because the information is presented as a grid.

However using tables for the website layout is cumbersome. Tables take more time to display compared to DIV elements because all the rows and columns are tied together. The web browser has to make an extra effort to have all the cells in the right places taking into account all the rowspan and colspan that might be defined in the HTML markup.

You can hide or show a box (layer, div tag, container) either by changing its visibility from visible to hidden or set its display property to “inline” , “block” or “none”.

Floating Div tags comes in handy when the need arises to align rectangular blocks of content side by side horizontally without having to use absolute positioning. A div tag creates is typically a block-level container. As such has natural tendency to occupy a 100% width of its parent container and push down any another other element placed after it in the HTML markup. Therefore by specifying the width of div tags and floating them you can place them side by side as long as the width of their common parent container can allow.

The only drawback of using CSS is that you have to do the math as we did yesterday to get the right positioning or calculate the dimensions of each box to align them side by side.

So always design you website layout using div tags (i.e. #wrapper, #header, #maincontent, #footer, ….) as the main building blocks of your web page layout. You can then use more div tags to create smaller containers for your content and position each section of your web page.

When the data you are presenting is a grid then use tables to get the job done more efficiently. Table and CSS are not mutually exclusive. You can use a table then format its look-and-feel with CSS. Again it keeps your HTML and content semantic clean & tidy, easy to maintain and Search Engines Friendly.

I hope this message answers your questions.

Here are a few things worth noting after just an hour of Google Chrome test drive: 

* Google Chrome once installed can import all my favorites (bookmarks) & saved passwords from IE: a real time saver. 

* the google chrome browser loads fast (less than 5 seconds) and my system “Task Manager” reveals that it uses only about 9MB of RAM compared to 44MB  by Mozilla Firefox 3.0 and 86MB by IE7 loaded with a blank page. 

* The browser interface is clean, simple and efficient: just one toolbar with the basic navigation buttons on the top left corner: back, forward, refresh. You can add the “Homepage” button to your settings. 
 

* You don’t have to be a techie to change the settings: mainly choosing your home page, your default search engine, a few “other tweaks” and things “under the hood”

* Easy to make personal settings: just click on the wrench icon (top right corner) in the graphic above.

It shows the bare minimum items on the menu:
- for displaying a new bar with your bookmarks buttons.

- Clicking on “history” will open your browsing history in a new tab with a search function in it

- the same goes for the “Downloads”

- “clear browsing data” comes handy to clear your browser’s cache and force it to download fresh information from the web server.
- “Import bookmarks & settings” says it all.

- the “Options” opens a new window where you can set your google Chrome browser preferences as shown in the screen capture below:

* one thing that seemed missing was the search box. Well, it turns out the address box have a double-duty of being the search box for your default Search Engine. 

As a web developer, Google Chrome is one more browser to add to my list of web browsers to test websites with before going live. So far it seems to be web standards compliant as far as CSS2 is concerned behaving pretty much like Safari for PC (sorry Mac users I cannot speak for you.)

I am however confident, based on the fact that Google Chrome is an open-source web browsers, that this newcomer in the web browsers arena will try hard to win the heart of the online community.

Happy web surfing and warm welcome to Google Chrome!! 

At the time of the writting of this blog, the Popularity Contest Plugin in only compatible with WordPress releases up to up to wordpress 2.3.1. That means, if you are using the newer versions of wordpress say 2.5 or or the latest release wordpress 2.6 for that matter, you should brace yourself for one or a few surprises when trying to use that plugin in your blog.

That is exactly what happened last night when I tried to activate in the admin panel of my client’s blog. I have been slapped with a PHP error message:

Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

That should not deter you from using this wonderful plugin. Here are the steps I took to solve the issue at hands:

Step 1
The first thing I did was to check on my local server for parsing error since my client’s web server does not display those errors for security reasons. The only error revealed to me was the include path of the wp-blog-header.php which should be

../../../wp-blog-header.php

instead of

../../wp-blog-header.php

because  the calling file pouplarity-contest.php is 3 folder levels down from the blog root folder where the wp-blog-header.php is.

Step 2
I made that correction then run the file (pouplarity-contest.php) again in my localhost server.
This time I only receive a database connection error. Good! No PHP parsing error.
I then uploaded the “pouplarity-contest.php” file to the remote server, went to the plugins section of the blog admin panel and tried once more to activate that plugin.

Not a chance, same fatal error message on my face. Grrrrr!!!.

Mind you, I have the utmost respect for the PHP developers (I am a member of that tribe) devoting their time to develop various applications and widgets they freely give to the online community.

Step 3
I commented out any add_action call and tried again to activate that Popularity Contest Plugin. No luck again, same fatal error message.

Step 4
I stopped for a few seconds, looked again then told myself: “the wp-blog-header.php file is already called somewhere by the admin header section with the require_once() PHP function!”

Solution:
* Remove or comment out (// or /* …..  */) the line 59 or whatever line contains the code:

require('../../wp-blog-header.php');

Tried again to activate the Popularity Contest Plugin.
This time it works!!

I can now use the akpc_most_popular() function in my blog sidebar to display the most popular posts.

I just save you  time and frustration.
Now go ahead and
- make that change in the PHP code
- upload the file
- activate the plugin

.. and happy blogging!

When any of those icons is clicked on a pop-up layer (not a new document window) opens and displays 3 tabs:
1) Choose file will let you:
* choose a file from your computer and upload it to your blog . Click on the “Choose Files to upload” button to see the file upload field appear
* or enter the URL of your image file (web address of your file e.g. http://www.saheltech.com/images/logo.gif” ) in the Image URL box
- * choose an option to define how your new image will be aligned with the rest of the content in your post (none, left, center or right)
* Once you are done, you can just click “Insert into Post” button to insert your image and resume editing your post

2) the “Gallery” tab switch to a window displaying thumbnails of pictures previously uploaded.
You can then click ”Show” to see each image in more details then decide whether to insert int your post or not

3) the “Media” tab as you might have suspected will show all the multimedia files (pictures, audio/video files) already uploaded and used or ready to be used in your post.

Two other tools I found particularly useful are to the “Toggle Fullscreen Mode” and “Show/Hide Kitchen Sink” icons on the very right hand-side of your visual editor toolbar.

Try’em and see for yourself.

I will be upgrading to wordpress 2.6 very soon. I am trying to keep up by jeez these guys at WORDPRESS are rolling fast lately.

That’s all for now folks!
Happy blogging!!

* It would display a video in a “Featured Video” section or the sidebar of your blog.
I have used it quite a few times during the cutsomization process of some of my clients’ blog using themes from Revolution News/Magazine
However when using it in the “Revolution News” theme, the Featued Video seems to be displaying the same video on the featured video section despite the fact that my customer has

Solution:
* open the “featuredvideo.php” file in your wordpress plugins folder /wp-content/plugins/FeaturedVideo
* add ORDER BY post_date DESC to the $sql varible which becomes:

 $sql = "SELECT distinct ID, post_title, post_date, post_content                         
            FROM {$prefix}posts, {$prefix}term_relationships, {$prefix}term_taxonomy
            WHERE {$prefix}posts.ID = {$prefix}term_relationships.object_id
            AND {$prefix}term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = {$prefix}term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id
            AND {$prefix}term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'category'
            {$catsql}
            AND post_status = 'publish'
            AND post_type != 'page'
   ORDER BY post_date DESC";

 * save and upload that file to your blog at the same location (/wp-content/plugins/FeaturedVideo/featuredvideo.php)

Just as with any other plugin, you need to activate it in your blog admin panel and set the options offered.
Then “Featured Video Plugin” will now located the latest youtube or googlevideo file used in your posts and display it in the Featured Video section of your choice. Just be sure to have to call vsf_show_video() in order to get the job done