Surfing the web, you find many interesting websites or blogs which you want to subscribe to. But the never-ending search for the RSS link is a burden we all share. If you are using Google Reader, I may have the perfect solution for you.
Bookmark or favorite the following URL:javascript:var%20b=document.body;var%20GR________bookmarklet_domain='http://www.google.com';if(b&&!document.xmlVersion){void(z=document.createElement('script'));void(z.src='http://www.google.com/reader/ui/subscribe-bookmarklet.js');void(b.appendChild(z));}else{location='http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/'+encodeURIComponent(location.href)}Using Google Chrome or Firefox, you can drag this link to your bookmarks bar – Subscribe.
Now, you may skip the RSS link seeking and simply click the link you have just bookmarked.
In my browser, Google Chrome, it looks like this:
If you want to check it out, feel free to give it a shot and subscribe to my blog.
First, thank you for the bug reports. Without them, new & enhanced versions simply won’t come out.
The plugin now has better video detection capabilities, and a serious bug regarding the auto thumbnailing feature is fixed.
You can download the new version at:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/youtube-thumbnailer/
Any bug reports, feature requests or comments are welcomed in the comments section below.
Have a look at your browser’s address bar – your sight is just fine. You actually are on orenyomtov.com as opposed to this morning, when this website lived under the .info TLD.
It has been quite a long time since my decision to move to the new domain. But there were two drawbacks which delayed the domain transfer. The first one is lack of time, and the second one is… Well, my laziness.
Anyways, I thought I would share some of the steps I took in order to move the website to the new domain. I was lucky that I didn’t change hosting. That may cause some additional steps to be taken.
- I bought the new domain and linked it to my hosting.
- I downloaded the latest WordPress installation and uploaded it into the new domain by FTP (Looking for an FTP client?).
- I copied the
wp-contentfolder. And in my case, the “downloads” folder which is the folder I chose to store the uploads in (Default iswp-content/uploads). - I also copied the
wp-config.phpfile and the.htaccessfile. - I used the Search and Replace WordPress plugin to replace “orenyomtov.info” with “orenyomtov.com” in the database.
- I notified Google of the domain change in Google Webmaster Tools.
- I exported a new sitemap using the Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin and submitted it to Google Webmaster Tools.
- I opened a new Google Analytics account and deployed the new tracking code in the theme I copied in step 3.
- I edited the old .htaccess file to contain only:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://orenyomtov.com/$1 [R=301,L] - I updated my FeedBurner account and all other similar services.
- I updated my website to the new URL in all of my favorite social platforms (@orenyomtov) and forums.
- Twit twit.
- And then I began writing this post.
The move didn’t take as long as I expected it to take. Even through it seems a bit long when writing it all down. It took me about two hours.
I hope that your move will be as smooth as mine. Good luck, Oren.
When one goes to a job interview, mostly in retail stores and other similar jobs, a test is often asked to be filled. The purpose of the test is to aid the filtering process of the applications in there.
My brother emailed me an interesting answer sheet for one of those tests. You should really take a look at it, there are some very interesting answers and questions.
For example, every question has four possible answers:
- Strongly Disagree
- Disagree
- Agree
- Strongly Agree
And only one correct answer, but according to the answer key: “Disagree” or “Agree” are NEVER the right answer to any question, even though any sensible person will have mixed feelings about all these questions
.
Nevertheless, I have found several particularly interesting answers for questions I know I would have answered differently:
- When people make mistakes, you correct them – Strongly Disagree
- When you are annoyed with something, you say so – Strongly Disagree
- You do not like to take orders – Strongly Disagree
- You get mad at yourself when you make mistakes – Strongly Disagree
And some other answers that quite surprised me:
- You are somewhat a of a thrill-seeker – Strongly Agree
- Many people cannot be trusted – Strongly Disagree
- You’ve done your share of troublemaking – Strongly Disagree
I found these tests to be anti-ambitious and anti-innovative. They are simply looking for strait-forward, friendly and rule obeying employees. What is your opinion?
I’ve received many emails complaining that the plugin does not recognize YouTube videos. Because of lack of time, I delayed the update until now.
I just released an update to the plugin which should solve most of the issues that I was contacted about.
Go ahead and download the new version:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/youtube-thumbnailer/
Last month I participated in two amazing events. The first one is The Big Geek and is considerably similar to the second event called Startup Weekend. They both took place in Israel.
The Big Geek II
Startupseeds
This event was organized by StartupSeeds, a non-profit organisation encouraging teen Israeli entrepreneurs to make their first steps in the entrepreneurship world. Whether it’s by giving them a place to talk about technology, or by conducting monthly meetings with the most interesting lectures (for free!). StartupSeeds even assists young innovative kids with starting their own startups by providing them financial help and the best mentors available. The online forum and meetings created a large and friendly community for the Israeli teenager who breaths technology and internet.
What’s the event about?
Sixteen kids (Ages 14-18), divided into four “teams”, worked 24 hours non-stop on their unique idea for a startup. Each team raised a fully working service within those 24 hours (!). While the projects are not breath-taking nor unbelievable, they are still awesome considering the time spent working on them. Actually, they’re awesome not matter what.
The project that my team and I developed is FixedInch. It’s a free online service for displaying objects in their real size over any screen in the world. We have discussed the possibility to continue working on it, and we most likely will, in the near future.
What else can I say? It was an awesome experience that I will never forget. It was 24 hours of fun and jokes, some of could not be told anywhere else like (via @TalDromi):
“Let’s use JSON for this”
“Who’s this Jason you are talking about?”
“XML’s brother!”
Startup Weekend Israel 2009
This is a world-wide known event, which started in 2007. Since then it took place in over 50 cities and growing (!). This is kind of a grown-up version of the Big Geek.
During the first day, 140 Israeli entrepreneurs pitched 50 unique ideas which turned into thirteen motivated teams. Each team consisted of about 4-8 people who designed and developed their idea for three days. The second day was all about work and food (lots of it!). On the third day of the event, the teams finished their work and presented their project.
My team and I worked on Frayer Meter – an online free service that suggests the most economical cellular plan according to one’s needs. While it’s not fully functional, we plan to continue working on it as we believe in it’s potential.
NOTE: If you don’t know Hebrew, feel free to use Google Translate when visiting links from this post.
Lately a fellow web developer of mine asked me why can’t he manage to save the current time in a MySQL table. The problem was that he didn’t understand how the PHP timing mechanism works. That’s why I decided to write this article.
time() and date()
time()
The time() function receives no parameters and returns the current time measured in the number of seconds since January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT.
This may sound a bit weird but I find it to be clever.
Because one doesn’t want to display dates and times in PHP as a very long number (e.g. “The current time is 1256702873″), the date() function was created.
date()
The date() function returns a string formatted according to the given format parameter.
The function is documented as follows:
string date ( string $format [, int $timestamp ] )
While I’d prefer to think of it as
string date ( string $format , int $timestamp=time())
Because if you don’t pass the second parameter, it uses the time() function instead.
Lets see a couple of examples:
<?php
// Assuming today is March 10th, 2001, 5:16:18 pm, and that we are in the
// Mountain Standard Time (MST) Time Zone
$today = date("F j, Y, g:i a"); // March 10, 2001, 5:16 pm
$today = date("m.d.y"); // 03.10.01
$today = date("j, n, Y"); // 10, 3, 2001
$today = date("Ymd"); // 20010310
$today = date('h-i-s, j-m-y, it is w Day'); // 05-16-18, 10-03-01, 1631 1618 6 Satpm01
$today = date('\i\t \i\s \t\h\e jS \d\a\y.'); // it is the 10th day.
$today = date("D M j G:i:s T Y"); // Sat Mar 10 17:16:18 MST 2001
$today = date('H:m:s \m \i\s\ \m\o\n\t\h'); // 17:03:18 m is month
$today = date("H:i:s"); // 17:16:18
?>
I don’t want to get into the format parameter, but you can read about it at the PHP manual.
Saving the time in a MySQL Database
The wrong way
My friend was using some sort of a special “date”/”time”/”timestamp”/”datetime” column type because he didn’t know what he was getting from the time() function.
This is not the way to store the result from time(). While it may be useful in certain circumstances, I’d rather save the number of seconds since January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT for later easier manipulation with PHP.
The right way
All you need to do is use a simple INT or BIGINT column type to store what you get from your time() call and in order to display it, use the date() function, passing it as the second parameter.
A theme consists of many files, this can get very confusing very fast. What files are needed? What files runs when and why? Here are the explanations and tips about WordPress template files.
First things first, what is a template exactly? A template is a PHP file that is a part of a theme. For example, there is a template for displaying the home page, one for displaying pages and another one for displaying posts.
What Are The Existing WordPress Tempaltes?
Here is a list of the existing WordPress templates that can be used in themes:
- index.php – The master template. If a certain template file does is not found, this one is being used.
- home.php – Displays the home page.
- page.php – Displays page’s page (It displays my contact page).
- single.php – Displays the post’s page (This is what you are now viewing if you are reading this here).
- author.php – Displays the author page. This is not such a common template as most themes don’t use author pages.
- tag.php – Displays the posts which have a specific tag. (e.g. FTP)
- category.php – Displays posts from a specific category. (e.g. WordPress)
- date.php – Displays posts from a specific time range.
- archive.php – Used if tag.php,category.php or date.php is not found.
- search.php – Displays search results. (e.g. How To)
- 404.php – When WordPress sends a 404 header. (When it cant find something)
- image.php,video.php,audio.php,application.php or any other first part of the attachment’s MIME type – Attachment.
- attachment.php – If one of the last templates (image.php…) are not found.
Here is a very useful image provided by WordPress Codex (click to enlarge):
Custom Templates
There are two main types of custom WordPress templates.
The first one are templates that WordPress looks for automatically, and if one is found it will be used. What the heck am I talking about?
If you have a category called “News” with the ID of 512 and you want the archive page of that category to have it’s own unique template you can create a new template file called category-512.php in the theme’s folder. And WordPress will use it.
This is the list of custom wordpress templates you can use:
- category-id.php
- tag-slug.php
- pagename.php
- firstpartoftheattachmentsMIMEtype.php
Now for the second type of WordPress custom templates.
Let’s say you have more then one page* you want to be displayed in a different way then the others. How do you do that?
Create a new file called whatever.php at your theme’s folder and inside write whatever you want instead of single.php or index.php (depending what displays the single posts at your theme).
Add this comment to the top of the file:
<?php
/*
Template Name: The Whatever Template Yo
*/
?>
(Of course change The Whatever Template Yo to the new template’s name)
Now edit (or create) the pages which you want to use this template and in the right side pick the desired template from the drop down menu. Just like in the screenshot at the right side.
*If you want to do this for posts rather then pages then you will find the Custom Post Template plugin very useful.
Any questions/corrections? Comments are always welcome.
Do you get “jQuery is not defined” as an error after a fresh WordPress Install? JavaScript not working at your admin panel? Don’t worry, I have the solution.
After installing two new WordPress installations with defective admin JavaScript that won’t allow me to
- Open the menus (in the admin panel’s left side)
- See the post editors toolbar
- Install new plugins
- Install new themes
I understood I was having some kind problem with the Javascript jQuery library.
I deactivated all the plugins and nothing happened. Then I started looking at the source code and googeling for quite a long time. After some serious research I discovered what caused the issue.
The Problem
While uploading the WordPress installation files onto the server I had some issues that cause some of the JavaScript files to not be uploaded / be corrupted.
The Solution
Re upload the wp-includes\js folder and overwrite whatever is in there.
That’s what fixed it for me.
I hope this helped someone, if it does, or does not – comment to help or get help.
Are you asking yourself “Did Google just change their front search page?”, The answer is yes.
Now officially announced in their blog, The size of the buttons, text, logo and text box has increased at google.com or at any other local google home page.
This change is not browser specific and it has been verified that the change includes but not limited to: Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.
Google says at their blog post that this change was made in order to emphasize their goal as a search engine and to show that their focus is always on search.
When I first saw the change I was convinced that me screwing around with Google Chrome’s preferences or something simillar has caused the text to be bigger until I saw Google’s post at their blog. Then I realized that It does not only happen in my computer, it happens everywhere.
Anyway, now that we are aware of actual reason, I wish you all Happy Googleing!
