Web Dev Notes

Last week I decided to move a blog to a different directory on my web server. Doing so actually turned out to be quite easy thanks to the way the Wordpress developers have set things up! In fact, moving your blog is easier than formatting text in Wordpress!

Please make sure you follow the steps below closely. While it is very fast and easy, you could complicate things for yourself if you do anything out of order!

“Moving the WordPress files from one location on your server to another - changing its URL - requires some special care.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress“

Wordpress is a very powerful tool. Find out how you can use Wordpress to build online communities!

I’ve received questions from several individuals with regards to how I am able to include HTML code in my Wordpress posts. For example, if you want to make a word bold, you type <strong>bold</strong>. So the question is, how then did I write <strong>bold</strong> without the word becoming bold? The other questions I’ve been asked is, “How the heck did you do that indentation?!”. Take a look at this post for example! Can you put blocks of code like this on your page? YES!

The magic behind formatting a post like this is actually very simple. Writing a post in Wordpress is a simplified way of inserting a few paragraphs of HTML formatted text into a web page. When you make a word bold or add a link, the text is surrounded by tags which will tell the browser how to format it’s appearance on the screen. HTML tags always begin with “<”, so as soon the browser encounters this symbol, it will check to see if it is a valid HTML tag, and if so, take the appropriate actions. If you actually just want to display the “<” symbol on screen and have the browser ignore the possibility that it could be HTML code, then you need to instead write the ASCII entity name.

I know many of you just grumbled and felt discouraged at the mention of ASCII entity names, but don’t worry I promise it really is very easy! Basically, all you need to know is that some characters have an ASCII entity name which you can type in your posts to display the character. For example, the ASCII character name for < is:

Try it out! Open up wordpress and type the above ASCII character. When you preview the page, you will see that the character < is displayed instead. The new mystery then is, how did I write the ASCII character above without it being turned into “<”? hmmm…!

• Go here for a full list of ASCII character names

The next question was related to indentation in posts. The first thing I did was put my code within a blockquote. If you are using Wordpress, you can simply highlight text, then click the “b-quote” button to do this. This indents a whole paragraph of text, commonly used for quoting references by bloggers. Next, I surrounded my blockquote with a tag called <pre></pre>. This tag is used to define preformatted text which means that the text enclosed between the tags will be displayed as it is typed. In a nutshell, if you are typing a post in Wordpress and hit the spacebar 20 times between each word, when you hit preview, it will still only show a single space between each word. However, if you use <pre>text to be preformatted here</pre> in your post, then all text between the tags will display your text as it was written, meaning multiple spaces can be displayed.

Try it out. Copy/Paste the below into Wordpress and preview it to see the effect:

<pre>

This is the first line, with no indent.
     This line has 5 spaces in front of it!
          This line has 10 spaces in front of it!

</pre>

Enjoy!

Update:I’d just like to say it’s really interesting how this post first came to be. The only reason I thought about writing on this subject is because readers contacted me asking about it. I am very eager to answer any and all such questions! Please keep the feedback coming so that I can focus on providing content that is of interest to YOU!

Remember back in April when I became the new writer for Web Dev Notes? I started off by introducing Joomla, PHP-Nuke, phpBB and PHP. I even recommended some cool software like the ALT-Tab Replacer, Virtual Desktop Manager and the Firebug plugin for Firefox. After a slow start, I finally got my big break when my article Formatting Text in Wordpress started to bring in steady traffic!

In my early Web Dev Notes days I stuck to covering more technical topics such as how to insert CSS on your website or how to create your first PHP page. However, after testing out the use of humor in posts like the Top Ten Stupidest Joomla! Administrator Tricks and When will GoogleBot index my Brain I discovered that this unique approach was actually quite well received! I also realized website marketing and SEO was a very popular aspect of web development so I decided to venture into this area with posts like The Battle for Traffic - SEO vs Content, No Contacts, No Money and Validate Your Website for Better SEO!

Of course, even though I would later discover that marketing and SEO would be a very popular topic on my blog, at the time I had no idea yet! Looking at my stats, the posts about PHP were the most trafficked so I decided to cover this area more extensively! In May I introduced some great web development resources and then discussed the relationship between PHP and a Web Server/Browser in order to build a solid foundation before diving right into PHP for the rest of the month. I then covered how to comment PHP code, the debate over using Print or Echo, how to use variables, how to use concatenation with variables and variable naming conventions. Using this introductory material, I was then able to go even deeper and cover topics like using arrays, if/else programming logic, nested IF/ELSE conditional statements, and PHP Loops. Since the topic of loops is already an extensively covered subject, I decided to make my articles sound unique by naming them, “The magic of WHILE Loops“, “The incredible FOR Loop Multi-Tasker“, and “The FOREACH Loop Love Affair with Mr. Array“.

In order to stay informed, I subscribed to many RSS feeds relating to my topic. In so doing I noticed that Digg and Google were two very popular topics. I decided to explore these subjects a bit with articles like, “List of Google Hoaxes“, “Who’s Digging You?“, “Google’s PageRank Explained by Phil Craven“, “Declare Warr on Digg Doondles!“, “I Hacked Google and Stole Their Robot lolol“, and “Are Your Archives Burying You Worse Than Digg“. These articles continue to bring in traffic to this day!

During the month of June I was taking a course on Interface Design so decided to cover similar topics on Web Dev Notes. I began by discussing the advantages of using personas during development and then decided to list nine causes of software error before discussing software quality and the three general principles of quality assurance. I introduced the subject of human/computer interaction and demonstrated how good design can help us better interact with computers. In fact, making the interaction between humans and computers as easy as possible is an important goal of improved user interface design. I also mentioned that building the right product is even more important than building a product right.

It was around mid-June when I also began to notice how well my SEO, blogging and marketing tips posts were doing! I therefore decided to write about the guaranteed way to generate incoming links and conquering the crowded niche! I also wrote about some issues I was having with trying to follow my own advice when I noticed my trackbacks were being kidnapped and asked if it were possible if my bullets were killing them! Not wanting to stray too far from the very roots of web development, I also introduced the Pixel Groovy website, discussed how to created animated favicons and threw in 21 CSS tutorials answering frequently asked questions.

During the month of July I continued to cover a lot of marketing topics. I created a new Top 11 Posts section and asked if people thought linking to other sites increases incoming traffic. I also started to learn a great deal about blogging and realized that my very own archives contained in itself the power to help WebDevNotes succeed. I therefore stopped considering old posts like dirty socks thrown into a laundry bin, and instead began viewing them as cornerstone content that should be linked back to frequently so that new visitors could access my best content easily.

Upon making this realization, I began offering my visitors some blogging advice with the help of Lolcats to make the posts more fun and easy to read. For example:

Don’t let Chihuahua’s hold back your website! Start working with the purrrrfect partners and plot your plan for success. Make sure you plant the seeds for success early and listen to feedback so you can feed your readers a happy meal. Make good use of article directories and other marketing techniques and never forget the secrets to writing a successful blog!

In conclusion, to those who say linking to old content is difficult, I beg to differ! Don’t let those archives go to waste

Drupal, phpBB and Wordpress are among the most popular content management tools used for building active communities. By building a community, you are creating more than a website. You are giving your visitors something to become a part of and a feeling of belonging. By creating a community, you are more likely to see return visitors, comments and increased page views.

A web site is something people search for when they need information. Once they consume the information, they leave. A community is something people join, something people will open their computer to go check up on, something people will contribute too.

If you’d like to learn more about creating a prosperous online community, I recommend checking out, Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. This is a very good book written by Robert Douglass, Mike Little and Jared Smith. Douglass is a developer and member of the security team for the Drupal project. He has plenty of experience with content management systems and knows what he is talking about. Mike Little is one of the Wordpress founders and developers. Wordpress is the software which powers my site here and millions of others around the world! Jared Smith is a support team member of phpBBHacks and has therefore been involved with phpBB for many years and has helped create many mods.

The book has sections on Drupal, phpBB and Wordpress which cover everything from configuration to maintaining your website. If you are looking to get started creating your community, this is a great resource to help get you setup and running quick. It contains all the information you will need to be successful!

If anybody has read any other great books on the topic of content management, please let me know as I would be eager to check them out!

If you plan on doing any serious web development, you will inevitably have to use some form of server-side scripting. PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is one of the options available. ASP.NET and JSP are two other widely used server-side scripting languages.

PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. - www.php.net

If you are just getting started with web development, you may be interested in setting up a content management system. A content management system is a piece of software that you install on your web server which you can then log into to make updates easily to your website. For a full website management system I would recommend the following systems:

• Joomla
• PHP-Nuke

Both of the above systems are available for free and are written in PHP. If you really want to learn PHP, I suggest installing either of the above systems and then customizing them to meet the needs of your website. After you’ve successfully modified some of the code, try creating your own modules. If that seems a little too over-whelming, you may prefer getting started with this introductory tutorial.

Another good place to start if you don’t need a large system like PHP-Nuke or Joomla is with either of the following two systems:

• phpBB
• Wordpress

phpBB is forum system and Wordpress is a blogging system. Again, both are written in PHP, so customizing and editing them is a great way to learn PHP.

In order to use either Joomla, PHP-Nuke, phpBB or Wordpress, you will also need access to a MySQL database. Most web hosting companies will have MySQL databases available for you. You can also download and install PHP & MySQL on your computer for free to test locally.

Here are some more great tutorials which will help you get started:

• PHP & MySQL Tutorial

This blog uses Wordpress, and I like product. What I like better is the Spam guard that comes with it, Akismet. I just checked that crap that someones robot tried to add to this blog. That fact that it has caught so much spam was amazing. I installed a WP blog for a client and it was a breeze. Once registered you get a WP Key to enable the Akismet filter, and its worth it I must say. After glancing at the Spam that was filtered from my blog without any effort from me, I says its worth it.

Yeah, Wordpress!

Arnold

Another great piece of Open Source software. Also with alot of available templates.

Installable in a matter of a few minutes. The developers of Wordpress, Joomla, and all the other Apache/MySQL/PHP open source apps have really got the installation down well. After unpacking the zip and reading the instructions the wordpress blog was up on local host in a matter of a few minutes. I did have to go back and add a database for the package but that was it. I was then off looking for templates and found a treasure trove.

Check it out at wordpress.org, there are some cool built in features as well. The akismet tool to block spam I found has worked well for this blog. That being said, I am sure I will be targeted now.

Anyway, check it out. I love it.

If you do start using Wordpress, I suggest reading this article which explains how to format text in Wordpress!

Arnold