The Ultimate Website Help/Development Thread

[LoveTractor]

After looking for "the best" book to learn web page development a few months ago, this book came highly recommended:
Amazon.com: HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide): Elizabeth Castro: Books

I bought it, but haven't delved into it much. Nate, good buy...besides basic hands-on experience? From what I gathered, it is a fantastic primer. Would love to hear your thoughts.

[NaterGator]

Books are a handy resource because they'll take you from A-Z and they are well thought out. What doesn't work well is mixing two books with different methodologies, because you'll start to skip to different topics and think you know a bunch about the language, but you'll gloss over key details that make life so much easier.

I've owned two programming books in my life; I bought an O'Reilly php & mysql book back in 2000. Read most of it on a road trip while programming on a laptop with local AMP install. I also owned a c++ book with some assembly background, but I skimmed it and decided to just dive into c++ rather than read the book (didn't help that it was over 1400 pages)


I would go and thumb through the book at your local bookstore before you buy it. I've seen some really creatively laid out books that look like they'd be fantastic to learn from. I bought my boss in NC a PHP/MySQL book that I actually wanted to read just because the authors were so funny. He hasn't read much of it though (good for me, that's job security )

The most important things to learn are XHTML, CSS, javascript + XML = AJAX [those three are what you use on the client side], php/ruby[my brother is banking big time on the ruby revolution going on right now]/asp/etc, mysql, and optionally server configuration.

If you can get a handle of all of those, you can develop almost anything you can dream up. It helps that learning one of the server side languages will teach you the fundamentals needed for most programming.

[grrlscout89FJ62]

Originally Posted by nat

Actually my website problems are easy..............how should I create a cool website to put my photography on?

I suck

There are many ready to roll photo gallery options out there,

Lightbox is a popular option:
Lightbox 2

You have to consider if / how you want to protect your images / whether you plan on selling them, etc etc. Really, if you put them on the web, there is no absolute way to stop a determined person from downloading them.

But you can make sure they aren't print quality, and have your name watermarked on them, so you at least credit, and a lot of times, ppl downloading and circulating your images on the web can drive up sales.

[grrlscout89FJ62]

Originally Posted by Stumper

Not sure who on here would be the best to ask, but we are looking for a complete revamp of our site. Need some good help, and we are definitely willing to pay. I need something that we can adjust and alter/update as needed ourselves. I just dont have the HTML skills to build up the front end, nor the time to do it. Handling the back end data, checkout, database stuff I can do.
Any leads or help would be appreciated. Looking to get it done quick....as in now. Let me know if any of you can help us out.

Thanks,

Russell

I'd like to help, but I'm kinda booked right now, so I don't think I could provide the kind of turnaround time you're looking for.

[grrlscout89FJ62]

Originally Posted by NaterGator

Did you in fact install it? Filter them with the word login and see if it comes up. If not you may want to upgrade each part of the jfusion modules/plugins to the newest versions since installing just the login module from the new version may be risky.

OK I downloaded just that module, and tried to install it, but I got the following error:

Module Install: Another module is already using directory: "/home/content/p/a/g/pageweb77/html/joomla/modules/mod_jfusionlogin"



This is the description for it:

"This is the optional JFusion login module. The only difference between this module and the standard Joomla module, is the forgot password and register URL links."

[NaterGator]

Originally Posted by grrlscout89FJ62

OK I downloaded just that module, and tried to install it, but I got the following error:

Module Install: Another module is already using directory: "/home/content/p/a/g/pageweb77/html/joomla/modules/mod_jfusionlogin"



This is the description for it:

"This is the optional JFusion login module. The only difference between this module and the standard Joomla module, is the forgot password and register URL links."

That is weird. I see no harm in using the Joomla module then; the less JFusion stuff used the better

[NaterGator]

Here's something new for mud members:

Once again if you are using Firefox, go and get the greasemonkey extension (google it, it's the #1 result) and once you have it installed click here:
http://www.nate-online.com/youtube_parser.user.js

This will install a script which will automatically find links that point to youtube videos as you browse threads on 'MUD and it will cleanly embed them in place of the link (it will also lookup the title [yes, even 18+ titles]) in a little table. It will also warn you if it finds more than 10 youtube videos in the thread and give you the option to only load the first 10 or let you load them all.

The end result is that you don't have to click away from 'Mud to check out youtube videos, even if the other person didn't use/doesn't know how to use the [youtube] tags.

Enjoy


Edit: I thought an example would be nice. When viewing this post, here is a side-by-side comparison with/without the script. (coming right after I GIMP the pictures together )

YouTube - Top Gear: Killing a Toyota Part 1

Edit2: here ya go

[grrlscout89FJ62]

Originally Posted by NaterGator

That is weird. I see no harm in using the Joomla module then; the less JFusion stuff used the better

Seems to be working now, but not like it's supposed to.

It's supposed to automatically pull in users as they register for the message boards. As it is, I have to regularly go in and sync them.

Kind of a pain, but I guess it'll do until I find a better solution.

BTW nate, you are now a SuperAdmin on my Joomla

[grrlscout89FJ62]

ok NOW I have a major problem on the site.

If you try to select anything from the User Menu (you have to be logged in to see it), you get a blank page with this error:

No input file specified.

[NaterGator]

/me looks

[NaterGator]

Originally Posted by grrlscout89FJ62

BTW nate, you are now a SuperAdmin on my Joomla

Thanks, that would be highly useful... if JFusion hadn't blocked my ability to login
I get:

* Could not create a new user because of an email conflict with userid:67 plugin_username:natergator email:[my email addy]
* Username and password do not match

Which I've had on my test-bed before and fixed with some manual fudging in the database.

Is it possible for you to just make a new joomla user that is an Admin and pm me the info?

I'm pretty sure the problem is something with your apache setup; it's definitely caused by the SEO options in global configurations, but it should work on a properly setup server.

Is this server hosted on a shared box?

[grrlscout89FJ62]

Originally Posted by NaterGator

Is it possible for you to just make a new joomla user that is an Admin and pm me the info?

I'm pretty sure the problem is something with your apache setup; it's definitely caused by the SEO options in global configurations, but it should work on a properly setup server.

Is this server hosted on a shared box?

Is it OK if I delete your acct and set it up anew? I find they link just fine if I create the acct on the forum, and then import the info into Joomla.

Yes it's shared. It's on GoDaddy.

[NaterGator]

Whatever it takes

[grrlscout89FJ62]

Originally Posted by NaterGator

Whatever it takes

OK try it now!

[NaterGator]

Ok, you need to rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess and I'm pretty sure it will work.

Your host seems to have a funky setup for their cgi

[grrlscout89FJ62]

Originally Posted by NaterGator

Ok, you need to rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess and I'm pretty sure it will work.

404ed

Do you also get this?

Warning: Missing argument 4 for createforumcookie() in /home/content/p/a/g/pageweb77/html/joomla/administrator/components/com_jfusion/plugins/smf/admin_forum.php on line 122

[NaterGator]

Originally Posted by grrlscout89FJ62

404ed

Do you also get this?

Warning: Missing argument 4 for createforumcookie() in /home/content/p/a/g/pageweb77/html/joomla/administrator/components/com_jfusion/plugins/smf/admin_forum.php on line 122

That's cause you've gotta FTP or SSH in and rename the file "htaccess.txt" (see here: http://www.cactus4wheelers.com/joomla/htaccess.txt) to ".htaccess"

I didn't get the warning about cookies either

[grrlscout89FJ62]

Originally Posted by NaterGator

That's cause you've gotta FTP or SSH in and rename the file "htaccess.txt" (see here: http://www.cactus4wheelers.com/joomla/htaccess.txt) to ".htaccess"

I did.

I just looked on the server side and it is .htaccess

it did something, cuz before I got "No input file selected" and now I get "page not found"

[NaterGator]

Clear your cache? It's working for me now

[grrlscout89FJ62]

works for me too! Thanks again Nate - you rock!!

[Tapage]

Originally Posted by NaterGator

What do those emails say specifically?

vBulletin Database Error.

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.8:

Invalid SQL:

SELECT text, languageid, special
FROM phrase AS phrase
LEFT JOIN phrasetype USING (fieldname)
WHERE phrase.fieldname = 'error'
AND varname = 'invalidid' AND languageid IN (-1, 0, 1);

MySQL Error : MySQL server has gone away
Error Number : 2006
Date : Saturday, April 26th 2008 @ 10:27:55 PM
Script :
http://www.4x4panama.com/foro/forumd...une=-1&f=37&s=
Referrer :
IP Address : 66.XXX.XX.XXX
Username : Unregistered
Classname : vB_Database

[NaterGator]

Bump in case anyone else needs anything now that I'm back from Philadelphia.