I’m working on a web page thumbnail generator and a new blog post (a good one this time) about web page thumbnail generation. A topic for another day; however, when making the preloader for it…I don’t like the flash preloaders that you see every where, and I thought giving progress back wouldn’t be worth it because how am I going to know how to calculate the percentage done. You know how it says 60%, 70%, 80% percent in normal preloaders? Well, in this situation it wouldn’t be accurate to do something like that because I’m doing a whole bunch of different calculations, etc.

So what did I do? I thought, “Hey, why not just use an animated gif, like what I see on ajaxload.info?” I get back to coding and I load in my gif right? Wrong.

CONTINUE READING

Drupal is ideally equipped to be used as a base system for creating a custom social networking site like Facebook and MySpace. While these large social networks have their place, niche social networking web sites can help promote businesses, products, projects, and hobbies of any nature.

This book provides careful instructions and clear explanations to take you through the setup and management of your social network site, covering topics from users to marketing to maintenance. It will help you create your own social networking site, suitable for whatever audience you decide!

This book will take you from the very basics of both Drupal and Social Networking right through to more complicated aspects, like creating your own custom design and features for the site. With no experience of Drupal required, the book will introduce you to this award-winning CMS and carefully take you through the steps to create a social networking site from it. As the book progresses, you will learn how to add to and expand your social networking site, adding more features and adding value for your users, and how to make your users feel part of the community. Social networking web sites rely on their users contributing to the site, and this book helps you structure a site in a way users can easily and enjoyable contribute to the site – creating a powerful social network.

CONTINUE READING

The quickest way to get up and running with a social networking or dating site with video, chat, photos, blogs and more is by using a great piece of software called Dolphin 7 from BoonEx.

No need to click a save button anymore with this jQuery plugin: jQuery Autosave. Seriously, this is something I’ve been wanting and never had the time to develop. Thankfully, these guys/girls created what I’ve been wanting. In this article I’m going to let you know some of the features this plugin offers, how to use it, link you to a demo, and thank you for taking the time out to read what I have to say!

Features

CONTINUE READING

I just started my first Meetup at meetup.com called “Richmond’s Open Source Meetup Group.”

My goal is to help people learn about the new up and coming Open Source Technologies, along with re-introducing some of the heavy hitters in the Open Source Community.

Enjoy!

Richmond’s Open Source Meetup Group
http://www.meetup.com/richmond-open-source/

I installed yet another install of phpMyAdmin, and every time I forget how to configure it to force SSL. All phpMyAdmin installs should do this (use SSL). You never want to login without SSL unless you’re on a secured network.

2 ways to force SSL with phpMyAdmin

1) Using Apache .htaccess (this can also be put in the httpd.conf if you don’t use .htaccess files):

Note: I don’t like this way but I this is a way some people do it.

2) Using phpMyAdmin’s config.inc.php file:

CONTINUE READING

I just came across this article on the web about the different ways to make Ajax calls with jQuery. A very good article and something you should check out. It’s very easy to read so you can be new to jQuery or a veteran like myself.

Check it out:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/5-ways-to-make-ajax-calls-with-jquery/

CONTINUE READING

This is amazing. Somebody finally put this together:

http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/15-php-regular-expressions-for-web-developers

Bookmark it because you’re going to need it if you’re a web developer. It’s helped me. Well, it hasn’t yet but I’m sure it will. And that’s also why I’m blogging about it. I want to remember it and I want it somewhere I’ll be sure to find it.