mckayweb.NET

I did a lot more coding on the Wetstein Christmas exchange program today. Anybody on that side of the family, feel free to start posting your lists. It’s listed as a link on the right hand side of the page and here’s another
Wetstein App
I guess this could be called v2.0 after last year and holy geez what an improvement!

This version uses a mysql database instead of flat file storage (geeky people (read Phil) will understand).

It has a built in html editor so you can make your list look fancy, so unlike some weird code screw ups last year however you see it when you type it will be exactly how other people will see it and that’s also how it will appear in people’s email(see below). With full html support, if you link to other sites you can insert pictures of your items next to them (could be useful to get that exact ice cream scoop, or whatever it is you desire).

You can put your email address in and if your person edits their list you will get an update.

The most fun and un-necessary feature I think is posting a pic of yourself next to your name and then that pic can be viewed in a “lightbox” window. Check all the features out and post away.

Eric asked me this in my comments and as I just found out on his page too so I thought I’d post about it, why not.

If you’re running wordpress, or any CMS for that matter that supports comments you need some type of automated system to sort out spam comments. Everybody wants to have the freedom of letting their guests use anonymous comments but when you do that the flood gates are opened to spam comments getting posted.

The default installation of wordpress includes the akismat plugin which will remove these comments for you. Just login to the admin panel and activate it!

Eric was asking how to display the spam counter, it’s just one line of php as a function call. If you want it to show in a post you’ll need to install a plugin for wordpress that allows you to execute php in posts. I use exec-php .

Then just insert the following line:

<?php akismet_counter(); ?>

I recently uploaded a TON of new pics, over 430 approximately.
New gallery albums include (but not limited to) some halloween 07 pics, Zoo 07 trips, a Pere Marquette trip, and the Ozark vacation from this past summer with Jeremy and Laura and DJ and Collin. Here’s a few highlight pics:

I recieved my first spam comment last night. I wasn’t going to mess around with that business so I quickly turned on the akismet plugin that comes pre-installed with wordpress. If you sign up for a free account at wordpress.com (a wordpress blog hosting site, not the wordpress official site) then you get an “API” key that allows you to turn on and use the akismet plugin which is suppose to do a good job filtering out spam, we’ll see how it goes.

Here’s some stats:
Akismat has blocked

It’s late so I’m just going to get to point of this post. Ignore my mention of dreamhost being decent in my first post. I’ve been using wordpress less than 2 weeks and have paid for webhosting for the first time for only a month or so and have already switched. I’m now a hostgator.com fan. So, just so you know if you’re looking for a host, don’t go with dreamhost.com, check out hostgator.com.

The reason I made this switch was speed. This site was taken upwards of 15 seconds to load on dreamhost and dreamhost was flaky even in the short time I used this. This new host has much higher review ratings on review sites and my personal experience so far is that the speed is WAY better. Their panel sucks in comparison but you really only need the panel to make very rare changes. Sooo, yeah, hostgator. woohoo

Well, I’m sure just from the page loading you’ve realized that the site has changed.  I’ve abandoned phpNuke in favor or Wordpress.  Phpnuke was getting too commerical.  I wanted to get a new look so I started looking at replacement themes.  People wanted me to pay for these?  Are they crazy?  I had to sift through junk spam/ad sites just to get to other sites that offered to sell themese to me.  A few sites had free ones but they were few and far between.

So I switched to wordpress…

How does that help my problem? Simple Answer: open source.  Wordpress is 100% open source and licensed using the GPL.  People are writing all kinds of stuff for it all the time!  The photo gallery is semi-integrated with this new site.  The random photos on the sidebar to the right are from it.  You can also jump straight to any album in the gallery directly using the album tree on the sidebar as well.

Another thing different about this site is that it is no longer hosted at good’ol Compunizzle.  My server I had up there started having problems and I felt funny still having it there anyway since I don’t work there anymore.  I signed up for commercial hosting with dreamhost.com  They give me a ton of storage and wide open access to everything I would need.  It’s also reassuring that I have backups of my webiste now.

I’m still a little rough around the edges with the ins and outs of wordpress but I’m getting there.  I hope to have the Christmas List Exhange app re-written inside wordpress here shortly.  Well, I’m done for now.  Enjoy the photo gallery, a ton of new pics will probably be in there before the week is up.