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Top commentators

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 11:57:51 +0000

If you are one of the fastest typing commentators on this web site, you may find yourself interested in the newest little widget on Roumazeilles.net. The most prolific commentators are now highlighted on each and every page (in the side bars).

If you have correctly filled your web site affiliation, this will count as a link back to your own web site too.

But don’t even think about spamming. Akismet and me are actively removing anything looking remotely like a spam comment.

Congratulations for Jeff’s participation.

Search terms

Yves Roumazeilles — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:11:56 +0000

Looking into the search terms used by people on the Roumazeilles.net, I had some fun recently. Let’s quickly browse some of the most representative surprising ones:

chasseur francais poussiere reflex (in English: French hunter SLR dust): I did not have in mind that we had so many readers interested in photo hunting in the most basic technological meaning: hunting the dust on the SLR sensor;
nero burner 8 dovnlod free: I am surprised this reached any target with such a typo;
appareil photo nicon 8 mega: Some people are unsure about the name of famous photo brands (Nikon or Nicon?)
microsoft office for mac for free illegal: This one really is looking for the illegal version of MS-Word. Not even thinking a minute about getting it free legally
w.w.w.roumazeilles.net.: so many dots!
rechercher thepiratebay.org (in English: Search for thepiratebay.org): This guy is looking for one great web site. He has the exact address and is directed onto my web site. I would advise him never to press the “I’m feeling lucky!” button of Google search…

Nobody reads my blog…

Yves Roumazeilles — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:36:14 +0000

Thank you, Xtian.

Ideas for a better web site

Yves Roumazeilles — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:41:23 +0000

If you want to build a web site, or a better web site, I am starting a series of short small ideas about how to improve a web site or a blog with small tasks. One idea, one improvement per week. This is in the “easy idea” category of my other web site: Y Want Visits.

This is time to start your own blog in order to earn some revenue protecting you against the current recession.

PHP changes

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:26:01 +0000

This is what I told myself when uncovering a little PHP code fragment that stopped working on one of my web sites. So, this is a reminder for those of you inattentive programmers like me: $DOCUMENT_ROOT = $HTTP_SERVER_VARS['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; is deprecated and works no longer. You must now use the newest form: $DOCUMENT_ROOT = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];.

Be warned.

Be a beta-tester

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:15:48 +0000

If you have the heart of an adventurer, you may be interested to know that Ijust put in beta-test some new websites that I am working on.

YLovePhoto.com (site specializing in digital photography)
YLoveBigCats.com (about felines and other big cats)
YLoveIllusions.com (optical illusions)
YWantVisits.com (SEO, traffic optimisation and web site revenue maximization)

Your opinion will be welcome, but -remember- this is beta-test. So, it is full of bugs, problems, issues and don’t come back and complain if your significant other dumps you because of it.

Note: Most (if not all) of the photo-related news here will be applied to YLovePhoto.com as soon as I feel free with this new web site.

Good and bad things about WordPress 2.6

Yves Roumazeilles — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:27:31 +0000

I migrated this web site to the latest version of WordPress (version 2.6). Since this is a significant jump from the old v2.3.3 that I was still using (because it was stable and without known bugs), I feel that it could be interesting to summarize the observations I made during this migration.

Good

Somehow, the performance is the same, but the administration panel has been improved with a logic more task-oriented (important and common things are more immediately accessible).

Bad

Unfortunately, in the administration panel, I lost most of the direct visibility onto the posts scheduled in the future (I prepare a lot of articles in advance to free myself from the tyrany of web site updates).
The “Write Post” page is organised differently, but I lack the flexibility of re-organisation that was in version 2.3 (dragging the elements where I wanted them to be). But, maybe it’s because I still don’t know how to do it… Apparently, people think it was a regression in v2.5.x, but what the heck? It was working fine before.

Conclusion

I have no difficulty working with WordPress 2.6 now. Even if a few things keep annoying me and I feel that it was not all change-for-the-best, I would easily recommend it (even the newest v2.6.1).

WordPress 2.6 and images

Yves Roumazeilles — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:16:18 +0000

Minor information about using WordPress v2.6 (the latest revison of this great blog/web-site-wrinting tool).

I had a few difficulties to ensure that images where correctly aligned and displayed after the improvements in their presentation in WP2.6. For those really interested, I ended up adding the following to my CSS file:

/*************************************/
/* Align code for WP2.6 compatiblity */
/*************************************/
.aligncenter, div.aligncenter {
display: block;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}
.alignleft {
float: left;
}
.alignright {
float: right;
}
.wp-caption {
border: 1px solid #ddd;
text-align: center;
background-color: #f3f3f3;
padding-top: 4px;
margin: 10px;
/* optional rounded corners for browsers that support it */
-moz-border-radius: 3px;
-khtml-border-radius: 3px;
-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
border-radius: 3px;
}
.wp-caption img {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0 none;
}
.wp-caption p.wp-caption-text {
font-size: 11px;
line-height: 17px;
padding: 0 4px 5px;
margin: 0;
}

Thanks to the support of the WordPress.org forum.

Disable hotlinking

Yves Roumazeilles — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:51:32 +0000

When you have a web site, it becomes quite common that some people feel so easy to just borrow your images that they do not even take the time to make a copy on their own web site. Not only do they use your artwork, but they also use the bandwidth you paid for.

Normally, there is a solution. You can modify slightly your website to ensure that if this happens, the image served is not the original one, but a modified one (either a big red X, or a message to the reader). But it is a little difficult to do by hand. A wbe site tool comes handy for this: HTMLbasix – Htaccess Disable Hotlinking Code Generator.

Daily inspiration with WordPress

Yves Roumazeilles — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:23:49 +0000

Some people have been telling me: “You blog! That must take a lot of time and you must be there each and every day”.

Don’t worry, I may post something on Roumazeilles.net every day, but it does not mean that I am in front of the keyboard every day. Far from it. I am using one small advantage of WordPress (the software package supporting my web site). I can write posts and schedule them for future publication.

That way, I have no limit to my inspiration. For example, I have currently scheduled weekly posts about optical illusions for the coming 6 months, a full week of feline-related news (daily posts next week), a full week of daily videos titled “when XXXXX get bored” in a couple of months.

User rights in WordPress 2.3

Yves Roumazeilles — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:13:24 +0000

Pour ceux qui souhaitent le savoir, chaque utilisateur sur le site Rouamzeilles.net peut avoir des droits différents selon le rôle qui lui est attribué (par mes soins). Les droits attachés ne sont pas toujours évidents, même pour un habitué de WordPress. C’est pourquoi j’ai produit le tableau ci-dessous pour expliquer.

Cliquer sur le tableau pour le voir en plus grand.

It’s time for the 2008 awards

Yves Roumazeilles — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:57:34 +0000

I wanted to thank 2007 readers and visitors, so here are the 2008 Roumazeilles.net awards:

Best Guest Post Thanks to xo-fashi0n-x0 for her post of “La Cigarette“. A welcome poetic distraction from the routine of this web site.

Best Commenter This one was easy since ted is a persistent commenter with interesting insight and providing detailed information and feedback (both for the author and the readers). By the way, his web site is quite interesting too.

Best Linker Delphine Dumont, while staying attentive to what is happening on my web site, has been providing some significant and meaningful links and trackbacks. And all french-reading people should try and stop to read her blog.

Thanks to all readers, linkers and posters who made it possible. 2008 is certainly going to be even better and this will be reflected in the 2009 Roumazeilles.net awards.

Upgrade to WordPress 2.3.2

Yves Roumazeilles — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:00:28 +0000

As you may have noticed (because of the unusually long time it took me to do the upgrade), I upgraded Roumazeilles.net to the newest version of WordPress 2.3.2.

You should see no significant impact (except some security improvements and in the administration part, if you want to propose an article). But if there is something, feel free to tell me.

bbPress installation

Yves Roumazeilles — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 19:25:26 +0000

While installing the new forums software on Roumazeilles.net (bbPress) [it was only an evaluation that will not be followed immediately by a full implementation], I noted a few of the details I needed to do in order to reach a conveniently installed package. Since bbPress is only lightly documented, it may be helpful for other.

Aim

The first objective was to install two sets of forums (in French and in English, as for the news blogs) in their respective URLs.

The locations have an influence on the rest since I still wanted to have a good integration with the wordpress blogs. You are expected to install the forums inside the blog.

So, here is how I did it.

Configuration

The main issue is to install the software on the web site in the right location. The package is prepared to be downloaded into a bbpress sub-directory inside the wordpress directory, so I had to change the directory name just after decompression (And I did it twice: Once for each language).

The config.php file is set according to the following:

php
// ** MySQL settings ** //
define(‘BBDB_NAME’, ‘roumazeilles’); // The name of the database
define(‘BBDB_USER’, ‘*********’); // Your MySQL username
define(‘BBDB_PASSWORD’, ‘**********’); // …and password
define(‘BBDB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value
// Change the prefix if you want to have multiple forums in a single database.
$bb_table_prefix = ‘enbb_’; // Only letters, numbers and underscores please!
// If your bbPress URL is http://bbpress.example.com/forums/ , the examples would be correct.
// Adjust the domain and path to suit your actual URL.
// Just the domain name; no directories or path. There should be no trailing slash here.
$bb->domain = ‘http://www.roumazeilles.net’; // Example: ‘http://bbpress.example.com’
// There should be both a leading and trailing slash here. ‘/’ is fine if the site is in root.
$bb->path = ‘/news/en/wordpress/forum/’; // Example: ‘/forums/’
// What are you going to call me?
$bb->name = ‘Roumazeilles.net – English forums’;
// This must be set before running the install script.
$bb->admin_email = ‘wp_en_@roumazeilles.net’;
// Set to true if you want pretty permalinks.
$bb->mod_rewrite = true;
// The number of topics that show on each page.
$bb->page_topics = 30;
// A user can edit a post for this many minutes after submitting.
$bb->edit_lock = 60;
// Your timezone offset. Example: -7 for Pacific Daylight Time.
$bb->gmt_offset = 0;
// Change this to localize bbPress. A corresponding MO file for the
// chosen language must be installed to bb-includes/languages.
// For example, install de.mo to bb-includes/languages and set BBLANG to ‘de’
// to enable German language support.
define(‘BBLANG’, ”);
// Your Akismet Key. You do not need a key to run bbPress, but if you want to take advantage
// of Akismet’s powerful spam blocking, you’ll need one. You can get an Akismet key at
// http://wordpress.com/api-keys/
$bb->akismet_key = ‘1234567890′; // Example: ‘1234567890′
// The rest is only useful if you are integrating bbPress with WordPress.
// If you’re not, just leave the rest as it is.
$bb->wp_table_prefix = ‘en_’; // WordPress table prefix. Example: ‘wp_’;
$bb->wp_home = ‘http://www.roumazeilles.net/news/en/wordpress’; // WordPress – Options->General: Blog address (URL) // No trailing slash. Example: ‘http://example.com’
$bb->wp_siteurl = ‘http://www.roumazeilles.net/news/en/wordpress’; // WordPress – Options->General: WordPress address (URL) // No trailing slash. Example: ‘http://example.com’
/* Stop editing */
if ( !defined(‘BBPATH’) )
define(‘BBPATH’, dirname(__FILE__) . ‘/’ );
require_once( BBPATH . ‘bb-settings.php’ );
?>

In order to get a more direct access to the forums I also corrected slightly the web site .htaccess file to add the following redirecting lines that lead to more user-friendly addresses used here.

redirect 301 /forum/en http://www.roumazeilles.net/news/en/wordpress/forum/
redirect 301 /forum/fr http://www.roumazeilles.net/news/fr/wordpress/forum/

Additional steps

Directory access rights

I also directly had to modify the directory access rights on the web server.

chmod 644 ./forum/ (this may not be critical)
mkdir ./forum/bb-cache/
chmod 644 ./forum/bb-cache/ (this is needed to update the site-management options)

Theme

bbPress is using themes very similar to WordPress. This is helpful to reduce the amount of work involved in preparing the forums for a nicer presentation when you already have a WordPress theme.

However, it is clearly painful to create the many files expected by bbPress (I hope that this will be simplified in the future). Anyway, thanks to DreamWeaver 3.x and its very good support of HTML templates, thanks to the organization of my pages with a significant part located in the CSS file, it has been relatively easy to do this task. But it still is too much pain for a good software package. At least, if you don’t do anything, the Kakumei theme is used by default ensuring that your forums are displayed conveniently.

Internationalization

Now, since my web site is set both in English and in French, there is no reason for the forums to be set differently. The installation in English is standard, but the French bit is a little different. You need to update a separate file (named bbpress.pot) that will provide all of the needed text transalations.

I installed one in the language directory. That’s all. It’s unofficial translation, but that’s good for me.

Last comments

In the end, after a rather long testing phase on a hidden web site, I have been able to set the forums up rather easily (it could be better, but bbPress is still in development stages, so the issues were understandable -and they were not overwhelming). The documentation is very terse, but the community is active and supportive.

One thing I had difficulties with is that bbPress does a heavy use of page caching. When changing something in the configuration, you have to remember to reload from the site (not from the cache) or you get the feeling that nothing is ever happenning whatever your moves. Annoying if understandable for performance reasons.

More than 1.4 millions pages seen in 2007

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:38:30 +0000

Thanks to all visitors! This year 2007 saw a near-doubling of the number of visits and the start of new article categories. Arguably, you were pleased, but we’ll try to make it even better. I start immediately.

Happy new year 2008.

Dollar going low, blogger earning less

Yves Roumazeilles — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 09:23:42 +0000

As the US dollar drops in Stock Markets, there are some unexpected victims. As many other companies whose customers pay in US dollars, many bloggers using advertising services are being paid in US dollars (or in Euros converted from US dollars). While the green bill currency was dropping through the floor, bloggers earnings dropped too because unit prices of ads did not climb as fast.

Some are said to have lost 20% compared to last year.

Rich fonts for your web site

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:49:15 +0000

The design of a web site is notoriously opposed to the use of rich and varied fonts: You are strongly invited to stick to the small list of common fonts. Unfortunately, this is not always enough. If you already started exploring alternatives like text-in-GIF-images, have a look at this hackzine article: HOWTO – Use rich fonts in your web design.

Weird: All our error pages

Yves Roumazeilles — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:03:43 +0000

When you follow a broken link in this web site, you will fall onto an error page. Of course, this does not happen very often (Ed.: I hope so!); I decided to give you a direct list of the error pages to answer to the standard erorr code 404 page not found.

Spell-checking with Opera

Yves Roumazeilles — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:26:01 +0000

I am in love with the Opera web browser. I use it for 99% of my web browsing, so it is also the tool I use when writing posts for the roumazeilles.net web site. The only thing that I did not have right out-of-the-box after download was the ability of checking my spelling (and several people noticed a few typos in my posts along with some of my bad English).

So I decided to add a spell checker to Opera (a plug-in to limit the risks of my own typos). I found a pretty simple one: Aspell for Windows that Opera will automatically recognize when it is installed. It has dictionaries for many languages (it is easy to create one from a mere word list in your own language if you need to). It supports several languages at the same time.

The only drawback is that it is not working in real-time, but you have to call it from a right-click on the mouse into the post box. I would have preferred an active underlining of wrongly-spelled words (like in Word or OpenOffice-Write).

May be you know a better one that you would like to share…

Note for new bloggers: Even if I have been waiting long for this, typos in your posts just pushes forward a bad image for your own web site. Go and correct this now.

Source: http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/opera/spell check/.

Fifty ways to track website traffic

Yves Roumazeilles — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:31:10 +0000

You have a web site, you want to see its traffic growth (it appears that this is the number one way web site creators spend their time: They track each and every little traffic change with stat tools). I offer you here a frighteningly long list of ways to satisfy your worst statistical perversions.

Fifty ways to track website traffic