One of the main issues is that cli access via Drush isn’t an option in a shared server hosting environment. And a lot of issues happen because you may need to flush caches without logging in. So here’s the plan of action:

1. Login to site admin.
2. Clear your caches.
3. Use the backup and restore module to create a compressed sql dump of your db. Make sure that tables with the name “cache” aren’t selected for backup.
4. Open the sql backup file and use a text editor to replace all instances of <dev sitename> with <new sitename> and save.
5. Move all your files to the new server (tarball and extract if possible). Ensure that all hidden .htacess files are also moved across.
6. Fix permissions issues: core files should be chmod 644, all writable directories should be set to 777 and their content set to 755.  If any files in these directories are created by the web user and are subject to change via the CMS, ensure these files are chmod 777.
7. Ensure that the temp directory and files directory are writable.
8. Check that your new setup has the correct sitename for it’s multisite folder and that the database details in the settings file is correct for the new host.
9. Restore the database via phpmyadmin / remote sql client etc.
10. Surf to your new domain – it should show the offline page if you set it to offline and your database settings are correct.
11. Go to the admin page (/admin). If that fails, go to /user to login. If you can’t login, there’s probably an issue with your server setup or site config above.
12. Once you’ve logged in as admin, go to /admin/settings/file-system to check if your file and temp upload directories are setup correctly.
13. Check to see if your site is now loading properly.
14. If your images are broken, it could be imagecache – go to your imagecache setup in the admin section and flush all imagecache items.
15. Flush all site caches.
16. I had some issues with css and js_injector modules as well and ended up having to delete the files it generated in the <files> directory and had to recreate all the rules.

That’s all I can think of for now. Hopefully Drupal 7 can sort out some of this somewhat.

The problem with using CURL was that the download is authenticated with your Apple Developer Account details, using session ID’s and cookies, so CURL isn’t going to help much there. I should imagine the fix I found would work for most files downloaded.

The eventual solution was the following:
1. Login to the Apple Account using Firefox.
2. Go to the same download link.
3. Start downloading the file (should go into your Downloads directory by default).
4. Pause the download in Firefox Download Manager.
5. Replace the .part Firefox download file with the extracted Safari file in the .download package.
6. Hit resume in the Firefox Download window.

I thought I’d just summarise it to make it easier:

1. Download the Drupal drush package and put it somewhere in your system. Place it utside of the Drupal installation so that there’s no risk of it being executed from the browser.
2. Download the following packages from the sourceforge GnuWin32 project:
   1. Get the latest wget installer here.
   2. Get the latest bzip2 installer here.
   3. Get the latest tar installer here.
3. Install all of the above gnu packages.
4. Set your environment variables to detect all of the necessary binaries:
   1. Go to Start>Run and type sysdm.cpl to bring up the system properties dialog.
   2. Click on the Environment Variables button.
   3. In the System Variables panel, edit the Path variable value:
      1. <existing path>;<path to php>;<path to gnuwin>;<path to drush>;
      2. If you’re on a 64-bit system, gnuwin be in your Program Files (x86) directory.
      3. You can check that each of the above paths are resolving by typing php/tar/gzip/wget/drush in a dos prompt.
5. Start>run>cmd and navigate to your Drupal installation
6. Type drush for a list of commands. Append your commands with -d for debugging if the commands aren’t working.

Hope that helps somebody.

http://www.myoverseascall.co.za

http://www.bafokengsportscampus.com

1. No youtube advertisements
2. No youtube referral links
3. Open source code

What this means is that you can effectively add video upload and comment functionality to your blog without the youtube branding. You can also set permissions for uploading and commenting.

It comes with API’s for Flash, Flex, PHP, C#, Java etc.

Here’s an example:

The problem was that everything was actually working fine and playing as it should. And in the other two programs, the file meta data was reading fine. So the files weren’t corrupt. I then found this post which helped:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/GettingReadyforWindows7/thread/2af26d67-ea9a-4305-98a1-b4a05e13fa17

After a bit of searching, I found a batch tag editor for multiple audio formats at www.mp3tag.de. Browsing through my music collection showed me that the issue was in fact with the tag type. For some reason, ID3v2.4 tags aren’t properly supported by WMP12. Sorting my collection by tag name in mp3tag allowed me to select all of these files, change some arbitrary field and automatically re-save them in ID3v2.3 format (you can set the format up in the program options).

Problem solved.

1. Get the number the user wants to call
2. Run it against a table with available dialling codes
3. Return a single matching record

You’d normally do this by forward / backward recursing through each character of the test number until you found the longest match and then return that. This would require a server-side loop with a db call on each iteration.

I found a much quicker way of doing this with the following sql query:

select *
from `{table_name}`
where {test_number} like(concat(`{codes_column}`,'%'))
order by `{codes_column}` desc
limit 1

It’s really quick to execute on a large table. Hopefully it comes in handy for someone looking for it.

Face-box is a portable photo booth that’s been touring the country, snapping away at private and corporate functions. It seems to have taken off and people are loving it. It gives users a very slick service, basically allowing you to pose, press the shutter button and collect a large, high quality print 15 seconds later. Fresh on the heels of Markex, the new site has gone up and should meet the needs of clients for the foreseeable future. Visit the site here.

The Brief

The brief was simple: make something that looks good, helps to sell the product and captures the fun of the brand without compromising the value of professionalism inherent in the product. The site needed to be produced on a modest budget, allowing for easy updates without a CMS, and no HTML knowledge necessary. The site is both a new business tool as well as a place for people to view their snapshots from the event.

The Solution

The approach to the site combined a fun visual style with a flexible, easily configurable back-end. The application logic allows for a lot of flexibility from a maintenance and user point of view, considering no database or CMS was used. The site quickly communicates product intrinsics and benefits up front, allowing the user to find out more or take a look at the latest galleries immediately.

The gallery index offers predictive search functionality, allowing users to access any gallery within a maximum of two clicks on the site. The individual gallery page thumbnail system uses a table-less row structure, which allows for less code and very little configuration on the update side. Just drop the client’s images and logo in a new folder, give the gallery a name, decide how many thumbnails per page and it figures out the rest. A modal dialog for image zooming allows for faster loading and browsing of images (page reloads were a weakness of the old site). The custom LightBox script includes AJAX send-to-friend functionality and smart navigation buttons.

From a structural point of view, a div-based layout was implemented, with SIFR header tags. This allows for the preservation of content structure for SEO and acessibility purposes, while still looking great on the front end. The site relies heavily on jQuery core and plugins for cross-browser interactivity. This saved a LOT of time on the dev lifecycle. And, yes, it does work in IE6:)

At a glance:

Home page

1. User can quickly come to grips with what the product does. Flash slideshow quickly conveys how much fun people have in the box.
2. Floating front layer with dynamically resizing back shadow and filmstrip
3. Latest galleries quickly accessible from the home page

Gallery index page

4. Dropdown of active galleries listed chronologically. Administrator can easily hide galleries from public viewing and allow private viewing.
5. Predictive search functionality

Individual gallery

6. SIFR text allows for custom fonts without losing page structure. Gracefully degrades without Javascript.
7. Table-less thumbnails allow images to shuffle and fit according to width. Number of thumbs displayed can be changed by user or preset by administrator.

Full size image popup

8. AJAX send to friend mail form
9. Skinned interface with smart back / forward buttons

Watching the news the other night, the headline article revolved around Pioneer Foods and the bread price-fixing scandal. I thought all the demons had already been vanquished on this one, but clearly Sasko Sam was still hiding behind a particularly hardy bush. Yesterday, Pioneer vehemently dismisses the accusations, today they aren’t so adamant.

It’s a particularly emotional issue, mainly because such a large percentage of our people live on the bread line. Literally. And because there have been such abuses in the past. I agree in principal that it’s a heinous pre-meditated act. I’m not sure if I trust the motives of the competition commission entirely (you can make any cause sound like a righteous crusade when there’s big fines, dollar signs and the sans-culottes are restless).

The news crew then switched to a story in Gugulethu. It seems that some consumers were dissatisfied because the price of bread was too high. Luckily, this had nothing to do with Pioneer Foods. The problem was that certain spaza shops were ripping the people off. So consumers exercised their economic rights and shopped at cheaper stores, which just so happened to be owned by Somali nationals.  As a result of the loss of revenue, a cease-and-desist letter was issued to the Somali shop owners by the local ones and the two parties agreed that the Somalis would fix higher prices. I’m sure that pleased both resellers, but what about the man on the street?

At what point is interference in a free market justified? How do you rationalise certain tactics that benefit a few interested parties at one level and not another level? At the end of the day, if the consumer has to pay more, surely neither is right? I just don’t know if everybody sees it that way though. It stands to reason that those who cry the most about freedom being violated stand to gain the most from freedom being granted. The question is: “freedom for whom?”