When Updating Forum Theme Templates

Don’t forget that most of the existing forum engines (phpBB and vBulletin are the ones I use) have some form of internal caching for all the templates. This means that you need to refresh the cache after making any changes.

I’ve just spent a good few minutes trying to figure out why most recent changes to one of my forums never applied, and it seems that although I’ve changed the template files, there was a step with cache refreshes which had to be taken before any change is visible to forum users.

This is a really basic piece of advise, but since it’s not the first time I forget to check for internal caching, I thought I’d share it and save you some time in the future.

Review Your Blog’s Plugins Regularly

I’ve just resolved an issue with this blog which prevented me from posting for the past week or so. It took me so long because I’ve been trying all sorts of things: JavaScript debugging (thanks, Firebug!), Unix-host permissions, webserver logs analysis… Eventually it all boiled down to disabling a really old plugin which hadn’t been updated for ages.

Lesson learned: review your blog’s plugins regularly, and don’t hesitate to disable or even delete the ones you no longer use! With the recent WordPress versions, maintaining most of the plugins is really easy.

Get A Website with Professional Design for Just $350!

An online friend of mine, Dawud Miracle, is currently running a great promotion on his new Website Habitat website: for just $350 you can get a fully functional and professionally customized website or blog!

Your chance to get a great looking blog

I wish I could post about it earlier, but there’s been something wrong with my blog and there really was no time to fix it. So here it is – I’m sharing great news with you, but time is running out very quickly for this incredible offer.

Dawud had been working with small businesses for the past 10 years or so. This allowed him to perfect the design of a blog up to such a level that he can get you amazing results in just a few days. His services usually cost more than $1000 for a typical website, but since Dawud has got a few reasons for celebration, he’s doing this special until Sunday afternoon.

Please head over to The Website Habitat site to read all the details of the complete website for $350 offer, but here are just a few things which you should definitely know:

  • there really are no hidden fees, $350 is all you’ll need to get a fully working copy of your future website
  • everything can be customized, and things like logos and photos will be integrated at no extra charge
  • there’s quite a few base designs to start with, all fully customizable to suit your needs, and matched to your color palette if you have one in mind
  • unless many others on the current marked, Dawud is always reachable and welcomes a chance to help you with your new website – no question is too simple or too technical for him – just ask him and you’ll be surprised with the professionalism of the support
  • Professionally made websites don’t get much cheaper that this!

    There’s a short audio for you explaining much more, but I were you I’d just on this offer right now – $350 is an amazing offer and there’s less than 18 hours left to avail of this deal. If you haven’t done it yet due to prohibitive cost, here’s your chance: get yourself a professionally looking website now!

WordPress 2.8.1 brings stability and security

I really like the way first releases of WordPress 2.8 come out! The most recent update, WordPress 2.8.1 posted a few hours ago, brings some great improvements which make your blogs more stable and much more secure.

[Read more…]

Interesting Reads – Sep 21st, 2008

Here are the articles I found interesteding this week, leave a comment with a link if you have something interesting to share:

WordPress Logos and Buttons

WordPress

WordPress

Gone are the days of manually clipping the WordPress logo from the official website! Last week I’ve discovered a wonderful page with all the official WordPress logos and buttons offered in PDF (with vector graphics) and PNG versions of everything.

There’s a set of WordPress wallpapers and a neat table with current colors used by WordPress engine.

Like WordPress? Find out more:

Upgrade to WordPress 2.6.2!

Looks like WordPress 2.6.2 with a few fixes is out, so I’ve just upgraded all my blogs to this new milestone.

For all the details, read the official WordPress 2.6.2 announcement or glance through the list of bugs fixed in 2.6.2 release.

See also:

Follow me on Twitter!

It was bound to happen: I’ve joined Twitter! It would be great to hear from you there!

Follow me or leave your Twitter name in comments below so that I can follow you:

http://twitter.com/PerfectBlogger

Google Chrome Browser: Two Years in Making, Available Now

Looks like Google has taken one more shortcut to providing best service to its fans: as of yesterday, Google’s very own Internet browser codenamed Google Chrome, is available for download.

What is Google Chrome?

My first impression is that Google Chrome is a slick ultra-light browser with minimalistic yet intuitive interface and a minimal set of settings. There’s no fixed status bar, there’s no main menu, there’s just the address bar (called Omnibox because it also combines a search bar).

The tabbing works very smoothly, and overall you kind of feel there’s something missing simply because there’s only the page content and a very subtle set of controls. You get used to such a simplicity very quickly, though.

Here’s how Google Chrome looks:

Google Chrome

Performance of Google Chrome vs Firefox

I haven’t noticed much of a performance boost yet, but maybe it’s just because I need to play with this new browser a bit more. All the pages load quickly, but I’ve yet to see the ones which load much better than in my Firefox. ZDnet did some testing already and it shows that Google Chrome is quite fast.

What’s really cool is the really simple interface and intuitive searching – as you type a URL, Omnibox tries to guess what website you’re trying to get to. Works like a charm for many well known websites!

One of the main reasons Google came up with its own browser is performance of Google services and apps in modern browsers. Firefox is not ideal, although with a bit of tweaking you can get it to work pretty fast. Is it very likely that Google Chrome, being a highly specialized product, will be the best for GMail, Google Calendar and other services – but it may take some getting used to. Google also claims Chrome will be better for most websites, so it does seem like the optimizations will have a generic nature rather than a Google-specific services customization – I think it’s great news.

That’s it! Have a look at the browser itself, I think it’s a great move for Google, but would hate to see it as a direct competition to my favourite Firefox. I think the fact that these two products both called web browsers still doesn’t make a fair apples-to-apples comparison because Firefox has got quite a history and is much more universal as it is. I’m a long way from changing my preference for Firefox to any other browser, but must admit that Google Chrome seems to have done quite a neat and easy to use browser – time will show what Google will make of it.

See also:

Perfect Blogger Redesign 2008

After the last round of reviewing my online projects, I’ve decided to change not only focus but WordPress theme for PerfectBlogger.

As of today, this website will have Brian Gardner‘s Vertigo theme. My main reason for changing the look of Perfect Blogger is to declutter the pages of this blog, so have a look and let me know!