Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Link Checkers
One of the most common problems with websites is broken links. It seems like no matter how careful a designer is building a website, there’s going to be a few broken links. While Dreamweaver has a built-in link checker, I also like having other options available.
The W3C provides a completely free link checker tool that checks your website for broken links. All you need to do is type in the web address and click Check. The options can be left as they are.
Other free web based link checkers I like include:
Monday, May 28, 2007
Deleting Old Plugins in WordPress
Sometimes after installing a plugin for WordPress I decide I don't like it and after deactivating it don't want it to show up in my plugins list. What I usually do after this is delete the plugin's folder from wp-content/plugins. This usually works, but in some cases the folder just doesn't want to delete.
In order to get around this issue I rename the plugin's folder. It doesn't matter what the new name is, just something other than the original filename that isn't already the name of an existing folder. After this is done, the folder deletes and the Plugins list is once again free of inactive plugins.
WordPress Tiger Administration
Steve Smith has a great plugin for WordPress users looking for a different admin interface. I personally saw nothing wrong with the WordPress UI, but after trying this plugin I found out that I'm navigating the interface a lot more quickly.
The only downside is that it doesn't show up in IE7 due to IE's non-compliance to CSS2 standards. (If this is even an issue I have two words for you: Get Firefox!)
Download WordPress Tiger Administration
Update: One problem I'm noticing is that Tiger Administration squishes the code view into a smallish square instead of filling the entire editing window. This doesn't seem to be affecting the WYSIWYG editor.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
CSS Layouts: Breaking Out of the Box
Sitepoint has a great article about making CSS layouts fun and interesting. The author breaks down in steps how she took the website from a basic wireframe, to a basic CSS-based layout, to adding a few more elements for a beautifully simple yet unique design.
Read the article Breaking Out of the Box on Sitepoint.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Website Feedback Forms Using nms FormMail
While finishing up the contact page for BunnyOne Design I decided that I wanted to include a feedback form. I was looking for a way to send the form results to an email address, and ended up using nms FormMail.
nms FormMail is a nice little Perl script that is open source and allows for tons of customization options. This is a great script that allows anyone who knows how to create HTML forms to . Below are the instructions on how I configured it on my website. My webhosting is provided by InMotion Hosting, so configuration for your website may be slightly different.
nms FormMail is written in Perl, so make sure your host supports CGI scripts.
Installation
- Grab the latest version of nms FormMail from here. I used the compat package. Save it to a place where you can find it.
- Unzip the files to your local computer's hard drive.
- Navigate through the folders until you find the file "FormMail.pl" (without the quotes).
- Edit the settings as needed using a plain text editor such as Crimson Editor. See below for more information on which settings to change.
- Upload the file to the /cgi-bin/ folder on your webhost's server.
- Set the permissions on the script to 755 (chmod 755). If the permissions aren't set to execute, an error message will show after the visitor tries to submit the form.
- In some cases you may need to rename the script from "formmail.pl" to "formmail.cgi".
Configuration
Basic configuration of this script requires changing only a couple of fields.
- @referers (should be around line 47) - change the code inside the parathesis to the name of your website (mydomain.com). The default value is
dave.org.uk 209.207.222.64 localhost. After you are done, the line should look something like this:@referers = qw(mydomain.com); - @allow_mail_to (should be around line 48) - change the code inside the parathesis to the email you want the form to be sent to. The default value is
you@your.domain some.one.else@your.domain localhost. You want it to instead read:@allow_mail_to = qw(you@emaildomain.com);
This is the bare minimum setup I needed in order to process the results and send them to an email address.
