Blogs | Purple Oar Software

Phalcon Ubuntu 14.04 - install extension

Had a bit of trouble getting phalcon to appear in phpinfo() on Ubuntu 14.04 nginx and php-fpm. The compile and ./install put phalcon.so in /usr/lib/php5/20121212+lfs which is fine.

In /etc/php5/mods-available create phalcon.ini containing this:-

; configuration for php phalcon module
; priority=30
extension=phalcon.so

Then in /etc/php5/fpm/conf.d put a symlink to this file, sudo ln -s ../../mods-available/phalcon.ini 30-phalcon.ini

Restart php-fpm and nginx and you should see phalcon in your phpinfo().

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Display none IE8 and above

Recently worked on a site that used a "megamenu". These are drop down menus on steroids, using css to hide/show "panels" of links appropriate the parent item. The menu worked fine, however when accessibility testing using the "tab" key (no mouse) I discovered that on IE8, IE9 and IE10, the tab key would not "find" the child links for the top level items.

Repeated "tab" key usage caused progress to loop on the first 2 parent items.

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New Zealand website analysis, cms usage

Had an idea over the quiet xmas holiday zone for locating new clients by identifying who was using what cms.

No need to go into exactly how I did this, but here are the summary results from checking about 4000 New Zealand sites.

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Drupal 7 taxonomy image links

Recently upgraded my site to d7 and wanted to have taxonomy images. This is extremely easy in Drupal 7 as you can add CCK fields to taxonomy. Some images used require a link back to the owner's website as a condition of use so I added a link field as well. Here is the taxonomy manage fields screen (goto edit vocabulary from structure, taxonomy):-

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Javascript errors, line numbers from IE

Recently I received an email from Gary who tried out my shareware Javscript editor, ScrypTik. I tried to reply directly, but his email bounced. Gary's question was a good one, so I'll answer it here as it may help others. Question:

I have downloaded a copy of ScrypTik and I like what it can offer. However, I have the following issue which is typical of my application:

I have a PHP file which refers to numerous js files e.g. When running the PHP, The IE browser (v7) will refer to a line number "line 706: character 3" which bears no relation to my PHP source file. It seems to be erroring on some Javascript at run-time. I know this is a run-time error since it occurs in specific situations.

What is the best way of locating the error with your product?

My Answer:

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Javascript code filter for Drupal

This was an explanation of how I wrote a Drupal5.n module to filter javascript code so that it displayed syntax highlighted. Drupal 7 has been released, this site has been upgraded and I decided to display programming code syntax highlighted using the GeShi PHP library. It caters for most languages and there is a geshifilter module to integrate the library into Drupal. Here are some examples:

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SEO, the loooooooooong tail

This site is about web development. I provide web design and development services. It is optimized for words like "web development" plus my geographic location.

But this site is found most frequently by a phrase (or variation) to do with the difference between static and dynamic web sites. This is NOT what I anticipated.

However, if people are coming to my site from a google search for "difference between static and dynamic web sites", there must be a reason.

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Web story, the beginning

Every web site owner has a story or three to tell. Most web site owners want to make money from their site. Lots of web sites offer advice on how to do this (jargon "monetize"). Probably the most popular business on the Internet is how to make money on the Internet! They urge you to buy their latest snake oil system which will have you earning indecent amounts of money in hardly any time at all. Their spiel is awash with numerous testimonials from customers draped over their latest Ferrari/beautiful significant other which proves how much money they are making. Beware, low flying pigs!

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