I’m seeing a very ugly trend on the web today.  Lots of people having taken a liking to “Helvetica Neue” font.  Why is that?  It renders terribly.

This image shows what Helvetica Neue looks like on my home PC, my work computer, and my laptop. About 60% of the time I click through to a site using this font, I’ll close it right away. It’s just that hard to read.

Jack Sinclair is a pretty impressive kid.  When he was 15, he and his dad rode their bicycles across Australia. And I mean west to east, not north to south.  In a family of cyclists, they have a lot of bikes – and bikes are always tough to organise.  You want them to be out of the way, but not so much that you have to move boxes before you go for a ride.

Enter this little beauty: A ceiling mount bike lift!

You just affix the mounting brackets to your ceiling, which is easy done with a few screws.  You can then hook your bike to the rope, and lift your bike up out of the way.

The pulley system means that you don’t need much strength to haul up the bike, and the locking mechanism means that the bike will stay in place until you gently feed the rope some slack on the right angle.

If you lose your grip and let go of the rope, it locks back into place – so you’ll never accidentally drop your bike from the roof!

Jack sells these bike lifts via his Australian website – www.bikelift.com.au.  Right now (January 2011) he’s offering a special – free shipping – and you can’t go wrong with that!

He’s also a big fan of Aussie Fit Sport Heart Rate Monitors. It’s important to use an accurate heart-rate monitor like these. Training at the right intensity can make a big difference.

I’ve had a few strange phone calls lately. The first few said they were calling from Microsoft, the one I just had said he was calling from “PC Tech Support”.  They’ve all been the same though.  They always ask for me by name, too.

The caller, a very friendly fellow with an Indian accent, explains that my computer has a virus. When I asked how he knew this, he said that the “internet routing service” had shown suspicious internet traffic from my browser. He explained that when I visit websites like Google and Yahoo, software is automatically downloaded to my computer.

It’s kind of fun to let these guys rattle on for a while, and then tell them I don’t own a computer.  Today’s was funny;

Guy: <explains I caught a virus from visiting Google>
Me: Really? Are you sure?
Guy: Oh yes, it happens all the time.
Me: Well, I’m pretty surprised.
Guy: Oh yes sir.
Me: Especially because I don’t own a computer.
Guy: WHAT? (shouted)

I repeated I don’t own a computer, and asked how he got my phone number.  He hung up.

• Here’s a good read at the Guardian:
  Virus phone scam being run from call centres in India.

Yes, this is happening in Australia too.  With VOIP services (Voice Over IP) so freely available, it’s cheap as chips to make international calls these days.

That’s great and all, but it means we’re headed to a point where we could get as many spam phonecalls as we do spam emails.  And that’s a lot!

I’ve just uploaded an update to my SimpleSitemap plugin.  It now supports shortcodes, custom titles for All In One SEO plugin and Thesis theme, and a few other goodies.  Read more…

Sometimes you want to show your WordPress site to someone before you’re ready to properly launch it.

This plugin creates an “Allowed List” of IP addresses.  If you’re not on the list, you see a generic “Coming Soon” page.

The admin panel lets you view your list, and remove IP’s you don’t want.  You can work with Tokens, allowing you to send a link which will add the visitor to the allowed list.  This lets you show off your new site without launching it. (Or perhaps, show your client that site you’ve been working on)

The IP Allowed List plugin is designed to make life as easy as possible.  Generic tokens are set up to begin with, and a generic Coming Soon page is provided.  You can work with the defaults straight out of the box.  If you’d prefer to tweak, you can do that too.

• WordPress Plugin Page

If you have comments on the plugin, please leave them here.

I’ve been playing with the newest version of WordPress (2.8), which is due to be released in the near future.  It features a completely new way of writing Widgets, so I’ve been testing that out.

I discovered a clash with my favourite wordpress theme, the Thesis framework.  Took me a little while to figure it out, but I think I’ve solved the problem.

[AlertBox text="Update 18 June 09: Thesis 1.5.1 has been released, and makes this patch unneccessary."]

The problem

WordPress 2.8 features an excellent Widget manager in the admin area.  But with Thesis 1.5, this area is unusable.  Widgets cannot be dragged/dropped, which is essential.  It seems that the JS provided by Thesis clashes with JS provided by WordPress on a few different screens.

The fix

Open up your Thesis files, and look in /lib/admin/admin.php.   Look for function thesis_options_js()

{code type=php}
$date_modified_js = filemtime(THESIS_SCRIPTS . ‘/thesis.js’);
$date_modified_ui = filemtime(THESIS_SCRIPTS . ‘/jquery-ui.js’);
echo ‘<script type=”text/javascript” src=”‘ . THESIS_SCRIPTS_FOLDER . ‘/thesis.js?d=’ . date(‘mdy-Gms’, $date_modified_js) . ‘” /></script>’ . “\n”;
echo ‘<script type=”text/javascript” src=”‘ . THESIS_SCRIPTS_FOLDER . ‘/jquery-ui.js?d=’ . date(‘mdy-Gms’, $date_modified_ui) . ‘” /></script>’ . “\n”;
{/code}

Thesis comes with its own jQuery UI script, which clashes with the in-built wordpress scripts.  Replace that function with this one:

{code type=php}
if (!is_admin()) { return; }
$date_modified_js = filemtime(THESIS_SCRIPTS . ‘/thesis.js’);
$date_modified_ui = filemtime(THESIS_SCRIPTS . ‘/jquery-ui.js’);
wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery-ui-core’);
wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery-ui-sortable’);
wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery-ui-tabs’);
wp_enqueue_script(‘thesis-admin-js’, THESIS_SCRIPTS_FOLDER.’/thesis.js’);
{/code}

Also look for the function thesis_admin_styles_and_scripts()

It contains this:

{code type=php}
add_action(‘admin_head’, ‘thesis_options_stylesheet’);
add_action(‘admin_head’, ‘thesis_options_js’);
{/code}

Replace with this:

{code type=php}
add_action(‘admin_head’, ‘thesis_options_stylesheet’);
add_action(‘admin_head’, ‘thesis_options_js’);
add_action(‘init’, ‘thesis_options_js’);
{/code}

And problem solved!  So far I haven’t discovered any unwanted side-affects.  You may only need to enqueue jquery-ui-sortable.

[AlertBox text="Update 18 June 09: Thesis 1.5.1 has been released, and makes this patch unneccessary."]

I heard the most wonderful stream of profanity at the office today.  Funny story, really.  The long suffering Sinclair women (Brendon’s wife and daughter) have fled the country.  They’re spending a few weeks holidaying in Europe.  And no, the profanity wasn’t because Brendon and his boys are starving without Mel to cook for them.

The girls need some documents sent over, and its causing a lot more trouble than it should be.   They’re not staying in one place for very long, so timing is everything.

So Brendon mailed out the package via Australia Post, using their 2-4 day express service.  He was assured it should be there in 2 days, which would be great.  But naturally, it arrived after the girls had moved on.

When he expressed his displeasure to Australia Post, he was told that the 2-4 day express service typically takes 5 days to deliver.  Methinks they need to rename that service.

So he sends out a replacement package using UPS.  As you do.  He uses a $93 envelope GUARANTEED to be there by April 1st.  When he checks the tracking service 5 hours later, its already been rescheduled to be a day late.  Unbelievable.

Bless Ray Tomlinson, I’ll never take the reliability of email for granted again!

At work, we’re running some affiliate sites based on WordPress.  Standard practice is usually to pipe affiliate links through a /hop/ script.  We typically accomplish this by creating a .htaccess rule to redirect /hop/(.*) to hop.php, which will determine what hop was requested, and redirect based on that.

It’s a pretty tidy method, but still not ideal.  So I thought, wouldn’t it be great to manage those hops through the wordpress admin?  Much better than connecting via FTP to the server, and editing the hop.php file itself!

And so the Link Hopper is born.  You can download it here:

• WordPress Plugin Directory Page

I’ve written many custom plugins before, to satisfy client requirements on various sites.  This is the first one I’ve developed fully on my own time, and listed in the public plugin directory.

Let’s see if anyone else finds it useful!

There’s a few advantages here:

• Technical skills not required
  • It’s not that complicated to FTP to a server and edit a file, but this is still easier
• Easier to manage outdated links this way
  • Prior to using a /hop/ file, one could have an affiliate link on dozens of pages
  • When the merchant closes a product line, or changes a link, all those pages have a dead link
  • Now there’s a single setting which can be easily changed when this happens!

If you have comments on the plugin, please leave them here.

[NoticeBox text="This tutorial deals with the Thesis wordpress theme. It may not mean much if you haven't worked with Thesis before."]

The wonderful Thesis wordpress theme comes with two sidebars which are very configurable.  You can insert widgets into either sidebar, exactly as you wish.

But what if you want to put a widget somewhere else?  Let’s take a look at the Tailored Web Services website.  (That’s my employer).   Look at the footer of this site.  There are three columns down there, and each one contains a widget.

So how did that happen?

The key functions here are register_sidebar()and dynamic_sidebar().

Together, these functions allow us to set up an extra “sidebar”, which will be widget-enabled through the wp-admin area.

Let’s start with this:

{code type=php}
<?php
add_action(‘thesis_hook_footer’, ‘customFooter’);
function customFooter() {
?>
<div class=”footer1″>
<ul class=”sidebar_list”>
<?php if ( !function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’) || !dynamic_sidebar(‘Footer1′) ){ ?>
<li class=”widget”>Dynamic Widgets are not enabled</li>
<?php } ?>
</ul><!– sidebar_list –>
</div><!– footer1 –>
<?php
} // customFooter
?>
{/code}

The function customFooter() is designed to insert the right code for a new “sidebar”.  And yes, we’re still calling it a sidebar even though it goes in the footer.

The add_action() line defines where this new block of code should go.  The Thesis User’s Guide contains a reference list of all hooks provided by Thesis.  In this case, we want it in the footer.

The dynamic_sidebar('Footer1') call tells WordPress to output “Footer1″ there if present.

Next, we need to use that register_sidebar() function to let us put widgets in there.

{code type=php}
<?php
register_sidebar(array(‘name’=>’Footer1′, ‘before_title’=>’<h3>’, ‘after_title’=>’</h3>’));
?>
{/code}

By default, your widget titles will always be wrapped in <h3> tags.  You can change that if you want to.  The important argument to this function is the “name”.  The name should be the same as you used in the dynamic_sidebar() call.  Be descriptive:  We should call this “Footer Left”, or “Footer Right” to avoid any confusion later on.

Here’s one I prepared earlier

• Custom three-column widget-ready footer

Paste the code from this page into your custom_functions.php file.  When you add some CSS to float the columns side-by-side, you’ll get the same three-column footer we have on Tailored.

New Tailored Design

It’s always nice to receive recognition for your work.

At my workplace, we’ve taken to using the Thesis theme and WordPress together for a lot of sites.  This combination gives us powerful content-management capabilities, backed up by a highly-customisable design framework and strong search engine optimisation.  When you add some custom-built plugins to the mix, this platform can accomplish damn near anything.

The creator of Thesis, Chris Pearson, likes to tweet links to site launches and redesigns built around the Thesis theme.  So of course, when we re-launched Tailored.com.au with Thesis, we let him know.

He then tweeted:

pearsonified: Wow, this is a damn fine Thesis-based site… Odds are incredibly good that you will dig it: http://www.tailored.com.au/

A few others commented:

igobydoc: @pearsonified WOW is right – That is one really damn good looking #thesiswp site!

montanaflynn: @pearsonified that is a nice thesis site!

brendonsinclair: @pearsonified And apparently the bloke who owns it has an enormous… um, ego as well! Cheers.

pearsonified: @brendonsinclair Hahhaha, cheers!

TariAkpodiete: @pearsonified definitely that’s one of the nicer implementations i’ve seen of Thesis, honestly, some look boring, this is unique #thesiswp

Whoo!

Another Thesis-based site we’ve just launched is for an excellent non-profit organisation: the Spinal Injuries Assocation.  Be sure and check that out too.