BlogSchlager WebTech

It has been a while since I have tried using Adobe Contribute to add content to my blog. So here I am with version 5.1 as part of my CS 5.5 Web refresh. So far it has remembered the last time it was connected to my blog and it appears to be ready to roll.

First, here is a header 2

Now we have a block quote of some content right now.

And back to normal again. So now I am going to publish this and see how it looks.

 

This is the first post with a new App from MOApp myWPEdit for Mac. So I bought this because it was substantially cheaper than the other Mac 3rd party editors for WordPress and it looks like it has a full feature set.

I must say that so far, so good, at $9.99 it appears to be what was advertised and this post is cruising along so far. Setup was a breeze and I have a list of all of my past blogs on the left so I know it has connected.

Nice the photo upload and insert seems to work well too. AlturaVista Home page Adding links seems pretty straight foreword, so far so good.

Well, we are not quite ready for prime time in the native WordPress editor.

Seems it only works in HTML modes so you don’t get to take advantage of even the most basic text editor. Bummer! However, the more you play around the more you realize that it actually works pretty well and does pretty much what you would want an editor to do quickly.

You can create new paragraphs simply by hitting “return” twice. You can select a word or a section using the standard iOS way, put you finger on the scene and hold there until the magnify feature comes on and let go, choose select, etc. You can then click the “bold” button or “italic” or any of the other basic formatting buttons available.

While I am admitting you can still do a bunch in the base editor, there are some really great plugins out there and they don’t work with iPad. I am still looking for that one great full-feature editor.

Well I knew this day would come as soon as Apple launched the iPad. I knew it was just a matter of time before I would be required to have one at work. Well, there has become such a critical mass of iPads at work, that the web guy needs one too, thanks all you early adopters!

This is my first serious writing exercise with the iPad and so far so good. The keyboard is actually pretty functional for a virtual device. While you don’t get the tactile satisfying click of a key, you gain in convenience. I am writing this with the WordPress app for iPhone/iPad.

Stay tuned more fun with iPad to follow!

Have you ever wanted to have a cool new web design for WordPress or Joomla and don’t want to spend hours searching through templates and more hours modifying it to make it your own? Well now you can create your own templates and not just for one platform but for multiple platforms, and best of all they look awesome. The secret is a new application called Artisteer and it makes creating a cool template for all of your sites quick and easy, but not necessarily cheap. Oops, I said it, Artisteer is not particularly cheap at $125 a license but if you are a budding blog professional or are a small business with a website and a blog this tool can help you brand it all.

I went ahead and bought a license because I have a blog and a website and I wanted to brand them both the same. So let’s look at what you get and what you can do for the $$. First take a look at the style of this blog site (http://blogs.alturavista.com/) and my main website (http://www.alturavista.com). I used Artisteer to create the original template and then export it as an HTML template for the website and a WordPress template for my Blog. 

As you can see, I was successful. I am able to incorporate my original photo of the Golden Gate Bridge and my logo and it was pretty easy to do. Artisteer features a very slick interface and it really is push button easy to use. The best feature is the ability to "browse" suggested elements like headers, footers, menu items, etc., in fact I found that just about every element on the page can be customized. But enough about me, the cool thing about this app is the out of the box experience.

The interface begs you to customize your template:

Click the "Suggest Design" button and watch as cool-looking template after template goes by. When you see one you like, that is when the fun begins. Now click the "Suggest Colors" button and watch you new template change color before your eyes.

When you find a color you like, try having Artisteer suggest a new header design? Click on the "Suggest Header" button and just that easily you have created a custom design.

Custom background images are also available:

You can even move the toolbar around, very cool.

So much for the design work, Artisteer not only makes you a design wiz, it also makes you a code wiz too. You can turn out designs for multiple platforms. This is serious cool if you want to maintain a uniform brand across your web properties.

Choose to "Export" your design for WordPress, as an HTML template, for Blogger, or Drupal or Joomla.

Choose your platform	Export for WordPress and Blogger
Export for Joomla	Export for Drupal
Export for DotNetNuke	Export as a folder or as a zipped file. Allows you to make templates available for sale. Watermarking is also available.

It may seem a bit pricey at $125, but when you consider what it can do for you or your company, I think it is a great bargain. You can find Artisteer at their website: http://www.artisteer.com/?p=home and they have a limited trial so you can kick the tires if you like.

As the Web & Communications Manager for the CTO Office at NetApp, a good deal of my job revolves around R&D on Intranets and Intranet structures. Recently I have been researching scalable, supportable, and innovative Intranets based on Open Source technology. I know this seems counter-trend, since more and more companies are abandoning building there own Intranets in favor of SharePoint, Jive, or some other large, expensive application solution. While this make a great deal of sense in large companies, the price of these kinds of deployments are prohibitive to a small to mid-sized company. However, there is hope. If you are a small to mid-size company you should take a look at the new Web 2.0 and Open Source applications for your company, they are a cost-effective and scalable alternative to big dollar deployments.

In this post I am going to focus on one particular build that I put together and actually use myself. It is a WordPress blog, SimplePie RSS libraries, LAMP architecture (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and it is the backbone for my main website, www.blogschlager.com. 

So here is how you do it.

First, use open source:

I am a big fan of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) development, because it is cost effective, there is a bunch of really great software out there and you can find experts when you need additional help. I use Apache 2.0 servers with the latest version of PHP (server side scripting language) and MySQL Database (as good as Oracle but with no sticker shock) all running on a Linux OS server. The only costs are in the server hardware and storage arena, and for that I recommend getting your IT pro to bypass the hard drive on the server and buy some Network Attached Storage from someone like NetApp, my preferred vendor for large enterprises. For smaller enterprises get two or more hard drives and around 1TB of storage. This is important because it will free you up to not worry about running out of disk space and will allow you to have good backup and recovery capabilities as well.

Full disclosure alert:

I have worked with PHP and MySQL since 1999. So I am something of a power user but this system does not require that level of expertise. The amount of coding required to make this system work is minimal and a junior level coder could figure it out in a few hours.

Step Two keep your structure simple:

What does a simple structure look like? Here is what I do. I use Blogs as the backbone of my site. Blogs are great at allowing non-technical members of your teams to update content quickly and easily. I use WordPress because it meets my infrastructure criteria, it is LAMP based and you can fire up a new topic blog in as little as 10 minutes (no kidding). You can also take advantage of a great piece of freeware from Microsoft for your windows users called Live Writer (I know I said Microsoft and free and great). It is a 3rd party Blog editor that makes Blogging content as easy as sending an email with Outlook and it makes a very user friendly front-end to WordPress. In fact, I am using it to write and publish this article! For your non-windows users they can use the built-in WordPress editor or there are many different Mac and Linux based editors out there too.

Next organize your Blogs into single topics like News & Information, Words from the Helm, Team Events, and so on. This keeps each Blog focused on one topic and helps keep your structure more manageable.

The real power of Blogs – RSS Feeds:

I use Blogs because, one they are easy to deploy and easy to use and that makes training and support much simpler and more cost effective than trying to turn everyone into a mini-webmaster. The second reason is that Blogs have a great little feature called RSS feeds that come along for the ride. RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) are an XML technology that allows content generated at one level of the organization to be consumed or displayed at various other levels of the organization. The key word is syndication. Just like print news, articles and authors can be syndicated in many different newspapers across the country or around the world, RSS allows Blog content to be syndicated throughout the company and in multiple department sites in real time. I use the example of the CEO of your company writing an article on an exciting new technology that could be a game changer and posting it to their Blog. With this system they can Blog it once and have the article show up in multiple websites throughout the company and around the globe in real-time. I use the phrase "blog it once and display it multiple times and places." In this scenario the article appears on the corporate home page, in the Global Engineering website, on the Marketing and Sales website, and on the India Technology Center website. And no one had to lift a finger to make it happen, the sites where it appears were just out there waiting for the latest post from the CEO, and when the RSS feed was updated they all got the news automatically. For a real world example see this article syndicated by RSS on my home page at: http://www.blogschlager.com and on my Virb site at http://virb.com/koreski/posts.

Here is how it all happens:

Blogs by themselves are no better than regular web pages at keeping your Intranet organized and navigable. The problem is in linking it all together,  keeping it all organized, and meeting the other requirement of conforming to corporate branding guidelines. This is where good old fashioned web 1.0 pages come in. I use Dreamweaver to create compelling pages and link structures. I do add a few fancy features that make the pages more dynamic such as global navigation pieces through PHP includes but for the most part they are just web pages.

What makes them special is that they have the ability to dynamically display RSS feeds as links from the Blogs that belong to a department, group or team. This is where the power of PHP comes into play. I use PHP (open source server-side scripting language), and an RSS feed aggregation package called SimplePie (http://simplepie.org/). SimplePie grabs the RSS feed from a Blog and allows me to convert all of the posted content into a bullet list with links to each of the articles and display it in a nice looking branded web page. Click here to see my demo page in action. Each of the boxes on my home page contains feeds from my two personal blogs, http://www.blogschlager.com/webtech/ and my other test Blog GougeTastic Golf. You can imagine 4 to 6 of these feeds on a page all coming from different teams in your company, and all happening dynamically.

Here is the code that makes the links work:

In the head of the page I include the SimplePie script like this.

<?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].’/php/simplepie.inc’); ?>

Then in the boxes (<td>’s of the table) add the following

<?php
// We’ll process this feed with all of the default options.
$feed = new SimplePie();
$feed->set_feed_url(‘http://blogschlager.com/webtech/?feed=rss2′);
$feed->init();
$feed->handle_content_type();

?>

<div class="boxTitleLeft"><a href="<?php echo $feed->get_permalink(); ?>">

<?php echo $feed->get_title(); ?></a></div>
<div id="feedF">
<ul>
<?php
/*
Here, we’ll loop through all of the items in the feed, and $item represents the current item in the loop.
*/
$max = $feed->get_item_quantity(5);
for ($x = 0; $x < $max; $x++):
$item = $feed->get_item($x);

?>
<li><a href="<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>"><?php echo $item->get_title() ; ?></a>
<?php //echo $item->get_description(); ?>
<br /><span style="font-size:smaller;">Posted on <?php echo $item->get_date(‘j F Y | g:i a’); ?></span></li>
<?php endfor; ?>
</ul>
</div>

The beauty of this code is that the only change you need to make to add additional Blog feeds is this line $feed->set_feed_url(‘http://blogschlager.com/webtech/?feed=rss2′); . Simply insert the link to the RSS feed for each of the Blogs you want to include in your page and SimplePie does the rest.

Why is this the way to go?

The power of this system is that it keeps the simple things simple and keeps users who are not web technicians from having to edit web pages. Most folks tasked with maintaining sections of your Intranet should find updating content through this system much easier than having to edit web pages or use expensive and resource intensive CMS systems.

Self maintaining websites:

The big payoff in this system is that once you setup one of these websites they update themselves every time someone Blogs. The latest article link automatically appears at the top of the bullet list and the oldest one drops off the list. In my site I have it set to display the newest 5 entries through this piece of code, "$max = $feed->get_item_quantity(5);" , but you can have as few as 1 and as many as you like, so the system is very flexible. It is all pretty cool if I do say so myself. Here is what it looks like in action: http://www.blogschlager.com/

This is my first test post with a free app called BlogWriter Lite. Since this is the second free blogging app I have tried, it will have to go up against the WordPress 2.0 app.

First I noticed that BlogWriter does not offer a horizontal screen when writing, so I have been fat fingering this post.

Let’s see how it handles code, this should be red, if that worked then it handles code like the WordPress app.

OK, that is too funny, I am finishing this post up by writing from the WordPress app. The reason why is that the “Lite” means you can’t edit a post your have already published and since I published to see how it handles code I got stung by a poor piece of freeware.

Here is what you have to pay $1.99 to have functional:

The only thing that makes it worth paying for is it’s multiple-platform support. So if you have a Blogspot, WordPress.com, or supported blog and want to use one app to post from your iPhone you might consider this app.

I’ll keep looking as new apps come along,
Richard

One of my favorite ways to quickly enhance and subtly improve an otherwise good photo is with Photoshop’s layer, new adjustment layer, levels tool. To see it in action, grab a good photo in need of some brightening or darkening or subtle shading changes and we can get started.

First open your photo, here is one of mine that I have chosen:

I like this photo right out of the camera. It was shot in December 2008 at the Monterey CA, harbor at sunset.

So using our Photoshop levels tool here is what we can do:

When the dialog box opens, adjust the levels slider until you have eliminated any dead data, in my photo you will see that I have trimmed the light and dark levels by sliding the slider on both ends toward the center.

And just that quickly here is the final result:

And again here is the before:

It is subtle but you will notice that the water in the foreground and the sky in the background are slightly darker and deeper in color than the original.

Thanks,
Richard