Thesis is, in my view, the best Wordpress theme for commercial sites but there can be a couple of niggles when it comes to installing it on a shared hosting platform such as, in my case, a Heart Internet Reseller account.

Thesis includes the facility to include a post image: this is an image that appears near the post title and which is then used as a thumbnail – obviously exactly how these appear is configurable within the Thesis options panel.

Installing for the first time on a shared space went fine until it came to specifying the Post Images which simply didn’t appear. After a good deal of digging around on the Thesis forum at DIY Themes and some experimentation, here’s the process I went through to fix the problems:

1. In notepad, create a file containing just these lines:
   < ?php
phpinfo();
?>
   FTP this file into the root folder of your website and then launch your browser and go to http://[yourdomainname]/phpinfo.php. This will bring up a whole heap of information about your PHP configuration. Use your browser’s search function to find the lines allow_url_fopen and allow_url_include. If allow_url_fopen is set to ON, then allow_url_include must also be ON. The chances are that allow_url_include is OFF and what you need to do is set allow_url_fopen to OFF also. This is easily done…
2. Open up Notepad and create a new file with just this one line:
   allow_url_fopen = off
3. Save this file as php5.ini (or, if you’ve left your domain set as PHP4 for some reason, this file should be called php.ini) and FTP it to the root folder of your site (usually something like /public_html or /httpdocs). This should sort out the post images issue but possible not the thumbnails
4. To fix the thumbnail issue, fire up your FTP program and find and select the following folders, right click and select File Permissions, then type the number shown into the dialog that appears. This allows Thesis to create the thumbnails:
   • /wp-content/themes/thesis_16/custom/cache/ (set to 755)
   • /wp-content/themes/thesis_16/lib/scripts/ (set to 755)
   • /wp-content/themes/thesis_16/lib/scripts/thumb.php (set to 744)

   Thanks to “pulselv” for this on the DIYThemes forum

5. Finally, click the “Big Ass Save Button” (or whatever you’ve renamed it to) on the Thesis Options screen. This makes Thesis take notice of the changes. All should now be well!

Let’s just begin by saying that I have purchased Apple products in the past. I’ve owned an iMac, an eMac, several iPod Nanos, a MacBook and an iPod Classic. To me, they are the masters of hardware design and some of their software is also excellent (the iPhone/iPod Touch OS and Keynote being two outstanding examples for me – on the other hand Quicktime and iTunes are amongst my least favourite pieces of software, right up there with Adobe Reader). My loathing of iTunes and my discovery of how liberating it is to have a plain, vanilla MP3 player, buy MP3s from Amazon and simply drag and drop them across has led to my abandonment of the iPod series, for now at least.

As a geek but not an early adopter, it’s people like me that Apple needs to impress if it’s to increase its market share. Apple evangelists will buy the iPad, even if they don’t really know why and I don’t doubt they’ll find uses for it (even if it’s annoying other commuters by watching “Love Actually” on their lovely big screen) but people like me need a justifiable reason for laying out the money.

So, if money were no object, what would I buy in the following categories?

SMARTPHONE

I would buy: an iPhone

The iPhone was and is a game-changing device. Many of the apps are of high quality and, once 3G support was introduced, it offered truly liberated browsing and pseudo-computing.

What I actually bought: an HTC Magic running Android

Why? Just look at the figures. When I was choosing my next phone (my first smartphone having been a Sony-Ericsson user for a few generations), the cost of owning an iPhone was an £80 upfront payment and then a 24 month contract at £45 per month. This equates to a total cost of ownership of around £1,150 over 2 years.

My Magic, on the other hand, cost zero for the handset on a 18 month contract at £25 per month for a total cost of ownership of around £450. Android has proven a joy to use and I’ve already enjoyed 2 updates. It’s closely integrated (of course) with Google’s applications so for web use it’s ideal. And, of course, you don’t have to close one application to use another.

LAPTOP

I would buy: a Macbook Pro

…running Windows 7. I bought my first Macbook when they moved over to Intel chips and therefore became capable of running Windows. Windows 7 (and, to be honest, also Windows Vista) are nice, usable and productive operating systems and the choice of software for me, as a developer, is many times what it is under OSX.

What I actually bought: an Acer Laptop from Tesco

Why? Again, price. The 15 inch MacBook Pro starts at £1,328. The Acer Laptop cost £349 to which I would need to add £50 or so for an upgrade to Windows 7. What, in practice, does the MacBook Pro offer that makes it worth around 4x the price. And just to be clear, the technical specification of the Acer is very similar to the MacBook Pro.

DESKTOP

I would buy: Chillblast Fusion Midgard (£896 inc VAT)

This is PCPro’s current A list Desktop PC with a blistering benchmark score of 2.48 (3.2GHz Pentium D = 1)

What I actually bought: A cheap Dell Studio with a Quad Core processor (£299)

Runs my applications perfectly quickly. I play games on my PS3 so I don’t need game playing capability.

NETBOOK

I would buy: Samsung NC series Netbook (around £300 incl VAT)

…and this was what I actually bought. What a lovely little device. Excellent keyboard, nice bright display, around 7 hours of battery and a good rugged feel.

I guess this is the category the iPad could most obviously compete in. Except that it doesn’t have:

• a keyboard – software keyboards are NO replacement for a real one
• a webcam (are you having a laugh?)
• any protection for the screen
• a card reader so I can import my photos
• USB (!!!!)

…and it costs more than twice as much. The fact is that the iPad cannot replace a laptop or a phone. It’s only possible place is in the netbook market and it cannot compete there on either features or price. It is a lovely product, technologically very clever but its market (beyond Apple disciples) isn’t obvious to me. It’s too fragile to be used in education and not suitable for typing extensively on. I can see that if I were giving a presentation, it would be great to load it up on the iPad and then simply connect it to the projector and use the iPad as a controller. But I won’t spend £650 for this, very minor, benefit.

Sorry Apple, I simply cannot get excited by it. If you offered me an iPhone at a reasonable price I’d bite your arm off. If you offered me a Mac Mini, I’d have it and install Windows 7. If you offered me an iPad I’d politely decline.

About Me

I’m not a self-development guru but I am interested in the area and have studied many of the best practitioners. This series of blog entries summarises the main themes I’ve seen reoccurring time and time again: a series of universally accepted principles that really should be taught to our children at school.

I don’t pretend to be great at all of these – far from it. However, I know from experience that when I work on each of them, my life becomes more productive, richer and happier.

Just to reiterate, I am not preaching or evangelising these principles. I’m simply summarising what I see as the most important of them so that you can think about incorporating them into your day. If they make sense to you, I suggest applying them one at a time until each becomes a habit and part of your natural outlook on life.

Step1 : Taking Responsibility

You’re probably familiar with the concept of “stimulus-response” as in the famous experiment by Pavlov in which he trained dogs to salivate when they hear a bell which had previously been rung whenever there was a sausage in the vicinity.

The stimulus (the bell) lead directly to the response (dribbling). In a similar way, the stimulus of being cut up on the motorway might lead to the response of sticking two fingers up, honking your horn and chasing the offender. Or you might feel miserable because the weather’s wet or because you’ve just heard a sad story on the news.

However, there is an essential difference between animals and humans. Animals have no choice about responding to a stimulus, humans do. If you feel miserable on a cloudy day, you’re giving control over your mood to an outside force (the weather) about which you can do nothing. If you get stressed when someone overtakes you on the motorway and then cuts in, you’re allowing that person’s behaviour to stress you. Note the verbs: “giving” and “allowing”. You see, it’s your choice how you react to any stimulus: you choose whether to react with anger, sadness, calmness or even not to react at all.

It might feel as though you are taking control by reacting but, in fact, you are giving up control to the stimulus just as surely as if you were a dog salivating over a sausage. The truly strong, empowering thing to do is to stop, think and then respond in accordance with your values.

One of the best ways to make yourself more effective is to work on those things you can influence and ignore those things you can’t. The weather doesn’t make you miserable, it’s your reaction to it that does so: this is why one person’s gorgeous sunny day is another’s wasp-infested slice of hell.

By only trying to exercise control over things you can control (and this rarely includes other people), you focus your energies in productive areas and greatly reduce your stress. If the weather’s crap (the UK is locked in a new Ice Age as I write this) then don’t let it get you down: work out how you’re going to control those things you can. If you’re unable to drive anywhere (as we are at present) then work on managing with what you have at home. Think about helping your vulnerable neighbours out. Clear the snow from in front of your house and car. Enjoy it!

Don’t underestimate the power of this. By taking responsibility for how you react, you stop blaming the world for your misfortunes and this is empowering (after all if you stop believing that the weather can make you miserable, you’ve just given yourself the power to be happy). It also makes you more forgiving of others and much less affected by their weaknesses.

Do what you can about what you can influence: and remember that your reactions to everything that happens are entirely in your control. Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp victim and psychiatrist reasoned that he has complete control over his thoughts and reactions and, in that understanding, more freedom than his prison camp guards. His is a humbling story and well worth reading.

Further Reading: I came across this principle first in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. This was an enormously influential experience (I listened to the audio of a seminar) and very much affected my way of looking at life and my performance.

I’m all for Buyer Protection (after all, I’m a buyer more often than a seller) but Paypal’s Dispute Resolution system needs sorting out.

One of my companies offers an online subscription service. On Christmas Eve, a customer emailed us to say they couldn’t access the service having paid for it. On Boxing Day having waited a whole 48 hours over Xmas and not received a response, they put a claim in. What did they claim? That the product had not been received.

I then got notification of this, logged into Paypal (having emailed the customer and asked why they’d escalated it without giving us reasonable time to respond) only to find that the three options open to me when it comes to responding are:

1. I have posted the item, here is the tracking number
2. I did not post the item, I will refund
3. I have already refunded.

THERE IS NO ITEM TO POST! This is an entirely online product. The customer has (either wilfully or through ignorance) filed an incorrect complaint. Unfortunately, Paypal don’t bother to investigate the type of product and take the customer’s word for it. There is no way I can find to add a “note” to the dispute and surely the simplest solution would be:

4. This is not a physical product

…or something similar.

Paypal have now found in favour of the customer and refunded them. This leaves businesses like mine open to ignorant or malicious claim-backs without any recourse to defend ourselves. It really is time Paypal got their finger out and at least gave merchants such as us (with a long and blemish-free history) the opportunity to respond properly to inappropriate claims.

I've spent some time during a busy week signing up for Google Apps Premier. Why? The main benefit to my companies is that it allows us to use corporate level email facilities without the expense or hassle of setting up and running an Exchange (or similar) server. I'm currently in the 30 day free trial and all is going well.

Posted via email from Kevin’s posterous

I’m just starting to experiment with Expression Web 3 as a site editor (specifically for editing PHP, CSS and Javascript files) and the first stumbling block was how to set it up so that I can edit my remote files directly without having to create a local version. This is necessary because I don’t have PHP/MySQL and Apache installed on my Windows machine.

Despite the fact that this doesn’t appear to be mentioned in the application help, it’s actually very simple. Just go to File, Open and, in the address bar, type your FTP address. You’ll then be prompted to type in your login details and, assuming this has worked successfully, you’ll then be presented with an Explorer view of your site from which you can pick your file. Simple.

Our latest commercial venture www.MakingYourOwnCandles.co.uk has launched in time for Christmas. This site/business was created as part of a project for PCPro (or which more in due course) and offers easy-to-use but professional quality candle making kits that anyone can use to create coloured and scented 15-hour candles.

The site was created using Wordpress and is linked to a shop created using EKMPowershop’s ecommerce structure. It’ll run until Christmas, at which point we’ll evaluate whether to run it as an ongoing business.

The utter stupidity of big corporations never ceases to amaze. Forced by law in the US to provide a protective cap to owners of their push-chairs, Maclaren refuse to do so in this country because our law does not force them to do so. Utterly pathetic: they could have had a marketing triumph by issuing the covers in the UK because it’s THE RIGHT THING TO DO. If it prevents one more child having their fingers chopped off in the mechanism then DO IT. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The epitome of why big corporations are SO 20th Century.

Posted via email from Kevin’s posterous

Somewhat off-topic, I’ll admit, but I’ve worked with Automotive clients for years helping to teach them how to sell properly so perhaps I’m well placed to help you get the right deal for you. Having just bought a used Toyota Verso, here are my practical observations:

Choose your car before you go to the dealer

Car sales executives will want to sell you the car that best suits them, whilst (more or less) meeting your requirements. This might be a car that’s been on the forecourt for a while or one that the sales executive has been incentivised to sell for whatever reason.

Use the internet and personal recommendations to select your car. Check out What Car and pay particular attention to the user reviews (whilst bearing in mind that reviewers are self-selecting: either gloriously happy or, more likely, bloody angry!).

Once you’ve generated a short-list based on your requirements, find possible cars using each manufacturer’s used stock service (usually found from their main web page). Most services include the ability to select a maximum distance you’re willing to drive to find a car. From this, you will have an idea of whether you can afford your preferred cars: if more than one remains from your list, go and test drive them in order of preference.

Make sure you know roughly what the car you’re buying is worth

Go to Parkers and use the free valuation service to see how much you should expect to pay for the car. You shouldn’t expect to pay any more than this unless the  car has done fewer miles or is in exceptional condition.

Know the value of your part exchange

You can get a valuation via Glass’s Guide. Currently, Vauxhall are giving away free valuations. Be honest about the condition of your vehicle: it’s likely to be in “average” condition (that’s what “average” means, after all). Don’t tell the sales executive that you have this information: it could be useful in the negotiation process.

Go to a main dealer

If you possibly can, I suggest going to a dealer that specialises in the car type you are looking to buy. You will then get a manufacturer authorised health-check, a one-year warranty (usually, sometimes longer) plus membership of the driver’s club. You can also feel a little more confident that you’re not buying a lemon since these dealers have more of a reputation to protect.

Test until you’re happy

You can test drive as many cars as you like: it’s a lot of money and you must be happy with it.

Ask for a price for the deal

Make sure the Sales Executive gives you figures for both the part exchange and the car you’re buying. It’s essential that you get a complete breakdown and the sales exec might resist giving this to you because they don’t want to argue the toss about each figure

Mull it over

Don’t let them convince you to sign on the dotted line that moment (unless you’ve driven a long way to get there and are completely happy with the deal). Think it over, make sure that you’re happy with the figures and if not, come back with a counter-offer the following day. Do this by email if you possibly can because it limits their ability to use their patter to confuse the issue. It also gives you a paper trail

If they try to convince you to buy today, simply keep repeating “I need to think it over tonight, I’ll come back to you tomorrow” as there’s really no answer to that.

First, negotiate on the price of the car you’re buying and then, when you’re happy with it, negotiate the part ex price IF they have undervalued it (as they did in my case). Tell them you’ve checked on Glass’s (which is the service they use themselves).

Don’t buy any add-ons

Dealers make LOTS of money from Add-Ons which means they’re unlikely to be good value for you. If you think you’ll benefit from GAP insurance then buy it separately online as it’s MUCH cheaper done that way. If, on reflection, you want any particular add-on, you can always go back.

Pay by debit card

Dealers will charge you around 3% to pay by credit card and banks will charge for drafts so the most economical way to pay is by debit card if you possibly can.

So, my main advice is to be well informed, confident and upfront but to examine carefully every single statement the sales executive makes. They simply can’t help coming out with white (or not so white) lies such as “my boss insists I ask you” or “ok, although we said we wouldn’t budge on price, we haven’t had to give any other discounts today so maybe we can”  or “the FSA says we must offer you GAP insurance” (all of which I heard this week). This is mainly fluff which is part of their persona as sales people: if it’s important to you, get it written down.

PHP gets a bad press from time to time, largely because its very flexibility is seen as laxness by the tight sphincter brigade. However, just because PHP doesn’t force “best practice” on programmers doesn’t mean you can’t adopt said best practice.

Object oriented programming is much talked about and has many advantages over the old-school line-based procedural code. You’re probably familiar with functions (blocks of code called independently: they used to be called subroutines in the old days). Objects are groups of function which are, to some degree, “self aware”. By this I mean that values can be passed within the objects to allow the object to take the appopriate actions.

Enough of theory, I want to give a concrete example of how using objects can be, in a very practical, sense a timesaver. I’m going to show you how to create a very useful database object which can be used to make connecting to the database, retrieving and storing data much simpler.

Right, open up your favourite editor: mine is PHPDesigner although a good free alternative is PSPad. I’m assuming you have a working MySQL database and want to connect to it. If you’re at all familiar with interacting with MySQL, you know that there are three stages involved in retrieving information: connecting to the database, running the query and processing it. Let’s start by dealing with the first of these and automating the connection.

Create a blank PHP file and give it a name. I tend to use a two part convention: the first part of the name describes the purpose of the class, the second indicates the author. So, in this case, we might call it DbaseSB .php (SB=Scribbleit).

Here’s the inital code:

< ?php
//DATABASE CONNECTION/MANIPULATION OBJECT
//AUTHOR: KEVIN PARTNER
class DbaseSB
{
	private $DB_HOST="localhost";
	private $DB_NAME="mydbname";
	private $DB_USER="mydbuser";
	private $DB_PASSWORD="mydbpassword";
	private $connection;

You can see that we begin with the keyword “class” followed by the name of the class. This MUST be the same as the name of the PHP file. Following this is a series of variable definitions. private indicates that these variables are only accessible within the object: this is for security reasons and because these variables are only needed by the database object.

The variable names should be self explanatory except for $connection which is a variable I’m going to use to store the database connection once it’s made.

Now for the next bit:

function __construct()//CONSTRUCTOR FUNCTION WHICH IS RUN WHEN THE OBJECT IS CREATED
	{
		$this->connection = mysql_connect($this->DB_HOST, $this->DB_USER, $this->DB_PASSWORD) or die("unable to connect to database");

		$db_select=mysql_select_db($this->DB_NAME,$this->connection);

		if(!$db_select)
		{
			die("Database selection failed: ".mysql_error());
		}
	}

This code immediately follows the first block. The __construct magic method is run automatically when the object is created (we’ll see how to do that in a bit) so what this code achieves is to create a database connection automatically using the details you’ve supplied. This connection is then stored in the $connection variable for use later.

You’ll notice that $connection is expressed as $this->connection. The identifier $this represents the current object so what it’s saying is “my copy of $connection” since you could have many objects running at once based on a single class.

Moving right along, this code immediately follows the last block:

	function query($query)
	{
		$querydata=mysql_query($query);
		$this->confirm_query($querydata);
		return($querydata);
	}

	function confirm_query($result_set)
	{
		if (!$result_set) {
			die("Database query failed: " . mysql_error());
		}
	}

The first method (functions are called methods when they’re inside an object, go figure) wraps up any MySQL query and runs it. confirm_query checks to see that a valid result was achieved and, if not, echoes out the error returned.

Now, this might seem like a lot of work just to do some database stuff but the beauty is that you only have to do it once (and you can, after all, copy and paste it from here). This class can now connect to a database and execute a query. All that’s left now is to add some general purpose queries that will shield you from having to remember the MySQL code.

So, let’s now add one such general purpose method:

	function fetchfield($table,$indexname,$indexvalue,$fieldname)
	{
	    $query="SELECT * FROM $table WHERE $indexname=$indexvalue";
	    $querydata=$this->query($query);
	    $fielddata=mysql_fetch_assoc($querydata);
	    return $fielddata[$fieldname];
	}
}
?>

As its name suggests, fetchfield will pull out a single field from a single row of a database.

Ok, that completes our class for now: let’s look at how we would use that in a PHP script. So, create a script (for example “index.php”) in the usual way. For now, I suggest putting it in the same folder as the class but that’s not generally a good idea as it’s best to have your classes all together.

< ?php
require_once("DbaseSB.php");
$dbobject=new DbaseSB();

$userid=1001;

$firstname=$dbobject->fetchfield("users","userid",$userid,"firstname";
echo($firstname);
?>

In the first line, we include the php class file. The second line shows how to create an object from the class. A “class” is the blueprint, the definition of the object. Just as you can build many houses from one blueprint, you can create as many objects as you like from one class and each can have its own variable values etc. Most often, you’ll just create a single copy as here.

Important note:Remember that, in creating (“instantiating”) our object, it automatically connects to the database: you don’t have to carry out that step.

We then define a variable for testing purposes. On the next line, you can see how we access our object’s single method, fetchfield. In this case, the table name is “users”, the index we’re using to identify the row containing the field is called “user id”, the actual value of userid is $userid and the field we want to fetch is “firstname”.

A very simple but powerful example. Now that the object is created, we can use it anywhere on this page without recreating it. Adding new methods makes it progressively more powerful, allowing you to use MySQL without using MySQL, if you see what I mean. That single line of code has replaced at least 7 lines if you don’t include the connection. The more complex the method, the greater the time saving.

Furthermore, each time you add a method it becomes available across your whole site AND you can up and move your entire library to a new site for a new project and all you need to change is the connection information. Convinced yet?