It has some very cool effects for images. I had added it to a site and it was taking FOREVER to load. After searching cu3er forum, they were of no help, just contact theme developer.

Well I did find my issue with it… Maybe it could help someone else who is using it.

The issue stemmed from the config.xml. The images were taking forever to load.

I also moved the xml file to a php file.

Step 1: Open a new file, name it something you will remember “slideshow.php”.

Inside this new file, add

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/xml');
print '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>';
?>

to the top of the file.

Follow this up now with the rest of your content from the config.xml, minus the first line.

Would look something like this in the end:

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/xml');
print '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>';
?>
<cu3er>
<settings>
<auto_play>
<defaults symbol="circular"/>
<tweenIn x="850" y="25" width="30" height="30" tint="0x999999" alpha="0.5"/>
<tweenOver alpha="1"/>
</auto_play>
<prev_button>
<defaults round_corners="5,5,5,5"/>
<tweenOver tint="0xFFFFFF" scaleX="1.1" scaleY="1.1"/>
<tweenOut tint="0x000000" />
</prev_button>

<prev_symbol>
<tweenOver tint="0x000000" />
</prev_symbol>

<next_button>
<defaults round_corners="5,5,5,5"/>
<tweenOver tint="0xFFFFFF"  scaleX="1.1" scaleY="1.1"/>
<tweenOut tint="0x000000" />
</next_button>

<next_symbol>
<tweenOver tint="0x000000" />
</next_symbol>    

</settings>    

<slides>

<slide>
<url>/one.jpg</url>
</slide>
<!-- changing transition between first & second slide -->
<transition num="3" slicing="vertical" direction="down"/>
<slide>
<url>/two.jpg</url>
</slide>
<!-- changing transition between second & third slide -->
<transition num="4" direction="right" shader="flat" />
<slide>
<url>/three.jpg</url>
</slide>
<!-- transitions properties defined in transitions template -->
<slide>
<url>/four.jpg</url>
</slide>
<transition num="6" slicing="vertical" direction="up" shader="flat" delay="0.05" z_multiplier="4" />
<slide>
<url>/five.jpg</url>
</slide>

</slides>
</cu3er>

Step 2: Update the call to your new file. Look for the JS that embeds the flash.

var flashvars = {};
		flashvars.xml = "/slideshow.php";

Step 3:
Now to make the update that fixed the issue.

Find in your config the following lines:

<slide>
<url>/one.jpg</url>
</slide>

This is what I originally had. The file was in the root. If your xml looks similar to this, all you need to do is add the full url to your image path. So in the end it would look like this:

<slide>
<url>http://www.yoursite.com/one.jpg</url>
</slide>

Hope that helps!

Example:



<form> <input name="name" type="text" value="Search..." />
</form>

There you go. Simple and adds a touch of ease to any site.

Cheers!~

You will need JQuery for this. You can download it here.

<script src="js/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
$(function(){
var $container = $('#images'); //ID to your containing DIV
var i = 1;
var scrollInterval = setInterval(function(){
var currentClass = 'img'+i;
if(i >= 4){//Number of images +1
i = 0;
}

var ii = i+1;
var nextClass = 'img'+ii;
$container.removeClass(currentClass);
$container.fadeIn().addClass( nextClass);
i++;

},5000); //Time Interval between fade
});
// ]]></script>

The code above is set to change the class name of the container.

<div id="images" class="img1">
<h1>Title Tag</h1>
</div>

Now you will need to create the CSS classes for the rotator.

.img1 {background:url(image1.gif) no-repeat;}
.img2 {background:url(image2.gif) no-repeat;}
.img3 {background:url(image3.gif) no-repeat;}

That is it. I wanted a quick and dirty rotator. This also minimizes the external JS files the page calls. I know there are many JQuery plugins to handle rotators, but I just wanted the library includes.

Enjoy!
Cheers!~

Step1: Login to your server via SSH. (I like using puTTY for this.)

Your will need your:
ip:
user:
pass:

Step2: Navigate to your current directory on the server

cd /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/

Step3: Download the latest version of wordpress to your server.

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip

Step4: Unzip the download

unzip wordpress-2.9.2.zip

Step5: Move contents from wordpress directory to current location on server.

cp -rf ./wordpress/* ./

Step6: Creating MySQL DB

-Login to MySQL

mysql -uusername -ppassword

-Create Database

create database dbname

-Grant user access to new db

grant usage on *.* to username@localhost identified by 'password'

-Set Privileges to this user on this db

grant all privileges on dbname.* to username@localhost

-Test conntection, change values below with the newly created info from above and user that was granted access.

mysql -uusername -ppassword dbname

Note: If all was successful with no errors, your db is installed.

Step7:  Your wordpress is ready for the final installation.  Go to your site with the new WordPress files are located and follow the steps.

Note: You can remove the zip file now as well.

rm wordpress-2.9.2.zip

Note: To remove an entire directory

rm -rf DirectoryName

That is it. Congrats on setting up your first WordPress through SSH.

Note: If you are uncertain if your server has SOAP enabled or not, create a phpinfo(); file. If you do not see Soap enabled, you will need to add it.

Step 1: Download PHP5 (I am using version 5.2.6, so replace to whatever version you have). List of previous PHP versions.

wget http://museum.php.net/php5/php-5.2.6.tar.gz

Step 2: Unpack the PHP file
tar -zxf php-5.2.6.tar.gz

Step 3: Configure PHP to enable SOAP.
cd php-5.2.6
./configure --enable-soap=shared

Step 4: Rebuild PHP (This takes some time).
make

Step 5: Now we just copy over the SOAP module to your existing PHP module directory.
cp modules/soap.so /usr/lib/php/modules/

Step 6: Add the new SOAP configuration to your existing configuration
echo "extension=soap.so" > /etc/php.d/soap.ini

Step 7: Restart Server
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Step 8: Remove the PHP folder you just downloaded for this process.
rm -rf /home/php-5.2.6/

Check your PHPINFO file again. You should now see soap enabled.
Cheers!

Special Thanks to dotjay.co.uk for pointing this out.

this on my site. It is a nasty little script that will redirect the visitor to another site. The

script gets embedded on the Header.php file of your wordpress theme, right after the </head> tag

and right before the <body> tag.

I have the most recent version of wordpress too. I had heard of some security holes in the

previous version, so I did like any other good developer and upgraded the software. However, my

theme was still attacked. The code looks like a long line of javascript between two script tags.

It is pretty hard to miss when you open your Header.php file.

I have seen another one that hit wordpress blogs. That hack look similar to this one, however it

targets the index files on the server and injects a similar line of script to the end of your

index file. Another wordpress hack was to add a file to the root of your theme directory which

would allow the hacker access to your server.

If someone wants to get to your files bad enough, they will, but you don’t have to make it easy

for them. Here are some changes to your site that you can make if you have been hacked or even if

you just want to update your WordPress!

1. Upgrade your version of WordPress.

2. Exploit Scanner - There are several scanner tools, but this is the one I liked. You can

download and install a WordPress plugin that will scan your wordpress files, db tables, and

plugins for anything out of the ordinary. It will not remove any files for you, it leaves this to

the user. You can even allocate how much memory the scan can use if youre on a host with limited

access. Run this scan on your site.

3. Change your .htaccess file – There is a hack that adds new items to this file. Original

htaccess should look like this
# BEGIN WordPress
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</ifmodule>
# END WordPress

Hacked addition
<ifmodule mod_security.c>
<files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</files>
</ifmodule>

4. Check that there are no new users added to your Wordpress. Changing your passwords should be a

must. Having a hard time coming up with secure passwords? I love this site for creating long

crazy passwords.

5. Update or add the SECRET_KEY in your wp-config.php file. If you have never done this, you can

open the wp-config.php file in your wp root and follow the comments on where to get this updated.

WordPress does have some security updates they promote. You can find them here for more information.

You can also go to WordPress site. They have an article about Hardening Wordpress.

Best wishes and keep on blogging!
Cheers

“Keep it simple stupid’.

Here we go:

1.  All-in-one SEO

I love this plug-in. It is probably my favorite. It is very easy to install and allows the end-user to make updates to meta tags, sef urls, and can even handle canonical urls. Just install it! You’ll be happy later. You can download the plug-in here.

2. WordPress Navigation List Plugin NAVT

Another favorite of mine. This requires a bit more time to setup. You need to add the plug-in calls to your theme. Once you can get passed that part, this plug-in is a dream. It allows the end-user to update navigation/menu items with a very nice AJAX interface. I mentioned earlier, these plug-ins are for the end-user. I have yet to see a menu admin as nice as this. You can find this plug-in here.

3. Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a very handy contact form tool. I will admit it is limited in advanced input types, but for most of your contact needs, it is very handy. CF7 is very nice to update and edit the email that is sent. I used to use ChronoII for a long time, but switched over to Contact Form 7. ChronoII has their quirks too, but I found CF7 was just sweet and simple. You can download this plug-in here.

4. Google XML Sitemaps

Google Sitemaps is a must. Google makes up most of the searched traffic and you would be silly not to get indexed with Google. This plug-in requires you to create two additional files after the plug-in has been activated and permissions changed. After that, its a self-cleaning oven. Updates, sets recheck times. It gets the job done. You can download the plug-in here.

5. NextGen Gallery

NextGen is a beast! It’s the only Photo Gallery plug-in I use. There are also add-on plug-ins that work very well with this. You can manage galleries very nicely and even crate albums. There is a nice widget extension as well. I have used this on a few websites. It has the options to set how many thumbnails to display in the widget and even set up a random rotation of images from a particular gallery. You can add gallery Main Images as well as update text for each image in the gallery. Just a wonderful plug-in. Cheers! You can download this plug-in here.

6. Smart Youtube

Smart Youtube is a great plug-in if you have youtube videos. I had a client who needed a video gallery of his youtube videos. I scoured through many wordpress plug-ins to get an album view. I think I ran through every last one until I got to this plug-in. You are able to pull in play lists, a youtube user account, related videos, and all kinds of settings. This plug-in sets up a nice paginated gallery of youtube videos. You can download this plug-in here.

7. Simply Show IDs

Simply Show IDs adds a new column to your post, page, and category edit view that simple shows the post, page, or category ID. I started out telling clients to hover over the link and just grab the ID. That didn’t go over too well. This plug-in puts the IDs right in the admin and makes it easy for the end-user to grab. Certain plug-ins need this to redirect to a certain page or condition for a page/post. This has come in handy many times. You can download this plug-in here.

Hope these were insiteful. I will update as I think of more later. There are some plug-ins that are fantastic to recreate carts, membership sites, landing pages. etc… But that will be for a later post.

Cheers!


public function getReviewLink($id)
{
return Mage::getUrl('review/product/list', array('id'=> $id));
}


After adding this method, I can now call it on the Review listing template.

Location of review listing template: app\design\frontend\faction\template\review\product\view\list.phtml

< a href="< ?php echo $this->getReviewLink($this->getProductId()) ? >#review-form">Post a review.< / a>

We pass the product’s ID to the method and the link is construct and returned.

I started out using sIFR on the li and not on the achors. Then you can manipulate the a:hover tag. However, when you start getting into second level (sub-lists), things got complicated.

So here’s the code snippet I had used on the anchor tag.

,onRollOver: function(fi) { fi.changeCSS('.sIFR-root { letter-spacing: 1.2; color: #F6DA07;text-transform:uppercase; cursor:pointer;}'); },onRollOut: function(cb) { cb.changeCSS('.sIFR-root { letter-spacing: 1.2;text-transform:uppercase;cursor:pointer;color: #ffffff;}');},

That is it!

This went into a Magento Cart. The client was very pleased we were able to keep the same font.

1) Go to Zend official site. http://www.zend.com/
2) Find and download the Zend Optimizer 3.3. I am using the 3.3.3 package.
3) Download it directly to your server.
wget http://downloads.zend.com/optimizer/3.3.3/ZendOptimizer-3.3.3-linux-glibc23-i386.tar.gz
4) Decompress it.
tar xvfz ZendOptimizer-3.3.3-linux-glibc23-i386.tar.gz
5)Move to the new folder and install.
cd ZendOptimizer-3.3.3-linux-glibc23-i386
./install

6. Follow the steps to install.

7. After the installation, you will notice some new lines in your php.ini file.
cd /etc
vi php.ini

8. Comment out all of the new Zend lines. (generally at the very end of the .ini file).

Example:
[Zend]
zend_extension_manager.optimizer=/usr/local/Zend/lib/Optimizer-3.3.9
zend_extension_manager.optimizer_ts=/usr/local/Zend/lib/Optimizer_TS-3.3.3
zend_optimizer.version=3.3.4
zend_extension=/usr/local/Zend/lib/ZendExtensionManager.so
zend_extension_ts=/usr/local/Zend/lib/ZendExtensionManager_TS.so

9. Now we will disable ioncube.
/etc/php.d/
vi ioncube-loader.ini

10. comment out the line
zend_extension=/usr/lib/php/php_ioncube_loader_lin.so

and replace with your zend optimizer lines

zend_extension=/usr/local/Zend/lib/Optimizer-3.3.3/php-5.2.x/ZendOptimizer.so
zend_optimizer.optimization_level=15

Now save your .ini file and restart apache.
Service httpd restart

You should set up a phpinfo file to test that you have successfully installed Zend Optimizer.
I am sure there are many ways of doing this, but this is what worked for me on a MediaTemple 3.5(dv) server. Hope it helps someone else too!