There are several elements of an ExpressionEngine build that will appear only to a super user, but disappear for the average visitor to the site.  The reverse can also happen.  For example, on many of my EE builds I have built-in buttons for the administrator to edit the content directly from the website itself.  These “Edit Me” links disappear for the average user.  Another example is the content form, where a captcha and “remember my info” button appears only when the user is not logged into the site.

With all this conditional content, it is typical to log out of the site to see how the typical user views it, only to log back in to make changes.  This back and forth can be quite annoying.  A simple way to handle this is to view your site in one browser application, and edit the content in another.  The cookies won’t transfer, and therefore you will appear offline to the other browser.  If you are running Windows and using Firefox, a plugin called IE-Tab can allow you to open a tab as if it were Internet Explorer.  With one click, you can switch back and forth.  This is what I use on my PC, and is definitely a time saver.  There is a promising plugin being developed for Firefox Mac called Safari View, but it is still buggy and opens links in a new Firefox window, instead of a toggle like IE Tab.  Something to watch though.

Tags: expressionengine, quicktip, web development,

I'll have to admit, at first I wondered what the iPad was for exactly.  I have a laptop AND a desktop, and I plan on purchasing an iPhone when my contract with Sprint is through this fall.  What niche does this fourth device fall into?

Here are my initial thoughts:

The Ultimate Children's Entertainment Platform

My twin daughters are almost two years old.  We are taking them on a plane ride this weekend and have wondered what on earth we are going to do to keep them quiet.  Enter the iPad.  Already they are playing a multitude of games, browsing flashcards, listening to Raffi on Pandora, and watching movies that we've uploaded to the device.  We purchased a couple of children's headphones to keep the rest of the airplane sane in leu of Dora's perpetually yelling voice.  I can't think of a feature that this thing doesn't have to keep my kids content.

The Ultimate RSS Reader

I'm still getting my hands dirty with this, but with the plethora of RSS reader apps available for the iPad, in combination with the instapaper app that makes saving for later reading a pleasure, I can say that I will now be a more informed consumer of blog posts.  Already this morning I sat with the iPad in a local coffee shop perusing the thoughts of those whose feeds I subscribe to.  I will say that one thing that the iPad is not good at is leaving comments on other people's blogs.  What used to be a quick gesture after reading a post now turns into a ten minute headache of trying to fill out all of the forms with my email address, name, url, and typing a comment.  The on-screen keyboard is useable, but not for typing much more than a URL.  My buddy says I'll get used to it.  We'll see.

Coming Soon

I haven't had this thing more than 24 hours, but there are a few other uses that I know I'll use the iPad for:

• Streaming TV shows (as soon as something decent replaces LOST)
• Second Monitor (with AirDisplay, once my stand gets here from Amazon)
• Digital Photo viewer (when I'm just setting it aside)
• Bible Reading Plan (hopefully it will help keep my reading more consistent)

Of course, I'm open to suggestions of how else to use the iPad.  I'll be interested to learn from others what their experiences with the iPad are.

About EECI

EECI is an ExpressionEngine and CodeIgnitor developer's conference held at various locations around the world.  This past Spring it was held in San Francisco, and is coming soon to Leiden, The Netherlands. It is a great opportunity to learn from others, share ideas, and network with others from around the world.  For more information visit http://eeciconf.com/

Tags: ipad, eeci conference, technology, apple,

I'm interested to find out from the community which addons they use in almost every install they do, and whether they believe that the functionality that these addons supply become a part of the core of ExpressionEngine.

Tags: expressionengine,

How do I properly center an image in CSS?

There are several answers to this.  Before I begin, it is important to remember that images are displayed inline by default.  This means that they appear “in line” with text, and do not take up a whole block width the way a heading or a paragraph would.  Because of this, setting a margin of “auto” won’t work on images by default, because this only applies to block elements.  Also, if you give the image itself a style of text-align:center, this won’t work either.  What you are declaring here is that you want everything within the image tag to be centered.  The image tag only takes up the space that the image does, so centering is a moot point.

Solutions:

1. Give a style to the surrounding container (the paragraph, div, etc.) of text-align:center.  The image will be centered, as well as any text that is also within that block.
2. Give a style to the image to be display:block, and then give it a margin-left and margin-right of “auto”.

Bonus:

While not that popular, it is also possible to center images vertically.  Try this:

Any text or image within will be vertically aligned.

Tags: quicktip, web development, css,

First of all, Use { site_url } instead of { homepage }.  Using the { homepage } tag will make your links go to http://www.yoursite.com/index.php, whereas the { site_url } tag goes to http://www.yoursite.com.  A subtle difference, and one that at least Google can figure out, but other search engines see those as two different pages, and give them two different rankings.  Odds are, other sites will link to you as http://www.yoursite.com, so why not make your website links in the nav bar do the same?

Secondly, What is the difference between http://joviawebstudio.com and http://www.joviawebstudio.com ?  Not much in the eyes of your browser, but in the eyes of a search engine, they are two different places.  Write the following code in your .httaccess file in order to combine those two pages into one through a rewrite rule:

If you want to add the “www” back in when people forget it, just reverse the code:

Don’t put both of these pieces of code in your .htaccess file or you’ll break the Internet and somewhere a star will die.  Oh, and you can actually accomplish the first one automatically by installing Levi Graham’s excellent LG .htaccess Generator add-on for ExpressionEngine, which has a whole slew of other enhancements, including removing the index.php segment automatically.  However, I would suggest that you learn a little about .htaccess rules if you are going to implement this addon, so you can easily tweak some settings that come with it by default in case your particular configuration requires it.

Tags: expressionengine, seo, quicktip, htaccess, web development, lg htaccess generator,

In order to move an ExpressionEngine website, we need to transfer two things:

1. The Files
2. The Database

Transferring Files

This can be done using your favorite FTP program.  There are many free FTP programs out there, for Windows I recommend WinSCP, and for Mac I recommend Cyberduck.  Because I am a web developer by trade, I forked over a reasonable $28 for Yummy FTP on the mac, a fast, robust, and easy-to-use FTP client.

Now that you have your FTP client of choice, you need to create a new connection to the existing website’s server, and view all of the files for the site.  If your FTP client has a sync feature (Yummy does), then you can simply create a new folder on your desktop and synchronize all of the files from the site to that folder.  If there is no sync feature, just drag and drop all of the files into that folder.  Make sure that your client doesn’t delete the originals on the server, but just copies them.  This is probably the default behavior, but just had to mention that.

You should now have a local copy of the files that drive the site.  You can pretty much just reverse these directions to upload the files back up to the new server environment.  These files include the engine behind the site, as well as the images.  Depending on how the site is set up, it might include the template files as well, but by default those are stored within the database.  In fact, you don’t have much of a site without that database, and unfortunately, it can be the most difficult item to successfully transfer.

Transferring the Database

Databases can be imported and exported into a .sql file, making transfer of this data seemingly simple.  Sometimes, it is painless, but sometimes, it can take hours to troubleshoot.  My advice is to Google any errors that you receive and hopefully you can find a solution in a forum somewhere.  That is how I have successfully forged through a couple of hurdles in this department. 

If you have access to phpMyAdmin on both servers, then great.  You can generally click on the database name, click on the export tab, and export the database into an SQL file.  The following is a great tutorial on how to do that:

If you don’t have access to phpMyAdmin, there is a little trick that you can do via FTP to grab that .sql file in a method known as the “SQL Dump”.  I have written a little script that you can place within a folder on the original site, and navigate to that page.  For example, I could create a folder called “sqlbackup”, and within create an index.php file.  I would paste the code below into that index.php file, and then navigate to www.sitename.com/sqlbackup/index.php, and I would then run the script.

Note: the settings for the below script can be found by navigating via FTP into system/config.php

This script will generate an .sql file in the same directory as the index.php file, so in my example, the sqlbackup folder.  Via ftp, you can drag that file to your desktop, and then delete it from the server for security reasons.  This file could be navigated to and downloaded by anyone, providing all of your site’s guts (probably not a good idea).

At this point, you should have an .sql file by one of those two methods, and you will need phpMyAdmin access in order to upload this database into the new location.  For this, you login to phpMyAdmin, click on the name of the database you are importing into, and click on the import tab (If you haven’t already, you’ll need to setup a database using whatever database wizard is in your hosting control panel, or simply use phpMyAdmin—instructions here).  From there you will select the file on your local machine, and import.  If there were a reason for an error, this would be it.  Remember, just Google the error with the word ExpressionEngine and see what comes up.

Final Steps

The final things that you need to do in order to make sure that everything works correctly is to set the path to the database, and change settings within the control panel to reflect the new site structure.

To set the path to the database, navigate via FTP to the config.php file within the system directory.  You need to enter the new database settings into those fields.

To change settings within the control panel, you need to browse to the control panel in the new server environment.  You will probably have no stylesheet associated with the backend, so don’t be alarmed if everything looks wonky.  Find your way through the unstyled control panel to Admin > System Preferences > General Configuration.  Here you can begin to set some of the preliminary paths in the new server environment.  Once this is done, there are many other obscure paths hidden throughout the system control panel that need to be changed.  Save yourself some time and grab Hop Studio’s excellent Deeploy Helper Module, which lists all of the settings on one page.  To make things easier, is a quick find/replace feature is included.

Conclusion

This is really all that it takes to migrate a site.  Generally I estimate to my clients that this process will take 4 hours.  Depending on the hurdles discovered, this has been about accurate.  A majority of the time is spent uploading and downloading items, not to mention finding all of the appropriate login information.  The more organized you are about this, the less likely you will be to really mess things up.  These instructions can also be followed to simply make a backup copy of a website on your local machine using something like MAMP for Mac, or WAMP Server for Windows (both free).

Happy Migrating!

Tags: expressionengine, php, web development, migration, security, backup, mysql,

According to a recent Nielsen/Facebook report, if my friends like it, I’m more likely to buy it. Survey data from 800,000 Facebook users was analyzed recently to study different responses to more than 125 Facebook ad campaigns from 70 different brand advertisers.

The result? Personalization sells. The joint report, Advertising Effectiveness: Understanding the Value of a Social Media Impression, concluded that consumers trust their friends more than anyone else. The study looks at how “earned” media (advertising that is passed along or shared among to friends and beyond) and social advocate contribute to campaigns.

While there was significant value generated from a basic page ad, the results suggest that a personalized ad (that indicates which friends like a particular product) increased brand awareness by 60% and moreover increased purchasing intent 4 times.

And you thought peer pressure was a junior high phase.

Tags: emarketing, social media,

"What's the most resilient parasite? An Idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules."

If you think about it, marketing is about planting an idea so that a customer will act on it. How do you plant an idea into someone’s subconscious? Instead of throwing a blanket advertising campaign on your audience, the most savvy marketers will study and analyze their audience. A good business will show you what you need before you know that you need it. Or, mentally meet the consumer at the inception of an idea.

Instead of the pretentious “everyone needs this” campaign, a great marketer will allow the buyer to believe that he is part of the campaign and the idea or the progression of an idea, was his. After all, it’s for a specific customer that this product was born.

When Microsoft launched Windows 7, their advertising slogan was “I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea.” Looking at the website, the first line is: “You told us what you wanted in a PC. Here's how Windows 7 can help...” Well, how can I not like you when you make me feel important? Perception is crucial and inception perception could be invaluable. View your customer feedback as a building block for a future idea instead of a confirmation of a present, existing idea. Where there’s ownership, there could be partnership, and a loyal customer.

Survey, study, poll, and research repeat habits. A couple of online surveying tools are www.zoomerang.com and www.surveymethods.com, to name a few.

When information cyclically flows freely between consumer and creator, it could be hard to tell which is the dream and which is the reality.

Tags: emarketing, small business,

At the footer, when you create the copyright for your site, keep the site looking fresh by using a variable for the current year.  For example, don’t let this happen:

© 1994 Jovia Web Studio.

Instead, use ExpressionEngine’s date variable formatting:

You will never be out of date (at least not in your copyright).

Now, there are some people who intentionally do not use this method.  Mike Boyink of Train-ee ExpressionEngine Training stated in his session at the EECI2010 conference that he likes to manually update these copyrights in the footer of his client’s websites so that he can send them a quick note to wish them a happy new year and let them know that he’s updated their site’s copyright for them.  This is a nice way to keep in touch with your clients and let them know that you are looking out for their best interests, just make sure that you don’t forget to do this, or you’ll certainly hear from them!

Tags: expressionengine, quicktip,

The great secret of those who feel empowered as opposed to defeated by making a habit of sharing through social media is focus and reciprocity.

I want to say a few words on focus here and deal with reciprocity the next time around.

There's a saying that goes, "He who attempts to be a master of many things fails to be a master of any thing."  OK, I made that up, but it sounds good right?!  If we're honest, we'll probably admit that it resonates with what we know to be true.  Whether you are a web designer, photographer, software developer, or any other manner of contract worker, the best thing you can do for yourself, both in terms of skill development and Internet based marketing and promotions is FOCUS.

Here's why I say this is a key to successful social networking.  Internet searches are incredibly refined and they are getting better all the time.  The more focused you can be about who you are, what you're about, or what you seek to offer to potential clients, customers, or mere connections, the more valuable social networking is going to be to you.

Before the Internet and social networking became commonplace, we had to exert great amounts of energy and effort to meaningfully connect with those who shared our interests.  The more general you could be about your interests, the better, because only a certain number of people were accessible.  But, because the Internet flattens the world in which we "live," the number of people to whom we might connect is unfathomably larger and more accessible.  So whereas in a pre-Internet world we would have done well to identify as say, "Photographer," as a way to connect with other photographers and those needing pictures taken, we are far more helped today by identifying as a "family portrait photographer who focuses on urban action shots."  In a world where meaningful access to others is limited, this kind of specificity is probably to our detriment, but in a would where people have the freedom to search, globally and instantly, for others with specific interests and talents, it is a key to success in terms of social networking.

What are your thoughts?  Have you discovered this to be true?  Has focusing what you put out via social media yielded more meaningful connections?

Tags: social media, social networking,