Archive
- [ 4 posts ] May 2010
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- [ 3 posts ] January 2010
- [ 2 posts ] September 2009
- [ 3 posts ] June 2009
- [ 3 posts ] May 2009
- [ 3 posts ] April 2009
- [ 6 posts ] March 2009
- [ 1 post ] February 2009
- [ 1 post ] January 2009
- [ 8 posts ] November 2008
- [ 7 posts ] October 2008
Recent Comments
- Charles » 28 Jul
Using jQuery to highlight required fields - Graham Weldon » 30 Jun
iPhone 3.0 tethering with Optus - Update - Eric » 18 Jun
iPhone 3.0 tethering with Optus - Update - Graham Weldon » 24 May
iPhone tethering success with optus - Jacob » 24 May
iPhone tethering success with optus
Blog Posts
Emailer Component, with a twist
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Tagged: Website, General
Implemented the mailout facility for the Enquiries page, finally. Not that this is difficult at all, since CakePHP provides a nice ready-to-use Email Component. But with the help of Dale, I was able to devise a manner in which the Email component is extended, slightly, to provide site-wide settings in a transparent manner.
While this is entirely possible from the Email component as it is, you would need to either apply these settings in your AppController, or change the setting in each controller that used the Email Component. What I have achieved basically overloads the send() function, and applies the sitewide settings before passing the call back to the parent Email component. Simple, yet effective. But wait, theres more...
Recent Comments CakePHP Element
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Tagged: Website, General
Another little move forward in the scheme of things. I now have a Recent Comments element on some of the pages to indicate the latest 5 comments that have been made on the blog overall. I am not entirely certain that this is ideal moving forward. If traffic picks up on this site, there could be multiple per day, and this will tick over fairly regularly. What I might consider doing is storing a counterCache on the BlogPost model, which should automagically update as comments are made. This should, in turn update the 'modified' automagic field, creating an orderable index by which I could list the last commented posts.
So, rather than listing the last comments, I list the most recently commented on posts. This isn't something I have seen anywhere, its just something I thought could assist the diversification of content thats being presented at any point in time. With a particularly interesting post, using the current element, you could potentially have the last 5 comments based on a single post.
Contact form and cleanup
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Tagged: Website, General
A bit of an interesting night. I haven't often gone back to my CSS and refactored to ensure its minimal, optimal, etc.. Its a worthwhile exercise, and not often done, from my experience. I've also setup the contact form. This is setup and working to both keep a record of the contact, and to email it off to yours truly.
Well, I feel pretty lame writing this blog entry, because the activities tonight aren't anything ground breaking or spectacular. But these are things that are necessary and integral to the site. I've made some pretty decent moves towards the syntax highlighting solution, which I will update you all on in the next few days.
Curse that Little Big Planet
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Tagged: Website, General
The sole reason that for the last couple of days, there has been little to no progress in development of this site, the design for the Slavitica site, cleaning of the new motorbike, and work in general... The recent release of Little Big Planet, a cute new game for the Playstation 3. In fact, its the reason I bought my PS3 on launch, so long ago. Its an extensible environment with an extensive set of storyline levels to play through and seamless internet integration for co-operative play. So impressive in fact, that its now bundled with PS3's on purchase.
But anyway, this is not really a game review site. But I highly recommend buying this game. You'll giggle yourself silly. On the work front, I've decided that its time to move beyond the blog for now, as thats taking up a little too much time. There are a few minor features that need to be looked at and then its time to give some attention to the wiki and projects page. I may even take a small break in there to populate my resume page also.
Blog Archive complete, simple too!
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Tagged: Website, General
Not much code digging tonight, as the Archive element for the blog pages was way less complex than I had initially anticipated. What I wanted as a basic display of the months in which posts had been made, and to have them list in the side bar of the site. Nothing fancy there, but it meant grouping, ordering, and returning non-standard fields. All of which turned out to be a piece of Cake.. PHP, that is.
The first thing to note is that I am using some automagic within CakePHP, in that it automatically populates a 'created' field on a table, when the data is created. This is absolutely perfect for things like blog entries. Sure there are situations in which you might want to back-date a post, but I tend to just leave the dates natural, and the auto created field suits this just fine.
