deelightful musings » Code & Design

Favicons

Diana — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:07:41 +0000

I recently revamped one of my client’s website which included an updated Favicon to polish up the new site design. Favicons are mini graphics for a particular website that is displayed in the browser’s URL bar next to the site’s name. For instance, my blog’s Favicon looks like this:

Favicons help users identify what website they are visiting. These mini icons are useful if they are visually appealing and fit to the design or logo of a given page. This way, you create the visual connection between your website and your sites’ visitors.

To learn how to create your own Favicon, check out Abaya Code.

For some Favicon inspiration, check out Smashing Magazine’s 50 Remarkable Favicons.

WordPress 3.1 Upgrade

Diana — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 01:35:21 +0000

I was already behind on upgrading my WordPress to 3.0.5, so after using 3.0.5 for a few days shortly after, WordPress 3.1 was released. Unsatisfied with 3.0.5, I decided to upgrade to 3.1 since I’ve already backed up most of my blog with the exception of a few new posts from the last week. In bringing my WordPress up to 3.1 today, I noticed several of my plugins crashed and my dashboard was in worse shape than when I was using WordPress 3.0.5. Now what?

The Problem
When attempting to activate some of my plugins, the server responded with a “500 Internal Server Error”.

The Solution
The reason for that error message is because my PHP was running out of memory. If you’re running your own root, dedicated or virtual server, you have to change the php.ini of your server and provide more memory to your PHP installation. On a shared hosting server, like at 1and1 webhosting solutions, you often don’t have access to that central php.ini. But there is an easy workaround.

Create a text file and name it php.ini with this single line of code: memory=20MB

Place this file into the directory /wp-admin/ within your WordPress installation and that’s it! WordPress 3.1 is running great with the extra memory and all my plugins are working without a glitch!

Credit: Solution for 500 Internal Server Error by Christian at codedifferent.

WordPress 3.0.5 Upgrade

Diana — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:52:59 +0000

After months of procrastination, I finally gave in and upgraded my WordPress blog to 3.0.5 today. My last experience with the 3.0.1 upgrade was a headache, to say the least. I had to spend over three hours restoring my blog back to 2.9.2 because it was so unstable. I took every precaution this time. I created a dummy blog to run 3.0.5 to make sure it was compatible with all my plugins. So far, the upgrade has only one issue with the Dagon Form Mailer plugin, causing my dashboard menus to collapse (admin control panel and post menu). I deactivated that plugin and now everything seems to be running fine. Now if only I can find a stable form mailer plugin… *sigh.

To learn more about backing up your WordPress blog, check out Online-Tech-Tips.

Visit WordPress Support for instructions on upgrading to 3.0.5.

What’s Your Type?

Diana — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:14:33 +0000

Pentagram has a resident psychiatrist and is giving away free appointments at his office to learn what typeface most suits your personality. He will ask you four questions, take some notes, and then reveal your “type,” complete with a history lesson on that font. I was diagnosed as Baskerville Italic.

Give it a try! Visit Pentagram to see What Type You Are.

Facebook Button

Diana — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 23:10:21 +0000

Hello lovelies! Notice anything new with my blog? I added the Facebook LIKE button!

Facebook introduced more social interactions with their new “Like” or “Recommend” button. This Facebook button enables the user to interact with a site or page. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user’s friends’ News Feed with a link back to your website:

For all you WordPress bloggers, check out this simple installation:
Open “single.php” or “index.php” and look for “the_content”.
Paste this code either before or after “the_content” line:

ID)); ?>&layout=standard&show_faces=false&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”true” style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:60px”>

You can also adjust some of the attributes in the code to fit your blog! To change the layout from displaying social text to the right of the button to just a simple total number of likes, change “layout=standard” to “layout=button_count”.

If you’d like to show the faces of your friends, change “show_faces=false” to “show_faces=true”.

To display the label of the button as “Recommend”, change “action=like” to “action=recommend”.

For more information, check out RuhaniRabin‘s post… and don’t forget to hit the LIKE button!