Before you even think about reading this you should familiarize yourself with the primary migration document.

Issue 1

The problem

The latest migrator release wouldn’t upload to my site. I tried this throught the Joomla! 1.o admin uploader numerous times. With every attempt the had to manually remove the files from my server (the physical upload worked – it just showed as failing in admin).

The solution

As a last ditch attempt I tried to upload the first stable release of the migrator (I was trying to upload the latest – 1.4). It worked perfectly!

Issue 2

The problem

After I ran the migration script I couldn’t download the MySQL database dump. The download button simply didn’t work in Safari and in Firefox it downloaded an empty file.

The solution

I figured that the dump had to be on my server somewhere and went hunting for it. Here is where it was for me…

/public_html/administrator/components/com_migrator/dumps

Issue 3

The problem

I actually had a few issues after I ran the Joomla! 1.5 installer but the most persistent had to do with the front page. For some reason it used the default Joomla! template while the rest of the site used the new template I had uploaded and chosen in the template manager.

The solution

Almost at my wits end I decided to have a look at the database. I went into my cpanel’s phpMyAdmin and navigated to my database. Under ‘jos_templates_menu’ I noticed that there was an entry for the default template. Deleting it gave me control over my Joomla! front page again!

I hope these humble tips may help you in some way. The upgrade process took me about 3 full days of rouble shooting. In all fairness, I was also switching hosts to BlueHost at the time and that may have caused some of the issue.

Please feel free to leave your comments or questions below. If this tutorial did help you in any way, why not give devDisko a quick linkback?!

You don’t need to have a website or be a member of any specific community.

That’s it! From then on any time you leave a comment on a website or blog that has the feature your avatar will appear beside your undoubtedly witty and fascinating remarks.

As a person who runs a few websites I would even say that having an avatar is a basic courtesy to the site you are leaving comments on. Web developers labor for hours on the aesthetic of their sites and quite often build avatars into the function of the comments section to compliment the look. Not using an avatar can seriously distract from the look of a site and generally make the comments section feel transient and unprofessional at no fault of the designer.

So sign yourself up at Gravatar today!

Example of page with mixed avatar usage.

I have a natural aversion to most email clients and you will never catch me using Outlook, AOL, Postini etc. So, when I found out that I could manage my email through Gmail, while using my domain name (the end result looked like this… zwj@devdisko.com), I immediately set up an email for each of my websites.

Here is a basic run down of what you will need to do.

1. Go to the sign up page for your free Google Apps account.

2. Follow all of the prompts. You will be asked to upload an file to your domain root.

3. Log into your server. The particulars at this point may vary somewhat. Google has a detailed list of instructions by server. As I use cPanel I added the new email address under Email Accounts.

4. Also under the Mail heading click MX Entry. You’ll see a list of email accounts associated with your account. You will need to add ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM to each email account you’ve created with Google Apps.

That’s it!

Let me know if you have any questions!

This year’s joke was particularly interesting to me as I worked a few years ago for a company that was plagued by Nigerian fraudsters. My job essentially consisted of identifying, tracking and getting rid of them.

Whoever thought of using them for the auto-reply example is in my mind is a genius!

Front page teaser

Google April Fools day joke 09

After letting the Anon fall into a state of neglect for a month or so I checked the traffic stats and was pretty shocked to see that it was getting a few hundred page views a day. Ah, the magic of Google Images! That was incentive enough to give it a fresh coat of paint.

This tutorial will focus on one CSS feature that I attempted for the first time – hovers with a background image.

Let’s start with some basic CSS hover code for your nav bar…

nav a {
color: #000;
}
nav a:hover {
color: #ff0000;
}

The first part of the code will make each link blank while the second part will change them to red when the cursor hovers over. That pretty basic stuff and doesn’t include any dimensions or positions – a simple hover effect.

Let’s add an image to the hover. Create an image that is proportionate to the link you want to attach it to. By proportionate I mean that the image shouldn’t be insanely large, but it could be if you don’t mind working through the code to get it to work, and by image I mean a graphic file with whatever you like on it. Upload it to your themes images folder.

Replace the code above with this in your stylesheet…

nav a {
color: #000;
}
nav a:hover {
display: block;
background: url(images/here.gif) no-repeat scroll center top;
}

That little bit of code works well if you want the hover image to appear above the link like I have in the nav bar on Anon. If the image doesn’t show entirely you could try tweaking the padding of the link a bit.

The code works equally well for sidebar links. I added a hover bullet to all of my tags…

.wp-tag-cloud a:hover, .wp-tag-cloud a:visited{
background: url(images/bulletback.gif) no-repeat right;
}

.wp-tag-cloud a:visited leaves the image there after a person clicks on it. I also tweaked a couple of individual tags…

.wp-tag-cloud a.tag-link-5 {
padding-right: 45px;
}
.wp-tag-cloud a.tag-link-5:hover, .wp-tag-cloud a.tag-link-5:visited {
background: url(images/flag.gif) no-repeat right;
}

The code above placed an American flag beside the Obama tag upon scroll over while the code below added a peace sign beside peace. Both overrode the default bullet image.

.wp-tag-cloud a.tag-link-38 {
padding-right: 25px;
}
.wp-tag-cloud a.tag-link-38:hover, .wp-tag-cloud a.tag-link-38:visited {
background: url(images/peace.gif) no-repeat right;
}

In all cases you have to identify the unique name in the code that you need to alter. I use the webmaster plugin for Firefox to view the style information. Let me know if you have any questions or need help tweaking something. If you use the code and it works for you – why not link back to devDisko?!

Here is some Wiki info about the artist…

Scott Matthew (occasionally credited as Scotty Matthew) is a vocalist and lyricist born in Queensland, Australia. He currently resides and performs as an independent artist in New York City.

Scott Matthew was a member of the alt pop band Elva Snow, which he co-founded with ex-Morrissey member Spencer Cobrin. Two songs from their self-titled debut album, which boasted Matthew on vocals and Cobrin on drums, piano, guitar and composition, were included in feature film soundtracks; “Hold Me” was featured in 2004’s The Last Run, directed by Jonathan Segal and starring Fred Savage, and “Could Ya” made an appearance in the 2005 film Splinter, directed by Kai Maurer. After the dissolution of Elva Snow, Matthew performed with the band Songs to Drink and Drive By under the free-base mp3 label Comfortstand.

Scott Matthew is perhaps best known to the public for his vocal contributions to the soundtracks of the anime series Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the anime film Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, both produced by composer Yoko Kanno, among whose fans he is very well-received as one of several faithful vocal collaborators. His performance of the alt-rock song “Lithium Flower”, featured as the ending song for season one of Stand Alone Complex, garnered him national exposure in Japan as well as the United States when the show was aired on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block. Matthew also wrote the lyrics to “Go Where No One’s Gone Before”, the main theme for the anime series L/R: Licensed by Royalty performed by Billy Preston.

Matthew recently received additional exposure as a result of his contributions to the original soundtrack of John Cameron Mitchell’s dark sexual comedy Shortbus. The soundtrack includes six of Matthew’s songs.

Scott Matthew’s vocals have been described as warm, sultry and a little androgynous. Aside from singing, he has also exhibited notable talent playing the ukulele and the guitar.

His website…

Scott Matthew Music

And the video…

Please see the Preface for the directory.

The Basics

So you want to build your own website? Great! Here is a rundown of what you will need. A lot of these points will be elaborated upon in further posts but this should give you a good idea of what you’ll be getting into.

1. Your own computer with internet access! This isn’t a deal breaker but it will make your life a lot easier. Also, keep in mind that for security reasons having a secure internet connection is very important.

2. You will have to decide whether you want to use a hosted service (your site is hosted on their server – but usually with limitations to you) or a self hosted service (you purchase server space and a domain address from a host but have essentially unlimited freedom).

There are dozens of popular hosted services. Some require that their domain be appended to yours (yoursite.wordpress.com) while some make their money from ad revenue on your site.

A couple examples of hosted services are:

• Wordpress.com
• Blogger.com

Hosted services, on the other hand, allow you to work within the limits of the particular service you use. Most are infinitely flexible and use a plug-in system to extent a light weight core. There are also dozens for you to choose from. In fact, the bar has been set so high by the free packages that I will rule out any that charge.

Here are a few examples of self hosted services:

• Wordpress.org
• Joomla!
• Movable Type
• Drupal

The package you choose will ultimately depend on your needs. It’s perhaps one of the most important decisions you’re going to make, so take your time and review all of the links above and any that you come across elsewhere. I will go into greater detail on the subject in the next couple of posts.

I should also mention that Devtronik is powered by Wordpress.org and hosted by Bluehost.

3. Once you’ve decided upon a service (we should probably be using the term CMS – although it might not apply to the most basic blogging software) you will have to choose a template, or theme. Chose a theme that fits your needs the closest as you will have to make the least amount of customizations. There are some fantastic themes out there. Generally, each CMS will have a theme directory to help you select a theme that works with their product.

4. You will need some kind of editing program. I use CSSEdit for CSS (I’ll elaborate upon this later) and TextWrangler for HTML and PHP code.

5. Some kind of image editing software if you plan to include custom images on your site. You can go with Photoshop on the high end or any of the free packages, such as Gimp. A lot of great websites don’t use any image editing software at all. Things like font color and size, header color can all be changes using CSS.

6. Most of all, you will need patience and persistence. Stalk the forums for information. Use Google. If you are stumped on something and can’t find a solution ask on the forums.

So, in summary, to begin building a website you will need…

• a computer with internet
• a CMS and perhaps a host
• some style and code editing software
• some graphic editing software
• patience!

Please feel free to post any questions or comments below! The next installment will be about choosing a Host.

This post will detail the fix I found for the problem and might not be that interesting for those of you who don’t use Macs.

The Symptoms

1. Internet connection drops or breaks whether using wireless (Airport) or Built-in Ethernet (Cable).
2. Drops every few minutes, when computer sleeps or when changing wireless connection.

Temp Fix

Restarting the computer reconnected me to the internet temporarily.

The Fix

I searched for days. I’m not kidding here! I couldn’t upload or download anything without having to restart. The problem basically brought Phauxshow to a standstill. There is a lot of action on various forums but none of the suggested solutions seemed to work for me. It’s important to note though that some solutions worked for some people. It seems, in that case that while certain symptoms may be shared the root cause may vary from computer to computer.

Here’s what worked for me…

1. Click the Apple Icon then select System Preferences and then select Network.
2. Select the Location that you most commonly use.
3. Show the Network Port Configurations.

This will bring up a list of your Port Configurations.

4. Unclick things you don’t need. In my case I unclicked Bluetooth and Built-in Firewire.
5. Drag AirPort to the top of the list. Drag Built-in Ethernet to the second spot.
6. Make sure both are clicked and hit Apply Now then restart your computer.

There is also some talk about Resetting your Pram. I didn’t need to do this but you might need to.

That’s it! You should have a stable internet connection and your sanity back.

I’d definitely love to hear if this worked for you. Also, I welcome links to alternative solutions in the comments below.