Tag Archives: blog

It’s baaaaack!

Posted on by John Rockefeller
Kool-Aid Man

Image via Wikipedia

After a now completed year-long project took my full attention, I’ve re-launched my blog. It feels great to be back. Taking it down was a mistake as I really enjoyed the outlet; sharing PHP tips & tricks, and releasing news about projects that I’m a part of is a lot of fun and good for the soul. So, I’ll be getting back into the swing of things, posting often once again.

It’s amazing to look back and see how much stuff has happened in a year. I’m flipping through my older posts and remembering them like they were a decade ago instead of  just one year!

A few geeky points about the blog:

  • It’s HTML5 WordPress. Oh, yeah! (cue Kool-Aid Man)
  • It uses Microformats (I love these things)
  • The theme is my own design built off of the WordPress Toolbox theme
  • http://www.stiligececilie.net/ provided the amazing free FB, Google, etc. icons under my Twitter widget. If you’re into graphics design, you have to check out her stuff. It’s awesome.
  • It’s got some kick-ass jQuery that lets you scroll infinitely through my posts instead of pagination
  • This will be my 101st post. Sort of makes sense to cross that line when I relaunch :)

 

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Must-have WordPress Plugin: wp-db-backup

Posted on by John Rockefeller
"Add New Post" page of the WordPress...
Image via Wikipedia

I run a number of WordPress sites around the web, including the official Synn Studios Inc. blog, the Synndicus site, the iN Magazine site, and the blog you’re currently reading, Digital Oasis.

Trying to maintain a backup schedule for numerous blogs is a full-time job if you’ve got to do it all manually.

Thankfully, backing up your WordPress database is made simple by installing and using the WordPress plugin wp-db-backup. This handy plugin lets you download a copy of your WordPress database at that moment or schedule a backup to happen automatically. For my sites, I choose the latter.

A typical WordPress database backup is quite small and is easily E-Mailed. Once the plugin is installed, I set wp-db-backup to E-Mail my Gmail account a zipped copy of the database every day.

From there, I set up a Gmail mail filter to automatically Archive and label the zip as a backup. Whenever I need to restore a backup, I just open my Gmail and click the “Backups” label.

What sort of tools or plugins have you found to help you maintain your WordPress sites?

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51st Blog Post!

Posted on by John Rockefeller

I typically try to avoid posting personal articles but I feel that I should let you know that this post is my 51st post on this blog so far. Yay! :)

It’s been a fun 5 months since I started doing this and I have to say that I’ve learned quite a bit both about writing but also how hard it is to keep a set posting schedule. I’m on-track for posting 50% of the days in this month, but I cannot stress how incredibly hard of a task that is to achieve when you only blog part-time.

I figured to commemorate this occasion, I should link to a few of my most popular articles thus far.

First and foremost, the most popular article on this blog is How to eliminate unwanted characters from a string in PHP. In the world of a web developer, your skill levels increase faster than the world spins. If I were to write the same article again today, the code would be much, much cleaner. It’s almost embarassing how un-optimized that code is. But, you have to start somewhere!

A close second is Securing your Input Forms From MySQL Injection Attacks. This subject has always fascinated me. The first PHP book I ever read had a huge section dedicated to thwarting attacks from user input. I guess ever since it’s just been instilled in my blood to look at user input with intense suspicion.

Finally on a funnier note, my third most popular article is Top 5 Office Don’ts. This one got a lot of negative reaction on DZone but maybe they just have bad office etiquette and took offense. Either that or they have no sense of humor. :)

I’d like to thank all of my readers young and old and hope you’ll all be here for the next 50 articles.

Thank you and see you again soon!