Free WordPress Plugin: Custom Admin Footer

From time to time we build websites on the WordPress platform. Our client’s are often wanting to manage all of their content on their pages easily, so WordPress is a great solution. I won’t go into how great WordPress is, or how it can be used as a CMS, or how there are tons of plugins available to help speed up development time, because there are many websites and blog posts already covering these things.

We created a very simple plugin that allows the administrator to edit the footer text that shows in the lower left corner of the WordPress Admin pages. You can download the plugin from our server. Once downloaded, you can just upload the folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder on your webserver. Activate the plugin from the Plugins Admin in your WordPress installation and then navigate to Settings -> nuAdmin Footer and add whatever footer message you would like. If you install it, let us know how you like it and what other things you would like added, if any.

Here is a screenshot of the admin part that allows you to change the text in your footer.

Update: I have finally added code to the SVN at WordPress so you can download the plugin from WordPress.org

Download the nuAdmin Custom Footer WordPress Plugin

New Client: Brock’s Performance Products

triple G interactive would like to welcome our new client – Brock’s Performance Products

Brock’s Performance Products has hired triple G interactive to develop their new ecommerce website. Check back in a couple months as we dive into this project and help make Brock’s website a more up to date and user friendly experience.

About Brock’s Performance Products:

At Brocks Performance, we strive to lead in the innovation, research and development, manufacturing and distribution of performance components and associated information in the motorcycle industry. We translate our products and knowledge into value for our customers by offering unsurpassed customer service combined with comprehensive solutions to our customers’ needs.

Brock’s Performance Products
4064 East Patterson Road
Dayton, Ohio 45430

Local Celebrity: Canine Collective

The Canine Collective is our second spotlight for a local business in Columbus Ohio. My wife and I started volunteering at the Franklin County Animal Shelter in 2008. This lead us to helping out the Canine Collective after being introduced to them at a weekend event. The group of volunteers and workers are all great people and do what they do for a great cause.

About the Canine Collective

The Canine Collective is 501c3 non profit organization whose mission it is to provide sanctuary and re-home various breeds of dogs rescued from rural shelters and referrals. Our goal is not only to provide a second chance for our furry friends who have ‘run out-of-time’ at their local shelter but to allow rescuers full involvement and resources to follow their passion. We believe in educating people on the life saving results of adopting, spay and neuter, and the malicious truth behind puppy mills and pet stores.

triple G interactive has been able to donate some time to the organization by providing some small website maintenance to help speed up their website. Load time has drastically increased by over 90%! You can visit the Canine Collective at http://www.caininecollective.org

Microsoft Add-On for Firefox a security issue

Back in February of 2009, Microsoft released a very sneaky and quiet update to Windows. The update was a firefox add-on that was added automatically. It’s labelled ‘Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant,’ and it ‘Adds ClickOnce support and the ability to report installed .NET versions to the web server.’

No big deal right? I’ll just uninstall it or not install it. Nope! Big Deal! The problem is that the add-on cannot be uninstalled the normal way. The button to unistall or disable it is grayed out.

Instant questions came to mind: Is it messing with other settings in firefox? Is it reporting back to MS what other extensions I am using? Is it monitoring my web traffic? Will it break my browser? And lastly, is this a new security problem?

Turns out that indeed it is a security hole in firefox.

Back in February, there was an instant fix on how to uninstall this add-on. You can get instructions at www.dedoimedo.com But now firefox has tried to help fix the problem for you. Today I was prompted with the below dialog box.

You’ll see I already have it blocked on firefox, but a restart of firefox will remove it from the add-ons.

If you do not already have Firefox 3.5 I suggest you upgrade. Get firefox from their website.

IE8 and IE7 Compatibility Mode

There are still many people who do not care whether they are using the Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari or Opera. They simply just want access to the internet. As designers and developers, we have to understand this and make sure sites look correct in all browsers.

IE8 was released on March 19, 2009 and was touted as a Standards Based Browser. This excited and scared the web design industry. For so long, IE had ignored standards making it almost impossible to develop a site that looked the same in IE as it did in other browsers.

If your website is displaying correctly in IE7, but now you see that your site doesn’t look right in IE8 there is the ability for the end user to switch to compatibility mode. This means that your site will render like it did when using IE7. The code to use would be:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

What if you don’t want to Emulate IE7 and want to force the site to display using IE8? No problem.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

Remember, to put this meta tag before any other in your head section of the document. The meta tag “http-equv” is an HTML 3.2 property. Microsoft has an article in their MSDN about this very issue. Although one thing I would recommend is to use lowercase tags.

One final note: While we do have to develop for all browsers, we don’t have to use them all. For us, firefox is best. It allows us the speed, tools, and security that we like. If you are not using Firefox, please download it and give it a try.

Splitting large files

Recently we had the opportunity to take a project that someone else had developed.  Our part of the project was to add some functionality and speed up the load time on pages.  Simple enough.  The hard part was dealing with some data.  The previous developer used XML as a database holder. This is not the bad part, because for small things, XML can serve a very much faster approach to using MySQL or any other similar type of database.

The problem came in the fact that the XML file began to grow and grow on every update through their admin dashboard.  So big, in fact, that the XML database file was close to 20MB in size.
File Splitter, a freeware program which does not require installation and can be used to split files to multiple chunks as well as to merge multiple chunks into a single file.  This was incredible, we were able to split the file, edit all links in the split files and then repackage it back into one file.

Of course, we structured things to not have to pull a 20MB file whenever pulling information, but we hoped we could get out a message about file splitter and how great it is.

You can download file splitter at www.filesplitter.org

File Splitter is a freeware program which does not require installation and can be used to split files to multiple chunks as well as to merge multiple chunks into a single file. **Softpedia guarantees that Free File Splitter 5.0.1189 is 100% CLEAN, which means it does not contain any form of malware, including spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors.**

Remote Desktop Connection protocol error

We connect to remote computers via Remote Desktop Connection from time to time. Whether its to connect to a windows server or to connect to a desktop that is at a remote office.  Some of our computers have a custom theme that will alter the look of the computer.   These themes give the RDC problems.  We get an error like

Because of a protocol error, this session will be disconnected. Please try connecting to the remote computer again.

We can connect to the remote computer just fine, but as soon as its done loading it throws the above error. Well, the error isn’t exactly helpful. What has fixed the problem for us has been to go to the Advanced settings and then to Experience tab in the Remote Desktop Connection. Uncheck the Themes checkbox and this should solve your problem. (see below)

If you continue to have problems from Windows 7 to another desktop/server, then you can try unchecking the Bitmap caching.

We like this: Autofill Forms

You fill out the same type of online form over and over and over and think “Hey, automating this would be nice!”

We needed something like this to speed up testing and fill in forms with information quickly.  We turned to the firefox extension website to see what we could find.

We found Autofill Forms to be our best bet.  Our favorite feature was the profiles.  This allows us the ability to create multiple profiles and use one for development to fill in test forms and one profile for personal use.  There are many features and settings you can change in order to get it work the best way you would like.  Some people want a shortcut via the mouse, clicking a button or by using a keyboard shortcut.

You can add new custom fields for forms.  So say you are always filling out the last 4 digits of your zip code, well you can store that in the forms settings and always automatically fill it when you want!

Your Business is probably already on Facebook

Recently, we offered a service of helping a client setup their facebook account to pull in their blog posts and connect with their customers fans.  Interestingly, the customer said they didnt want to worry about a facebook account.  We did a quick search and found their business name came up in the results.  With thousands of fans already in a group made by one loyal customer, the client was shocked but excited about the love.

The point of this little story is that if people are a fan of your business in the real world, brick and mortar sense, chances are they have or are ready to say so on facebook.  Social networking is a great way to drawn in new customers and get free publicity about your business.  Take for instance, Dell Computers, who have stated that through tweeting they have made about $3 million dollars in sales through twitter.

If you’re interested in getting things going on facebook, twitter or any other social network, then feel free to drop us a line.

Local Celeb: Rose Bredl Flowers

From time to time, we will be showcasing a “Local Celebrity”. Our definition of a local celebrity is someone associated with triple G interactive in some way, shape or form. It could be our favorite place to catch the big game, a client, or just a person or business that we think is doing it right in Columbus. And now on to our first local celebrity…

Rose Bredl Flowers & Garden is located in the Short North of Columbus and specializes in sophisticated, timeless arrangements with an organic garden-inspired feeling. Mary Ernst Mccolgan is the owner of Rose Bredl and has had her company featured in several magazines, including Country Living and Columbus Alive. We really like the work that she does, which is why she is our first showcase in our local celebrity profiles and is doing it right in Columbus! If you are in the Short North, stop in and see her work.

RoseBredl.com is hosted by tripleGinteractive.com.  You can learn more about our personal and small business hosting plans on our services page.