Judebert.com (Entries tagged as serendipity)

Blog Maintenance and the 503 Status

judebert@judebert.com (Judebert) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:20:11 -0500

Don wanted a way to block access to his blog while he was fiddling with it. He found information about the 503 code online.

Of course, they want to return different codes for search engines and for users. We figured we wanted to return the same thing for users and search engines; after all "Service Unavailable" is the actual status, regardless of who's visiting. The only exception should be the blog maintainer.

Here's the .htaccess we worked out:

CODE:

RewriteEngine On RewriteBase /serendipity # Allow blog maintainer back in RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^your\.IP\.address\.here # Don't loop forever RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/503\.php RewriteRule .* 503.php [L]

And here's the 503.php file I like:

CODE:

<?php header('HTTP/1.1 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable'); header('Status: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable'); header('Retry-After: 3600'); header('X-Powered-By:'); ?><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <html><head> <title>Get Off My E-Lawn!</title> </head><body> <h1>Get Off My E-Lawn!</h1> <p> I'm busy maintaining the site. Please don't step on the grass. </p><p> I should be ready for visitors again in under an hour. </p> </body></html>

We use a PHP file so that we can set the header, and so we can include a retry period for search engines.

If you're one of the few whose server allows [R=503] in the .htaccess, there's an even easier way outlined in the article details.

Continue reading "Blog Maintenance and the 503 Status"

Serendipity 1.4 Integrity Validation

judebert@judebert.com (Judebert) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:04:38 -0500

Serendipity 1.4 just went beta! That means my new upload validation code comes into play.

I developed the code a while ago, when people on the forums were having trouble with corrupted uploads. Some clients were uploading everything in ASCII mode, some were skipping files... it was a nightmare.

The new validation is working, but as more people start testing it, we expect to find the edge cases. Like the installation problem reported on the forum.

Turned out the FTP server was stripping all the linefeeds out of a weird file. I made a PHP application to check your FTP client and server for hiccups like the one that hit rj. You should be able to just unzip it and upload the files to your server; when you visit sumcheck.php, it'll explain what you should be seeing. You can let me know on the forums (or in the comments) if you find anything interesting.

checksum tester (zip)

Bulletproof Theming with Serendipity

judebert@judebert.com (Judebert) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:05:00 -0500

The "criterion" Template

Judebert.com may be powered by the Serendipity blog engine, but it's really more like a website than a blog. There's a lot of information, some of which is not dynamic, like Contraction Timer or the EV conversion diary.

To make the information more available, I decided to redesign. I visited Free CSS Templates to find a template with big, immediately visible tabs, clear text, and a well-defined separation for links and sidebar items.

After some searching among many excellent alternatives, I picked criterion for my website. Although it was presented as a corporate template, it looked like it would fit my layout without too much modification. An easy fit was important because this would be my first template port.

The Bulletproof template made porting a breeze. Here's how I did it.

Continue reading "Bulletproof Theming with Serendipity"

Improving CSS Star Rating

judebert@judebert.com (Judebert) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:18:13 -0500

I'm considering adding a star rating tool to my website. But I don't like using JavaScript if I can avoid it. Luckily, I found a tutorial on creating a star rating bar using pure CSS on the web.

Using the lessons learned in his tutorials (note the plural), I had a few insights and made a few improvements. For instance, the rating bar can vary in color or shape from one end to another. It can even be animated! Finally, I made the current rating parameter easier to generate for blogs and such.

Continue reading "Improving CSS Star Rating"

Serendipity Theme Contest!

judebert@judebert.com (Judebert) — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:07:02 -0500

The Serendipity Theme Contest has officially begun! Create a theme for Serendipity (that's the blog this runs on) for fame and glory! It's really easy, because Serendipity uses Smarty templating. Deadline is Feb. 7; let's see what I can pull out of my sleeve...