David Nash

I came across this and there were no Google matches, which I thought was strange.

So if you’ve installed Symphony CMS under Ubuntu (I have 10.04, Lucid Lynx) and get the message “no suitable XSLT processor was found”, it means that you need to install the package “php5-xsl”.

I like GUIs so I used Synaptic, but I’m sure you could also do something like “sudo apt-get install php5-xsl”.

Then restart Apache with “sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload” to load the XSLT module.

It’s been a long time between posts, mainly because I’ve been so busy. Lately I’ve been working with Symphony CMS. Which means I’ve been writing templates using XSLT, which I think is excellent for writing templates. My XML skills have really advanced over the last 6 months. Using XSLT you can transform one bit of XML into another bit of XML. And because XHTML is XML, it means that I can transfer the XML data output from my Symphony data sources to XHTML.

The documentation that does exist for Symphony is quite good, but there seems to be a lot that simply isn’t there. Hopefully that will improve in the future.

I’ve already used Symphony on a couple of projects. It’s a CMS that looks after the developer as much as (perhaps more than) the content author. The learning curve for the developer is pretty steep but once I got over it, it’s been very smooth sailing. If it’s possible to sail down a curve.

I don’t usually like to re-blog – I prefer original content and a list of links. But I’m making an exception for this – firstly, it’s really cool, and secondly, I’ve been too busy to post anything for a while.

http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1007

Ron and his team ran some A/B testing online that compared a traditional Web form layout with a narrative “Mad Libs” format. In Vast.com’s testing, Mad Libs style forms increased conversion across the board by 25-40%.

I think forms are a crucial part of any website. The web is mostly one-way, and only via forms can you get feedback. You need forms to do anything interesting. Yet they’re SO boring.

They’re boring to fill out, they’re boring to code. I think anything that makes them a little bit interesting helps a whole lot. I hope to code some forms like this in the future and I hope this turns into a real trend on the web.

It seems like every time I deploy a Silverstripe site I either lose the admin password, or it changes somehow. Then I have to search for ‘lost silverstripe password’ or something to work out how to reset it. This is basically for my own reference:

1. edit /mysite/_config.php
2. add Security::setDefaultAdmin('admin','password'); to the bottom
3. profit!

I was asked to do some quick mods to client’s Wordpress blog. He wanted to replace the banner image. He’s using Wordpress 2.7 and has the default Kubrick theme.

This isn’t as easy as you would think as it’s generated by PHP so that the colours can be dynamically set.

Here’s what I did:

1. Download wp-content/themes/default/images/kubrickheader.jpg
2. Modify it, save and upload as wp-content/themes/default/images/kubrickheader_NEW.jpg
3. Edit wp-content/themes/default/header.php. On line 42 you should see <div id=”headerimg”>
4. Modify this so it reads:

<div id="headerimg" style="background: url(<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/kubrickheader_NEW.jpg) no-repeat -1px 0">

Upload header.php and it should now be using your new header. I used the “-1px 0″ because the header was out of horizontal  alignment by 1 pixel. I don’t know if that’s because of the header image he sent or if that’s the way Wordpress’s dynamic banner image works. You might need to remove that part.

This probably isn’t the best way to do it but it’s a quick and easy solution.

Welcome to my new site. I plan to post things here about the things that I’m doing, along with tips for other web developers. I’m not worried about sharing my knowledge – it’s all available on the internet anyway. Why not have it all in one place?

It’ll be like my own personal notebook – one that everyone can take advantage of. I feel all warm and fuzzy.