Burnbright Blog

Username Authentication for SilverStripe Websites

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:00:00 +1300

This set of instructions and code will help you to set up username authentication for your SilverStripe website. Note that the SilverStripe CMS has typically relied on E-Mail authentication, so this could cause problems if developers have assumed email authentication. I've provided a patch and information for issues I've found so far.

Use this code at your own risk. Please let me know if you find any bugs with the code, or the instructions are not clear.

Download & install my auth_username module

In your _config.php optionally add:

// makes username authentication default
Authenticator::set_default_authenticator("UsernameAuthenticator");
// removes default email + password authentication
Authenticator::unregister("MemberAuthenticator");

Patch your MemberTableField & SecurityAdmin to include username support. If you don't patch these files, you won't be able to add members to groups properly in the CMS Security section. Download diff.

To apply patch on unix:

Upload the patch to your SilverStripe root directory
Run the command: patch -p0 -i membertablefieldpatch.diff

Generate usernames for your users. I've provided a function on the member decorator class 'UsernameMemberDecorator' that generates a username from the user's first name and surname.

Known issues:

Can't change default admin member's details properly.

How to set up email bounce handling using SilverStripe and cPanel

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:18:00 +1300

These are instructions for setting up bounce handling for SilverStripe, and assumes you use cPanel for site managment. You should be able to mirror these steps accross to other systems also.

Here is the SilverStripe documentation on the silverstripe bounce handling: http://doc.silverstripe.org/doku.php?id=email_bouncehandler

Download this file: BounceEmailTask.php , and store it in your SilverStripe /mysite/code/ directory. This class handles incoming emails, and determines if they are bounces, and then records the bounce accordingly. Sam Minnee from SilverStripe provided the original code, and I converted it into a SS ScheduledTask (even though its not a cron job task). More about ScheduledTasks here.
Set up a bounces@yoursite.com email address
Set up a cPanel filter that pipes emails that are "To: bounces@yoursite.com" to a program:

"| php -q /home/yourusername/public_html/sapphire/cli-script.php /BounceEmailTask"

(Everything before /sapphire/cli-script.php may differ on your hosting)
I also set another rule for the bounces to be delivered to the inbox, just incase they are needed.

Make sure you have your site path set in your _ss_environment.php:

global $_FILE_TO_URL_MAPPING;
$_FILE_TO_URL_MAPPING['/home/yourusername/public_html'] = 'http://www.yoursite.com';

Again the site path could differ on your server.

Test by sending a newsletter, or email to an address that is very likely to bounce, eg: bouncemeplease23jkzkkkd@gmail.com

Feel free to modify the BounceEmailTask class to suit your needs.

Let me know of any problems or issues you have setting this up.

New Version of SilverStripe Log-In Widget Released

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:14:00 +1300

Finally, I got around to properly coding my log in widget to use a SilverStripe login form, rather than a hack form that submits to the Security controller.

See on Burnbright

Download from the SS widgets directory

New Zealand Web APIs

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:24:00 +1200

I'm keen to know what New Zealand APIs are out there. A project I'm working on could benefit from the use of them.

Here's whats available on ProgrammableWeb: http://www.programmableweb.com/search/new%20zealand

I also know about these:

DigitalNZ - NZ content archive
MenuMania - Resturant rating / finding service
Apparantly sella.co.nz will have one soon (should be an interesting one)
Bookabatch.co.nz - batch booking service

If you know of any more, please let me know. :D

CSS hack to get optimised icons

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:00:00 +1200

It is good practice to include your website's icons in one image to prevent the client browser making a http request for each icon, which could mean tens or hundreds of requests.

Here is an example image from jquery ui that includes lots of icons:

Problem:

You can't include these icons on buttons without icons showing up in the background. To include them as inline elements, you need to do tricky stuff with divs and spans.

Solution:

Put the background on a transparent GIF image. This lets you treat your icon like an image.

examples to come...

This has probably been done before, but I couldn't find anything on the net when I had the problem.

Adding FLV videos to SilverStripe page content

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:28:00 +1200

I came up with a hack way to add flv videos to SilverStripe page content.

The finished solution simply involves inserting a link to the .flv file and then applying a certian style to it from the dropdown menu.

The rest is handled by javascript. It looks for the style, and replaces the link with flowplayer.

How to:

download and install my media module.

in your editor.css file add:
        .typography .embedvideo{

        }
..this will make 'embedvideo' show up in the -- Styles -- list in the CMS
upload and add a link to your .flv file in the CMS editor.
with the link selected, choose 'embedvideo' from the styles list.

The media module automatically introduces the capability to convert those 'embedvideo' links to flowplayer video players.

Let me know if this isn't clear.

Website Fundamentals: How to Generate Amazing Results Online - a summary

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:15:00 +1300

I recently attended a free seminar presented by Brent Kelly of ZEALD.COM. A lot of the content (for me) wasn't entirely new, but it certainly structured my knowledge and equipped me with a vocabulary to communicate it. Here is a summary of my notes from the seminar:

2 key factors of a website's success:

Ultimately, the most important factor for business owners: Is my website generating money? If you want to increase the success of your website, you increase one of two things.

Number of visitors
- You need visitors to your site, which is fairly obvious if you care about generating money. The more the merrier.
- Determined by how well your website is promoted
Conversion rate
- What proportion of your website's visitors are taking the action you want
- Determined by the persuasiveness of your website content / structure

These factors should be MEASURED. Persuasion should be implemented before promotion, otherwise you'll have traffic to your site, but nobody wants to stick around. This is why Brent focused on persuasion for the remainder of the talk.

NOTE: "Hits" is not an accurate measurement/term for website success. A visit on one site could generate 100 hits, whilst a visit on another website might generate 2 hits. It is to do with the number of elements of a page that are downloaded when you download a web page.

TMT: the key to improving website results

It is impossible to achieve 100% growth by getting things right in one go, first time. However it is easy to achieve 1% growth 100 times over incrementally.

This is done by:

Test - identify some aspect of the site to be tested
Measure - record performance of site
Tune - tweak the part of the site to improve

Persuasion

Persuasion is about getting visitors to perform a desired result.

Identify your objectives and develop a powerful strategy.

You need to know what you've trying to persuade your visitors to do. Your ultimate conversion goal will either be to make a sale (purchase something), or generate a lead (phone call, email, request quote).

Your strategy will determine the core purpose of your website.

Someone who has just arrived at your website is probably not ready to complete your overall objective. They have questions and fears that should be answered and addresssed by your website.

The about us page is the best place to address fears. This might include a mission statement, a code of conduct or recruitment policies, a picture of your team in their best, and anything else that says "we are a professional organisation".

A services page, or similar, will be good for identifying every little thing you do. Include a contact form for those things that are not on the list. You can always refer them onto someone who can do that thing. You should offer incentive to fill out the form and provide little excuse for them not to contact you. This might include providing a way to be contacted urgently.

Map your site

Include a site-map that gives a 'zoomed out' overview of the entire site.

Conversion pathway

Your conversion pathway is the steps/pages a visitor of your site.

To determine your conversion pathway you need to identify which questions are most important for a new visitor. The top four questions should become the 4 most important pages on your website that you should 70 - 80% of your time and budget on. These pages act as a funnel, which all other pages should lead in from in some way.

For example the following might be a conversion pathway for generating a lead on a plumbing website: Home -> About Us -> Services -> Request Quote

TMT your pathway

Macro conversion is your overall goal of generating a sale or lead. Micro conversion is the conversion objective of the page/step you are currently on.

Once you have your pathway, you can implement it and begin testing, measuring and tweaking it. Come up with 3-5 "wireframes", or layouts for a page, test and measure how each one changes the performance of your website.

Trust / Credibility

Trust and credibility is a crucial factor for making sales/leads. It is more important online than offline, because you essentially only have words and images to convey trust.

The Neilson Norman group published some research that identified why customers make the decisions they do when preferring one website over another. These are the top reasons ZEALD.com analysed in that research:

Must be fast loading: 8 - 10 seconds on a 56k modem is the limit people are prepared to wait. This is relative to Internet connection speed, eg broadband users would have a shorter patience span. The #1 cause of slow websites is poorly optimised images.
Must be user friendly (easy to use):
- If your website differs from standards, people will find the site unfamiliar and difficult to use. Eg: positioning of menus is usually top, or left of the page.
- 99.9% of visitors come to a website to solve some problem. Don't make it hard for them to do so.
- Splash pages destroy business results
- Quirky also destroys business results
- Make it simple and TMT
Must have professional design: reflect the brand but not at the expense of usability

Elements of trust and credibility

Testimonials - happy customers raving about your business
- Must be detailed, eg include: name, picture, company, ...
- Specific, eg the staff member they interacted with, what product/service they got
- Link to their website
Certifications - ratings or certifications of your business that are important to the customer
Terms of trade
Returns policy - eg what happens if goods are damaged etc
Logos of partners
Media - press you've had
Contact us - include physical address and a land line number
About Us - the best tool to humanise an organisation
- Go the extra mile and let your customers really get to know who you are. People are more comfortable dealing with someone they know more.
- Picture of team
- Profiles of staff - more is better (ZEALD.com has 2 page profiles). Some small piece of information that helps a customer relate might be the key to winning their business.
Presales - give away skills/info/tools/worksheets for free
- Builds credibility as an industry expert
- Establishes you as an expert in your field
- Relates to both persuasion and promotion

Spark Interest

Research shows that 3 seconds is the average time taken for an individual to decide whether to stay on a page, or leave it.

The #1 tool for sparking interest is headlines. A headline will either be a:

Question - this should be followed by a hook that answers the question. Eg: "is your website generating results?, read on about the benefits of ..."
Statement

Customers don't want features, they want benefits. It is important to word content in terms of the benefits you can bring them, rather than a list of features you offer.

TMT 8-10 different headlines that incorporate benefits.

Develop persuasive momentum

Words
- Long text consistently out performs short punchy text in the online world.
- We can't percieve a visitor's preference, so use long text by default, but structure it in such a way that people can skim it easily.
- Use one page of text
- Split into sections that start with a powerful headline
- Visitors will typically read up and down your page, rather than all of it from top to bottom
Images
- The more the merrier
- Closeups / action shots of your product or service
- They show benefits as well as features

Complete the conversion process

At each step in your conversion process should include a call to action, which is the step you want them to perform next. This should feel like the most natrual thing for a customer to do when they are on a page.

Learning programming is easier than ever

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:09:00 +1300

I wish we had access to the programming learning tools that are coming out these days back when I was in high school. All we got into was a bit of HTML, some and some MS Access-type database creation.

I've made a list of tools that would be great for teaching programming. These tools have a very visual focus, so they won't be as daunting as purely writing code. It can take a while to get to the stage of producing cool visuals with pure Java, and some libraries. These tools are often integrated development environments with a very visual interface. Most are based off Java.

I've linked each to their respective websites:

Scratch

Highly visual interactive media creator. Creations can be posted to the scratch website. One college student user I aked said it was a bit too elementary.

Alice

Program objects and characters in a 3d world using a visual drag-and-drop programming interface.

Greenfoot

Learning the basics of object orientated programming using scenarios. The default scenario is a grid which contains beavers, leaves or rocks. The beavers move foward and turn whenever they hit a rock or a wall, and eat a leaf when they are on it. This behaviour can all be modified.

BlueJ

Made by the same crowd as Greenfoot, BlueJ was the tool I was introduced to programming with at university.

Processing

Processing is not so much a learning language, but it is very visual. Essentially just cut-back Java with a visual output window.

Computer Science Unplugged

Worth mentioning also is this material that teaches programming without using computers. There is a list of school age activities that can be used to teach fundamental comptuer programming concepts.

Importance of a backup system that works : ma.gnolia

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 11:07:00 +1300

In Jan 2009 the ma.gnolia website lost all of their user data due to a corrupted database. In the following video they share about the loss, and give some useful pointers about doing backup properly.

Have a backup system in place
Diagnose problems early
Backup system shouldn't rely on the original database
Test your backup system
Figure out a good version backup system
If you are a small start-up, don't do your own IT > cloud computing
Always pay attention to infrastructure
RAID won't help software corruption
Ma.gnolia projected an image of a big company, but it was a mistake to hide the truth
Openness is important