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Eclipse - an efficient environment for SilverStripe development

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 11:34:51 +1200

The Eclipse IDE is a great free (and open-source) tool for software development. Eclipse is like a super awesome text editor with file browsing, and countless additional plugins you can add to make your programming life so much easier. Eclipse can run on all major desktop platforms (ie windows, mac, linux).

I have been developing with eclipse since ~2006, and there always seems to be more to learn about it. It can be a rather complex piece of software, so hopefully this post helps someone along their way.

This post explains my eclipse setup for the purpose of developing SilverStripe websites. Here is a breakdown of the Eclispe tools I make use of, and some of the features I love about them:

PHP Development Tools (PDT)

PDT Historically I'd been using the PHPEclipse for my php dev needs, which did a great job, but PHP Development Tools (PDT) does a far superior job.

The syntax highlighter can be heavily customised to suit your desired style. I modified the default to resemble what I was familiar with in PHPEclipse.

The best feature for me is the rich support for marking occurences of variables used throughout a file, and the ability to jump to a function or class definition by alt+left clicking the function or class name respectively. Alt+left clicking a variable in the same way will jump to the place in your code where it is first defined.

PDT hooks into XDebug, an extension to PHP that provides rich debugging support, such as halting execution at breakpoints, inspecting variables, stepping through code. XDebug saves a lot of time over using die(), var_dump(), and SilverStripe's Debug::show() statement.

Note: to make use of xdebug for SilverStripe sites, you'll need to make sure you have the index.php file that comes with the SilverStripe installer, and point to it as the starting point for running debug sessions, as mod_rewrite cannot be handled. screenshot

Template support means that it is very quick to start new SilverStripe (Sapphire) DataObjects, Controllers, Extensions/Decorators, Pages. I can supply these if you like... just ask in comments below.

PDT is a core part of SilverStripe development, altertiavely you'd be using a plain text editor, or something a bit more advanced like notepad++, or Dreamweaver.

JavaScript / Web Development Tools

The Javascript Development Tools and Web Development Tools project provides all important support for editing HTML, CSS, and Javascript files.

Classifying .ss files as html enables syntax coloring and validation for your SilverStripe templates.

Subversive SVN Team Provider

Subversive provides SVN support for your eclipse projects. My websites are all stored in my own SVN repository, providing a way to: store half-finished changes, submit changes for easily updating the live version of the website. All SilverStripe core code is included into each project as svn:externals.

Previously Subclipse was my eclipse svn connector of choice.

Making use of subversive avoids the need for tools such as TortiseSVN. However I still make use of TortiseSVN myself when things play up with Subversive.

Remote System Explorer (Target Management)

The remote system explorer (part of the Target Managment project) provides a suite of tools for remote SSH terminal, file browsing, and debugging.

It removes the need for putty SSH terminal, and WinSCP remote file system browser.

The remote system explorer really cuts down time switching between programs / logging in etc. The time it takes to update a live version of a website from local development changes can be reduced to roughly 10 seconds.

Mylyn Task Management (with Redmine Connector)

Mylyn is Eclipse's generic solution for task management, which can interface with any extrnal project managment system, provided a connector has been written for it.

Redmine is a great open-source project managment tool. Here is the plugin you need to connect it to eclispe mylyn.

Non-Eclipse tools

There are only a few more tools that make up my full suite, so I might as well mention them:

WAMP web server - apache, mysql, php, xdebug, phpmyadmin, +more..
Antix SMTP Server - catches emails sent from locally hosted sites, so you can read them.
Web browsers - firefox, ie, chrome, safari. (Virtual machines for past versions of IE)
Photoshop - design/graphics. Note: this is the only tool in my suite that costs money. I <3 open source.
Mozilla Thunderbird for emails.

Future ideas / wants

Integrated MySQL database browser - a decent database browser/editor to replace phpmyadmin would be handy. The existing Eclipse Data Tools didn't cut it for me.
EGit submodule support - EGit is eclipse's GIT connection provider, which doesn't have a good alternative to svn:externals yet for including external SilverStripe modules.

In summary, eclipse is an excellent free tool for SilverStripe

Are there other Eclipse plugins you think I should look into? Comment below.

See who you stalk the most on Facebook

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:02:37 +1200

Here's a useful tool I found that display a list of facebook friends who you view the most. Facebook automatically stores this information in your web browser to make commenting and searching friends faster. This technique is simply displaying that information for you to see.

Don't worry, this some kind of phishing scam or something.

Here's how:

Drag this link to your bookmarks: facebook friends
Log into facebook.
Click the bookmark link you just added.

The names that show first correspond to who you stalk the most.

source: http://thekeesh.com/2011/08/who-does-facebook-think-you-are-searching-for/

Make money by getting spam?

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:09:18 +1200

Recnently I decided to start fighting back against all the spam I get on my blog. I realised they are spamming me to get back-links to their sites, or sites of their customers. They use a keyword phrase as their name, and link to some site about that keyword.

My poor website became a tool for unethical backlinking.

But this sparked my mind a business idea. Because the sites being linked to appear to be legitimate sites, I suspect those site owners have paid someone to create backlinks to their site to boost their SEO rankings.

These site owners could be informed that their SEO-provider is using unethical practices, but I am a proper provider, and here is my service offering. Pay me to do it properly.

What do you think?

10 Ways to Grow Your Online Presence

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:36:00 +1200

Having an online presence is essential to most businesses / organisations nowdays. Here are some ways you can grow it.

1. Get a Website

This is your home-base for everything. People expect you to have one. Contact me, if you don't.

2. Start a Newsletter

A warm-lead is always better than a cold one. A newsletter is a great way to keep your connections with your clients and potential clients warm...or making them warmer.

3. Get Listed on Internet Directories

There are hundreds and thousands of directories

4. Contribute to Social Networks

Facebook and Twitter are a start. You can have real-time interaction with your customers. The more you interact, the more opportunity you have to generate leads.

5. Publish Images

A picture is worth a thousand words. Take pictures of your premesis, clients, products, and services. Put them up on your site, so people can trust you more, and be more informed.

6. Post Videos

If a picture is worth 1000 words, then a video must be worth much more than 100,000. Videos give you and your organisation a face, and a sound, perhaps an overall impression/emotion. Do this well and people will be impress and well informed about you.

7. Banner Adverts

This gives you guranteed visitors, but on the other hand it does cost you more than your time.

8. Write a Blog

Blog posts create new landing pages for your website. In other words, and extra door on the house that is your website. Another way in.

9. Maps Location

Google maps/places should contain your address.

10. Intract with Other Websites

There are probably sites which relate to yours. You may be able to comment and contribute on them, where you can post links to your own site.

If you have any questions about the above, or any other ideas, just post them in the comments below.

How Much Does a Website Cost?

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:54:10 +1200

As a website producer, a common question I get is: so how much does a website cost?

This article will help you understand that question better. For a quick answer, please contact us.

I answer "how long is a piece of string? ...and how many knots, loops and bows are in it? ...does it connect to other strings?"

In other words, it depends what you are looking for. You may not even know what you are looking for. There are many factors which can contribute to the overall cost of a site. You should first make sure any proposed solution meets your goals.

Here are some factors to consider:

How much content will the site contain? Who will write it? Who will maintain it?
Who will do the ongoing managment and mainteneace of the site?
Will the site be search-engine optimised?
How will the site be promoted externally?
Will the site link into any extra services such as Twitter, or Facebook? Do these accounts need to be set up?
Will the site have a professional visual design that fits your existing branding?
Do you require email accounts?
Do you wish to sell products online?
Will you have videos made and incorporated into the site?

Fighting Spam with SilverStripe

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 07:30:00 +1200

I decided to fight back against the spam mounting up on this blog. Over several months I explored different techniques of combatting it.

SilverStripe Spam Protection

SilverStripe contains a spam protection field: "MathSpamProtection", which asks the visitor to add two numbers together. I can't say I'm too proud to the be author of that one, as it did not take spam bots to figure a way around it (by reading the numbers).

Round 1 - fight!

I've now written a better form of protection, which I've called "HoneyPotSpamProtection". This adds a field to your form, which is hidden by CSS, so humans can't see it. If the field is ever filled out, the form validation will fail.

Spammers may figure out how to get around it by not filling out any fields with the honeypot name. However my next improvement in this war will be to made the name of the field random so that it can't be guessed.

Evil spammers may select certian fields for bots to fill out, but I'll think of something else. There are always services like Mollom and ReCapture which I could employ. Lets see how this new technique goes first.

Round 2

It turns out my new approach is not good enough, as the spam is still coming. I assume the spammers are using a front-end approach...perhaps by automatically filling out specific form fields. The growing ammount of traffic from India and China in my ananltyics reports.

I have blocked all traffic India and China, which apparantely are the culprits for all the spam, but this isn't an ideal solution. I'll probably continue to get spam from elsewhere.

Round 3 - Down, but not out

Even with blocking India and China, I still recieved ample spam within a day or two. I have now resorted to the captcha, which I'm guessing will solve my spam woes for good. I was hoping for a solution that didn't require visitor interaction.

I'm using reCaptcha , which is owned by Google, and helps to scan books text in the process.

Round 4 - KO!

Now four months on, I'm getting less spam, but I'm still getting plenty of it. I'm surprised that actual humans are filling out the comment boxes. My theory is that there is a sweat shop in some remote country with human spammers generating terrible backlinks all day long. I feel sorry for the website owners who are wasting their money on these people. During my fight, I came up with an idea for making money off spam, which relates to this.

I've decided to change tactic. I've enabled moderation of comments. This way my laziness to check messages won't cause my site to be riddled with messages. I think this is actually quite a smart step forward, because now I'll get an immediate notification of a new message, meaning that i can respond quickly to proper messages.

In approximately round 3, I removed the ability for author names to be links. I may re-introduce this now that I'm moderating comments, perhaps as a nice way to reward those who comment.

Run your website business through a browser

Thu, 27 May 2010 23:11:00 +1200

As we get further into the future of the web, and its many applications, I'm seeing that its becoming more and more possible to run everything through a browser.

One of the problems with some online tools is the download time. However, as net speeds get faster this becomes less of an issue.

The basics/obvious:

Email - gmail, and the likes or a self-hosted solution
Documents - google docs, dropbox
Instant messaging, voice, video chat - these can all be done online now.
Accounting - xero.com

The perhaps not-so obvoius:

Coding IDE
- bespin by mozilla - this looks awesome. Watch the introductary video. I especially like the collaboration features. Imagine doing real-time, over the shoulder coding from a remote location.
- jsFiddle
Design: photoshop.com, pixlr.com
Video editing: jaycut.com, moviemasher.com (open source)
Telephone - gizmocall.com
Server managment - this can all be done through cPanel, which includes an in-browser SSH (ok, this one is probably obvious)

The not-so-necessary:

Listen to music: spotify.com, grooveshark.com, last.fm

I'm sure that as more web-based devices, such as the chrome book become availble, these types of services will become more abundent.

Dummy Email Server for Windows and Mac OSX

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:09:00 +1300

I want to share with you some useful ways of catching local emails without actually sending them, meaning you can test your email-related developmemt work quickly and easily.

Windows - Antix SMTP Server for Developers

Antix SMTP Server for Developers listens on port 25 for SMTP connections, and then stores the sent emails in a local directory on your computer. You can then view those emails with whatever client you use for viewing emails.

http://www.antix.co.uk/projects/smtpserverfordevelopers

Mac OSX (and probably andy Unix system) - php sendmail script

I recenly started using a Mac for development, so I needed to find an equivelant solution.

The best solution I could find was not an application, but a script that someone had written. You simply point to the script from your php.ini configuration, and the emails automatically open in your email client when they are sent.

find the script here

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");

To 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

UPDATE: Open Data Catalogue - has all govt related datasets

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