IT Werkz Sometimes

When I tweek this blog I do all my edits on the server which is just a tad hairy coz if I screw up I’m not sure if I can unscrew myself!

I do backups to various PC’s and cloud drives so I am covered up to a point (Just like them old tape streamers that you could never restore from eh? Ed). I’ve been thinking about editing WordPress themes on Dreamweaver and hadn’t a clue how to go about that so did some searching. Firstly you need to create a folder on your PC to store everything and then FTP to that folder the WordPress theme’s stylesheet – style.css – and then FTP the complete images folder – on the hosting server – to the same folder on your PC. Create a new HTML document and save that in the same folder, on your PC. Then comes the nasty bit. Grab the code for the header – header.php on the hosting server – and paste that, in Code View in Dreamweaver, into the newly created HTML document. Then paste the code from the main index template – index.php, sidebar – sidebar.php and footer – footer.php into the new HTML document.

Actually that’s not all, you also need to change the location of the CSS file in the header and also dynamic calls for the blog name and sub-titles and as the darn thing won’t have access to your database tables they’ll be no content to display so somewhere headings and article text will need to be added. Jeez, this ain’t easy and you’ll probably spend hours messing about just getting the blog into Dreamweaver so that you can then start hammering away at it.

Hmm…just thought, so even when I have tinkered away at a WordPress theme in DW how the heck do I get all that amended code back to the server? Do I have to unpick it all and regenerate individual PHP files for header.php etc? Nope, this is just asking for trouble. Think whats needed here is an add-on or plug-in to Dreamweaver so you just point DW at a WordPress blog and it sorts itself out and then displays your blog locally but in DW. I then remembered that MS Expression Web imports web pages so tried it and though it did download a pile of docs I haven’t been able get it to display squat yet.

I tried six WordPress themes that were given away on a magazine the other day and none of them worked. If I was an expert at CSS I could probably sort them out. I suppose I could create a new blog and therefore there would be no content to import and then maybe these WP themes might work. Trouble with that wonderful idea is that I can’t remember how I created this darn thing. I did some jiggery-pokery then imported the articles from a WordPress.com version of this blog. But what was the jiggery-pokery?

I downloaded a few user generated free WordPress themes and as usual most of them didn’t render correctly. I considered paying for one but couldn’t find a theme I liked, but I did bump into some software called Artisteer which will generate WordPress themes.

I installed a demo version of that and played around with it a bit and noticed that some of the suggested templates looked suspiciously like some of the free themes I’d seen and tried. That wasn’t a good start, a WordPress theme generated by commercial software which I had tried and found it not to work. Anyway I created a new theme and loaded that up to the server and tried it and what a mess it looked. The posts were displayed in one of the side bars and the main body was empty. No doubt if I fiddle around enough with Artisteer I can get it to work but if I’m going to do that then I might as well just use Dreamweaver and get a better looking page that will work.

On the cover of a magazine there was a CD with three free professional themes from both StudioPress and ThemeGalaxy. So I tried them with my test site. All six when demo’d from the CD looked great. When I tried them with my chock-full test web site they also looked a mess. Jeez, I’m starting to think it’s me or my test site rather than these themes. I removed all of the widgets to see if they were the culprits but most of them still rendered badly. I’m probably just doing too much and these themes are to be used from the initial start of a web site, when there is nothing to import, and not by using them to try and jam a couple of years of cack-handed web site nonsense.

I also downloaded the Web Developer plug-in for Firefox and that’s yet another learning curve. On the WordPress.com pages they mention a Custom CSS Upgrade app that they sell. That looked quite interesting but I couldn’t find a link to actually pay for the darn thing. WordPress obviously don’t do useability testing.

Just had a look at my Akismet stats and I usually get around 500 spams a month for this blog but in April I got 26,000. What the heck happened.

What is this a once a month new entry kind of blog. It must be that I chuck up all my snippets to Twitter instead.

I’ve been learning Dreamweaver CS3 for the last 3 months. Well, 30 minutes here and there and I wasn’t getting very far so this week I have been hitting DW with a vengence and have just about got my head around a lot of it. It’s a big jump from using Frontpage 95 all those years ago and as for CSS, I knew what it was going to do, but working your way round that very busy screen was confusing for a while. Better finish off my DW learning exercise this week or when I come back to it in a few months I’ll need to start again. Shudder. Anyway, I’ve managed to generate a new resume with DW and just to confuse the IT agents I’ve stuck adverts for Dell, Tom Tom and Photoshop on it.

Just seen Steve Jobs on stage at the Apple show and he was thin and had an old mans voice. Dunno if thats got anything to do with his liver transplant.

I redownloaded this blogs database the other day and managed to load that into a local version of MySQL and have been messing around with the tables with a MySQL version of TOAD. I’ve also downloaded and installed the express version of Oracle as well as its version of TOAD and also SQL Developer so that if a miracle happens and I can load the MySQL database tables, via an SQL file, into Oracle I can then interrogate that stuff with TOAD and SQL Developer. That might fall at the first fence.

I downloaded version 9 of the iTunes software and afterwards iTunes didn’t recognise my iPhone, but did after a reboot. On the Summary screen it shows that 95% of the iPhones capacity is taken up with ‘Other’ displayed in orange and it thinks that there is no music on the iPhone at all, but there is. I hope when I’ve got installed version 3.1 of the iPhone software everything will work OK.

I noticed several months ago that iTunes couldn’t connect to Apple when the Windows Live Onecare forewall is running. When you switch off that firewall then iTunes can connect to Apple. I tried messing with this several times and noticed that iTunes was supposedly allowed through the firewall but it was still stuck. Eventually I switched off Onecare’s firewall and reverted to the Windows firewall which does allow iTunes to connect to Apple. The other day I checked the Windows firewall and that was turned off. I tested it a few times recently and when I switch off the PC the Windows firewall is running, when I reboot it’s switched off again as is Onecare’s firewall. Not much use in that. No doubt there’s one tiny, iddy-biddy little thing I have to do to get it to stay running or, even better, that will allow iTunes to connect with Apple with Onecare’s firewalll switched on, but I can’t be bothered right now.