Google+ Changes Privacy Settings for New Posts…A While Ago
For those using Google+, have you noticed the new share settings? They appear to have been modified months ago. For some reason, I didn't notice until recently. Instead of posting publicly by default, they seem to have switched so that posts are available to my circles only. There's an option to make posts public, but it needs to be set before clicking the share button. [Continue reading]
Thoughts from the CyberScorpion.com Redesign
It's finally done. The CyberScorpion Bytes blog has been redesigned! When switching to WordPress a few years back, a pre-made theme was chosen for the design so I could hit the ground running with the blog. It was never the plan to stick with that template. I wanted to build my own. Now that it's done, I wanted to share some thoughts. [Continue reading]
End PHP Scripts Gracefully After a Failed Database Connection
Last week's post talked about externalizing the MySQL connection script for easier maintenance. The problem with the previous code is that it's not very user friendly. If the database connection fails, it just drops everything and displays an error. Well, there's probably other content on the web page that can be viewed without database access. The website navigation, for example, most likely doesn't require a database. The navigation will probably lead to other pages that don't need that database. To minimize the impact to the visitor, let's look at a more graceful solution for handling connection failures. [Continue reading]
Maintain Your Database Login Information with Ease by Externalizing the Connection Script
When working with databases like MySQL, a connection needs to be established before processing any queries. That connection script could be added to the top of every page needing access, but what happens when the database password needs updating. Who wants to update dozens (or thousands) of files? As a solution, let's look at externalizing the code that makes the connection and importing it instead. [Continue reading]
Custom Calendar Design from the United Blood Services
Over the past few years, the United Blood Services (UBS) has sent desk calendars to donors. Even though that sounds a little boring, I look forward to them every year. The reason being that these calendars have been customized for donors in a very creative way. I wanted to take a few minutes to share. [Continue reading]
Quickly Send Follow-up Messages with Microsoft Outlook
Have you sent an e-mail message and then quickly realized that something was forgotten. Maybe an attachment was missing or an important piece of information was left out. It's fairly easy to go through the sent items folder, forward the previous message, and include the new content. However, this requires us to re-add the contact information. That may not be much of a burden, but there's a quicker way. [Continue reading]
Maintaining a List of Blog Entries
When starting this blog, my goal was to release content regularly—at least once per week. Taking too long of a break would likely wreak havoc on my motivation for blogging. This isn't the first personal project I've tried starting after all. To stay focused, I needed a steady stream of ideas. Unfortunately, those ideas don't always flow when needed. They tend to crop up (and quickly disappear) when doing something other than writing for the blog. That's where tracking those thoughts is handy. [Continue reading]
Rethinking the Structure of My Templates
Over the past few years I've been working on an initiative which shares a single template over several websites. The overall process has gone fairly well, but my standard process for building templates in PHP isn't holding so well. The number of files could use some pruning and there have been issues with variables and helper functions not being available when needed. Plus, it would be nice to have a common place where overall website setting could be changed to affect all pages. So it's time to rethink my template-building process. [Continue reading]
Goals for 2013
Reading "New Year's Resolution" by Marc Towler inspired me to share my own goals for 2013. Some of them have been on my mind for years now. However, little work has been done toward accomplishing the goals. As the Get-It-Done Guy says, "When you publicly say you'll do something, you're just more likely to do it." So here it goes. [Continue reading]
Compose E-mails Faster with Outlook Quick Parts
Over the years, I've found myself writing certain things again and again when e-mailing customers and clients. To save time from composing essential the same message, I tried looking for similar messages in the Sent Mail folder to use as a template. However, it can be difficult to locate those messages. That's where Microsoft's Quick Parts come in. [Continue reading]
