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It’s that simple!

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<?php
//set timezone
putenv ('TZ=America/New_York');
mktime(0,0,0,1,1,1970);
?>

Just replace America/New_York with whatever your local time zone is. Check this page for valid entries: http://us.php.net/manual/en/timezones.america.php

For PHP5.1 or newer use date_default_time(’America/New_York’).

Also check this page in the Simplepie docs for reference.

Cheers!

The fix to get Cake working in the subdirectory was to add a single line to the .htaccess file in the Cake root directory ( the “/tw” folder in my case). The .htaccess file should look something like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule    ^$ app/webroot/    [L]
RewriteRule    (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]

Add this line after “RewriteEngine on”:

RewriteRule /YOURCAKESUBDIR$ /YOURCAKESUBDIR/ [L]

Obviously, replace “YOURCAKESUBDIR” with the subdirectory your Cake app in running in. So my .htaccess file now looks like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /tw/
RewriteRule /tw$ /tw/ [L]
RewriteRule    ^$ app/webroot/    [L]
RewriteRule    (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]

(The third line, “RewriteBase /tw/”, is necessary to get CakePHP working in the Mosso hosting environment. If your Cake installation is at the server web root (the Mosso “content” directory) then it should read simply “RewriteBase /”. If your site is not hosted at Mosso just eliminate this line.)

Thanks to Jeff Loiselle for the quick fix: http://jeff.loiselles.com/wordpress/?p=22

We love our tiny, shiny Apple Keyboards (aside from the ridiculous USB placement/depth). We also love eating lunch at our desks. Today happened to be one of those days where lunch somehow ended up on my glorious keyboard. It could have been worse (soup). It could have been better (soft dinner rolls). But it was a bagel with cream cheese. Face down.

It wasn’t pretty, and rather than taking photos of the incident (depressing and poorly lit) I’ll walk you through how to remove a slightly messy substance from a slightly ridiculous keyboard.

Oh snap, you got cream cheese on your keyboard. The first method (wiping with papertowel, wedging paper towel in gaps) proved useless as the keys are so sensitive that touching them depressed them, thus spreading cream cheese further down the already-tiny crack.

I had never encountered this problem with Apple’s absurdly thin keys. So I looked around my desk for something better. A harder/stiffer material. Something thin enough to get underneath the key (because removing the Apple keys puts you at a 77%* chance of breaking the key, or never getting it back on). My successful find: a former employee’s business card.

The above card has been changed (to our latest version) to protect the identity of the not-so-recently departed. But I’m sure any business card would do.

I wish I could say it was trickier than that, but really you just have to dig down in there with your business card, alternating corners to get the most use out of your card (which will also prevent further spreading of material).

It might take a few minutes, and it would be advised to use some sort of sanitation product after. It is important to note that I unplugged my keyboard during this process. I wasn’t looking to accidentally send an email to a client that looked like “jm,j,kj,k,mkjm,m,jk“.

Repeat until clean.  Look at it shine! Back to normal, almost.

These illustrations were done in Illustrator while finishing the slippery bagel (cheddar) from Collegetown/Downtown Bagels which was: delicious

* Totally made up

WordPress doesn’t automatically redirect your old permalinks to the new permalinks, unfortunately. The permalink for the above post is http://blog.awpny.com/2008/03/position-a-div-element-absolute-and-align-it-top-center/. I did a little research. More than a few people have been frustrated with this problem, as you can imagine. I discovered this plugin Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin. It works perfectly! Thank you Scott Yang’s Playground.

Simply download & install the plugin. Edit the plugin settings (under Settings>Permalink Redirect). For our blog, in the ‘Path pairs to redirect from and to’ box, I used:

[from] /archives/%post_id% [to] /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/

And now, Google search results take me to the post, rather than a 404 Error page!

1. Headings!

WordPress Default template lists Post Titles as <h2> in order to reserve <h1> for your Blog Title. At AWP we like to use <h1> for unique page content titles, so the first main text you see on the page is <h1>. We generally have great SEO ratings, so we are going to stick with that strategy.

The template files, archive.php, links.php, page.php, single.php and search.php can be changed directly. To affect the heading tags for posts, you will need to insert some conditional code in index.php (or post.php, since this file can be used on the single post, the post category list views, and some times the home page). In the following example <h4>’s are used as the list view headings.

<<?php echo (is_single() || is_home()) ? "h1" : "h4"; ?> class="title">
    <a id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>">
        <?php the_title(); ?>
    </a>
</<?php echo (is_single() || is_home()) ? "h1" : "h4"; ?>>

Insert this into the beginning of index.php. (Modified from geniosity musings)

2. Page Title

Another SEO measure we’ve implemented at AWP is ordering titles with specific content first in the browser title bar. For example, if we are several layers deep, the title goes “Page Title _ Sub-Section _ Section _ Website Name,” etc. For more of an explanation, see Web Designer Wall (go to #7).

For interior pages WordPress Default theme uses “Blog Title > Category > Post Name,” which is not Search Engine friendly. To improve this, I borrowed code from The Blueprint Theme which integrates the Google Blueprint framework into WordPress (which I also used in my blog template).

<title><?php wp_title(''); ?> <?php if ( !(is_404()) && (is_single()) or (is_page()) or (is_archive()) ) { ?> | <?php } ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

So, now we get “Post Name > Blog Title.” Happy SEO improving!

Good design is only slightly superficial

Last year we were bombarded with links from friends and/or heard stories (rumors!) about how lo-fi design is the new hi-fi. The driving force behind this idea was mostly based on the perspective of an imaginary character: that of the hypothetical visitor. The argument assumes that visitors don’t want to feel cheated, manipulated or over-sold on a site that is too polished or classy. They just want the goods. People were citing Craigslist and Google (and, dare I say it, MySpace – ouch, that really does hurt) as the ultimate success stories. Bare-bones design, super-accessible content.

Seems straight-forward enough. And logical in theory. Obviously if John Doe has a computer, knows a bit of code and wants to sell the lovable lawn ornaments he makes in his garage, he doesn’t need a site that looks like Apple. That being said, I don’t go to the doctor and expect to see paint-chipped walls and broken equipment. So what is the compromise?

Design’s Common Ground

Without diving too much into demographics and appealing to your target market, we can start from the ground and work our way up: the thing has to work. In the visual world this means making sure that the important bits are accessible. If there is text, is it easy to read (contrast/size)? Do we know who it represents (branding/logo)? Those are the basics, and easily accomplished…which will only get you halfway to your finished product.

Getting your message across is the second half and is tricky for a number of reasons. Your concept (visually and literally) needs to stand out. In a good way. Is it unique? Picture your finished product lined up with a dozen other competitors’/organizations’ products. Chances are that most of them will look similar, playing it safe with trends that currently work. Some will look amateurish and unprofessional, using too many fonts (and lame ones) poor color choices or lacking any coherent concept. Some will pop. Some will have a message and style that is so fresh, so humbling, you’ll remember it days, weeks later. And if yours isn’t one of those now, learn from it. That doesn’t mean you should borrow (design-speak for “rip-off”) elements or ideas, but learn why it resonates with you. Maybe you like the hand-drawn look or the startlingly simple bold font and high-impact graphic. When you sit down to start your next project, those feelings and concepts that work will come back to you.

That Being Said…

We’re still in a very subjective field. Just because you like it doesn’t mean everyone else will. Hopefully this isn’t the case, but no work of art, website, billboard, business card will be flawless. But if the final result is something that you can be proud of, communicates your message clearly and separates you from the crowd (or at least isn’t re-hashing old trends), then pat yourself on the back and high-five the first person you see: you’re designing!

An excellent way to see this inconsistency in action is through Eric Meyer’s Javascript line-height test. Just open up this link in different browsers and the rendered line-height will be displayed for you.

Although we are used to making special considerations for Internet Explorer and Safari, problems between releases of similar browsers are much harder to solve for. It took me awhile to figure out what the problem actually was.

The solution, luckily, is quite simple. Set

body {line-height:1.5}

(or some other unitless value)

You will want to put this at the top of your reset.css stylesheet which you should be using for the greatest browser consistency possible. Here at AWP we like to use Blueprint CSS Framework which uses reset methods developed by Eric Meyer’s.

Now my drop-down menus line up correctly! Yes!

The save password feature is nice for preserving my own brain capacity! But you might be wondering, what about when Molly asks me, hey what is the login for AWP’s WebTree so I can post some juicy details about the project I just finished? I go to the site, and of course I can login (because I choose Remember my password). But I can’t give the password to Molly, because it is hidden. Is Molly out of luck? No!

Firefox does store your passwords where you can see them. Although a bit cumbersome, just head to Security > Saved Passwords. (Note: This is also where you can delete passwords that you saved accidentally, which might happen if your cat walked across your keyboard without you knowing).

But here is an even better method. Download this great Firefox Add-On, Web Developer Toolbar from Chris Pederick. As the name suggests, this toolbar is great for Web Developers. I use this tool when developing websites to examine what they will look like in a smaller browser, determine rendered font size, disable cache, disable images or css, outline table cells and even edit html live.

However, I use Web Developer Toolbar most for its Show Password feature. Once you have this spiffy toolbar installed, simply visit the site with the hidden password and choose Show Passwords from the Form menu. Password revealed, just like that! Completely for free! Imagine what I can do with the time I saved looking up obscure passwords!

Here’s how to get those messages back (note, this worked for me on Tiger OSX 10.4):

1) Don’t panic.

2) Download a trial copy of Data Rescue II. You’ll need an external hard drive with some free space, so go grab one while you’re downloading.

3) Plug-in that external drive. Open the disk image and launch Data Rescue II. Follow the instructions for performing a “Deleted Files scan”. When the scan is complete you’ll see a Mail folder that contains all your email messages. Recover it. If there is more than one mail folder, recover them all. You may need to register the program at this point as the unregistered version will only recover 5mb of data. Don’t worry, it will be the best $99 you ever spend.

4) Now you should have all the recovered Mail files in a series of folders on your external drive. Each folder holds 1,000 messages. Each message is a separate .emlx file.

5) To get those emails back into Mail you’ll need to convert them to a single mbox file. Download a copy of emlxconvert, open the disk image file and launch the program. I converted my .emlx files in batches of 1,000.

6) Now switch over to Mail and select “Import Mailboxes…” from the File menu. Choose to import data from “Other” and hit continue, and select the folder that contains your new mbox file. Mail will create a new mailbox folder called “Import”, and the messages will begin to appear in this mailbox as they are imported. It took me about 5 minutes to import 1,000 messages on my MacBook Pro (2 GHz Intel, 2 GB RAM).

7) Whew! You have now imported all the messages that were either sent or received by the account you deleted. You’ll need to repeat the import process for each mbox file you created in Step 5.

Leave us a comment if this technique helped you out!