WordPress › Google XML Sitemaps Plugins

I was wondering for a while why some of my blog posts dont' show up in Google, but after taking a look at Google Webmaster Tools, I found that the sitemap I had submitted a long time ago now returns a 404. This must have been the result of an upgrade I did recently.

It's important for SEO reasons to make sure that you have a Google XML sitemap for your blog, so download this guy:

WordPress › Google XML Sitemaps � WordPress Plugins: "This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update."

What is BlogThis! ? - Blogger Help

What is BlogThis! ? - Blogger Help

This is Blogger's equivalent to Press This, the bookmarklet that lets you post to your WordPress blog.

It works fine and great for using your blog as a general bookmarking tool, with a lot more flexibility.

The problem with tools like delicious is that they limit how much you can write, which is a shame. By using your own blog, there's no limit to how much you can write or how much you can paste (barring copyright restrictions).

Micro Persuasion: Bookmarklets Every Blogger Should Have

Micro Persuasion: Bookmarklets Every Blogger Should Have:
"Here's a bunch of bookmarklets that I use every day in Firefox. I highly recommend them. To use these, drag each one individually into your Favorites or Links toolbar (in IE), or your bookmarks folder/toolbar in Firefox. (Hint: in Firefox you can also assign a single keystroke to each. Then all you need to do is type that letter in the address field and hit enter and the bookmarklet activates.)"

How to install mod_python on XAMPP

Complete tutorial for getting mod_python set up on XAMPP so you can work on Python and Django projects on your localhost computer.

Installing Python (mod_python) on XAMPP (on Windows)

XAMPP + Python + Django

Labels: django, python, windows

MSI Specs X-Slim X320, X340 and Wind U123

In the market for some netbooks? Here's a review of the MSI Specs X-Slim X320, X340 and Wind U123

Labels: laptops

Dell XPS 13 - a worthy successor to the XPS M1330?

I currently have a Dell XPS M1330, which I like, and would like to replace at some point with a newer version with better specs. Unfortunately, Dell hasn't released a new version of the XPS M1330, but they did come out with the Dell Studio XPS 13.

Here is a review of the Dell XPS 13 (official specs).

- by hothardware

At 4.85 pounds (with the 6-cell battery installed), Dell's Studo XPS 13 isn't the lightest 13" notebook on the block. To be fair, it's not the heaviest, either. But frankly, we never expected a machine with an "XPS" label to be the lightest and slimmest in its class; what we did expect is for it to be amongst the most potent in its size class. If we're being candid (and of course we always are), we didn't grimace a single time when picking up the machine and lugging it about. Then again, you might consider us the sporting type. 4.85 pounds just didn't feel too heavy here, and the weight is delicately spread over the 12.56" x 9.3" x 0.88" - 1.35" body. Indeed, this ultrathin machine fits quite well in the ultraportable category, and it's tailor-made for churning out video clips and handling light duty gaming on airplane tray tables.

The heat issue is a big deal. I don't want to deal with that, so I'm going to hold off until they release something better. But it looks promising.

But really what I want now is just the M1330 with better specs.

Labels: laptops

Paint.NET - a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, etc.

paint.net

I'm surprised I never heard of this photo editor or image editor until recently. It's been around for five years or so already, but I guess it's just recently gotten to the point of being comparable to things like GIMP.

The nice thing about it is that it's apparently a .NET application, so the download size is very small and it works really well in Microsoft Windows.

Still not ready to leave my Adobe Photoshop, but good to know that there's a free alternative should I need it.

Labels: photoshop

Insert writable disc! Error when burning CD on Windows Vista

This problem might apply to other versions of Windows besides Vista but I tried to burn a playlist of songs from Windows Media Player, and it kept spitting the CD out and saying "insert a writable disc" in the playlist panel and showing a similar error as a pop up message.

I thought it might have to do with Windows or my laptop computer (a Dell XPS M1330), but the solution is pretty simple: use a different disc!

It just didn't like the disc I was putting in, maybe it was too cheap, too old, who knows. But once I put in a new disc I got from Staples, a 4.7GB DVD-R disc it didn't complain.

Labels: windows, windows vista

Nice personas / skins for Firefox

Simple & Clean - Grey Edition

Offical Cookie Fruits by chetaraparker

Blog Marcianos.com.mx by heryemmanuel

Labels: browsers, firefox

How to Use the Django Sites Framework

Instructions from the Django Book are skimpy.

How to Use the Sites Framework

The sites framework is more a series of conventions than a framework. The whole thing is based on two simple concepts:

The Site model, found in django.contrib.sites, has domain and name fields.

The SITE_ID setting specifies the database ID of the Site object associated with that particular settings file.

How you use these two concepts is up to you, but Django uses them in a couple of ways automatically via simple conventions.

To install the sites application, follow these steps:

Add 'django.contrib.sites' to your INSTALLED_APPS.
Run the command manage.py syncdb to install the django_site table into your database. This will also create a default site object, with the domain example.com.

Change the example.com site to your own domain, and add any other Site objects, either through the Django admin site or via the Python API. Create a Site object for each site/domain that this Django project powers.

Define the SITE_ID setting in each of your settings files. This value should be the database ID of the Site object for the site powered by that settings file.

Here's another clue.

And perhaps a better way to do this.

The official documentation.

The closest thign toa tutorial:

Next you’ll want to create separate settings files for each domain you’re adding; each one will need its own MEDIA_URL and other settings. You’ll also want to do two things to make sure everything works out properly for administering the different sites:

Create a new Site object in your admin for each domain, and put the id of that Site into its settings file as SITE_ID so Django knows which site in the database corresponds to this settings file.

In the settings file for your original site (the one with id 1), add the other sites’ settings files to the ADMIN_FOR setting, to let Django know that this one instance of the admin application will handle all of the sites.

Now you can use the single Django admin running on your domain to create weblogs which will show up on your friends’ domains.

A couple more leads:

deploying with django's sites framework on webfaction

Serving Multiple Hosts from a Single Django Instance

Labels: django, python

Everything you know about CSS is wrong: Table layouts in CSS3

Table Layouts in CSS3 is actually what the book shoudl have been called.

It's an interesting book, not really worth buying because it's very thin and very basic. There's ntohing here you can't pick up in 10 minutes of Googling, but it shows you what's possible using CSS table layouts withouf loating divs and so on, but using the new features of CSS which imitate tables.

The bad thing is that it's not supported in IE7 or IE6 so why bother?

And the fact that there are now CSS frameworks like Blueprint CSS that takes away most of the pain of layouts, it's hard to see why anybody would be looking at this at this point. Until IE6 and IE7 market share dips down into the single digits, this is just one of those things to be aware of but to ignore for now.

Maybe in three, four or five years it will be interesting.

Labels: css, ie6, ie7, ie8

Wordpress is too slow!

Here's a good article on how to speed it up:

Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours

Not clear if memcached helps.

Labels: memcached, wordpress

Django deployment articles

Creating my Dream Server for Django

http://lethain.com/entry/2007/jul/17/dreamier-dream-server-nginx/

Labels: django

memcached with django on windows

Installing Memcached for Django Application on Windows XP

Installing Memcache On Windows For PHP

Running memcached on Windows

memcached for Windows - v.1.2.4

memcached on jellycan - 1.2.6

memecache2 for win 32 - old version

Labels: caching, django, windows

Setting up your own remote Git repository

An alternative to using GitHub is to set up your own remote Git repositories:

Setting up a new remote git repository


Setting up a new Rails app with Git

Labels: git, version control

Django deployment with version control using subversion

Django deployment with version control using subversion. Part of a longer series on the topic of Django web development.

Labels: django, version control

Free Ruby on Rails Screencasts

Excellent free series of Ruby on Rails Screencasts and Tutorials called Learning Rails. Recommended.

Labels: rails

Capistrano + Git deployment and version control screencast

Good screencast on deploying a Ruby on Rails site using Capistrano and Github (Git for version control). Part of the Learning Rails series.

Labels: capistrano, git, version control

Version control with Git and Github screencast

Fantastic screeencast for version control using Git and Github. The tutorial is part of a Learning Rails series but this episode is general Git and Github information.

Highly recommended!

Labels: git, version control

Setting up a remote git repository

Several tutorials on the subject:


Version control with Git: remote repositories


Git - setting up a remote repository and doing an initial ‘push’


Git: Easy way to setup a private remote repository


Initialize a remote git repository


Setting up a new remote git repository

Labels: git, version control

Python decorators tutorial

Python decorators tutorial recommended beginners look at decorators in Python.

Labels: python

Easy Django deployment with Fabric, a Capistrano-like utility

Capistrano itself can be used to deploy Rails apps, but there is a Python equivalent known as Fabric:

Fabric: simple pythonic deployment.

Fabric user guide.

Labels: django

Django deployment using Git and Fabric

Good articles by Will Larson on deploying Django apps using Git and Fabric:


Deploying Django with Fabric



Installing a Development Deployment of LifeFlow, a Django Blog Solution

Labels: django, fabric, git

Version control live websites using Git

Articles about using Git for deployment and versioning of live web sites:

Using Git to Maintain Your Website

Using Git to manage a web site

A web-focused Git workflow

And specifically for Django:

Development to Deployment in Django

A Tale of Three Repositories

The foundation of my development-deployment pipeline is three repositories (it's a bit simpler using distributed version control, but you could accomplish more or less the same with Subversion or CVS).

A master repository hosted in a non-local and non-production location. I use my Slicehost slice that hosts my blog for all my private git repositories (it has daily and weekly backups, and if it does lag or crash, I can fix it myself), but you could use a paid GitHub account or one of the other similar services.

A local repository for each developer, which they push out to the master server at regular intervals.

A production repository on each production machine serving the project.

Developers do most of their work on their local machines, and push it to an appropriate branch on the master repository. They also pull from the master server occasionally to keep the repositories synchronized.

The production repositories are kept up to date by either:

Using Fabric to command them to pull the newest changes. This is the best option for large, medium and small deployments. That is, this is always the best option. Don't bother reading the others.

SSHing into the production servers and manually pulling the change set. Alternatively you could write a batch script that does this. This approach is more than sufficient for one machine deployment, but for anything more complex than that you'll want to use a deployment solution.

Setup a cronjob that pulls the changes periodically. This is the simplest and laziest of the approaches, but is a bad idea in most circumstances.

That's a good article.

Labels: django, git, version control