Have you ever wondered when you are posting a status update, tweet or sharing a link on Google+, how many people you are reaching out to?
Well so were the guys that made Klout, a service that lets you measure your audience, their feedback, and creates a “Klout” score, from 1 to 100.

But it doesn’t end at just measuring your reach. There is also benefits such as “Perks” which are exclusive products or experiences that you earn based on your influence. Like for example, I can get a Subway Oven Crisp Chicken Sub since my Klout score is above 40, but alas, they are all out at the moment. I suddenly don’t feel so impressed by my “41″ Klout score. But then again, Keven Rose only has an 81, and he’s a celebrity.

But Perks aside, I think the best part about Klout is the self aware factor. Once you realize how to focus what you’re talking about, and see what topics trend better, you could really use this as a tool to hone in your online social skills. And that would translate to growing a larger audience, so while I personally am not in it for the “Perks” I’m watching my Klout score on a daily basis. I haven’t figured out how frequently it updates, but I can see that over the next few months it will have a positive impact on my blogging as my social consumption should increase. Speaking of which all this is making me hungry for a meatball and pepperoni sub…

Why not check me out on Klout http://klout.com/#/LarcenIII and follow me on twitter. http://twitter.com/LarcenIII or Google Plus http://➸.ws/~fc5L1

P.S. I’m also a stumbler!

SPAM. We all hate it, and while there is a ton of different ways to protect yourself from it, the safest, bestest, way, is to

Presenting Scr.im

NEVER GIVE YOUR EMAIL TO ANYONE. lol, But that doesn’t help us get it out there for real people does it?

I recently became aware of this problem; with all the Twitterer’s of the world wildly posting their e-mail everywhere all willy-nilly, their email addresses are subject to the harvesting by robots. Robots crawl websites like twitter (and yes they even crawl my site) so sooner or later you’ll wind up on a spammer list.

We all got caught up in the E-mail sharing twitter storm trying to get Google Wave invites.

So what’s the best way to protect yourself? I found a little website called Scrim (http://scr.im/) There is NO registration required, (nice) all you do is type in your e-mail address, and it generates a tiny URL like this one http://scr.im/811 and anyone who clicks on it is asked to verify that they are human, after which your e-mail is displayed!

Give it a try! Here’s my email address http://scr.im/811

And to anyone who was thinking “I just put email [A T] whereever {dot} com” – Well the bots have been wise to this for a long time, and it only fools the simplest of spam bots, they have long been trained beyond that old trick….

Let me know if you like/dislike this….

I’ve used Gallery for years, and I’ve used ZenPhoto for a little over two years.

Zenphoto Vs Gallery3 Showdown

And for anyone who is wondering what they are, they are PHP Scripts, or Web Based Applications.  They are IMO the two best PHP photo galleries out there. They are both slowly evolving into great scripts but they aren’t Google Picasa or anything, but what you can do with them in really impressive, even more so when you consider that they are free.

Ok in this review lets get to the nitty gritty. I’ll keep it short and sweet.

Here’s what they have in Common with each other.

Both Gallery3 and ZenPhoto are:

• Free
• Open Source
• Manage Small/Medium Photo’s and albums well.
• Easy to use
• Use Themes
• Support Plugins
• Have a “Hold your hand” installer
• Require a server with PHP & MySQL

Now that’s out of the way, here are the Differences:

• ZenPhoto is a little easier to style if you know CSS
• Gallery support MASSIVE photo databases
• ZenPhoto will detect new photos that have been uploaded to your server and add them automagically
• Gallery has a better security history
• ZenPhoto has a CMS plugin to add static pages, great for a simple site.
• Gallery3 is still in Beta, Google has made this word pretty meaningless.

In short if you’re making a photo album online, and are trying to decide, think about it this way:

ZenPhoto is simpler, Gallery supports larger albums with more users easier.
Don’t get me wrong, ZenPhoto is great for around a half a dozen users, and the permissions system is great!  But Gallery3 is built on top of Kohana, and that’s a powerful back end.
For example, ZenPhoto will load faster under normal server load, but I think Gallery may best ZenPhoto however, if your site became popular, due to it’s Kohana and Zend usage.

Links:

Gallery3 (Version is Beta3 @ the time of this writing)

ZenPhoto (Version 1.2.6 at time of this writing)

ZenPhoto Theming Guide

REMEMBER:

Regardless of which your choose, subscribe to their mailing list or RSS feed or whatever you can to be notified of new versions. You always want to keep them current with the latest version. I really wish Gallery3 would take notes on the World of WordPress where it notifies you of a new version from the admin console!

This is a beginners guide to creating a site-wide navigation that is consistent from page to page.

Tired of keeping track of multiple Menu’s on different pages? As your site grows, adding 1 new page to 25 other pages’ navigation can become a full time job. I’ll show you how easy it really is to make a single navigation that will save you time and headaches!

For this you’ll need:

1. Guts
2. A little understanding of HTML CSS and PHP (Not Really)
3. Notepad++ (Or any HTML editor)
4. A copy of DDtabmenu From Dynamic Drive (This file)

1. Let’s start off with the code you’ll need. The Three Parts are:

A. The CSS include, paste this in the header of your html.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/solidblocksmenu.css">

B. The Javascript Magic,  paste this near the top of your html.

<script type="text/javascript" src="/ddtabmenu.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">ddtabmenu.definemenu("ddtabs1", auto)
</script>

To make adjustments, you can change the tab_menu_id to whatever HTML id your using for your menu, and the number after the comma will select which link is highlighted.
SYNTAX: ddtabmenu.definemenu(“tab_menu_id”, integer OR “auto”)
//initialize Tab Menu with ID “ddtabs1″ and select 1st tab by default

C. The HTML for the Links

<div id="ddtabs1" class="basictab">
<ul>
<li><a href="http://green.cx/" rel="sc1">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="http://green.cx/Link1.htm" rel="sc2">Link1</a></li>
<li><a href="http://green.cx/Link2/" rel="sc3">Link2</a></li>
<li><a href="http://green.cx/Link3/">Link3</a></li>
<li><a href="http://green.cx/Link4">Link4</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

D. The HTML for the Subtitles

<DIV class="tabcontainer">

<div id="sc1" class="tabcontent">Sub contents here</div>
<div id="sc2" class="tabcontent">Sub contents here</div>
<div id="sc3" class="tabcontent">Sub contents here</div>

</DIV>

2. Now The Required files you need on your server

Download this file and extract the contents to the root of your webserver, using a FTP client like FileZilla.

And, Volia! You should have a nice HTML/CSS Navigation on your site, but you don’t want to copy/paste this to EVERY page on your site right?
What if you needed to change a link or fix a typo? That would be a LOT of editing for a site with more than a hand full  of pages.

So we get around that using a simple PHP include file.

Woah! Don’t get nervous, this is actually really easy, just keep following along!

Now making that nice flashy menu and making it a PHP include is really quite easy.

First off I feel the need to make it clear, your server needs to support PHP. (Of course)

Start off Coping the HTML code for the MENU and the Subtitles, into a new document, named nav.inc

nav.inc Contents

<div id="ddtabs1">
<ul>
<li><a href="http://green.cx/" rel="sc1">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="http://green.cx/Link1.htm" rel="sc2">Link1</a></li>
<li><a href="http://green.cx/Link2/" rel="sc3">Link2</a></li>
<li><a href="http://green.cx/Link3/">Link3</a></li>
<li><a href="http://green.cx/Link4">Link4</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<DIV>
<div id="sc1">Sub contents here</div>
<div id="sc2">Sub contents here</div>
<div id="sc3">Sub contents here</div>
</DIV>

Now rename your index.html file to index.php

Keep the CSS and Javascript in the header as per usual.

But where the Menu was located, replace it with this code.

<?php
include ("/nav.inc");
?>

That should put the contents of the navigation include file whenever this line is called. But notice! It will only work when the index (or any file on the server) ends with .php

Give it a try!

]]> http://green.cx/web-resources/web-dev-resources/web-20-navigation-crash/feed/ 0 http://green.cx/web-resources/web-dev-resources/cushycms-simplest-cms/ http://green.cx/web-resources/web-dev-resources/cushycms-simplest-cms/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:24:55 +0000 +Jason http://blog.jhawk.ws/?p=99
CushyCMS is a Content Management Systems (CMS) that is truly simple. It's built from the ground up with ease of use in mind - for both content editors and designers. It's such a simple CMS that it takes less than 3 minutes for a web designer to implement. No PHP or ASP required for this CMS. If you can add CSS classes to HTML tags then you can implement CushyCMS. ]]>

CushyCMS is a Content Management Systems (CMS) that is truly simple. It’s free for unlimited users, unlimited changes, unlimited pages and unlimited sites.

It’s built from the ground up with ease of use in mind – for both content editors and designers. It’s such a simple CMS that it takes less than 3 minutes for a web designer to implement. No PHP or ASP required for this CMS. If you can add CSS classes to HTML tags then you can implement CushyCMS. It’s also a hosted CMS, so no installation or maintenance is needed either.

Content editors will love managing their content with this system. No training required, it’s just that easy.

And it is, and always will be a free CMS. You can use it for professional use, you can even charge your clients to use it. The only catch is that if you make it your own CMS solution, with your own brand, then you’ll need to pay for the pro plan.