Load Thickbox javascript library

Before we can start using Thickbox we need to make sure jQuery is loaded before and then load thickbox jquery plugin and stylesheet. We don’t need to enqueue jQuery because we’ll add that as a dependency and WordPress will add that automatically for us.

wp_enqueue_script('thickbox', null,  array('jquery'));
wp_enqueue_style('thickbox.css', '/'.WPINC.'/js/thickbox/thickbox.css', null, '1.0');

Hook that with a function to the init hook.

add_action('init', 'myplugin_thickbox');
function myplugin_thickbox() {
	if (! is_admin()) {
		wp_enqueue_script('thickbox', null,  array('jquery'));
		wp_enqueue_style('thickbox.css', '/'.WPINC.'/js/thickbox/thickbox.css', null, '1.0');
	}
}

Markup

To add Thickbox, we only need to add class=”thickbox” and it will automatically add the onclick trigger.

<p>To open image: <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/google_uwt.png" class="thickbox" title="Title">Google search</a></p>

Try it

To open image: Google search

Add your hooks

We will need to add 4 hooks

• manage_edit-post_columns: In this hook we will add a column to the list. “post” is the post type in this case, if you have a custom post type change “post” to your post type name manage_edit-customPostType_columns.
• manage_posts_custom_column: This hook will add the value to the list
• posts_orderby: Will tell which columns that are sortable, will nicely use WordPress built in AJAX functions to sort the table for you.
• manage_edit-post_sortable_columns: Where you add the logic when sorting you custom column

Put it together

Lets say we have a custom field (meta-data) “score”, and want to be able to see that in the table view and make it sortable so we can see highest scores.

add_filter('manage_edit-post_columns', 'my_edit_columns');
add_action('manage_posts_custom_column', 'my_custom_columns');
add_filter('posts_orderby', 'my_orderby', 10, 2);
add_filter('manage_edit-post_sortable_columns', 'my_sort_columns', 10, 1);
 
function my_edit_columns($columns) {
	$columns['score'] = __('Score');
	return $columns;
}
function my_custom_columns($column) {
	global $post;
	switch ($column) {
		case 'score':
			echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'score', true);
			break;
	}
}
function my_sort_columns($columns) {
	$columns['score'] = 'score';
	return $columns;
}
function my_orderby($orderby, $wp_query) {
	global $wpdb, $post;
	$wp_query->query = wp_parse_args($wp_query->query);
	$order = array_key_exists('orderby', $wp_query->query) ? $wp_query->query['orderby'] : false;
	switch ($order) {
		case 'score':
			$orderby = "(SELECT `meta_value` FROM `{$wpdb->postmeta}` WHERE `post_id` = `{$wpdb->posts}`.`ID` AND `meta_key` = 'score')" . $wp_query->get('order');
		break;
	}
	return $orderby;
}

You can either make a plugin out of it or copy it straight to your functions.php in your theme.

Themedy Thesis & Genesis Skin Club

Themedy is a premium skin marketplace offering quality child themes for the some of the most popular Wordpress frameworks like Thesis & Genesis. Read more

If you need to SSH to a server that only accepts a public key, the connection procedures get a bit more complicated.

Authenticate using a public key read from a file

This is an example how to use the exchange algorithm:

$methods = array(
	'kex' => 'diffie-hellman-group1-sha1',
    	'hostkey' => 'ssh-dss',
    	'client_to_server' => array(
		'crypt' => '3des-cbc',
	    	'mac' => 'hmac-md5',
		'comp' => 'none'),
    	'server_to_client' => array(
    		'crypt' => '3des-cbc',
    		'mac' => 'hmac-md5',
    		'comp' => 'none')
);

Full code snippet

Example below will try and connect to ssh.domain.com.

$host = 'ssh.domain.com';
$public_key = './id_dsa.pub';
$private_key = './id_dsa';
$user = 'root';
$methods = array(
	'kex' => 'diffie-hellman-group1-sha1',
    	'hostkey' => 'ssh-dss',
    	'client_to_server' => array(
		'crypt' => '3des-cbc',
	    	'mac' => 'hmac-md5',
		'comp' => 'none'),
    	'server_to_client' => array(
    		'crypt' => '3des-cbc',
    		'mac' => 'hmac-md5',
    		'comp' => 'none')
);
try {
	if(!($ssh_conn = ssh2_connect($host, 22, $methods)))
    		throw new Exception('Unable to establish connection');
	if(!ssh2_auth_pubkey_file($ssh_conn, 'root', $public_key, $private_key))
		throw new Exception('Public Key Authentication Failed');
} catch (Exception $e) {
	$error = $e;
}

Remember that you need to create your keys and upload to the server you want to connect to.

Interactive PHP

Learn interactive PHP click here to find out more

You’ll have to use 2 rules, as the standards for this is not been set yet.

For Mozilla:

:-moz-placeholder { color: #000000; }

And for Webkit:

::-webkit-input-placeholder { color: #000000; }

This goes for both input and textareas.

Chrome 9 & 10

Do not support background-color, border, text-decoration and text-transform when styling the placeholder.

Summary of CSS properties supported

If you find a hack or a workaround for other browsers please let me know.

Easy Starter CSS Templates

Web design has never been easier with these static, Html/css templates. Choose between two or three column and select from over 50 high-res headers and 70 custom backgrounds. Read more

Only IPv6

Yes it’s true, China does not support IPv4 anymore. Well that’s not entirely true but it’s extremely limited and IPv6 is more or less the standard, same goes for India. For many in Europe and USA IPv6 is still a futuristic thing we don’t have to worry about yet. If you are thinking of having traffic from Asia, you’d better investigate if your hosting company and DNS supports IPv6. If not, change to one that does.

In Europe we still have IPSs that doesn’t support IPv6, so not to lose any traffic you need to be prepared for both, not just switching to IPv6.

Global launch for IPv6 June 6th 2012

The Internet Society has organized a World IPv6 launch. This includes hopefully all ISPs, hardware makers, hosting companies to permanently enable “Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). IPv4 will not be shut down but will run its course until the addresses run out.

Largest industry commitment

The IPv6 deployment will be the largest industry commitment in the history of Internet. Not only the big boys have to upgrade, even you and me have to upgrade our routers, modems and maybe even your desktop network card.

Keep up to date with Internet

Not just for Asia but for the biggest change in Internet history.

Link Building

Read the guide on link building strategies, I used these methods and I am now ranking top 10 on several keywords, Read it here

# ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub "user@host -p 6000"

Linux training

If you need to improve your skills try my linux training guide, read more

Basically the Auto Scaling launches additional instances to meet your demand, usually with help of a CPU alarm. Later removes them when not needed any more.

First, you need to build your environment, I would recommend having an NFS (Network File System) server, to host your web-server configuration and your web-root directory. If you need a database, have a look at Amazon RDS (Relationship Database Service), it works great as a MySQL server.

Then you will need to create an Image (Amazon AMIs), install your web-server and put all your scripts so it will automatically add itself to grant access to your NFS and so on.

That will be your Auto Scaling Image, so whenever you have a traffic spike, the Auto Scaling will launch new instances from this image.

You also need to create your Amazon ELB (Elastic Load Balancer), which can be easily done from the AWS web console under the EC2 tab.

When all this is finished, I’d recommend you install Auto Scaling Command Line Tool and Amazon CloudWatch Command Line Tool on your NFS instance.

Create a launch config

First thing you need it to create a launch config, that will tell what kind of instance will be launched.

# as-create-launch-config MyFirstConfig --image-id ami-01234567 --instance-type m1.large --key MyFirst_PairKey --group MyFirst_Group
OK-Created launch config

• –image-id: The ID of the AMIs you created, the image with the web-server
• –instance-type: How many virtual CPU’s and memory for the Auto Scaling images
• –key: Which KeyPair to be used, important if you need SSH access
• –group: The name of the Security Group, if you need special ports open

Create an Auto Scaling group

Next step will be to create your Auto Scaling group, here is where you tell minimum and maximum of instances.

# as-create-auto-scaling-group MyFirstGroup --launch-configuration MyFirstConfig --availability-zones eu-west-1a eu-west-1b --min-size 2 --max-size 20 --load-balancers MyFirstELB
OK-Created AutoScalingGroup

• –availability-zones: Tell in which zones your instances will be launched
• –min-size: Minimum of instances
• –max-size: Maximum of instances

Create first policy Scale UP

We need two policies one for scaling up and one for down, in this case I will use CPU usage as alarm and when the average CPU usage is higher then 75% on all active instances it will launch two new instances.

# as-put-scaling-policy MyFirstScaleUpPolicy --auto-scaling-group MyFirstGroup --adjustment=2 --type ChangeInCapacity --cooldown 300
arn:aws:autoscaling:eu-west-1:123456789:scalingPolicy:0123456-789a-bcde-f012-3456789abcdef:autoScalingGroupName/MyFirstGroup:policyName/MyFirstScaleUpPolicy

Use the output string that the policy returned to add in your alarm.

• –adjustment: How many instances to create when CPU usage is higher then 75%
• –type In this case it’s capacity but percentage can also be used “PercentChangeInCapacity”
• –cooldown Time (in seconds) between a successful scaling activity and succeeding scaling activity.

# mon-put-metric-alarm MyFirstHighCPUAlarm  --comparison-operator  GreaterThanThreshold  --evaluation-periods  1 --metric-name  CPUUtilization  --namespace "AWS/EC2" --period 600 --statistic Average --threshold  75 --alarm-actions arn:aws:autoscaling:eu-west-1:123456789:scalingPolicy:0123456-789a-bcde-f012-3456789abcdef:autoScalingGroupName/MyFirstGroup:policyName/MyFirstScaleUpPolicy --dimensions "AutoScalingGroupName=MyFirstGroup"
OK-Created Alarm

• –comparison-operator: Tells which operator to use, in this case GreaterThanThreshold.
• –evaluation-periods: Number of consecutive periods for which the value of the metric needs to be compared to threshold.
• –metric-name: The name of the metric on which to alarm.
• –namespace: A namespace for your alarms AWS/EC2 is default.
• –period: Period of metric on which to alarm.
• –statistic: Here we use average between periods, but others like Minimum or Maximum can be used as well.
• –threshold: The threshold with which the metric value will be compared.
• –alarm-actions: What should be sent, use your output from when you put your metrics alarm in previous step.
• –dimensions: Adds a tag to all instances

Create second policy Scale Down

The down scaling policy needs to be added too. When average CPU usages goes below 20% on all instances, remove 1 instance.

# as-put-scaling-policy MyFirstScaleDownPolicy --auto-scaling-group MyFirstGroup --adjustment=-1 --type ChangeInCapacity --cooldown 300
arn:aws:autoscaling:eu-west-1:123456789:scalingPolicy:0123456-789a-bcde-f012-3456789abcdef:autoScalingGroupName/MyFirstGroup:policyName/MyFirstScaleDownPolicy

# mon-put-metric-alarm MyFirstLowCPUAlarm --comparison-operator LessThanThreshold --evaluation-periods  1 --metric-name  CPUUtilization --namespace  "AWS/EC2" --period 600 --statistic Average --threshold 20 --alarm-actions arn:aws:autoscaling:eu-west-1:123456789:scalingPolicy:0123456-789a-bcde-f012-3456789abcdef:autoScalingGroupName/MyFirstGroup:policyName/MyFirstScaleDownPolicy --dimensions "AutoScalingGroupName=MyFirstGroup"
OK-Created Alarm

Verify your configuration

# as-describe-auto-scaling-groups MyFirstGroup --headers
AUTO-SCALING-GROUP  GROUP-NAME   LAUNCH-CONFIG  AVAILABILITY-ZONES     LOAD-BALANCERS  MIN-SIZE  MAX-SIZE  DESIRED-CAPACITY
AUTO-SCALING-GROUP  MyFirstGroup  MyFirstConfig   eu-west-1a,eu-west-1b  MyFirstELB           2         20        2
INSTANCE  INSTANCE-ID  AVAILABILITY-ZONE  STATE      STATUS   LAUNCH-CONFIG
INSTANCE  i-01234567   eu-west-1a         InService  Healthy  MyFirstConfig
INSTANCE  i-01234567   eu-west-1b         InService  Healthy  MyFirstConfig

To remove your config

First you need to remove all instances from the group. Set maximum and minimum to 0. Make the auto scaling do this for you so it removes correctly from the Load Balancer.

# as-update-auto-scaling-group MyFirstGroup --min-size 0 --max-size 0
OK-Updated AutoScalingGroup

Verify in the AWS console that instances are termintated

Next step: Delete both alarms

# mon-delete-alarms MyFirstHighCPUAlarm
OK-Deleted alarms
# mon-delete-alarms MyFirstLowCPUAlarm
OK-Deleted alarms

Then delete Auto scaling group

# as-delete-auto-scaling-group MyFirstGroup
OK-Deleted AutoScalingGroup

Last step delete your config

# as-delete-launch-config MyFirstConfig
OK-Deleted launch configuration

Setting up a web server

Learn how to configure a web server from home, read more

How to

After installation, look under the Tools tab and open “WP Backup”. Click on “Generate WP Easy Backup Zip”. Use the link to save the file.

Download

WP Easy Backup

Szuper PHP Store Locator

The software allows you to add a Google map to your website that can display all your stores locations and details. It allows people to input a location and the map will display all the stores within a given radius, and also directions to get there. Read more

echo "String to save " | sudo tee filename.txt > /dev/null

Linux training

If you need to improve your skills try my linux training guide, read more

register_taxonomy( 'brands', 'post', array('labels'=>array('name'=>'Brands')));

To get the category from post id we use get_the_category, but that only look for the terms in category taxonomy. So we need to get the custom term list from get_the_terms, as we can specify which taxonomy to look for.

$brands = get_the_terms( $postID, 'brands' );

get_the_terms

Will return an array with all brands selected in this case, false or wp_error if invalid taxonomy given.

So in a real example you should use something similar to this:

<?php
global $post;
$brands = get_the_terms( $post->ID, 'brands' );
if ($brands && !is_wp_error($brands)): 
	$brand_names = array();
	foreach ($brands as $brand)
		$brand_names[] = $brand->name;
	$brands = implode(", ", $brand_names);
?>
<p class="posts brands">
	Brands: <span><?php echo $brands; ?></span>
</p>
<?php endif; ?>

If you want with links look for get_the_term_list.

Themedy Thesis & Genesis Skin Club

Themedy is a premium skin marketplace offering quality child themes for the some of the most popular Wordpress frameworks like Thesis & Genesis. Read more