A while back now I started setting up a server to use as a development machine. From a standard CentOS 5 installation I have installed SubVersion and Trac. Now I have finally got round to installing phpUnderControl for continuous integration and build management.

As usual, there are many great guides already on the net but getting everything to work usually requires a few of these references and a few additional changes. I will point out where I got the information from where applicable but the aim of this guide is to be complete and comprehensive.

If you follow this guide you should start with a basic CentOS 5 installation with Subversion setup correctly and end up with a working installation of phpUnderControl.

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I have recently launched a website for the Bramham Lodge Residential Development in Bramham Village.

The site features a neat Slideshow / Thumbnail Gallery implementation using MooTools and Flash (utilising the Swiff utility of MooTools 1.2).

A demo can be seen on the Bramham Lodge Apartment page.

The SlideShow makes use of Flash to create easily customisable image transition effects that are not possible with JavaScript alone. A collection of MooTools classes are employed to mange the Swiff interface and control the slideshow.

Key Features

• Images are not hard-coded into flash: no need to recompile the SWF when adding/removing or re-ordering the gallery as all data is presented in the XHTML markup.
• Extensible and customisable: The slideshow class makes use of MooTools Events so that add-on classes can be created for bolt-on features whilst being kept separate from the core functionality.
• Accessible: No content is hard-coded into flash, search engines are able to index all the information.

The modular nature of the code and the ability to change the implementation using bolt-on functionality has allowed me to re-use the same set of classes on an upcoming project in a completely different fashion, making use of the great features of Flash without sacrificing indexable content and accessibility.

Hair by Caroline first launched back in 2005...three years down the line and we decided it was in great need of a re-design. It was also important to update the content, adding more material and creating a new gallery was among the important factors to consider.

15thApril 2008 has been re-launched, with a new and improved navigation, modern images and a whole lot more content to help improve its ranking in the search engines.

I just spent a while wondering why IE7 wouldn't make use of an external stylesheet when it worked in Firefox no problems.

The page is in UTF-8 and the .css file was also encoded in UTF-8 but IE7 simply refused to render the page using the CSS rules.

I have no idea  what the problem is but if you are having similar issues try putting @charset “UTF-8″; at the top of your external stylesheet - it worked for me.

Does anyone know what the underlying issue is?

I always prefer to build websites in valid XHTML as it allows for a stricter, more maintainable envorinment to build websites than traditional HTML. However, there are a few features of HTML I like to make use of.

For example, making links open in new windows using the target attribute is unsupported by XHTML.

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Ryan at SEO Noobs have hosted a competition, which many of you are probably aware of by now. The key word is “Yicrosoft Directory” which is a word which had zero results in the Google search when the competition started; it’s also a word that has been put together in the light of Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid to take over Yahoo. All the competitors have until 4^th March 2008 to produce a website to appear at number one in Google.com search engine rankings. I decided to take part in this competition, not only because it is interesting but to also give myself the opportunity to create and optimise the content of a website the best I can. I guess this is really going to test my skills as a writer! If I can aim to post something remotely interesting daily, perhaps I could get the site to page one! Who knows, but as time goes on more and more people are entering the competition, the Google search alone now holds nearly 2,000 results for “Yicrosoft Directory”. Only time will tell! Of course everyone is in it to win but in all honesty if our website makes it to number one in the Google search I will be more than happy. I’ll keep you all posted on the progression.

I decided to create a Yahoo Directory parody website: http://yicrosoftdirectory.com/. At this point I would like to invite everyone and anyone to submit any type of original, written content to help broaden the horizons! Your help would be much appreciated. If you don’t have anything to say why not come along and vote on the poll anyway.

This guide will show how powerful the MooTools Chain class is. In MooTools chaining facilitates the execution of a stack of functions sequentially and is extremely powerful. I have only tested this in MooTools v1.2 beta 2.

I will be posting more of these short guides on using MooTools in the upcoming weeks. Each will focus on a small problem and solve it with MooTools with the aim of being a useful way to learn the framework.

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I finally got round to booking the Zend PHP 5 Exam and successfully passed earlier this week!

I didn't think that the exam was particularly hard but whilst revising I did learn about a few interesting features of the language.

I would recommend becoming a Zend Engineer to anyone who is serious about PHP software development. If anyone is interested I have a few online practice exams going spare.

For more information on Zend certification, see this article

I have only just noticed that comments on this WordPress blog have rel="nofollow" set as default. I believe that if someone is willing to contribute to a blog by commenting then the least they deserve is an inlink to their site.

A quick search shows that this is the default for all WordPress installations. The main reason seems to be to dissuade spamming. However, with the new Akismet anti-spam plugin I have never seen one spam comment get through the net. Is it time for WordPress to change the default setting and give commenters at least a bit of recognition?

Nofollow Free

I don't see the reason for nofollow and I am more than willing to give people some recognition for commenting on my blog. Bloggers should encourage quality comments as much as possible. For this reason I have installed the Nofollow Case by Case plugin to remove nofollow from links by default and this blog is now nofollow free.

Is there a reason?

Have I missed the real reason for nofollow on comments? Is it time for WordPress to change the default setting? Are commenters more inclined to comment on a blog that doesn't use nofollow?

Feel free to give your opinions and correct me if I am wrong, there is a little bit on link juice in it for you! :)

Nick has just released Lightview (another neat project) to the public. Lightview allows you to augment your images. It provides an excellent way of creating a slideshow or simply showing a large version of a thumbnail without resorting to popups. Effects are used to create very appealing slideshows and image galleries.

From the Lightview project site:

• Clean: Designed to compliment your images.
• Fast: Images and their neighbours are preloaded.
• Easy to customize: You don't even have to know CSS.
• Rounded: Adjustable rounded corners, without PNGs.
• Smart resizing: Images will always fit on your screen.
• Slideshow: One button slideshow.
• Effects: Using Scriptaculous.
• Works on all modern browsers

Lightview is similar to Lightbox 2 and both are built with Prototype and Scriptaculous. However, there are a few differences I noticed:

• The morphing effect that Lightview uses is a refreshing change (probably because I have seen the Lightbox effects too many times!).
• Lightview allows you to customise many of the visual aspects of the viewer programatically. For example, the background colour and corner radius.
• Lightview supports a customisable slideshow option which Lightbox lacks.
• Lightview uses the caption attribute of the <a> tag to give images a caption. This attribute is not valid XHTML and thus its usage will produce invalid markup. I would suggest using a convention similar to that used by MooTools Tips: title="image title :: caption"
• Lightbox has been around for a while and is well tested and proven.

Personally I like the look of Lightview but I wouldn't use it because I don't like invalid markup!

If you are interested in something similar for the MooTools framework, try Slimbox.