Recently I published an article about Windows Vista Home Premium and the “problems” I was running into when installing my programs. Well, this time I run into another problem when I installed appserv-win32-2.6.0 . Everything seemed to work just fine, Apache was working well, but when I tried opening PhpMyAdmin for some reason it was displaying a blank page after I entered my login information.

The solution to this blank page problem is fairly easy. Simply modify this line in the phpmyadmin/config.inc.php

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host']          = ‘localhost’;

to this:

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host']          = ‘127.0.0.1′;

In the above code, you’re changing your name server to 127.0.0.1 in order to use TCP/IP connection. After this, you should be able to see your PhpMyAdmin page by opening in your browser the address http://127.0.0.1/PhpMyAdmin

Hope this helps!

Note: Whenever you specify “localhost” or “localhost:port” as server, the MySQL client library will override this and try to connect to a local socket (named pipe on Windows). If you want to use TCP/IP, use “127.0.0.1″ instead of “localhost”. If the MySQL client library tries to connect to the wrong local socket, you should set the correct path as Runtime Configuration in your PHP configuration and leave the server field blank.

For the last couple of weeks I have been working on my new laptop that has Windows Vista Home Premium installed in it. Unfortunately, I run into a problem a week after I had it, I decided to install Dreamweaver CS3 and it wouldn’t start correctly. Dreamweaver would look as if it was starting and then close itself a few minutes later.

I tried running the program as Administrator, uninstalling and reinstalling, I tried installing other DW versions but still no luck.

Finally, I figured out that my Acer Aspire 5920 laptop had a program called Acer Empowering Frameworks installed that was blocking Dreamweaver. I still don’t understand why it would block a program, but it’s certainly a problem that Acer needs to solve soon.

So once that I identified the problem the solution was simple. Uninstalling Acer Empowering Frameworks Software from my Acer laptop was the solution, as simple as that. I believe this advice has been useful to a lot of people so there you have it. Hope this helps you as it helped me.

We have talked in a previous article about how easy it is to have an online presence now days. The key is not in creating an online presence but also learning to develop and maintain this online identity clean, friendly and professional.

This is the second part of my previous post called How to Create, Develop and Maintain a Successful Online Identity.

Build and Maintain a Good Online Reputation

Regardless of what the purpose of your profile/website/ blog is, it’s important to keep a clean online reputation  - even if you are not planning on doing business online.

Have you tried “googling” yourself? Try it and see what comes up. What you will see is what’s your online identity today.

Brand Yourself with Gravatar

There are some really good tools you can use if you are trying to create a successful online identity. One of them is Gravatar.  To quote from the website “A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things…”

Benefits of using Gravatar

Avatars allow people to recognize you  easier whenever you comment or post something on websites, blogs and web forums. (more…)

Google Reader has lots of useful keyboard shortcuts. Here is the list.

Navigation
j/k        : next/previous item
space        : next item or page
<Shift> + space    : previous item or page
<Shift> + n/p    : next/previous subscription
n/p        : item scan down/up (list only)
<Shift> + x    : expand folder
v: view original
<Shift> + o    : open subscription or folder

Acting on items

s        : star item
t        : tag item
e        : email item
<Shift> + s    : share item
<Shift> + d    : share item with note
v        : view original
o/enter        : expand/collapse item (list only)
c        : add comment
<Shift> + c    : view comments
m        : mark item as read/unread
<Shift> + a    : mark all as read

Jumping

g then h    : go home
g then a    : go to all items
g then s    : go to starred items
g then <Shift> + s: go to shared items
g then u    : open subscription selector
g then t    : open tag selector
g then <Shift> + t: go to trends page
g then d    : go to discovery page
g then f    : open friend selector
g then <Shift> + f: go to friends’ shared items
g then c    : go to comment view

Application

r        : refresh
u       : toggle full screen mode
1        : switch to expanded view
2       : switch to list view
/        : move cursor to search box
a       : add a subscription
=       : increase magnification
-        : decrease magnification

via: Google Reader

Lately, I’ve been working in some small details in my blog - as some of you might have noticed.  This time, I just wanted to post a quick tutorial about how to customize your comments in your Wordpress blog.

How to Change the Style of the Author’s Comment in Wordpress

You probably have seen this before, whenever you are reading the comments of a post and you notice that the author’s comment is highlighted in a particular way, just so it’s different than the rest. Well, there are many ways to get this done.

An easy way to do it is by going to Appearances -> Edit -> style.css and add the following class:

.author_comment {
background-color: #F1C056 !important;
}

This simple class will just change the background of the author’s comment box. Here you can customize the style of your author’s box by changing the border color, etc.

Finally,  you need to make a small change in comments.php,  so go to Appearances  -> Edit -> comments.php. Once you are in the page, look up the line

<li <?php echo $oddcomment; ?>id="comment...

Change it to this:

<li class="<?php
/* Only use the author_comment class from style.css if the user_id is 1 (admin) */
if (1 == $comment->user_id)
$oddcomment = "author_comment";
echo $oddcomment;
?>" id="comment…

That’s all, if you followed this two simple steps correctly, your author’s box should be displaying with an improved and personalized style.

How to Change the Avatars Sizes in Comments

This is really easy, the kubrick wordpress template resizes the images to 32×32 by default. In order tyo change the sizes, go to Appearances  -> Edit -> comments.php and look up

<?php echo get_avatar( $comment,

You will find a line that looks like

<?php echo get_avatar( $comment, 32 ); ?>

In order to make the image bigger just try changin the number 32 to 50.  That’s all.

I hope you enjoyed this small tutorial.  Until next time!

A few days ago I found a really nice tip about how to find your serial number and model of your computer without too much hassle. Some desktops and laptops of the most popular brands come with a serial number. This information comes in handywhenever you are about to get technical support, or wanting to register your product online, just to mention a few cases.

Here is how you can find the Model and Serial Number, you just need to follow this steps:

1) Go to  Start -> Run -> cmd

2) Once you are in the command line, enter wmic bios get serialnumber this will return the serial number of your computer.

3) And if you enter wmic csproduct get name, this will return the Model Name of your computer.

As you can see, this works well in computers with a popular name like DELL, HP, IBM, etc. Pretty easy, huh?

via: Kabytes

A couple weeks ago I was in charge of configuring an OsCommerce account with PayPal Module. Unfortunately, when searching on the internet I came to find out that there wasn’t a lot of documentation on the web about this subject. So I had to spend a few more minutes trying to figure out some things that I wasn’t familiar with. Fortunately, I didn’t run into many problems, since I had configured OsCommerce a little while ago already, and I only had to take care of configuring PayPal.

However, there were a couple problems that  I noticed there wasn’t a lot of help documentation available online, so here I leave you a pretty short and specific post which I think is going to be very helpful for those who are looking to fix some problems while configuring their OsCommerce with Paypal or upgrading.

Problem:

Shipping Modules not showing up in OsCommerce Admin Module

Solution:

On the live server  login to the Admin page, and go to Tools > Server Info. Search for “DOCUMENT_ROOT” then copy and paste the value for that field into admin/configure.php and add the catalog directory onto the end of it, like this:

define(’DIR_FS_CATALOG’, ‘/home2/www/public_html/catalog/’);

This fixed both the images folder issue and the modules issue. I have tested installing/removing modules and it’s all working ok.

Problem:

Error When Clicking on Customers in the OsCommerce Admin page.

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #1 is not an array in /home/xxxxxx/public_html/admin/customers.php on line 733

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /home/xxxxxx/public_html/admin/customers.php on line 733

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /home/xxxxxx/public_html/admin/customers.php on line 735

Warning: reset() [function.reset]: Passed variable is not an array or object in /home/xxxxxx/public_html/admin/includes/classes/object_info.php on line 17

Warning: Variable passed to each() is not an array or object in /home/xxxxxx/public_html/admin/includes/classes/object_info.php on line 18

Solution:

This problem usually happens when you upgrade your OsCommerce site to PHP5 version.  So , if you are using PHP version 5, then this might be the answer.

Find these lines:

$customer_info = array_merge($country, $info, $reviews);

$cInfo_array = array_merge($customers, $customer_info);

and change them to:

$customer_info = array_merge((array)$country, (array)$info, (array)$reviews);

$cInfo_array = array_merge((array)$customers, (array)$customer_info);

I hope you find this short tutorial useful. When I run into this problems I wished I would have found a post like this, so here it is in a nutshell just for you. Until next time!

Many businesses have seen an opportunity in the rapid development of internet transactions, to the point that you can do your shopping right from your computer and have the product at your door after a few days. Browsing in cyberspace you will find stores that only do their marketing and sales online - that’s the audience they attend to.

The same way, many professionals have decided to go freelance and work online with a lot of success. But, this also raises the question,  if I decide to work freelance online, how will people know I’m the right person for them?

The answer can be simple and complex at the same time.  It’s pretty much the same basic requirements you need to have in order to do business in the outside world: do good work and continue advertising yourself and your services.

But offering services online will also require for you to create a medium from where people will get to know you, here are some ideas:

Have an Online Profile

This could be a social networking account, website, blog,  store, etc. This is pretty much the first step you will need to take in order to have a presence online. (more…)

I thought it was about time that I make a post about Wordpress Plugins again.  In this opportunity I have put together a collection of articles listing a great number of really good plugins, 81 plugins in total. (more…)

Navegando por la red, me encontre con una gran colección de plugins para Wordpress muy buenos. (more…)