Another wordpress update is out and about – WordPress 2.0.6, seems like this is the last release before WP goes into 2.1 beta stage.

This is the latest release in our stable 2.0 line, which we’ve committed to maintaining for several more years.

Here’s what’s new:

• The aforementioned security fixes.
• HTML quicktags now work in Safari browsers.
• Comments are filtered to prevent them from messing up your blog layout.
• Compatibility with PHP/FastCGI setups.

For developers, there’s a new anti-XSS function called attribute_escape(), and a new filter called “query” which allows you filter any SQL at runtime.

Right, so gotta upgrade it this weekend. Just a note for you guys anyways.

Have you guys notice about this feature on Google Reader?
There is this “Original audio source” link with flash-based audio player showing up for some posts that have audio links. I saw that on a few posts but I thought it was the blogger’s doing. But now I just saw that on my own music pick post and realised that it was actually one of Greader features.

Pretty cool huh? You can play all the mp3 the first mp3 source on the page directly without the need of downloading. Sweet!

I’ve tested the Google Reader since it came out but in the beginning it gave me errors while importing my subscriptions, messed up the folders and tags so I continued with my Bloglines.

After the newly upgraded Google Reader I was able to transfer all my subscriptions successfully. Now I’ve completely switched across Google Reader and loving it.

Some functionalities on Google Reader I like to see are:

• to check numbers of subscriber to individual feed,
• to show feed description,
• to have the left hand panel draggable or collapsable,
• may be improve in iconomy would be great too, like adding favicons to each feeds as they have for Bloglines and Rojo.

I’m sure the developers are improving as we speak cos’ just now I’ve discovered this new feature called “Trends” where you can view the stats of your reading trends by “Last 30 days”, “Time of day” and “Day of week”. It also tells you how much you’ve read in a brief summary as my stats here:

From your 453 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 5,008 items, starred 0 items, and shared 15 items.

There are “Reading trends”, “Subscription trends” and “Tags” where the more items a tag has, the bigger it appears. The more of those items you have read, the darker it is. In my case, my tags are my folders.

Seems like you got more control over your reading habits and quite fun checking out neat little stats along the way. Have fun analyzing your “Trends“.

I came across this site, “World’s Hightest Website”, via Eric Meyer recent links and was confused.

Welcome to the World’s Highest Website! Currently, it’s 18.939 kilometers high (that’s about 11.769 miles), and an enormous pleasure to scroll.

What exactly are they trying to prove or what exactly is the purpose of that website? Ok so it is very tall. It’s valid and accessible. I checked the code, it’s sweet and simple…but I still don’t get the point. Am I missing something?

div#whws { font-size: 100cm; height: 18939em; line-height: 1.0; }

div#whws { background: url(../../img/tape.gif) repeat-y top center; margin: 42px 0; }

div#whws + div { position: relative; }

So with that CSS, all they did was use this div tag, and it generated that long repeated images.O…K!!! So…what? What is it exactly? Is there any hidden meaning that I’m missing? Or it’s just that some people with lots of time in their hand having fun?
Hmmm…makes me think, wanna know proper answer.

Work in progress sites are somewhat interesting. I’ve seen a few in the past like my friend’s, Sarnil.com, site where he publishes his site in the state of progressive development. Now my favorite, “SimpleBits” has stripped the style and full on redesign in progress as well.

I like the very idea of in progress sites for:

• you got to see how actual work (layout, design, typography, ideas, structures, etc) is done,
• you got to study how developer/designer plan things through,
• you got to learn some tips and tricks along the site progress,
• you got to observe lots of things such as
  - how developer handle each task,
  - how much time/effort he put on the site,
  - how dedicated he is to the site,
• and many other professional and personality aspect of the developer and the whole site development.

I also was thinking of posting site development in progress posts as I work on a few site but doing things in your head is alot easier than actually putting them down and working on it.

I guess some great minds think alike but when it’s with a role model like simplebits, it spread alot faster. You bet, I’ll be checking those sites regularly on their progress.

I hope Sarnil find some time to work on his site again soon as I heard he is very busy and on business trip. That reminds me, I’m still waiting for Jachin new posts.
Man, these guys are just so busy…or rather lazy?

This is one of the most frustrating errors I’ve got to fix. I’m using rad editor for my aspx pages and in some pages, it works like a charm but some just doesn’t. Whenever I tried to update the page, it threw this error, “An error has occurred. Refresh the screen and try again”, in the rad editor content area.

My first thought was, the files much be read-only and hence to make writable to the files but it wasn’t the case. So I checked my code, cross check with another working page, recheck again and again, but I found no difference in code and doesn’t work. Then I created a new “test.aspx” file and pasted the same code and tested it. Strange enough, it works!

So I thought may be my page got corrupted, so I deleted that page and recreated a new page with the same name, paste the code back in. Then it’s not working again. The same god damn code in “test.aspx” is working and not in the other page.

Something was really fishily wrong! Since they are the exact same code, the only difference I can think of now is the file name. But I can’t change all the file names without knowing whether that’s the actual cause of the problem. So my final option, turn to google for help and there it was!

(ID#250) “An error has ocurred. Refresh the screen and try again”

PROBLEM
When saving the content from r.a.d.editor directly in the ASPX/ASCX the following error appears:
An error has ocurred. Refresh the screen and try again.

SOLUTION
When saving the r.a.d.editor content directly in the ASPX/ASCX the page name should not contain “(“, “)”, “-”, or ” ‘ “. If such names are obligatory, r.a.d.editor’s content should be saved in a database.

Link: Telerik KB Article

So stupid error. My error files are named using the “-” dash. Once I removed the dash, all working. It’s just so lame error message and even in the KB no explanation about why it cannot use a dash in the file names. Well you can use dash if you saving content in DB, but why not in the actual file? I just not satisfy with that KB solution explanation. Nevertheless, it solved my problem and thank god for that. Took hell lotta time from me. I guess next time, I better google first then check on my code. Hmm.

Every time a customer asks you a question like “How much going to cost to make a website?” or “How much for a design?”, I got a problem answering and most of the time I say, “It depends…”. And most of the time I transfer the call to my senior colleagues or project manager.

Seriously, I don’t know the exact figure and I don’t want to talk about money matter first. Most of the time, I ask why they want the website for, what are they going to do with it, get to know a bit of their requirements and general site audience. Depending on those, you start slicing your time against the tasks and provide the figure. So there is no set price for a website.

Some people think making/getting a website is so easy as 1 2 3. May be so. But it depends alot on how well you want your website to be, what platform or technology to use and many many factors.

I got this article a few weeks back from a friend and I thought of writing about it. Things are so busy this week and just now I can get back to my deferred posts. There is a great article and a good discussion at personified.com : How much should a design cost?, that you should check out for more understanding of how they decide on the cost factor.

One thing to note is that, the author is talking about the design cost based on ready-made CMS platform such as (WordPress, MoveableType etc) and not custom made CMS. More like the whole website functionalities part is not included as it’s open source and free of charge. His figures are only on DESIGN part such as creating CSS, valid code and abit of customizations. Plus he is concentrating mainly on Blog design. For those it costs around US$ 1500 – 2500. That would be around Fj$ 5000.

A blog is quite different from a website in terms of functionalities as well as a requirements. Blogs are more like news post or articles based publishing whereas website are different nature such as ecommerce site, portfolio site, portal site etc. For those kind of site, the cost will go higher because of custom made functionalities and you cannot use wordpress for that (well you can, but not advisable…so I think).

For those kind of websites, you have to start from scratch. Requirement gathering, specifying technology to use, database design schema, layout design, the backend codes, front-end codes, graphics…etc etc etc. Every steps require time and time is money. So the more requirements you have, the more steps involved, the more time you need and the more it’s going to cost you.

I think I’m not the right person to talk about it as I don’t involve in cost decision making but I only involved for specifying tasks and adding time against it. But you get the general idea of how we charge for website design and development. So comparing our (Fiji) design prices with overseas (US – personified.com) prices, we are way cheaper. We make custom content management systems, we use expensive and latest technology – MS SQL + .Net platform. Ofcos’ there are quality factor to consider too. If I must say and be fair about it, we are a bit lack in design quality factor cos’ most of our sites are not valid standards yet. But it’s only a matter of time we improve our quality…ie. our developers’ responsibilities.

You should check this article for more detail explanations: How much going to cost to make a website.

I like the first comment. I must add if (($CMS != “Word Press”) || ($CMS != “PHP/Open Source”)) { echo “price goes up”; }