Teevio LLC

It is not very often that I have to go in and change the DocumentRoot on a server, but I’ve had to do it a few times for some of the sites I host. The main reason I needed to do this was so that I could use the default CakePHP file structure without having to move folders around and editing the configuration. Since I don’t do this very often I find that I spend a few hours trying to remember what I did the previous time. To solve that, I’m going to write up a simple step-by-step process of how I did it.

Here’s a little background on my server setup. I have a Dedicated Virtual machine hosted with MediaTemple. The DVs at MediaTemple use Plesk for the admin panel. To perform the following tasks you need to have Root access to your server and need to be able to SSH into your server. Refer to this article regarding SSH and to enable Root access you will need to submit a support request asking for Root access.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the document root for a DV server is httpdocs. To make the server play nice with CakePHP I needed to point the root to the /app/webroot folder of CakePHP.

Once you have Root and SSH access to your server here are the few steps you need to take to change your DocumentRoot:

• SSH into your server as ‘root’ with the following command: ssh root@yourdomain.com
• Execute the following command: vi /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/conf/vhost.conf
• Add the following line to the vhost.conf file and save the file (reference this article for the vi editor commands): DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/httpdocs/app/webroot
• After you have saved, reconfigure and restart your webserver with the following command: /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -a -v

That’s it in terms of modifying the DocumentRoot. If everything went correctly the new root should point here: /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/httpdocs/app/webroot

It looks like Fi finally launched Kontain. It is definitely another testament to Fi’s amazing design capabilities as well as their superior Flash expertise. But, it’s the Flash part that I’m rather surprised about.

Why would they build an entire social-networking website with only Flash? I have mixed emotions and thoughts about their reasoning. Here are a few reasons why I think they might have done all Flash:

• No need to worry about cross-browser issues
• Design consistency across all browsers
• Only elements that change need to be (re)loaded reducing page load time
• Super “easy” to do some really fancy stuff

While I think there are some really good reasons to build this site entirely with Flash it does make me question the cost/time effectiveness of this. I also wonder about speed issues. Here are some things that I’ve noticed just from clicking around:

• Load time is surprisingly slow, especially when the whole page has to reload
• Directly linking to files cannot be done
• Update/development time is greatly increased
• No completely comprehensive Google Flash indexing…yet (See the last question)

All that to say I’m torn on whether Flash is a good idea. I believe Fi has the expertise and manpower to pull this off, but I’m still not so sure. I’d love to hear what everyone else thinks.

In all seriousness, Teevio LLC is looking for a killer developer who is proficient in iPhone application development, loves bicycles, gets things done quickly and likes to make money.

If you think you are a good fit for this project and would like more specific details, use the Contact Form to get in touch.

I love Safari, and I would rather not touch another browser. I rarely have any instance where I can’t do what I want in Safari. Of course the moment that this isn’t the case is when I’m using Flash and Javascript together. This interaction is known as External Interface in Actionscript lingo. I think the creators or Actionscript said, “Let’s take all the negative aspects of Javascript and then make it 100 times worse.” Anyway, I digress.

I spent a long time creating what I would call, the most perfect DHTML/Flash audio player out there (or maybe I’m just conceited). Unfortunately, there was one minor flaw. The progress bar would sometimes update how it should, but more often than not, it would update randomly. This reminded me of another website that has a similar problem. Flickr.

If you’ve ever used Flickr’s fancy uploader on Safari, you will most likely have noticed that the file upload progress doesn’t always update like it should. In fact, most of the time it only updates when you are moving your mouse around. This can be super annoying. Who wants to sit around moving their mouse just so the progress updates properly? And who wants to constantly move their mouse around just to have an audio player work right?

I seriously thought I was doomed. If Flickr has that problem and they haven’t figured it out, how am I ever going to figure out what’s wrong? Thankfully, I was saved by a minute detail on my audio player. Every time the track name would scroll to show the artist name the progress would update properly. I realized that as long as Javascript was executing from the browser, not from Flash, the JS that Flash was sending would update how it was supposed to.

After I realized what the problem was, the fix was extremely simple to execute. Set a timeout that continuously times out. Why Safari needs this I will never know, but it worked perfectly. I really hope the people at Flickr read this someday, I’m tired of using their basic uploader.

Down For Everyone, Or Just Me? is a great, simple website to see if yours, or someone else’s website is ‘up’ or ‘down’. I thought I’d take this one step further and make a little bookmarklet for this website.

The bookmarklet is a very simple piece of code: javascript:window.location = 'http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/' + window.location.hostname;

As you can see from the Javascript, it takes the current hostname of the website you are viewing and redirects you to the Down For Everyone website. You’ll then be able to see if that site is up or down.

To use this bookmarklet, drag the following link, Down For Everyone Of Just Me?, into your bookmarks bar. Or you can do it manually by copying and pasting the code mentioned above into a bookmark you create. Enjoy!

I didn’t think it would ever happen, but I’m back in Albany, New York, for good! I already miss the city of Boston as it has to be one of my favorite cities in the USA. But, it’s hard to turn down free babysitting and lodging at the in-laws while we try to find a house to move into.

My day job with Virb is still going strong and these next couple months are going to be amazing. If you would like to stay up-to-date on the happenings of Virb, follow us on Twitter.

As to Teevio LLC, I’ve been keeping busy doing some ‘philanthropic’ web design (that means I don’t make any money on them). My list of to-dos is a little lengthy, but I think I have severe design-ADHD and can’t seem to concentrate on just one thing. Here’s a quick list in no logical order:

• Redesign Crossroads Farm’s website and branding.
• Finish building the Out For A Ride API
• Complete the Out For A Ride iPhone app.
• Finish a random side project, that I can’t mention, and that never seems to die.
• Finish a text message reminder system.

Joshua Blankenship wrote up an awesome article on his blog about how he manages and organizes his fonts. Since I’m a font organizing noob, this will be very helpful for me and hopefully anyone else who has a large collection of fonts.

Everywhere I look people have been raving about Wall-E. Deeming the movie as one of the greatest Pixar movies made. People I would never have expected to like a Pixar movie was saying that it was amazing. I saw it, and I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I’d be.

You see, I have three kids, I’ve watched (willingly and unwillingly) every Pixar movie out there. I can’t even count how many times I’ve watched each of them. I think Cars alone could be in the upwards of 15 times. I’m not saying Wall-E was a horrible movie, I just don’t think it was the pinnacle of Pixar’s movie making career.

Do I think Wall-E was a great movie? Yes. I was very impressed by the story line that used almost zero dialogue. I thought the animation was amazing and detailed. The plot itself was clever, but not super clever. The ‘robot love’ was moving. But it wasn’t as good as the hype.

A List Apart has just published an excellent Javascript article called “Getting Out of Binding Situations in JavaScript,” which I highly recommend to any Javascript programmer.

If you like love colours you should check out I Heart Colour.

I Heart Colour was a little side project that I created, just for the fun of it. It had been broken for a while but I finally fixed it.

While I’m not a colour expert, I hope you will find the website fun and inspiring.

Well, I experienced some amazing generosity the other day. I’ve had my eye on the domain outforarun.com and thought I’d find out if the owner would be willing to sell it to me. I fully expected to be gouged for all I’m worth, especially since it compliments Out For A Ride. Thankfully, I wasn’t gouged and better yet I was given the domain.

In an effort of returning the favor I’m offering up some domains I own for free. Yes, they aren’t the most amazing domains, but maybe you will find them useful. I had some plans for them, but have been trying to cut down on the randomness of what I do. So here is the list:

• colorflavor.net/org
• colourflavor.com/net/org
• guigoodness.com/org/net
• pointbend.com/org/net
• stringedwithlove.com/org/net
• virbtown.com/org/net
• youcss.com/org/net

If you are interested in any, or all, of these domains please contact me.

The Enkoder is simply amazing, and Dan Benjamin has finally re-released it for OS X. Downloading as I write.

I should also mention that the application icon is a work of pure genius.

Today I experienced one of those moments in my programming life where I was very relieved, but also extremely annoyed. I was relieved since I figured out a ‘Bug’ that was only occurring in Firefox for Windows (of all places). Annoyed, because it was probably the stupidest thing I ever did experience, which I spent a long, long time trying to figure out.

Over here at Virb we’re developing some cool new stuff for the imminent launch of Virb v2. This particular thing that I’m working on involves Flash, Javascript and ExternalInterface. What was baffling me was that Firefox for Windows was not recognizing any ExternalInterface calls, while every other browser did.

To make a long story very short, I had the Object and Embed tags with a height and width of 0px. Apparently, 0 height and width is like telling Firefox for Windows that the Object and Embed tags do not exist. I will now be changing it to 1px by 1px.

I wouldn’t consider myself obsessed with the whole ‘Going Green’ movement, but I’m really starting to appreciate a lot of what it is about. I thought I’d give a quick list of some of the things that I’ve been doing. Initially they all seemed pretty painful, and some things on the list I couldn’t avoid, but now that I’m in the swing of things, they really aren’t so bad.

• Single Car – This was inevitable. Moving to Boston really made it impossible to afford two cars. The city of Somerville charges an outrageous car excise tax and my insurance doubled from what I was paying before in Albany, New York.
• Bicycle Commuting – I’ve always enjoyed bicycling and since I went from two cars to one I thought I might as well start bicycling to work. This is probably the best choice I’ve made, considering gas prices are continuing to go through the roof. On average I save about $15 a week and stay in shape. If you check out the ‘badge’ on the right you can see a running total of how much pollution I’ve prevented by riding my bicycle.
• Clothe Diapers – The thought of switching to clothe diapers really scared me. I have three kids, two of which are still in diapers. This meant that I would not only have to change poopy diapers, but they would have to be washed as well. My wife was insistent that we do it, so I took the plunge. Overall, the experience has been pretty positive. Clothe diapers these days are very sophisticated and make the whole process rather bearable. I also have to keep reminding myself of all the diapers that I’m not putting into landfills.
• Energy Star Washer – Our clothes washer broke the other day. I’m going to attribute it to how much laundry we do (or possibly because we bought the cheapest one money could buy). Either way, we were in the market for a new washer. I couldn’t stand how much water is wasted with traditional washers, so we bought an Energy Star compliant washer. These washers use about 60% less water and electricity, meaning I’m saving about 13 gallons of water per load.

While I don’t own ColourMod anymore, it does make me proud that it made its way to Tumblr. I am kind of shocked that it still is hanging around even after 2 years of zero development by the new owners. But I must have done a pretty good job when I first coded it (even though the code makes me cry).

Currently, we use ColourMod on Virb, but that will all be changing with the launch of Virb v2. I’ve built a brand new, faster, sexier, colour picker that leaves a much smaller footprint. No, I will not share, but if you want a different alternative to ColourMod, I highly recommend COLOURlovers free dhtml colour picker.

Rockerboo, Virb’s own brilliant programming, just tipped me off to an amazing way to cache images and javascript client-side from these guys (http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/#IMP-SERVER). All you need is mod_expires and mod_headers turned on, an .htaccess file in the root of your website and the following piece of code in the .htaccess file:

### activate mod_expires
ExpiresActive On

### Expire 1 month from when they're accessed
ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
ExpiresByType image/png A2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000
ExpiresByType text/css A2592000
ExpiresByType text/javascript A2592000
ExpiresByType text/js A2592000

I should note that this is smart and knows when you’ve uploaded a new version of a file and will not use the previously cached version.

While you won’t notice a difference the first time you hit the website you will notice a significant difference once you start clicking around. I’ve implemented this here on Teevio.com and on Outforaride.com. Load times on Out For A Ride dropped from about 5-6 seconds on graphically intense pages to about 1 second. Even Teevio.com which doesn’t have a very fast server became very snappy. I’d highly suggest any web-developer to implement this very simple caching method.

I’ve always lamented the fact that churches have a tough time using media/technology/design effectively. There are definitely many people who are trying to raise the bar, but it has been a slow, slow process. A good internet friend of mine tipped me off to this Church Media Conference called Echo. It seems promising. Here’s a blurb about the conference:

While this conference might not appeal to everyone who reads this blog, I’m sure some of you might find this to be a helpful resource. Definitely check it out! I shouldn’t forget to mention that you could win MacBook if you sign up before May 25.

Well, I feel it is time to unleash Out For A Ride to the masses, so what better way than to submit it to Mashable. I thought I’d also take their advice seriously:

If you haven’t heard of Mashable by now you should probably check it out. Mashable focuses on up-to-the-minute news about the latest consumer-facing websites. In normal people’s language, they tell you all the newest and coolest information relating to the internet.

I had a CD with some money in it that had a very decent interest rate. Unfortunately, the term ended. I considered reinvesting back into a CD but when I checked, CD interest rates had tanked. I asked my financial advisor what I should do with the money. My only stipulations were that I could have relatively easy access to the money and that I would have a decent interest rate. He recommended Ing Direct, the orange savings account.

I know this sounds like Ing Direct payed me to say this, but they didn’t. I am getting 3% interest on my savings account through them. I can transfer money in, and out, with no costs whatsoever. It is tied to my ‘real’ bank account so I can deposit money at my physical bank, and then transfer the money into my Ing Direct account. The only downside I’ve found is that it takes 2-3 days for the money to transfer in or out.

Typical savings accounts will give you around .3%. If you use an Ing Direct savings account you are making 10 times more interest. It’s hard to argue with that.

Could Fi have said this any better?

Out For A Ride Beta has officially launched as of Friday last week. I’m very pleased with how it turned out and can’t wait to keep developing this website. Head on over and Create An Account!

After much last minute testing and tweaks, the redesigned Jack Cards was launched last night (although there are still a few minor tweaks to be made). Check it out at JackCards.com. I doubt that anyone who is reading this watches the Rachel Ray show, but if you do, Jack Cards is being featured on the Rachel Ray show today at 10:00am ET.

Things are starting to roll over at Out For A Ride. After I migrate the database and get the new server switched over, Beta testing will be ready for the masses.

If you are a bicycler, or know a bicycler, who hasn’t signed up for Out For A Ride yet, you’d better head on over and signup for an account.

Why you ask? Because current users will get first dibs on Beta testing the new version. I will be ‘shutting’ down Out For A Ride within the next couple weeks, as I will be porting the current database to the new version. Once I have ported the database any users who are already signed up will be emailed the specifics on Beta testing the new version (which you will seriously want to be a part of).

I had a question posed to me the other day. It happened to be one of my most dreaded, but most inevitable questions as a web developer. The question was, “How does this look in IE?” But to take it a step further (and worse) they followed up by asking, “What about IE 5?”

While everyone is concerned about IE 6 and 7 I haven’t really thought about IE 5 (or anything before 6) that much. I had wrote it off as a dead browser. I quickly came up with a few responses about why IE 5 was obsolete, etc. But, to someone who owns a website and cares very much about all their customers, my ‘excuses’ didn’t cut it.

I decided to come up with a couple of tests that would help a client decide if developing for IE versions less than 6 was necessary. Hopefully, these test will help you in the client world.

The Traffic Test

For websites that are getting redesigned and have some kind of traffic analytics, it is best to see how many people with versions less than IE 6 are actually using your site. This will give you a good feel for whether it is worth the effort. It turned out for the situation I mentioned above that the percentage was about .06%. In terms of traffic this is a negligible amount, you can stand to lose those users. But let’s say that the percentage was 2% of the user base? That’s starting to become a significant portion of your users.

The Demographic Test

Taking into account for the percentages of users, you should also think about the demographics of users who might use the website. I’m not going to specify an age range, but there is point where the computer user starts to become less savvy, and less aware about how to upgrade to newer browser versions.

The Verdict

I’d say if you have a pretty significant user base of IE 5/5.5 users, and your demographics tend to be in the older range, it might be worth developing for IE 5/5.5. Of course, you have to think about time and money constraints. In my case above, there wasn’t much of a user base, but the demographics could dig into the older generation. My solution was to get everything running in IE 6 and 7 and if there was time burn, try and make the lesser versions as usable as possible.

At the Web Innovators Group meetings, 6 minutes is all you have to present your idea, that is, if you are the “Main Dish”. If you are a “Side Dish”, you have less than that.

I had the privilege of attending the Web Innovators Group meeting and boy was it a mix of emotions. Jack Cards was one of the “Main Dishes” and were unveiling their new website design, a design that I had done for them.

I was extremely excited, since all of my hard work was finally coming together. I was also insanely nervous as my design would be seen/critiqued by hundreds of top-notch internet professionals. Thankfully, the design was well received.

Unfortunately, if you want to see some good screenshots of the new design, you’ll have to wait till Jack Cards re-launches (within the next couple weeks). Also, if you are a Rachel Ray fan and watch her talk show you can tune in on April 18 to see what she thinks about Jack Cards.

It has been a long, long, long time since I’ve done anything with Teevio.com. I suppose it was about time that something changed around here.

I’ve been spending most of my time slaving away on Virb 2.0 with the Virb Team. In fact, we just opened up Virb 2.0 Beta signups and are looking at launching the brand new version rather soon.

When I have a spare moment, I’ve been working on Out For A Ride. The site has been a long work in progress, but the end is soon to come. You can check out some sneak peeks of the new version on Flickr, stay up-to-date on Twitter, or sign up on the current version.