EWD - Journal

Evaria family of sites

Posted by Thomsen 4 months, 1 week ago in CSS & design, News & Updates

The old front-page

It’s been a few years since we last updated our “landing page”, evaria.com. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and finally decided to do something about it today. Not that the old front-page was that bad;

The redesign

However, stating redesign launched 2005 doesn’t sound to promising. Thus I’ve completely redesigned the front-page and included one of my favourite photographs along with automatized daily updates;

More specifically the content will update itself whenever something gets published at evaria.com. This is accomplished using a PHP script that automatically grabs the latest updates from my RSS feeds. This way new visitors will always find their way to the latest news and the page suddenly appears much more useful than the old static one (can’t believe I haven’t done this ages ago).

The photo mentioned above features my two sons sitting on the beach 17th May 2007 in Fuengirola, Spain. We had been celebrating the Norwegian national day and were taking a well deserved break. I feel the photo reflects harmony and tranquillity, which is one of the reasons I like it so much, besides the obvious.

I would really appreciate comments/feedback regarding the new front-page. Anything from a web designers point(s) of view to personal opinions.

Comment , More

How to view and collect visitor statistics

Posted by Thomsen 4 months, 4 weeks ago in WordPress

Note! The following shows one way of collecting visitor statistics, but applies for WordPress installations only. If you are looking to get site statistics for any other CMS or blogging platform please see their respective lists of available plugins or try AWStats (which is a very good server log analyser tool).

WP Slimstat for WordPress

There’s dozens of statistic plugins available for WordPress already, but I find WP Slimstat to be one of the best. However, since the release of WordPress 2.3 the plugin no longer recorded all hits as the WP table structure was altered. The author of WP-Slimstat still offers the plugin from his website but informs visitors that it’s no longer in development.

Screenshots

WP Slimstat report panelWP Slimstat report panelWP Slimstat report panel

Earlier today I found the solution to the problem in one of the forum threads. Having waited for a decent solution for some time I decided to implement the necessary code changes but also keep it backwards compatible. The updated copy of the main file (wp-slimstat.php), including the new WP 2.5 colour scheme, can be downloaded below:

WP Slimstat (116) - 24.86 KB

Before you continue I recommend backing up your database. This way you can always roll back in case something goes terribly wrong. I’ve just completed the update myself without any issues so I hope and think there shouldn’t be any surprises.

If this didn’t scare you away you can now proceed with the actual update. All you need to do is replace the old copy of wp-slimstat.php with the new one included in the zip, using your favourite FTP program (e.g. FileZilla).

Update the IP to Country Database

The plugin also shows you where your visitors are coming from by comparing the IP against the “IP to Country database” made available by webhosting.info. The original is now a bit old (March 2006) so I’ve made an SQL dump that contains the latest list (10th March 2008):

IP to Country Database (108) - 609.06 KB

You can update your IP to Country database table as follows:

  1. Log on to phpMyAdmin (or any other tool you use to maintain your database) and empty the old table (normally wp_slim_countries)
  2. Unzip and upload the file you just downloaded (wp_slim_countries.sql) using the import feature

If you experience difficulties uploading the file (it is quite large -> 2.56MB) you can try bypassing this by opening the file in WordPad (not NotePad), copy all the text (CTRL+A and then CTRL+C) then paste (CTRL+V) and run it as an SQL query in phpMyAdmin.

Feel free to let me know if you experience any problems or have a comment on this unofficial WP Slimstat release.

Comments (1) , , More

Running on WordPress 2.5 RC1

Posted by Thomsen 5 months ago in WordPress

Just a few hours ago I discovered that the first release candidate for WordPress 2.5 is out. As with any other major upgrade I just couldn’t let it pass and as you read this you are also reading a blog/website running on WordPress 2.5.

In case you wonder most the plugins I’ve used are still working. Below is a list of all plugins used on this site, and besides one they’re all compatible with the new release. Strangely enough it’s the Popularity Contest plugin by Alex King that doesn’t seam to work. I’ve left a comment announcing this, and with any luck (and if he’s not to busy) an update will be available shortly.

Update: I’ve found a temporary fix for the Popularity Contest plugin, see my main blog for a solution.

WP 2.5 Compatible Plugins

I must admit I haven’t been able to run the testing for more than an hour, so there might be a few incompatibilities still not discovered. Feel free to share your findings, and also let me know how you experience the speed and overall “look n’ feel” of the site.

As a final side note I must give credit to the outstanding WordPress developers for providing yet another great update. The admin panel, long left in the shade (design wise), is now looking extremely nice and works great. I’ve already gotten used to the new layout and won’t miss the previous one bit. Thank you!

Update (31st March): Moving from RC1 to the first official 2.5 release took around 5-10 minutes, including FTP, and caused no issues at all. More information on the latest release are found here, and the download here (as usual).

Comments (2) , , More
« Newer 1 2 3 4 Older »