A 3 and a half minute video tour is viewable below:

Updating is straightforward and didn’t break any of the plugins found working with the last major update. All in all I estimate the upgrade to take less than 15 minutes including deleting and re-uploading through FTP.

I strongly encourage everyone to apply the update as it fixes approximately 194 bugs besides offering full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security (new cookie setup). It also includes speed improvements and a Wiki-like tracking of edits.

Again, 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.

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Follow the results live here:

There’s also another big event taking place tonight. More about that here.

I’ll post back later with some news on what’s happening at EWD. Despite a few weeks of silence we are anything but relaxing. Two giant projects are keeping us VERY busy and we’re really looking forward to summer holiday now

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The old site was static HTML and Flash which made updates slow and inconvenient. It also failed terribly trying to validate as valid HTML which made it incompatible with several browsers (versions). Using Flash also blocks disabled visitors (blind) from viewing the content.

The fresh code is a mix of valid XHTML and CSS2 and a few JavaScripts backed by the incredible jQuery JavaScript library. Colours were based on the new company logo, and future updates are to be expected as the client gets more material ready.

A brief case study of what the client wanted and what we did can be found in our portfolio.

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• Oslo Fashion House – Redesigned
• Evaria family of sites

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.

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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

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 (367) – 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 (400) – 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.

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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

• Akismet v2.1.4
• Dunstan’s Time Since v1.1
• Get Recent Comments v2.0.2
• Google XML Sitemaps v3.0.3
• Pagebar2 v2.16
• Posts By Category v2.0
• ShareThis v2.1
• Smart Archives v1.9.2
• Smarter Archives v1.0.1
• WassUp v1.4.9
• WP-ShortStat v1.13a
• WP 2.3 Related Posts v0.51
• WP Contact Form III v1.5
• Youtube Brackets v3.0

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).

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• A busy year for Egtvedt Web Design

Parts of the work can be seen in our portfolio, but there’s also a lot more not shown. Those are either Intranet solutions, member only areas or print material. The latter is quite a challenge as this is an area of expertise we don’t exercise that much. But that makes it even more fun.

So what does the future bring?

We are already planning 2-3 new websites and are currently working on the details with the respective clients. All the clients already have a website but feel they would benefit from an update. Especially on the Costa del Sol many companies feel the impact of increased competition and a dropping demand. Naturally this generates the need to further push their marketing budget and change strategies. The Internet is one of this areas left unexploited, and is where I come in.

Besides creating web solutions EWD is also planning to release several new plugins and themes for WordPress. Being our CMS of choice these days it feels only natural to share some code with the users. Among the planned releases are our Comic strip add-on, the Accordion category/date menus and also the theme currently running this website.

Can I contribute?

We are glad you asked! Off course you can! By getting involved either by contributing articles about web development and design, or by interacting through commenting you are helping both this site and future development. We hope to make your acquaintance any day soon.

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The new theme has been named Tranquil Horizon, which is the feeling we get looking at the photo below the main menu. If the interest is big enough we will consider releasing the source (that means you will have to comment on this post and let us know).

In the blog section we have also added the popular comics plugin that we initially created for Blogvaria (below header image to the right).

Instead of the normal widgets in the sidebar we have hard-coded it in order to get it working/looking exactly like we want. We’ve also made great efforts to keep all the code 100% standards compliant. CSS provides complete control of layout and design, which makes future changes a breeze.

The only thing we are still working on is the logo. We are 93% happy with our current one and are still brainstorming for new ideas. We are also more than happy to receive suggestions… [submit here]

Please let us know if you encounter any bugs or abnormalities, as we are eager to fix and expand in the following days.

MT

Thomas

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The old site was static HTML which made updates slow and inconvenient. It also failed terribly trying to validate as valid HTML which made it incompatible with several browsers (versions).

The fresh code stores all data in a MySQL database which allows for easy browsing and fast updates. In my mind it also made the site more appealing…

A brief case study of what the client wanted and what we did can be found in our portfolio.

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• Oasis Climate Control – Redesigned
• Evaria family of sites

We are a small web design company helping clients enhancing their web presence. We do new design, redesign, programming (JAVA, PHP, SQL, XML, Flash etc.) and general marketing/SEO stuff. Feel free to contact us to learn more or ask for a quotation.

We also feel strongly about open source and will share fresh code and ideas on this site as well in the hope that fellow designers and programmers may find it useful.

A list of recent work is found in our portfolio section.

As a final note, I would like to mention that while most of our pages are already in place we are going to use the “Journal” as our future location for posting news and updates. That includes ongoing projects as well as articles about programming and design in general.

We sincerely hope that you will find our pages of use and inspiration, and most of all give our services a go

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