How The Problem Started Christmas Eve have just started at about 12:03 AM, when I logged on and saw that dreaded message: Your Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota So I did what all normal people do at first: I ignored it. Actually, I had a very good reason to at the time. Since it was 12:03 AM, I assumed that my nightly backup job (backup and compress files and databases) was causing the issue.

Rounded Intro

So you’re all grown up and want Rounded Corners on your site. There’s just one small problem: the normal rounded corners implementation comes with tons of divs used for styles and you’ve got your fellow web developers screaming down your neck about web semantics.

So what’s this funky semantics thing? Basically, we’re looking for a separation of styles and data. We want to keep all the styles in the CSS style sheets and all the data in the XHTML files. Now, I’ve been known to be flexible on this a bit, however it is a great idea with a purpose and in this case, it actually helps us out a ton.

Ignore Me - Take The Easy Way Out

There are two jQuery plugins that can do this instantly, aptly named jQuery Corners and jQuery Corner. Yeah, I know totally different, right? They vary slightly in terms of their capabilities (anti-aliasing, background images, etc.). So if you’re not up to the heavy lifting or your requirements are very light (just basic rounding) these plugins more than fit the bill.

Now, it’s no secret that I can be a moron sometimes, but I’d like to put it on record that it was all me and not WordPress 2.7 that had the issue. So I’m sitting here last night minding my own business and Chris Coyier sends out a tweet talking about how it took him 10 minutes to upgrade. So I figure, why not? I already had the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin ready to go, so I figured it would be a breeze.

Welcome to the November 21, 2008 edition of Web Development 2. Dereck presents My Google Penalty and My Response posted at I Will Not Die. Sly presents 5 Search Engine Optimization Tips for WordPress Blogs posted at Slyvisions dot Com. Although I’m more or less devoted to CakePHP as my PHP Frameowrk, it’s also good to diversify sometimes. Greg Allard presents Quick Thumbnails in Django posted at Code Spatter. Margaret Garcia presents Top 20 iPhone Apps for Entrepreneurs posted at Web Design Schools Guide.

This has always been a touchy subject, especially in larger computer firms. But first, let me tell you how I got into Open Source. I started coding in Turbo Pascal 7.0, in about 1996 when I was in Grammar School. I took Turbo Pascal more as an introduction to Programming, instead of a product to do something constructive in.

After Pascal, I was looking into something visual. Hence, I fell into Visual Basic 5.0. Yeah, I know, I’m sorry.

Legal Issues

Now this was my first step towards the open source community. I must admit, that I downloaded a pirated copy and ran with it for a while. Now, that was all well and good when I was sitting home playing around with stuff. But when it came to actually, to producing something for a market, you can’t (or should I say, shouldn’t) do that with pirated software.

After that, I got into web development. For this, there was a plethora of free tools available, for use. So I did that for a while. When I got back to college, I got into C++ (using Visual Studio, but still essentially free). That was a step in the right direction. However, as the semesters went on, we got more into using the .NET library. However, for my web development I never got into ASP.

The First Real Plunge into Open Source - Enter PHP

Bit by bit, web development gave way to web programming. This is where PHP came in. I got more familiar with PHP when I started working on different projects for clients. I chose PHP for a few main reasons:

1. Free Documentation: I could learn almost everything I needed through online documentation.
2. Cost: My first problem was hosting. ASP hosts used to be almost twice as expensive as their Linux counterparts.

The Open Source Misconception

One of the problems that people have with Open Source is that they think that it’s unsupported. People seem to think that open source software is written by a bunch of kids in basements or something. This is not the case, by any means.  For example, a lot of the Linux distributions are totally free and totally supported.  Wake up people; free doesn’t mean unsupported. The whole “You get what you pay for” isn’t always true.

I’m not sure how many of you guys share my views about passwords. Or maybe I just don’t feel comfortable with other people telling me what to do. Yeah, I think that’s it. If I decide that my password is going to be qwerty, password, letmein, or even 123; I think that’s my business. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the reason behind this. Some sites are trying to protect the users against themselves.

I must say, this was a major hurdle for me when I first started out with CakePHP. If you’re working with some data from a database, then it’s all Model-View-Controller magic. Your forms are automatic: $form->input() is pretty much all you need. Why is this? That’s because all the information about the fields (names, sizes, types, etc.) come straight from the database. You’re Out On Your Own The problem right now is that, you’re all on your own.

Before I start bashing Internet Explorer 6.0, I’d like to share a story with you. I’ve had a high yields savings account at HSBC Direct for some time now. Now I think I know why I haven’t experienced many user issues with their website before. I also use ING Direct Savings Account and Electric Orange Account for some of my banking, you know all eyes in one basket and that stuff.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve had some problems with WordPress 2.5 and their new image upload. Now I know there have been many, many, many, (well let’s just say a lot) of posts and articles about how to fix this problem. But, none of them seemed to work for me. Most of them just go into the basics: setting folders with the right permissions, etc. My Set Up I won’t go into detail, but I think being on Dreamhost has something to do with it, because trying all this on my local PC with XAMPP Lite on Windows XP.

Lately, I’ve decided to switch themes on a few of my blogs. So I started looking around for some themes that are nice and simple enough. I found about five (5) candidates and that were nice, simple and not too loud. To my surprise none of these themes worked in Internet Explorer 6.0. It seems that, lately, blog theme designers are saying a big old “screw you IE 6.0” and I don’t blame them.