I don’t know what it was about this week, but I received two emails asking for some PHP and CSS help from individuals who recently read my 2003 A List Apart article entitled “Keeping Navigation Current With PHP.”
While the lessons in my article are still relevant, I’m just a little surprised it’s still being found, read, and followed.
This is how Wonderware Central’s new website looks on an iPhone. Not too bad for a mobile device. Admittedly, the iPhone Safari browser renders many sites rather well.
After several months of work, I’m pleased to say that Wonderware Central launched its redesigned website today.
Many people were involved in this project, but I did most of the development and design.
This was my first time using the open source Joomla content management system. As such, it was also my first time developing a Joomla template. It didn’t take me too long to figure out and understand how Joomla and its templates work.
I based my design on the Yahoo YUI CSS framework. Joomla uses Mootools as the JavaScript framework, so I stuck with that. I also made use of several third-party extensions that have been developed for the Joomla CMS, which speed up my development and should make it easier to maintain the website in the long run.
This was a fun project to work on. So far, I’m receiving some good feedback from my coworkers, which is nice.
I run several community blogs that maintain an open registration process, meaning a new user can create a new account and begin adding content to the website. Two examples include www.thirdgoal.com and voices.crossandcrescent.com.
User-generated content is nothing new, for many sites permit strangers to comment. But in the WordPress world, there are many plugins and tools to protect the site from comment spam. There are no tools, however, to prevent a spammer from creating hundreds of new accounts and then submitting multiple blog entries.
To keep this from happening on the sites I maintain, I simply delete the bogus new user accounts hours after they are created. I know they are bogus because they have usernames like “alasdflwhw” or use temporary email addresses (for the required email confirmation).
Today, I submitted a feature request to the WordPress community to address this growing problem:
Idea: Block Lists for Register Confirmation Emails
Problem: When “Membership: Anyone can register” is enabled (for multi-user community blogs), spammers are creating hundreds of new accounts using temporary email address services. So they’ll receive the “Your username and password” email confirmation; giving them access to post full entries on the community-blog website.
Proposed Solution: Provide an easy way for admins to maintain a block list of domains that WordPress cannot send emails to, pre-populating the list with the most common temporary email address services.
My Experience: While I do receive an email notification when a user creates a new account, I have to manually delete those users who are obviously using temporary account names and email addresses. While the free @hotmail.com and @gmail.com accounts are less obvious, I have a list of 20 temporary email domains that are frequently used.
For my 2007 New Year’s Resolution, I vow to adopt and frequently use the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI).
I learned about Yahoo’s YUI while reading 24 Ways over the holidays. Once I got over the disbelief of having not learned of YUI until now, I couldn’t wait to use it in an upcoming project.
There are so many things to like about YUI. Here are the features that excite me the most.
Grids blows me away. In less than 2.5kb of CSS code, YUI Grids offers almost 200 preset layouts and a great deal of customizations. Grid layouts can be fixed or fluid and columns are source-order independent. It’s everything One True Layout hoped to be, but done so much better.
Dav Glass built a tool that allows you to try out all 200 Grids wireframes in seconds. What a great time saver.
Another great thing about YUI is that Yahoo’s developers are committed to making it’s code work for what they call A Grade Browsers. By focusing on progressive enhancement, Yahoo builds a rich experience on top of an accessible core, without compromising that core.
The heart of the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library is really a robust JavaScript library. While I was already tinkering with other JavaScript libraries, the YUI Library is so well documented I can no longer resist.
I’d really like to see MediaWiki skins and WordPress themes that are based on YUI CSS and JavaScript libraries. My first YUI sandbox project was to try to make my FratMan MediaWiki Skin adopt the YUI framework. While I ran out of time to complete the project during the holiday, YUI sure provides a more stable skin.
YUI has renewed my passion for good web design. It provides a very flexible — yet sturdy — foundation for me to construct all of the web development projects I’m bound to face in 2007.