Open Source Software Specialists

A Developer’s Blog

We’ve been building websites since 1993.  That’s a long time.  We've learned a great deal along the way, and this website will attempt to share some of that learning.

We are no longer looking for new clients and have devoted our freelance time to supporting our existing client base and doing pro bono work for groups that we think are making a positive change in the world.  This is what makes our work more than a job.

If you’re looking for a web developer or programmer, please feel free to contact us for a referral and provide us with a summary of your project.  We'll be happy to help direct you.

We’ll be using the space below to post articles on a very irregular basis about open source projects we find interesting, helpful code we’ve discovered, and other things we hope might be of use to others.

Google Voice – A free second phone number, and so much more

Saturday, 05 May 2012 21:35 0 Comments

I don’t yet use Google Voice as much as I could, but have to say, the service is pretty incredible.   I simply don’t advertise my phone number as I only do business via email and have for years.

From their introductory email:

Welcome to Google Voice. Google Voice gives you 
a single phone number that rings all of your phones,
saves your voicemail online, and transcribes your
voicemail to text. Other cool features include the
ability to listen in on messages while they're being
left, block unwanted callers, and make cheap
international calls. We hope you enjoy using Google Voice.

If you need a secondary phone number, or a means of filtering your calls for business, this is a free solution. Want to transcribe your notes?  Setup a Google Voice account and call yourself.  Voilà! It’s free, too.  Simply amazing.

Six Months of Using WordPress

Saturday, 05 May 2012 10:50 0 Comments

WordPress LogoIt’s been six months now since I started using WordPress to run my website.  While familiar with it for many years, my decision to move from Joomla to WordPress was largely about wanting to learn to work in it better.  The focus of The Design Mission has also shifted to largely supporting our existing clients and doing pro bono work.  No need for a portfolio or sales oriented website any longer.

So far, WordPress has been a great experiment.  Learning to use the RocketTheme I purchased, customizing it and playing with widgets and such has been a good education.  See all that has changed in WordPress in the pass few years has also been helpful.  I’m impressed with the versioning capability and the auto saving of drafts.  WordPress has come a long way.

By far my favorite widget/tool has been WP Hashcash for spam prevention.  It’s awesome!  It validates that the comment being submitted is done from a browser, not a robot, and do so with some intelligent algorithms.  Coupled with Akismet, my site has been spam free.  So far, using WordPress has been a big win for me.

Directory Pass – Open Source File Access Tool

Saturday, 05 May 2012 07:29 0 Comments

Being able to manage access to specific directories with usernames and passwords is a fairly easy thing to do with htaccess on Apache server.  There are many websites that offer help for this. However, if you need to manage users on a regular basis, having a tool for doing so is really helpful.

Directory Pass is one such tool.   I’ve been using it at work for close to a year now and while it’s not perfect, it gets the job done with pretty simple ease of use.  The only real pain I’ve had with using it was clicking the “Disable Password Protection” link once only to discover it didn’t save any of the former settings.  Disable is really delete.  Otherwise, this has been a great little tool to use and it’s open source, too.

Mobile Site Recognition Via htaccess

Friday, 27 April 2012 08:47 3 Comments

Using JavaScript to detect a browser type and redirect iPhones, iPad and other mobile devices is not very difficult to do.  However, it means that the page load has already happened as the JavaScript must be invoked before it can redirect the browser to the alternative page.

If you’re using Apache, you can redirect via htaccess.  This will let Apache redirect the browser before there are any assets downloaded.

This example is from StackOverflow.com, and includes a call to cookie the user so that you may code your pages to keep the user on the mobile site unless they choose to view the desktop version.

RewriteEngine On

# Check if this is the noredirect query string
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)noredirect=true(&|$)
# Set a cookie, and skip the next rule
RewriteRule ^ - [CO=mredir:0:%{HTTP_HOST},S]

# Check if this looks like a mobile device
# (You could add another [OR] to the second one and add in what you
#  had to check, but I believe most mobile devices should send at
#  least one of these headers)
RewriteCond %{HTTP:x-wap-profile} !^$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Profile}       !^$
# Check if we're not already on the mobile site
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}          !^m\.
# Check to make sure we haven't set the cookie before
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie}        !\smredir=0(;|$)
# Now redirect to the mobile site
RewriteRule ^ http://m.example.org%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]

Join.me – Free Screen Sharing

Friday, 13 April 2012 21:46 2 Comments

I’ve used several screen sharing programs and tools including WebEx, VNC, GoToMeeting, and Skype.  Some work great, some require some technical skills to install, and some are slow and not always cross-platform friendly.

Today at work we used Join.me for a presentation.  It’s free, simple, cross-platform capable and worked great.  Nothing really difficult to use about it and it loaded up quickly.  You can share the control of your mouse with others, use a chat feature and more.  I was impressed enough to go download a copy of the app in the middle of the presentation.

There is a paid version that offers more features, and perhaps best of all, there’s an API which would allow developers to integrate JoinMe’s features into their website – an excellent help and support setup!

It’s worth trying and would be a great tool for demos or training.

Mantis – Open Source Bug Tracker

Sunday, 08 April 2012 11:58 0 Comments

Mantis Bug Tracker

Need a great tool for bug reports?  Want something that will help facilitate your quality assurance process?  Mantis is simple open source tool that fits this bill quite nicely.

Mantis is both a wonderful tool, and at times a source of frustration for me.  It’s very helpful in guiding reporters of issues during a quality assurance period.  I like the tools ability to help get issues reported fully so that developers can understand fully what the issue is and how it can be recreated – assuming that the reporter has indeed completed the bug report form completely and accurately.  If this is done correctly, this tool is great.

Features include:

  • User levels with different permissions
  • File uploads for screenshots or other
  • An intuitive interface with custom search refinements
  • Email notifications
  • Login / password protected management
  • Public and private projects may be created
  • An easy installation

It can’t stop people from submitting reports that are duplicates or incomplete, but it does do a good job of guiding all users to a well documented bug report.

Backup Scripts for 1and1 and Others

Sunday, 08 April 2012 09:14 0 Comments

1and1.com is the hosting provider I’ve been using and recommending to others for many years.  They provide adequate service on a very complete product offering that is inexpensive.  So long as you can either resolve issues yourself as their technical support is not what I would call strong, they are a great option.  (Does that spell out an endorsement with caution well enough?)

One thing I’ve come up with is a modification to a backup script that if you are using a Linux system at 1and1 and have access to making crontabs, you can have daily, weekly and monthly database backups stored on the server, emailed to you, or both.  I got this script from a project on SourceForge and modified it to work with 1and1.

  1. 1and1-backup-script  Download this zip archive and unzip it.  You’ll find a shell script and an empty folder called “backups” within it.
  2. Open the backup.sh file in a simple text editor — I use my SFTP tool Transmit for this, too – and enter your database information and change the “changeme@email.com” address to yours or make it empty for no email.  (A dedicated Gmail account would be useful here, too.)
  3. Save the file and upload it and the empty backups directory to your root directory of your 1and1 account. Be sure to set the permissions of your shell script to something that is executable.  If you have configured your domain(s) on your account to point to a subdirectory, this will also keep the shell script and backups from being accessible by a web browser.  More on this simple security hack in the future.
  4. Using a command line tool such as Terminal on a Macintosh, login to your 1and1 account using your SSH credentials.  1and1 has good online help here.
  5. Once you’ve logged in, it’s time to setup the crontab that will run the backup.  Enter “crontab -e” to enter the crontab editor.
  6. You’ll be in the program vi after entering this prompt.  To enter a new line, you’ll need to type “i” to INSERT a line.
  7. I have my backup run at 3:30AM on the server every day of the year.  Here’s the line to type to do the same:
    30 03 * * * sh ./backup.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1
  8. Press the escape key to exit Insert mode and then type press the shift key and type “zz” to exit vi.  You’ll get a prompt about your crontab being written (or modified) at this point.
  9. To view the crontab without editing it, you can type “crontab -l”

If you have multiple databases to backup, you can modify the name of the shell script and backup directory easily enough.  I’ve been using this backup script with my website and with client websites for years.  It has never failed me and has saved my clients several times.  Many thanks to the original authors of this useful open source script.

 

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