Abdussamad's blogspace

A simple free program that I often use is ontop. On top makes a window always stay on top of other windows. This is useful if you want to copy things from one window to another or if you want to look at two documents simultaneously.

Ontop works very easily. You run it either manually or place a shortcut to it in your start menu startup folder and it will run on windows startup. When running ontop displays a small icon in the system tray. Using it is very simple. Just right click on a window title bar and you'll see the new option "Always on top". Click on that and your window will never be buried. Click it again to make it function like all other windows.

Download ontop (21 KB)

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This article shows you how to implement header image selection via the media manager in your serendipity templates configuration.

I first introduced this feature in the beautiful day theme and it proved to be quite popular.

I have updated two of my serendipity blog system templates. The following updates were made:

Freshy: The ever popular freshy theme now has the additional option of custom header image selection via the serendipity media manager a la beautiful day.

RoundedCorner: I have updated rounded corner to make it easy for users to add, remove and modify links in the top navigation bar via the admin suite.

I had a few unused domain names so I decided to put them to use as URL shortening websites.

In case your unfamiliar with the concept, a URL shortening website takes your long website addresses or URLs and shortens them into short and search engine friendly URLs. A URL shortening site saves you from having to use long URLs that can break in your emails, forum posts and IM messages.

So here are my newly formed URL shortening sites. Use anyone of them to shrink your URLs:

TC7 URL shortening

TE9 URL shortening

SI9 URL shortening

BS2 URL shortening

FI9.org URL Shortening service

Every site has the same web 2.0 design but in different colours. So if you like blue visit bs2.org or if you prefer red then go to te9.org .

I use my own script for all these sites. The programming logic is simple. The site accepts a long URL and INSERTs it into a database. A short URL is made by appending the primary key of the newly inserted row to the short url site's domain. When a user visits a short URL the primary key is received by the script as a query string and it simply looks up the relevant URL in the database and redirects the user. Throw in a bit of mod_rewrite goodness to get rid of the query string and you have yourself a URL shortening site.

I'll be adding more sites soon as I have a number of unused domains!