I have heard a lot of webmasters rave about sNews so I decided to try it out. sNews aims to be a simple and minimalistic Content Management System (CMS). It tries to provide the 20% of features that people use 80% of the time.
website development
How to access your website at your new web host before DNS propagates
Often when switching hosts or signing up at new host you’ll have to set your domain’s name servers to your new website host’s name servers. This step is necessary because it allows your new host’s servers to receive and serve requests for your website from your visitor’s browsers. However the Domain Name System (DNS) is such that it takes time for this new mapping between your domain name and your host’s servers to propagate across the Internet.
Depending on your new host’s DNS servers and your Internet Service Provider it can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days before you will be able to access your website via the domain name. If, in the meantime, you want to upload files to your website and test it you will need to edit your HOSTS file to manually map your domain name to your web host’s IP address.
What I look for in a blog host
The world of web hosting can be a bit overwhelming. Website hosting companies almost scream about their fat hosting packages on their sites inorder to get people to spend money on hosting. But what is it that you really need to host a blog?
Rounding up corners
My third serendipity blog theme RoundedCorner is available for download. I have been tinkering with this theme for quite a while now and I finally decided that it was good enough for release. However, it might still have a few bugs in it so please tell me if you find any.
Click to view full sized image.
This theme isn’t particularly fancy looking but developing it
has taught me a lot. It is full of rounded rectangles created in photoshop and converted into code. It is also standards based with valid xhtml and css. At the time of writing this theme is in use on my site and you can try and validate it by clicking on the icons in the right sidebar. RoundedCorner is also a pure css theme except for the calendar plugin. You can download it here.
Simple website navigation with PHP
A good website is easy to navigate from one page to the next and an easy to navigate
website will make the following clear to the user:
- Which page he is currently viewing, i.e. where he currently “is” in your
website - What pages he can view
Furthermore, you want to be able to save time and effort in
coding your website while also ensuring that your site can be easily modified and updated.This is
an ideal situation in which to use PHP server side scripting to dynamically generate the links.
In this post I present code that will generate links grouped under different sub-headings. It will apply a special style to the navigation bar entry for the page that the user is currently viewing.