‘Tis the season….You’ve made your lists, checked them twice. You’ve crossed off all your to-dos. You’ve been nicer than naughty. In short, you done everything you were supposed to do this past year. So it’s time to reward yourself. Celebrate your restraint instead! Tell the whole world all the things you didn’t do that you’re proud of.

Introducing Tierra’s iDidn’t app, a first of a kind mobile lifestyle application dedicated to recording and broadcasting your virtuosity to the world. Immortalize and customize all the bad habits you’ve avoided and then tell your friends on Facebook and Twitter, all from your iPhone. Your friends will never be more impressed with you.

Download iDidn’t in the App Store now for FREE and start sharing your incredible personal victories from the comfort of your own phone.

You may all remember that roughly 1 year ago, I wrote this little blurb about black friday deals here. I thought this year I would elaborate further and explain why the topic interests me so much.

Origin

For those of you who don’t know, Black Friday (sometimes referred to as “Green” Friday is a day when most stores sell enough merchandise in one day to turn a profit for the year, essentially going in the “black.” From age 16-21, I worked at a very well known and established toy retailer. Having said that, I feel I have a lot of insight on the subject and can prove a worthy ally when it comes to navigating this day.

Tips From A Pro

Here are some tips from a pro (yours truly) that will help you have a safe day.

1. Stake Out: Stores have limited quantities of “door-busters” so get there early – I’m thinking 2-3 days early.
2. Be Prepared: Bring a sleeping bag, water, food, warm clothes and an attitude. People cut in line when your guard is down. It’s your job to resolve that. Using the advice of Sarah Palin – “Go Rogue.”
3. Stop if you hear screams: When the doors open at 5am, if you hear someone screaming, chances are you’re all trampling someone. Stop! Allow store personnel to access the person(s) and then safely resume your frantic run for that latest Pokemon game little Johnny “has” to have.

Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. If you’re really prepared, chances are you found that you can actually buy the same item from the store online, get free shipping and have it with a lot less hassle. You see, retailers realize that the in-store experience is slowly dying. That’s why they created sweet-spot deals for e-shoppers, knowing very well that people will be just as cut-throat online to get deals as in the stores. What retailers they won’t tell you, is that Internet sales make up almost 50% of gross Black Friday sales, so in actuality, they are hoping you’ll shop from home. Now granted, they may not get you with an associated sale item, but they still move product and that’s all that matters. Plus, if you can’t find it at your favorite store, chances are Amazon, eBay, or other web outlets will have quantities in stock.

What I’m saying here is this – if you do a little research online and find the right coupon codes, you can get the same great deals without the hassle. Black Friday is an absolute zoo, from 5am – 12am. There is really no reason to be a part of it, unless you like that kind of thing. Plus, do you REALLY want to be on the evening news plowing into your local Wal*Mart?

We also formally announced Tierra’s WordPress CMS Toolkit website at WordCamp.  As part of our commitment to releasing all the project code to the open-source community, we launched the Toolkit site to centralize all plugins, templates, and other support info about this project.  The Tookit takes WordPress way beyond blogging and lets you use it as a full-blown content management system (CMS).  Using our plugins and templates your organization can easily design and build scalable and flexible media-rich websites with the ease of use of WordPress.

In addition to what’s there now, more plugins and code will be posted soon.   Dozens of WNET.ORG and other organizations have already taken advantage of the plugins for their sites.  We hope you find it useful and look forward to hearing your feedback about it.

Pre-Setup:

1.) Generate a certificate request (CSR) and private key – CD into /etc/httpd/conf/ and run the following command to generate a CSR (Certificate Request File) and private key. The private key file will be named {domainname}.key and the CSR will be {domainname}.csr.

openssl req -new -nodes -keyout {domainname}.key -out {domainname}.csr

You will now be asked to enter details to be entered into your CSR.  What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.  For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter ‘.’, the field will be left blank.

—–

Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]: US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]: New York
Locality Name (eg, city) []: New York
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]: {companyname}
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []: www.{domainname}.com^[1]
Email Address []: {emailaddress}

Please enter the following ‘extra’ attributes to be sent with your certificate request:^[2]

A challenge password []:
An optional company name []:

[1] NOTE: The certificate will NOT match non-www records. You’ll need to make sure to redirect all non-www requests over to the www, or buy a wildcard certificate whill will work for any *.(domainname) instance.
[2] NOTE: Please find out if the CI (Certificate Issuing Company) would like the certificate request password protected. Most DO NOT. If they do NOT want it password protected, hit ENTER and leave the fields BLANK.

—–

Your CSR will now have been created. Open the {domainname}.csr in a text editor and copy and paste the contents into the online enrollment form when requested.

2.) Forward off the .csr file you have generated to the CI (certificate issuing company). They will email you the new certificate. They will also email you a ca certificate. This tells the client’s browser that the CI is vaild. You should rename that ca file to ca-{domainname}.crt and also the private key needs to be moved into the ssl.key folder which is located at:

/etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/

You will want to copy the private key that was generated with the certificate request in step #1 to:

/etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/

You will want to copy the ca file that was sent from the CI to:

/etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/

See the config below for how this should look.

Server Configuration:

1.) Setup an IP Based Host – This means that the server responds to a unique IP address not configured for any site except for the one the certificate will be used: (Port 443)

<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:443>

2.) Add the following lines to the apache conf for that site directly under the specified ServerName:

<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:443>
ServerName www.{domainname}.com

SSLEngine on
SSLProtocol all
SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL
SetEnvIf User-Agent “.*MSIE.*” ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

SSLCertificateFile /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/{domainname}.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/{domainname}.key
SSLCACertificateFile /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/ca-{domainname}.crt

<Files ~ “\.(cgi|shtml)$”>
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Files>
<Directory “/home/httpd/cgi-bin”>
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory>

CustomLog /var/log/httpd/ssl_request_log \
“%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \”%r\” %b”

<Directory /var/www/html/{domainname}>
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
Options FollowSymLinks Indexes ExecCGI
AllowOverride None
</Directory>

RewriteEngine On
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/{domainname}
</VirtualHost>

Restarting Apache

You must completely stop and start apache for the certificate settings to be absorbed in apache:

sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl stop
sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl start

If you restart the server, for some reason, apache won’t sever “all” connections, so it is advised you stop and start.

Other Notes

Keep in mind that your locations for installing the certs, paths to apachectl can be completely different then what we have listed here. Find your locations and amend this document to best fit your needs.

Over the many deployments of Wordpress and Wordpress MU, we have found that our clients are constantly requesting the ability to sort content at the category level without editing the core of their templates.

Today, we present our latest plugin titled, “Smart Category Ordering.” The plugin that we are releasing is a modified version of a plugin we developed for WNET.org and their various Wordpress platforms.

This plugin extends the built in content sorting that you can control via your templates by allowing you to control it via the Wordpress admin. The plugin works strictly at the category level, and does NOT work with the home page, as that is not a category.

The “Smart Title” option strips the leading “a”, “an” or “the” from the post title when setting the ordering. Additionally, per sorting definition, you’ll define the number of posts per page (default is 10) and whether your category sorting is confined to a single category or the category + all children.

*Note* You should set a (catch-all) sorting option which acts as the default sorting method for the rest of your site. By default, Wordpress sorts by post date in descending order.

How To Install

First, you’ll need the plugin. You can download it here. After you have completed the download, follow these short steps:

1. Upload ’smart-category-ordering’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Set your sorting options

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the “Smart Title” option and how is it used?

When sorting by “Smart Title”, that option is there to the leading ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’ from a post title when sorting. This is the only difference between “Smart Title” and “Title.”

Over the many deployments of Wordpress and Wordpress MU, we have found that our clients are constantly requesting the ability to post HTML that the core of Wordpress does not support. Mostly, it is HTML used for video embedding, but it can also be enhancements to existing HTML tags that are supported.

Today, we present our latest plugin titled, “Extend KSES.” KSES is a reference to the file that controls HTML that Wordpress allows. The plugin that we are releasing is a modified version of a plugin we developed for WNET.org and their various Wordpress platforms.

This plugin extends the HTML functionalify of the Wordpress kses.php file, which states the allowable HTML that the post/page content editor will accept. It allows the site administrator to check pre-defined HTML tags that can also be allowed via the editor. Tags include: `object`, `embed`, `param`, `iframe`, `map` and extensions have been added to the `div` and `img` tags.

Keep in mind, that by checking a tag, you are making it acceptable to post said HTML and save it. If your users also post content, it is important that you make sure you are not enabling any malicious HTML from wreaking havoc to your environment. If there is a tag that is missing or that you would like us to add and support, feel free to leave a comment below.

How To Install

First, you’ll need the plugin. You can download it here. After you have completed the download, follow these short steps:

1. Upload extend-kses to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Check the boxes next to the HTML tag you wish to enable and click save options
4. Paste HTML code into the HTML version – NOT the visual version – of the post/page editor and save.

Frequently Asked Questions

What tags are currently supported?

1. `div` tag extended to allow for `id` child tag.
2. `embed` tag is now fully supported, including the following children tags: `style`, `type`, `id`, `height`, `width`, `src` and the entire `object` tag (including children).
3. `iframe` tag is now fully supported, including the following children tags: `width`, `height`, `frameborder`, `scrolling`, `marginheight`, `marginwidth` and `src`.
4. `img` tag extended to allow for `usemap` child tag.
5. `map` tag is now fully supported, including the following children tags: `name` and `id`
6. `object` tag is now fully supported, including the following children tags: `style`, `height`, `width`, the entire `param` tag (including children) and the entire `embed` tag (including children).
7. `param` tag is now fully supported, including the following children tags: `name` and `value`

Tierra customized WordPress as a CMS to make Online Publishing
more Efficient.

During the past year Tierra and WNET.ORG (PBS Channel Thirteen in New York) collaborated on a groundbreaking project that cut WNET.ORG’s costs, streamlined their web publishing process and improved the user experience on many of their individual program sites. At the heart of our solution was WordPress Multi-User, an open source blogging platform.

Publishing a dynamic website with frequent content updates is a must for many businesses these days. But this is easier said than done. There are a multitude of considerations, technical hurdles and business or marketing objectives that play into every website project. If you’ve ever created or managed a relatively complex website, you know what I mean. Now imagine that times 50.

That’s basically the challenge that WNET.ORG (PBS Channel Thirteen in New York) brought to Tierra this past year: Design and build a website platform that can scale to support the dozens of websites that WNET creates and publishes every year. And provide a single content management system (CMS) that lets anyone—from the most competent programmer to the most technically averse writer or editor—easily log in and publish on any one of those sites with very little support.

Tierra helped lay the foundation for a significantly streamlined publishing operation for WNET’s interactive group, from a careful discovery of technical platforms and design requirements, to information architecture, to migrating a decade’s worth of web content, to finally customizing WordPress Multi-User as a CMS. The new platform and tools let WNET.ORG focus on their core competency:  creating innovative and compelling educational content to support its on-air programming and extending it across the web.

The case study below describes in detail what WNET.ORG and Tierra accomplished with the project, how we went about it, and what the benefits have been for our client.  We also discuss how we customized WordPress Multi-User and some unique contributions we’ve made to this leading open-source software platform. We welcome your feedback and would be delighted to discuss our work with you.

Download the Case Study (PDF 2.6 MB)

Design Team: “Our web site looks ok in all of those other browsers, but just not right in IE8.”

Announcer: “Well, now it can!” “With the NEW X-UA-Compatible meta tag <meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=EmulateIE7″ /> , get your pages looking JUST RIGHT on your local IE8 browser.”

Design Team: “Seriously!?! There must be a catch?”

Announcer: “There’s no catch! You don’t even have to REMOVE THE DOCTYPE!!!!! Just let X-UA-Compatible work for YOU!”

Design Team: “WOW!”

Announcer: “Act now, before this meta tag is GONE FOREVER… or replaced by IE9’s own version. Here’s how to order.”