Tackling Comment Spam in Textpattern
Posted on May 04, 2009 in Textpattern. - No comments
This month, the website caught the attention of those nasty comment spam people. You know the types, they want to post comments on your most popular pages to exploit your Google page rank and dump some links to their sites all over your pages.
Luckily, Textpattern does a pretty good job discouraging spam by requiring commenters to preview their comments before submitting them. You can also limit the window of opportunity for spammers by restricting the time that people can comment on articles (from 1 to 6 weeks.) Obviously for a site that doesn’t get a lot of comments you’ll probably want to keep the comments open as long as possible!
TealOS killed by Palm
Posted on April 21, 2009 in Palm. - No comments
As we all know, Palm have abandoned the PDA market that they pretty much created. On their UK site you can still find the final ageing devices still available (Z22, T|X and Tungsten E2) although it’s not so easy to find any mention of them on the US site.
Unfortunately Palm has stated that it’s the end of the line for Palm OS devices. If you’re a die-hard Palm user then you’re effectively being left with the Palm Pre. If you’ve recently taken a look to see how easy it is to get yourself a Palm PDA these days then you’ll be under no illusion that these devices are becoming an endangered species.
HandyShopper
Posted on April 18, 2009 in Palm and Software. - No comments
So, maybe I’ll admit that my “inner geek” was wondering if there was any other opportunities to use my Palm TX. One activity that I find constantly soul-destroying is the weekly shop, but once I’d discovered the Palm OS application HandyShopper I was intrigued and keen to find out if it could make the horror of the supermarket more bearable.
How does it work
HandyShopper is in essence a simple database that you populate with stores and products. Then, before you embark on your shopping trip you mark the items you want to buy as needed. As you wander around the aisles you can tick off the items and make note of the cost as you go if you so wish. Hopefully, when you get home and unpack you avoid that crushing feeling of despair when you realise you’ve forgotten the most important item on the list and that it’s going to condemn you to an evening of verbal abuse from your partner. Sounds good so far!
Problems with Digitiser Drift on a Palm TX
Posted on January 20, 2009 in Palm. - Comments [2]
Recently, my trusty TX has started to exhibit a rather annoying problem with the Digitiser. Despite using the Palm preferences to calibrate the touch-screen, the bottom of the screen no longer responds to the stylus. Annoyingly this means that the button bar below the Graffiti input area is almost inaccessible.
There are a number of things you can do to try and tackle this problem which I’ll describe in this article.
Comment [2]
Simplifying common section content in Textpattern
Posted on November 04, 2008 in Web Design and Textpattern. - No comments
It’s pretty common to have common content that is specific to each section. Often this takes the form of different side-bar content. This is easy to accomplish in Textpattern by creating a form for each section and then including the following code in your page template:
<div id="side" <txp:if_section name="articles"> <txp:output_form name="side_articles" /> </txp:if_section><txp:if_section name="features"> <txp:output_form name="side_articles" /> </txp:if_section><txp:if_section name="default"> <txp:output_form name="side_default" /> </txp:if_section> </div>
This is obviously rather long winded, and as you add more and more sections to your site, it becomes increasingly clumsy. Textpattern 4.0.7 promises us the ability to include tags within tags which would provide a solution along the lines of: