Blog Cleaning-Up

So I finally managed to clean up the mess called “blog categories” for imbadev.com :)
I’ve trimmed them down to only 8:

• Blog Updates

Pretty self-explanatory. In this category, I’ll put posts that keep track of the changes, updates, upgrades etc of this blog (like this one :) )

• Great Thoughts

As I’ve explained here, I’ll (try to) write every day a quote - something interesting, worthy to be taken as an universal truth. You should read these, as you’ll find yourself usually meditating about a quote for a long time :-)

• Have Fun

Again, a clear, simple name. Fine humor, amusing videos and pictures on the web - all in here, just to allow a break from the everyday routine.

• Internet Money

Probably the most interesting category for lots of people :-), “Internet Money” is the category which contains posts relating to how to make money online, step-by-step. I might be also posting some numbers about my own earnings or such - when I will consider these numbers to be worthy to be made public.

• Programming

Most posts here will pertain to PHP, cause this is where I feel like home, but also anything else related to programming. I know a bit of C++, so maybe I’ll write about this, too.

• Rants

This lovely category contains all my jabbers on all kind of stuff - mainly web-related, but expect some personal-life posts from time to time.

• Toolbox

Software, online applications, cool scripts, useful tools - whatever simplifies your life online will be found under this topic.

• Webaholic

Quite an unusual name, but I pretty much like it. News from around the internet, web2.0 stuff, search engines, neat sites - you get the point. Might as well consider it the generic category of every blog, just that instead of being called the default “General”, I’ve renamed it to “Webaholic”, to sound more web-related (which actually is).

I’m still not decided if tagging every post is a useful thing to do, mainly because it would be a really daunting work to tag all posts that I’ve written until now. I still have to think about this.

Besides this, I’ve also started to write some paid reviews (through 3rd-party networks). If you are interested in a review, contact me directly at htsrzvn at gmail dot com so we can discuss the price (not fixed yet :-) ).
Adverts are not back yet, and it might stay for a while this way, but I’ve placed some useful (methinks), affiliate links in the “Resources” box up there, in the center of the page (yeah, I have to rename it to something else). So, check it out, maybe you’ll find something you like/need.

Over and out!

Payday Loans for Hard Times

Have you ever been in the situation where you have several, small debts, but your payday is sooo far away ? If you work 9/5 (9h/day, 5days/week), then you most likely have been, especially when you are starting out with your job. Obviously, the situation is not exactly pleasant, and in order to honor your debts, you loan money from a bank or something, engaging in a long-term relationship - eventually, the interest will kill you, financially.

Thats where Payday Loans come in handy. To get out of sticky situations described above, you can request a personal cash advance to help you overcome difficult times.

This kind of loan has obvious advantages over other types of killer-loans:

• You get the money very quickly, right when you need it
• It is a short-term cash advance, until your payday. Therefore, you avoid paying costly bounced-check fees and late payment penalties.
• Low thresholds to get accepted (see below)
• Perfect for paying the small, everyday fees - no need for a long-term loan, which will create an even larger debt on the long-shot

As you can see, Payday Loans seem a perfect solution when you are in a sticky situation, overcame by debts - and the payday is a long way ahead.

As I mentioned above, one great advantage of this Payday Loans program is that the limits for applying are quite low, as follows:

• You currently have a job (or receive regular income)
• You earn at least $1000 per month
• You are 18 years of age or older and a U.S. citizen having a checking account
• Even bankruptcy, bounced-checks, charge-offs and other credit problems don’t prevent you from receiving the cash advance you need
• You are not active in the military.
• Other requirements may apply

Seems fine to me. So, if you fit these requirements and need a quick cash advance, wait no more and apply today for a cash advance.

Create A Free Blog On Thoughts.com

During the last few years, the blogosphere exploded in terms of volume, evolution and quality. More and more people choose to create a blog use it as a platform to write their thoughts online, and a part of them successfully monetize these blogs.

However, even though today’s blogging software makes installing a blog quite easy, not everyone is familiar with using a FTP client, for example. To help these, people, hosted blog networks appeared. Google is one of the biggest in this field, but smaller networks appear, offering extra features that attract people.

One of these smaller players, Thoughts.com, offers more than a simple way to create a blog for technically illiterate people (no pun intended). Thoughts.com ’s homepage features a social network-like interface, aggregating recent blog posts from around the network, a news feed, photos + videos areas and, of course, the traditional tag-cloud.

Speaking of the interface - all I can say about the design is that I like it. It is not a masterpiece of art, but it is a sleek, neat, visually-appealing layout, “keeping it simple” - the way it should be, in my opinion, for this type of sites.
One little suggestion I might give the folks is to “ajaxify” the news tabs, so when you click on a tab, you are presented with news from that section, without reloading the page or going to another one. This way, you save space - and contributes to the overall professional feeling.

All in all, I can say Thoughts.com might just develop into a powerful blogging platform, as long as they keep improving and offer extra features to differentiate themselves from other sites in their “create blog” niche.

So, what are you waiting for? Head over to their site and create a blog.

Wallpapers For Digg Fans

Here are some of the best wallpapers that suit the desktop of a DIGG fan:





Sorry for not providing the pictures in different resolutions, but you can easily adjust the pictures yourself using IrfanView, for example.

EnjoY!

Great Thoughts #5

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful
Seneca

Unlock Files or Folders on WinXP So You Can Delete Them

If you are using Windows Xp, then you most certainly encountered the following error when trying to delete, move or rename a file or a folder:

or one of it’s flavors:

• Cannot delete file: Access is denied
• There has been a sharing violation.
• The source or destination file may be in use.
• The file is in use by another program or user.
• Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

Obviously, yet another annoyance of winxp. While the MS official help page doesn’t offer much of a solution, there is a small, free program called “Unlocker” that does what it’s name says: unlocks a file or a folder so you can delete, move or rename it.
Here’s a screenshot of the application:

The dropdown in the bottom-left corner of the window has the following options: Delete, Rename, Move, Copy.

If you ask me, this is one of the most useful piece of software I have ever installed on my Winxp computer.

Download Unlocker

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DIGG-me-please:

5 PHP Classes You Can’t Code Without

You probably know the old saying: “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel”, and probably you know the meaning too.
Also, as you can say from the “Tips of the Day” series on my blog, which present you quick short tips to improve PHP applications, I am an adept of clean PHP code, optimized and non-repetitive.
This is why even though I like to code my own stuff, I also think that if someone wrote a great piece of code or a great PHP class, there’s no point in writing from scratch a different variant of that code, to accomplish the same purpose. Using these classes are not a shame or whatnot - even for those who consider themselves php professionals (I do not - just to mention it). In fact, these classes speed up the development process - sometimes by a considerable amount.
But, enough blabbering, lets get to the point of it. Today I’ll present you with 5 GREAT PHP classes, which will ease your everyday work as a PHP coder and which you’ll most likely use in one of your projects. Without further ado, here they are:

1. Login System + Admin Features

This is actually a full-blown script, not only a class. Anyway, it is damn useful: you’re going to need this one sooner or later. Any “big” site needs a user base, which of course has to be easily administered - and that’s what this script accomplishes at its best. Full tutorial at evolt.org

Download #1

2. FPDF

Use this class to generate PDF’s on the fly from PHP. Again, not only a single class, instead a complete script, but extremely useful and easy to use. Great documentation included.

Download #2

3. Pagination Class

This class is used to interrogate a MySQL database and then present the results in a paginated format. Useful in multiple situations: listing news, users, search results etc.

Download #3

4. Code Highlighting

If your site resides in the tech / development industry, then you’ll certainly need this one. Present PHP code in a more human-readable manner, highlighting as in an editor.

Download #4

5. Google Maps Mashup

This one is a basic Google Maps Mashup. You can generate maps based on address, change the style and colors of icon, customise links and more. Read the documentation. You’ll need a Google Maps API key

Download #5

Bonus: solve Sudokus
If you’re into Sudoku solving and you’re stuck with one puzzle, then you’ll love this Sudoku solving class. Easily input the known numbers, then solve that “unbreakable” puzzle.

Download #6

Happy coding!

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DIGG-me-please:

Flickr Account Banned For No Reason

While browsing through my blog today, I just found out that the pictures in the 20+ Wallpapers For Linux Lovers are unavailable.
Those where uploaded on my Flickr account - and they are now available. I try to login to my Flickr account - nada, “this account does not exist”. WTF is wrong with you guys, you just ban accounts for no reasons whatsoever?
That is so cool! NOT!
I’ll try to find those images again, create a new Flickr account and just hope that they won’t disable that one, too.
Sorry to disappoint you, but if you’re trying to view the images in that post, they are nowhere to be seen. Keep close, though, I’ll try to make the images available as soon as possible.

Anyway, my final words: shame on you, Yahoo!/Flickr !

Update: I’ve reuploaded the wallpapers to another Flickr account (hts_rzvn instead of htsrzvn). Lets hope this one doesn’t get kaboomed by the wonderful flickr team. Cheers, Yahoo, rock on!

Theme Change on imbaDev.com

So, I just found the Daily32 theme while reading DailyBlogTips in my RSS reader and I really like it. I just implemented it here on imbaDev.com and I think it will be here for a long time :)
I just need to sort some stuff like what to put in the Resources area up there, grab a Photoshop copy and edit the PSD files in the header, and some other minor things.
Oh btw guys, there’s a typo in your theme’s title. When you go to the theme selection page, the title of your theme reads: “Daily32 Version 3.0 by Daily Blog Tios” instead of “Tips”. Check it out!

Also, you might have noticed (or not) that Adsense ads are gone - for a while, at least. I have to rethink the monetization strategy for my blog, because, even though I don’t really receive that much visitors, I am not satisfied with what I make from the blog.
I’m even ashame to post my earnings - for now, at least :)

The sponsored links on the right will still be there - at least those provide a stable, even though low, flow of income (pocket money :) ).

That being said, I hope that you enjoy the new look of my blog.

How to Embed Videos in WPMU Posts

There are lots of plugins to embed videos in WP/WPMU (you could do it manually in WP, but NOT in WPMU), but sometimes plugins are not an option.
So, what is there to be done?
You’ll just have to go to wp-includes folder, find the kses.php file (so the path is: wp-includes/kses.php) and modify some code over there.

Find these lines of code (just at the beginning of the file):

…and it goes on with allowed tags. All you have to do is to modify this array so that the specific video-embedding tags are allowed, too. In the end, this is how it should look like:

The tags before ‘address’ are the ones needed for embedding a video, and they are now allowed in a post, too.
Remember: wp-includes/kses.php
For your convenience, here’s the file containing the exact code you have to paste in kses.php, right after:

$allowedposttags = array(

Good luck! Let me know in the comments if you have any problems.