We now have a demo up featuring a video player developed by Ross Sabes.

This player utilizes a full featured custom back-end video database management tool.

Each video title can support multiple files in a variety of formats (FLV, MP4, Ogg, WebM, etc…) and settings for maximum compatibility and performance across the widest possible array of devices. The player can be customized to detect the users bandwidth and play the most suitable Flash format available. If the visitor is using an iPad, iPhone or iPod the player is programmed to use the compatible MP4 format with both high and low bandwidth options if available.

Videos can be assigned to multiple pages by the administrator.

Select pages for the video to appear on.

Videos can also be tagged for search engines and other custom functionality.

Visit the front-end here
For a demo of the back-end contact us.

This program was developed using:
MooTools
MediaBox
and MooFlow

MediaBox is a very cool MooTools based JavaScript modal overlay. It has a bunch of bundled in features for displaying various types of media and galleries.

One issue that Google would not help me solve was embedded Flash not appearing in the media box in Safari. I could switch tabs then switch back and the Flash would magically appear. I assumed it was a display conflict Safari was having when everything fired at once with the loading of the MediaBox and the Flash embed. A more elegant solution may involve a listener object on the mediabox, but this seems to resolve it.

My solution was to simply delay the swfobject flash embed by half a second using setTimer();.

Here is the version that does not work in Safari (mac):
http://www.websitedesignby.com/mediabox/mediabox-flash-notimer.html

Here is the fix with the timer:
http://www.websitedesignby.com/mediabox/mediabox-flash.html

Direct link to box content containing hack/fix:
http://www.websitedesignby.com/mediabox/mediabox-flash-box.html

There are 2 ways a website can be developed: either as static web pages or as dynamic (database driven) web pages. Let’s discuss both varieties:

Static Web Pages
All web pages are displayed using HTML code. Static web pages are essentially a series of linked HTML documents. To make a change to a static website one must edit the HTML code directly on each page. While this may work for a simple web site that has 3 or 4 pages, it quickly becomes inefficient as your web site grows in depth and complexity.

Dynamic, Database Driven Web Pages
Database driven websites are fast becoming the standard for website development. The content on a dynamic website is maintained in a database. When a visitor requests information for a page, product, article or photo, that request is processed and returned by a database.

Web Site Maintenance
Typically the information in the database is maintained through a secure administrator log-in area. A well designed administrator log-in area makes it easy for anyone to update the website content without having to learn HTML or sophisticated website design software.

If you are interested in developing a dynamic, database driven website, have static web pages that need to be converted or want help with an existing dynamic website please contact us for a free consultation. We will be happy to discuss the various benefits and options available to you.

You can also use the comments form below for additional discussion and questions.

When I am working on a website I have a local development version that I program and test locally. When an update is implemented, it is tested locally before it is copied to the live server. Wordpress sites are treated no differently. Here is how you can make the wp-config.php portable to work in your live and local environment. Simply replace the variables below with the actual information for your web site and you will be have a wp-config.php that can happily thrive in both environments.

I defined an additional constant ‘LIVE’ that I can refer to elsewhere in my code to determine if I am on the live server or not.

wp-config.php

MySQL Queries

Another thing to be conscious of when moving between a live and local server environment with Wordpress are couple of records in the wp_options table of the database. The siteurl and liveurl records will be different in your local environment and live environment. If you copy your database from one to the other, just run the appropriate query below (with the liveurl and localurl variables changed to your actual data) depending on if you are copying from local to live or live to local.

Live to Local Query

Run query on local database.

Local to Live Query

Run query on live database.

If you have any questions or suggestions, your comments are welcome below.

If you do a lot of Emailing back in forth as I often do, you may want to try Google Wave. Google Wave is still an invitation-only beta (Gmail was an invitation-only beta from 2004-2007 years before being released to the public), so you will need an invite to start using it. I have about 10 invites left, so you can drop me a note and I will send you one if you are interested in trying it and promise to post something nice in my wave. Google Wave is hard to describe as I am quite a wave newbie myself. It is an amalgamation of Email, chat, bulletin board, shared document and a live meeting.

Since wave is currently the bleeding edge of technology, you will need a couple things besides an invite to make your web browser Wave ready. First of all I recommend using Firefox, so if you don’t have that web browser go ahead and install it. Next go install gears. Ok you should be all set! Now go visit my wave and try it out.

You will probably need to watch some of the videos and read the instructions at wave.google.com/about.html. If you have other resources and links, please share them in my wave. I am still a little perplexed by it all myself, but see some potential here. Who knows, maybe this thing will be really useful when it gets out of beta in 2013.

Thanks blog.zenika.com for sorting out the details.

I am looking forward to the launch of Adobe CS5. Although I have never been an early adopter of major software releases, preferring to read others feedback and take my time to understand the benefit of new features before shelling out hundreds of dollars, this release has my attention.

Adobe Flash CS5
I just got through watching a sneak peak of Flash CS5 at gotoAndLearn.com and it looks like Adobe is hitting the suite spot when it comes to what developers are looking for.

Text handling and fonts have always been a weak point when working in Flash. I am impressed with the features in CS5 that address text flow, better multi-lingual character support and the new font palette.

Flash has established itself as the most popular video streaming platform on the web today. Being able to scrub the video on the stage and add ActionScript cuepoints will be extremely useful timesavers.

Flash’s real power lies in it’s powerful ActionScript programming language that gives developers the freedom to shape the user experience without limits. Code snippets and a host of new features make it easier for programmers to control Flash using ActionScript. The XML-based source files are interesting too. From what I can tell at this early stage it looks like Flash is opening up their traditionally closed, complied SWF files for developers to be able to edit it’s properties and library items on the fly. Not only will this help with using version control, but also unlocks some interesting possibilities with custom content management systems.

The most hype about this release is centered around it’s wide distribution feature. In a nutshell, Adobe wants to allow a project created in Flash to be deployable across any platform (web, desktop, mobile, tablet). Ahead of this release Apple has announced it will not support applications developed using 3rd party (Adobe) software on the operating system running their widely popular iPhones, iTouches and iPads. This latest plot twist in the friction between Apple and Adobe definitely puts a crimp into this feature. However even without the Apple devices this feature will make it easier for developers to port their applications created in Flash to other popular mobile devices running Google’s Android, Windows and others.

I am much more excited about the release of Adobe’s CS5 than I was for the launch of the iPad. This one looks like it might actually be worthy of the hype.

naturesong.net was redesigned in 2009 to address some issues with the shopping cart, integrate a reseller login so resellers can log in and purchase CDs at a discount and NET 30 payment terms and generally update the look and feel of the site.

The shopping cart and content management system is completely custom. I decided to create a custom system for this site because I had a clear vision of how it should work. The owner, Bill Leverick, wanted to be able to easily update the CDs available for sale. I knew there were off-the-shelf shopping carts and content management systems I could probably have used or customized. Because these products had an ‘audio sample’ component to them that we needed to attach and be able to associate audio files with multiple products, I decided to build it myself. The site integrates PayPal Website Payments Pro for it’s merchant service provider and the UPS API to get shipping information from UPS in real-time for orders with quantities above 2 CDs. The AJAX overlay for each product uses the jQuery framework to handle the JavaScript effects.

In retrospect I am happy with my decision to go completely custom with this site. It allowed me to develop exactly what the client was looking for without excess functionality that he didn’t want or need and might have confused the process. It also allowed me to address his fine-tuning requests quickly and not have to compromise because of an off-the-shelf software limitation.

Here is a quote from the owner:

Ross,
I just logged on to check out the new NatureSong site that you activated today. I am very pleased not only with the graphics, but with the built in ability for me to make necessary changes to the products. You have done a great job and I would heartily recommend you to anyone. Please feel free to use this site and my other web site, Cape Cod & New England Gift Show as examples of your work.
Thanks,
Bill Leverick

View Project

The original site I developed in 1998 can be seen here.

You can now log in to post comments on my blog using FaceBook via WP-FacebookConnect.

This example uses the php class developed by Mark Sandborn (now hosted at code.google.com here). I made a couple slight modifications to the class. Using Marks’ class I created this form to serve as a starting point for you to present your user with various UPS shipping options and their associated costs to integrate into your own shopping cart.

download my sourcecode for the form
Rates and Service Selection XML Tool Developers Guide from UPS

Happy coding!

I know it’s lazy, but it’s handy…

date(“Y-m-d H:i:s”);

function.date.php

MySQL DATE_FORMAT