Serif Blog

This how-to will follow me as I work through the process of building a site starting with RapidWeaver.  The site will be bare-bones structured in RapidWeaver, then I will take the home page and turn it into a Joomla theme.  Then content will be added to the site using Joomla articles.  I will also use the FaceBook Connect platform to get a family website off the ground quickly by adding the family members’ FaceBook pictures and feeds to each of their pages.  Although there is not much I have found for rich Flickr content, I will also be adding Flickr sets to the page for easy gallery uploads.  The first installment will be showing you how I tricked Joomla into thinking a RapidWeaver page was a fully functional theme without any changes to a bare-bones Joomla theme.  Stay Tuned…

If you have a website you are building for a client and they need to edit one or two pieces of information and you don’t want to go to a full blown CMS solution consider using Google’s *free Google Docs account to manage it.  The process is a little tricky, so just read through these steps and apply it to your own situation.  I will let you refer to Google on how to set up the account and save your content.  You will need to create the following files:

1. A Google Docs file - Your client will edit this
2. This PHP file - Save it as google.php and upload to your server

From the Google Docs website, open your client content file you created and at the top-right of the page there will be a blue drop-down button “Share”.   Select “Publish as Web Page”.  On the following page, click “Publish Document”, then click “Automatically re-publish when changes are made”.

Now on your website, replace the formerly static content with

<iframe src =”paste_PHP_file_URL_here” width=”100%” height=”200″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”> 

<p>Your browser does not support iframes.</p>

</iframe>
 

Adjust the <iframe> height and width parameters to fit your site. Also, you can change the text inside the <p> tag above to include more relevant information in case the user’s browser doesn’t support it (universal access, text only browsers).

Your Google Docs page should now show up on the client’s site.  Any time they edit the document from Google Docs it will automatically be changed on their website as well!

To summarize, you have created a Google Docs document with full rich text and image capabilities that a client can edit quickly and easily which will be visible on their website and updated automatically.  This is done by using a PHP page that makes some minor changes to the Google Docs document so it looks nice in a web page.  This modified page is then included in their site inside the <iframe> tag which makes a web page within a web page.

After having problems with RapidWeaver publishing my site over FTP, I searched the net looking for solutions.  After looking for an answer to why my FTP client is uploading files of size zero, a quote from the movie Zoolander came to mind.  Will Ferrel as the evil Mr. Mugatu in response to his feelings about fashion model Derick Zoolander being famous for his many modeling facial expressions all of which are exactly the same says “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”  These quotes will help you understand:

National Instruments
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/4D5B0EF024E178B386256DF2007A6909

Situation:
After you install Norton Internet Security for Macintosh 2.0.x, when you upload a file to an FTP server using an FTP client in passive mode, the file you upload is empty or contains 0 bytes.

Solution:
In some cases when uploading files to an FTP server with an FTP client in passive mode, the files uploaded are empty or contain 0 bytes.
To avoid uploading empty files, disable passive mode in your FTP client and use active mode to transfer files. To disable passive mode in your FTP client, see the documentation for the FTP application that you are using. You may also need to disable passive mode in Mac OS X if it is enabled.

OK, so I should FTP in active mode? National Instruments seems to be so sure.

Symantic
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/num.nsf/pfdocs/2003013010180811

Problem:
When I use the FTP Put File VI to upload a file to an FTP server, why does the file appear on the FTP server as an empty file with 0 bytes size? The VI does not report an error.

Solution:
You must send the passive command before you can upload files to an FTP server that does not allow anonymous logins but requires you specify a username and password. The passive command requests the FTP server to listen on a data port that is not the default data port and to wait for a connection instead of initiating one when it receives a transfer command.

Wire a FALSE constant to the active input of an FTP Put VI to send a passive command to an FTP server, as shown in the following image…

Wait, my problem must be solved in active mode! Hmm… why doesn’t my client have an indecisive mode? The real answer depends on your individual situation so you must read up here to get a clue: