SeeIT Consult

Stable version 0.2.

This is a roll-up of recent fixes and enhancements. At this stage all development is on the 0.3 branch. Unless bugs appear before I’m ready with 0.3, there will be no further releases prior to 0.3.

Get it from the Tina MVC for Wordpress page.

Development version 0.3.

A complete reorganisation of the plugin folder structure and some functional enhancements. Check out at the version 0.3 development branch at the Wordpress plugin repository. This will be released shortly.

If you are evaluating Tina MVC then the 0.3 branch is where to go.

Westmoreland College

WestmorelandCollege.ie

Largely a brochure web site with some customisations.

This is the first real outing for Tina MVC (our in-house Wordpress plugin framework). Wordpress manages all content and templating, making ongoing maintenance a breeze.

Customisations are coded using Tina MVC:

• contact us form
• page widgets for showing sub pages of the current page
• page widgets for random testimonials

The result is a much accelerated development time. Not including the content (which will always be supplied by the client) development time was just a few days.

Asher Senyk

BornToRunAsh.com
born-to-run-ash.com

Ash is a runner, cyclist and general fitness freak who wins the Death Valley Marathon and runs extreme 70km marathons around Connemmara in his spare time.

His web site (built on Wordpress) is a simple enough visual affair – he wanted it up quickly and Wordpress themes allow you do do that and more. Because we were able to get the site up with a minimum of fuss (from a design point of view) we were able to concentrate on integrating the site with the various social networking bits and pieces that Ash uses.

The site is linked up to a Facebook account, a Twitter account and his Garmin training log.

Update: 2010-05-06:
Ouch – a hurried commit introduced a rather embarrassing bug. It has been fixed and an update has been uploaded as version 0.11.

This update contains a roll-up of various enhancements to the core:

• removal of the PHP __autoload() function requirement
• a new dispatcher method
• configurable handling of missing controller errors

This is a release candidate for 0.2. Get it from the Tina MVC for Wordpress page.

All seems well with the recent fixes, so I have bumped to version 0.1.8.

Download from the Tina MVC plugin page on Wordpress.org or download from SeeIT.org here.

There have been numerous updates to the framework over the past few weeks, mostly getting the various http redirects and user  login, registration and password reminder pages to play nicely with Wordpress. It seems to be working fine now, but until I am finished testing I’ll stay off bumping to version 0.1.8.

The shortcode and widget code and functionality remains largely unchanged and has been stable for a while now.

I have also added a tutorial on developing a contact form using Tina. It introduces the form helper and the usage of view files.

Also many thanks to Guido Mühlwitz for reviewing Tina MVC in his Webworking blog. He makes good points about code overhead, but (as he says) Wordpress can be troublesome to deal with sometimes, and Tina was designed to solve a few very specific problems for me.

Download from the Tina MVC plugin page on Wordpress.org or from the Tina MVC page on SeeIT.org.

This update:

• Minor bugfix: in tina_mvc_functions.php, tina_mvc_make_controller_url() was creating an incorrect url for absolute controller paths.
• Trivial bugfix: In one of the sample apps, index_view.php was using the wrong function to create some links to sample apps.

Important:

When you upgrade, the default installation will migrate files in the app/ and app_emails/ folders. As one the fixes is in sample_apps/tina-mvc-for-wordpress/index_view.php it will not be visible unless you copy the file tina-mvc-for-wordpress/index_view.php to apps/.

Thanks for Simon Stewart of CIC for spotting the bugs.

There was an issue in previous versions which prevented your customisations from being retained when Tina MVC was upgraded. This is now fixed.

Get it at Wordpress.org.

Important upgrade notice:

If you are upgrading from an older version of Tina, your customisations will NOT be migrated when you upgrade. You should manually backup the following from the tina-mvc directory:
- app/
- app_emails/
- tina_mvc_app_settings.php
and restore them after the plugin has been upgraded.

You will also need to deactivate and reactivate the plugin to reflect the new settings in tina_mvc_app_settings.php.

I haven’t been doing too much updating of the Tina code lately as I get used to the Wordpress.org developer interface and get some basic documentation up here, but there have been a few changes made as time permitted.

I’ve bumped to version 0.1.4 as a few very minor bugs surfaced. If you were trying a version prior to 0.1.2 then there was a problem with the plugin folder name (`tina_mvc` instead of `tina-mvc`) and the plugin just wouldn’t work – sorry.

I’ve written a quick start tutorial which will get you going quickly. There is also a (quick copy-paste job) function reference for the helper functions.

I will write a few more comprehensive tutorials as time permits, but at the moment Tina is being prepped for a project, so all priority is on making sure we can stick a big “production ready” sticker on it by the time the project is deployed (if there ever is such a thing in software). Currently in sights is getting the yucky “experimental” tag off the custom login and user pages feature. In any event all the core Tina code will be back-ported to the GPL version via Wordpress.org and here (www.seeit.org), so get stuck in!

Fran.

Tina MVC is the open source implementation of our new development framework.

Read about it and/or download from the main Tina MVC page on SeeIT.org.

Feel free to comment below, but if you would like to ask a support question, then do so here.

I have now been using the product for 3 weeks and have 21 days worth of upload, download and ping data. The latest graphs have been added to the end of the post: Imagine Wi-Max: One Week On.

The conventional wisdom always said that PHP’s include()/require() was quicker than include_once()/require_once(), but recently I came across an interesting post by Arin Sarkissian which suggests otherwise.

Also I found more commentary on the performance benefit of using relative versus absolute paths in include()/require() and include_once()/require_once() statements (although the main article’s conclusions contradict Arin’s experiments). The Drupal developers discussed and benchmarked the relative/absolute include() issue too.

So in keeping with the spirit of quick and dirty experimentation I hacked up some code and ran some tests on include()/require() against include_once()/require_once() and on the relative/absolute path issue. The results are pretty surprising and I love to hear some views.

Continue reading ‘PHP: The include() include_once() performance debate’ »

This is a follow up to my initial review of the Imagine Wi-Max product 2 weeks ago.

Updated on 2010-06-15 (see end of article for 3 weeks worth of test data).

Warning: do not host your DNS with BT Ireland.

Hard to believe, but get a load of BT Irelands policy on DNS changes…

1. Fax a request into them on company headed paper (“for security, don’t you know?!”)
2. Wait for 24 hours (“we only reload our DNS twice a day”).

In fact they are so protective of their DNS servers that they will not break their 2-reloads-a-day rule even in cases where they have made a mistake.

Exercise for the reader:

Figure out how to spoof a DNS change request to BT Ireland using nothing but a PC, a screen grabber and an Internet connection (you shouldn’t even need a physical fax machine).

The ultimate irony: Security guru Bruce Schneier is the Chief Security Technology Officer for BT (but I bet he doesn’t know about the fax-on-headed-paper security initiative)!

Update on getting stale DNS entries removed:

Four days! After becoming frustrated with tech support drones, I had to escalate it to the complaints department.

The symptom

You cease your contract with your hosting company, cancel your contract and move your web site. People start to complain that they cannot reach your web site. Nothing seems out of order.

The problem:

You were hosting with a major ISP (like Eircom, Magnet or BT Ireland). They put DNS entries into their servers for your web site. When you cancel your contract they should remove these entries. Magnet and BT Ireland are two companies that are negligent in this regard. If they don’t remove these DNS entries, then their customers can have problems reaching your new web site.

Continue reading ‘Beware: ISP’s as Hosting Companies – watch your DNS’ »

Last weekend I received a Wi-Max box from Imagine to replace my current DSL connection. Here are my initial thoughts on the device, the set-up and configuration, performance and some serious reservations about how Imagine have crippled the modem.

Continue reading ‘Imagine Wi-Max Initial Review’ »

In October 2007 Electric News reported that a vulnerability had been discovered with Eircom supplied DSL modem/routers. This was based on some clever investigative work by Kevin Devine in September of that year. It allowed an attacker to deduce the password used to encrypt traffic between a PC and the Wi-Fi access point.

To be fair calling it a vulnerability is being overly generous – the method used to generate the passwords was totally flawed. I would expect more from a 16 year old script kiddie with a Corn Flakes packet code wheel.

As an academic exercise and to publicise the vulnerability we converted some Perl scripts to PHP and published them to our web site. Believe it or not, almost four years hence, there are still a load of routers that are vulnerable. You can even get an iPhone app for it!

If you suspect you are affected, then follow the link below and see if we can deduce your password. If you are affected contact us and we will be happy to help. You can also find DIY instructions on how to secure your Netopia router here.

Go to the Eircom WEP password cracker page here.

Very useful if you run as a ‘restricted user’ (i.e. not a ‘power user’ or ‘administrator’):

Step 1: Get a CMD shell (‘DOS box’) as Administrator:

runas /user:administrator cmd

You will be asked for the Administrator password.

Continue reading ‘Using Runas to Add/Remove Programs/Hardware in Windows XP’ »

Symptom:

• An XML file saved as something.php.html
• Apache was trying to parse it as PHP and throwing an error because Short_open_tag was ‘on’

Fix:

Add the following to an .htaccess file in the folder (or a parent folder):

php_value short_open_tag off

I don’t know if this is a ‘bug’ or a ‘feature’. I don’t see why Apache should be interpreting *.php.html [...]

Continue reading ‘PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /whatever/my-php-class.php.html on line 1 with PhpDocumentor files on CentOS’ »

A client was approached the other day with an offer that sounds too good to be true. Well guess what, it is!

For more information, Webphoria (a UK web development company) has the story of the AdWords scam, and James from Online Media Direct checked it out the story with Google.

If you are approached with such [...]

Continue reading ‘Unlimited Google Adwords for a Fixed Fee – Not!’ »