Category Archives: Tech stuff

Working with Weaver II–Part 3

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

One of the big problems with customising themes is that the theme’s core files have to be modified.

So you spend a happy few hours modifying style.css and you get the site looking just as you wish.  Then along comes an update to the theme which nicely overwrites your customised style.css and you are back to where you started. 

Of course you should have a backup of your customised file, but suppose the update included the theme author’s updates to style.css? 

As I have already pointed out, Weaver has the facility to insert your own code (CSS or HTML) into the header or footer of the site without any file editing.

An example of this is in the layout of the nested comments on the theme.  I felt that the reply to a comment wasn’t indented enough, and could lead to some confusion, as it wasn’t immediately obvious whether a comment was a new comment in its own right, or a reply to a previous comment.

Indent1

The obvious way was to modify the style.css file but I went the route of adding an insert of some CSS into the Header in the (Advanced) Admin area –

.commentlist li.comment, #respond  {
margin-left: 15px !important;
}

This had the desired effect.  The effect is small but significant enough to improve readability –

Indent2

Since I made that modification, there has been an update to the Weaver theme.  I applied the update and all my modifications remained intact.

Another hugely significant feature is that in the event of catastrophic failure I only need three things –

  1. A database dump (mailed to me daily via a plug in)
  2. A copy of the images I have created
  3. A tiny XML file which Weaver creates and which contains all the modifications I have applied to the theme, including code inserts.

Every other item I need can be downloaded from the Internet.

Not many themes can do that?!

Working with Weaver II–Part 2

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I mentioned before that I had rejigged my three blogs to use Weaver II.

I am currently in the process of designing another (for a friend of a friend) and am once again using Weaver II.

It has become a real challenge to see just how far I can go without changing any code whatsoever in the core Weaver II files.  So far I am really impressed.

One of the big features is the ability to insert snippets of additional HTML, CSS or Javascript into parts of the site just by entering those snippets in at the Admin area. 

WeaverDash

So far I have been able to add CSS animation, customise a plugin’s display and to layout a complete page using CSS.  The latter was done by entering the various blocks (DIVs) on the page itself and then using custom CSS to handle those blocks.

I did come across a couple of areas though where in the bad old days I would have modified the raw code.  In particular I wanted to be able to place my own code in specific areas on pages.  For example, I wanted to insert some additional text onto the Comment form and also some Javascript (for Google Ads) onto posts.  The way around this was to install another plugin – Code Insert Manager – which does exactly what I want.  I realise there are plugins for Google Ads, but the Insert Manager does this and a lot more besides.

So far, I have managed to do everything without any file editing with one small exception – I use the CKEditor plugin for WYSIWYG comment editing and I wanted to modify the available buttons.  This isn’t possible from the admin area so I finally had to resort to tweaking the plugin’s file.

Weaver II also has its own plugin (Weaver II Theme Extras) which is essential as it contains an excellent backup feature.  All non-default settings and code additions to Weaver II are backed up to a small file which can be stored locally.  In the event of catastrophic failure the entire site can be restored using the standard installation files and then retoring all the various modifications using the backup file.

That’s assuming you have a backup of the database and images, of course!

Working with Weaver II – Part 1

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I started writing blogs back in 2006.

After a bit of searching at the time I found a template I liked, that was simple and easily adaptable, and have been using that template ever since.  In fact I started a second blog and used the same template (heavily modified) on that too.

Over the years, both the CSS and PHP files in the template were extensively modified, particularly as in the early days (pre-widget) I had hard coded a lot of items straight into the template files.

A couple of weeks ago I decided it was time for a bit of an overhaul.  The first thing I did was to “widgetise” Head Rambles.  That was fairly painless and the result looked almost identical to the original.  However I still had a load of modified template files and the CSS was in a bit of a mess.  I decided on a change of the core theme and template.

My good friend Kirk pointed me in the direction of Weaver II, which is a template he has been using.

My first impression was that it looked a bit daunting.  I set up a local server on my laptop and installed it there.  Sure enough, there was a bit of a learning curve.  The Admin area is quite large with a lot of options.

My first project was to create a theme to match the Rambles one as closely as possible.  The further I went the more impressed I became.  There is virtually no aspect of the design that couldn’t be changed from the Admin area.

Rambles is now running the new Weaver template and the original design.  The main aspect is that I haven’t touched a single PHP or CSS file so updates/upgrades won’t destroy anything.  As a bonus, I have been able to remove several plugins as their functions are built into Weaver. 

The only drawback, if you can call it that is that the theme is three times slower that the old one.  Does that sound bad?  If I say that the old one took 0.07 seconds to load while Weaver takes 0.2 seconds?  Not bad considering all the additional bonuses.  The new site is mobile friendly (previously I had to install a plugin and a clatter of extra themes).  It has a much better comment area, with nested comments.  And I can make any changes to the theme with a couple of clicks of the mouse, with no FTP or file editing at all.

Since then I have also redesigned this site and Smoking so all three sites are now updated.

I have a feeling I will be writing a bit more about Weaver!

VirtualBox disk size

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I use VirtualBox on an almost daily basis.

As I now use Linux Mint as my operating system of choice, I need some way to run a few programmes that are specific to Windows, such as Windows Live Writer (which I am using to write this!).

A long time ago I set up a Virtual Machine to run Windows 7.  I installed Live Writer and Office (which I never managed to install via Wine despite claims that it can be done).  Since then, I backup my “VirtualBox VMs” folder and restore it after any upgrade.  My Windows 7 therefore remains pristine and fully working.

Lately however I have been running close to full disk capacity in my VM, with only 1Gb to spare.  My first thought was to create a new VM and install a copy of Windows 7 there.  That worked with no problems as I expected, however try as I might I cannot get Live Writer to work properly.  Of the three blogs I work on, one loads with no problems whatsoever, the second connects but refuses to recognise the theme and the third won’t even recognise the fact that it’s a WordPress installation.  All three blogs have identical setups so I am baffled as to the cause of this.

The solution to my problem I have now discovered is extremely easy.  I simply increased the size of my virtual hard drive.

Open a terminal in home/VirtualBox VMs  and CD into the folder that contains the virtual Machine (in my case it was “Win 7”).  Then run the command

VBoxManage modifyhd “Win 7.vdi” –resize 30000

That’s it!

Naturally you need to change the “Win 7.vdi” bit to your own VM name (and the quotes are necessary if there is a space in the name), and set your own new disk size (the number is Mb, so 30000 = 30Gb).  Note also that there are two dashes in “–resize”.

There is one further step though.  Running your VM will still show the old disk size, which may cause a moment of frustration or even panic!  The reason is that you have increased the hard disk but with an unformatted area.

In my case I simply went into Windows’ Disk Management (enter “partition” into Search to find it) and expanded my current disk to fill the new free space.

My Windows 7 Virtual Machine now has an extra 10Gb of free space!

Simple Scan not finding a scanner

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I recently did a full format and reinstall of Linux Mint 13.

I installed the MATE version from DVD but installed Cinnamon on top, and am using that as my default desktop.

As part of the build, I had to connect to my printer.  It’s a Hewlett Packard Officejet J4680 wireless multi-function printer and it is well supported by Linux.

Setting up the printer was no problem at all.  However, when I went to test the scanner I ran into problems.  While I could print pages to my heart’s content, Simple Scan just flatly refused to recognise the scanner.

I searched the Internet and found a few people with the same problem, but no solutions.

It then occurred to me that the setup of the printer had actually been too easy!  It just connected and that was that, with no downloading of drivers or anything.  I disconnected the printer and logged into MATE.  I went to reconnect the printer and it promptly downloaded the drivers.  Even better, Simple Scan now worked.

I logged back into Cinnamon and all works smoothly.

It’s not an elegant solution to the problem, but it did solve it.