Making It Up As I Go Along - Tools & Tips

Enforce 'www' prefix with .htaccess

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 22:17:00 -0600

On our Windows/ColdFusion servers at www.gowesthosting.com we run Helicon APE (and on our older servers, ISAPI Rewrite, also by Helicon) which lets you use standard Apache .htaccess files to create rewrite rules for any website.

Here are a few quick useful snippets for rewriting any URL to include the 'www' prefix. This is good practice, preventing the 'duplicate content' penalty from Google which can occur when a site is available under two addresses, as well as forcing consistency to visitor sessions. This is especially critical in eCommerce sites where a user's session may not be persisted when jumping from a 'www' to 'non-www' page.

RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [NC]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,nc]

just replace "domain.com" with your actual domain, and you should see http://yoursite.com/ gets redirected to add the 'www' prefix automatically.

TIP: be sure to use the 'www' anywhere you link to your site, or when connecting any third-party services like PayPal, since a form 'post' from any external source will not be persisted if the page gets redirected.

Tools to Live By: ClearContext plug-in for Outlook

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:08:00 -0600

I've used MS Outlook for a few years now, as part of my GTD-ish system for tracking tasks, appointments, and of course email messages. After quite a while of using a tricked-out routine using some variations on the built-in outlook categories (those colored dots that outlook lets you tack onto any message, task or appointment), along with the usual gazillions-of-folders for projects, customers, billing, personal messages and every other possible categorization of outlook info - all managed by clicking and dragging messages and tasks here and there - I went looking for a better solution... and I am so glad I did.

Enter "Clear Context" from http://www.clearcontext.com/ - this little add-in makes such a big difference to my day. While it boasts a long list of features ( see the user guide, here: http://www.clearcontext.com/user_guide/ ), I'll touch briefly on the ones I use the most, and let you see for yourself why i am so excited about this tool.

1) Folders as 'projects'. ClearContext analyzes your Outlook folders and uses those as the basis for what it calls 'projects'. The entire application runs based on those folders - replacing outlook's somewhat limited category options with a limitless number of options for filing. When i get a new client or project, i create a folder, and once i've put a message from a client in that folder, CC 'suggests' that future messages from the same person go there as well. Unlike regular message folders, these same project/folder names are applied to your tasks, and CC's easy 'dashboard' view lets me see all messages, tasks, attached files and contact information for anything in that folder or related to that 'project'.

2) Put stuff where it goes with keyboard shortcuts, and smart suggestions. With any message highlighted, i can hit ctrl+shift+m for an intuitive list of likely folders where this message belongs (ClearContext gets to know who you put where and suggests it back to you, becoming more accurate as time goes on). So, without taking my hands off the keys, i can file an entire day's worth of email in a matter of seconds. This is big, and the way it works is super slick.

3) Defer / Unsubscribe. These are two separate features but both of them serve the same purpose - getting things out of your face that you don't want to see! With a single click i can 'defer' any message for a set number of hours or days, or until a set time and date - it is removed from view, and at the set time, it comes back to my inbox as a new message. So, if stuff piles in for 'later' while i am working on correspondence for 'now', i can defer everything else until i am ready to deal with it, and don't even have to look at it until then. 'Unsubscribe' uses the message subject to create a rule which puts all messages using that same subject line into a special folder 'clear context deferred', which i look at and then empty to deleted items every few days. This is also huge - repeat emails, junk alerts, group messages where i am bcc'd but really don't need to be - they all go away, never to be seen, clicked or managed again (unless i want to ... then they are easy to find)

4) Tasks from messages. More keyboard shortcuts, or a click on a single toolbar icon, allows me to create an outlook 'task' from any message. Even if I file or delete the email message (which i often do, once a task is made) , CC saves a task with the due date i specify, and the email text as the body of the message, with the original message attached. This makes it uber-easy to look through my to-do list , by category, and see what needs to be done. If i mark the task complete, or delete it, the original message is still where i put it, for future reference, without the need to refile it from 'to do' to the project it belongs to. This is incredibly useful for the way i work, and the way i use Outlook.

5) Do not disturb. Turns off auto send/receive for a limited time, and hides the 'you have mail' icon along with any sounds related to same. Click that, leave me alone, I am working.

6) Follow-up. When sending any message, there's an easy option to 'follow up'. This creates an automated alert, again at a time and/or date i specify, which is automatically cancelled when somebody replies to the message (lots of options there for who must reply to cancel the follow-up, etc) . If i send off a proposal (or even more importantly, a bill) and want to make sure the client receives it , I simply click the follow-up button and can put the whole thing out of mind. If the client replies, the alert is cancelled - if they don't, i get reminded to follow up. Super simple, super useful.

Overall, my goal is to keep things organized and my inbox empty so i don't have to think about any of it. By making easy to file and find all email messages, tasks and other important 'to do' data, I can free my 'mental RAM' from carrying those things around, and focus on whatever i am doing at the time. (Now, what was I doing... ?)

If you use Outlook's tasks, or file your messages by folder, or just like to keep your inbox clean, I suggest you take a test drive (30 day free trial, $89.95 to buy w/ money-back guarantee) of this super useful, well-maintained and carefully implemented add-in.
You can also check in with other users in the active, well-supported Clear Context forums: http://online.clearcontext.com/forums/ to find how it can help you get more done.

When Alt+Tab just isn't cutting it: VistaSwitcher!

Mon, 03 May 2010 02:45:00 -0600

Any PC user who likes keyboard shortcuts knows about the Alt + Tab combination built into all recent versions of Windows. It has been improved in recent versions, and the visual options and speed in Win 7 are pretty good... but not good enough.

That's where VistaSwitcher comes in - I just found this little app, and it is instantly part of my workflow, providing a more visible, more intuitive way to switch between open programs or documents.

From the description:

Alt + Tab	Switch between ALL open windows
Alt + ` (Backtick)	Switch between open windows of a single application (for example, MS Word documents or Explorer folders)

Also, you can switch between open windows with only the mouse. No keyboard shortcuts required! Just hold your right mouse button down and scroll the wheel up or down to select the window you want.

Check it out here:

http://www.ntwind.com/software/vistaswitcher/download.html

HTML Formatter ColdFusion-friendly code cleanup tool

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:44:00 -0600

No matter how clean your code, there's something to be said for a fast, clean pre-launch cleanup with a reliable code formatter . My favorite by far is the HTML Formatter from LogicHammer.com: http://www.logichammer.com/html-formatter/

Complete with a full set of ColdFusion-friendly options, this simple tool makes cleaning your code a snap. I use it as I'm working, to clean up the work-so-far at any point, and before final launch to make sure the production code will be as easy as possible to maintain and revisit later on. It is a standalone executable, which means there's no installation, and you can put in anywhere you like on your hard drive.

I simply create a taskbar shortcut on my Windows PC and drag the files I want to clean directly from the 'project' view in Eclipse onto the icon - couldn't be faster, simpler or easier. I prefer to have my original files altered, with the originals automatically put in a specified backup location - you can also assign the option to leave the original alone and create a cleaned-up copy.

Among other fav features, HTML Formatter ships with a simple text-based config file which makes it incredibly easy to specify tags to ignore or to indent, and file extensions to be formatted or skipped ( you can run the formatting on specific files, or an entire directory).

For only $14.99 you get all the features and 2 years of updates (there is also an 8.99 version with a basic feature set). The program's developer has answered every question I ask directly and has been very helpful with customizations, even building in some features I requested a while back (for the record - I'm not affiliated with logichammer in any way, just very pleased with this slick little tool).

Keyboard Shortcuts I use all the time

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 12:12:00 -0600

WIN 7
--------

Win + Arrow left/right:
snap open window to 1/2 monitor frame

Win + Arrow up/down:
up: full screen (maximize window)
down: restore / minimize

Alt + F4:
Exit program / close window

Win + D:
Show desktop

Eclipse (w/ CFeclipse)
----------

Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down arrows
Duplicate line

Alt+Up/Down arrows
Move line

Alt + F > A
Save as

Ctrl + Shft + R
Open file w/ search by name

Firefox
----------

Ctrl+T
New Tab

Ctrl+T
New Window

Ctrl+Shift+Q
Inspect Element (Firebug)

Ctrl+Shift+F
Display Element Information (Web Dev Tools)

Ctrl+Shift+W
Close window (close all tabs)

Ctrl+W
Close current tab

Installing SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:04:00 -0600

I don't do much work on MS SQL, but a recent project requires I connect to a remote SQL 2008 database, so I went looking for the new version of the SQL Server Management Studio Express program which has worked so well, and so simply, for SQL 2005 databases.

Simple enough, right? Not quite. It didn't take me long on Google to realize i was far from the only one having trouble installing just the Management Studio, without the server components. Microsoft has managed to make this process incredibly unintuitive, including links and download pages which don't actually point you to what you think you are getting.
( for examples, see the google link above... i'm being really nice in this post by comparison!)

The best compromise i could find was the official MS download page, which offers a 160+mb file containing the full database server system. Blog posts mention compatibility issues (Win7 did throw up some warnings of its own when i started the process, so i backed out and kept looking), incomplete installations and the need to run the installer twice so you can 'add' the Management Studio as a component to an existing installation.

Huh? Exactly.

So, anyway... for those that might be in the same plight... I have the solution!

Go here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/Downloads/platform.aspx and install the MS 'Web Platform Installer'. Then, when the installer loads up, find the little 'customize' link under the "Database" section, where you can tick the boxes for the components you want to install. ( see image )

Once i got it going, this was actually a slick little installer.
(So finally I have SQL 2008 Management Studio ready to go.
Now, what was i going to use it for?)

A whole new Outlook

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:04:00 -0600

I depend on Outlook 2007 in a number of ways but it has been kludgy, memory-hoggish and recently, a dead weight on anything else that was running at the same time. Granted, I have a massive storage of email and use the heck out of tasks, but still, it should work once things get loaded. Today I got fed up with the freezes and did some investigation.

I am happy to report I found what seems to be a magic tonic, restoring the Outlook I used to like!

The cause was apparently an "Add-In", and the slowness is a common symptom. I won't go into all I read about Outlook Add-ins here, but it is a little subculture all its own.

The cure, for me, was as easy as disabling all Outlook add-ins... once I found where and how (it is not obvious!)

1) To do this in Vista, you have to be running Outlook as an administrator . (right click on Outlook.exe, select 'run as administrator')

2) Once Outlook starts up, go to Tools, then Trust Center

3) In the Trust Center window, select 'Add-Ins' - you'll see a list of Add-Ins, and below that a select box labeled "Manage:" Select "COM Add-ins" and click "Go", to bring up the window where you can actually Manage your Add-ins. ( They must over-engineer this on purpose. 1 out of 10 for intuitiveness, MS!)

4) In the Add-Ins window, you can uncheck the box for any that you want to disable. I unchecked them all, not seeing a darn thing there I thought I might ever need. ( And surprised at the number of things that allow themselves to 'talk' to Outlook behind the scenes)

5) Save, OK and otherwise Exit your way all the way out, close Outlook and if you like , reboot your computer.

6) Launch Outlook again like always, and marvel at the speed. Seriously, this made a *huge* difference!

View XML directly in Firefox without the annoying 'add to reader' screen

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:42:00 -0600

This is one of those little things that has bugged me for quite some time, but not quite enough to do anything about... until now...

Whenever I try to view an xml file, whether it be a sitemap.xml file from one of my website projects, a data export file, or an rss feed, Firefox shows me a screen with two options, "add to google reader" or "add to google homepage" ... usually I want neither, I just want to see my xml!

The fix was actually super simple... but, lest I forget at some point ( most likely not too far in the future) how I managed to banish this little annoyance, I'll post it here:

1) In FF, go to Tools > Options in the top menu
2) Select the Applications tab
3) Scroll down to "Web Feed" (how annoying ... not 'xml', not 'rss', but 'web feed'? really? )
4) Change the Web Feed 'action' to "Preview in Firefox" (mine said "Use Google" before changing)
5) Click the 'ok' button and go to any .xml file url to see all the wonderful XML , sans reader-prompt annoyance !

121 Blackberry Tips - some good ones, too!

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0600

A friend and fellow Blackberry enthusiast just turned me on to this blog post featuring a very comprehensive list of BB tips and resources, including several very useful keyboard shortcuts and other tricks I was not aware of at all.

Here's the full link: http://www.insidecrm.com/features/121-blackberry-tips-021408/

Live HTTP Headers Firefox Extension

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:45:00 -0600

As part of my url-redirection efforts related to the launch of the new company site, I've been looking more closely at 301 redirection using ColdFusion ( see this post about CF 301 with CFlocation - it really is that simple! ) But, being somewhat skeptical that it could really, truly be that simple, I still wanted to verify that the redirection was going through as '301' status in my web browser. On the advice of a friend, I downloaded the quick easy FireFox extension called "Live HTTP Headers" http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/ Within a few seconds, I had my proof. I did a quick google search that I knew would turn up my old site, clicked "Tools > Live Http Headers" in Firefox, and clicked on the first result for 'www.mredesign.com'. Sure enough I was looking at the new site, www.gowestweb.com , and in the little Live Http popup, I had my 301 proof. Here's part of the detailed output: http://www.mredesign.com/ GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: www.mredesign.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://www.google.com/search?q=utah+web+designer&btnG=Search&hl=en&client=firefox-a HTTP/1.x 301 Moved Permanently Connection: close Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:44:48 GMT Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Location: http://www.gowestwebdesign.com/index.cfm Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.gowestwebdesign.com/index.cfm GET /index.cfm HTTP/1.1 Host: www.gowestwebdesign.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://www.google.com/search?q=utah+web+designer&btnG=Search&hl=en&client=firefox-a I am a happy (and safely redirected) camper. Very nice tool, works just like it should... and free!

YouMail VoiceMail for Blackberry

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:35:00 -0600

If you call GoWest Web outside of office hours, or during an important meeting, you will get our voicemail. As part of the business image upgrade for GoWest Web Design and Hosting, I went looking for a solution with features that would allow us to respond more quickly to customer voicemail.

I've always used my mobile voicemail for the business (via a simple call forwarding option w/ my local phone company), which allows me to get forwarded calls and dial in to hear voicemail, but I know there are better options. I tried Vonage for a while, and though I prefer working with my local landline company, I really liked some of the features, especially the option to have an email sent with an audio attachment of the voicemail message. It just makes sense.

On the recommendation of several trusted professionals, I just set up YouMail on my BlackBerry curve and so far I am really impressed.

You can read about YouMail here: http://www.youmail.com/youmail/home.do
I don't have too much interest in the pay-for services like transcription to text, but could see that being useful in the future. For now I am using the Free version of YouMail, which is plenty.

I had one issue with the YouMail client for BlackBerry, where the screen came up blank with no options, just a heading and no inbox. Has something to do w/ being logged out while connected... or something... but, while seeking that solution, I found this blog post about VYMail , and now I think I've got the best setup possible... I used the very nice YouMail interface to set up my account, verify my phone, etc, and installed VYmail on my Blackberry for viewing and managing messages.

The thing that won me over (and sent me racing to my blog admin to write about the wonders of YouMail): when I had a problem during testing, I called YouMail support, got a very friendly, very clear-speaking helpful person, and within 20 seconds, the solution!(Calls forwarded from landline to mobile were being greeted with a login prompt instead of a greeting message - fix was adding the landline number to youmail account, and removing 'automatic login' from that number).

So.. I am totally sold. There are a number of features that I haven't checked out yet but here's my current setup

1) Landline w/ Local phone company ( call me... 435.644.8523 )

2) Forwards to Mobile after 4 rings when in office, instantly when out or on other call.

3) Mobile is set up on YouMail, with a custom greeting - if I don't answer (or I push 'ignore' when I see you on caller ID) you get my YouMail instead of my usual Verizon mailbox message.

4) When you leave me a message, I get an SMS text notification, and within seconds, an Email with the voicemail attached. Even better, the 'VYmail' app on my BB notifies me that I have a new message, and downloads the audio for me. One click - no dialing, no password - and I hear the message, knowing I can replay anytime and will have a backup on my pc when I get back to the office.

Thanks YouMail for a great free app, and vyMail for an excellent add-on tool!

TwitterFeed and Tweet.js - feed your blog to Twitter, and your Twitter feed to any page

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:32:00 -0600

Two fun, free tools for blog/Twitter syndication combo:

1) www.twitterfeed.com : enter any Blog Rss feed url and twitterfeed will automatically post your blog entries to your twitter account

2) tweet.js : light, fast jQuery powered Twitter feed display - easy to configure options and show your Twitter posts on any page you choose

See both in action in the sidebar, here: www.gowestweb.com

Anything I post on this blog gets added to my 'gowestweb' twitter feed, which is shown on the GoWest site using tweet.js

Use Gmail for mailto email web links

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 01:30:00 -0600

On my main pc, I can click 'send link' in Firefox and Outlook opens up, I choose a recipient and send the url as an email. On my laptop, I use gmail... and often email links to myself for things to follow up on later, from the main machine. I hadn't bothered to look it up but have thought for a while how nice it would be if I could do the same with Gmail, setting it as the default client for mailto links from the browser... sure 'nuff... this blog post explains in very simple terms how to do it: http://ffextensionguru.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/gmail-as-default-for-mailto/

Filezilla - open site manager or a specific site connection on startup

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:57:00 -0600

For FTP, I love FileZilla. After using WS_FTP for years, and then trying alternatives like SmartFTP and even FireFTP, the simplicity and straight-up speed of FileZilla (FZ) really makes things seem easy and clean. Then I discovered 'synchronized browsing' and knew I had a winner.

However, one thing that has eluded me (until today) was how to get FZ to start up with less clicks. I have just a few FTP accounts that I use most of the time, and even though it is still pretty quick, I've been thinking I could cut down the amount of time to 1) click FZ shortcut , 2) click on site manager and then the connection I want (or, the dropdown for saved sites, and the one I want from there).

The answer is so simple, I feel silly not doing this sooner. Using the info found here: http://wiki.filezilla-project.org/Command-line_arguments , I was able to easily tell FZ to start up with the 'site manager' open. Here's how (in Windows):

1) right click on the FZ shortcut on your desktop, task bar, whatever, and select 'properties'

2) edit the url shown in the "Target" box by simply adding "-s" after the quoted url (after the closing quote)

So:
"C:\Program Files\FileZilla FTP Client\filezilla.exe"
Becomes:
"C:\Program Files\FileZilla FTP Client\filezilla.exe" -s

3) Click "OK". That's it.
Now when you click your shortcut, FZ will open with the Site Manager displayed and your connection is just one click away.

To go one step further, and create a shortcut to a specific FTP connection (i.e. open up FZ and connect to this site with one click) the answer is a tad longer but just as simple:

1) right click on the FZ shortcut on your desktop, task bar, whatever, and select 'properties'

2) edit the url shown in the "Target" box by simply adding "-c/" , then a 1 if FZ-default connection or a 0 if user-defined, and the sitename, in quotes, after the quoted URL

So:
"C:\Program Files\FileZilla FTP Client\filezilla.exe"
Becomes:
"C:\Program Files\FileZilla FTP Client\filezilla.exe" -c "0/myftpsite"

where 'myftpsite' is the name of your site connection in FZ (see the wiki link above, if you put your sites in folders within the Site Manager the path will be a bit longer)

3) Click "OK". Test your shortcut.

I actually replaced my single taskbar FZ icon with two shortcuts - one for the site manager open, and another for the FTP site I use most of the time.

This will save me countless clicks over the coming months! The only thing that could make this better is a 'hot drop' feature like WS_FTP, where you can drag files onto a desktop icon and have them uploaded automatically... hmm.....

Setting up Eclipse 3.5 w/ CFeclipse 1.34 & Aptana 1.5

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:54:00 -0600

A new version of Eclipse (version 3.5 aka 'Galileo') was just released, along with a well-timed new version of CFeclipse (version 1.34), the Eclipse-based ColdFusion editor, and a new version (1.5) of the incredibly versatile Aptana Studio eclipse plugn. I've been using Eclipse for a while now, but my installation was done as a total noob and it is unclear to me what is part of native Eclipse, what came with my current version of the CFeclipse plugin, and what's provided as part of the wonderful Aptana code editor, another must-have plugin for my daily Eclipse use. In an effort to trace my steps this time around, I'm attempting to make notes as I go. Your mileage may vary (I'm on Windows, not sure if it varies for Mac, for example), but here's what I did: . [More]