So I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have an easily accessible cloud database. In other words, mysql databases that could be accessed by any site, a mysql db for the cloud.

One of the most important, especially to me as someone who works with packages that use databases, is that the service run 24 hours a day without interruption. I cannot have a client complain that their site is giving errors because of not being able to access the mysql database. The solution is a cloud database that has good network connections, and not just from a few major carriers.

Another factor that clients will probably ask you for is scalability. What if their blog suddenly gets a link from a famous site and wham, 100,000 hits/day, can the cloud database handle it? Will the traffic overwhelm it or will there be nothing more than a blip on a graph?

Before I sign off, another thought. If you have a cloud database and install a wordpress site (for example), what happens if you move the site? If the database is in the cloud, it’s far far simpler to move the site, all you’d need to do is alter the settings in the config file. If the database were local, you’d have to zip up the database, move it, and so on, which would take a lot more time.

This has been a sponsored post, but what I’ve written has been taken from my own experiences with databases.

So what do you know about faxing? You take a piece of paper, transcode it into digital format, send it over a phone line to another fax machine to reverse the process. Not exactly rocket science I suppose, but when it was first introduced, it was groundbreaking. Now another method of faxing, the fax exchange is poised to add to the longevity of the fax.

I can remember several years ago trying to find a method of faxing via email, this was before anything like this existed, and was from a unix machine, so we’re talking about over a decade ago now. Nothing happened from it, and the project died out to be replaced by another.

What is a fax exchange exactly then? Ok so you can send an email to a fax number; the online fax exchange servers get that email and then send it to the fax number. This is all done over the cloud, the online service that runs the fax sending. You can be assured of many multiples of lines to handle incoming emails to send faxes out.

I think if I were to use this, I would have an important question, what about security? Can I be assured that my fax is sent then gone, no trace of it? Interestingly, yes, you can set an option todelete the fax when it’s sent! You can also set all sorts of options using fax exchange, encrypting the faxes and even authenticating senders to make sure only you use your account.

And another interesting feature of this fax exchange service, you can defer sending up to 30 days, specifying date and time as well as how many times you want to try to send the fax.

One final thing I wanted to cover. You only pay for what you send, and in this day and age, one of the most important.

This has been a sponsored post, but my opinions and thoughts are totally my own.

JMeter, the Apache desktop application, is used for load testing simulation (specifically heavy load testing) and has extended it’s original design to encompass files, servlets, Perl, Java, Databases and more. Instead of having this on the desktop though, maybe a better way is to use Jmeter cloud testing.

Ok knowing a little bit about development work I know that there are many applications that could use Jmeter testing, lots of different server types that can be tested out: web, SOAP, LDAP etc.,

What would someone get from utilizing a cloud-based Jmeter testing platform? Well right off the top of my head I could think of one – you wouldn’t have to install the product and have it running on your own hardware, using your resources that you might want at that time. You could access the configuration via your browser, and set it all going, using the resources in the cloud, not in your office. You would only pay for what you use, simple enough. You save money by not having set it all up in the first place and let’s be honest, we all like saving money right?

Can I think of anything that might make you want to consider not using cloud testing? Not really. JMeter, like anything else, offers you something you would need especially when you’re in an development arena. Cloud testing is just another form of that.

Perhaps something else that jumps to mind when I’m thinking about this: assume you have a fairly large development team, and you want to test lots of different projects, you’d save a fair amount of money by not having a large team just testing when you can log onto a browser and configure it all to go. Concentrate on your projects, and spend the minimum of time using JMeter cloud testing to make sure it’s going to withstand the stress you hope it’ll take.

Do you get just a bit of text saying what the results are? A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Err no, the results are going to be comprehensive, telling you a lot of what you couldn’t even imagine.

This is a sponsored post, I hope that I have helped you with my honest opinion.

Normally it’s like this in the config.php file:

$table_prefix = ‘wp_’;

Just change it to something more complicated, a random set of letters and/or numbers if possible like so:

$table_prefix = ‘e998thF1_’;

It’s free to use, and called the Author Feeds Widget. There is an option in the Widgets administration section to show/not show the admin feed, and another option to set the title of the widget in the sidebar, but other than that it’s as simple as can be!

add_action(‘admin_print_styles’, ‘my_admin_styles’);

This then calls a function my_admin_styles() that you’ll add to functions.php file, as follows:

function my_admin_styles() {
global $post_type, $pagenow;
if ((‘post.php’ != $pagenow && ‘post-new.php’ != $pagenow) || current_user_can(‘administrator’))
return;
?>
<style type=”text/css”>#sticky-span { display:none!important; }</style>
<?php
}

There it is, as simple as that! This has a check to make sure that the user who is writing the post isn’t an administrator (after all, administrators shouldn’t be barred from doing anything, right?).

First of all you need to use an add_action() to hook into admin_head:

add_action(‘admin_head’, ‘theme_page_head’);

This then calls your defined function in the functions.php file, ‘theme_page_head’ like so:

function theme_page_head() {
 if (!current_user_can(‘administrator’)) {
  remove_meta_box(‘categorydiv’, ‘post’, ‘side’);
 }
}

Here we call the remove_meta_box() function, with the ‘categorydiv’ as first argument, the type of page we’re targeting (post/page/link, or registered custom post type) as the second argument, and then the context (normal/advanced/side) where it would normally appear. Voila the category box has gone.

To get more information on this you should see WordPress’ remove_meta_box() Codex entry, as there is more information on there as well as a list of some of the possible meta boxes available to target.

add_action(‘wp_login’,'market_wp_login’);
function market_wp_login() {
 global $current_user;
 get_currentuserinfo();
 if (!get_cat_ID($current_user->user_login)) {
  $arg = array(‘description’ => “Category for “. $current_user->user_login .” to post into”, ‘parent’ => 0);
  $new_cat_id = wp_insert_term($current_user->user_login, “category”, $arg);
 }
}

First this function gets all the user info ready using get_currentuserinfo(). Then the function looks to see if there is a category named after the user with this line:

if (!get_cat_ID($current_user->user_login)) {

Then if not, we create an array of arguments then use that array with the function wp_insert_term() to add a new category:

$arg = array(‘description’ => “Category for “. $current_user->user_login .” to post into”, ‘parent’ => 0);
$new_cat_id = wp_insert_term($current_user->user_login, “category”, $arg);

add_filter(‘authenticate’,'check_login’,10,3);
function check_login($user, $username, $password) {
 $user = get_userdatabylogin($username);
 $user_role = new WP_User($user->ID);

 $level = (int)$user->user_level;
 if ($level < 1) {
  $user_role->remove_role(‘subscriber’);
  $user_role->add_role(‘contributor’);
 }

 return $user;
}

The first part is the call to the functions.php file (where we’ll put all the comments code), from the comments.php file. This uses the wp_list_comments() function like so:

<?php wp_list_comments(array(‘callback’ => ‘np_comment’)); ?>

Here I’m only using the callback parameter of the wp_list_comments() so we can define the function np_comment() in our functions.php file. You may use other parameters but for the purposes of this, I’m only showing the callback parameter.

So now we need to look at the np_comment function. I won’t go into it, since most of them are quite long, but I’ll provide a couple of links here for you to look at:

• Scriptgoddess has a good write-up of how to use wp_list_comments() with callback;
• Studiograsshopper has a more elaborate write-up detailing some customisation of others parts of the callback function;

Ok so the part I want to show you is inside the callback function, adding a bit that displays the total amount of comments by a commenter. So in my comment function I have this bit of code:

<p>
 Comment from <a href=”<?php echo htmlspecialchars(get_comment_link($comment->comment_ID)) ?>”><?php printf(__(‘%1$s’), get_comment_author_link()) ?></a> <?php np_comment_count($comment->comment_ID, get_comment_author()); ?>
</p>

So here there is a link to display the name of the commenter, then there is a call to the np_comment_count() function, which is my own defined function, as shown below:

function np_comment_count($commentid, $commentauthor) {
 global $wpdb;
 $count = $wpdb->get_var(‘SELECT COUNT(‘. $commentid .’) FROM ‘. $wpdb->comments .’ WHERE comment_author = “‘. $commentauthor .’”‘);
 echo ‘(‘. $count .’ comment’. ($count > 1 ? ‘s’ : ”) .’)';
}

And there you have it. Now you’ll get a display like this:

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