Orangescale.NET

It works, and let’s make it better

Currently, we’re working on a site. I will tell you about what site it is. This time, I want to share our ideas about how we build it. It comes with a membership features. You know… registration, login and password reminder. For the password reminder feature, the current site — we actually redevelop the current site — has the feature, and it works fine.

BUT, we think that the process can — and should — be improved. Here are the scenario (from the current site) for the password reminder:

• A user fills in the email field with the his/her account’s email address.
• The system will generate a randomly-generated password.
• User can login with the new password.

It works. But, there are some other situations:

• Other people can see other members’ profile.
• On the profile page, the email address is revealed (readable).

So, other members can easily bug each other. Of course, only when they want to. The point is: it can be done. If someone put other members’ email adress, he/she can reset the password. “Hey, I have someone changed my password without my permission. I need to change it again now…”
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• May 9th, 2008 • # 1:40 am
• 4 comments

WordPress and My Blogging Productivity

After moving from Movable Type and WordPress, I feel that my blogging productivity is increasing. I mean, I have more posts this month. Yeah, probably it’s not about the engine. It’s probably about the spirit of blogging. But, for me… if I have to be honest, WordPress has its own role for me. How? Here are some factors:

• Writing an entry should be easy. The point is getting an entry composing screen. How fast you can reach that screen? The word “fast” here is always closely related to some factors like internet connection, document size, etc. I feel that WordPress is a lightweight application (compared to Movable Type, for example). So, I do not have to wait longer to start typing.
• Now, it’s time to write an entry. Using WordPress, I can do it easily. WordPress only offers two types of composing style (rich-editor and HTML mode). If I want to upload a picture, it’s not difficult at all. Well, I like the upload photo mechanism in the previous release. But, I am fine with the current schema.
• Entry formatting! I like when I can have a good and clean HTML tags in my entry. When I write an entry in both visual or simple mode, I can always have a good HTML outputs.
• I can use a desktop blogging tool. Rignt how, I use BlogDesk. And, related to the previous point. It just works. Period. When I insert a photo from my desktop publishing tool, it will be uploaded in the right place, without thinking whether it’s placed properly or not.

It has been a month. And, I feel comfortable.

• April 30th, 2008 • # 7:10 pm
• 3 comments

Share This! at Flickr

No, no. It’s not about having social bookmarking buttons on our Flickr photos. But, the idea is still about sharing. We are now able to share our photos, sets, collections with other members. And, it’s not only about sharing pictures with other members, but also related to how we will use the photos.

The “Share This” button will be visible only if we can share the information on the page. So, it is not visible on frontpage since we can not share anything. If we’re seeing a photo — our own photo or other member’s — we can easily tell other people about the photo, embed it into our websites/blogs, get the permalink, or even blog about it from our Flickr account (only if we have blogs assigned into our Flickr account).

Of course, we can not share our private pages like Flickr stats page (for Pro members). And, it depends on the privacy settings we apply to our photos. If we want to share some private photos, we can do it by giving a “Guest Pass” to our friends. Go to Flickr help page about sharing for more info.

• April 26th, 2008 • # 3:04 am
• no comments

Withdraw Paypal funds to Indonesian bank account

Last week (April 20th, 2008), we (Lala and I) decided to withdraw our funds at Paypal into our bank account. We use BCA right now. Since we already had our Paypal verified, the process was not difficult at all. It was very easy. And here are the process and few things you might want to know (if you want to get your Paypal fund, too):

• First, make sure you have a verified Paypal account. And you already added your bank account information.
• You have to know that there will be a fee (Rp. 16.000,00) if you withdraw Rp. 1.499.999,99 or less. But, for Rp. 1.500.000,00 or more there is no extra cost. So, we took the second option.
• It takes 5-7 business day to process. But, we got our fund faster — I think it was 2 or 3 days only.
• Paypal has its own currency system I guess. So, before sending your funds, make sure that you get the right amount. There is a currency calculator available. The exchange rate was “1 U.S. Dollar = 8.944,22 Indonesian Rupiah”. It might change.
• If the transaction failed, your fund will be returned to your Paypal account. And, there is Rp. 50.000,00 administration cost for this. Well, I am not sure about the exact number. You will see a short notification before you confirm your transaction.

Pretty easy, right? It was our first time getting funds from Paypal to our local bank. Everything was great. So, if you want to send fund into my Paypal account (donate[at]orangescale.net), I can receive it. Hehehe… :)

• April 26th, 2008 • # 2:28 am
• 2 comments

PunBB 1.3 Beta Preview

For all PunBB fans, PunBB 1.3 beta is already available. Few days ago, I download the beta release, did a fresh install, and I believe that the coming 1.3 will be MUCH better. Currently, the latest stable release is PunBB 1.2.17 (released on February 19th, 2008). Here is a screenshot:

So, what’s new? Here are some of them:
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• April 22nd, 2008 • # 4:39 am
• 2 comments

Oh My Grid, free WordPress Theme

Today, I released a WordPress theme. This theme is called Oh My Grid. I designed this theme based on theme I use for my blog. If you run WordPress 2.5, you should find no problems — if you found one, let me know so that I can fix it.

For more detail, go to Oh My Grid project page. (theme demo).

• April 21st, 2008 • # 2:24 am
• 11 comments

Some notes about 21Cineplex website

Before going to theaters for a movie, I checked the schedule first. And I want to get the information about the movies — their schedules — I go to http://www.21cineplex.com/. It’s informative, but I found annoyance there.

• I can’t bookmark a theater page. Whenever I want to go directly to a theater page, it takes me to frontpage. I think it’s because my browser does not send HTTP_REFERER?
• Because I can’t add a theater to my bookmark, it means that I can not send a permanent link to other people. If I want to show a page to someone, for example: “Go to theater in Yogyakarta”, how to do that? “Open the site, then click this, then scroll down, you should see the link there”. Like that? Doh!
• Every theater has its own RSS feed. This is good. But, it seems that the feeds are out-dated. I just open a feed few minutes ago (April 20), but I got the feed for April 9 (as seen from <pubDate> value).

A question: why?

There are some answers, but I am just guessing. Probably:

• they put advertisement there. More page views, more value?
• they think people are not interested to subscribe to RSS. RSS — in this case — means less page views?
• nobody complains about this, so there is nothing wrong with the site.
• the point is: “All information are there. There. The most important thing is that users can find them.”

Okey, I will stop complaining now.

• April 20th, 2008 • # 5:15 am
• 4 comments

When strangers add you as his/her contact

Few days ago, I had someone added my Flickr account as her contact. Well, I am not sure whether it is her own real account or not. Probably, it is someone’s account. I assumed that it’s a “she”. I noticed that I was not familar with the name. Okey, I looked at the profile. And, boom! The account has many pornographic material there. And, it seems spammy.

I just quickly blocked her account. I did not have any other reason to accept that. And, probably this is the first person I blocked. I am not a person who put ‘numbers of contact’ as a goal. I prefer to have less contacts rather than having numerous contacts but most of them are stragers. Remember what happened to my Facebook account? Currently, I have still many ’stragers’ there. It is fine if those who added me have a ’safe content’, but I am not comfortable when someone who has pornographic and any other distracting materials added me.

Okey, I blocked that person (as my Flickr contact). According to Flickr, blocking means that they:

• can’t comment on my photos. All comments on my photos that they make are deleted.
• are removed as my contact, and you are removed as theirs.
• can’t add me as a contact again.
• can’t add my photos as favorites. Any of my photos marked as their favorites are removed.
• can’t blog my photos
• can’t add notes or tags. Any notes and tags they added to my photos are removed.
• can’t send me FlickrMail

• April 18th, 2008 • # 10:17 pm
• 2 comments

Image styling in blog entry

When we write an article in our blog, sometime we insert images/photos to support our article. And this can be done easily, no matter what blogging platform we use. For example, using WordPress we can upload image using uploader tool, and with few clicks the image will go to entry editing screen. For better formatting purposes, we can manage how inserted objects should be displayed: floating left, right or in the center. For example, see the image below:

The above image is constructed using HTML codes like this:

<p><img src="/path/to/image/file.jpg" alt="Alternate Text" align="left" /></p>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque mollis. Sed ut eros at ante congue vehicula.

Or, something like this:

<p><img src="/path/to/image/file.jpg" alt="Alternate Text" style="float: left;" /></p>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque mollis. Sed ut eros at ante congue vehicula.

There are many alternatives to have such output. We can use style="float: left;", align="left", align="right", etc. Is it what you want? Probably, yes. But, do you notice that the text is attached to the image? Do you want to insert some space there so that it can please your readers? Now, let’s compare with this image.

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• April 18th, 2008 • # 4:17 am
• 6 comments