When I’m setting up a new website for a client with an existing website, I will commonly want to point a temporary URL to the new website for use during development and testing. For example, I might use something like http://newclient.wenderhost.com to point to an account that I setup as http://newclient.com. This is commonly known as an account alias or a temporary domain. If you’re using a WHM/cPanel server, setting up an account alias is easy:

1. If you haven’t already, be sure to start by creating an account in WHM for your client’s domain. We’ll use http://newclient.com as our example.
2. Login to the cPanel for a domain whose DNS already resolves to your WHM server. The most logical choice would be your reseller domain. In my case, I would login to the cPanel for http://wenderhost.com.
3. Create a subdomain for your client’s site from the cPanel you accessed in step two.
4. Login to your WHM control panel. Choose DNS Functions > Park a Domain. Select your client’s domain for the “Domain to park on top of.” Type in the subdomain you created in step three as the “Domain to park.” Click “Submit” and now you have a temporary domain that points to the new account.

One of my clients runs a WordPress blog on a Plesk powered web server. My client requires that their WordPress admin only be accessible via SSL. Given Plesk’s default behavior of storing non-secure files in /httpdocs/ and secure files in /httpsdocs/, this presented a configuration challenge.

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Michael Welsh, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, does an excellent job of explaining Web 2.0 in this five minute video:

[Source: VerseLogic]

I’ve been busy in the office as evidenced by my lack of posts during the past month. Allow me to break this drought by sharing two recent highlights from my time in cyberspace:

Great Specs Lead to Fast Development
Sevier Heights Baptist Church got in touch with me last month with this request: “We have designed and laid out a website for our college ministry. Now, we need you to implement our design on a live web server.” In addition, they needed the project finished in one week.

This type of project can easily become quite daunting; however, thanks to an excellent specifications document submitted by the Sevier Heights design team, it turned out to be a relatively painless task. Along with a Photoshop comp of their design, Sevier Heights also provided me with a Word document which contained all of the content and specifications for every page of their site.

In the final analysis, I built insidethewalk.org with the help of the following tools:

• WordPress - content management system
• WordPress plugins:
  • cforms II - provided for the quick and easy development of various contact and signup forms
  • Event Calendar - along with some custom coding and CSS to control its display, this plugin serves as a great way for the content managers to post information on upcoming events
  • FAlbum - displays photos from the Inside The Walk Flickr account
  • Image Manager - allows for easy management and editing of photos in blog posts
  • podPress - handles the Inside The Walk podcast
• Image Cross Fader - JavaScript which smoothly transitions images on the home page
• XSPF Web Music Player - site-wide music player

An Inbox Surprise
Around 5pm one Friday afternoon last month, I checked my email to see that I had received a Paypal payment. This was rather confusing as I hadn’t sent out any invoices lately; however, upon closer examination, I remembered the payment’s source. Last October, I posted a tutorial showing how to embed WordPress into a vanilla install of OS Commerce 2.2. As an accompaniment to the post, I posted a demonstration of my technique complete with two products: 1) an OSC Commerce/WordPress install plus hosting and 2) an install without hosting. The payment was for option two.

Before leaving the office for the day I sent a quick email to my new client informing him that I would get to his request on Monday morning. This was the beginning of what has been a very good business relationship brought about by a website I hadn’t thought about for a while.

This Philco-Ford Corporation video from 1967 is an amazingly accurate prediction of how we presently use the Internet. While you watch, please pardon me as I have some “finger-tip shopping” that I need to get to:

[via DesignVitality]

While I was working on a WordPress template today, I needed to find the current page’s post_slug. After investigating the function is_single in wp-includes/query.php, I discovered the following method for determining the current page ID, post title, or post name:

$post_obj = $wp_query->get_queried_object();
$post_ID = $post_obj->ID;
$post_title = $post_obj->post_title;
$post_name = $post_obj->post_name;