Download Manager plugin for WordPress, engineered to enrage!

Posted on March 5, 2012 by holter

The plugin is called WP Download Manager by InteliSoft Solutions

I found it while searching for alternative methods to managing the free graphics I provide on the site. There’s a wide array of other plugins out there that do the same thing, most of them for free or at least very cheap, but this one appeared to have some really nice features that definitely apply to my needs. After spending a good chunk of time browsing the details of the features and the prices for everything on their website, I decided to install their free version to see if it would be worth the $45.00 for the Pro version. Continue reading →

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WordPress Twenty Eleven child theme progress

Posted on February 4, 2012 by holter

Since the “Twenty Eleven” WordPress theme was release, I’ve been dying to put it to use. Until now I’ve been using the “Twenty Ten” theme as a base to create custom child themes that perform more like a regular website than a blog. Twenty Ten was easy to tweak and customize via template pages and a few additional custom functions, and it worked great. However, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get a few things to show up on the home page, which was a static page, like my recent posts and other custom post types that I wanted to display in the sidebar. All of these features and more are built right in to the Twenty Eleven theme. It’s all built on HTML5 too. Very cool.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been rebuilding my site. I created a new child theme with Twenty Eleven as the parent template. It hasn’t been as easy as I’d hoped. While most of the template pages and functions work similar to Twenty Ten, the new way of doing things is a bit different than the Loop used to generate posts and pages through template pages in Twenty Ten. “Content.php” loads the appropriate template pages depending on the content (makes sense, right?). For example, if you choose to use a static page for your home page, like I usually do, there is now a template page called “showcase.php” that you can select as your front page template, which then loads “content.php” and “content-featured.php” for example, to display Sticky Posts with a nice big image right smack in the middle of your front page. You can choose the “sticky” option for several of your important posts and they will show up all together in a nice little slider that your users can flip through. Again, really cool. Continue reading →

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Inmotionhosting.com, WordPress, and a hack: My Server Was Hacked by Tiger-M@te

Posted on September 25, 2011 by

I woke up this morning and was ready to start working. I logged into my site to do a quick update and found that it had been hacked and was redirecting to some hacker’s page.
Here’s what I saw when I tried to log in to my WordPress dashboard:

Some time this morning a hacker, TiGER-M@TE, had hacked Inmotion’s servers today and in the process managed to take down hundreds of it’s users’ sites as well; mine included. It’s not the end of the world, but it certainly sucked a bunch of time out of my day that I can’t get back. I contacted Inmotionhosting.com’s tech support immediately but after a few hours with no response, I had to drop everything and try to correct the problem. I found that it had not affected one of my sites which is just an html-based site, but it had affected every one of my WordPress-based sites. In my case, I have a WordPress multisite network of sites and all were redirecting to this hacker’s page. The hack replaced all of my WordPress index.php files with it’s own. If this has happened to you and your site is still down, you just need to replace your index.php file in your WordPress install’s root directory (the root dir of your site unless it’s installed in a subdomain or subdirectory, then you just replace index files there).
Wordpress has a couple other index.php files that need to be replaced as well, and they are in the wp-content folder and wp-admin (if you don’t replace these, your attempts to log in to your WP dashboard will still redirect to the hacker’s page). The hack also installed an index.php page in the wp-includes folder which doesn’t belong at all, so just delete. If you have multiple installations of WordPress, do the same for each.

Here’s an article by TheUrbanCowboy.net who had the same problem today. He goes into more detail about fixing the problem and even includes an index.php file if you need one. I noticed that the content of the index.php files are different from the root directory file to the ones in wp-content and wp-admin however, so the best option is to move copies from the same location on your local backup if you have one.
You can also go get the entire WordPress installation here at WordPress.org/download.

We did a little looking around to find out about the hack and came across this interview with TiGER-M@TE by The Hacker News in case you are interested: Exclusive Interview with TiGER-M@TE (Bangladesh Google website Hacker).

Why? Who the hell knows? I wish I had the free time to sit around finding new ways to sabotage servers and websites for fun. Actually, I would never do that to anyone because it sucks! Hackers suck! If this guy had simply sent us all a message telling us that our servers and sites were not secure, this would have actually been useful. Instead, hundreds of people are wasting hundreds of hours fixing the vandalism done by some guy that doesn’t give a shit about anyone else.

So what makes a guy sit around finding new ways to waste everyone’s time? I just don’t get it. Is he actually having fun making us all angry and wasting our time? To me, this is just as bad as having your car keyed or your mailbox run over. It probably costs as much for some. I would be the first to vote in favor of a new law that would make hackers like this pay the hourly wage for the duration of downtime of everyone who’s site was hacked and had to blow off work to fix their malicious bullshit. I think there would be a lot less of this type of thing happening if it had a direct affect on the hacker’s wallet.

BUY REMBRANDT TOOTHPASTE…

Posted on July 29, 2010 by holter

…IF YOU ENJOY A GOOD SCREWING.

I don’t spend a lot of time writing about or commenting on things that suck, but this one really twisted me off. Rembrandt toothpaste is hardly worth reviewing except for the balls those folks gotta have to sell a tube of air at a higher price than any other toothpaste on the shelves.

Take a look at the two photos I’ve included here: one is the new tube right out of the box and the other is the same new tube, squeezed to the point when the paste finally started coming out of the tube.

I couldn’t believe it. A relatively small tube to begin with, compared to nearly every other brand on that aisle, it was nearly 70% air. Rembrandt the brand has a pretty high opinion of their stuff judging by what they charge, and in the past when there was a lot more money floating around for frivolous crap like this, I wasn’t as reluctant to spend a few extra bucks on a better tasting toothpaste. In my attempts to curb frivolous spending, I’ve managed to avoid purchasing this particular brand for more than a year but I decided to splurge a bit on the last grocery shopping trip and purchased a tube of Rembrandt, only to be disappointed and outraged.

Everyone is cutting back these days in order to make it through this economic disaster we are all experiencing, consumer and manufacturer alike, but these guys are going about it in a way that just makes me think they believe we’re all so stupid that we won’t notice. When you sell a tube of toothpaste that costs twice as much as any other brand and then fill the package with mostly air, what is the message that they’re trying to send us? The message I interpreted from it all is “we are so superior that we can sell you idiots air and you’ll like it, if your soft little brains even have the capacity to notice, that is, which we all doubt very much down here, so piss off!”. At least that’s how I understood it.

Go buy a tube of this crap and I’m sure you’ll reach the same conclusion. Or better yet, don’t. Don’t waste your money, just take my word for it and forego the anger and frustration.

ICY DOCK Enclosures

Posted on July 26, 2010 by holter

Working with massive graphics files creates all kinds of storage issues. Some of my Photoshop files for print have been more than 4GB, and when combined with other support files and elements of a job, leave me with limited options for backup and storage.
Until my layered PSD files became 250MBs on average, all of my backups fit on a DVD just fine. The problem with DVD backups is finding stuff when you have to reference an old job in a hurry, especially when the files are massive.

As the job folders have grown over time, the most sensible means of data storage for my needs turned out to be external hard drives After trying several external storage devices, my final solution for the problem was the purchase of an ICY DOCK (MB559UEB-1SMB) external enclosure and an internal SATA hard drive (several, actually).
I have several portable external units including a G-Drive (which is an excellent external unit), a LaCie, a Rocketfish drive, an Acomdata drive (also surprisingly reliable for a cheap portable), and a few VST FireWire portable drives, all of which are good devices overall and each with their own unique positive qualities. In contrast to the good qualities each of those devices possess, they all maintain one common downfall: when the hard drive is full, you still are left finding a way to burn, archive, purge data or shelve it and purchase another. Portable external hard drives are getting cheaper all the time but they don’t even come close to the cost of a bare internal SATA hard drive. The last 1TB SATA drive I purchased was less than $100 bucks; there’s no way a powered portable 1TB unit sells for that cheap. Not today anyway.

Dual ICY DOCK Enclosures

The ICY DOCK units I purchased, with USB 2.0 and FireWire 400/800 connections, I am able to plug in any of my bare internal hard drives for tons of extra storage and never do I have to stress out about running out of space. With SATA drives getting larger in capacity and cheaper every day it’s no problem for an unemployed art director like me to pick up another drive when one fills up or if I just need a redundant backup.
Another big bonus of using SATA drives is the ability to format them as a boot disk, allowing me to have additional backups of my operating system in the inevitable event of disk failure. Some of the other units have that functionality but only the more expensive higher end drives.

The ICY DOCK enclosures with SATA drives have worked out great for archiving large jobs and even temporary storage for the jobs that are on hold indefinitely. I was so happy with my first ICY DOCK that I purchased a second one a few months later. Having a second allows me to move data from one drive to another without actually adding anything to my internal drives. Ten years ago I would have never dreamed that 4TB worth of internal hard drive capacity wouldn’t be enough! Now it just gets me by.

No technology is flawless however, just like no technology is permanent. After three years of heavy use, I recently ran into the very first issue with my two ICY DOCKS. The problem wasn’t as much with the enclosures as it was with the evolution of the (Mac/Apple) operating system, software and firmware updates. Recent updates to Snow Leopard OS 10.6 (.4) created drive mounting issues with several SATA drives connected via ICY DOCK. After some time spent troubleshooting the problem and tracking down the source, I sent one email to the ICY DOCK tech support folks which immediately prompted a series of troubleshooting messages and other suggestions within a couple hours. After a few attempts to resolve the issues via email, they issued me an RMA # and had me send both enclosures back to their service department. It only took a week for them to do the repairs and upgrades, and my ICY DOCKS were back on my desk and working perfectly.

The best product on the planet is only as good as it’s customer service and tech support when it comes to computer technology, software and hardware. The folks at ICY DOCK have the best of both; excellent products and fantastic support – a rare thing to find in any company these days.

If anyone is looking for a data backup solution that is expandable, the ICY DOCK (MB559UEB-1SMB) external enclosure (usually ships with no hard drive) is an excellent choice and can be purchased for $79.99 at NEWEGG.COM.

Cocoaopotrace

Posted on May 27, 2010 by holter

If you are a designer or illustrator, graphic artist or whatever, then you’ve probably had an image, a photo, a logo image, or some kind of image object that you would like to convert from a bitmap image to something a little more useful like a vector object that you can work with. I do – all the time.
Maybe you have a specific type treatment, like a logo with a font that’s been tweaked beyond recognition, and you need to use it at a variety of sizes and other scenerios that make working with a JPG or other bitmap image really difficult. What do you do?
Scan, trace, redraw, etc. You waste a lot of time reproducing the graphic is what you do. There should be an easier way, right?

There is. I found an app that does nothing but trace bitmap images, converting it to vector. The app is called Cocaopotrace (“Potrace” for Windows). It does a fantastic job tracing images. It can be adjusted to refine the way it traces; tighter paths, less points, more or less detail, and so on. I first came across it in a post by David Malki on Wondermark.com. I was so glad I checked it out!

Adobe Illustrator has it’s Live Trace/Live Paint features which does the same thing, and more, but the accuracy just isn’t there. Cocaopotrace really gets you close to a vector replica of your scanned image and since that’s all it does, it’s fast and clean and does a very nice job.

I still find myself using Live Trace on ocassion, but when I need a really clean vector outline of something, it’s Cocaopotrace all the way. Since I started using it my vector textures have been turning out much tighter. A photo of a texture, such as a cast iron manhole cover with lots of different textures, is really easy to convert and I can refine the settings to make the vector output as accurate as I choose.

Many, many years ago before global warming, the moon landing and the assembly line, back in the 90′s actually, there was an app called “Streamline”.

2do: another iPhone app

Posted on May 23, 2010 by holter

When I first purchased my iPhone, I was a week away from travelling to Bulgaria. Long flights are a bitch for a guy with A.D.D, and I always stress out about bringing enough stuff to keep my little brain busy while I’m in the air. I found that this time I could have taken my iPhone, camera and a sketchbook, and wouldn’t have needed to lug the other 300 pounds of crap along that I never used. In fact, it was the iPhone that kept me entertained 50% of the time. Most of that time was spent scrounging the outer reaches of the App Store wasteland looking for that one little productivity app which I hoped would be the solution to my organization and task-based problems.

Three weeks had passed, I was back from the trip and after countless hours of searching, I never did find The One. In fact, nearly a year later I was still searching and downloading, trying and testing, and failing. My browsing for this one particular White Whale had decreased to a bi-weekly and then monthly affair, but I continued to be disappointed.

Then after downloading and trying about 30 different list, task, and to-do type apps with no success, I stumbled upon “2do”. It was too good to be true!

“2do” has almost everything I was looking for in an organization/productivity app. It has customizable Calendars so you can organize your projects, tasks and checklists by type (personal, work, home improvement, or whatever), and they can be named, color coded, and you can add as many as you need, but in the paid version only. There is a free ‘lite’ version but you are limited to 3 calendars and other options are also limited.

Features that really made me do a little happy dance are the options you can utilize within the calendars. For example, Notes are my most frquently used because I can jot down the details of a project so I don’t forget. Another is an option to add a photo for reference. You can also schedule reminders and have it send an email to you, or an alarm, an instant message, and so on. You can set your Task up as a Task, a Checklist, or a Project, where you can actually group a bunch of tasks and checklists within it.

The list goes on and on. I was even happy with the Lite version until I found myself with the need for several Calendars to keep my insane list of things to do better organized. I also needed the Sync functionality so I don’t have to worry about losing my data. I can simply Sync everything to my desktop Mac and no worries!

If you have so many things to do that you need software to help you get your shit together, then I would recommend that you check out “2do”. I think you’ll sleep better if you do!

iLoader app for iPhone

Posted on May 23, 2010 by holter

Have you ever had a bunch of photos you wanted to post to Facebook on your iPhone only to get absolutely frustrated going about it one at a time through Facebook itself? It can be quite a pain in the ass. I went searching through the app store and finally found an app that does it all in one stroke, and the app is iLoader.

iLoader by Tektrify is an iPhone app for batch uploading photos and videos to Facebook. In addition to allowing you to select several images at once to upload, it also gives you the option to write captions on each image. When you’re ready to go, you can also choose to post with a comment and actually select any one of your albums to upload to. It sure makes life easier for people like me who don’t want their photos automatically going into the ‘mobile uploads’ album.

I always get excited when I find something that works well and makes my life easier. iLoader is one one of those things. If you have been looking for a way to batch upload photos to your Facebook page, I would definetely recommend checking out iLoader by Tektrify. You can also find it in Apple’s app store, just search for iLoader, and it’s cheap.

the Holter Project

design, art, portfolios and various other creative endeavors by Jeff Holter

Category Archives: Reviews