Whether you’re looking to learn PrestaShop, or you’re already working with it, this is for you. We’re sharing over 50 PrestaShop tutorials, modules, themes, and resources for learning and using this shopping cart system.

For those who are unfamiliar with PrestaShop, it’s an up-and-coming open source e-commerce system.

PrestaShop is still relatively new, but it’s a nice alternative to Magento or Zen Cart for small to medium sized online shops.

What Sets PrestaShop Apart?

One of the notable features of PrestaShop is that its code is much less bloated than Magento–meaning shops run much faster. Your server’s also less likely to melt down.

PrestaShop also seems to be getting updated a lot more often than Zen Cart. The latest update was just a few days before writing this.

Another thing that sets PrestaShop apart from other e-commerce systems is that the backend is pretty simple. It provides lots of control, but doesn’t seem as overwhelming the 1st time you login (view PrestaShop backend demo)

You can also disable certain sections and menus for other users who don’t need access to some of the more advanced features.

When trying out a new system, finding information and gathering resources seems to take the longest. We’ll look at PrestaShop tutorials, guides, modules and themes to help get your shop up and running as fast as possible.

Contents of Our Toolkit

• Getting Started With PrestaShop
  • Downloading
  • Installing
  • Setting up your online shop with PrestaShop
• Tutorials, guides and where to go to find answers to your PrestaShop-related questions
• PrestaShop Modules (shipping, payments, best practices, creating your own modules)
• Themes for PrestaShop (download themes or learn how to make your own)
• Hosted Option

Let’s dig in!

Getting Started With PrestaShop

There are a few obvious things that need did before diving into PrestaShop.

Downloading PrestaShop

This is the easy part. You can find the latest version in the PrestaShop Download section.

PrestaShop also comes in 32 languages that can be downloaded as language packs from the download section.

Installing PrestaShop

Installing PrestaShop is fairly straightforward and takes maybe 5 minutes once you upload the files to your server.

The PrestaShop Wiki is an invaluable place to start and contains an easy-to-follow install guide. The install guide also provides a list of server requirements.

Advanced users may want to take a look at the System Administrator Guide. This covers setting up PHP and MySQL configuration and setting up extra security for the PrestaShop backend.

Setup Your Online Shop With PrestaShop

The Wiki has a user guide section that gives a set of step-by-step tutorials to help you setup and configure PrestaShop’s shipping, payment modules, currencies, taxes, adding products and categories, and other general configurations.

I recommend following the tutorials in order since they’ll help you learn where everything is in PrestaShop. By the time you finish the first 6 steps, you’ll know your way around PrestaShop and you’ll have most of your store setup.

Additional Resources

• PrestaShop Tutorials (SiteGround)

Tutorials, Guides and Forums—Finding Answers

If you’re just starting out, you’re going to have questions, problems and issues that you won’t be able to figure out off the top of your head.

That’s okay because you can find answers and get help from others–here are a few official places to start:

• PrestaShop User’s Guide
• PrestaShop Official FAQ
• PrestaShop Community Forum

Unofficial Resources

Beyond the official PrestaShop guides and forum, you can also search for answers on sites like:

PrestaPortal
PrestaShop news, tutorials, general questions/answer discussions, tips, modules and related resources.

Hints and Tips (@ Free PrestaShop Modules)
The Hints and Tips section provides many useful PrestaShop tidbits.

PrestaShop Modules

Modules add additional features and functionality to your PrestaShop site–whether it’s on your store or in the backend. Installing modules in PrestaShop is very simple.

While PrestaShop comes with many modules by default, you can add modules created by others or create your own.

Finding New PrestaShop Modules

Here are a few places to find PrestaShop modules:

• List of PrestaShop Modules (@ PrestaPortal)
  A mega list of PrestaShop modules.
• Newly Released Modules (@ PrestaPortal)
  The place to look for announcements of new modules as they’re posted.
• PrestaStore
  Commercial modules for just about every need (shipping, payment, backend, SEO, shop enhancements, etc).
• eCartService.net
  Free PrestaShop modules as well as tips and tricks.
• Free PrestaShop Modules
  A large collection of free PrestaShop modules. The majority of the modules on this site are free, but there are some other commercial modules as well.
• PrestaShop Modules
  Nice collection of modules–some commercial, some free.
• Presta Modules
  Commercial modules, including a 1-page checkout mod.
• AGA Software
  Commercial modules: Price Adjustments, Blog Module, and Forum Module.

Shipping Modules

Here are some useful individual shipping modules for PrestaShop:

• USPS Postage Module
  Calculate postage for United States Postal Service based on zip code (US only).
• USPS Postage Quote Module
  Provide shipping quote by location right on the product page.
• UPS Shipping Module
  Should be compatible with the above USPS module.

Payment Modules

• Authorize.Net Payment Module
• 2Checkout Payment Module
• Western Union

Other PrestaShop Modules

• Better Together
  A great cross-promotion/combination discount module from That Software Guy. Lets you suggest other products that would go well with an item plus offer a discount. This is a port of his flexible Zen Cart module.
• Export Orders
  Exports orders to CSV.
• AddStuff
  Add custom bits and blocks to your PrestaShop site. Very handy for adding custom code to your side while allowing you the flexibility to move the blocks location (think WordPress widgets).
• AddHeader
  Works with AddStuff to let you add/remove stuff from your template without touching your actual theme files.
• YouTube Module
  Easily add YouTube and DailyMotion videos to your PrestaShop site.
• MailChimp E-Commerce 360 Integration Plugin
  Integrates MailChimp tracking and stats with PrestaShop and help you figure your ROI.

Writing Your Own PrestaShop Modules

eCartService.net has an excellent 5-part series of tutorials showing how to write your own PrestaShop modules:

• Writing a PrestaShop Module Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Module Editing Best Practices

One important thing to remember about editing modules and using custom themes: Edit the core PrestaShop files and modules only as a last resort.

eCartService.net once again comes to the rescue with some important tips for editing modules and module templates within the safety of your custom theme.

PrestaShop Themes and Templates

PrestaShop lets you change the look of your shop by applying visual themes.

You can also customize and create your own visual themes–transforming your e-commerce shop into whatever you can imagine.

Premade PrestaShop Themes

There several nice themes created by talented designers. Some are free, others paid, but at the most, you should be able to pick one of these up for $30-$40.

Here are a few places to go if you’re looking to download premade PrestaShop themes:

2 Link

Just about the 4 nicest, most modern free PrestaShop themes I’ve ever seen.

PrestaShopThemes.net

Some nice premium (commercial) PrestaShop themes starting at a reasonable $29. You won’t even recognize your shop with these themes.

I Love PrestaShop

Nice collection of free themes. These themes are very simple, clean and uncluttered.

Other places to find ready-made themes:

• PrestaThemes
  A collection of free PrestaShop themes.
• PrestaShop Themes
  A decent mixed collection of free and commercial themes.
• Themes at PrestaStore
  A large collection of quality commercial themes.
• Template PrestaShop (Updated 11/02/2009)
  A few commercial PrestaShop themes.

Create Your Own PrestaShop Theme

Wanna roll your own design? These resources will help you get started:

• Creating Your Own Theme (PrestaShop Wiki)
  Recommended reading before creating your own custom theme.
• Themes & Graphics Section (PrestaShop Forum)
  Get answers to your theme questions and learn about newly released themes.
• PrestaShop Themes and Guides
  Great tips, tricks and resources for trickin’ out your PrestaShop theme.
• PrestaShop Designer’s Guide
  Helps you work with a quick PrestaShop primer as well as jQuery and Smarty (PHP template engine used by PrestaShop) basics to help you design a great shop.
• ArdianYS
  Contains some useful tutorials and tips for customizing PrestaShop themes.
• PrestaShop Theme Cheat Sheet (JPG) (See full thread)
  Cheat Sheet showing main sections of a default PrestaShop page. Helpful when editing CSS.

Live PrestaShop Stores

PrestaShop has a section of their site dedicated to showcasing live online stores that use PrestaShop. If you’re wondering what can be done with PrestaShop, just take a look.

Hosted PrestaShop Stores

Do you just want to use PrestaShop and skip all the setup and maintenance?

PrestaBox might be just for you.

PrestaBox is a hosted version of PrestaShop that lets you start selling quickly.

Conclusion

PrestaShop is a nice, light-weight, fast open-source e-commerce shopping cart system.

While it’s still a bit young and may lack some of the more advanced features of Magento and others, it is a nice option for small to medium size online stores.

PrestaShop also has a great and supportive community that is continuing to grow.

Suggestions? Tips?

Do you use PrestaShop? Have you got a great tip or resource that we haven’t mentioned?

Share with us in the comments.

Follow On Twitter

Want to know when new blog posts are published? Want more random web and graphic design goodness?

You should follow me on Twitter @esdev.

Photo credits (in order of appearance): Red Toolbox by J. Helgason | Set of Vintage Tools by Timofeyev Alexander | Close Up of Old Books by Andrea Haase | Still-Life In a Studio of the Artist by S-BELOV | All stock photos from Shutterstock.

I just had an unpleasant episode that really reminded me of the need to have some kind of encryption on your thumb drives.

I was leaving a friend’s house, got in my truck and drove home. I unloaded my pockets as usual and discovered–no thumb drive.

I did find the flash drive a few minutes later, by the curb outside my friend’s house. But the whole time I was looking, I was trying to do a mental inventory of what information was on that thumb drive.

Fortunately, I don’t store sensitive client information on my thumb drives. Yet, the idea of someone else finding the drive and being able to freely access the other info on the drive was not a pleasant one.

Lesson: Don’t put personal or client/work passwords or other sensitive data on a thumb drive. If for some reason you do have to have some of that information with you, make sure that information is encrypted.

To keep people from viewing your files if your thumb drive falls into the wrong hands, here are some tools, tutorials and products to help you encrypt your thumb drive.

TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt (Win XP+/Mac OS X/Linux) is a free, open-source software that can encrypt an entire partition or storage device (like a USB drive).

Once encryption is set for a volume and then the volume is mounted, file encryption/decryption is done on-the-fly–meaning it’s automatic and transparent (ie not a pain in the rear).

Note: TrueCrypt does not currently (as of Oct 11, 2009) support Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard. View a full list of TrueCrypt’s limitations.

A Beginner’s Tutorial to TrueCrypt

Adding encryption to your entire USB thumb drive or just a portion (say a directory) is pretty simple.

TrueCrypt Security Precautions

Because of simplicity, the beginner’s tutorial skips some of the more in-depth security details, so it’s a good idea to take a look at the extra things you can do to keep your information even more safe.

What if the System You’re Using Your Thumb Drive With Doesn’t Have TrueCrypt Installed?

Since you’re going to most likely be using your USB with more than one computer, it doesn’t make since to install TrueCrypt on every system.

TrueCrypt fortunately lets you run in ‘portable mode‘–meaning you don’t have to have TrueCrypt installed on the system.

You can read more about portable mode and the various options you have on the TrueCrypt site.

Note: You will need to have admin privileges on the system (OS) you’re running under in order to run TrueCrypt in portable mode.

How to Create the Ultimate Encrypted Flash Drive

A New Morning has a great tutorial that walks you through how to use TrueCrypt specifically with a USB flash drive.

IronKey USB Drive

If you’re serious about security, IronKey is the USB thumb drive for you.

IronKey is a USB thumb drive with built-in 256-bit hardware encryption.

Since encryption is hardware-based, IronKey will also run on pretty much any operating system that will read a USB thumb drive–Windows 2000+, Mac OS 10.4 and Linux (2.6+ kernel).

Also, unlike software-based encryption solutions like TrueCrypt, you don’t have to have administrator rights on the system you’re using IronKey, and there’s no software to install.

It uses internet authentication as well to protect the information and site passwords you exchange when browsing the internet via a portable version of Firefox.

James Bond’s Thumb Drive

I could imagine James Bond using an IronKey–yes, it has self-destruct features built into it.

A stolen or lost drive can be remotely disabled, or a self-destruct can be initiated–erasing all information on the drive and/or physically destroying the drive.

IronKey Personal Demo Video

IronKey Enterprise Demo Video

Keep Your Friends Close and Your Thumb Drive Closer

Remember that if you put sensitive information on a thumb drive that it’s always possible that it’ll get lost or stolen. So make sure your thumb drive (or at least a directory within) is encrypted and secure.

Do you use anything else to secure your USB drives? Share in the comments.

Photo credits: USB Flash Drive by Stephen VanHorn, Abstract View of Data Storage and Abstract View of a Data Sequence by irabbiosi via Shutterstock.

Lately, I’ve been using Thematic–a framework for building WordPress themes faster.

Thematic gives you a solid, bare-bones theme with reset CSS styles, a very basic layout, no color and limited typography. A clean slate.

Don’t Touch That Theme!

To create your theme, you don’t actually edit any of Thematic’s theme files. Instead, you make changes using a separate child theme.

It’s really powerful since you’re not actually touching any part of Thematic. You just get a nice starting place, without worries about future Thematic updates overwriting your code edits.

You don’t have to rewrite a bunch of code all over again–you’re just adding the bits that you want to be different. This works very much like the custom styles on WordPress.com hosted blogs.

I’ve collected together 40+ Thematic resources, tutorials and links to help you get up and running faster.

Thematic and WordPress Child Theme Basics

• Official Thematic Website
• WordPress Child Theme Basics
• Modular CSS
• Theme Template Directory Structure

Theme Hooks

• Thematic 0.9.6.1 Is Live (Updated 2/10/2010)
  Details about newest version. Contains new hooks and filters for even more control.
• Using Action Hooks in WordPress Child Themes
• Theme Hooks
• Adding Custom WordPress Hooks
• Using Filter Hooks in WordPress Child Themes
• Theme Filters
• Frameworks, Child Themes, Filters and Hooks?
• Overriding Parent Theme Functions in Child Themes

Thematic Tutorials

• 10 Design Tips For Your Custom WordPress Theme Built With Thematic
• Edit Your Theme With Functions.php
  Tons of fun by adding functions to edit your theme.
• How I Used a Custom Page Template to Redesign My Blog the Smart Way
  Step-by-step creating a new child theme.
• Replacing WordPress Content With an Excerpt in a Thematic Child Theme
  How to replace the_content() with the_excerpt()–without touching your theme files.
• Add “Featured Posts” to Your Thematic Child Theme
• Use WordPress as a CMS With Thematic: Part 1
• Add a Header Image to Thematic the Easy Way
• Add a Search Box to the Thematic Menu
• Adding Theme Options to WordPress Themes
  Creating theme option pages to your WordPress theme.
• ThemeShaper Forums
  If you get stuck, the Thematic Forums is the place to go for help.

Editing Parts of Your Theme With Thematic

There is a whole series of tutorials on the Thematic website for edit particular parts of your WordPress theme:

• Thematic 0.9.6.1 Is Live (Updated 2/10/2010)
  Details about newest Thematic version. Contains new hooks and filters for even more control.
• WordPress Themes Template Tutorial Series
• Working With the Index Template
• Editing Your Thematic CSS
• Editing the Header Template
• Editing the Sidebar Template
• Editing the Single Post, Post Attachment and 404 Templates

Thematic Cheat Sheets

• Thematic Structure Cheat Sheet
  A visual look at all of Thematic’s main elements–div’s, theme actions, hooks and widget areas. Very, very useful.
• Widget-Ready Areas
  Images of widget-ready areas for each major template and section of Thematic.

Thematic Child Themes

There are already some nicely-designed Thematic child themes.

Acamas

SimpleCart (js) – E-commerce theme

Audry

Gallery

Aether

Sugar Cane

Update: 3HoursTheme (by Matteo Stagi. Also includes tutorials to help you to use the theme)

Cosmos Labs

I can’t include Thematic themes without mentioning Cosmos Labs. They have released several nice child themes. Here are a few.

Byty

Street

Early Morning

Commune

Crystalline

Element Templates

These are not full child themes, but themes for specific parts of a WordPress site that can be used along with another child theme.

• Login and User Registration Page Templates For Thematic
• Replacing the Thematic Menu With a DropDown List of Categories

Hopefully these links will give you a good place to start using Thematic.

What Do You Use?

Do you use Thematic? Do you use some other WordPress framework? Tell us in the comments.

Whether you’re just beginning in photography or someone who is looking to add a little fun into your photographs, here’s a list of 24 fun photography and camera tutorials, hacks and tips.

Camera and Photo Fun Projects

1. Shoot Macro Photos Using a DVD Drive Lens

2. Make a Tripod Out of a Paperclip

3. 2 DIY Tilt-Shift Lenses You Can Make From Plumbing Hardware

4. Tilt-Shift Photo Lens

5. Give ‘Em a Spin – DIY Fun Family Photography Project

6. Create Time-Lapse Photos With PhotoLapse

7. DIY – Create Your Own Bokeh

8. 3 Tips to Turn a Spring Clamp Into Your Best Photo Accessory

9. Home-Made Camera Tripods (Mount your camera to your bike)

10. DIY Bottle-Cap Tripod Tutorial

11. $0 Digital Pinhole Camera

12. Let’s Make a Pinhole Polaroid Camera

Tips and Techniques

13. Digital Photography Tips, Techniques, Lessons and Tutorials (Lexar)

14. Tips For Taking Portrait Photos

15. How to Take Great Close-Up Photos

16. Get Greater Depth of Field With the Brenizer Field

17. Rock Concert Photography – 9 Tips on How to Get the Shot

18. Learn How to Capture Action Shots

19. How to Use Umbrellas–Getting Started

20. Simple Head Shot With 2 Umbrellas

21. Night Photography: Tips and Tricks For Getting the Shot

22. Landscape Photography

23. Top 10 Tips For Great Pictures

24. Digital Photography Tips and Tutorials For Beginners

Great Photo and Camera Resource Sites

If you’re looking for even more photography fun, DIY projects, tutorials and tips, try some of these websites:

• Photojojo
• Digital Photography Tips and Tutorials
• DIYPhotography.net
• Strobist

The only problem I have is that it’s only viewable to registered WordPress users with an admin role. Editors, Authors and Contributors can access the WordPress backend, but can’t view the stats.

You could always install a bloated role manager plugin just so you can allow others to view CyStats. But this is overkill unless you need to adjust roles for some other reason.

Here’s a quick way to allow non-admin users to view your CyStats stats:

1. In WordPress, go to Plugins > Editor
2. Select CyStats from the upper right dropdown list
3. Choose cystats/includes/admin.php from the list of plugin files on the right.
   Alternatively, FTP to the wp-content/plugins/cystats/includes/ dir and edit the admin.php file.
4. Notice there are several ‘8’s (or possibly ‘9’s or ‘10’s). These are the numbers for the WordPress user levels/roles. 8-10 are admins, 7-5 are editors, etc.:

   /**
    * Builds admin panem menu for Plugin
    */
   if(!function_exists('cystats_create_admin_menu')){
   	function cystats_create_admin_menu() {
   		if (function_exists('add_options_page')) {
   			add_options_page('CyStats Options Page', 'CyStats ', 8, 'cystats-options', 'cystats_admin_options');
   		}
   		if (function_exists('add_menu_page')) {
   			add_menu_page('CyStats Statistics Plugin', 'CyStats', 8, __FILE__, 'cystats_admin_index');
   		}
   		if (function_exists('add_submenu_page')) {
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Index','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Index','cystats')), 8, __FILE__, 'cystats_admin_index');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Blog','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Blog','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-blog', 'cystats_admin_blog');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Clients','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Clients','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-clients', 'cystats_admin_clients');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Referer','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Referer','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-referer', 'cystats_admin_referer');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Robots & Tools','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Robots/Tools','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-robots', 'cystats_admin_robots');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Pages','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Pages','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-pages', 'cystats_admin_pages');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Time','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Time','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-time', 'cystats_admin_time');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Options','cystats')),htmlspecialchars(__('Options','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-options', 'cystats_admin_options');
   		}
   	}
   }

5. If you want editors (as well as admins) to be able to view the stats, change the 8, 9 or 10 throughout the includes/admin.php file to the number of the user level your want (ie 7, 6 or 5 for editors).
6. If you only want the admin to be able to edit the CyStats options/settings (recommended), don’t change the final 8 (or 9 or 10). It looks like this:

   add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Options','cystats')),htmlspecialchars(__('Options','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-options', 'cystats_admin_options');

That’s it! No editing the database.

Note: You’ll probably need to make these changes again when you update the CyStats plugin, so this isn’t a perfect solution, but the CyStats plugin isn’t updated too often.

Enjoy.

Tilt-shift is basically a visual effect where you distort an image by reducing its perceived depth of field.

This can be used, for instance, to make a normal photo look like it’s a miniature–a very interesting effect.

Photojojo shows you 2 methods for making a tilt-shift lens for your camera using plumbing supplies.

A regular commercial tilt-shift lens is rather pricey, so you can either use Photoshop to create a tilt-shift effect, or use Photojojo’s tutorials and make your own lens.

DIY Tilt-Shift Lens:

http://photojojo.com/content/diy/plungercam-diy-tilt-shift-lens/

Enjoy!

Today we’re gonna look at how to install Photoshop on Linux (Ubuntu in this case, but should work with pretty much any distro).

Here are the ingredients:

• Toshiba Satellite laptop—Intel Dual Core processor
• Linux—Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)
• Wine 1.0.1
• Copy of Photoshop CS2
• Windows Fonts

Assuptions

We’ll assume that you’re already familiar with Ubuntu and know how to run and install programs via the Synaptic Package Manager.

We’ll also assume that you have Ubuntu installed already on your computer.

Finally, we assume you have a legal version of Photoshop CS2 (or at least a 30-day trial version)

Get and Install Wine

Wine basically lets you install and run many Windows programs right from within Linux, but without having to use any virtualization software.

Add the Wine Repository

First, add the Wine repository to Linux. This will make sure you have the most recent version on your computer.

You can find information on how to do this on WineHQ.org’s Download page.

Choose Ubuntu and follow the instructions to add Wine to your software sources.

Once you’ve successfully added the Wine repository, you’ll be able to install Wine easily.

Install Wine

Installing Wine in Ubuntu is as simple as going to Synaptic Package Manager (found in System > Administration), searching for ‘wine‘ and checking the box next to it.

But before clicking Apply, there’s something else we need to add as well–Windows fonts.

Windows Core Fonts

Linux and Wine don’t come with the same core fonts that are bundled with Windows. These include Times New Roman, Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, etc.

While Linux programs don’t require these fonts, any Windows program you’re going to install through Wine will.

To install the fonts, search for ‘mscorefonts‘ in Synaptic. Tick the box next to ttf-mscorefonts-installer and finally click Apply.

Synaptic will now install both Wine and the MS core fonts.

Photoshop

While you can install many Windows programs on Linux with Wine, some programs run more smoothly than others.

Photoshop CS2 (version 9.0) seems to run the smoothest with Wine. While it’s not the newest version, it’s still very usable. Actually, I’m still using CS3, so this isn’t that much of a  difference.

Wine has a page in their AppDB for Photoshop CS2 where more information, tips and status of bugs are displayed. This is a good place to start.

As mentioned in the AppDB page on Wine’s site, use a legal version of Photoshop CS2, not one of *ahem* questionable origins.

Adobe still has a 30-day free trial version on their site:

http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/win/cs2/Photoshop_CS2.exe (direct link to the EXE)

Simple Install

To install Photoshop, just double-click on the setup.exe file and it should install pretty much as it would on Windows.

Once it’s installed, you’re almost ready to use Photoshop.

Adding Fonts

The only thing left to do is copy your fonts from your Windows’ Fonts dir and place them in the Fonts directory within Wine.

Even if you have all your fonts you want to use installed in Ubuntu, for Photoshop/Wine to see and be able to use them, you will need to copy them and place them in the Fonts directory in the Wine folder.

Once this is done, start Photoshop and enjoy.

Running Photoshop on Linux: Bugs, Quirks and Oddities

Yes, running Photoshop on Ubuntu isn’t without some little glitches.

There’s a more complete list of bugs on Wine’s site, but here’s a quick list of what to expect:

• Windows overlap other programs sometimes unless you actually minimize Photoshop
• Windows and dialogs within Photoshop sometimes overlap each other
• Open documents are often minimized as icons at the bottom of the screen when Photoshop’s been minimized
• Adobe Bridge does not work, so Browse in the File menu will do nothing
• While some have noted that Save For Web doesn’t work, I have had no problems and it seems to work fine for me

Even though it has it’s quirks, Photoshop runs pretty well, and is actually much faster than CS3 on my Windows XP computer.

Hope this has showed you that it is possible and easy to install and run Photoshop on Ubuntu Linux.

Links used in this article:

• Ubuntu – http://ubuntu.com
• Wine – http://winehq.org
• Download Wine – http://www.winehq.org/download/
• Wine’s Photoshop CS2 page – http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=2631
• Adobe Photoshop CS2 (trial version) – http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/win/cs2/Photoshop_CS2.exe

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 2355395 bytes) in /public_html/wp-includes/http.php on line xxx

If you look at the file mentioned in the error message, you won’t find anything worthy of changing. I believe the line number mentioned is simply the line where WordPress ran out of memory.

Fortunately, I found the answer in a thread on the WordPress Forums (which should be one of the 1st places you go when looking for WP-related answers).

The error is memory related, so increase your available memory (after backing your site up, of course). Edit your wp-config.php file and add the following line right after the opening php statement:

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

Save the file and try the upgrade again. Unless you have something else wrong with your site/WP setup, the upgrade should now work perfectly.

@gimptutorials

Official Twitter account for GHUJ.com. Tons of links to GIMP tutorials, tips and resources.

Follow @Gimptutorials

@Linuxartist

This was mentioned on our Inkscape Twitter list, but there are a lot of GIMP tutorials and resources posted by @linuxartist, so this is a great Twitterer to follow.

Follow @Linuxartist

@Gimpusers

The official Twitter account for GimpUsers.com. Lots of tutorials, links, resources, brushes, fonts, etc.

Tweets are also available in German on their other Twitter account.

Follow @Gimpusers (English)

Follow @GimpusersDE (German language version)

@rstein

Rolf Steinort of MeettheGimp.org tweets about GIMP-related topics and provides links to other video tutorials for GIMP found on his site.

Some of his tweets are in German, so if you can’t read German…learn! ;)

Follow @rstein

@jyahshar

J. Yahshar runs a nice GIMP video tutorials site and tweets about GIMP. He also tweets tutorials and links and other GIMP-related news.

Follow @jyahshar

@devhideout

Tweets about GIMP tutorials among other graphics-related items. You should also take a look at DevHideOut.com for more GIMP video tutorials.

Follow @devhideout

Who do you think if worth following on Twitter for GIMP-related info? Share in the comments.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s Twitter collection.

Follow Me on Twitter

And of course, if you’re looking for web and graphic design-related links, resources, tutorials, news, etc—Follow me on Twitter.

Last week, I recommended some great people to follow on Twitter if you’re interested in Inkscape.

This week, I’m showcasing more people to follow on Twitter—this time, for Photoshop.

@hashphotoshop

Retweets (RT) of Photoshop-related tweets: tutorials, news, tips, plugins, brushes, etc. Always something new.

Follow @hashphotoshop

@photoshop_gu

Photoshop articles, tutorials, reviews, tips, tricks, and freebies from GurusUnleashed.com.

Follow @Photoshop_GU

@TutorialMag

Tutorial Magazine’s (Jørgen T) hand-picked Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and design tutorials.

Follow @tutorialmag

@Photoframd

Blog.Photoframd.com’s Twitter account. Features Photoshop tutorials and tips, as well as digital photography-related tweets.

Follow @photoframd

@PSDTuts

Twitter account for PSD Tuts+. Lots of great tutorials on Photoshop.

Follow @PSDTUTS

@tipsquirrel

Scampering around the internet for tasty Photoshop links, TipSquirrel.com’s (aka Greyson TipSquirrel) Twitter account is a nice collection of Photoshop goodies.

Follow @tipsquirrel

Who do you think if worth following on Twitter for Photoshop-related info? Tell us in the comments.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s Twitter collection. Look next Friday for another installment of Who to Follow on Twitter.

Follow Me on Twitter

And of course, if you’re looking for web and graphic design-related links, resources, tutorials, news, etc—Follow me on Twitter.

Now you can search all the web and graphic design posts on the Es Developed Blog right from your search bar in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7+.

We’re going to learn how to create your own custom OpenSearch search engine plugin for your site.

The search plugin will work in both Firefox 2+ (including Firefox 3) and Internet Explorer 7+ (including IE8).

OpenSearch and Your Site or Blog

OpenSearch is a collection of simple formats for the sharing of search results, created by A9.com.

In the context of your browser’s search bar you can use OpenSearch to help visitors find information on your site or blog even when they’re not currently at your website.

An OpenSearch plugin will work in both Firefox and Internet Explorer 7+.

Online Search Plugin Generator

One of the simplest and fastest ways to create your own search plugin is to use MozDev.org’s Mycroft Project Search Plugin Generation Tool.

The tool is a relatively short form you fill out and it does all the heavy lifting for you.

You supply:

• Icon for use in the search bar of the browser (can be your site’s favicon)
• Your details (used to register the plugin to you in the Mycroft database)
• Plugin name and description
• Search URL
• Category (where to place your generated plugin on the Mycroft database), plugin language, etc

It’s a good idea to tick the ‘Show full instructions?‘ box at the top of the form. This explains the type information to place into each field. Most of what you need is explained.

If you need more information about what to put in each field, take a look at Creating OpenSearch Plugins in Firefox.

The code for the search plugin is generated. You can either copy and paste the code into a blank XML file on your computer (recommended), or you can just install it in Firefox and test it first.

Once you’re sure it works, you can submit it to the Mozilla/Mycroft search plugin database using the same form.

Linking the Search Plugin

Now that you have the search plugin generated, you will want to provide a link to it in your website.

The easiest way is to copy the generated code from the Mycroft Search Plugin Generator and paste it into an XML file on your harddrive. Then upload the file to your site and link to it in your <head>:

<link type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="search" title="searchTitle" href="pluginURL/fileName.xml" />

This line of code allows your custom search plugin to be autodiscovered by browsers that support OpenSearch. Be sure to change ’searchTitle’ and ‘pluginURL/fileName.xml’ to the actual values you want for your plugin.

Automatic Updates in Firefox 3.1+

Beginning with Firefox 3.1, OpenSearch plugins can be automatically updated. To support this, you need to add another line to the <head> section of your site as well:

<Url type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="self" template="pluginURL/fileName.xml" />

Notice also the ‘rel=”self”‘. Be sure to change ‘pluginURL/fileName.xml’ to the actual URL of your plugin.

More info about automatic search plugin updates can be found here:

Mozilla Developer Center (Creating OpenSearch Plugins For Firefox)

Works in Firefox and IE

Even though you’re going through all the steps here using Mozilla’s site, the resulting search bar plugin is in OpenSearch format, so Internet Explorer 7 and 8 can use it as well.

See the Plugin in Action

If you’re using Firefox or IE 7+, you can see the search plugin that I made for this site in action.

Click on the dropdown on your browser’s search bar and select Add “Es Developed Blog”.

Add the Es Developed Blog Search plugin and give it a try.

You can search through our collection of web and graphic design:

• Tutorials
• Articles
• Online tool and services recommendations, and
• Design inspiration and resources

Tilt-Shift: Visual effect that makes normal-sized objects look as if they’re miniatures by reducing the depth of field.

Basically, think Mr Roger’s Neighborhood, but sans the models.

Tilt-Shift (Longer, more technical) definition:

“Tilt-shift photography refers to the use of camera movements on small- and medium format cameras; it usually requires the use of special lenses.

‘Tilt-shift’ actually encompasses two different types of movements: rotation of the lens relative to the image plane, called tilt, and movement of the lens parallel to the image plane, called shift. Tilt is used to control the orientation of the plane of focus (PoF), and hence the part of an image that appears sharp; it makes use of the Scheimpflug principle. Shift is used to change the line of sight while avoiding the convergence of parallel lines, as when photographing tall buildings.

In many cases, “tilt-shift photography” refers to the use of tilt and a large aperture to achieve a very shallow depth of field.”

Source: Tilt-Shift Photography: Wikipedia.org

Tilt Shift on TV

Recent TV shows using the tilt shift effect:

• Dollhouse
• Firefly
• ITV’s Whitechapel

Dollhouse

Joss Whedon’s newest project for TV—Dollhouse—makes great use of the tilt shift effect in its title credits sequence.

The choice of the tilt shift effect in Dollhouse fits perfectly with the subject and basic idea of the show—miniatures in a ‘dollhouse’. I like that the effect is used not just to make things look cool, but rather as a metaphor and tie-in with the show.

The Dollhouse intro is a great example of the tilt shift effect in video

Firefly

Firefly—another Joss Whedon project—used a tilt shift type effect when zooming in and panning, rather than to create a miniature effect.

This was many times used during space scenes to mimic a person using a hand-held camera and then having to refocus on the object in the frame.

The tilt shift effect blurred the outsides of the frame, while leaving the focus of the zoom relatively focused—kind of a tunnel-vision look. Then, once zoomed in, Zoic Studios used a quick manual focus effect before focusing completely on the object. The tilt shift effect is easy to miss, but it makes for a very interesting look.

Zioc Studios’ Firefly Effect Showcase Reel (contains a few examples of the zoom and pan effect described above)

Whitechapel

ITV’s Whitechapel makes sparse use of the tilt shift effect. It’s primarily used in a shot or 2 in the credits sequences and throughout for aerial shots of some of the UK buildings and architecture.

The effect doesn’t quite fit the subject as well as in Dollhouse, but it’s also not used as extensively or prominently as with Dollhouse.

Make Your Own Tilt Shift Photos (or: Tilt Shift Effect Tutorials)

A tilt shift lens for your camera allows you to shoot “real” tilt shift photography, but these can be a bit pricey. However, there have been several tutorials showing how to easily duplicate the effect in Photoshop.

• Fake Model Photography
• Tilt-Shift Photography Photoshop Tutorial
• How To Use Photoshop’s Lens Blur Tool For Tilt-Shift Fakery
• Tilt Shift Photoshop Tutorial: How To Make Fake Miniature Scenes

Tilt Shift “Photography”

This post wouldn’t be complete without some examples of tilt shift photography (or Photoshop copies). Smashing Magazine has a collection of 50 great tilt shift photos.

Did I Miss an Example?

I’ve shown 3 examples of TV shows that make use of tilt shift effects, but I’ve probably missed some. What about movies? Are there any films out there that you’ve spotted the tilt shift photography or effects? Share with us by leaving a comment.

Article Update: The steps outlined below are for use with Thunderbird 2. A newer post for Thunderbird 3 users has been written more recently. Thunderbird 3 makes syncing with Gmail 100×’s easier than the method below.

I originally used the Gmail option in Thunderbird 2’s Account Wizard to set up my Gmail account (almost 2 years ago). Looking at my settings in Thunderbird, I noticed that my Gmail account was set up for POP3 and not syncing at all (due to some changes Google made in late November, 2008).

POP3 vs IMAP

With POP3, you only get 1-way syncing. IMAP, not POP3, is what you will need if you want 2-way syncing with your computer and your online Gmail account. We want our Gmail account to be up-to-date on both our web account and the Thunderbird account on our computer.

Why Thunderbird 2’s Gmail setting still uses POP3, I don’t know. Maybe there will be an update for this soon.

I use Gmail as 1 part of my backup plan for work files. Copies of my site’s DB backups are emailed (via a handy WordPress plugin) to my Gmail account. But I also wanted a local copy available on my hard drive.

Fortunately, a little searching did me good and I found the solution.

Syncing Gmail and Thunderbird (The Solution)

I’ve recorded some notes and a few extra steps to help you (especially if you’re making the switch in Thunderbird from POP3 to IMAP).

Note: Before doing the following steps, make a backup of your Thunderbird profile in case something glitchy happens in the process.

If you already have a Gmail account set up in Thunderbird, I would also make a separate, new Gmail account/folder in Thunderbird for the IMAP version. Make the following changes to that new account. You can delete the original (POP3) account in Thunderbird once you’re sure everything’s been copied over.

Setting Up IMAP in Gmail and Linking to Thunderbird

Now, setup your IMAP/Gmail:

1. First, make sure you have IMAP set up in Gmail: Enabling IMAP in Gmail
2. Then, set up IMAP access to Gmail in Thunderbird 2.0
3. Also change your account settings based on the recommended Thunderbird settings (see note below)
   

Important: In the Recommended Thunderbird settings (step 3 above), your Gmail subfolders may not show up immediately. This will make it impossible to set the destination folders properly.

If your Gmail account in Thunderbird does have subfolders already (see illustration), you can skip down to Moving Missed Emails.

However, if your Gmail subfolders don’t appear in Thunderbird and you can’t properly set your destination folders, try this:

1. I recommend not enabling the Check for new messages at startup (Tools > Account Settings in Thunderbird).
2. Close Thunderbird without checking your email and then restart Thunderbird.
3. If there are still no subfolders ([Gmail], Drafts, All Mail, Sent Mail, etc… see screenshot) under your newly created Gmail account, you may need to write a new message from your new account in Thunderbird and save as a draft.
4. You should then see a [Gmail] subfolder with the following subfolders under it: Drafts, All Mail, Sent Mail, Spam, and so forth. If still nothing shows, then just restart Thunderbird again.

Now you should be able to go back into your account settings for your new account in Thunderbird and set the destination folders (according to the recommended Thunderbird settings).

After I finished all the above steps, I went back in and enabled Check for new messages at startup.

1. Go to Tools > Account Settings in Thunderbird and choose your newly setup Gmail account.
2. Re-enable Check for new messages at startup.
3. Save your settings.

Depending on your settings, Thunderbird should have already downloaded and synced your former emails that were on your online Gmail account to your newly created Gmail account folder (it will show the progress in the status bar).

Moving Missed Emails to New Gmail Folder

If you’re missing some recent emails that are in Thunderbird but not on your online account (like I was because of my former POP3 settings), here’s what you do:

1. Go to your old Gmail account folder in Thunderbird and select all the affected email.
2. Then right-click and choose Move To > [and select the Inbox of your new Gmail account].

Depending on how many files you’re moving, it may take some time to sync everything up. After it’s completed, your online Gmail account and your Gmail account in Thunderbird should all be syncing.

Cleaning Up

Once you’re sure that all the emails you need are copied to your new Thunderbird Gmail account, you can safely remove the old Gmail account; leaving your brand new, sparkling IMAP-enabled account.

Syncing With Other Email Clients

The same basic formula for syncing Gmail to Thunderbird should also work whether you’re using Outlook, Apple Mail, etc. Your settings may be different depending on your email client though, so use the IMAP help in Google Gmail Troubleshooting and choose the desktop client you use.

Troubleshooting > IMAP (For a list of all the topics under IMAP troubleshooting)

I hope this helps you. If you have any questions or comments, drop me a line or leave a comment below.

A couple of weeks ago, I showcased 5 free, open source graphics programs. One of the programs mentioned in the post was Inkscape—an Adobe Illustrator replacement.

Inkscape is a powerful, full-featured vector graphics program, capable of producing some mighty impressive graphics. Inkscape can be used to create all manner of vector graphics, logos and icons.

Similar to what I did with GIMP last week, this week we’re going to learn the basics of Inkscape with some tutorials, and then move on to some of the more impressive things that can be done.

The following tutorial sites and links will help you:

1. Learn Inkscape’s interface and shortcuts
2. Learn how to use some of Inkscape’s most-used tools
3. Have fun with Inkscape

Learn Inkscape’s Interface

To start off, let’s learn more about Inkscape’s interface and keyboard shortcuts. We’ll learn the basics by taking a look at Inkscape.org, the official Inkscape website.

Inkscape Tutorial: Basics

This tutorial shows how to perform common tasks like:

• Panning the canvas
• Zooming
• Creating and managing documents
• Creating shapes
• Moving, scaling and rotating
• Grouping
• Fill and stroke
• and more…

This is the first stop for anyone wanting to start using Inkscape, as well as those wanting to refresh their memories on keyboard shortcuts.

Advanced Inkscape Shortcuts and Techniques

Learn how to:

• Draw freehand and regular paths
• Editing paths
• Subpaths
• Boolean operations
• and more…

For more Inkscape basics and official documentation, take a look at Inkscape.org’s Documentation section (available in several languages).

Inkscape Interface Tutorial

Introduction to Inkscape: A nice tutorial showing you the Inkscape interface as well as the various tools.

Having Fun With Inkscape

Now that the basics are figured out, let’s have some fun with Inkscape and actually create some things.

Creating a Simple Ribbon

Use Inkscape to create a simple, but realistic vector ribbon.

InkscapeTutorials.wordpress.com

Blog dedicated to nothing but fantastic Inkscape tutorials. You can find tons of useful, easy-to-follow Inkscape tutorials here, as well as some video tutorials.

Example Tutorials: Using Inkscape to Illustrate Tomatoes, Creating Icons in Inkscape: A Basic Workflow, Render a Bitmap Image Using Tiled SVG Clones

Pixel2Life Inkscape Tutorials

A huge list of user-submitted Inkscape tutorials.

More Inkscape Tuts on Inkscape.org

Look at the user-submitted Inkscape tutorials in the Inkscape.org Tutorials and Help Wiki.

LinuxPlanet Inkscape Tutorials

A 6 part series on using Inkscape.

Video Tutorials

Screencasters.HeathenX.org is the place for Inkscape video tutorials.

Example Tutorials: Create a Pencil Icon, Desktop Publishing, Grunge Patterned Snowboard

Inkscape Video Tutorials on Google Videos

Benefits of Inkscape

Remember, Inkscape is cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) and it’s open source.

Unlike Illustrator, Inkscape is easy on the system resources and runs nicely on just about any system.

It’s a good choice for graphic designers who need to create vector graphics, logos or icons.

Since I found Inkscape, I hardly ever crack open Illustrator anymore. I’ve used it for commercial and print projects, and logo and icon designs.

A month or so ago, I stumbled across a post that led me to Posterous—a free online service that lets you post to your blogs and other sites by email.

Posterous also lets you autopost—posting to multiple sites/blogs with a single email.

Last month, I wrote a step-by-step tutorial about using Posterous and its autopost feature to post to WordPress (hosted and self-hosted), Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, etc, etc.

This is extremely useful because WordPress’ built-in email posting system is very limited. Posterous makes it easy for people with a web-enabled cellphone or BlackBerry to post on the go. The autopost is great for anyone who wants to make posting the same information/photos to several sites a 1 step process.

More Tutorials and Features

Posterous also has a few more features and capabilities that’s been released since I wrote my original tutorial in January. These features make it even easier to control which sites you autopost to and control the information you can post to your blogs.

Official Posterous Tutorials and Features

The Official Posterous blog shows a simple way to select which blogs and sites to autopost to on the fly using the #url@posterous.com syntax.

It also explains how to assign WordPress categories to your posts with Posterous. For example, add your categories to the end of your Subject like so: ((tag: apple, gadgets))

Thanks to Posterous

I want to thank Posterous for making it simple for non-technical people and those with mobile devices to still post to their sites with as little effort as possible.

I also want to thank the guys at Posterous for linking to my earlier tutorial on their blog and newletters.

I look forward to seeing where Posterous will go in the near future. They seem to be adding new features about every other day lately:

• New Posterous Bookmarklet
• Password Protect Your Posterous Site
• Official Posterous Blog

Last week, I wrote about 5 open source graphics programs. One of the programs I covered was GIMP, an open source Photoshop alternative for creating and editing images.

If you’re familiar with Photoshop, GIMP can take some getting used to.

This week, I’m going to help you master The GIMP with a showcase of 3 sources of GIMP tutorials guaranteed to turn you from newbie to GIMP master *.

These sites will help you:

1. Learn the GIMP interface and basic keyboard shortcuts (in ½ an hour!)
2. Learn the basics of GIMP and perform common (and essential) tasks
3. Take your new GIMP superpowers and learn how to perform daring acts of special effects, photo-manipulation and more.

* Guarantee on GIMP mastery not valid in Alaska or lower 49 states. Results may vary. See a doctor if results last longer than 6 hours. Do not take internally.

1. Learn the GIMP Interface in 30 Minutes

GIMP’s interface and keyboard shortcuts are quite a bit different from Photoshop, so this is probably the biggest hurdle if you’re coming from PS.

Want to learn the basics of using GIMP’s interface? Want to learn GIMP’s interface and main keyboard shortcuts? Have 30 minutes?

Yes, yes and yes? Checkout a rundown of GIMP’s tools and shortcuts posted on GimpTalk’s forum.

2. Learn the Basics With the Official GIMP.org Tutorials

Now that you have GIMP’s interface and shortcuts down, it’s time to practice some basics with the tutorials found on the GIMP.org website. These tutorials cover many of GIMP’s abilities and are grouped into categories such as Beginner, Intermediate, Expert, Photo Editing, Web and even Script Authoring.

Beginner Tutorials

Covers the basics of using GIMP (getting a grip on GIMP) and things you will need for most editing projects such as:

• Using selections
• Paths (Bezier selections)
• Quickmask
• Red-eye removal

Intermediate Tutorials

The intermediate tutorials build a bit on the beginner tutorials:

• Drawing shapes with paths
• Anti-aliased threshold
• Film grain
• Changing background color
• Coloring a black and white sketch
• Textures
• Simple animation
• Custom brushes

Expert

The tutorials in the expert section continue to build on the features of GIMP:

• Make GIMP image pipes
• Sketch effect
• Draw a paint brush
• Creating icons
• Using GAP (GIMP Animation Package)
• Advanced Animations

Photo Editing Tutorials

The photo editing tutorials section covers:

• Converting color images to black and white
• Selective colorization
• Reducing CCD noise
• Contrast masking
• Gaussian blur overlays
• Smart sharpening

The official GIMP tutorials are great for learning the basics and will help you find your way around GIMP’s tools and menus.

3. Flex Your New GIMP Superpowers

GIMP-Tutorials.net

Now that you have the interface down and the basics sussed out, it’s time to have some real fun.

GIMP-Tutorials.net has some well-written and very useful tutorials for different effects, collages, light effects, photo-manipulation, icons and buttons, painting, textures, website layouts, text effects and more.

Definitely the place to start if you’re familiar with GIMP and ready to make some fantastic graphics.

If you want some more fun, try out these other GIMP tutorial sites:

Gimpology

Gimpology has a huge list of user-submitted GIMP tutorials.

Example tutorial: Authentic Vintage Effect

Shadow Logic

Some impressive effects done in GIMP and the tutorials to help you do the same.

Example tutorials: Grunge Brush Pack and Tutorial, Resizing Fade Effect

GIMP Tutorials.com

One of the biggest collections of GIMP tutorials on the web.

GIMP Users

Another huge collection of GIMP tutorials, including video tutorials.

GIMP Plus

Living up to it’s tagline with some high quality GIMP tutorials.

In Part 1 of our BlogDesk tutorial, I showed you how to setup BlogDesk and connect to WordPress and publish/edit posts.

This week in Part 2, I’ll show you the basics of connecting to ExpressionEngine (version 1.6.6) from BlogDesk and how to publish simple blog-style entries.

To get the most out of this tutorial, you should:

• Know the basics of ExpressionEngine (EE) and have it setup (either the core or commercial version will work)
• You should also look over Part 1 of this series because we’ll be skimming over some of the basics of using BlogDesk in this tutorial

Note: Although you can add/edit EE entries in BlogDesk, I found it to be very limited. BlogDesk might be a decent option for those who are using EE strictly for blog posts or posting news items. For those using EE’s more advanced abilities (field groups, etc), BlogDesk may not be the answer for you.

I also found uploading images and editing entries that have already been posted to EE to be problematic.

That said, let’s begin.

Install the Metaweblog Module in ExpressionEngine

The first step that we need to take is to make sure that the Metaweblog API module is installed in ExpressionEngine. This module lets BlogDesk and EE communication with each other.

1. Log into your EE control panel
2. Click on the Modules tab at the top
3. Find the module named Metaweblog API and make sure it’s installed. If it isn’t, click Install and let EE install the module.
   
4. Note the Metaweblog API URL—it will be used later in the Blog Wizard
   

Connecting to ExpressionEngine

Now you’re ready to configure the connection to your ExpressionEngine site from within BlogDesk.

Basically, setting up the connection between BlogDesk and ExpressionEngine is the same process as setting up the connection from BlogDesk to WordPress.

1. Go to File>Manage Blogs
   
2. Click New to start the Blog Wizard. The Wizard will guide you through setting up the connection between BlogDesk and ExpressionEngine.
3. Enter the name of your blog on the next screen. It’s just to help you identify your site within BlogDesk, so any name will do.
4. Next, you’ll enter the address of your blog. You don’t have to put http:// or a trailing /—BlogDesk adds them when you click Next.
   
5. Next, choose ExpressionEngine as your weblog system
   
6. BlogDesk will try to guess the location (URL) of your Metaweblog API in EE. The default that BlogDesk comes up with should be okay, but double-check in EE to make sure it’s correct (see step 4 under the section above Install the Metaweblog Module in ExpressionEngine).
7. Click the Next button and enter your EE login information
   
8. The next screen is for your Blog-ID. Click Get Blog-ID. You should get a success message. Click OK and go to the next screen.
9. If you have categories set up in EE already, the Get Categories button will import the list into BlogDesk. EE comes with 3 categories by default (Blogging, News, Personal), but you can always import your categories later if you haven’t set any up yet from Blog Manager>Properties.
   
10. The next screen tests to make sure you can upload images through EE (as opposed to using FTP). Test Upload will upload a small badge image.
    
    If this doesn’t work, you may have to set up an FTP connection instead later. Personally, I could not get this to work. You may need to check your permissions for your uploads folder.
11. Click Next and then Finish to finish and exit the wizard

Now you will return to the Blog Manager window. Clicking the Properties button will let you review your settings. This is a good idea just to make sure everything is set up the way you want.

This is also where you can add your FTP settings if you had problems getting your image uploading working in the Blog Wizard.

Publishing EE Entries

See Part 1 of this series for details on publishing using BlogDesk. The same details apply to publishing entries to ExpressionEngine.

The Verdict

BlogDesk can be used to post simple EE entries, but I found it to be very limited in its abilities. It would be best suited for EE sites that are mostly standard blogs or for making news-type posts. Beyond that, I found BlogDesk to be very temperamental with EE. BlogDesk is no match for ExpressionEngine’s flexibility.

Editing Previous Entries

I had issues editing previously posted entries. Editing the entries made them disappear from the site for some reason.

Image Uploading

I also had issues getting images to upload properly or at all.

Granted, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time trying to make it work, but compared to WordPress, getting BlogDesk to work with EE was much more of a hassle.

Has anyone else tried BlogDesk with ExpressionEngine? What were your experiences? Anything I missed? Tell us about it in the comments.

Previously, I wrote a brief post about BlogDesk, a Windows desktop app that lets you publish to your site without setting foot inside your blog/CMS’s admin section. BlogDesk works for WordPress, ExpressionEngine, Drupal, Movable Type and Serendipity.

Over the next 2 weeks, I’ll be showing you how to use BlogDesk to publish to WordPress and ExpressionEngine.

This week, in part 1, we’re going to look at setting up BlogDesk and publishing a post to WordPress 2.7 (beta 3).

BlogDesk Installation & WordPress Blog

1. First, make sure you have a WordPress blog set up and configured. Even though this tutorial uses WordPress 2.7, any version of WordPress 2.3 and up will work the same way.
2. Although not required, it would be good to set up some categories on your blog if you haven’t already
3. Next, download BlogDesk and install it on your computer (Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP, Vista)

Set Up a Connection to Your Blog

1. Run BlogDesk and you will see the main application screen—this is where you will write, save and publish your posts. First, though, we have to set up the connection to your WordPress site.
   
2. Go to File>Manage Blogs
   
3. Click New to start the Blog Wizard. The Wizard will guide you through setting up the connection between BlogDesk and WordPress.
4. Enter the name of your blog on the next screen. Any name will do—it’s just to help you identify your site within BlogDesk.
   
5. On the next screen, you will enter the address of your blog. You don’t have to put http:// or a trailing /—BlogDesk will add them when you click Next if you leave them out.
   
6. Next, choose your blogging platform. In our case, we will choose the 1st WordPress option since the version is above 2.2.
   
7. BlogDesk will try to guess the location of your xmlrpc.php file. The default should be fine unless you’ve specifically changed your WordPress settings.
   
8. WordPress (2.6 and up) does not enable XML-RPC by default, so now is a good time to enable it if you have not already. You will need to log into your WordPress control panel and go to Settings>Writing. Under Remote Publishing, check the box next to Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols and save the settings.
   
9. Back in BlogDesk, click the Next button and enter your WordPress login information
   
10. The next screen is for your Blog-ID. This establishes a connection to your blog. If you’ve enabled XML-RPC in WordPress, click Get Blog-ID. You should get a success message. Click OK and go to the next screen.
    
11. If you have categories set up in WordPress already, the Get Categories button will import the list into BlogDesk. If you have not created any categories yet, you can always import your categories later.
    
12. The next screen tests to make sure you can upload images through WordPress (as opposed to using FTP). Test Upload will upload a small badge image. If this doesn’t work, you may have to set up an FTP connection instead later.
    
13. Click Next and then Finish to finish and exit the wizard.
    

Now BlogDesk is mostly set up. There are a few more things, however, we can check before we write our first post.

Check Blog Properties

1. In the Manage Blogs window, you will see your newly added blog. With the blog selected, click Properties.
2. The Blog tab lets you see your blog’s details. Make sure your Encoding matches what’s used on your site. For us, we’re going to keep it at UTF-8.
3. If you could not upload files directly (step 12 above), the FTP & Upload tab lets you add an FTP account. If you had no issues uploading the test image, don’t worry about this.
4. In the Categories tab, Get Categories From the Server will update the list of categories if you’ve added or deleted any categories in WordPress. If you want new posts to belong to one or more categories by default, tick the appropriate boxes.
5. In the Publish tab, tick the boxes next to the fields that you want to check for content when publishing posts (think required fields in forms)
   
6. If you selected UTF-8 encoding, make sure Encode Special Characters in HTML is unchecked
7. Click OK to save your settings and exit the Properties window
8. Click Close to close the Manage Blogs window

Now you should see your blog’s name and a list of categories in the upper right panel on the main program screen. Now let’s write a post for our blog.

Write a Post

The rest is pretty self-explanatory, but here are some quick tips:

• Use the main window to write your post
  
• To switch to HTML code editing, go to View>Source
• The Extras menu lets you add/edit tags and custom fields, password posts and edit program settings
• The Save button saves a draft of your post to your harddrive for later editing
  
• By default, the Publish button will publish your post automatically. If you want to just upload the post as a draft to WordPress, untick the checkbox next to Publish after Upload, in the right sidebar.
  
• You can see your brand new post if you log into WordPress. You can edit the post from the WordPress control panel after you publish it, just like any other post.
  

Editing WordPress Posts in BlogDesk

In BlogDesk, you can also edit posts that have already been published, whether or not they were written originally in BlogDesk.

1. In BlogDesk, go to File>Edit Posts Already Published (logical enough)
2. In the Edit Posts window, select the blog you want to edit from the drop-down menu at the top
3. Choose how many posts you want displayed, then click Show
4. Select the post you want to edit and click Edit
5. Once you have made your changes, clicking the Publish button will save the edited post back onto your site

Useful Tool

BlogDesk looks like a solid program for Windows users or for those who have clients that use Windows. With BlogDesk, you don’t have to give your clients access to WordPress or any other blog/CMS’s control panel.

This could be great for times when you need to write a post, but don’t have access to an internet connection. It can also be used to keep local backup copies of your posts.

More BlogDesk Tutorials

Read Part 2—BlogDesk: Publishing to ExpressionEngine.

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Every web or graphic designer needs a way to backup their files and keep them off-site in case of disaster. Last month I wrote a post about online incremental backups using Mozy. But if you’re like me, you may want to try doing this yourself.

Today we’re going to tackle a DIY project—making online, incremental backups and storing them on your website (or more accurately, on your web host’s server). For security reasons, we’ll be placing the backups outside of the browseable directory structure.

This tutorial is tailored to Windows users and is based on the tutorial found on ExaVault’s website. But instead of using their pay service, we’ll be using the extra storage space on your web host account.

The general principals are the same if you’re running Mac OS X or Linux, but the command syntax is different. For tutorials on how to set up Rsync on the Mac and Linux, take a gander at the following tutorials:

Mac OS X Rsync Tutorial

Linux/Unix/BSD Rsync Tutorial

Requirements

In order to complete this DIY project, you are going to need the following:

• The desire to get your hands dirty
• Windows (95 & up will do)
• cwRsync
• Web Host that allows you plenty of storage and transfer bandwidth
• Access to SSH (Secure Shell) – Note: You may have to specifically ask your host to enable SSH access. Most hosts have it turned off by default.

Still with me? Grab your safety glasses and let’s get to work.

For Windows users, you will need to get cwRsync (the download link is in the right sidebar on their site).

Basically, cwRsync creates a Linux environment on Windows so you can run Rsync (a program that comes with Linux and Mac OS X.

Step 1 – Install cwRsync

1. Download cwRsync from IteF!x
2. Unzip cwRsync_2.1.5_Installer.zip and run the installer (the default settings should be fine)

Step 2 – Create a Security Key (SSH)

We need to make a secure connection between the computer you want to backup and your web host, so we need to create an SSH key.

1. Open the Command Prompt

2. Add cwRsync to your Windows path so you can run it:

path = %PATH%;c:\program files\cwRsync\bin

3. Create a directory to put store your backup config files. Create a directory in your C drive and name it backup ( c:\backup )

4. Create the SSH key.

ssh-keygen -f /cygdrive/c/backup/ssh_key -t rsa -N ''

‘/cygdrive/c/backup/ssh_key’ is where cwRsync is going to save the SSH key. ‘/cygdrive/c/’ is basically your C: drive.

Step 3 – Upload Your Key To Your Web Host

In the following commands, substitute username@domain.com with your account username (usually your account name given you by your web host) and your domain name.

Type the following command; all on one line:

rsync -e ssh /cygdrive/c/backup/ssh_key.pub username@domain.com:ssh_keys/key1.pub

Since the host can’t be verified, it will ask you if you want to connect to the server. Type yes and type in your password (for your web host account) when asked. If it doesn’t say anything else, then it was a success.

If it gives you an error, check and make sure you substituted your username/domain name correctly in the above command.

Step 4 – Activate Your Key

Activate the key you created:

ssh username@domain.com addkeys

Enter your password when prompted.

This copies your public key (key1.pub) to the authorized_keys directory in your backup directory.

Note: If this step fails, you can simply make a copy of the key1.pub file and place it in the authorized_keys directory yourself and it should work.

That’s pretty much it for setting up the connection between your computer and your web host’s server. Now let’s run a test to make sure everything’s working.

Step 5 – Run a Test Backup

This is an important step to take before trying to backup your important files. We want to make sure it works properly.

In Command Prompt, type (again, substitute your details):

rsync -avz -e "ssh -i /cygdrive/c/backup/ssh_key" "Desktop" username@domain.com:backup-test

This tells Rsync to backup all the files on your Desktop and upload them to /backup-test on your web host.

Rsync should create the backup-test directory for you. But depending on your web host’s setup, you may have to create the directory yourself.

Note too, that we’re storing the backup in a directory outside the site structure. This is for security reasons—we obviously don’t want people to be able to reach your backup folders from their browser.

Step 6 – Check the Backup

Since we can’t browse to our directory from our browser, use either FTP or SFTP to view the /backup-test folder. Make sure the files from your desktop are there. If so, you’re good to go for making your first real backup.

You can go ahead and delete your backup-test directory if your test backup worked.

Step 7 – Back It Up Already

Decide what folders you want to backup. Note that cwRsync makes a Linux environment on your Windows system. That said, cwRsync wasn’t designed to backup Windows system files. I haven’t personally tested it, but there are probably permissions issue that won’t let you backup system files that are in use by Windows.

I have a main directory that holds all my clients’ project and production files in subdirectories (/Production Files). So this is the folder I’ll backup.

Make a Backup Script

We will need to make a backup script that can be run from the Command Prompt. This will feed the commands to Rsync so we don’t have to type it all by hand every time.

You can download a sample batch file from ExaVault’s website.

The very last line in the data-backup.bat file is what you will need to change.

Example:

rsync -avz --delete -e ssh "/cygdrive/c/My Documents/Production Files/" myusername@mywebsite:mainbackup

Data-backup.bat contains instructions to help you make edits. This file should go in your c:\backup directory.

Run the backup the first time to test it:

c:\backup\data-backup.bat

After typing your password in, it should start uploading files. If you have a lot of information, depending on your upload speed, this may take a while to complete.

The next time you run the batch file, it will be incremental and only upload the changed bits.

Multiple Directories

You can backup a directory and all it’s subdirectories will be backed up. However, there’s something to note when backing up more than one main directory that I discovered.

To backup more than one main directory, I recommend making a separate .bat file for each main directory you want backed up.

The reason is that if you add a second command to data-backup.bat, once the first backup command is finished, you will be prompted for your password again. If you’re not at your computer at the time, your host will timeout and you will have to run the whole command again.

I also recommend sending each main directory that you backup to it’s own separate folder on your web host.

For instance, say you want to back up the directories c:\production-files\ and also e:\studio-projects\. Backup production-files to backup-1/ and studio-projects to backup-2/.

If you backup both main directories to the same folder, the commands in each batch file will undo the other. Each batch file will look for the files it’s supposed to be backing up. When you run the next .bat file, it will see the files/folder from the other backup and ’sync’ (ie delete) them since they are not part of the current backup. I know this sounds confusing, but trust me, it’s annoying to see an hour’s worth of uploading be wiped out only to be redone the next time you run the other batch file.

Once you have everything working, you can create shortcuts to the .bat files on your Desktop so you only have to double-click each one to run them.

Conclusion

This is definitely not as easy as using Mozy for online incremental backups, but hey, it works and it’s nice to have it right on your own server. This technique can also be used to backup to another computer across a network. It’s also a great redundancy backup plan for just-in-case.

Are you currently using, or have you used cwRsync or Rsync in the past? Do you use something else I’d love to hear your thoughts on this—leave a comment.

ExpressionEngine is a great CMS—flexible, powerful yet unassuming, a designer’s dream. However, the thought of actually sitting down and learning ExpressionEngine can seem daunting at first.

What would you say if I told you that you could learn ExpressionEngine in less than 2 days?

If you have a fairly good handle on coding valid (X)HTML/CSS, you already know most of the code you’ll need to build your site in EE.

Many say ExpressionEngine has a steep learning curve. But I think much of that learning curve is a result of 2 main things:

1. Confusion about EE terms
2. Scarcity of ExpressionEngine tutorials

Once you overcome these 2 obstacles, learning EE isn’t that difficult. Now, I’m not saying you’ll know everything about ExpressionEngine in 2 days, but you’ll know enough to start converting your existing XHTML/CSS design to EE.

ExpressionEngine Terminology

To be honest, this was the most difficult part for me to wrap my head around, and a lot of people go into EE a bit confused when it comes to what this and that term means. So let’s start by clearing up just a few of the basics.

Weblog

Everywhere else, a weblog is a site usually made up of posts, such as what you’re reading right now. In EE however, a weblog refers to a chunk of information. A weblog can contain just about any kind of information you want.

For example, a weblog could contain details about an album: Artist, Album Title, Release Date, etc. Using EE tags (similar to HTML tags), you can pull those individual details out of the weblog—using, reusing and displaying them virtually anywhere on your site.

Templates

If you’re familiar with WordPress, you know what templates are. In ExpressionEngine, a template houses the code for your pages and can contain information from many weblogs (again, chunks of information).

Basically, templates contain your code. They can hold HTML, but they can also contain CSS and javascript.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="{path=styles/base}" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{path=styles/print}" type="text/css" media="print" />

{!-- External Site Notice Dialog --}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{path=styles/dialog}" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{path=styles/jqModal}" type="text/css" media="screen" />

<!--[if lte IE 6]><script type="text/javascript" src="{path=scripts/iepngfix}"></script><![endif]-->
<!--[if lte IE 6]><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="{path=styles/css_ie}" /><![endif]-->

Contents of a header template: Linking to external stylesheets and javascript is pretty much like regular XHTML.

Just as you can link to external CSS and javascript files from an HTML document (and include files into PHP files), you can import templates into another template. This could be used to keep your header, footer, main content and sidebars separate in their own templates.

{!-- DTD, Page Title, Styles & Scripts --}
{embed="includes/html_dtd_head"}

    {assign_variable:page_title="Home"}

    <title>{page_title}&mdash;{site_name}</title>
    {embed="includes/html_meta"}
    {embed="includes/html_styles_home"}
    {embed="includes/html-scripts-home"}
</head>

You can easily pull in code from another template using the embed tag, similar to using includes in PHP.

Template Groups

While EE’s flexibility allows for other uses, basically, template groups are virtual folders used to group similar templates together.

For example, you could create a template group named Scripts to place your javascript templates into. Or a Portfolio template group that contains a few templates with your previous work.

There are other terms, but much of this is explained (and probably better than my attempt here) in the Getting Started section of the ExpressionEngine Documentaion. I recommend reading through this section and following along with the Quick Start Tutorial.

The ExpressionEngine Documentation and Knowledge Base do much better jobs of explaining everything in more detail.

ExpressionEngine Tutorials

The second obstacle to learning ExpressionEngine is finding good tutorials.

Sure, you can find a few tutorials that deal with different aspects of ExpressionEngine, but when you’re just starting out, you need a good set of tutorials that take you from start to finish.

Michael Boyink’s Train-ee site is the best there is as far as leading you through the entire process. His Building a Small Business Site tutorial series is a great place to start.

He suggests finding a free website template and dissecting it. Yet, if you’ve read through the EE Quick Start guide already and you’ve already created the site (or your main pages at least) in regular XHTML/CSS, you can use your own design and follow along. No need doing things twice.

Basically, you’ll be learning how to set up your dynamic information (weblogs) and then add EE tags into your pages to pull in that information.

Getting Help When You’re Stumped

It’ll happen. Instead of pulling your hair out or developing a drug addition, don’t forget about the EE community.

The ExpressionEngine Forums is a great place to find answers. They are a great bunch of people and very friendly and willing to help you any way they can.

ExpressionEngine Tags

Learning and remembering EE’s tags can take some time. Why not cheat.

You can use the handy-dandy ExpressionEngine cheatsheet-er-Quick Reference Guide. It’s also available in a convenient PDF download.

Tips & Tricks

As great as these tutorials are, once you build your 1st site in ExpressionEngine, you’ll probably wish you’d done things a little differently here and there. Instead of making mistakes that others already have, Simon Collison of CollyLogic has some great tips for working more productively in ExpressionEngine:

• Working smarter with Expression Engine
• Expression Engine Top Ten Tips – Part One
• Expression Engine Top Ten Tips – Part Two

Edit: Smashing Magazine just published an insane list of ExpressionEngine resources—including tutorials, plugins much more. You’ll want to check it out.

Note: The It’s All Text plugin for Firefox that I have written about before is almost impossible to live without when coding in ExpressionEngine.

Not So Hard

With all this great information at your fingertips, learning ExpressionEngine doesn’t sound so difficult, huh? Once you get your first site under your belt and see how flexible and powerful EE really is, you may get spoiled when you have to build for other CMS’s.

Schedule For Success

Day 1:

• Look through the EE Getting Started documentation and follow the Quick Start examples.
• Make sure you have the terms and how they relate to each other clearly in mind.
• Print out the ExpressionEngine Quick Reference Guide.

Day 2:

• Take a look at Simon Collison’s EE tips.
• Check out the It’s All Text plugin for Firefox.
• Follow along with Michael Boyink’s Building a Small Business Site tutorials and by the end of the day, you should have the basics of ExpressionEngine down.

What Do You Think?

What has your experience been with ExpressionEngine? Have any tips to pass along? Leave a comment.