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Last 25 Posts
Complete TimThumb Parameters Guide
It was recently pointed out to me that there's no single place to get a list of all the TimThumb parameters so I thought I would put together a page explaining them, and link to the relevant tutorials/ explanations.
stands for values What it doessrc source url to image Tells TimThumb which image to resize › tutorialw width the width to resize to Remove the width to scale proportionally (will then require the height) › tutorialh height the height to resize to Remove the height to scale proportionally (will ...Customising WordPress Custom Headers in Child Themes
I am currently working on the next version of Mimbo Pro (due for release really really soon), and am updating the child themes to work with the new update.
Part of the update is that we (Darren and I) wanted to make the best use of the built in WordPress functionality. One of the elements we wanted to take care of was making sure the header is as flexible as possible. Adding the custom WordPress headers is easy. There's documentation on ...
Legend of Zelda: The Lost Oracle
Anyone who knows me knows that I love some Zelda action. So I'm in love with this trailer for a new Zelda game..?
The Lost Oracle is what every fan wants and, unfortunately, not something we're likely to see. The trailer was created by Joel Furtado - 'just for fun'.
The animation has all the Zelda trademarks, including the sound effects and music, and fans of the series will recognise the enemies and environments as ...
WordPress Theme Framework: Less Is More – Or Is It?
I have a conundrum. I want to improve Elemental - my WordPress theme framework. I want to make it lean and fast; but this will involve removing functionality. This in turn means that when people upgrade their themes things may break.
And I don't know what to do?
ExamplesI want to remove options and features and make better use of WordPress built-in functionality. For example:
HTML5: I want to move to HTML 5 for the theme. I'm in the process of making ...YouTube: Best of 2011
YouTube is awesome - I recently read a statistic that said that the average YouTube user is watching over 300 YouTube videos a month.
Part of this must be because of the proliferation of devices that you can watch YouTube on. The recent XBox 360 update (that I mentioned the other day) has a YouTube app that let's you watch YouTube in the comfort of your own living room. It makes a big difference watching the ...
New Xbox 360 – Just For Games?
Not entirely sure how this happened but I was recently invited to be an Xbox 360 ambassador. What does this mean? Well I have been asked to write a couple of blog posts and post some tweets about Xbox.
The reason for becoming an ambassador is to promote the new Xbox 360 dashboard functionality that turns your Xbox from a pure games console, into a full blown media hub.
New DashboardWhen you first load the new dashboard the first thing you ...
A Strange Request and Your Chance to win £200 of Amazon Vouchers
This is a slightly strange request - but I have had a pr company contact me and ask me to get my readers to fill out a survey - and the survey gives you a chance to win £200 worth of Amazon vouchers.
There is a reason for me posting this - and all will become clear in the future - but for the time being you'll have to make do with this cryptic message
Anyway - if you want to ...
Brave – Pixar – Awesome
Pixars new movie, Brave, looks super sweet!
I love that Pixar like to do things that go off in totally different directions. This movie actually reminds me a little of the classic Disney cartoons (Sleeping Beauty, Sword in the Stone, Robin Hood etc) and I guess that makes sense since they have now been consumed by the Mouse House.
The characters look a little 'How to Train Your Dragon'ee, but then I enjoyed that as well. Really ...
Business Lessons from Innocent Drinks
Online there's loads of blog posts and articles about web development, marketing, copywriting, and graphic design. As a web-designer things like technical knowledge and design skills are very important - but there's not so much about building a successful team environment and making the most of your team.
Business, management and marketing are things I am really interested in. In my day job I lead the web team at Miniclip.com so, besides designing web pages and developing new functionality, I ...
Star Wars: Clone Wars, Series 3 DVD Review
Recently I received an invite to go and see a preview of Season 3 of Star Wars: Clone Wars at the Warner Brothers HQ in London.
Anyone who knows me, knows I am a long time Star Wars fan, including the prequels, and the 3D tv series - so it would be an understatement to say I was looking forward to it (yes, I'm a geek).
In fact talking of the tv series Jo, my wife, got me series one and two ...
Paul and The Big Lebowski
I recently got sent some more iTunes movies to review. I like getting free stuff and, as you can tell from the post titles, these were good'uns
PaulPaul is the latest film from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and the only one to feature a potty mouthed alien.
Generally I watch the iTunes movies on my iPhone however since Jo, my better half, wanted to see Paul I decided to hook ...
TimThumb 2.0
Ok - so - TimThumb. I am sure many people have seen this already but some code exploits were recently discovered in TimThumb. Now that everything is under control once more I thought I would explain what happened and what is going to happen in the future.
The exploit that was found was a bug with the external image resize functionality and the fact it could be used to download and execute files. There was code in place that restricted ...
It’s Kind of a Funny Story – Movie Review
It's been a while since I have written a movie review here on Binary Moon, I'm hoping I can start doing them more often as I rather enjoy the process.
My latest review is for a film called It's Kind of a Funny Story, which I watched on iTunes. It's Kind of a Funny Story is a slightly unusual film. A coming of age story ...
Meteora, Exhibitor and Byline – New WordPress Themes
In the last 7 months I have released 3 new WordPress Themes on Pro Theme Design and so I thought I would mention them here. The themes cover a variety of website types/ niches, and so are suitable for a range of different people.
If you're interested in any of these themes then you can give them a test run for yourself on the Pro Theme Design preview site.
BylineByline is a magazine/ newspaper style theme. Its unique feature ...
A Day in the Life of a Web Designer
I recently had someone email me and ask what a day in my life, or that of a web designer, was like. A slightly unusual request but I thought I would take up the challenge and document an average day.
I don't mention it very often so I am not sure how many people realise I have a full time job. The websites I run I work on around the day job so I need to be very careful to balance ...
Choosing What to Add to a Premium Theme
Building WordPress themes for Pro Theme Design I have to tread a fine line, between what people ask for, and what people want.
I get loads of feature requests, and generally my approach is to suggest a plugin, or to dig a bit deeper and work out why the request has been made. The requests normally end up filtered into one of three piles.
Will it benefit me or my own ...TimThumb Quality Settings
Recently I have had a couple of emails about changing the amount of compression on TimThumb cropped images. The change itself is really easy, however I thought I would write it up as a reference for those who aren't aware of it's existence.
To change the level of compression all you have to do is edit the 'q' (which stands for quality) parameter in the query string.
If you don't set the value then ...
How To Fix WordPress and Mod Security 2
Recently my website was moved to a new web server, and in the process the server software was upgraded, and it broke some parts of my site. It took a bit of digging but in the end I worked out that the problem lie with Mod Security - a server plugin that improves security but can sometimes inadvertently break features.
Simple WordPress Post Thumbnails with Regular Expressions
These days everyone with a blog understands the importance of thumbnail images. Three years ago it was common place to have exclusively text, but now a nice image is a requirement. As such the process of implementing the image needs to be made easier.
With my WordPress themes, Elemental in particular, I have simplified things as much as possible. You can set your own thumbnail using the WordPress featured image functionality, or you can use custom fields (which is generally ...
Optimizing WordPress 404′s
One of the great things about WordPress is how 404 error pages are handled. If a page isn't found then you can show a proper dynamic error page giving the user things to do - this removes a lot of the traditional problems with 404 pages, ie the dead end syndrome.
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