EU Cookie Law – Elgg Extension

Jul 8, 2012 Posted Under: Elgg   Read More

Elgg-based sites make use of cookies to remember the visiting user preferences. Some sites also make use of Google or Yahoo Analytics that will include some additional cookies to the site. With the new EU cookie regulation law, Elgg-based sites in EU countries are required to acquire consent from the visitor to use cookies. To [...]

Software Failover: The jump-sheet for everyone – Conclusion

May 22, 2012 Posted Under: Other   Read More

Conclusion Failover mechanisms are neither an extra effort nor an extra cost that can be ignored in software solutions. From the developer’s perspective failover mechanisms are a sign-off: Understanding of working environment of a specific piece of code, Willingness to supply a reliable and robust system, A way to avoid irresolvable issues. On the other [...]

Software Failover: The jump-sheet for everyone – Part III

May 14, 2012 Posted Under: Other   Read More

Why I lost my work? One of the frustrating aspects of utilising a digital system is when the system experiences an unexpected behaviour. It is frustrating, as all the work previously done tends to get lost and has to be done all over again. In the early years of word processing, the auto-save feature or [...]

Software Failover: The jump-sheet for everyone – Part II

May 7, 2012 Posted Under: Other   Read More

My technical design is flawless It is a well known fact that developers tend to consider their product as their perfect creation. Thus, it is very difficult for them to understand that there might be scenarios that can occur, although not explicitly specified in requirements. The next sections show why introducing failover mechanisms does not [...]

Software Failover: The jump-sheet for everyone

May 1, 2012 Posted Under: Other   Read More

Introduction A step in the project lifecycle is requirements gathering. During this stage in the project lifecycle the operation conditions are defined for the code that will be developed. However, whichever project management model is adapted, requirements are meant to change. Craig Brown in his articles on Better Projects has suggested that on average requirements [...]

Magento Website Restrictions

Apr 17, 2012 Posted Under: Magento   Read More

Magento Enterprise comes with a very useful extension to close a Magento site either completely or partially. For example, you can close the entire site until an upgrade is completed or you can lock a store to only registered users. How It Works? When Magento receives a request it starts routing the request through the [...]

C# Automatically Implemented Properties

Mar 28, 2012 Posted Under: .NET   Read More

Some time ago, we analysed how C# Properties are emitted by IL.  In this article we will extend our view by investigating how C# 3 (and later) Automatically Implemented Properties (or Automatic Properties) works.  But first, let’s see how these properties are used. In order to use Automatic Properties, one needs only to declare the [...]

Changing the Magento default admin URL

Oct 30, 2011 Posted Under: Magento   Read More

Magento installations normally use the URL /admin to access the back-office. To change the admin URL to something different: Open the/app/etc/local.xml file In the section 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 <admin> <routers> <adminhtml> <args> <frontName><![CDATA[admin]]></frontName> </args> </adminhtml> </routers> </admin> Change the CDATA value for frontName to the new admin address. For [...]

Working with Elgg Menu

Oct 16, 2011 Posted Under: Elgg   Read More

Menus are an integral part of any website. Elgg defines two classes that help in building and rendering menus. The first class provided is ElggMenuItem. The second class provided is ElggMenuBuilder, which provide methods that help in rendering menus using the ElggMenuItem objects. Adding Items to menu Adding items to a menu requires: Create a [...]

Magento Reindex Programmatically

Oct 2, 2011 Posted Under: Magento   Read More

The Magento indexing mechanism is one of the core functionalities that improve a site performance. However, when programming bulk imports of data it is ideal to stop the indexing until the import is completed. For two reasons, first the indexing will slow the process, as on each line of data imported a reindex of data [...]