Sidewaysgravity Blog

There is a quick and simple way that you can change the default page that is loaded when you open up a website. For almost every server, the default value is to first look for the index file. On my server it will first look for an index.php file, if that is not found, it will then look for the index.html file and if neither are found, it will just say page cannot be found, or something to that effect.

If you want to change those settings, your can do it with the server files… or a much easier way, especially for a temp page during website construction is to define the default file within the .htaccess file.

Working with the .htaccess file can be tricky at times, depending on what you are wanting to accomplish, but luckily changing the default start page is simple. First you will need to create a .htaccess file within the root directory of you website. Likewise you can create one inside subfolders, and change the default page for a subfolder as well.

Once you have your file created, you must add the following code.

DirectoryIndex filename.html index.cgi index.pl default.htm

Within this code is where you can specify what you want the default page to be. If you only want one option, just specify one file. If you want multiple options as listed, this will first check for the “filename.html” and if not found it will then check the next file “index.cgi” and so on. Upload that .htaccess file to your server and your in business.

I should clarify that this is for a server with an apache web server, usually that is a linux server.

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I recently had a problem where all the users added to expression engine would post to weblogs with a closed status and they did not have the option to change it to open even though they had permissions to do so. It took me a while to figure this one out, but like many things with expression engine, I have found that their are simple solutions to almost all of the issues that I have found, it was just a matter of finding the solutions.

If your having problems with other members publishing as closed status and cant figure out why, try checking the following setting. Select publish and then edit weblogs. For the weblog that you are having problems with, and this could be all of them, you will need to select to edit groups, and from there you will need to make sure that the default option is NOT None, but set to either the Default Status Group or a custom one.

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Today I noticed a feature of the iPod touch that I had not known before. It behaves like windows! I have had my iPod for a little over a year now and it seems to slow down and have more problems the longer I have had it… similar to windows. It all came close to a grinding hault last night, as it took 30 to 40 sections to get between the screens in the mail program. It seems that the mail program always ran a little slow, with delays switching between screens. With last night being unbearable I decided to do what I do to my windows XP machine when it gets slow, delete everything and restore it to its original software.

With iTunes this is made easy. After connecting my iPod and opening iTunes to my iPod menu, I told it to restore my iPod. It prompted me to back it up, which I did, and later asked if I wanted to restore it to a back up or just its factory default. I selected to restore to a back up. I left the computer and came back a couple hours later to see that the update and backup was done, and it was running lightning fast…. or just a lot faster. There was a noticable difference in speed of the mail application even from when I first purchased the iPod and it has continued to do well. Although my iPod was up to date, I think doing a clean restore to back up really helped resolve any issues that it had.

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This is not so much a tip for what to do but what not to do. I recently had an RSS page that was giving some strange errors in expression engine. The fix was simple, when you create your template, make sure you select it to be an RSS page. Seems simple enough, but if you select it to be a webpage, everything will look as it should with the exception of just one thing.

When I created the template, I would get the following error in the safari web browser, and would not get results in other web browsers.

The error was: “The feed could not be loaded because the content is not in a known feed format.” (PubSub:2)

After looking at the source code, the only thing that I could see which was different than that of a standard RSS feed was the following line of code.

<ee:last_update>

Why expression engine adds that line, I dont know, but if you see this, be sure to check that your template is set to be an RSS template and not a webpage.

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I recently ran into a problem with an email account getting over 3,000 emails within a very short amount of time. The webmail client that was being used is Horde, and there did not seem to be an easy way to just delete all of the emails in the inbox. After a little searching around I found this solution.

First you will need to select Folders from the top navigation. This should bring up a list of all your folders, including your inbox. This screen shot was taken after I already emptied the inbox, which is why it shows (0/0).

Once you have selected the folders that you want to empty, you can use the drop down menu above it to empty the folders of all the emails that they have.

It should ask for confirmation and then you should no longer have any emails in your inbox.

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How to get your categories synced with what you have online with the wordpress app for the iPhone / iPod touch. One thing that has always frustrated me about the app for wordpress is that I can create and organize all my categories on my blog, but they did not show up in the app. There is a simple solution to this problem an it’s built into the app.

When you first open up the WordPress App, you have the main screen which lists you blog. Instead of selecting the blog and going into view the posts, select the blue arrow for the blog that you want to update the categories for and this will take you to the settings for that blog (ie. username, password). All you have to do here, is tap save (top right) and it will update your blog settings including any new categories. Now you can go to your blog posts and all the categories should show up and also be organized as they are online.

Simple as that.

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The latest update 2.70 came out today and I just wanted to write up a couple of the features that this update will have.

• You can now have text chats with your friends while playing games. This could be a nice feature to have instead of sending messages and constantly checking your recieved box. I am still waiting for the ability to view a recieved message when clicking on your friend, it shows a notification by there name, but you have to check your received box for the message.
• You can now get information on a game by opening the options (triangle) while you are on the icon of the game and selecting “internet search”.
• Copy and paste, copy text on a website and paste it into a chat window. I cant say I will use this much.
• Option to reduce the difference in volume level between tracks so that the music doesn’t suddenly get loud. Although I am not sure yet, I hope this works on the music that a game plays when you have the icon selected. There are a few games (Iron Man Demo) that blare out every time I select them.

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