• The blog’s front-end is still working fine, nothing seems out of place or broken
• I got to the login screen, but as soon as I logged in, it was completely blank
• I could not access any of page in the admin such as by typing: /wp-admin/plugins.php – all blank

1. I checked blog’s front-end and was still running fine – checked if any page is broken or funky stuff showing up on the pages.  A broken plugin might have be the culprit or you simply got hacked
2. So far so good, nothing seems broken or out of place. Login, page goes blank. I run the plugin Login Lockdown, so I FTP in and deleted the folder to see if that’s the culprit – nope. Put it back in.
3. Checked the error log and see what threw error(s) recently – did the same thing above. No go.
4. Found some people said that empty returns on functions.php or wp-config.php  in your theme can cause that – make sure no blank space on top or bottom…
5. Some said check files for weird stuff got append on top of some php files – checked all files inside wp-admin folder – nope
6. Fast forward 3 hours later – finally re-uploaded a new copy of the /wp-admin/ – fixed!  Son of a…

Description

If you want to customize your VIM a bit more, you just have to create a .vimrc in the root. Even if you create/edit the .vimrc in VIM, better than Notepad right? NOT! Apparently, by default, VIM doesn’t set the file format for you. So it leaves a “trailing ^M” and VIM doesn’t like that…

Symptoms

• Windows: it shows a blank screen and has “Hit enter to type command” or something like that before VIM starts. It doesn’t show any errors.
• Ubuntu (see screenshot): it actually displays the following errors: “Invalid argument on^M” OR “Trailing characters ^M” OR “Not an editor command: ^M”

To fix this, it’s actually pretty easy.

While in VIM and in command mode type:

:set fileformat=unix

Of course the setting depends on your system, if you’re on Mac, set it to fileformat=mac. I set mine to unix because I use Git Bash and set it to use unix style, so if you are on Windows and set it to dos commands… set it to dos. Now you’re safe to edit .vimrc, when you :wq and vim again, the blank black screen (on Windows), and “Invalid editor commands” should go away.

If you are in Minnesota, or probably heard about the annual Overnight Web Challenge hosted by a group of  local generous web agency: The Nerdery. Which was an event to redesign websites for local non-profits. I have to say at first I was very nervous about it, but I had a blast and learned a lot of things. So here are the details.

The goal

The goal of the challenge is each team can have up to 10 people (strangers or friends), and each team will pair up with a non-profit chosen by The Nerdery. In 24 hours time we are to redesign and build a new website for our designated local non-profit client.

Outcome

In my case, my team was Team Venture – we were a mixed of former and current co-workers. Not everyone knows everyone, but we bonded quickly. Our client was Someplace Safe. Even though we couldn’t finish 100%, so we are still continuously working on it and provide support in the next 6 months.

Before

After

Rules

Anything goes… PHP, WordPress, Ruby, whatever. We could even prepare codes ahead (in which I hope we can prepare better next year).

What we did and lessons learned

We chose WordPress as our platform, the lessons I learned from it were:

1. Don’t build anything from scratch if not necessary, frameworks, frameworks, and frameworks.
2. Pre-installed plugins  – take them out if not needed. It’s easier to remove than add
3. List of jQuery components, snippets to generate WordPress page contents (sidebars etc…)

I am totally going to do the challenge again next year and because the winning team: TST Media pulled off some very amazing stuff in one night, they’ve inspired me to push a lot harder than just using a WordPress platform. So hopefully I’ll start posting more updates on what this “pushing harder” in the next few months.

Other than that, I encourage all web nerds in MN to try this challenge at least once. It’s thrilling, learn to work faster, and put our web nerdiness skills to use in a very meaningful way. Besides that, you get to meet maybe a Senator such as Al Franken, and the Tronguy. Foods in every 3 hours, massage, Yoga, live action Angry Birds and a whole lot more nerdy fun stuff.

With all the hypes that how easy and fast Ubuntu is, I wasn’t really impress to be honest especially the first thing didn’t work was the wireless. Took me hours to figure it out. Turned out that most people who have newer laptops and with a Broadcom brand wireless card will have similar issue due to the driver wasn’t “install” or whatever you call it properly.  I finally figured it out and these are the steps I took and worked both times after I installed a “test drive”, wiped, then full install:

Fire up the Terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T), let’s do a little diagnosis first to see if you’re having the same issues and wireless problem I did.

sudo lshw -C Network

I’m a newb in as mentioned, but I guess the above command split out your network cards brands, settings and what not. Your wireless should be the last group says something like:

*-network DISABLED<br /> description: Wireless interface<br /> product: BMC4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY<br /> vendor: Broadcom Corporation<br /> ... then blah blah blah ...

So now you found out what’s your wireless model is, write that down somewhere. Then do a:

dmesg

Look for something like:

[ 13.938268] brcm80211 0000:06:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17<br /> [ 13.938276] brcm80211 0000:06:00.0: setting latency timer to 64<br /> [ 13.963989] brcm80211: fail to load firmware brcm/bcm43xx-0.fw<br /> [ 13.963993] brcm80211: Failed to find firmware usually in /lib/firmware/brcm<br /> [ 13.964046] brcm80211 0000:06:00.0: PCI INT A disabled<br /> [ 13.964060] brcm80211: wl_pci_probe: wl_attach failed!

Well there you go, that’s the problem. The silly firmware/driver could not load. This is where I will send you to a page with all the goodies that pretty much got me through. But before that, a few notes:

You will need a tool called b43-fwcutter. Jump to a computer with internet access and USB thumb drive and download the latest version (judging by date on the right hand side), oh, since I’m just as newb, don’t ask me which blah_i36.deb or blah_amd64.deb to download. Just grab both. Both installs I did it preferred one over and other, then vice versa *shrug*

Don’t unplug the USB thumb drive yet, now go to my ultimate wireless problem solving page. Since we got the b43-fwcutter taken care of, you can go straight to step 2 and there should be a few files that you need to download.

I followed the instructions up to step 3, step 4 didn’t work for me. So at that point I did just a good old sudo reboot, wait a few seconds, then laptop now found my wireless networks.

We’re not alone, there were TONS of people have wireless problems with Ubuntu – even one of my co-workers did not aware of this until his cousin told him and me, too. So if the above solution didn’t work for you, here’s the rest of the wireless documentations for Ubuntu:

Ubuntu WifiDocs

I can only assume as long as you found out which driver is missing, and using dmesg to find out whether it’s loaded or not, the above should work the same. Good luck!

1. Localhost Timeout Error

As many sane developer would do, you want to test almost everything on a Local server if you’re using Xampp Lite. I have been experiencing timeout error. Maybe it’s due to the firewall at work, but I am going to investigate more using a full verison of the Xampp server

2. “public_html” vs “www” Folders

This may sounds crazy, but I think it might have something to do with the configurations of the server. I tried uploading to my own server, everything works fine. But I couldn’t get it working on my client’s server, it couldn’t CHMOD properly. Crazy enough, I deleted everything and re-uploaded everything to the public_html folder, CHMOD the proper files, then it worked… I know both folders are basically the same thing, but why it happened the way it did, CRAZY! I tell you. So I’m going to try to reproduce this “bug” if it is even a bug or just me…

3. jQuery + zimplit = Site Explosion!

Unfortunately, today I found out zimplit will blow up your some parts of your layout if you have some sorts of scripting going on in the background, such as slideshow, hidden divs. As soon as you insert an editable area, it automatically inserts its own div and classes inside ALL OF YOUR DIVs! Drove me insane for over an hour why my simple page stopped working with a simple slideshow. I mean it’s not the end of the world, you just have to rework your CSS to fit it in. But it would be nice IF SOMEONE TOLD ME BEFOREHAND!!

Overall, zimplit is still an awesome idea, but it’s quite intrusive. It works well if you have a very simple website or planned ahead to use it at the beginning. If you decide to implement afterward, it is much more difficult because you’ll probably have to rework lots of CSS. But I think I will try my hands on it again next time when I build a site from scratch.  Just my 2 cents.

First of all, I am one of those people who refused to support/buy anything with an “i” in front of it, it’s not that one day I wake up and decided to dislike Macs. I owned an iPod before and I found myself almost throwing it against the wall. I have used Macs, and I can’t find myself liking it as much as a PC. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate it, but I just prefer PC’s… that being said, the best thing Apple “invented” and poured so much thoughts into my brain is the latest and greatest the Multi-touch technology.

Where did I get the idea Multi-touch will be Web 3.0? Well, Javascript libraries such as jQuery, Mootools, Prototype etc… changed the way people interact with web, and how it delivered interactivity and information to the users. Designers/developers don’t need to depend on Flash/Silverlight to have animations / effects, things load faster in the background or don’t even have to reload a page thanks to AJAX. No longer the user has to open a new window to see a picture, instead, they can see them using a Lightbox or similar tool. I personally feel those are the most important elements that differentiate the good old web from Web 2.0. Some might argue Web 2.0 is all about the shiny graphics, but I beg to be differed. Not only that, Multi-touch is already in smart phones and Apple already started it with their Macbooks / Magic Mouse, and Windows 7 with their own multi-touch interface. It’s only a matter of time when all the websites don’t require a mouse to browse and adding more interactivities, because I don’t have to use a mouse to browse when I use my G1, why should a desktop computer? The tools are already existed to get us there, the question is how soon. My guess? I’d say in a year.

To prove it, some crazies already made one of the world’s first Multi-touch website taking advantage of Windows 7 multi-touch support – of course it still works if you don’t have a fancy multi-touch screen or a Waccom Bamboo Touch (cost only $69 and works on both Macs and PCs – yes, even Win XP SP2).  Or a fancy Macbook / Magic Mouse.

Although, I don’t think I’ll trade my CSS/HTML skills for multi-touch making websites in Silverlight. That being said, I think I was looking at the future of the web and probably something that will “encourage” CSS3.x / and HTML4.x to support multi-touch sooner, maximize and push the web even further? Can I already say Multi-Touch Web 3.0, anyone?

A slight problem of course Multi-touch is quite new, not many people have the tools to interact, or the necessity for it for the web at least. Never mind that, not a lot of people get the use of it. Multi-touch took me a few seconds to figure out how to use it, now that I know, “wowser” is the word I’m using to describe it. To me, the web is all about two words: information and experience. As designers/developers are constantly finding better and cooler way to create websites and deliver information, Mutli-touch is definitely the next big thing on the web.

I don’t know about you, but I’m jumping on the bandwagon to look for a way to “fake” a Web 2.5 for now and make Web 2.0 sounds so 2008 while people still digging the glossy/shiny buttons, and debate the best way to clear floats.

…son of a… learn something new everyday, don’t we now…? A little less deprived