• 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…

The problem of this awesome plugin that it is quite new, the documentations, tutorials, and resources are quite limited. But the developers are extremely helpful on their own forum – so you’ll have to do a lot of digging to find the answers you need… in which I did. I also found the tutorials were kind of half way done, they stopped at displaying the data, but not showing how to write simple Display Helper and Input Helper. So I’m going to jog that down here.

If you have not gone through the documentations and have some basic data to play with, you should get going (thinking putting one simple guide of how to put all the pods together later).

Disclaimer:

The following helpers are very basic ones that I found myself used them a lot and repeatedly, so hopefully these will be useful for someone else also.  On a side note that I am NOT a hardcore PHP coder, I understood enough basic PHP codes to customize them. If you know a better way, feel free.

So let’s get rolling…

Software Note: Pods CMS 1.7.3 / WP 2.8.4

Documentation: http://pods.uproot.us/codex/helpers

Display Helpers: Display Helpers are the codes that help to display your results in a nicer, customized look.  For example, say that you want to show all of your ingredients in a recipe, by default, they’ll be list as such: “Ingredient 1Ingredient 2″ – it is hard to read.  So you can write a Display Helper to show them as “Ingredient 1, Ingredient 2″.  Got it?

By default, the Display Helper passes $value as an array for you to manipulate as such: $value[0][’column_name’].

Adding a Display Helper

Adding a new Display Helper is very simple, see below:

Pods CMS – Add new Display Helper

List Single Result ONLY (No Link)

Add a new Display Helper and name this one something like “print_r”:

<?php print_r($value[0]['name']); ?>

I have these two generic Display Helpers displaying a single result only.  By default, if you having something like {@column_name}, it will show column’s name and it is linked to a its own detailed page (if it is bi-directional), something like (http://domain.com/your_pod/column_name/1).  Where the very last part is actually the row ID.  So what if you want to display your data with a custom permalink/slug?  Such as: (http://domain.com/your_pod/slug_name)  This helper will come in handy in your Pod Templates page:

<a href="/pod_name/{@slug}">{@column_name,print_r}</a>

You probably noticed that I put the helpers right next to the Magic Tags instead of adding the Display Helpers like this:

Display Helper

It’s a matter of personal preference really. If you want, you can add the helper inside the admin interface. If you’d rather add the Display Helper through the admin interface, you don’t need to add “print_r” inside {@print_r}.

Displaying Arrays

The following will display “Ingredient 1, Ingredient 2, Ingredient 3″ instead of “Ingredient 1Ingredient 2Ingredient 3″ with links or no link to your liking:

".$val['name']."";
    }
echo implode(', ', $output);
} else {
   echo "No record found";
}
?>

If you just want to display the results without the links, simply remove the “href” on line 8.

Note: This helper will only link to current pod, what I mean: “/pod1/slugname”, but not able to link “/pod2/slugname”. The reason is that this script will only grab the pod’s name which is “/pod1″ and add itself to the “a href…”. If you want to link to a different pod, you’ll just have to add a new helper with a minor change of instead of ‘$pod’ (line 8 ) where the “a href…” is to your actual pod’s name, make sense?

Well, that’s it for now… next up, :inputHelper:.

I would eventually do a writeup for my entire design process of coming up with this theme.  That because I think I am having a case of early alzheimer or something.  I can’t remember what I want to do in the next 5 minutes, and I have to resort to use a task manager (Remember the Milk) to remind me of things lately.  So, writing down things is one of the ways trying to improve my crappy memory, and jogging down the process helps me to understand how I came up with certain things and hopefully improve the process later on.  The inspiration for this design came from a book just laying around that got me going.  Besides that, I would like to thank my boyfriend Danny and my bro Wil (JavaJunky) for feedback.

Lastly, an interesting note during the theme building process is that IE7 as everyone knows has 1 or 2 pixels difference between Firefox.  When I tried to add the + sign background images to the lists, it was a big pain and very annoying.  No matter what I did, IE7 seems to be 1 pixel up higher or 1 pixel lower.  Eventually, I added line-height to the text in ratio font of 8pt : 13pt line-height, so 9pt : 14pt and so on… That seems to fix the problem completely.  The problem is that the height of the text are rendered differently from the two browsers.  So, when you CSS-ing fonts and texts, don’t forget to add line-height.  It will save you lots of headaches.

Well, hope you like this new theme.  Feedback are greatly appreciated!

Note: I have not tested this theme on IE6 yet.  I’m focusing on the two newer browsers.  I’ll fix it up for IE6 next week.

Update: 7/28

Well, good news is IE6 now behaves nicely with only 3 lines of CSS fix.  Before it was just messing up the header, the rest of the content seems to be fine.  The only thing I don’t really care to fix is the PNG backgrounds – IE6 should be burn anyways.

And have to give IE Tester credit for getting this done quickly.  I was thinking of installing a virtual server using VMWare’s Virtual Server, but with IE Tester which supports from IE5-8, don’t need to do that.  So big kudos to IE Tester.

I got this idea of this article after me and JavaJunky talking and given a tutorial of how Twitter works to a couple of our friends at my birthday party.  When they went home, 3 people were on Twitter.  I guess me and JavaJunky did a good job on the sales pitch.

Twitter started out as a very simple idea: “What are you doing?”  At first, I wasn’t sold on the idea that I want to tell my friends where I am at, what I’m eating, sleeping etc… I see no point and productivity, a waste of time and add more junk to the web.  One day I was visiting NPR (National Public Radio) website and I saw them that they are on Twitter.  So I started to follow them.  That day on, I saw the light. Instead of popping out your emails, open up your RSS reader, or going through a website just to search news those are interesting to you, they are delivered to you almost instantly with a short description and a link.  As you follow more people on the topic that you are interested in, the more news you can get.  Because I sit in front of a computer most of the time and as many of the web nerds are, I have TweetDeck or Twhirl open pretty much all the time.  I honestly learn more new things in the past 2 months using Twitter as a news service than waiting for my subscription emails to arrive once a week or once a month.

Before Tweeting, I highly recommend using LastPass.  You will never have to remember another password but one password – it is accessible anywhere, and can randomly generates strong passwords for you. Even you don’t know the passwords, so won’t the hackers… I hope :P

Twitter from anywhere

If you don’t have a fancy iPhone or Internet access, well, you don’t have to.  If you are in the U.S. you can just send a text message to 40404.  If you are outside of the U.S. you can find out the number:

Keeping your wanted tweets and filter out the ones that you don’t want!

Twitter to Blogs:

Note: Since I am a WordPress user, I can only say what I know of WordPress.  I don’t know about other blog services.  Just throwing out an idea…

Now you got all of these new information, you’ll probably get overwhelmed by all the information that you are NOT interested in.  But how do you keep the ones you that you want and filter out other junk?  The easiest is to set up a blog such as WordPress and add on a plugin called Twitter Tools (although it is dated for WP 2.7.1., but still works in WP 2.8.1.) – RT (retweet) the tweets that you like, and tell the plugin to do a daily or weekly digest of your tweets.   It’ll grab all of your tweets.  You can also set it to not grab any tweet with @ at the beginning, so very flexible.  Voila!  You now have a daily journal basically.

Bookmarking with Delicious (http://delicious.com/)

Of course, the traditional way is to bookmark your links.  I prefer and highly recommend Delicious that because it comes with a very simple to use yet powerful FireFox addon. With one click, you can save your bookmark, tag them and find them again extremely fast and easy.  But hey, if you prefer Digg, StumleUpon… by all mean.

The Power of Twitter

Tweecious is a FireFox addon that automatically grabs the past 1000 tweets and separate them in tags.  I doubt that is helpful because not all of them you want to keep, and there are repeated tweets, or just down right to useless tweets.  You’ll end up getting more junk than quality information.  The get quality tweets you just have to screen them yourself.  No easy way out.

Twitter to Evernote (http://www.evernote.com/)

I just started to use Evernote for a few weeks, and I don’t know how I could live without it now.  Evernote is a powerful software that allow you to create Notebooks from writing down your diary, doing research, grocery list, backup your mp3, videos, files, or to keeping bookmarks.  Although, I don’t like it keeping my bookmarks, it’s a waste just to insert a link.  You can then later access the exact same information on the web, on another computer that has Evernote installed, or even a SandDish U3 thumb drive.  Evernote can be also shared with other people, publicly or friends for collaborations such as working on a project.  Lastly, you can “web clip” anything on your screen, or highlight text on a page then send to Evernote as a new note.  Powerful research tool.  You can also use your cell phone, take a picture, and email directly to Evernote as storage or whatever you want.

Now, back to Twitter.  Twitter can also send a quick note via Twitter simply by following myEN, then every time you have a link or tweet that you want to keep, just add @myEN anywhere inside the tweet, it’ll be automatically send to your Evernote account.  The bad thing about is that you can’t tag, and it can only be sent to Evernote’s default notebook.  You’ll have go back to add tags and move the note to the category you want.

Twitter to Remember the Milk (http://rememberthemilk.com/)

Remember the Milk is an online tasks service, and get reminders for tasks.  Great for grocery shopping lists ;-)   The thing is, RTM uses Twitter as an input service also.  All you have to do is to follow @rtm (http://twitter.com/rtm), and everytime you want to add a new task. All you have to do is send it a DM (Direct Message) by typing: “d rtm have lunch with mom on Sun @ 1pm”.  Scary enough that RTM knows to add that task as:

Task: have lunch with mom

When: Sunday @ 1:00pm

But it’ll only send to your “Inbox”, and you cannot add tags and locations to the task.  Although, you can apply these commands. I personally like to sit down at home and add all of my grocery, and then grab the list through Twitter on the phone when I’m at the store.  Or add something quick to remind me later through my phone or Twitter desktop app such as TwitterDeck, Twirl etc… it can also send you a DM through Twitter to remind you of your tasks also.

Twitter to GCal through TwitterCal: http://twittercal.com/

Just like RTM and myEN, all you have to do is to follow GCal, then just send a direct message to GCal to add a new event to your GCal.  The problem is, it doesn’t seem to be working because GCal did not follow me back after I followed them, and you cannot DM someone unless they’re following you also.  GCal finally followed me back, it is pretty slick!  You can add What, when, where, and who.  But only What and when are necessary.  Visit twittercal.com for full instructions!

Saving the best for last: Mashup

Dial2Do (http://dial2do.com/)

I just discovered this service a few days ago and boy, it is awesome!  Dial2Do is a “mashup” tool.  You can tweet, send pictures, voice clips, pictures to Evernote, or add a task to your RTM, add a new event to your choice of calendar service, all by just dialing their given number.

Currently, it is in Beta and it is all FREE to use!  They did state that eventually they’ll charge something, but it probably worth it.  Jott is another similar service, they charge reasonable prices for the services.  I have not tried them because I’m broke, and I got Dial2Do :)

Conclusion

The problem of using Mashup service or Twitter to do other tasks that you cannot tag your items, and add them to certain category.  Are hashtags (Example: #tag1, #firefox) really that hard to implement?  But nonetheless, these are very useful tools when you’re not around a computer but with a mobile phone.

How are you using Twitter to organize your life?  Are there more useful tools that you want to share?

I’ve tried messing with the .htacess, making file sizes smaller.  Making images smaller than 600px wide seemed to work for some, but not all.  Then I also noticed that Nextgen Gallery also has the same problem as the default image uploader.  In fact, NextGen Gallery warns that maximum memory exceed at 16.xxMB.  So I went to NextGen Gallery’s site and found this in the FAQ.  Then I went into my Cpanel to investigate the PHP settings, lo and behold the memory_limit is set to 16MB.  I opened up a ticket to ask my host to increase the limit to 24MB, problem solved.  I no longer have any error when uploading any images.

One last thing though, after I got the memory_limit changed from 16MB to 24MB.  I started to get 505 Internal Server Error.  Luckily, I have a very awesome host, they fixed the problem within half an hour after I opened a ticket.   Although, my host used .htaccess to fix the problem.  Then a new problem came out, all the permalinks seem to be no longer working.  They all returned as 505 Internal Sever Error.  I solved it by checking the .htacess file and took out what my host put in and just left the WordPress .htaccess – problem fixed.

Hope that helps someone else out there.