Ardee Aram and Relly Arevalo Wedding Video Same Day Edit (SDE)

Time really flies so fast! I can’t believe it has been already a year (seriously, a year?!) since I got married to the funniest, craziest, and most wonderful person I’ve ever met, Relissa Arevalo-Aram.

I want to thank you, my dear wife, for a year of ups and downs, of budgeting and spending sessions, of changing Pots’s diaper and capturing his baby milestones, of dreaming the dreams and planning the plans, of FRIENDS and Game of Thrones marathons, and of great arguments and even greater after-fight make up conversations. I am very grateful to you for coming into my life, and making it more exciting and colorful (and a bit more complicated, but hey).

I should be writing a bit more, but I’ll still be preparing for our weekend staycation. Maybe I’ll just whisper it to you later, personally.

FOR RENT: Pinecrest Semi-furnished Studio Type Condo w/Balcony in New Manila, Quezon City

For rent. Contact me if interested.

 

I am currently looking for people interested in renting out a semi-furnished, studio type condominium in New Manila, along Aurora Boulevard. The address is at Unit 1032 Tower 3 Pine Crest Condominium Complex, Balete Dr, New Manila, Quezon City, Metro Manila.

My wife, kid, and I stayed there for four months, and I can attest that the place is wonderful and very accessible to facilities. It is directly adjacent to Robinson’s Magnolia, which is perfect for weekly grocery and shopping. LRT stations are a 5 minute jeepney ride away (Betty Go Belmonte Station and Gilmore Station), or if you have time, you can walk. If you have a private vehicle, EDSA is 10 minutes away, and so is Ortigas Avenue.

If interested, visit bahaylupa.co for more information about the property.

Currently tinkering with: Yeoman

I am currently involved in an AngularJS-based project, and I am looking for an alternative to ngbp. Not that it is bad, it’s just that I have nothing to compare ngbp with, and I do not feel entitled to hold strong opinions on ngbp until I get to compare it with other tool to get things done in the JavaScript/NodeJS world.

I’m really excited. Will post my Yeoman learnings here, and probably post as well at StackOverflow.

The “Cum Laude” Syndrome

After a quite night’s worth of introspection, I realized that I am afflicted with what my friend referred to as the “Cum Laude” Syndrome; furthermore, I realized that I have to shake off and conquer this behavior to become a successful entrepreneur, and to further push my limits and grow as a person.

First of all, no offense meant for those talented and hard-working individuals who rightfully earned their Latin honors back in college. However, I just realized in my “light bulb” moment that, probably, the combination of personalities and skillet that proved advantageous to get you on top of the college academics may prove very harmful in the world of entrepreneurship.

So, what is the “Cum Laude” Syndrome? I define it as the emotional need to please and receive praise from a certain “teacher”, and the need to avoid any disappointments and criticisms from the said authority. Bear with me and step back a bit for a moment – why are Cum Laude’s Cum Laude? Often, they have high grades. They have high grades because they study well, they know the correct answers, they follow the rules, and follow the teacher, sometimes to the dot. They are thrilled when they receive no less than 100% in their papers, and more than once I saw weeping and devastation when they receive a failing grade (or 95%, depending on the standards).

Solved: WordPress asking for FTP credentials when upgrading

Problem

WordPress is asking me for FTP credentials when I was upgrading my WordPress to the latest version. The funny thing is my WordPress is installed in my localhost! Apache is installed in my laptop, and I have no FTP server here so it really doesn’t make any sense WordPress using FTP to upgrade itself.

Root Cause

All WordPress files should be owned by the Apache user. In Ubuntu, this is “www-data”.

It is NOT sufficient that the Apache user can access the files, so a CHMOD 777 just won’t work. It has to own them all.

Apparently, there are different “methods” of upgrading method. The choice of method is done in the background by WordPress by checking some environmental settings. The one that I need and want is the “direct” method, where it just downloads the file and extracts it onto the filesystem.

For WordPress to choose the “direct” method installation, it does the following checks:

1. The directory where WordPress is installed must be writable by the Apache process;
2. The UID of the Apache process is the same as the owner of the UID of a file temporarily created by the Apache user in the directory where you are installing WordPress.

Source Location

Observe these lines of code at /wp-admin/includes/file.php: get_filesystem_method(). It seems that not only does WordPress check if the directories are writable, but it checks if the Apache user OWNS the directories (or at least, if the Apache user owns the temporary file it creates). 

    if ( $temp_handle ) {
        if ( getmyuid() == @fileowner($temp_file_name) )
            $method = 'direct';
        @fclose($temp_handle);
        @unlink($temp_file_name);
    }

Solution

You must give ownership of the whole site to the Apache user. You can do this by issuing the following command:

sudo chown -R www-data wordpress/

where www-data is the Apache user, and wordpress is the directory where you want your WordPress installation.

Hot WordPress Plug-in of the Day: Featured Page Widget

Featured page widget is a simple plug-in that displays the title, content/excerpt, and featured image of a page (or pages) of choice.

Featured Page Widget

Featured Page Widget Administration

Why is it hot?

It is sweet, it is simple, and it freaking works! I can think of a lot of uses of this plug-in on many of the projects that I do.

If you have been developing sites for a long time, you will often encounter a layout wherein pre-selected pages will be represented in the homepage as “boxes”. These boxes will contain a summary of the page: often we have the title, a few sentences of that page, and an icon to give the reader some visual information on what the article is about. Usually, these “boxes” won’t change very often, but the user reserves the ability to be able to change the content, so we cannot (and we really should not!) hard-code  the text in the template. Shame on you if it ever occurred to you to use the Text Widget.

Here is an example of this layout, which this plug-in can solve in a flash (with a few CSS retouch here and there). The snapshot is taken from Premium WP Organic Restaurant WordPress Theme.

Organic Restaurant WordPress Theme Snapshot

Where do I download it?

You can download the plug-in at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/featured-page-widget/

Whodunnit?

Many thanks to grandslambert for creating this simple yet powerful plug-in!

Disclaimer and Footnote

I am NOT related in any way to Featured Page Widget nor PremiumWP. Nobody has sponsored me to create this article. Everything written in here is purely my independent opinion and observation. In short, I just really find this plug-in pretty cool and userful. 😉

WP Worker Catalog 0.1.1 – What’s new

Hello guys,

Just released some minor updates for the WP Worker Catalog:

• Added the ability to send email notification to an email other than the administrator email.  By default, it is the administrator email that receives all inquiries from guests. This can now be reconfigured by going to Settings > WP Worker Catalog
• Added the option to send emails to the workers themselves. By default, this is turned off, as some manpower agencies that I know of prefer to limit direct communication between the employers and the workers. However, if your needs are different, you can turn this on, and the workers will receive a copy of the email that is being sent to the administrator.

If you see any bugs, or you have any suggestions that you think would make WP Worker Catalog more useful for you, feel free to comment below, and I’ll be listening to your thoughts.

Also, you might notice that the WordPress plug-in directory still has it on version 0.1 (when of course I have added a minor .1 at the end). Just ignore this. I think WordPress has troubles handling a version numbering system such as mine. Nevertheless, when you click on the button, you will still get the latest and the greatest release version.

Enjoy!

WP Worker Catalog Plug-in: Frequently Asked Questions

1.) Ok, I have downloaded and activated the plug-in. What do I do next?

First,  go to the administration page. Find the “Worker” menu on the left sidebar, select “Add Worker”, and enter the required values in the form.

After you have added your workers, go to http://your-wordpress-site.com/catalog to browse them all.

2.) The /catalog slug works pretty well, but I prefer another slug. Is there a way to do this?

Yes. You can choose a different slug for your WP Worker Catalog catalog page:

• Go to Settings > WP Worker Catalog, and edit the slug relating to your catalog page

3.) How do I add new workers in my catalog?

In the administration page, there is a “Worker” menu where you can add, edit, and/or remove  your workers.

4.) When a visitor leaves a comment in one of workers, where does the comment go?

The comment is emailed to the administrator email that you have configured in your WordPress website. Make sure that your wp_mail() function has been properly configured to send email.

Note: As of version 0.1.1, this can be configured in the Dashboard > Settings > WP Worker Catalog. Choose “Others” in the “Send notification to” dropdown, and enter the email address in the blank text box beside the dropdown.

5.) The links are not working! I am receiving a 404 page!  What do I do?

Sometimes the internal permalink rules of WordPress needs to be refreshed. When this happens to you, follow these instructions:

• Proceed to Settings > Permalinks
• Press “Save Changes”. You can do this without modifying any of the permalink settings. This will just refresh the internal WordPress permalink rules 
• Try visiting the links again.

6.) I need something like this, but with a little modification. Can you help me?

No problem, we can certainly talk about this. Drop me an email at ardee-dot-aram-at-gmail-dot-com, and I’ll see how can I help you.

What’s cooking: WP Worker Catalog Plug-in

Because of my 1-week vacation due to sore eyes (weeee!), I channeled my excess energy and time into creating a WordPress plug-in which I plan to release to the public, and be hosted at the WordPress Plug-in Directory. So this pet project of mine, WP Worker Catalog, was born.

What does WP Worker Catalog do? The plug-in gives you a catalog of available workers, along with vital information such as skill sets and preferred position.

Download WP Worker Catalog plug-in here.

An interested employer visiting the site can then contact the administrator if that employer sees that the skills of the worker fit the employer’s current needs. The administrator of the site will receive an email notification regarding employer’s interest in hiring the worker.

If the employer has specific needs, he can use the Search Worker widget.

An administrator can manage the catalog by adding, editing, and deleting worker profiles.

I made this plug-in Manpower and Placement Agencies in mind. These agencies usually have these set of skilled people looking for work, and  usually have employer contacts abroad who are looking for certain skill sets which they can get from another country at a cheaper rate. These agencies then become sort of a “match-maker” between skilled workers looking for jobs, and employers interested in hiring them.

Where can you download? You can download WP Worker Catalog Plug-in here.

The source code is under GNU Public License version 3

Enjoy!

WordPress Plugin of the Day: Quick Post Widget

Quick post widget is a very useful widget when you need to allow your users to post entries in your blog, and you find the built-in WP administrator post interface a bit user-unfriendly.

This widget has a textarea interface, where your user can type their article right away. Or if you prefer something visual, it also has a very neat Visual Editor if they want to see their posts on-the-fly as they edit it.