We are excited to find another programmer to join our development team. Successful candidates should enjoy a fast-paced, young-minded environment and have enthusiasm for technical elegance. We are looking for someone who is self-motivated and can meet project goals and deadlines. Work will involve both collaborative efforts and individual responsibilities.

Required to apply

• Strong grasp of object-oriented programming (OOP) and model-view-controller (MVC)  design patterns, specifically Ruby on Rails
• Experience with JavaScript frameworks/libraries (jQuery, Knockout, Angular, Node, Socket.IO)
• Comfortable with various database architectures (MySQL, MSSQL, PostgreSQL)
• Familiar with version control system, specifically Git
• Semantic use of HTML5
• Proficient in Linux
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Transportation to/from the office
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, performance-oriented work environment

Experience in the following is not required, but beneficial

• PHP (Symfony, WordPress, Magento)
• Objective-C / iOS development
• CoffeeScript, Haml, Sass, Less
• Server maintenance capabilities

What you can expect

Work in an open room with like-minded individuals where learning and sharing new frameworks and techniques are highly encouraged. Also, access:

• 27″ iMac w/ dual-flanking monitors
• L-shaped desk, speakers, and your choice of mouse/keyboard
• Professional software packages and collaboration tools
• Fully virtualized hosting environment with iSCSI storage array
• Remotely-accessible Windows Virtual Machines for testing, debugging
• Git version control management
• Code reviews by peers
• Scrum project management

Employee benefits

• Health insurance
• Dental/Vision
• 401(k)
• Paid vacation
• Company-sponsored monthly excursions
• Coffee, energy drinks, and snacks supplied

How to apply

• Complete the online application
• Include résumé & cover letter
• Cite examples of completed projects

Click here to apply

This article originally posted on Now hiring web developer in Baton Rouge

Just add the following line to your cycle function, replacing 4 with the total number of slides:

startingSlide: Math.floor(Math.random()*4)

This article originally posted on How to randomize initial image with jquery-cycle plugin

Office Furniture World has offered wholesale furniture to the Baton Rouge area for over 20 years.

Now, customers can browse their inventory online via their new website - http://www.ofwbr.com.

This article originally posted on Office Furniture World website goes live

Download Per Page Sidebar Blocks plugin for WordPress

This plugin is being submitted to the WordPress repository. For now, you can download it here: Download Per Page Sidebar Blocks v1.0

The plugin is now available in the WordPress repository: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/per-page-sidebar-blocks/

Background and goals of this plugin

Part of offering WordPress as a CMS to my clients involves giving them as much control over the future of their website as possible. One pitfall I experience is offering per-page sidebar customization.

Sidebar templates and conditionals

I find myself creating several sidebar-name.php templates and using conditionals to display them where I want. Functions like is_page(), is_tree(), is_ancestor(), is_single(), etc. let me plan ahead for which sidebars should show on which pages. However, these functions do not truly allow customizing sidebar output for pages created in the future outside the scope of my preemptive conditionals.

Page-specific blocks of content in the sidebar

Per Page Sidebar Blocks lets you, the theme developer, create several sidebar templates using WordPress’ naming convention sidebar-name.php. (detailed in WordPress’ codex)

Automatically finds your sidebar templates

PPSB will scan the current theme’s root directory for all your sidebar templates and let you decide which ones get displayed on each individual page by simply checking a box on that page’s Edit area.

*Please note, this plugin will not search a child theme’s parent directory for sidebar-name.php files. These files must reside directly within the currently-active theme’s root directory.

Control the display order

Sidebar block control would not be complete without the ability to specify a display order.

Drag and drop

Just drag and drop each item into place on the PPSB Settings page (under the Settings menu), and see your changes reflected on the frontend. Changes are saved immediately via ajax, so no save button is necessary.

Sitewide display order

Your specified display order is sitewide, not page-specific. I currently have no plans of offering page-specific display orders.

Integrate into your theme

Integration is very simple. Put the following code into your sidebar.php file. This line checks if the plugin is activated, then shows enabled sidebars (if a box is checked) on the page being viewed.

<?php if( function_exists( 'ppsb_show_sidebars' ) ) echo ppsb_show_sidebars(); ?>

Obviously, you will have to pull the sidebar in your page templates (page.php, index.php, etc.) which require sidebar output.

<?php get_sidebar() ?>

Why is this sidebar plugin different?

There are other solutions that offer sidebar content control per page, but PPSB approaches the problem differently.

I don’t like widgets

Widgets don’t offer the level of consistent control that I need in the markup, and they open the door for my client to unintentionally “break” their website at some point. Client control is great, but too much control can introduce problems.

Custom sidebar building blocks

Instead of simply letting you select a full sidebar for a page (which you could certainly setup using this plugin), I go a step further and let you create different blocks of content. Let’s say your client has a list of Company Partner’s logos, and they want to list them on the About and Services pages. Rather than create a specific sidebar for each of those pages, create a sidebar-partners.php block and just enable it on every page it’s needed; use sidebar templates as building blocks to customize sidebar content as needed.

Just another tool

This solution is not ideal for every situation. For instance, your client may be confused if you have a 1 column page template, and they overlook that sidebars are not meant to be displayed on such pages. It may also become tedious to rebuild the sidebar for every page, whereas conditionals would automate this process. Then again, you could mandate certain blocks with conditionals and let your client control the others.

Hopefully, though, it’s niche of functionality will be suitable for some projects.

How does it work?

For those that are interested, you will notice the sidebar values are reiterated in the Custom Fields box; the checkboxes assign a yes or no value, but with a much more intuitive interface for your clients. The visibility of each sidebar template is stored in the wp_postmeta table of the database, and WordPress offers nice functions – get_post_meta() and update_post_meta() – to pull it all together.

Future goals of this plugin

• Set certain sidebar blocks to be visible by default on all pages
• Set certain sidebar blocks to be hidden from the Edit Page’s checkbox list

Known issues

• PPSB visibility (the checkboxes on each page) is forgotten after the first time you save a new page. You have to check the sidebar blocks again AFTER saving, then save the page again.

This article originally posted on Per Page Sidebar Blocks plugin for WordPress

After much research, I can only assume this special price issue not working properly is a bug in Magento. The only accepted solution was to visit the admin page System > Configuration and Reindex the Data for Product Prices. Fine, but I can’t tell my client to log into his admin every morning and clear his indices.

Create cron jobs

Instead, I created some cron jobs to clear the indices and cache storage every night at midnight.

Reindex all Magento indices

Create one cron using the following command:

php /home/path/to/magento/shell/indexer.php reindexall

Clear all cache

To clear all Magento cache, we will need to create a script file that deletes everything in /var/cache/.

1. Create a file called clearcache.sh in the directory one level above public_html (so it’s not publicly accessible)
2. Put the following lines into that file:

    #!/bin/bash rm -rf /home/path/to/magento/public_html/var/cache/*

3. Edit the path to your Magento installation and /var/cache/ directory as necessary.
4. Create the cron job using the following command:

bash -s < /home/path/to/clearcache.sh

This article originally posted on Magento special price still showing after expiration

This plugin is being submitted to the WordPress repository. For now, you can download it here: mycomp-menu-v1.0.zip
The plugin is now available in the WordPress repository: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/my-company-menu/

Background and goals of this plugin

This plugin is intended for theme developers who build WordPress websites for other businesses. WordPress has become my CMS of choice for so many reasons, and I find myself exploring ways to give my clients a better experience. The MCM plugin, overall, helps my clients manage their content a little bit easier.

My Company Menu tab in admin panel

For starters, MCM adds a new tab in the Admin’s Sidebar, which links to a page to manage standard business contact information and social networking links.

Add your own custom subpages

I also use this new menu to organize Pods, like a Work Portfolio or Team Member Manager. This lets me create custom managers for my client and consolidate them under one menu, keeping the sidebar simple and clean.

Demo page mcm_menu.php

I include a Demo Page (mcm_menu.php located in the plugin directory). If you have no need for additional subpages, just check the Hide Demo Page box on the Help/Settings page to remove it. Otherwise, move mcm_menu.php from Plugins to your Uploads directory to customize it as needed (this will ensure your tweaks remain after an update).

The file mcm_menu.php has ample template functions and recommendations for creating your own custom pages.

Customize menu title and icon

Change the menu’s title and icon to match your client’s branding on the Help/Settings Page.

Manage company contact information

Give your clients an interface to manage typical contact information, such as:

• Phone number
• Toll free number
• Fax number
• Email address
• Disclaimer
• Physical address

Manage social media links

With MCM, just echo the company_social() function in your template file to display icons for fields with a URL. Now, your client can add URLs and the appropriate icons will display automatically.

Supports Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Vimeo—standard business-related networks.

Icons load as an unordered list with a class of mcm_social. Soon, you will be able to specify your own images.

Customize social media icons

New in 1.0.5 Now you can customize the upstate and hover state of your social media icons by using an image sprite.

Just upload your sprite image, specify the width and height of individual icons, and give the background position coordinates for each.

Shortcodes and Functions

Each field has a shortcode beneath it that can be used on posts and pages to show the contents of the related input box. Theme developers can use the same shortcode as PHP functions in templates to display the data.

You should verify if each field has a value, then echo something based on success/failure. Each shortcode shares the name of the function for your template pages.

For example, the shortcode for the Company Phone Number is [ company_phone ]. So, incorporate this into your template with:

<?php
  if(company_phone()) { // check if has value
    echo company_phone(); // if yes, display value
  } // if not, nothing is displayed
?>

<?php
  if(company_phone()) { // check if has value
    echo company_phone(); // if yes, display value
  } else {
    echo 'No phone number entered'; // if not, display message
  }
?>

The following shortcodes are available at this time.

• Phone Number: [ company_phone ]
• Toll Free Number: [ company_tollfree ]
• Fax Number: [ company_fax ]
• Email Address: [ company_email ]
• Disclaimer: [ company_disclaimer ]
• Address (multi-line): [ company_address ]
• Address (one line): [ company_address_oneline ]
• Google Plus: [ company_gplus ]
• Facebook: [ company_facebook ]
• LinkedIn: [ company_linkedin ]
• Twitter: [ company_twitter ]
• YouTube: [ company_youtube ]
• Vimeo: [ company_vimeo ]
• RSS Feed: [ company_rss ]
• List social icons: [ company_social ]

TinyMCE integration

Easily add the company’s phone number or email address into a post by clicking the new buttons in your WYSIWYG editor.

Future goals of this plugin

• Custom social media icons
• Interface for adding Pods as subpages (currently a manual process in mcm_menu.php)
• Google Maps integration

This article originally posted on My Company Menu plugin for WordPress

WordPress is an open-source project maintained by the community and Automattic. It offers big benefits:

• Free to use and modify as needed
• Beautiful and intuitive user interface
• Simple, powerful and expandable foundation for websites
• Thousands of 3^rd party plugins, usually decreasing development time
• Great documentation and community support

Search Engine Optimization

Another big win for WordPress is its incredible per-page SEO capabilities. True SEO comes from content and proper coding (among other things, of course). WordPress lets us boil down important page elements as input boxes, ensuring it is coded properly. Part of our web training will cover how to most effectively use some of the input fields to give your content a better chance at getting indexed by search engines and ranked higher.

Paste from Word

I use the Paste from Word feature to let Word markup content properly. WordPress recognizes things like headings, bold text, and links and automatically codes it correctly. Try my style set for Word if you’re having issues using this feature.

Automated Feeds, Search engine pings

Our own website (on WordPress) automatically updates our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts as we post new content. Going back to SEO, WordPress goes one step further and pings Google, Yahoo, and Bing when content is updated or added so they can rescan the site and update their search results cache. It will also keep your sitemap.xml file updated automatically, which search engines often use to help navigate your website.

Revision History

WordPress keeps a revision history of all the changes made to a page or post, complete with the date and user who made the change. So you can go back in time to an earlier version of that page if it gets compromised in some way.

Drafts, Post/Pre date

You can save new posts/pages as a Draft instead of actually publishing the page. This lets you see your content as a normal user would, but you’re not obligated to publish it and you won’t lose your changes. Also, you can set pages/posts to automatically publish at a specific date/time in the future. We do this sometimes on our own site to make sure our blog posts have a time gap between their deployments.

Trash/Recycle bin

WordPress has a trash feature, just like Recycle Bin on your computer. Here, you can restore or delete things permanently.

Drag and drop navigation menu

WordPress has a great way of managing navigation menus. You simply add the page, then drag+drop it into place. It’s like dragging a file into a folder on your computer—very intuitive.

Automated database backups

Plugins are available that automatically backup your database every day, week, biweekly, etc., so you have a known good version to revert back to just in case.

Plugins

If you need to add functionality or tweak something down the road, WordPress typically provides a simple way of doing it or someone out there has already written a plugin that we can integrate rapidly.

This article originally posted on Why we develop websites on WordPress

It was developed to be a simple notification system that warns you 90, 60, and 30 days and the day before something expires. There’s also goodies like registrar info, creation date, nameservers, raw whois, etc.

Right now, we’re offering a free account that lets you manage up to 10 domains/SSLs. Larger plans will be offered down the road, but the 10-for-free plan will always remain.

We’re well-aware of some styling issues and bugs, but the system should work well overall.

This article originally posted on Manage domain names & SSL certificates with ServerExec

Multifaceted web experience

Our site is accessed by different types of people for various reasons.

• Developers, system administrators, and typical users find helpful information in our technology blog
• Current clients visit our site to start remote support sessions with a support technician
• Potential new clients find our site in search results and want to learn what we’re all about

Simplification for better user experience

Our new main navigation menu and overall site structure focuses on the core services we offer to Baton Rouge; each section provides concise and meaningful descriptions of our products and services.

Available support technicians

Our current clients rely on the convenience of clicking a support technician’s name at the top of our homepage. This has been carried over into the new website and tucked under a new Available Techs button to reduce clutter and provide focus for all users.

Latest HTML5 and CSS3 techniques

We have been tinkering with the latest HTML5 and CSS3 coding techniques for some time now, and this site builds on that foundation. New elements (such as header, nav, & aside) help search engines understand the meaning of your content more semantically. They also offer enhanced options for people accessing the website from mobile devices.

This article originally posted on Immense Networks rolls out new website

For some reason, the current version of OpenCart (1.4.9.5) is still using an old version of CKEditor (3.0.1) in the admin interface, though the current version is up to 3.6. While the old CKEditor still works fine as a WYSIWYG, I need to give my clients an easier way to manage their content in the CMS; this means I need a paste from Word feature.

I need the Paste from Microsoft Word feature

It is infinitely easier to explain site hierarchy and per-page SEO (with respect to Headings <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.) in Microsoft Word than it is to run through an HTML lesson.

A simple way to allow this is to upgrade the included CKEditor to the latest version (currently 3.6), which includes Paste from Word and a number of other features.

How to upgrade CKEditor in OpenCart

Download the latest CKEditor

Grab the latest CKEditor from their website.

Rename old ckeditor directory

Navigate to /public_html/admin/view/javascript/ and rename your ckeditor directory to something else, such as ckeditor-old.

Unzip and upload new version

Unzip the new CKEditor and grab the directory ckeditor to /public_html/admin/view/javascript/

Enjoy the latest CKEditor

It’s as simple as that. Refresh your admin page to see a ton more options in your WYSIWYG, including a Paste from Word feature.

This article originally posted on How to update CKEditor in OpenCart