Author Archives

About Dougal Campbell

Dougal is a web developer, and a "Developer Emeritus" for the WordPress platform. When he's not coding PHP, Perl, CSS, JavaScript, or whatnot, he spends time with his wife, three children, a dog, and a cat in their Atlanta area home.

CSS: The One True Layout

Oct272005

I had recently been using Alex Robinson’s 3-column CSS technique called “ordered columns, float-margin/float-margin” for some website designs. But he has superceded that with the One True Layout. OTL combines methods for source-ordered columns, techniques for equal-height columns, and “vertical grids” to provide a flexible method of creating complex page layouts, while maintaining a minimum of markup clutter. Plus you get to keep your content sections in a logical sequence. Check out the examples for … Continue reading →

Sorry for the downtime

Oct272005

Whoops! I made a change to my template code yesterday and broke the site without realizing it. I thought I had verified that the code was working, but I must have pulled the page from my cache. It’s back now (duh, as you can see)…

Snoopy PHP Webclient Security

Oct262005

There is a security advisory out regarding a Snoopy PHP Webclient vulnerability. Since WordPress uses Snoopy internally, we immediately double-checked to be sure that WP isn’t affected. It’s not. WordPress uses Snoopy internally to fetch RSS feeds for display in the Dashboard. But by default, all the URLs are hardcoded, and thus not vulnerable to the bug mentioned above. The only way that a WordPress site could be affected is if it had some sort … Continue reading →

Finally joined the Tivolution

Oct212005

We finally got a Tivo. I bought an 80hr model off of eBay for $150. It arrived about two weeks ago, and I finally installed it last weekend. We set up some of our favorite shows as Season Passes and put Bruce Campbell in my actor wishlist (hey, I forgot that he was an extra in Darkman!). We’re just starting to get used to it. One of Susan’s favorite features is the Guide (“You mean … Continue reading →

IE7 and the demise of CSS hacks

Oct132005

As mentioned previously here and elsewhere, Microsoft is working on Internet Explorer 7, which will have greatly improved CSS support. The IE7 team has posted an article about the demise of CSS hacks and broken pages, warning that the hacks often used to target CSS specifically to work around old IE bugs may be unnecessary under IE7 when in strict mode. So, IE will finally have improved support for standards, but all of our old … Continue reading →

My tug boat

Oct062005

I bet you never knew that I had a tug boat in Alaska, did you? Thanks to my friend Akash, who spotted this when he was on an Alaskan cruise this summer. Oh, and for those of you who haven’t read my About page, my first name is “Ernest”. “Dougal” is my nickname.

Software taxes

Sep302005

Most states charge sales tax for “products”, but not for “services”. So, if you go to the store and buy a can of beans, you are charged tax. If you hire a lawn service to cut your grass, you are not. Due to the way that commercially sold computer software is typically licensed, most states didn’t charge sales tax on it. Until fairly recently, anyways. I vaguely remember grumbling about it about ten years ago … Continue reading →

Helping Hurricane Victims

Sep292005

Do you wish that you could help a victim of Katrina or Rita? Do you have items that you think they need, but you aren’t sure where to send them? If you knew what somebody needed, would you like to be able to get it directly to them? The Been There Clearing House is “an informal clearinghouse in which individuals offering in-kind donations and individuals in need can connect.” You can read the stories of … Continue reading →

Woof!

Sep282005

We’ve been talking for a while about getting a dog. We had been leaning towards a golden retriever, but now we’re looking into maybe getting a border collie, due to their smaller size, and because they’re just darned cool. We know that, generally speaking, border collies tend to be very active. But we’re hoping to locate one that has a more laid back personality. We figure that the pet that best matches us would be … Continue reading →

Photo Galleries

Sep282005

A while back, I asked for recommendations for photo gallery software. I still haven’t picked one (I’ve been using Flickr in the meantime), but I’ve been keeping my eye on Plogger as a strong contender. But today I ran across another good one: zenphoto. Both projects are working on WordPress integration, so I can’t wait to see where these projects go. Sample default setups: Plogger, zenphoto I heard about zenphoto via: Broken Kode