http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/ Latest blog entries from staff at SiteCrafting en-us Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:05:32 PST Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:05:32 PST SiteCrafting, Inc. CMS http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/visual-studio-2005-crystal-reports/ When you install Visual Studio 2005 Professional on your development computer, you get everything you need for adding Crystal Reports to your ASP.net 2.0 project or web site. However, your web server does not have Visual Studio 2005 Professional installed on it, which it shouldn't, which means your nice new reports will not work. What should you do? ... Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:43:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/fastest-growing-companies/ I have a seven year old who loves boxes. He loves building playhouses, cars, and hideouts using as many raw materials and all the imagination he has, and he does it everyday. He has faith in me and depends on me. I have a five year old, who loves her daddy more than just about anything and who loves princesses and dress up. She is learning to read and is getting better at it every day. She counts on me to be there, to support her and to love her. ... Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:08:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/aspnet-20-or-files/ We have a CMS that generates static html files and some of those pages redirect to a different web page. When that occurs the static page has a combination of meta-refresh, javascript, and a paragraph with a link to the redirected page to handle all possible scenarios. Unfortunately, this combination poses some issues, such as a blank page being displayed while the redirection is occurring, if the page is slow loading the user will see the paragraph text, and once the redirection is completed, the back-button will not work in IE. To avoid these issues, here are a couple of solutions for handling those redirects, the first is to have ASP.net serve .htm files, the second is to install ISAPI Rewrite version 2 or 3. ... Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:26:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/volunteering-emergency-food-network/ There's something extremely satisfying about doing for others.  It's not very hard, doesn't take very long, yet makes a huge difference for those in need.  Saturday, November 15, some co-workers and I headed over to the Emergency Food Network's Distribution Center for their monthly Repack Project.  Giant bins of frozen vegetables are repacked into 1-2 pound bags for distribution to over 70 food banks, hot meal sites, and shelters throughout Pierce County. ... Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:41:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/happy-halloween/ Happy Halloween from SiteCrafting! Today we found a chicken in our office. Feel free to order him around.Free video streaming by Ustream ... Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:52:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/to-jquery-in-prototype-world/ Prototype and jQuery conflict over the $ function. In the entry, I will show you how you can start to include jQuery code in the an environment that is already Prototype heavy.  ... Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:01:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/variable-resolution-in-server-side/ I was working on a content retrieval procedure recently, and hit a snag. I needed to retrieve the content of one field, do some other processing, then compare that content to a field in another table. That middle processing step was preventing me from just doing a JOIN between the two.Logically, what I wanted to do was this:BEGIN    -- set up variable to store name of table    DECLARE storedValue VARCHAR(64);        -- query to grab the value used later    SELECT firstValue    INTO storedValue    FROM FirstTable    WHERE id = 1;    -- other stuff happens here    DECLARE tableCur CURSOR FOR    SELECT *    FROM SecondTable    WHERE secondValue = storedValue;    OPEN tableCur;    tableLoop: LOOP        -- process results    END LOOP tableLoop;    CLOSE tableCur;END ... Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:45:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/goto-code-in-php/ Sometimes, you just need a way to GOTO. Here is a little trick that will duck out of a section of code using break ... Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:43:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/stats-in-mysql-pt-iii/ Not as snazzy-looking as my last two, but a useful query nonetheless. One the applications we built over the years, among other things, takes a list of names and addresses (currently a little over 2600), and selects around 200 of them at random. The client has been keeping track of the alphabetical distribution of last names with each random batch, and was concerned that the apparent weighting of the list toward the beginning of the alphabet was evidence that the lists were not truly random.Fortunately I was able to get a quick statistical breakdown of the overall list, using the following: ... Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:43:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/jscommandlet-released/ We're happy to announce a new bookmarklet called JSCommandlet. It is a JavaScript console developed for use within SiteCrafting. If you do any kind of JavaScript development, especially working with Internet Explorer, JSCommandlet is for you. ... Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:43:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/disney-photopass/ Leave it to Disney to get it right. We've all heard the stories. We all know about the legendary service, cleanliness, and fun. This story is a bit different as it is about all of those things, but more in my area of interest. Here's the set up. I spent a week at Disneyland with my family. Fun was had by all. I enjoyed seeing my kids enjoy the rides, the characters and the fun that is Disneyland. All in all, I took over a thousand photos and a lot of video. Where the story gets interesting is in the photos I didn't take. ... Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:20:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/stack-overflow-liftoff/ Today marks the first day Stack Overflow opens its doors to the public. In case you're not in the know, Stack Overflow is essentially a Q&A site geared towards developers of all kinds. It takes a language/technology agnostic approach and simply provides a framework within which the community can ask and answer techincal questions. Think of it as ExpertsExchange.com except free and much more community driven. ... Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:18:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/new-phar-php-package/ Today I discovered a very powerful addition to the PHP world. Phar is an archive extension for PHP that allows an entire PHP application to be packaged into a single file. It's basically PHP's answer to Java's .jar archive format. Don't get excited yet, it gets better... ... Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:01:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/first-look-at-googles-chrome-1/ Though adding another browser to our already rigorous bevvy of website testing doesn't appeal to me, having new such programs help drive web innovation is always welcome. Case in point: today's beta release of Google Chrome. ... Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:43:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/stats-in-mysql-pt-ii/ (Author's note: not necessarily actually a practical idea. But fun!)So pictured here is a histogram of a moderately large set of random integers. Each vertical line represents the total number of entries at each particular integer. Since each number is made up of multiple random factors (10 different random numbers, each between 0 and 100, added together), the distribution tends toward a bell curve.So how did I build the graph? Excel? PHP? Nope. Just a MySQL query. ... Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:51:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/stats-in-mysql-pt-outliers/ With most large sets of data, especially numerical data, statistical analysis plays a key role. You can't be bothered to look at every record yourself; that's what computers are for.One useful tool in any statistical analysis is the identification of outliers. Assuming you have a normally distributed set of data, outliers can help to identify user error in the data entry process, or genuine spikes in the data. Once found, these numbers can be set aside for closer analysis or eliminated to normalize the data set.There are many different methods for identifying outliers, with varying levels of rigor. Here I'll just demonstrate one of the simplest definitions: an outlier is any value greater than three standard deviations away from the mean. ... Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:45:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/iphone-goggles/ As mobile access to the web increases, it is becoming more and more important to ensure sites are usable on mobile devices. iPhoney attempts to address the iPhone camp with a desktop application that renders web pages within a virtual iPhone. ... Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:44:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/lets-sirius/ So I have a new car. Well three months old and I've been taking advantage of the FREE installed satellite radio. I have to say I was pretty certain that I'd let the system expire once the trial was over, but after commercial free radio with good music, I have to say I'm hooked.So, when the extend your service email arrived in my Inbox Saturday, you bet I clicked to extend my service. ... Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:11:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/company-email-signature/ As a company brand evolves, it's often easy to forget about little things such as the email signature. The email signature, which appears at the close of a message, is usually where contact information exists, consisting of info like your name, title, dept, website, address, and phone number. I say "usually" because many people feel this is a spot to showcase a little bit about themselves. They do this with such things as banners, animated gifs, inspirational quotes, and even their photo. ... Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:48:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/dont-build-em-to/ As one of the "older" employees at SiteCrafting, and as I get ever closer to the birth of my first child, I find myself mirroring my father's sentimentality by reminiscing about the "good 'ol days". Sometimes the "they don't build 'em like they used to" adage can be a wistful lament, whereas other times it can be joyful proclamation. Gone are the days of the sturdy, craftsman house with rough-cut timber and spacious attics, as we now build with prefabricated trusses, foam-filled roof sections, and 4x2 lumber that's really 3 1/2 x 1 1/2. ... Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:14:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/website-innovation-profile-1/ Changing the way an entire industry works is never easy. It can take a lot of time to get people used to doing things in a new way. Fortunately, during the past few years we have witnessed entire industries become disrupted by innovation. The Internet has changed the rules in so many industries - digital music, travel, banking - the list goes on and on. So one of our customers asked, why not Letterman jackets?We all remember (at least those of us that were jocks) receiving our letter and going to the nearest sporting goods store and ordering our jackets. Typically, we chose from a limited set of styles, got measured, paid some money, and then waited 4-6 weeks for delivery. It's a process that still plays itself out in most of the country. Enter Lettermansclub.com... ... Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:32:00 PDT