We recently launched a WordPress-based blog for Lucid Realty, a Chicago-based real estate company. First we built a custom WordPress template to integrate the blog into Lucid Realty's corporate site, then added social bookmarking, SEO, email subscriptions, and Feedburner integration. Having worked with WorkPress over a number of years, we feel that WordPress is an excellent choice for companies who need a blog or a content management system, and we're glad that Lucid Realty chose us to help them expand their social media campaign and connect with homeowners.

WikiWorldBook is a robust site with a number of facets: it's not only a feature-rich online community, but also a people finder and online address book. It provides a broad AJAX search engine to help you learn about and find old friends, and offers a myriad of privacy controls for your profile so that you can control who can see what about your online identity.

Handy shell command to list out the Apache processes & what they're up to

ps axo 'pid user size %cpu %mem cmd' | grep http | grep -v "\(root\|grep\)"

A reminder that Portland Open Beer Club is this Thursday, June 12, at Bailey's Taproom downtown. Grab a brew & chat about the web in a laid-back manner.

I called a popular hosting provider today to talk with them about getting a client's server order straightened out, as my client wasn't able to make progress on a few issues. However, the account was set up in my client's name only, which made the provider reluctant to assist me. I can understand that from a security standpoint, they can't hand out information on the phone to just anyone, but still, the account rep sounded like I was wasting his time and couldn't wait to get off the phone.

(FYI the account was set up in the client's name so that they bill the client, not me.)

So here are some tips:

Tip for developers: When your client gets web hosting, make sure that you are listed as the technical contact (or a secondary technical contact), and that your client is listed as the administration & billing contact. This may require you being on the phone while the client places the order, or perhaps they can email server specs (provided by you) to the sales rep. Or I guess you could set up the order & then have the sales rep contact your client to switch the billing from you to them.

Tip for hosting providers: If a new client's webmaster calls about an order, treat them like a new customer, not some prank caller.

I do more & more Linux work from the shell, and it's starting to grow on me. ;)

I used to search through files using this command

find . | xargs grep -s 'keyword'

but now & again get errors like xargs: unmatched single quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option

So I found this command works instead

find . -printf '"%p"\n' | xargs grep -s 'keyword'

or you can make a handy shell script (e.g. search.sh) like this

#!/bin/bash

find . -printf '"%p"\n' | xargs grep -s "$1"

and then search files like

search.sh 'keyword'

I was unable to temporarily stop AVG antivirus in Vista until I saw this tip from highmastodon:

1. Shut down AVG Control Center by right-clicking the AVG icon in your taskbar & choosing Quit.
2. Now click the Vista start button and type "AVG" in the search box. AVG Control Center should appear.
3. Right-click AVG Control Center and choose "Run as Administrator"
4. Now you can open up AVG Control Center, double-click Resident Shield, uncheck "Turn On Resident Shield", and save the changes.

So apparently if I start a blog post but don't submit it within an hour or two my session times out & I lose the post. Nice.

Anyhow, performance has been terrible with VS2008 inside of Virtual PC. CPU is pegged, 30 seconds to load pages, you know the drill.

So here are some tips to improve performance.

1. Don't use Virtual PC. Instead, run VS2008 on VMWare or your own computer, and have it access all CPU cores.
2. Get good hardware. Quad-core CPUs, 3+gb RAM, fast disks (especially in a RAID 0 arrangement).
3. Install the VS2008 Performance Patch. It didnt' help me, but it might help you.
4. Make sure your anti-virus is ignoring your VM & compile folders.
5. Change your <compilation tempDirectory="" /> to point to a very fast drive, like a RAM drive.
6. Ensure VS2008 is running multiple parallel builds under the Tools->Options->Projects & Solutions->Builds & Compilation. The default is only 1 build at a time, but you can run more if you have a multi-core CPU.