Viewing your site before it goes live - Flush DNS

Posted on February 27, 2008
Filed Under Code Snippets, Technical Resources | 2 Comments

How to Flush DNS - See New Site Before It Resolves Live!

One of the greatest techniques ever used by responsible web designers.

I was chatting with Mack McMillan of UltimateIDX the other day when we got onto discussing the subject we frequently encounter with clients.  Many times clients want to see their blogs and websites prior to them going live and many times that isn’t easily done without some clever techniques I’ll reveal herein.  After having encountered this many times I realized that I should come up with a small guide on "how to build and view a site development prior to it going live"  when I came up with a little tool to distribute in order to help. So this post is generically in response to a common question being asked in forums.   Read more

Web Design Archive - Web Resources

Posted on December 18, 2007
Filed Under Professionals In Review, Technical Resources | Leave a Comment

Only a moment this morning to make a post about a site I stumbled upon yesterday while searching for various podcast players for WordPress. As it happens, I’ve found it necessary to find a solution to insert a small pod cast player into my college blog for interviews I do with various design professionals. From time to time, various module members at SERTI University District where I teach Photoshop invites professionals in the design and development industry to speak at public seminar throughout the school year. Each of these events or seminars gives me a great opportunity to do interviews and pick the brains of colleagues in the business which I sometimes record for instructional purposes.

So, after speaking with the developers at iPress about the importance of Pod Casting we hashed out how beneficial it would be for me as an instructor to put my interviews online on any number of my blogs. Last night, I decided to take just a few minutes to locate a nice little flash MP3 player to put into blogs that I could modify to have my own look and feel when I stumbled upon a site impressive enough to motivate me to write this very post. A few minutes turned into 4+ hours as I looked at my watch, taking notice that the time was just shy of 3AM I realized bookmarking the site would not be enough justice and a post about WebDesignArchive.org would be the worth the time.

Web Design Archive - The Website

I recently added a new category on my blog here at JaredRitchey.com to reflect my thoughts and to articulate the blessings in knowing or interacting with various professionals in the industry titled “Professionals in Review”. The website, Web Design Archive, although not part of an interview fits my own little criteria of the kind of post that gets to go into this category. Although I have dozens of posts in draft state regarding some of my favorite people in the business like Bryan over at CMS Report, or Ryan Bonham at Transparent Technologies among many others, the website, Web Design Archive gets to fit under my new category because the site is not just a professional resource but is presented as a “professional”.

My many hours on the site last night netted me a lofty inventory of resources I’ll be days in organizing and writing about as a result. The website presents many post snippets about an assortment of applications, products and plugins for WordPress among other things. One thing in particular that I was able to find most useful during my hasty search last evening was the AJAX Tabbed Snippets that was most fitting to projects I’m working on with The Brokers Edge. Armed with great examples as a result the site in a span of 4 hours proved more valuable than the previous days efforts to build a tabbed interface for an Open Realty MLS search screen which took me a full 9 hours. Worthy of a visit and certainly a bookmark, you can visit Web Design Archive to form your own opinion.

Jared Ritchey FeedBurner Update

Posted on December 10, 2007
Filed Under Technical Resources | Leave a Comment

New design being applied to this blog and the others so I thought I’d also update the feed burner.  Here is a link for no other reason than to post a link. FeedBurner.

Adobe InDesign CS2 Error

Posted on December 3, 2007
Filed Under Technical Resources | 34 Comments

Adobe indesign is missing required system fonts or CMap files

Pressed for time and at the most inconvenient moment, Adobe InDesign decided to stop working. The error "Adobe indesign is missing required system fonts or CMap files" pops up tossing my workday in array. After 40 minutes on the phone with Adobe Tech support I finally succumb to my frustrations and reinstalled Adobe InDesign CS2 on a second system and simply migrated the missing files directly to my workstation. Having solved the problem using this method I figured I’d make a zip copy of that folder and provide it here for download. Before you follow the suggest repair method outlined on Adobe’s Self Service Forum, consider for a moment that if you accidentally deleted the directory during an uninstall as I had then reinstalling and or running the "repair" sequence likely will not work. I installed and reinstalled several times with no success as suggested by tech support the many methods I had been directed to follow. The quick and easy solution is to simply download this zip file for your PC version of Adobe InDesign CS2 and drag them to your Adobe Shared Folder

Required System Fonts or CMap Files Download Fix Here

edited January 30th 2008

Okay so start by visiting my downloads section for the missing-adobe-cmap.zip file. After you extract it you should see a file structure like this;

missing-adobe-cmap.zip

Be sure InDesign is closed, simply drag the folder reqrd (and sub folders) to the following directory; C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts\ and restart Adobe InDesign. An image of the typical file structure;

indesign-file-structure

You should now have the error message gone and the application starting as it should. Having spent less time to write this post than it took me to lose valuable time fixing this little issue, I’m glad that maybe this will help someone else save valuable time should they experience the same error.

Updated January 30th 2008

Well it looks like my original instructions were not entirely clear so I’ve replaced a portion of them with graphics and I’ve given a bit more detail in hopes that it provides a bit more clarity. Thanks to everyone who has visited, commented and contacted me regarding this fix.

CRE Loaded Dreamweaver Extension

Posted on November 25, 2007
Filed Under Technical Resources | Leave a Comment

I’ve been actively working to get the CRE Loaded Dreamweaver Extension complete but had ran into issues with the differences in template code between versions.  The CRE BTS system, unlike other template engines changes its core so frequently that building templates in the past has been an expensive endevour.   The only real reason why many template houses charge so much money for templates for CRE has everything to do with the complexity of the code in making it work relatively cleanly across many installations.

This version of the CRE DW Extension will have only basic layout and foundation tools for building templates as testing and feedback from users will be most beneficial in determining what is working and what isn’t.

Check the download section later in the week.

 

Joomla OpenSEF Download Link

Posted on November 24, 2007
Filed Under Technical Resources | 5 Comments

Joomla Search Engine Friendly

Its been my opinion that the best open source freely available component for Joomla SEF is the OpenSEF Component. Unfortunately further development on the component seems to have fallen off the map as many claim to be furthering development yet none seem to post any progress or updates. Regardless, since there didn’t seem to be any download link for this in the Joomla Forums or the Joomla Component Index today I figured I’d make it available here.

Download the OpenSEF Component RC5 Service Pack 2

Download: Joomla OpenSEF Component RC5 Service Pack 2


TEMP CODE: GDHXCDX17249629
Close
E-mail It