OAS – Banner not showing up

Posted on October 27, 2009 by erin.oppy

WebDev has a great little plugin Matt T wrote prior to his departure which allows much of the OAS administration to be handled from the content/program/product team levels.  Which is great – when it works.  I am going to step through the  process to allow you to see if the problem is with the code or a missed setting someplace else.

Step 1:

Login the admin section of the site in question.  Then, click the settings menu and go to the settings for the “OAS Admin”.

1

Add positions to the string. Make sure there is no extra whitespace - that will cause an error.

Step 2:

Go to the widgets page and move the OAS widget from the left to the sidebar on the right.  Add your banner designation in the sidebar spot you selected.

2

Insert widget and add position text.

Step 3:

Once this is complete – we need to look at the source code of the site to see if the banner code is rendering properly.  Go to the main URI of the site – then in your browser, use the view source command.  (It can usually be found by right clicking on the site – and clicking view source.)

Do a search for the new ad placement text you added.  It should appear in 2 places.  Near the top and the area where the banner will display.

Check the site name and banner position at the top.

Check the site name and banner position at the top.

Now look for the banner diaply call.

Now look for the banner diaply call.

Final:

If those things are in check, then there is more than likely a problem within the OAS itself.

UPDATE: If you are seeing a small 1×1 pixel image,  that means OAS is working – itis sending the image.  But there is an issue with the set-up.

Please give us a call if you have questions.

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Debuging the Helios calendar

Posted on October 26, 2009 by erin.oppy

It was the best of calendars – it was the worst of calendars.  But – it is our calendar.

Unfortunately or fortunately, the helios calendar is popular.  And sometimes – it doesn’t really play nice.

Today brought up an example – where when trying to bring up a category called “Career Related Events”, it failed.

As we have known for a while – helios lets all kinds of funky characters in, but when you go to push them out.   Blaaaaaaaaaa.  No good.

Here is a way to debug – use the RSS tool to see what bad character you have.

http://corridorcareers.com/wp-content/themes/corridorcareers/calendar/helios_calendar_widget.php?cat=65

If there are errors – it will give you clues to the problem.  Then you can go to the back end and hunt for them.

http://calendar.gazlab.com/admin/

It’s not exact science – but it beats looking at a hundred or so events.

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Making changes to a Drupal site

Posted on September 15, 2009 by corridorlist

Firstly, become an administrator.  Only an Admin can make another Admin, so ask Tom or Erin to make you one. And then sign in.  (There should be a place to register and/or sign into the site.)  At iowa bridal planner . com, it’s here:

drupal_1

If you are an Admin, then after you sign in the site will look very similar, but with two major changes – an “edit” tab will appear at the top of posts allowing you to change anything in that post.  Like this:

drupal_2

And more options will appear in the navigation.  Like this:

drupal_3

By clicking the “Administer” link here you can get access to lots of areas of the site that you can make changes to.  This was quick and dirty, I know, but feel free to leave questions or comments.

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WordPress Cheat Sheet

Posted on September 15, 2009 by corridorlist

This one page .pdf file has all sorts of handy references.

WordPress-Cheat-Sheet

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Slides from our WordPress intro class

Posted on September 14, 2009 by erin.oppy
Fact or Fiction?
Image by l0ckergn0me via Flickr

We’ll all trying to cross train at Gazette Communications.  WebDev is no exception.  Our compadres in AppDev were looking to learn a bit more about WordPress – so we put together an informal training slide deck.

Learning Wordpress - the internal guide
View more presentations from tomaltman.

Let me know if you know of any other good examples.

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www, domain names and DNS – what does it all mean?

Posted on September 2, 2009 by erin.oppy
Commons-logo
Image via Wikipedia

One of our co-workers sent a question to us this morning about the “www” in front of a domain name.  Here is the question:

Hi Tom, wanted to get your opinion on something… J

http://m.ourweb.com directs to the “Our Web” Mobile site

and

http://www.ourweb.com/mobile directs to the same “Our Web” Mobile site

but

http://www.m.ourweb.com does not

Do you think it’s critical to address that referral?

This is a great question.  Here is my reply:

I would not say it is critical.  People who are trying to get to the mobile site are, by the nature of the site, on a mobile phone.  So they will more than likely just simply type in “m.”.

The “www” in front of every site name is kind of a throwback to the origins of the web.  So, with no offense intended, the only people who tend to get hung up on it are “older” people who just associate the “www” with the web and having to have it.

That all being said – the process of adding the extra DNS record takes less time than it did for me to write this email and you to read it.  So, I will drop a quick note to the network guy – he can add it and we’ll have it, just in case.

If you are interested in more information on how domain names work – check out this link.  It does a nice job of explaining them in greater detail.

http://www.recommendedwebtools.com/index.php/563/what-are-domain-names-and-how-they-work/

Have a great day,
tom

I hope this answer works for you too – DNS and sub domains are confusing, but a very integral part of how the web works.

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