Add Search Provider to Internet Explorer Error
It’s strange how often the Microsoft “Add Search Provider to Internet Explorer” page breaks with java script errors (specifically Element not found on line 116). Every other Microsoft site and service seem pretty solid but for some reason this one doesn’t seem to be as important. I just can’t figure out why this is not a priority for them?
Free Website Monitoring by WebsiteHawk.com
Knowing when your website is up or down didn’t seem like a big deal to me until I began selling products and receiving income from Adsense. It was then that I began using what I believe is the only 100% free monitoring service on the web. WebsiteHawk.com is dead simple to setup and receive notifications when there is a problem with your site.
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Free New Scripts to Toy With
My most recent website purchase was script29.com. It’s an interesting business selling scripts but I’m not into it. I’m going to dissect and give-a-away for Free all the scripts available there. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to go about it just yet but slowly I will. For starters I’m hoping to get some feedback. Although the scripts on the page I’m about to ask you to go to can technically be bought for $29 I’ will be changing that to free as I may my way through them. Visit http://Script29.com, play with the domain lookup, local gas prices, etc.. Tell me your favorites so I know which ones to evaluate and give out.
Renaming Windows Files
Renaming Windows Files - Examples below use Zen-Cart files
In our example we will rename some files on Windows. The examples we will use are handy for ZenCart Admin. When renaming files in bulk it is easiest to use some form of batch rename process. When dealing with zen-cart image renaming you often need to do mass additions of _MED and _LRG but the synatx below will work for all of your needs. I find Windows Powershell to be the easiest way to accomplish this. Following are some examples:
To rename a single file using Windows Powershell:
[ this will take a “.php” file and rename it to “.php.original” ]
Windows Powershell Syntax:
Rename-Item tpl_main_page.php tpl_main_page.php.backup
To rename a directory full of files using Windows Powershell:
[ this will use the above example and apply it to an entire directory ]
Windows Powershell Syntax:
Get-ChildItem | ForEach-Object { rename-item $_.name $_.name.replace(”.php”,”.php.original “) }
Therefore To rename a directory of Images to include _MED or _LRG for Zen-Cart use the following:
Windows Powershell Syntax:
Get-ChildItem | ForEach-Object { rename-item $_.name $_.name.replace(”.jpg”,”_MED.jpg”) }
Windows Powershell Syntax:
Get-ChildItem | ForEach-Object { rename-item $_.name $_.name.replace(”.jpg”,”_LRG.jpg”) }
The same example for renaming a directory of Images to include _MED or _LRG for Zen-Cart using Windows Batch would be:
[ this is valid from a cmd line only, to use in a batch file (.bat or .cmd) you will need two % symbols, not one. i.e. %% wherever % is present in the line below ]
Windows Batch Syntax:
for /f %i in (’dir *.jpg /b’) do ren %i %~ni_MED.jpg
Windows Batch Syntax:
for /f %i in (’dir *.jpg /b’) do ren %i %~ni_LRG.jpg
If you would like other examples such as Perl, PHP, or VBScript just ask and I’ll toss them together.
Zen-Cart Image Files
When adding products to your Zen-Cart catalog you have the option to reference or upload an image. Zen-Cart will automatically resize this image depending on the display that requires it. A sidebox for new products or featured products will require a small image (default height of 80) while a product display page will require a medium sized image (default height of 120) and finally you have the option to click on an image in the product display page to view a large photo.
When adding an image to a product you can either reference an existing file on the server or upload an image. The file path references the /images/ directory by default and will upload new images to this location. At this point you can leave good enough alone and allow Zen-Cart to manage your images sizes for you. By default Zen-Cart will include size attributes in the <src img> tags so they will display properly in all their locations. When doing this clients are still required to download the full size image then the browser resizes it when rendering the page. This can be extremely painful in terms of bandwidth utilization if you have a typical homepage that is full of products (example: www.Warclick.com.
A better way to manage your images and keep you site lean and mean is to make three versions of each image. This will allow clients to download a small 2-4K image for thumbnails instead of a full size 80-300K image then resize it. Zen-Cart has this functionality built in however you will need to do some extra preparation to use it. There are two directories in the images directory named Medium and Large and if you save your images with _MED and _LRG in these folders respectively Zen-Cart will display these alternate version for you automatically. The result will need to look like this:
Example file name for this case will be xep_hairy.jpg
Your small image with height of 80 would be located at the root of your images folder:
http://www.xekoshop.com/images/xep_hairy.jpg
Your medium image with height of 120 would be located in the medium folder:
http://www.xekoshop.com/images/medium/xep_hairy_MED.jpg
Finally your large image with native height would be located in the Large folder:
http://www.xekoshop.com/images/large/xep_hairy_LRG.jpg
If you would like more information on doing massive amount of file renaming for this purpose see this article on renaming files.