Mark Headrick’s Blog

I actually got these for Christmas but just now added the last one to the website. They are:

• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• The Bourne Ultimatum

In addition to the front case cover, I have started including trailers for new movies I add to the site. They are flash videos so if you can view YouTube videos, then you will be able to view these. As usual I don’t really say that much about the movies because if I didn’t think they were good or didn’t enjoy them, I wouldn’t have them.

My photo gallery has been upgraded to Gallery2, version 2.2.4 which includes a number of security patches and fixes.  The upgrade went smooth and without any hiccups.  I used the 2.2.3 to 2.2.4 upgrade file.  Speaking of the gallery, I have added my 2007 Christmas pictures for any family members to view in the Family Albums section (this is a protected area of my gallery which requires a user name and password to view).

I have finally done it!!! My website is no longer using frames after years and years. It’s now using a combination of CSS and DIV containers to control the layout. I think I have made changes to all the pages and scripts that I needed to LOL. As you’ll notice, I no longer have my embedded midi player on the bottom left. Instead when clicking on a link to play a random midi file or any particular one, it will open a pop-up window with the midi player. Any future midi files will be targeted to that same pop-up window and start playing.

As a result of this, I have had to modify my .htaccess file to redirect any links that might be going to my old index.shtml (the file that contained my frame information) or main.php (which was the home page file loaded into the right-hand side) to just the root at “/” so that it loads the new index.php.

The main thing that is bugging me so far is that with Firefox, the pages that have an embedded object such as a media player, flash player, or YouTube player causes the left menu to be redrawn… except for the NASCAR page for some reason . In IE, this does not happen. Trying to make things behave the same or as close to possibly can be a real pain sometimes. Anyway, now my website will be easier for search bots to handle and for people to bookmark and refresh pages!

My photo gallery which uses Gallery2 has been upgraded to v2.2.3, a Security Fix release.  If you’ll notice, both my gallery and blog have the same version numbers! Weird. A coincidence I’m sure… or is it?? Muwhahahaha!!! LOL. 

I’ve updated my blog to WordPress v2.2.3 which includes a few security updates, a couple of which were high priority, and some bug fixes. Like before, I only updated the changed files. Since vars.php was one of the updated files, I did have to edit it and force the $is_apache variable to be true since on my server, the server_software variable comes back with WebServerX instead of Apache. Following is the part that I changed:

// Server detection
//$is_apache = ((strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'], 'Apache') !== false) || (strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'], 'LiteSpeed') !== false)) ? true : false;
$is_apache = true;

If I do not do this, then it will not modify the .htaccess file if I change the permalink structure.

I have also decided to reduce the possible annoyance factor when loading my website by not automatically playing the random MIDI file that is loaded into in the media player in the bottom-left frame. You now have to click play in order to hear the song. All other “play” links on the site will cause the player to automatically start playing.

I am aware that my site still uses those evil frames and how taboo it is these days to use them, not to mention the difficulties some search engines have with them. I’ll investigate my options… I just don’t like a seperate pop-up window, tab or browser to be created when clicking on a “play” link. It just makes browsing the site so.. disjointed. Hmmm..