CSS Hints

Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible

Sam — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:18:57 +0000

To fix, create or edit an .htaccess file in the same folder as the symlink. Insert the following line:

Options +FollowSymLinks -SymLinksIfOwnerMatch

HTML Entities in Unicode Format

Sam — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:47:51 +0000

See here for an extensive list of HTML entities in escaped unicode format – great for inserting content using the :before CSS pseudo class selector.

http://www.evotech.net/blog/2007/04/named-html-entities-in-numeric-order/

iPhone only stylesheet

Sam — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:02:03 +0000

If you want to include styles that will only apply to an iPhone you can do so by using and @media declaration within your main stylesheet.

@media screen and (max-device-width: 480px){
h2 { font-size:22px; }
}

SSHFS Symlinks

Sam — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:15:53 +0000

Using the default settings, symlink on sshfs don’t work.

You can add an option with the -o flag that will get these working properly:

sshfs user@host:/path/to/mount/ ~/mountpoint -oauto_cache,reconnect,volname=mountname,defer_permissions,transform_symlinks,follow_symlinks

MAMP MySQL won’t start

Sam — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 06:12:00 +0000

If you use MAMP for local PHP/MySQL development on OS X then you’re likely to come across this problem with MySQL starting once in a while.

MAMP is a great bit of software but every now and then you will see that MySQL has a problem starting. Checking PHPMyAdmin you might see “Error: Could not connect to MySQL server!”.

Don’t despair, there is a very quick fix:

Quit MAMP
Open terminal and type: sudo killall -9 mysqld
Reopen MAMP

That will fix it but if it’s still not working you can try visiting this MAMP forum thread for more details.

Should I use a class or an ID?

Sam — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:38:55 +0000

A CSS tip for beginners today. You might have wondered why CSS uses both classes and IDs. Well, the answer is very simple:

A CSS id should only be used once per page.

A CSS class cam be used on multiple items on a page.

It’s also important to note that IDs also take precedence over classes. Any CSS selector that uses an ID will override one that only uses a class.

SQL command to reset WordPress password

Sam — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:32:53 +0000

The quickest and easiest way to change your WordPress admin password. Just enter this SQL command directly on your server.

UPDATE wp_users SET user_pass = MD5('newpassword') WHERE user_login = "admin";

Zimbra mail suddenly stopped working

Sam — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 07:26:10 +0000

After a couple of days with no mail I decided that something must be wrong. A quick check of the logs showed a problem.

I tailed the log file while I sent myself an email from another account:

tail -f /var/log/mail.log

The mail tried to be delivered but there was an error occurring:

127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1]:10024: Connection refused

It seems the Zimbra mailserver was not accepting connections. This was easily resolved with a quick restart.

zmcontrol stop

zmcontrol start

Set table caption location using CSS

Sam — Thu, 26 May 2011 15:23:53 +0000

If you use table captions on your site and want to be able to define the caption location there is a little used CSS rule called caption-location.

Internet Explorer puts the caption underneath the table, for example. If you want to put the caption above the table just add:

caption-side:top;

Now your table caption will sit at the top.

Style hyperlinks by filetype

Sam — Sun, 22 May 2011 09:53:14 +0000

You’re probably seen those links with the little icons next to them. It might have been a mailto link or a link to a PDF file, but you knew what it was going to be before you clicked on it because it had the small icon next to it.

This is probably because the web designer had included a little trick that styles links based on the content that they point to.

Taking the PDF example, imagine you wanted a small PDF icon to appear automatically to the left of your link. The first thing you need to do is add some padding to the left so that the text doesn’t overlap the icon.

a{
   padding-left: 20px;
}

Next you’ll want to add the actual icon, so our CSS selector will look like this:

a{
   padding-left: 20px;
   background: url(icon_pdf.gif) no-repeat left;
}

The final step is that we only want this to apply to links that point to a pdf file. We don’t want to have to add a class to every PDF link either, we need it to happen automatically.

a[href $='.pdf']{
   padding-left: 20px;
   background: url(icon_pdf.gif) no-repeat left;
}

Finished. This selector will now apply to any where the href ends in .pdf.