Shortening URLs with Twitter Tools

April 16, 2009 | Posted in: Web Development, WordPress

I use a great WordPress plugin called Twitter Tools to update my Twitter status with posts from my blog. It’s a great way to get the word out about new content on your site. The only thing that the Twitter Tools doesn’t do automatically is shorten your urls to make it easier to fit in the 140 character limit of Twitter. Fortunately, the author of Twitter Tools did think of this and built in a way for us to do it fairly easily.

Need to Upgrade PHP on Fedora Core 4?

April 9, 2009 | Posted in: Linux, PHP, Technology, Web Development

If you are still using the Fedora Core 4 (FC4) version of Linux you may have a need to upgrade your version of PHP. Unfortunately the Fedora Project hasn’t put out an update to PHP past version 5.0.4. There have been some functionality updates to PHP since then. The project I was working on at the time needed the functionality of SimpleXML (for handling XML responses; built into PHP 5.1.4 or higher).

The easiest way to upgrade PHP on Fedora, in my opinion, is using YUM. YUM makes it easy to download and install rpm packages on Linux systems. So let’s take a look at what we need to do.

Problem Updating RPMs Using YUM

April 9, 2009 | Posted in: How To's, Linux, Technology

I was working on a Linux system that is running Fedora Core 4 and needed to install some updates to the system. I was using YUM because of the easy of use and how well it handles dependencies with rpms.

When trying to update the system I received the following error:

[root@yourlinuxbox ~]# yum -y update php
Setting up Update Process
Setting up repositories
Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: updates-released

Rename Multiple Files with the Tab Key

February 17, 2009 | Posted in: Technology, Tips & Tricks, Windows

We discussed earlier about how to rename a bunch of files in Vista, but what if you want to rename a group of files with names that discribe each one? Suppose you have a bunch of photo that you took with your camera and they have been named something like DSC_0001, DSC_002 and so on. Good news, you don’t have to go through the “right click and Rename” process each time.

Configure Device Manager To Show Detailed Information

February 17, 2009 | Posted in: PC Support, Technology, Windows

When troubleshooting problems with various devices and components, there will be times when you would like to see information such as the hardware ID of the device or other information that is not available by default in Device Manager. You can configure Device Manager to display more detailed information.

About This Site

WDBuc.com is the web site and blog of William D Buchanan, a web developer and technical consultant in the Tampa, Florida area. More...