Tag Archives: SouthanUK News

SouthanUK has moved!

Hi everyone!

If you’re reading this then everything has gone well and SouthanUK is in it’s new home.

If you’re wondering where the theme went, I’ve had a few problems with it so its really going to have to be rewritten. So I’m back on the good old default theme; Twenty Eleven, for now.

That’s that for the moment, expect some more updates soon!

-Joe

Well that was weird – WordPress encoding

Seems the site decided it was time that it shouldn’t encode the site properly.

utf8-whatisthat

Since Southanuk is a relatively old WordPress installation [Around 2006] it was using an old character set, namely latin_1. Converted it to UTF8 and all is now good and properly displaying. Have a few celebratory ‘ , – s.

 

For others having the same problem with WordPress not encoding pages properly, I recommend the bbWP2UTF8 plugin. Its very simple to use and is a lot easier than this method, although saying that, it may work if the plugin doesn’t.

[edit]

Well something went wrong very shortly after I had posted this, post numbers weren’t auto-incrementing. Should be all fixed. Also discovered a very nice MySQL command to help convert those troublesome characters to UTF8:

update DBNAME

set ROWNAME = replace(ROWNAME,'’','\'');

update DBNAME

set ROWNAME= replace(ROWNAME,'…','...');

update DBNAME

set ROWNAME= replace(ROWNAME,'–','-');

update DBNAME

set ROWNAME= replace(ROWNAME,'“','"');

update DBNAME

set ROWNAME= replace(ROWNAME,'â€Â','"');

update DBNAME

set ROWNAME= replace(ROWNAME,'‘','\'');

update DBNAME

set ROWNAME= replace(ROWNAME,'•','-');

update DBNAME

set ROWNAME= replace(ROWNAME,'‡','c');

[Source]

GEF follows shortly and possibly something on Monday if I can get it to work.

New features – Facebook like and Disqus

What’s all this you say? Well Southanuk today has some new features that should make your stay much more inviting and interactive.

 

Facebook’s new “Like” button

fblike

As announced by Facebook at the recent F8 conference in the USA, the new like button can be easily added to web pages and adds instant integration with the ever popular social networking site.

 

 

 

I found it very easy to integrate indeed as per so:

  • Add an instance of Facebook’s Javascript SDK to your website’s source code. Ensure you have an application ID from Facebook also or the button will not work.
  • Generate your like button here and click “Get Code” and select the XFBML version and copy the code.
  • Then simply add the button code where you want in your site’s source code and you’re done!
    • [Wordpress blogs] instead of putting in a URL, add the following into your loop:
<fb:like href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" layout="standard" show_faces="false" width="xxx" action="like" font="segoe ui" colorscheme="light" />

 

As you can see, very easy indeed.

 

Disqus Comment Plugin

disqus

Finally, the latest addition to the site is the very versatile, Disqus commenting system.

 

I felt that my old plugin I used was too bulky and was rather unessacary for just simple commenting. People don’t want to have an account for every site they visit, so allowing them to use their current Facebook, Twitter or OpenID accounts means less time registering. You don’t even need one of those accounts as posts can still be done via Guest with no account whatsoever.  Try it out next time you fancy having a little comment.

 

Stay tuned for more updates via following me on Twitter @fatjoe151

Evenin’ all…

(This post was typed ages ago, but I had to fix the flash and resubmit it – term is over now and I have a ball to look forward to tonight -admin note: ooooh fancy).

Yeah, this posting system works in IE8, but only with the compatibility mode on. I hope this beta is a long way from finished, as it struggles with image transparency on my blog. And no, it’s not that it doesn’t do Â it – scrolling around and clicking seems to start and stop it from doing transparency. This leads to a sidebar with bits sticking out. 🙁

Anyway, Joe seems to be very busy at uni (playing openBVE, probably) Â at the moment, doesn’t he? Somehow I am more busy, and yet I’m Â randomly typing this post, while putting up with a headache, slight dizzyness and thoughts about what I’m going to have for dinner (luckily, I have already done my work for tomorrow).

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure how the flash insertion system here works (which reminds me that I need to put instructions on my blog, for the admins), so I’m going to try to share a video with you.

There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama

[flash https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EADUQWKoVek w=425 h=344]

Welcome to Southanuk v5

All the posts have now been moved over to wordpress so it makes my life a whole lot more easier when I want to make a post, horray!

The podcast will be changing over soon and everything will then be finished

Welcome to southanuk v5 just intime for the 2nd generation of southanuk.co.uk!

Southanuk is technicaly 7 1/2 ish so i may have something lined up for 8 😉