Problems accessing or browsing HTTPS websites using Opera 12.11+

If you've ever noticed having difficulties using HTTPS websites using Opera 12.11 or up, here's how to fix it. This problem may manifest itself with a minor error or may even block you completely from using a website. You may notice these problems may occur every time or it may be spotty. Here's how I fixed the problem.

Problem: You cannot use HTTPS websites.

Impact: You cannot access email, online shops, etc which all use HTTPS for security.

Tip: Shutdown commands in Linux and Windows

Have you ever been working in a command-line interface wondering how to shutdown or restart? This is not so much a problem per se as it is a list of shutdown/restart commands which may come in handy one day.

Linux/Ubuntu
To shutdown and completely power off right now, you can type at the prompt:

sudo shutdown -h now    OR   sudo shutdown -h 0

To reboot, type at the prompt:

sudo reboot   OR   sudo shutdown -r 0

(Note that the second command means to shutdown and then restart in zero seconds.  The -r flag means to restart.)

Windows
(This came in handy one day when a Windows computer I was trying to revive was so messed up I could only access the command line and not even the safe mode.)

Just type at the command prompt:

shutdown -s   OR  shutdown -s -t 0

In the above examples, the -s flag means to shut down the computer while the -t flag gives the time before shutting down (in the second case, in zero seconds).

Drupal 7 keeps asking for FTP login when trying to install modules/themes using the web interface

After changing ownership of a Drupal installation to the SFTP user using the folder, Drupal started to show peculiar behaviour. Whenever I tried to install any module or theme through the web interface, Drupal 7 would ask for the FTP login credentials. Although making changes through SFTP is okay, sometimes the web interface is much more convenient.

Problem: Drupal 7 would not allow installation through the web interface without needing the user to type in the FTP login.

Impact: Inconvenience.

Creating a "NEW!" flag in Drupal 7 using entities and Display Suite

Have you ever wondered how to flag new content in Drupal? In a website I've worked on, I wanted to find a way to create a "NEW!" flag to flag new content. (Note: If you were only wanting to create a flag that says "NEW!" on the node page for the piece of content you can just use a view, but what if you wanted to have something that marks content as new in a list of node teasers?) Here's how I did it in Drupal 7 using a custom code field with Display Suite.

Problem: A flag or field was needed to display "NEW!" for new content.

Impact: Users won't be able to pinpoint at a glance the new content.

Errors viewing website after changing Drupal theme

While I was pretty new to Drupal, I started playing around with themes, but after changing the theme I started seeing error messages at the top of each webpage. The answer was simple: I forgot to clear the caches!

Problem: Error messages after changing the theme in Drupal.

Solution:
This one's a short one. In Drupal 7, go to Configuration > Development > Performance. You'll see a button labelled "Clear all caches". Click that and you're done!

Some updates on what I've been doing

With my program getting busy this past semester as well the current semester, I've been a little silent the past few weeks. Not to worry! I will be back soon with more stuff and code snippets. I haven't just been rusting away in my absence, so I'll have some new stuff up soon. Keep an eye out for how to use CKEditor with PHP and more! I will also try to address some of the issues that my fellow colleagues have commonly asked me in class at Humber.

Part 2: URL-rewriting using IIS7, URL Rewrite, and your web.config file

Previously, I wrote about how I used the .htaccess file and Apache mod_rewrite to translate SEO-friendly links back to their original formats for interpretation. Later, I also needed to do the same thing for an IIS7 server. I decided to use URL Rewrite which works with IIS7 and IIS7.5. For this to work, though, the URL Rewrite module needs to be installed on your server. Using URL Rewrite, you can create rewrite rules like with an .htaccess file but you'll be using your web.config file instead.

Problem: SEO-friendly link interpretation was needed on an IIS7 server, which doesn't have mod_rewrite.

Impact: The links are hard to read and remember and are not very good for SEO.

Solution:
The rewrite rules are actually somewhat similar with URL Rewrite. I just needed to move the parts around and in some cases change the syntax a little. In the previous example with mod_rewrite I wanted the following:

Re-interpret "http://www.example.com/a/256/my-title"

back into "http://www.example.com/index.php?page=a&id=256&title=my-title".