Part of the reason isnt so obvious to users is that it is enabled on the theme level. So you must add the following code to your functions.php to enable it:

add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );

After this is added to functions.php login to wp-admin and go the the add new posts screen. You should now see the post thumbnail section on the right hand side like this:

This means your post thumbnails are enabled and ready to be placed in your theme with this function:

the_post_thumbnail();


Place the template tag anywhere inside the loop to activate it for posts. Now you have a way to easily manage small images as part of your blog posts. It’s great for adding some flavor to your Wordpress site and is easy for your users to manage. Here is the codex section on the_post_thumbnail function. There are tons of options so go nuts!

-Linux
-Apache
-MySQL
-PHP

Obviously Linux is what this series is about so forgive me for glossing over that and getting right into Apache. Apache is the most popular open source web server technology so having it installed locally on your development box is great for a number of reasons. You can install it using your package manager on just about every distro. The tricks come after you have it installed and configured. On Debian and Ubuntu you should see this screen when you browse to http://localhost/ after you have it installed.

One thing I like to do on a development box is create a symbolic link to the htdocs directory onto my desktop. Functionally what this does is put a folder on your desktop that becomes your web root for your local Apache installation. This obviously makes it much easier to manipulate the files you will be working with on a regular basis. Here is the magic string to accompish this:

ln -s /var/www /home/user/Desktop

This will put a link to your Apache web directory right on your desktop. You can change the paths to place the link where you see fit.

Now that you have a working web server running and a way to easily move your files in and out of your web root you need some toys to play with. This brings us to PHP and mySQL. In Ubuntu you actually have to install several additional packages to get a fully featured and useful development environment setup. My list of these include: php-mysql, php-pear and php-curl as a minimum. You also will probably need to setup mod-rewrite at some point, as many popular frameworks and CMS packages require it. Here is an excellent guide on enabling mod-rewrite in Ubuntu.

The database of choice for small to medium web apps is mySQL and it is available on most every Linux distro through their respective package managers. The client and server packages are typically separate but you might as well install both for a development box.

One tool that I would be horribly amiss if I didn’t mention is phpmyadmin. This is a great web based development tool for handling mySQL database maintenance and administration. I have heard mixed reviews on using it in production, and I can see it being a potential security issue, but as a development tool it is invaluable!

If you are not a fan of web-based solutions, mySQL offers a few tools for managing your databases and tables. The mySQL query browser and administrator are two separate apps that are cross platform and capable of doing your standard database tasks for web development.

There are many server side frameworks and CMS packages available under Linux that can aid your development. Reviewing all of these would be well beyond the scope of this article but I thought I would mention a few of my favorites.

– Wordpress started as a powerful blogging system and has transformed into more of a CMS hybrid. This is a great way to quickly develop powerful websites.

-MODx CMS is a more robust pure CMS system with many great plugins available and has an active development community.

-CodeIgniter is much more low level than the two systems suggested above as it is a PHP framework and not a simple CMS. It offers flexible MVC code separation and a useful class library for common tasks.

-CakePHP is another framework that is similar to Rails. It automates a lot of the work for creating database apps and has a powerful command line interface that can build a simple web app for you in minutes!

I have a couple more tips that don’t quite fit into any of the categories of this series but seem like they belong in the server side category so here they are. First off is a simple bash alias to start and stop my Apache/mySQL environment. Append these two lines to the bottom of your .bashrc file in your home directory:


alias stopdev='sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 stop && sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop'
alias startdev='sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start && sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start'


Now type “startdev” or “stopdev” in a console and it will either stop or start your development environment automatically.

The final trick is useful for cross browser testing, specifically IE and Safari on Windows. I use a Windows XP virtual machine for testing these browsers. The VM software I use is Virtual Box. It is freely available in the repos for Ubuntu and you don’t have to do any other downloading or configuring to get it up and running with a new VM. Just fire up your Windows XP VM and then point one of its browsers to your Apache web server’s internal IP address. You can find your’s with the “ifconfig” command. It is usually something like “192.168.1.99”.

Next time I am investigating the various solutions for editing and creating web graphics on Linux. So stay tuned!

Apache
PHP
mySQL
Aptana Studio
Komodo Edit
firebug FF plugin
gimp
Virtualbox (for IE testing)
Photoshop CS2 *wine

I use a few other tools and plugins here and there for special situations I accomplish the bulk of my heavy work with these tools. For a lot of web developers unless you are dealing exclusively with back end PHP work the 1st question to address when considering a platform for developing on is Photoshop. It is an industry standard and even though i love the gimp and do use it for quick edits, you are going to end up needing Photoshop as a web developer.

Luckily the wine project has done a great job of getting slightly older (but mostly %100 for web design) versions of Photoshop to run with little fuss. As noted i do use the CS2 versions but i have seen reports of the CS4 version performing decently under wine as well. You can find more info on using PS under wine here. As a side note Macromedia Fireworks 8 and several versions of Dreamweaver run flawlessly for me under wine as well.

Even though i just rambled on for a while about using wine extensively there are a ton of apps you can run natively on linux that will accomplish all the tasks needed to build a website from start to finish. The native gimp i touched on earlier and the great vector tool inkscape are both at the top of this list as far as graphics tools go. You can even open and manipulate .psd files with the gimp but it does not render photoshop live effects. Sadly most .psd designs ive come across lately all use these live effects.

I’ve been using Aptana Studio more lately than my favorite editor Komodo Edit as i have needed the SVN and better FTP management found in Aptana. There are tons and tons of choices besides these two but besides the above i recommend checking out Gedit and geany for lightweight solutions and netbeans if you do a lot of PHP or just need heavier editing features.

As stated one of my favorite things about using linux for a dev environment is you get all your fun server side toys natively right on your personal box. My next post will go over configuring some of that server side goodness. Mainly Apache and PHP/mySQL. There are a few tricks beyond just a “simple apt-get install” that will make you way more productive if you know them going into it

Beyond the next article on server side tools I also am planning to explore the graphics software situation as well as the various web IDEs in more detail and then a final article summarizing some firefox plugins and how to make it work all together.

Went to the OCwordcampthis past weekend and had a great time! Picked up a ton of cool tips and specifically quite a bit about developing wordpress plugins. Hopefully I’ll be doing a lot more of that moving forward. Overall I’d say it was an awesome event but i wish i could make it up to SF for the SFwordcamp this weekend. Looks like it will be crazy!

I’ve also been putting some work into updating my music blog and hope to have that HTML5 goodness ready within a couple more weeks. I experimented with quite a few non flash solutions for audio playback and think i finally have it narrowed down enough to move forward. This seems cool but I don’t have it up and running yet.

The most common way to achieve this nice effect is by using jQuery and a combination of several plugins. I prefer keeping the number of plugins loaded on a page to a minimum so as to limit HTTP requests to keep page load times low. I’m sure you could probably combine several of these plugins into one for production sites but i decided to look for another option.

Thats when i found the amazing jQuery Tools.

To implement the slider effect with jQuery Tools you just tag what divs you want to be “slidable” and then get on with your life. jQuery Tools does much more than this though also enabling customizable tool-tips and tabbed interfaces. So you get 3 very common and useful UI effects all in one plugin.

You can find debates on several sites that question if jQuery-tools handles the implementation of these effects in a clean manner and also if it is redundant considering the existence of jQuery UI. I’ll leave that up to you to decide but its definitely a quick and easy way to implement some nice user interfaces on your sites!

I’ve been experimenting with each of these features as i’ve discovered them and am in the process of putting a demo together. I’ll post back when its done for sure. For now lets just say it has been a struggle finding which browsers support which features of the spec.

Is anyone using these features in live sites yet ? Even if its just experimental or
for fun id love to see them. Also whats the best way to test if a browser supports these features and then dumping them to a html4/css2 version of the site if they are using IE or an older webkit/gecko browser ?

All the other features you would expect to be there are present in Komodo edit including syntax highlighting for a plethora of languages including php, perl, python, ruby and more. Komodo also alllows for editing files remotely via ftp or sftp through its server configuration pane in the options menu.

Komodo is full of features you would normally expect to be found in the big boy IDEs and not something that calls itself an “editor”. Perhaps the most interesting of these features is the macro controls. They are very easy to use, working just like a tape recorder. Hit record to create the macro of an often repeated task. Then simply hit play to repeat the macro as needed. This can be a HUGE time saver for tedious editing tasks. In fact between all the built in features and extensions available, the only thing in the IDE version of Komodo I find myself missing is versions control support. It does not exist in any form for Komodo Edit.

If you are a web developer or just find yourself editing html or scripts fairly often I highly recommend taking a look at Komodo edit to improve your productivity.