The official word press android app has been released for quite some time now

Recently I was playing with the linux command line .. I was testing out a script which i was interested in..

i ran a wget command and download the file to the server and then extracted it using unzip

But the worst part is that the after the extraction i ran a mv command to move the files to root directory

And the command replaced the sites’ index.php .htaccess and robots.txt

I did not bother for a couple of days until I figure out that the site is not working as the main index file is broken and also google and other search engines started deindexing the site as the urls were broken and worst part is that robots.txt had a Dissallow * line

Its a Very painful mistake both for me and the site ..

So the lesson learnt is that Never try out new things / change files on a live site without prior testing even if ur confident enough ..

Such mistakes can cause irreversible damage to the site and might take days / month to discover ( glad i found in 2 days )

IM not surprised of the incident when Google recently flagged the whole web as Malware.

So having a Local , Dev or Staging environment .. even on same godamn server or machine would make a HUGE difference in such calamities

Daily backups were disabled for this site as its small one .. and the weekly backup was taking ages to extract

Only the host Servint saved us from this disaster .. they restored the files needed from a recent backup and we were back on track.

We had about 10hrs of downtime due to this negligence .. Unforgivable !

IM at the Chicago Linux meetup and I m seeing an interesting app being discussed.

Its an application launcher for Linux GNOME called Do.

Its something similar to QuickSilver for mac osx which I have been trying for the past 1 week ..

Get it on your linux box

Time to setup a dedicated Linux box at Home

Change is inevitable

I was using perforce for the past 3 months and now I have to use Subversion at my new project

I have used subversion in the past but i started liking perforce due to its ease of use and simple commands

only pain was having to do a p4 edit on each file before editing it

I stumbled upon this nice article about Perforce to Subversion migration

Althougth the article is mainly about migrating code , it also talks about equivalent commands in perforce and subversion.

I found it really useful

Also theregister had a nice comparison

Version Control was not a big thing as long as I was doing freelance development. But once I got into the process of working with a team I released that a Team programming without source control is useless.

I started using CVS with the WinCVS client .. Then moved on to use Sub Version with the TortoiseSVN client..

I spent most of the last 2 years in Microsoft world .. So Team Foundation Server was the system..

Right now IM on Ruby and we are using Perforce which is actually Damn Good !

Ther user interface is damn simple although it might look a bit funny.

Its one the systems used by development teams which work on various platforms ..

I can check in code from my windows box and get latest on my Linux box / server ..

This is really cool !!

I remember writing about Aptana on this blog about 2 years back

But god , they have grown really bigger over the past 2 years and have support and intellisense support for so many javascript frameworks like mootools , jquery, scriptaculous, ext js1.1 (ext js 2.0 plugin unofficial)

The IDE has also improved in terms of speed ..

They also have an iPhone plugin which looks like a iFrame hack..

Must have for any web coder out there..

Download aptana

Matt at ma.tt at Automattic are doing a great job with Wordpress

Wordpress 2.5 release candidate is out ..

IM a huge wordpress fan and user and any development in this area brings me a lot of joy

The latest release looks impressive..

A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting? Then WordPress 2.5 might be the release for you. It’s been in the oven for a while, and we’re finally ready to open the doors a bit to give you a taste.

Wow .. WP users cant ask for more .. Are you trying the RC1 ?

I am really excited that Forum Nokia is sponsoring the Mobile Monday (MoMo) event in Chennai.

The event is going to be held at Gandhi Nagar Club on Saturday Feb 16, 2-5 pm

So all you mobile folks in Chennai better don’t miss the action.

checkout the momochennai site .. if you are too lazy .. heres the direct link to the register page.

UI Development is getting cleaner and easier day by day.

I was impressed when I came across Yahoo UI library’s CSS patterns and ideas.

Personally I don’t like the idea of completely adopting any new framework when time is a major concern.

But YUI looked impressive ever since its launch.

Check out the example page of reset CSS

Its so easy to cook up websites rapidly using such frameworks !! Wow

I had written about this fact on TechQuack Can Search Engines understand flash atleast Google does

Jeff Muendel at news.com has written a nice detailed post about how Search engines like Google read text in Flash sites.

Stephan Spencer had interviewed Top Googler Matt Cutts and its now public that Google is using Adobe’s flash SDK

Now the problem is that Google can understand text and index it .. How will they provide matching results ?

What the context between a zillion flash movies with text.

So better put a lot of relevant text in your flash movies