Searching the forums proved that we were not alone in this situation, as many users report media issues from Wordpress 2.8 onwards. Downgrading to 2.7 seemed a solution for most, whilst others seemed to resolve their issues after many trial-and-errors.

We’d like to share the research we did, and what eventually worked for us.

Documentation:

• this forum entry (and the referred entries)

What worked for us:

• if you are using the multilingual CMS WPML plugin, make sure you are up to date. Version 1.5 broke the media library. This bug was fixed from version 1.5.1
• The default repository for the media library is located in wp-content/uploads. If this folder does not exist yet, Wordpress is supposed to create it automatically and start uploading there. However, there is a small quirk in Wordpress 2.8: the Settings/Miscellaneous page does not provide the proper default entry. Simply type wp-content/uploads, save, and try uploading an image again

We hope this can be useful for anyone pulling his hair out there. If you found any other fixes other than those mentioned in the forum or here, help others by sharing in the comments.

The drums are beating, a mob is gathering… The uproar about Internet Explorer 6 is gaining momentum. Once again, individuals and companies are uniting to actively promote the use of modern, standards compliant browsers. What to think of this issue, and more importantly, should we take sides?

Let’s have a closer look at the main arguments:

• security: IE6 is dubbed one of the worst softwares of all time. Eight years after its release, there are still critical security issues that can compromise your system and data. Many trojans and exploits have solely targeted IE6, partly because of its deficiencies, partly because of its ubiquity.
• user acceptance: IE6 was bundled with Windows, making it the browser of choice for users who did not know otherwise or did not wish to install additional software. The combination of Windows + IE6 dominated the browser market by over 90%, and much of this drama is still felt today
• corporate acceptance: for the same bundling reasons as mentioned above, as well as to follow corporate “everything Microsoft” policies,  IE6 became browser of choice, and many applications have been developed (and tweaked) for this browser only
• meeting user expectations: IE6 does not go hand in hand with the rich web experience everyone expects nowadays.  This forces web developers to come up with countless tweaks and still serve a sub par content as opposed to following web standards. Although the user should not be concerned by what happens behind the scenes, it becomes ridiculous to expect a 2009 experience from such an old browser
• web consensus: most if not all web designers and developers cry out loud for the pain and misery caused by non adhering to web standards. Tweaks increase the development time, complexity, and testing. Web professionals should not care about which browser the audience uses, as long as web standards are strictly followed

My conclusion is that for all points mentioned above, everyone should gain in upgrading, the sooner the better. Computers will be less vulnerable to attacks; companies could benefit from upgrading sooner rather than later; users would enjoy a richer and more uniform web experience; development time and costs would be reduced, thus enhancing overall productivity; developers would spend less time tweaking and more time producing quality content.

Stop stalling the web, upgrade now!

I was really happy to read in the Wordpress blog that the Open Source CMS awards came to a happy end, with Wordpress ranking very well amongst the competitors by winning the titles of best overall open source CMS, as well as second best open source CMS developed in PHP.

This is tremendous news, for it aknowledges that Wordpress can be a full-fledged CMS platform in its own right. This sort of publicity convinces all users – be it prospective users, clients, authors and web developers – that Wordpress is definitely more than just a blogging application.

Wordpress outranked Joomla!, and is now second only to Drupal. About this note, it must be said that Drupal is truly a robust platform, quite capable to handle anything out of the box. However, this yet unrivalled power is usually not necessary for most users/sites out there, not mentioning a degree of complexity that detracts most.

In contrast, Wordpress shines with an ease of use that spans from installation to back-end maintenance. This is the main reason why I made it my platform of choice: ultimately, the end user is not me, but my clients. It is they who must feel comfortable with the solution I provide.

This user-centric approach is one of our core values, and combined with graphility’s agile graphic development, it allows for rapid quality delivery that keep clients happy.

Allianz, my day-time employer, has launched a new internet portal in preparation for the climate summit in Copenhagen. Committed to reduce its own carbon imprint, Allianz teamed up with the World Wide Fund to expose the consequences of global warming as well as to propose strategies to fight it. As it stands, anyone can benefit from further information on the subject.

Check the website at www.knowledge.allianz.com/111days

If you need a refresher of what RSS is,  read this post.

Prior to this, RSS clients had to request for updates (pull). This created a delay that was acceptable a few years ago, but not so in today’s real-time web. RSSCloud will effectively notify clients as soon as new content is available (push).

This change puts back RSS in the frontlines of real-time information where it belongs, and gives content rich solutions a fair chance to compete with instant messaging applications such as twitter. Whatever you may think of these “micro-blogging” services, the truth is that content is king, and a good title and news excerpt will beat a 140 character tweet any day.

Source: RSS in the clouds.

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.

Two thousand years later, these words are still a lesson…

The Lorem Ipsum filler means nothing, thus achieving a double purpose:

• typographic: good word density, letter variety and distribution
• semantic: without meaning to relate to, reviewers only focus on the presented layout

Lorem Ipsum is really used to demonstrate how large portions of text will render in a composition. If the intention is rather to check how every possible letter (in the English language) would display in a given font, the pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” will be used instead.

For your Lorem Ipsum needs, check my favorite source, lipsum.com.

For the conundrum resides not in what we are, but in the manner and timing we give in to this innate character trait.

Some people have vision, perspective. They fight inaction beforehand in order to improve quality time and enjoy dolce farniente later. Granted, all of us do little things to enjoy our everyday lives. But people such as golden age inventors, adventuring explorers, and modern day lifehackers, gave and still give a lot of thought to every action, striving to be as efficient as possible. Call it energy management, if you will.

When you think of it, most discoveries of the Human race have been driven by sloth. A desire to build upon what we already have to reap the benefits of a simplified life. We can all carry things in our hands, but a bagpack, an elephant, a truck, or a pulley can do this too, and better. America was “discovered” because Colombus was looking for a shorter route to the East. Developers refactor code and create frameworks – why reinvent the wheel, as the expression goes. Of course we can relate these discoveries to efficiency, but that is my point exactly.

Just like order was born out of chaos, efficiency is a derivative of sloth.

1. Click Save For Web & Devices. Then, in CS3, click the Image Size tab on the lower right sidebar. In CS4, it’s already displayed in the lower right side (no tab)
2. Check Contrain Proportions to preserve original aspect ratio, then enter your new pixel dimensions
3. Apply

I find this especially useful when working in Illustrator and suddenly being in need of different artwork sizes, as Photoshop’s Image size option can quickly remedy this without especially opening Save for Web & Devices.

While there is nothing esoteric to this information, it strikes me how often I found myself looking for such a quick resize solution. I thought it useful to write this entry to refer back to it later, as well as to share the tip with others who may need it.