I’ve started using the WPG2 Plugin for Gallery2 with WordPress.

The reason for this is because the number of photos I’ve been putting in my gallery is getting ridiculous. Nowadays I have a sound grasp on using database systems so I don’t need the comfort factor of the file based database of Minigal that I’ve been using at http://tombamamnn.org/photos.

There was a neat trick for getting everything integrated nicely. For my “Simple Header Code” I use:



This forces the content wrapper to the centre of the page, and extends it out to fit nicely on a 1024×768 screen. (I’m a little disappointed about lack of dynamic resizing based on window size.)

Then, in Gallery under the themes options I’m using 940px wide to spread the Gallery content out to take full advantage of the 1024×768 optimised screen size.

I would like to say a big thankyou to Joel for helping me debug why my site hasn’t been loading the last few days, it seems it was a complication with my .htaccess file.

To make a long story short, unless I can be bothered reading a huge pdf on Apache, I can’t seem to keep my crazy redirecting script as well as the new domain name I bought.

I feel kind of silly after I announced I fully understood what was going on here.

So now I’m just using dyndns.com to serve http://tombammann.homedns.org with my dynamic IP, using the DynDNS updater piece of software. Then, I bought tombammann.org through dyndns.com, and set the nameservers through domain registration to that of zoneedit.com, and used zoneedit.com to cloak webforward tombammann.homedns.org to tombammann.org.

My .htaccess file is left as writeable, and with permalinks set to %postname% the WordPress automatically changes the .htaccess file to:

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

If this setup works flawlessly for a couple weeks I *may* start playing with the .htaccess file again, just for fun I’ll actually read some literature before I do next time though, rather than learning as you go. I think if you want these things done properly you just have to do your research. Problem is though, if you don’t know what to research, or even what you’re trying to do, trial and error is the only option.

Tonight I have finally figured out what all my problems have been trying to transfer http://tombammann.homedns.org/any-post-link to http://tombammann.org/any-post-link

Basically, I was using dyndns.com to purchase my domain name of tombammann.org, and then using dyndns.com‘s paid service to redirect the dynamic domain of tombammann.homedns.org to tombammann.org. You see, with dyndns.com you can create a free dynamic dns to your computer using an update client. You can buy a domain name through them, but then they charge you about the same amount again for a cloaked redirect. A cloaked redirect is where you redirect the site from a friendly domain name to the real domain name, whilst hiding the real domain name. I paid for and used this, but it was totally crap. After about a week, it probably worked for a few hours at a time and totalled about 40% success rate over the week. I was able to confirm that it was purely the cloaked redirect that was the problem, so I thought I’d try somewhere else that I was recommended on the WordPress.org support forums, zoneedit.com.

With zoneedit.com, you can create a free account, and they supply free nameservers for your domain name which you can purchase cheaply anywhere, and then they provide a free dynamic redirect of that domain name to your computer. This works similar to dyndns.com, except you don’t have that cloak redirect middle ground which dyndns.com was screwing me over with.

So in summary, to host your locally hosted website on the internet, simply purchase your domain anywhere, as long as it is cheap, tell the people you bought it from the nameservers of zoneedit, create your free zoneedit account, and then setup your free dynamic cloaked redirect. Dyndns.com will offer you a piece of crap at the expense of your wallet, whilst zoneedit.com will just give you the good stuff outright, because their business philosopy is to attract potential long term customers with a taste of quality service.

Thankyou zonedit!

I am pleased to announce (even if I am only announcing these things to myself, but hey..) that I now own http://tombammann.org.

I’m relatively sure that everything should just magically turn into http://tombammann.org instead of http://tombammann.org, but who knows, really, I’m new to the whole domain name thing. I’m considering buying http://tombammann.com as well, just for fun, and having it auto-redirect to http://tombammann.org. The reason I chose a .org is because from what I’ve been able to find out, the .com and the .net are a little too business orientated for my personal site. Although the .org means an organisation, and I should technically be using a .name, who the hell actually uses the .name domain. Maybe when I’m a quadsquillionaire I’ll just buy every possible permutation of domain names involving the words tom, thomas, and bammann.