I’ve reduced frequency of my publications these days, for two reasons.

First, I’m re-writing the DNA-Framework, I don’t know yet what will come out of it, probably something big ;) I’m not sure yet if it will be released as OpenSource framework or not. I’ll decide that when version 1.0 will be ready.

And the other thing is I’m completly rewriting ZdStats with better spam detection and much more realistic filters. Even though I know that my filters are more permissive than google’s, my stats are also much more realistic. Why is that ? Simply because I don’t rely on javascript only, therefore I also count users that come to your website with javascript disabled (or google filtered)

© Zen-Dreams.com

This post is just a remider for thoses who don’t know that yet, but next Sunday, 24th of August, Nolwenn, my wife, is organising a Culinary bloggers meetup in Toulouse.

Of course, not only culinary bloggers are welcome to join us, other bloggers can also come at the picnic :)

It’s taking place at “La prairie des filtres” which is on the border of the Garonne.

Everyone must bring one or two meals to share with everyone.

The party will start at 12pm, you will find us in front of the childs’ playground.

More information is available here (in french)

© Zen-Dreams.com

As I said yesterday, Something big was prepared for this blog, and here it is, a new design.

This new design doesn’t only include a new layout, but also this brand new logo, a favicon and a real good looking design.

Why did I say something big ? Simply because I didn’t like previous one, in fact I realised that if I had to fall on a blog like the one I had before, i wasn’t sure I would have subscribed as it was nice to look at but hard to read.

My inspiration

First I would like to say that this new design is inspired from one of the most beautifull webdesign to me and also a great source for designers. To me this is a not a copy or a rip, it’s more something like a tribute to SmashingMagazine.

I was also inspired by the wordpress theme Coda, that uses a lot Mootools for effects, such as the one you can see on the right top sidebar.

And finally, I use Oxygen icons for most images you’ll find here. Simply because these are probably the most beautifull icons available for an Operating System environment.

The about section is inspired by what we can see on ProBlogger and introductory text was corrected by my lovely wife.

Final words

I just hope you will enjoy this design as much as I do, and do not hesitate to leave comments about what you think of my new design.

[Photo credits: Strawbleu]

© Zen-Dreams.com

Ok, I’ve been away from the blog for quite a few days now, but that’s just because something big is going to happen on this blog ;)

Can’t tell more, but stay tuned and come back often to see it ;)

© Zen-Dreams.com

You might have noticed it if you use the beta service of Bloglines, the page has been revamped and is at the same time nicer to read, but as colors are much more clear, I find this more difficult to read posts.

The design looks more web2.0, slick and classic at the same time.

You can also notice one big change… It now says Bloglines and not bloglines beta anymore. Does that mean that Bloglines beta will soon replace the official stable release ?

I must say the new design is much better and it could easily replace the current standard version :)

© Zen-Dreams.com

Today, I just passed by an article talking about MyBlogLog and basically, they are giving some reasons I totally agree with for not using the system.

In fact I used to use that service, but it’s a complete waste of space on your website, and most of the people displayed in there are not leaving comments anyway.

In this article, the author suggest the use of a plugin displaying top commenters or last commenters not only using their names, but also via gravatar service.

So, here is the plugin, he got the idea and I made it :)

Here is the list of features :

• Display whether Last commenters or top commenters
• Display user name (or not, via options)
• Display link to user’s website (or not, via options)
• Default gravatar
• Gravatar size

Download ZdCommentsWidget

Once you installed the plugin, just add it to your sidebar and choose your options. A tutorial and Documentation will be written in the next days.

It’s not yet available through Wordpress extend, but it will be published today or tommorow. So you’ll be able to get automatic updates :)

© Zen-Dreams.com

I know this tip has been known for ages, but I wanted not only to explain how to do it, but also how and why it works.

This little search query will return you servers with mp3 files :
`-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:”index of” “Last modified” mp3`

Let’s analyse this query:

• -inurl:htm -inurl:html => will not return results with “htm” or “html” in the url (no html page)
• intitle:”index of” => will look for “index of” in the title tag of the page.
• “Last modified” => will look for that string in the resulting page, this is due to the fact that most webserver software will display this when displaying a directory listing
• mp3 => just because you are looking for mp3 files

So if you want to extend this query, you can replace mp3 by anything (let’s say pdf for example) and even add a title or group, or album in the search, for example by adding : “Placebo”.

For example if you want to download ebooks, you can replace mp3 by “pdf ebooks“.

Of course, downloading stuff you don’t own legally if strictly forbidden !

© Zen-Dreams.com

Last saturday, while hanging around in Toulouse with our two daughters, I finally took the decision to buy myself a MP3 player. Yes, not a new one, just buy one, this just means I didn’t own one before last saturday.

I found that I would be likely to go to work with music on my ears walking, instead of driving to work. Indeed, I work at 900 meters from home, and therefore I could spend less on gas by walking.

This new player is a Sony NWZ-S616F RED with 4Gb memory. For now, it also enables me to work with music on my ears :D

At this very moment, I’m writing this post with “The Beach OST” which is to me one of the most meditating music I’ve heard, not talking of the movie that I liked a lot !

So let’s talk about the player:

• 4Gb memory
• FM Tuner
• Video player (MPEG-4, M4V)
• Music player, of course (AAC, MP3, PCM, WMA, Protected WMA)
• JPEG photo player

The screen is very clear and even if I will probably never watch a movie on it, the colors are great and it’s very feasible to watch a movie.

To me, it’s probably the best choice I could have done, it has great autonomy (around 33 hours while playing music) and great sound, and all this under 50 grams

© Zen-Dreams.com

After publishing my lastest plugin, I saw that some blogs are pulling posts directly from the RSS feed to publish it on their “splogs” (spam blogs). In order to avoid duplicate content, I decided to create a new plugin that will enable you to add anything you want inside your feed’s posts.

This addition is only limited to the feeds. For example, you will see that at the bottom of this posts nothing special appears on the site, but a copyright will be displayed inside the RSS version of it.

This can also be used to add any HTML code you want, it can be added on top of the post or at the bottom of it.

You will also note that I removed the related content plugin, I didn’t find relevant the correlation made between posts and related content.

Here is a Question to the readers, would you like to see the plugin published ?

[Image credits : eJk]

© Zen-Dreams.com

Due to some requests and feedback I received on my Wordpress plugin ZdMultilang, a new version has been published on wordpress.org.

This version is numbered 1.1.0 because of the number of improvements I made to the plugin. But before to talk about what I’ve changed, I’d like to thank all those who gave me their ideas and feedback on the plugin :

• Impulse for his help on solving a very annoying bug (two flags instead of one)
• Jeremy Clarke for his suggestion on displaying only translated posts
• Eduardo and Ferlo for their view of the SEO against the plugin
• Teneke for the bug due to UTF-8 character encoding
• Emmanuel Georjon for his comments on dashboard integration and other tips.

Changelog

• Added the possibility to switch default languages (meaning: exchange original posts/tags/cats with translated ones)
• Added translate links directly into the manage pages & into the Media zone of page/posts edition
• Added an option to generate permalinks for default language (ex-default behavior was always yes)
• Changed default character set as UTF-8
• Added an option to add “Translate with Google Translate” to untranslated posts
• Added an option to hide untranslated posts if they exists (ex-default : show all posts)

© Zen-Dreams.com