Yesterday, we talked TurboVote at Personal Democracy Forum:

After clicking Upload Picture, message indicating “your changes have been saved” is displayed. However, the new picture does not appear on your profile. Further, the string success=0&errornum=1366027 is appended to the URL.

This error means the image you uploaded is too small. You need to use one that is at least 190px wide.

String.prototype.countWords = function(value) { // remove html tags var cleanedText = this.replace(/< .[^<>]*?>/g, ' ') // remove numbers and punctuation .replace(/[–—.(),;:!?%#$‘’“”'"_+=\/\-]*/g, '') // remove/coalesce space chars .replace(/(&nbsp;|&#160;|[ ])+/gi, ' '); // don't split "" into words, as you'll get 1 ([""]) if (cleanedText === "") { return 0; } // count words return cleanedText.split(/\W/).length; }

How to setup multistage deployment with Capistrano

1. Install capistrano and capistrano multistage
2. Capify your project
3. Set up the deploy/ directory
4. Create the deployment recipes

In my Rails-based example, we'll have two stages: staging and production. You can name your stages whatever you want. However, don’t name one of your stages stage — that's a reserved word. Call it staging.

Install capistrano and capistrano multistage

gem install capistrano
gem install capistrano-ext

Capify your project

capify .

Set up the deploy directory

mkdir config/deploy
touch config/deploy/staging.rb
touch config/deploy/production.rb

Create the deployment recipes

You’re going to edit three files: deploy.rb, staging.rb and production.rb:

deploy.rb

set :stages, %w(staging production) set :default_stage, "production" require 'capistrano/ext/multistage'
default_run_options[:pty] = true
set :application, "myproject" set :use_sudo, false set :keep_releases, 5
set :repository, "https://somewhere/svn/myproject/trunk" set :scm, :subversion set :scm_username, "me" set :deploy_via, :export
# this is useful in a shared hosting environment, where you have your own JAVA_HOME or GEM_HOME. # otherwise, just set RAILS_ENV set(:rake) { "JAVA_HOME=#{java_home} GEM_HOME=#{gem_home} RAILS_ENV=#{rails_env} /usr/bin/env rake" }
# since :domain is defined in another file (staging.rb and production.rb), # we need to delay its assignment until they're loaded set(:domain) { "#{domain}" } role(:web) { domain } role(:app) { domain } role(:db, :primary => true) { domain }
namespace :deploy do task :start do ; end task :stop do ; end task :restart, :roles => :app, :except => { :no_release => true } do run "#{try_sudo} touch #{File.join(current_path,'tmp','restart.txt')}" end end
# for some reason, this isn't enabled by default after "deploy:update", "deploy:cleanup"
# here is an example task which uses rake, as defined above after "deploy:migrate", "load_sample_fixtures" desc "load sample fixtures" task :load_sample_fixtures do run "cd #{current_release}; FIXTURES=samples #{rake} db:fixtures:load" end

staging.rb

set :deploy_to, "/path/to/#{application}-stage" # My Rails app uses RJB, so it needs to know where Java lives set :java_home, "/path/to/java-6-openjdk" set :domain, "testing.myserver.ca" set :user, "paul" set :rails_env, "staging" # I am root on my staging server and have all the right gems installed # so I don't need GEM_HOME to be overridden set :gem_home, nil

production.rb

set :deploy_to, "/home/myuser/#{application}" set :java_home, "/home/myuser/sw/jdk" set :domain, "www.myserver.ca" set :user, "myuser" set :rails_env, "production" set :gem_home, "/home/myuser/ruby/gems/"
# in a shared hosting environment, you often need to specify your own passenger configuration desc "copy the .htaccess file (passenger configuration); setup_load_paths.rb (sets GEM_HOME)" namespace :deploy do task :copy_htaccess do run "cp #{current_release}/config/htaccess_production #{current_release}/public/.htaccess" run "mv #{current_release}/config/production_setup_load_paths.rb #{current_release}/config/setup_load_paths.rb" end end
after "deploy:update_code", "deploy:copy_htaccess"

Now, you’re set. You can deploy with cap deploy (for the default stage, production), or cap staging deploy. TextMate's Capistrano plugin handles this gracefully, presenting you with a dialog listing the available stages.

All you do is stick [get_latest_tweets username="me"] where you want the tweets to go. You can optionally supply a count=X parameter to display more or fewer tweets.

JSON is cached, preventing the Twitter server from being hit more than twice in one minute.

You get markup like this, which you can style as you please:

<ul class='tweets'>
<li>@<a class='atreply' href='http://twitter.com/jane'>jane</a> Please dance a jig. <span class='date'><a href='http://twitter.com/me/status/2345'>3 hours ago</a></span></li>
<li>Anyone used TotalFinder? <a href='http://t.co/blah'>http://t.co/blah</a> Saw it on @<a class='atreply' href='http://twitter.com/bob'>bob</a>'s machine and am intrigued. <span class='date'><a href='http://twitter.com/me/status/1234'>6 hours ago</a></span></li>
</ul>


Grab the plugin from GitHub or the WordPress plugin directory.

All you do is stick [get_latest_post] where you want the post to go.

You get markup like this, which you can style as you please:

<div class='latest-post'>
<p class='title'><a href='http://www.mysite.ca/blog/post'>Look ma, no hands!</a></p>
<p class='excerpt'>Today I rode a bicycle &hellip; <a href="http://www.mysite.ca/blog/post">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&rarr;</span></a></p>
</div>


Grab the plugin from GitHub or the WordPress plugin directory.