1. Create a new empty file called aptana.sh that you will use to launch Aptana.  I store my install of Aptana in /home/username/Applications/aptana so I created the launch script in /home/username/Applications/aptana.sh.
2. Put the following code in the empty file and save it.  It will become what is called a wrapper script for launching the Aptana application.  Change the paths to match your environment.

   #!/bin/sh
   export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1
   /home/username/Applications/aptana/AptanaStudio

3. Make the script executable.  You can do this by right-clicking it in gnome and selecting Properties -> Permissions -> Allow executing file as program.  For the purists: chmod +x /home/username/Applications/aptana.sh
4. Create a launch script.  For the sake of simplicity, I create a launch script for it on my desktop by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Create Launcher.
   Name: Aptana
   Command: /home/username/applications/aptana.sh (browse to and select the script you created)

You should be able to use a very similar setup to fix mouse clicks in Eclipse as well.  Just change the paths and filenames where appropriate.  Keep in mind that the application for Aptana is called AptanaStudio whereas in Eclipse it is simply called eclipse.

You can now test your script by double clicking the launcher or running the shell script you created.  The mouse clicking problems should be fixed.

Wicked Cool PHP

It’s not often that I write reviews about specific products, but I recently bought this book and couldn’t resist recommending it to anyone who has a basic grasp of PHP and is looking for some practical applications and scripts to work on. I have found it to be a great PHP scripting resource which walks through a number of very useful scripts in detail, discussing exactly what is going on and how the script might be used in real life.

The authors, William Steinmetz and Brian Ward, do an excellent job of walking through each script showing how it works, what the potential pitfalls are and how it might be used in real life.  The best part is, there isn’t a single “Hello World” script in the book.  Rather the scripts are solutions to real life programming situations that most PHP programmers will run in to at one point or another.

I highly recommend Wicked Cool PHP to anyone starting out with PHP who wants to go a little deeper than “Hello World” or wants to see real examples of practical PHP scripts.

If you have any suggestions for improvements or comments about it, feel free to leave them in the comments area below. Also, we’re always on the look out for good regular expressions, so if you feel that you have one or a few that might be useful to the other visitors to this site, feel free to mention them in the comments.

Open Source Web Design is a place to download free web designs and share yours with others. We help make the internet a prettier place. – oswd.org

All the website designs can be easily previewed and downloaded, and come with source images along with everything else you will need to make a great looking website. Some also come with multiple stylesheets, allowing you to easily tailor the look and feel of your particular website. You can even contact the author of any given design in the event that you have questions or just want to hire them to design MORE stuff for you.

All-in-all, the Open Source Web Design site is a pretty useful tool for any website designer to keep in their ‘back pocket’.

This is useful in both helping you to know whether a particular keyword or phrase is popular, as well as helping you to find other keywords or phrases that might be easier to target. You might see that a particular keyword has huge results in the keyword selector tool, but good luck getting first page search engine results for that word. Then you notice that there are five other phrases related to that same keyword, which would be much easier to target, and together would yield more results than the initial word you were aiming for.

This is exactly what The Occasional Joke blog is hoping to provide. This blog is offering it’s readers the opportunity to syndicate the daily jokes onto their own blogs and websites. Anyone running a PHP enabled site can syndicate the latest Occasional Joke to a page on their own site, with just a brief bit of code.

There is also a WordPress plugin developed specifically for people wanting to run Occasional Jokes on their own WordPress blogs as well.

1. The “50 Dollars Off” Coupon
   If you sign up for a year or more of hosting, you can use this coupon to get $50 off the total cost. Just enter WARKENSOFT50 as your promotional code when you sign up. Essentially, that could take your cost down to under $4/mo for the first year.
   
2. The “Waived $50 Setup Fee” Coupon
   When you sign up for monthly payments (instead of paying for a year at a time) Dreamhost will want to charge you a one-time $50 setup fee. You can get that fee waived by entering WARKENSOFTXSETUP as your promotional code when you sign up.
   

What They Offer:

• 167 Gig’s of storage space
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If you decide – within the first 97 days of your time with us – that DreamHost isn’t for you, we will gladly close your account and refund any payments you’ve made to us within those first 97 days.*

One of the most important reasons that I recommend hosting with them is that they have a VERY easy website setup process. Once you’ve signed up, all you have to do is choose a domain name and then walk through their automatic installer. For the look and feel of your individual site there are hundreds of different themes to choose from, many of which are included with the initial installation. And I have fifty dollar coupons to give away!

So if you’re looking at the possibility of starting up your own website, I recommend you click here to see what DreamHost has to offer. And don’t forget to use one of our coupons!

The answer? Use a form mailer! A form mailer is a system which takes information that someone types into a form on your website, and turns it into an email which you can read.

How Do Form Mailers Work?
When a person enters data in a form field on a website and submits the data, that data is transmitted to a script, also on the website, which contains the instructions required to process it. In the case of a form mailer, the script takes that data and puts it into an email, which it sends out to a specified email address. The person who filled out the form, then receives some sort of instructions as to what they can do next, now that they have successfully filled out the form.

Why are Form Mailers Needed?
You may be asking, why can’t I just put my email address on my website and let people contact me with it? If you’ve used the internet for any period of time at all, you’ll know about the problem of spam. SPAM is the name given to unwanted email, usually sent out in an effort entice people to purchase items or come to a given website. If your email address is posted on your website, it is more than likely that in a few weeks/months time, you will begin receiving more “SPAM” than you’ll know what to do with. This is because less reputable individuals will find your email address, and sell it to the highest bidder for their spam advertising pleasures. Soon, your mailbox will be so full of junk you will have a hard time separating the good from the bad.

A form mailer will allow you to accept email from your website, without risking your email address being “harvested” and sold. This is because the form mailer itself will handle the transmission of the email, rather than just posting your email address on the website.

What to Look For in a Form Mailer:

1. The ability to completely hide your email address.
   There are some systems out there which require you to put the email address you want the form to go to in a hidden field on the form on your site. This is bad. Even if a field is hidden on the site, it can still be read in the code of the web page. The Form Mailer should at very least give you the option to set an internal email address to send your forms to, without putting it directly on the web page.
2. The ability to send your visitor to a “Thank You” page.
   You want visitors to have a positive experience on your site. As such, once they fill out a form on your site, send them to a page which thanks them for their input, and possibly even gives them a time frame in which you will get back to them if requested.
3. The ability to set required fields. In some cases, you may want to force your visitors to fill out the “email_address” field before sending in a form. For example, if they have written you for help, you want to make sure you can contact them back. As such, you will want the Form Mailer to allow you to specify which fields on the form are required for the system to send in their response.
4. The ability to send a personalized automated response. This can be a key strategy in making sure that your visitors stay connected to you. It can mean the difference between making or breaking a customer. This feature would allow the system not only to email their information to you, but would also email them a personalized response possibly outlining what their next course of action could be, or letting them know that you have received their email and that as important customers or clients, you will be contacting them personally as soon as possible.

Suggest a Good Form Mailer…
WarkenSoft Productions has developed a Form Mailing script which fulfills all of the above requirements and more. It is quite easy to install, and as it is built in PHP should be usable on most web servers. We strongly suggest that you check this one out. We are convinced that you’ll find it to be a great asset for your website. So why not check it out. You can find it on our Product Page.