Giant trees > giant ocean > giant hole in the Earth.

However, things break down a little when I compose or respond to emails using Mail.app. Because of certain technical specifications, Gmail messages sent in plain-text mode automatically force a line break after about 78 characters. This happens after you press Send. Messages sent this way are laid out incorrectly, as you can see in the first screenshot below. However, by forcing Mail.app to send messages in Rich Formatting mode, I can avoid the line breaks and have emails look the way they were intended.

    

Here’s how to make sure your emails are sent with the proper layout:

By formatting a small bit of text in your signature, you can force Mail.app to send messages with Rich Formatting.

1. On your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, go to Settings.
2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars, then tap Signature.
3. Select part of your signature, then tap the Right Arrow in the black popup.
4. Tap Bold (or any other style).
5. Tap the Back Arrow at the top labelled Mail.

You can add Rich Formatting to any part of your signature. In the screenshot above, I selected a space rather than actual characters and applied Bold formatting.

Using this method, your emails will arrive in people’s inboxes without the line breaks that make a message hard to read. It may seem like a small thing, but proper formatting can make a difference when reading high volumes of email on a regular basis.

In order to make it easier for users to share their scores, I added the ability to post a match result to Facebook. By clicking the Facebook Heart icon, anyone can post a link to their profile that includes the players, the score, the conference and the location of the match. This feature uses the Facebook API Feed Dialog. You can use PHP to place variables within the Javascript, so that each post shared to Facebook is unique. For example, the code for Serve+Destroy is the following:

<a 
   style="text-decoration:none;border:none"
   href="http://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=189340417803807&
   link=serveanddestroy.com/standings.php?conf=<?php print $confid; ?>&
   picture=http://serveanddestroy.com/images/tennis-insig.jpg&
   name=Serve%20%2B%20Destroy&
   caption=<?php print $confname; ?>%20Conference%20%2D%20Tennis%20Standings%20Updated&
   description=<?php print $scores['winningteam']; ?>%20defeated%20<?php print $scores['losingteam']; ?>
      %20<?php print $scores['rf']; ?>%2D<?php print $scores['ra']; ?>
      %20%28<?php print $scores['wincomments']; ?>%29%20at%20<?php print $scores['field']; ?>&
   message=Ace!&
   redirect_uri=http://serveanddestroy.com/standings.php?conf=<?php print $confid; ?>">
LINK</a>

The result looks like this:

Here’s an example of a conference page:

Deploying the FB API Feed Dialog is great for adding a social media component, making it easier for people to share items on your website.

The WordPress Codex provides useful documentation about the Dashboard API, but it remains silent on how to customize the Dashboard across a WordPress Network. To remove Dashboard widgets, add the following function to your theme’s functions.php:

function remove_dashboard_widgets() {
   global $wp_meta_boxes;
   unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_right_now']);
   unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_recent_comments']);
   unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_incoming_links']);
   unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_plugins']);
   unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_quick_press']);
   unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_recent_drafts']);
   unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_primary']);
   unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_secondary']);
 }
 add_action( 'wp_dashboard_setup', 'remove_dashboard_widgets' );

Remove the lines for the widgets you’d like to keep visible.

Alternatively, to make things a little easier, you can unzip and upload the following file to your Plugins folder and Network Activate it from the WordPress Network Admin: remove-dashboard-widgets.php

Customizing the Dashboard is just one of the many steps you can take to make things a little easier for your users.

The objective of the re-design is not only to update the look, but also to improve usability. The new menu system features far fewer sub-menus, while the site as a whole uses larger and bolder fonts. Overall, the site is much cleaner. While the former iteration was based on Joomla, I elected to go with WordPress for the re-design. If a full-blown content management system is unnecessary, WordPress is a great choice for anyone looking for significantly improved backend usability.

Iankerr.ca is a WordPress multisite install. The theme of the main site is distinguishable from the subsites, but maintains a similar colour palette. Here’s an example sub-site: nyu.iankerr.ca. The subsite theme is based off of Jason Millar‘s customization of Rising Sun. Featured in the header is some of the amazing work created by Eric Joyner.

However, there’s not much information available on how to move a WordPress multisite from one domain to another.

I’ve been working on a new site, and needed to migrate the WordPress multisite installation from the development space to a live server. Since migrating a multisite install is much more complex than moving a regular WordPress site, I thought I’d offer up a short guide. It helps to have SSH access to both the target and source servers, though FTP and phpMyAdmin access should suffice.

There are two key tasks for a successful migration:

1. Change the domain and absolute path in your mySQL database
2. Change the database and domain_current_site information in wp-config.php

An extended guide that outlines what to do from start to finish:

A. Pack up your WordPress files and mySQL database:

1. Backup the mySQL database using SSH (tutorial) or phpMyAdmin (tutorial). SSH is recommended if the file size of your database is large.
2. Backup your files using TAR (tutorial) or FTP. I highly recommend using TAR, since it preserves the file permissions.

B. Transfer the files to your target (new) server:

• Use WGET (tutorial) or FTP to get the TAR file onto the new server. WGET transfers the file directly from target to source.
  • Then uncompress the TAR file (also using the TAR command)
• If using SSH, also transfer the mySQL file to the new server

C. Setup the new database:

1. Create a mySQL database on your new server using the built-in server management software  (e.g. CPanel or H-Sphere) or the CREATE DATABASE command. The easiest way is to use the management software that comes with your server, if available.
2. Create a user with administrator rights to the newly created database (tutorial).
3. Edit your backedup mySQL database file using a text editor (I recommend gVim)
   • Change the domain: e.g. if your development domain is test.org and your new domainis main.org, replace all instances of test.org with main.org in the database
   • Change the absolute path: e.g. if your development path is /home/user/public_html/eliot, replace all instances of it with the new absolute path (your web host likely provided you with this info, if not: try this)
4. Import your edited, backedup database into the new database (tutorial).

D. Setup Apache (if necessary):

• Depending on whether you’re using sub-domains or sub-sites, follow these instructions.
• If you’re using sub-domains, make sure your web host supports it! (not all shared hosting services do)

E. Setup wp-config.php:

1. Change the database name, user and password according to what you did in Step C, above. (You may need to change the database host as well).
2. The line define( ‘DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE’, ‘sample.com’ ); should reflect the new domain name.

That’s it! Your website should now be functional on your new domain.

Robot Film Festival Welcome, by Josh Ventura

Waiting for Name Assignment, by Alvaro Galvan, Carmen Simón Rubio (Botsker Award for Best Human as Robot)

Chorebot, by Greg Omelchuck (Botsker Award for Ethics and Impact)

The Machine, by Rob Shaw, Bent Image Lab (Botsker Award for Best Picture)

The festival also screened Spike Jonze’s 30-minute roboromance, “I’m Here“:

And an old favourite:

Keepon dancing to Spoon’s “Don’t You Evah”

However, there’s a relatively simple way to get your contacts from Facebook to Google+, and all you need is a Yahoo! Mail account.

Since Google+ uses your Google Contacts (located in Gmail), these steps will get you up and running with your old friends on the new Google service in no time. Keep in mind that this process transfers your Facebook friends who have email addresses visible to you:

1. Log into Facebook
2. Sign up for a Yahoo! Mailaccount
   1. Go to Yahoo! Mail’s Contacts tab
   2. Click Import Contacts > select Facebook > select All Contacts
   3. Click Actions > Export
   4. Select Yahoo! CSV
   5. Type in the captcha code and click Export Now
3. Log into your Gmail or Google Account *
   1. Go to Contacts
   2. Click More Actions > Import
   3. Click Choose File > select the Yahoo! CSV file
   4. Click Import (note: if the number of accounts being imported differs from your number of Facebook friends, this is because some of your friends do not have email addresses visible to you)
4. Done! You can now log into Google+ and add your friends to Circles.

* Alternatively, you can log in to your Google+ account > Circles > Find and Invite. Yahoo! contacts can be imported there. However, using the method above, you can see exactly how many contacts were imported from Facebook.