Some minor updates to lesterchan.net and hence I bump the site version to 3.30:

• Combined these 5 JavaScript files together:
  • Simple AJAX Code-Kit (TW-Sack)
  • ThickBox
  • Docking Boxes (DBX)
  • Docking Boxes Key File
  • lesterchan.net’s JavaScript File
• Minified CSS and JavaScript files using YUI Compressor
• Moved Google Analytics JavaScript code to the footer
• Added “My Wish List” (shopping cart icon) to the Welcome Area
• Changed “Posted By” to “Posted by”
• Added a new poll entitled “How Often You Visit lesterchan.net?”

The remaining optimization involved upgrading my plugins used on this site as well to WordPress 2.8 nightly which is not recommended for a production site and hence I will only further optimize this site’s JavaScript when WordPress 2.8 comes out in March/April.

I have upgraded lesterchan.net to WordPress 2.7 alongside with all my updated plugins. Please let me know if you find any bugs on this site by dropping me an email or posting it in the comments. Thanks a lot =)

The update is smooth and it only takes about 30 minutes. Not much compatibility issue here except I have to uninstall my WP-Sticky as WordPress 2.7 has already a sticky post feature built in.

I will create another separate post to highlight the updates to my plugins.

Spend more than 10 hours to modify lesterchan.net layout to make it iPhone/iPod Touch viewable. At the moment, you can only view blog post and not pages. I have no plans to make the pages iPhone/iPod Touch viewable yet as it is a lot of work and I don’t find it necessary.

Just point your iPhone or iPod Touch to lesterchan.net and it will detect your user agent and serve you the iPhone/iPod Touch layout if you are using either of the devices.

Here are 2 essential resources to get you stared, Apple: Safari Web Content Guide for iPhone and Ajaxian: iPhone Web Development Tips and Official Documentation Released.

lesterchan.net on iPhone (Portrait – Width: 320px)

lesterchan.net on iPhone (Landscape – Width: 480px)

While on the topic of site updates, here is the changelog since 4th July 2008:

• NEW: Close comments after 30 days instead of 14 days
• NEW: Highlight search words when viewing post
• NEW: Add hosted by Frro
• NEW: Add scroll bar To Recent Comments in Welcome Box if content too long
• NEW: Upgraded To WordPress 2.6
• NEW: Upgraded My Plugins
• FIXED: Removed all broken links using Broken Link Checker WordPress plugin
• FIXED: “No Comments” text not displayed if there is at least 1 trackback/pingback with no comments posted
• FIXED: Comment numbering is wrong after doing AJAX comment posting if there is at least 1 trackback/pingback
• FIXED: Search two or more words
• FIXED: Gallery hits increased by 1 on every photo viewed
• FIXED: Added urldecode() for $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] and $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] in 404 page
• FIXED: 10 Latest Comments in Welcome Box showing Pingback/Trackback

I am a sucker when it comes to changelog. I document almost every changes I made to my WordPress plugins’ under their respective changelog and I am hopping to bring that good habbit to this site as well.

It has been 1 month since the launch of lesterchan.net Version 3.0. Along the way I fixed many bugs and added a few new features to the site.

1 month later, I present to you lesterchan.net Version 3.10.

Version 3.10 (4th July 2008)
Index

• NEW: Reorganised “Welcome to lesterchan.net” box
• NEW: Seperated My Computer and My Desktop in “Welcome” box
• NEW: Added 10 Recent Posts from My WordPress Plugins Blog to “Welcome” box
• NEW: Added 10 Recent Posts to “Welcome” box
• NEW: Added 10 Recent Comments to “Welcome” box
• NEW: Added user IP below Last Visited date
• NEW: Added a link to my Twitter profile
• NEW: Renamed “Lester …” to “Lester Chan on Twitter” and moved it to “Welcome” box

Blog

• NEW: Renamed “x Comments” to “x Responses”, “1 Comment” to “1 Response” and “No Comments” to “No Response” as reponses are made up of comments, trackbacks and pingbacks
• NEW: Trackbacks and Pingbacks are displayed separately from the comments and they are counted seperately as well
• NEW: Prefixed a “arrow point right” icon to the “Read More” link
• NEW: Suffixed Word, Image and Video count to “Read More” link
• NEW: Added “By Author” in Blog Archive page
• NEW: Added a Star icon beside my name when commenting
• NEW: Added Gravatar to comments
• NEW: Added Tag support for breadcrumb navigation
• FIXED: Duplicate crumbs when doing paginating Category/Date/Author
• FIXED: RSS feed URL now points to Feedburner
• FIXED: Spread the listing of categories and tags into 3 columns instead of a single column

Menu

• NEW: Menu items (not boxes) slides up and down when toggled
• NEW: Menu fading in and out when changing from left to right
• NEW: Paypal donation image now shown by default
• NEW: Added “Quick Links” menu box in order to access my plugin page within 1 click
• NEW: Renamed “Others” to “Network” and moved it from “Navigation” to “Quick Links” menu box
• FIXED: “Menu Settings” menu box icon now reflect the position of the menu sidebar
• FIXED: Menu is now able to move to the left and back to the right in IE7

General

• NEW: Added Google Analytics tracking code
• NEW: Combined portfolio.css and gallery.css with style.css
• NEW: Optimized style.css

Site

• FIXED: Associate links within “lesterchan.net Network” with Lester Chan instead of GaMerZ
• FIXED: “lesterchan.net Network” Link Category named wrongly

Portfolio

• NEW: Added “Lester Chan’s Webpage”, “AllEventsGroup.com”, “FirstFood.com.sg” and “Raffles Airline HR Management System” to websites
• FIXED: Removed Demo link for WP-Wap as it is no longer in development

Gallery

• FIXED: Gallery image description is now centerized

I have brought forward the launch of lesterchan.net a few days in advanced as I may not be free on the 9th June 2008 which is the original intended date of launch.

After more than 4 years of using the same layout, the old layout (version 2.0) has been finally replaced with this newer (version 3.0) layout. I think some of you may find this layout a little dull as compared to the previous layout because of the colors used. I am trying to come out with a variety of color schemes if possible because of the colors are controlled by CSS, the only limitation is choose the color. Do note that I am not a designer but a programmer. Most programmers are poor designers and most designers are poor programmers.

Changelog

• Upgraded site from WordPress 1.5.1 to WordPress 2.5.1
• Upgraded plugins from WordPress 1.5.1 to WordPress 2.5.1 compatibility
• Renamed /blogs/ to /blog/
• Merge Calendar and Archive Page
• Brand new AJAX driven Archive Page
• Brand new Donation Page
• Brand new AJAX driven Contact Me Page
• Re-coded Search engine
• Re-coded Gallery feature
• Re-coded Alex King‘s Since Last Visit plugin
• Added Plugins Used Page
• Split Programming Page into 3 sub-pages, PHP, Java and Visual Basic
• Posting Comments is now in AJAX
• Movable menu boxes by brother cake‘s Docking Boxes
• Menu is able to switch from left to right and vice versa and your preference will be remembered
• Javascript are all compressed/packed by Dean Edward’s Packer
• jQuery used extensively
• ThickBox used for Portfolio Images
• Using FamFamFam icons

Todo

• Add Playlist Page
• Add sitemap.xml
• Update favico.ico

Feel free to browse through the whole site if you have not been doing so for a very long time as most of the pages has been updated.

All the old URLs should be redirected properly to the new URLs, I have spent quite a lot of effort to ensure that.

You can report bugs in the comments =)