[//edwin||reyes\\]

Below is the sample code you can use and modify to fit your needs. It contains all f the information you need before the advertiser goes to Pay Pal or any other method of payment you may have. I have eliminated the quotes from the code in order to display it.

<form method=post action=adboxes.php >

</form>

Here, is the adbox.php file you will need to create the email with the information provided and redirect the advertiser to PayPal or any other method of payment you may have. I have eliminated the double quotes from places you’ll see an *.

<?php

?>

I hope you find this helpful in creating your own. Cheers!

Since I published the ad space boxes on the pages of Blogs Dominicanos, I’ve received a couple of emails asking how it was created. The ad boxes is created through a list and the list is then modified using CSS code. Below is the coding for the style sheet I have on this blog. You can use it and modify the code to make it the size you want and with as many boxes you want. You’ll also need to create a form that will take the id number from the box the advertiser wants and insert into the email you will receive.

First things first, you need to create an DIV id for the ad boxes. This way you can make changes to the ul and li without affecting any other ul’s and li’s on the page. For all intensive purposes I’ve set my width to 800, you can set it to any width you want. Margin-left is for ie6 and ie7. Without the margin-left setting, you’ll have the ad boxes displayed with no indentation in FireFox and with indentation in ie7.

div#addbox {
width: 800px;
margin-left:0;
float:left;
padding-left: 0;
}

The ul (unoredered list) properties. Padding:0 removes the indentation in FireFox.

div#addbox ul {
padding:0px;
background-image:none;
margin-top: 5px;
float:left;
margin-left:0;
}

The following code sets the list style properties.

div#addbox li {
background-image:none;
display: block;
width: 16px;
height: 16px;
float: left;
margin: 0 2px 2px 0;
}

The following code sets the list style properties of the background for the boxes with a hyper link. You can display them inline, list-item, compact, or in this case block style.I’ve also set the hieght and width for the boxes as well as the color.

div#addbox li a {
display: block;
width: 16px;
height: 16px;
background: #7B97CB;
}


Hovering over the boxes changes the color. This is done with the following code.

div#addbox li a:hover{
background: #3E5793;
}

Once you have an advertiser and depending on whether or not you want to display the image with a border, you may want to change the following size of the border and perhaps add other styling such as border color etc…

div#addbox img {
border: 0;
}

The html code for the boxes is the same as any item list for an unordered list. I’ve removed the quotes so you’ll have to insert the quotes when you copy/paste into your files…

<div id=addbox>
<ul id=addbox>
<li><a href=http:// id=1><img src=http://image1.location.jpg/></a></li>
<li><a href=http:// id=2><img src=http://image2.location.jpg/></a></li>
<li><a href=http:// id=3><img src=http://image3.location.jpg/></a></li>
<li><a href=http:// id=4><img src=http://image4.location.jpg/></a></li>
<li><a href=http:// id=5></a></li>
<li><a href=http:// id=6></a></li>
<li><a href=http:// id=7></a></li>
<li><a href=http:// id=8></a></li>
</ul>
</div>

And this is what the boxes will look like…

So here’s the scoop on the open source script that I used for our Blog Rating.

Masuga Design Unobtrusive Ajax Star Rating.

This is a rating bar script done with PHP and mySQL that allows users to rate things like can be done on Netflix or Amazon, all web 2.0-like with no page refresh. It is a major improvement on the previous version because it is now unobtrusive, meaning that if Javascript is off it will still work…

There are other sites using this script such as Design Fest, CSSRemix, and Sci Talks.

They’ve all modified the stars and the script… I don’t know who can simply plug and play other then a Word Press plug-in for rating posts or similar rating scripts with one line of code.

I opted for these files because it was using php and interacting with MYSQL database info. All of which was incorporated into our current database. I had to modify my current function which creates the list of recently updated blogs with the rating function.

Total amount of time playing with the code was about 12 hours… on and off for 5 weeks… I finally sat down and re-wrote the function today.

The one thing that I have noticed before is that in any Internet Explorer older than version 7.0, the stars do not appear correctly. Perhaps that is my CSS file but I’m not messing with it anymore.

One of these days I’ll re-launch the option to create your own wordpress blog on BlogsDominicanos. I need to clean that old database and work on the files again…

As many of you may or may not know already, I published the second round of questions for my survey. I think that the results of the surveying should be interesting. I plan on publishing the results towards the beginning of next year… So for those that are anxiously waiting to read something about it, please be patient.

The blog rating has been a pain in the ass… The function needs to create a php function that will generate the stars as the page opens. But since I am already in a function I can’t echo the php code in order to populate the star rating.

However I can display the results which is a good thing. I just need to decide how I want to display the star rating if thats the case… Perhaps I’m just making it more complicated the it really is. I’m sure that the programming of the function to echo the php code can be integrated into the function that displays the list. That would be quite a lengthy function and I’m not too sure if it would execute as efficiently. Not to mention that I would have to hack the code that the star rating uses in order to include it into my function.

If you want a hack at it let me know…

All non profits have a tax ID number. You should ask for it when you make any type of donation so you can use it when you file your taxes. I don’t want any complications when I file next year for this year. Needless to say I’m holding off on any of that right now.

This will be the last time I change the design on my blog. I may change the colors but I like the layout a whole lot more then the other designs. It’s clean and simple… not as simple or clean as White Milk but…

¿Eres humano? Si no lo eres no puedes registrar tu blog. Ayer me puse a activar mas de 1200 blogs que registraron… lo malo de eso era que habían algunos 900 registrado por Spammers. Pero espero que la ultima pregunta resuelva eso… cheers!

Para los que le gustan dolores de cabeza averiguen lo que esta pasando aqui…

Requesting the information…

<label>Si eres Humano entra el numero 1510.</label>
<input tabindex=”17″ type=”text” name=”info” value=”" size=”41″ maxlength=”255″ />

Passing and executing the information…

$info = strip_tags($_POST['info']);
if ($info !=”1510″){$url = ‘http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/blog’;}

Passing & executing the information again…

$query = “select * from vb_weblogs where url = ” . “‘” . strtolower($url) . “‘”;
$myDB2->Query = $query;
$myDB2->Execute();
if($myDB2->RecordCount > 0)
{$goto = “repetido.php”;}
else{…

That’s what I do on my days off… niceeee…

My world around me may be falling apart but I honestly can’t keep it together everyday.

Today I spent the day completing a survey which was started a few months ago. The programming was just a few simple clicks and done… the questions were the tough ones. I wanted to get basic information from everyone and get a feel for what I was getting myself into… The next set of questions revolve around the criteria which readers continue to read, why bloggers continue to write and why others steer away from blogs.

Granted, there should be some type of structure behind these series of surveys but I’m going to take it all in as it comes in. Chewing it will be the more interesting part of the job… and then I’ll spit it out with a few charts and graphs and you let me know what you make of it.

I don’t know about you, but I’m more focused on the content portion of our reading and writing. If I was an English teacher and these bloggers were my students I’d say that more then half of them have failed. But all in all… it’s just a blog right?

But then again, why are only a hand full of Dominican bloggers writing on a more educated, instructive, and creative manner? Is it lack of leadership? Is it lack of interest? Is it because there are no ethics in blogging? After all we do have other responsibilities to assist and we know of different services that allow us to be as carefree as we want to be… Perhaps we just don’t see the need… or find it hard to share in such a taboo environment… That makes me wonder what is it that we really think and feel?

I’m not one to criticize any other blogger for how they write in their blog either. This month I’ve published more then I have in the last 12 months I think. Not to mention that most of what I’ve written in this post is just about as long as all of my posts within the last 12 months anyway…

So if you want to look for content, your looking in the wrong area… If your looking for news regarding the latest technology, your looking in the wrong area… If your looking for what ticks me off, what drives me, what lurks me, what interests me… your looking in the right area.

For the most part it’s self satisfaction that I can code in PHP, C++, HTML, CSS, ASP, Java, Ladder Logic, Panel View, create buttons to make my publishing easier, publish RSS feeds to save readers time, re-write code that is no longer supported in PHP5 but was in PHP4, the ability to hack my way through code to create the homepage we have at Blogs Dominicanos, my curiosity, complete boredom, the opportunity to meet the groups of bloggers and simply observe you, read you, and share with you the same satisfaction.

I can’t help but laugh too… I don’t write well in Spanish… Spell check does wonders… Every writer coming into the spotlight lately and every reader that knows more Spanish accent marks then the previous reader seems to have an eye out for us… Not that it’s a bad thing… just that not everyone has been using spell check. One things for sure… we not all trying to make a career out of this blogging thing… but I’ll definitely take into consideration the content I publish on it from time to time as I have in the past.

I can be real Dominican or I can be technically American with that Dominican accent. I can’t be Dominican with an American accent tho. That’ll never happen… Being raised in Jersey with family and friends in NYC creates a diverse character if I may say so myself. Add a little knowledge and a good education to that mix and possibilities are endless. I’m not talking about myself either. I’m talking in general. You’ll see that “go-getter” mentality working in every New Yorker. Some a little slower then others but it’s in there… Now if you compare Apples to Oranges… Florida people are a little more laid back.

I’m not looking to offend anyone either… I don’t think anyone here is… and don’t worry… I can locate who it is with your IP addresses remember… that script is working just fine… oooooh… I’m scared… hehe… but it really is working.

First things first… I’m ready to test drive a new plugin for Wordpress…

That my friends is Pollen… I leave my windows open and my apartment gets filled with Pollen. It’s not very good if you have allergies this time of year. My problem is that it creates a layer of green dust on everything…

Plugin: Light Box

So I’ve been working on it… and here is a sneek peak…

Mas contenido, mas información, mas espacio… Mas de todo. But there may be a few that don’t like it… what can I do… I need to do something in my spare time… even if it never makes it as a full blown website… You tell me what you think and we’ll take it from there…

I started to re-design the site but I simply can’t find the time to do what I have to do. I asked a few bloggers to take a look at the previous designs as I was updated it but they didn’t like the backgrounds or colors very much… here is what it looked like the last time around. Granted nothing is validated yet… The Ajax coding for the RSS feeds is probrably the most interesting… If I don’t publish the new design I will look into coding the Ajax into the present design.

Y antes que se me olvide… the site will return to a basic hosting plan… There haven’t been donations this month, none the less any checks from Google in regards to Adsense ads and I’m not going to be the one bearing the cost of a dedicated server with out the support of someone else. Bloggers said they would chip in and others blamed me for sporadically asking for donations. I’ve come to realize that we all have responsibilities and I shouldn’t expect you to help out. Sooo… with that being said… I think I can manage a $4.95-$14.95 monthly plan for the time being…

Cheers!

Today has been productive i guess… 1000 out of 1600 done so far and the 1600 keeps getting smaller because there are a number of blogs that no longer exist… Maybe I should leave them in the database just for numbers, but whats the point… If the blog doesn’t exist I delete it… It’ll make who-ever navigates the directory that much more reliable versus a directory that is full of blogs that don’t exist or those that aren’t updated on a regular basis…

This picture was in on of the last blogs I checked today… It is an incredible picture… not as clean as the acclaimed picture taken by Steve McCurry… but it comes close to the same image and the meaning behind it…

via: Domingo’s Blog from Venezuela

I can wrap my day up on this note but I’ll try to finish the other 600 blogs tonight…. and not for nothing the little girl is a little scary too…

Today I will be updating the database with your Atom/RSS/XML urls… Some of you never inserted the url which is cool, but a good majority of you inserted the wrong address into the field… Soooo why am I doing this? well… I’m also re-designing the site. I’ve been playing with my files and trying to come up with different look. I have no idea of what I’m doing… The whole thing is that it’s hard to create a new look after getting used to the one we already have and have come to “love”. A new design would be nice but I don’t think it’ll be that much more different. However the new “features” or “goodies” as some may say might intrigue more visitors.

An AJAX platform for adding your own feed and customizing the sidebar. Different CSS Styles is another and the use of an agregator to display the most recently updated blogs in the database. Thats why I’m updating the database… My only problem is that your 1637 different urls… all of which need to be checked and updated accordingly. Thats going to take up all of my day… oh well… better me then you right… – that’s not funny…

Pero nah… I’ll do this for you, me, or anyone as long as I have the time… What else could I possible be doing on a bright and sunny day other then updating our database? Oh which reminds me… Everytime I find out something new about what I’m doing to the site (tearing it apart and creating useless scripts) I want to blog about it but its rough because I get caught up into it. For example… something real easy but perhaps something that most of the dominican bloggers wouldn’t care about… the curl_init() function…

If I can accomplish updating the database within the next few hours without getting bored or any other distractions such as food, I’ll move onto creating the code to grab the url’s from the database, caching the feeds, sorting them by date and perhaps coming back to blog about it… If you have any questions or comments feel free to do so…

By the way… this wasn’t my idea to do this. I hate giving myself work to do… Especially if I’m in it alone and without any references to go by… This is fun but not that much fun. This is the equivilence of picking your brain with tweasers, followed by being teased by a model, driving 140mph in a BMW and winning the 800 meters at the State Track Finals after being told you would never make it to the finals.

Que chulo esta el diseño!? Se ñama “Vistered Little“… Si todavia no han cambiado sus blog por uno de Word Press, que estan esperando?

Vistered Little gave me a few problems on the installation… for starters I had to insert

< ?php

include 'functions.php';

?>

into the header file and initialize the pickaskin function. Once the theme loaded I erased the include and it’s been working fine… I also had a problem with the themetoolkit file. I simply disabled this line and I haven’t had any problems since…

//add_theme_page(‘Configure ‘ . $this->infos['theme_name'], $this->infos['theme_name'], ‘edit_themes’, basename($this->file), array(&$this,’admin_menu’));

If I run into any other problems I’ll post it…

Ni que dolor de cabeza fue el transmito de los datos al nuevo server. La ultima semana y media e estado trabajando entre 12-14 horas diaria… Hoy Miercoles fue mi dia libre y me la pase jodiendo con Blogs Dominicanos hasta que se vencio el problema de los pings!

It was a pain in the ass trying to figure out why it wasn’t working, what happened how to fix it. For starters the nameservers were not setup right. That was my mistake… I simply forgot to add the IP Address in order for the site to propogate as it should. Then the A-Records for the new Semi-Dedicated server needed to be fixed. This was all on the hosting company which I am reluctant to even mention on this site anymore. There tech support system seriously sucks… bigtime… pero nah… por no joder mucho me voy a quedar con ellos hasta que venga una oferta de gratis para nosotros.

El problema de no poder actualizar sus blogs es causa del servidor. We were passing the url to be updated by using the isset parameter. Unfortunately the server isn’t identyfying the string that is in the header and was never updating the database.

Here is a snippet of the code…

if (isset($url)){
$mystr =”< ?xml ['titulo'] . ['url'] .>“;
$sp=fsockopen($host,$port,$errno,$errstr,30);
if (!$sp) {
die(“Could not contact $host:$port – $errstr\n”);
return false;
}
fputs($sp,”POST http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/

Since the code was not working and the help from the hosting company has been undeniably poor, I went ahead and reprogrammed the way in which the site updates the time stamp from the homepage. Instead of passing the Title & URL of the blog in the header, I created a form which uses php to update the MySQL database.

I have yet to program the time period in which you are able to re-ping the site… Perhaps next week…

Other then that… I hope everything else works on the site… If it doesn’t… I’m sure someone will email or leave a comment. telling me so… Meanwhile… I think it’s safe to say that the site is back up!

Un Blo. Everyone I talk to about a blog has this look on their face like “What the hell is a blog?”… I ussualy use descriptions such as a website or a news site… but the truth of the matter is that they don’t exactly give justice to what a blog really is. Aside from it being a website, you have to login, select from a list of options such as edit, write, manage, options, templates, presentation etc etc etc… And you can’t force feed someone information if they aren’t interested in it so I simply leave it at that…

I honestly don’t know how i’ve managed to update my blog for as long as I have. I think that the desire to learn about html was the begining… Then I got into PHP because the html was simply too boring and easy to do… I’ve gotten suggestions to create HTML tutorials for our bloggers but it’s a bit time consuming to create… aunque talves un dia de estos me aburra tanto que me ponga hacerlo. Not to mention that I’m not getting paid for any of this… but then again thats what the internet is for right? I think Internet access should be completely free! Why should you have to pay? Not to mention that more then half of the information that is sold on the internet can be obtained for free if you search long enough. ohh.. and you can’t forget about P2P programs that allow you to download complete programs for free…

Ok… enough jibber jabber for now…

Pancakes for breakfast, pasta for lunch, quien sabe lo que hay para mas tarde… Yesterday I had lunch with my older sister who some how some way made it back to the states without me knowing. Like many Dominican parents, my parents thought that sending my sister to DR would keep her in check and away from the road she was heading down… boy were they wrong… lol… So she is back but not living at home and I don’t even know how to react to her sittuation… One thing is for sure, we can’t live together. It was one of the main reasons I decided to move out…

Other then that, me estoy pasando los dias trabajando aun mas de lo que trabajo en el trabajo… Me hice experto en Photo Shop y usando las funciones de Dreamweaver esta semana. Tambien encontre una vaina interesante que seria bueno implementar a los Blogs Dominicanos. Rentando espacio para promover los blogs o empresas dominicanas via un programa especificamente creado para Blogs Dominicanos… se puede hacer de diferente maneras… claro… se le puede pedir a los bloggers que le pongan un link de su blog a otro o a la empresa… Pero ya mi idea seria como una que me mandaron de un directorio Americano.

The algorithm and logic behind the script is kind of complicated but the fundamental point is to earn points/money for visiting the blogs that are registered in our directory or the Dominican Companies that desire to publicize on Blogs. You can earn points from other bloggers if you decide to rent out space on your blog and money if you promote the companies… This could lead to a small income once I figure out how incorporate a payment method for those that want to earn money on thier blogs! Vamos a ver como se hace… I’ll keep you all posted…

I’ve got nothing to do… I’m attempting to make my own Vegetable Rice as I blog… vamos a ver como me sale esa vaina. Other then updating the website, I’m actually visiting some of these blogs leaving comments and visiting the same blogs over and over again… I think I put too much rice in the pot… oh well…

Meanwhile, we’ve got another website to program… I have to edit some images and try to make them look half way decent. I’ve also managed to edit a script to display the current weather in a particular area… maybe I’ll implement it on Blogs Dominicanos so it’ll display the temperature in Dominican Republic. Also, I created another member directory… It’s not done yet tho… maybe another month or two before the site is launched… One thing is for sure. It’s time consuming! geezzz… editing pictures in Photo Shop is no joke.

That reminds me… PodcastsDominicanos.com has been on the back burner for almost a year now! But that’s cool. I see more and more Dominicans creating podcasts so eventually I’ll launch the site for those podcasters to register… I think I can count the number of dominican podcasts with my fingers.

I have to update this blog as well… bueno… not in the sense of what I’m writing but perhaps re-creating the list of blogs that I read and or visit most… for starters we have…

1. Michers
2. Remo
3. Bracuta
4. Mr. Harold Martinez
5. Nicole
6. Alfonso
7. Ivan
8. Alex
9. Anich

ehh… a few more but for the most part… thats it… I’ll add some more later on… aun me pregunto que habra pasado con Huascar Blanco. Ese tiguere blogiaba casimente todo los dias mientra estaba en guerra… some of his writing were pretty intense and the days he would go to combat and we wouldn’t read from him was like woah… hope he’s ok kind of deal… That was back when we had the web-ring prior to creating Blogs Dominicanos. One of the first sites I visited that led me to believe that a directory for dominican bloggers existed was DominicanBlogger.com…

Ok.. time to check up on the Vegie Rice…

Gracias al licenciado Harold Martinez por la vaina de Obvious Diversion Image Toy… a few of my own modifications in the CSS file and we’re good to go…

Which reminds me… I have to continue modifying the submit page on the Remolacha Beta page… People have forgotten all about it… including myself… I just don’t think that we are ready to contribute on the level we have to if in fact it is the way to go with sharing news about our culture… to many things to do before it is published… Vamos a ver que pasa… I’ll finish working on it and then take it from there.

Bueno… vamos a ver… I’ve uploaded and modified Menealo for Remolacha.net. Next up is testing the site out and determining if it’s as easy as it looks. Obviously it takes away from Remo’s personal touch which so many of us are used to. After all, thats what these blogs are all about… our personality, our traits, our characters… it is our image to the world… I must say we have come a long way in finding such ease by sharing thoughts, stories and pictures through blogs. It has been and will continue to be a great form of therapy for me… hehe…

Como algunos de ustedes saben/o no… Remo desea cambiar la forma en cual se publica en Remolacha.net.

“Pense mucho porque no sabia hasta que punto es REMOLACHA.net importante para tanta gente de la farandula, negocios, bloggers, periodistas, bodegueros, taxistas, y hasta chamaquitos, etc. que le dan valor a mi pagina como si fuera un medio a la par con los ya establecidos de mi pais. Esto me lleno de orgullo, vi una luz al final del tunel que me deja saber que aun hay esperanza, pero no se la forma de hacer que la pagina sobreviva basado en esa esperanza.

-La Solucion esta en sus manos

Para que Remolacha.net siga informando y entreteniendo a miles de Dominicanos debe de convertirse en una pagina mas democratica. Un web donde los usuarios envían las noticias y puedan decidir la importancia de los contenidos como Digg.com.”

En tres días hemos subido el programa “Menéalo” a nuestro servidor y ahora queremos ponerlo en sus manos.

1. Lo primero que deben de hacer es REGISTRARSE.
2. Luego de registrarse pueden seguir a la página de preguntas para leer más sobre el sistema de publicaciones, los votos, y como las historias que ustedes publican llegan a la portada principal.
3. Envíen una historia. Cada uno de ustedes tendrán la oportunidad de enviar un link con titulo, descripción y crédito por presentar la noticia.
4. VOTEN por las historias que ustedes publican y las historias que han publicado. Este sistema usa la palabra “MENEALO” para mover las historias mas leídas o importantes para ustedes.
5. Dejen Comentarios!! Queremos que prueben cada parte de este sistema. No solamente publicando y votando… queremos ver si en verdad trabaja y mas que todo, saber lo que piensan del proyecto como el futuro de Remolacha.net.

Durante las próximas 2 semanas queremos que ustedes publiquen, voten, comenten, envíen los bugs, y opinen sobre la facilidad o dificultad del programa. También permitiremos que pongan links en su blogs para que sus lectores vayan conociendo el sistema poco a poco.

Sooooo… I hope that by sharing the email that went out to select bloggers will encourage my readers to test the site. If you like it, let us know… If you hate it, let us know…

Ready set SHOP!… I’ve launched my own template store! Now you can actually start designing your own websites with pre-made templates.

Blog Templates – They can be modified to fit your exisiting blog templates. Included with each template are the Flash Intros, Flash Files as well as the HTML and CSS files associated with each template.

Website Templates – A website template can be used to build your personal webpage or huge corporate site, online shop or offline presentation or even as a design for the software you develop! And everything you create is going to be easy, fast and professional!

Flash Templates – Flash Templates are pre-made web design products that can be easily customized to reflect your company’s branding. Flash templates are available in Macromedia Flash format. Pay per one template to get rarest design.

Flash Intros – It is an effective flash presentation created to give customers an idea about your site and activities. This is in fact an informative movie that will certainly impress the visitor and make your site more vivid and professional-looking! All flash headers come with source FLA files and are fully editable.

PHP Templates – It is actually a skin for your PHP-Nuke. PHP-Nuke is a ready-made news automated system specially elaborated to be used in Intranets and Internet. Its usage doesn’t require any technical skills and theme integration takes a couple of minutes! Please note: PHP-Nuke theme WILL NOT work if you don’t have PHP-Nuke installed and configured on your web site.

There are also Logo Templates and Corporate Logos for you to choose from…