Two years ago, I detailed how to build a Hackintosh for under $800—then covered how to do the same with less hacking. Now that Snow Leopard’s out, we’re revisiting the Hackintosh, building a Hack Pro from scratch for roughly $900.

For folks eager to try a Mac but never wanted to plunk down the high price tag to get it, the Hackintosh—that is, a regular PC tweaked to run OS X—has always been an attractive option. That said, it’s not something you should take on lightly unless you’re willing—even enthusiastic—to build and maintain a PC entirely from scratch. I can’t guarantee it’ll be easy, but if you follow this guide step-for-step (it’s exhaustive) and stick with the same (or at least roughly the same) hardware as I am, I can vouch for a rock solid system that also happens to cost a good deal less than you’d pay for a comparable Mac.

Price Comparisons

Most Hackintosh enthusiasts will say you shouldn’t build a Hackintosh primarily to save money, as it’s more than just an insert-disc-and-click install. Still, I always enjoy looking at the price differences between my Hackintosh and Apple’s current offerings. At the moment, the cheapest Mac in the Apple store is a Mac mini sporting a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 120GB hard drive. For $300 more, I’m running a 3.0GHz Quad-Core processor, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and a damn saucy video card. I could have made this build much cheaper by skimping on hardware and still ended up with a great little machine, but I liked aiming for around the $800 price point from my last build—plus I really wanted to make it fly.

The most expensive iMac, by comparison, has only a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of memory for $2,200 ($1,300 more than my build, but it is built into a monitor), while the cheapest Mac Pro has a single 2.66GHz Quad-Core processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 640GB hard drive—and it costs $2,500 ($1,600 more than mine, though it’s a different and better processor and DDR3 rather than DDR2 RAM). In short, my $900 “Hack Pro” sports nearly as good or better hardware than any Mac that Apple sells short of the $3,300 8-Core Mac Pro (which can, incidentally, get more expensive, but it won’t get much better).

The Hardware

You can find plenty of hardware capable of supporting OS X on a Hackintosh—there’s no definitive build—but we’re not going to go into that here. I’ve put together a list of hardware that I’m using and that I can guarantee will (or at least has) run Snow Leopard like a dream.

Here’s a link to everything I bought over at Newegg:

• Antec Sonata III 500 Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply
• GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor
• GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
• Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory x 2 (for a total of 8GB)
• Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive
• Pioneer CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model
• 10/ 100/ 1000/ 2000Mbps PCI Copper Gigabit Network Adapter (The motherboard has onboard Ethernet, naturally, but this particular board has some problems with onboard in the Hackintosh world. Luckily, Ethernet cards are extremely cheap.)

The Build

Rather than detail every step necessary to put the actual pieces of your new computer together (this guide already reads like the Bible as is), I’m just going to point you to our first-timer’s guide to building a PC from scratch. Do your building, make sure everything’s booting up as it should be (i.e., you can boot the computer to the point where it does nothing, because you have nothing installed on it), then let’s move on.

What Else You’ll Need

Assuming you’ve purchased all the necessary parts for your build (linked above), you’ll still need a few other things before you get started:

• A USB thumb drive that’s at least 8GB in size (I’m using this 16GB Corsair drive, but obviously any sufficiently sized thumb drive should do just fine.)
• A copy of the Snow Leopard Install DVD. You can use the $29 “Upgrade” disc to install, even though this is a fresh installation. Note: If you feel like being completely honest, go ahead and buy the Mac Box Set—though, honestly, Apple’s practically made it hard *not* to buy the fully functional install disc.
• Another Mac to do some Terminal work on. (You’ll only need this other Mac for a few steps. I used my MacBook Pro, but you could also borrow a friends for an hour or so, too.)

Step One: Prepare Your Thumb Drive

We’re going to be installing Snow Leopard to your Hackintosh from your thumb drive rather than from the Snow Leopard install DVD, since in order to run the installer on your PC to begin with, you’ll need to slightly customize the way the installer is loaded. (More specifically, we’ll be loading a custom bootloader onto the thumb drive that will make booting into the install work like a charm.*)

So first things first: You need to format your thumb drive and then turn your Snow Leopard install disc into a disk image on your desktop. Here’s how to do it:

1. Launch the Disk Utility application on your borrowed Mac (located at /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility)
2. Format and partition your thumb drive: Insert your thumb drive; after a second, it should show up in the Disk Utility Sidebar. When it does, (1) click on it, then (2) click on Partition. (3) Choose 1 Partition from the Volume Scheme, (4) give it a name (I called my HackintoshInstall) and select Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) from the Format drop-down. Now—and this is important—(5) hit the Options button and make sure GUID Partition Table is selected as the partition scheme. Once you’ve made sure to set all the appropriate settings, just (6) click Apply and Disk Utility will get to partitioning your thumb drive.
3. Copy the Snow Leopard Install DVD image to your hard drive: In the following step we’ll be turning your thumb drive into a Snow Leopard Install drive, but before we do that, we need to get the installer off your DVD and onto your hard drive. To achieve this, insert the Snow Leopard DVD. When it shows up in the Disk Utility sidebar, (1) click on it, then (2) click New Image in the Disk Utility toolbar. Choose where you want to save it (for the sake of convenience, I put it on my Desktop), then click the Save button. Now go grab yourself a cold drink. This will take some time. When it finishes, move on to the next step.
4. Restore the Snow Leopard Install disk image to your thumb drive: Now, in Disk Utility, (1) click on HackintoshInstall (or whatever you called your partitioned thumb drive) and (2) click on Restore. (3) Drag and drop Mac OS X Install DVD.dmg from the sidebar to the Source field, then (4) drag and drop your thumb drive from the sidebar to the Destination field. Now simply (5) click on Restore and enter your password when prompted. Disk Utility will take everything on the Snow Leopard Install DVD and restore that image to your thumb drive—since, like I said above, we’ll be installing Snow Leopard from our thumb drive instead of the DVD. Again, go grab yourself another drink; this will take a few minutes. When it finishes, your thumb drive has basically been turned into a Snow Leopard installation drive.

As I said earlier, the thumb drive needs a little finesse before you can boot the Snow Leopard installer on your PC hardware; let’s apply that finesse now.

Warning: Semi-heavy Terminal work ahead. It’s not that difficult, and I’ve gone into a lot of detail to make it as easy to follow along as possible, but if you’re not at least a little comfortable with the command line, it may make you pretty uncomfortable. Beg or borrow a command line geek for an afternoon, if needed.

1. Make sure your thumb drive is still plugged in, open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type in:
   diskutil list

   
   We’re interested in two pieces of information here. The first is the root identifier for your thumb drive (mine looks like disk2, as you can see in the screenshot). The second is the specific identifier for the portion of the thumb drive that contains the Snow Leopard installer. (Again, see the screenshot.) In my case, the first is disk2 and the second is disk2s2. Yours may vary depending on how many disks are on your system. Copy your identifiers down somewhere. We’ll need them later.

2. Head to the Chameleon homepage, find the Latest Releases section of the site’s sidebar, and download the latest version of Chameleon. (As of this writing, it’s Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640.) Uncompress the download and move the Chameleon folder to someplace that’s easy to access. I’m putting it on my Desktop.
3. Now, in Terminal, cd to the i386 folder of the Chameleon folder. On my Mac, the command looks like this:

   
   (1)

   cd /Users/adam/Desktop/Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640-bin/i386/

   Yours should look similar if the Chameleon folder is on your Desktop, except your username should replace mine. (Quick shortcut: In Terminal, type cd , then drag and drop i386 folder inside Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640 to Terminal.) Hit Enter.

4. You’re going to be running a couple of Terminal commands that will use Chameleon to make your thumb drive friendly to booting up the OS X installer. They are, as follows:

   (2)

   sudo fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk2

   IMPORTANT: On your computer, replace rdisk2 with whatever you copied down above. In my case, the thumb drive’s root identifier was disk2, so /dev/rdisk2 is as it should be.

   After you type in that command and hit Enter, you’ll need to enter your user password to execute it. Do so, then execute the following command, again paying special attention to the disk identifier we took note of above:

   (3)

   sudo dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk2s2

   IMPORTANT: As I noted, my Snow Leopard partition was disk2s2, so that command is right for me. You should replace the disk2s2 portion of the command with whatever you noted as the portion of your thumb drive that contains the Snow Leopard installer.

5. Now we’re going to place an awesome, custom EFI bootloader on your thumb drive that lets us load into the installer (and into Snow Leopard in general). So first, head over to netkas.org and download the bootloader from the bootloader link. Make sure you download it somewhere convenient. (Again, I’ve just downloaded it to my Desktop.)

   Now head back into Terminal, where we’re going to copy the boot file to your thumb drive. (One might think that you could just do this using Finder via drag-and-drop, but in this case, doing it via Terminal is necessary.) So, in Terminal, your command should look similar to this:

   sudo cp /Users/adam/Desktop/boot /Volumes/HackintoshInstall

   The easiest way to do this is simply type in sudo cp , (1) drag and drop the boot file into Terminal, then (2) drag and drop your mounted thumb drive from the desktop into Terminal. (The drag-and-drop method is a quick Terminal trick that pastes the full path to each file or directory.) After that, simply hit Enter. (Enter your password if necessary.)

6. I know it seems like we’ve already run a marathon, but you’ve got one last step and then it’s relatively smooth sailing from here on. Download Extra.zip, unzip the file, and then drag and drop the Extra folder into your thumb drive. Nothing fancy, a simple drag and drop with your trusty old mouse will do. Once you’ve done that, open up your thumb drive and verify that it looks something like the screenshot below. (Notice the Extra folder, the boot file, and the OS X installer.)

Take a deep breath. By this time, you’ve completed all the hard work. Now it’s time to boot up your machine, tweak your BIOS settings so they’re ready for your OS X install, and then it’s smooth sailing.

Step 2: Set Your BIOS

Before you can boot into or install OS X on your Hackintosh, you’ve got to make some small adjustments to your BIOS. Rather than taking you step by step through every change you need to make, I’ve simply snapped a picture of the relevant BIOS screens and added some notes. Just click through these images and make sure your BIOS settings match up.

Step 3: Install Snow Leopard

If you’ve made it this far, the hard part is over. Now it’s time to install Snow Leopard, which—unlike what we’ve done so far—is extremely easy.

Make sure you’ve set the boot priority in your BIOS to boot from your thumb drive (you can see how in this pic), then simply plug your prepared thumb drive into your Hackintosh and power it up. Since screenshots aren’t really an option—and since it’s a fairly easy process—my install instructions come in video format:

The quick version goes like this: Boot into the Snow Leopard installer, format the hard drive you want to install Snow Leopard to (go to Utilities -> Disk Utility, then click on the drive, select 1 Partition, Mac OS X Journaled (Case-Sensitive Update: Several readers have suggested that case-sensitive formatting can cause problems with some applications, like Adobe’s Creative Suite, so you may be better off sticking with plain old Mac OS X Journaled.), give it a name, and make sure GUID Partition Table is set in the Options. After you Apply the new partition, go back to the installer and install like normal to that drive. When you reboot after the install completes, press the arrow keys at the graphical boot menu and select the drive you just installed Snow Leopard to.

A Few Final Tweaks

You’ll notice that, the first time Snow Leopard boots up, you’re not enjoying any sound along with that snazzy intro video. We’ve got one small, but very simple tweak to make to get sound up and running. Here’s how it works:

1. Download the Kext Utility, then download this audio kext (a kext is kind of the Mac equivalent of a driver) and unzip it to your Desktop. Once you’ve got both in front of you, drag and drop the ALC889.Fix.kext file onto the Kext Utility. You’ll be prompted to enter your password, so go ahead and do that when you’re prompted.
2. Once the Kext Utility finishes running, open up Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app). Once it loads up, (1) click on your Snow Leopard drive (mine’s called Hack Leopard), then (2) click Repair Disk Permissions.
3. Once Disk Utility finishes repairing your disk permissions, just restart. After your computer reboots, your audio should be working like a charm. (If not, open up Sound in your System Preferences and try changing the Output device.)

As things stand on your system right now, you need to have your thumb drive plugged in every time you reboot in order to load the bootloader that allows your Hackintosh to load OS X. There are certain benefits to this (for example, right now you could quite likely unplug this hard drive from your Hackintosh, plug it into a Mac Pro, and it would work just fine), but it can also be a bit of a hassle. At this point, though, you can load the bootloader and other necessary components onto the Snow Leopard hard drive and change that drive to your primary boot drive in your BIOS. All you’ve got to do is head back to the step-by-step bootloader guide above and repeat every step, except this time you’re applying each step to your hard drive rather than your thumb drive.

Congratulations! You’ve Got a Fully Functional Hackintosh

“But for realz,” you ask, “does it actually work well?”

I’ve been using one or another Hackintosh as my main computer for two years now, and while I’ve run into the occasional bump in the road, they’ve generally run extremely well. In fact, things just seem to keep on getting better and better, and the current build I’m running (the one I walked you through above) feels like the fastest, most stable build to date.

That’s not to say that you won’t experience an occasional kernel panic—you may very well. But I get crashes on my MacBook Pro, too, and I’ve never felt that my current Hack Pro has any more problems than any other proper Mac I’ve used on a regular basis. That may seem a bit crazy, but it’s true.

As for upgrading—often, you’ll be able to upgrade your Hack Pro without any problems. That said, it’s something you normally need to check on beforehand, and you should take all of the upgrade precautions before giving it a go.

I’m planning on letting readers know how my Hack Pro handles various 10.6.x updates shortly after they happen, though, and if it requires a little extra work, I’ll show you how to handle it.

Let’s hear your thoughts—whether you’ve dabbled in the world of Hackintosh, are interested in doing so, or just think it’s plain crazy—in the comments.

Adam Pash is the editor of Lifehacker; he loves a good hack, cherishes his Macintosh, and craves a Mac Pro, so building a Hack Pro was a perfect fit. His special feature Hack Attack appears on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

* OS X boots in a different way than, say, Windows, using a boot tool called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface). On store-bought Macs, EFI is loaded on the hardware by default (in fact, in place of the standard BIOS most of us are used to). In order to boot OS X on our non-factory Macs, we need to create our own custom path to EFI.

Huge thanks to stellarola, Onetrack, and weaksauce12 for all their help in getting me up to speed on installing Snow Leopard on a Hackintosh PC. The Hackintosh community is large and active, and they are awesome.

Go to Source

How to Build a Hackintosh with Snow Leopard, Start to Finish [How To] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on September 7, 2009.

In this post we are glad to release Creative by Nature, a unique and flexible high-quality portfolio WordPress theme for artists, photographers and designers. The theme was designed by .css{mayo} and released especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Download the theme for free!

Creative by Nature is a free portfolio theme created by CSSMayo.com and released especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The designers created a funky theme, particularly useful for artists, photographers and designers who are looking for a flexible portfolio solution. The theme’s .zip-package includes all necessary files, server installation guide and a help file which describes how to add entries to your portfolio section. Besides, a PSD source file is available for free download as well.

The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this post and also to CSSMayo Release Post if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.

• live demo
• preview
• download the theme (.zip, 2.8 Mb)
• download the PSD-source (.zip, 20.1 Mb)

Installation guidelines

1. Download the latest version of “Creative by nature” theme either here or here
2. Unzip and upload the theme to your “wp-content/themes/” directory
3. In WordPress, go to “Appearance > Themes” and activate the “Creative by nature” theme
4. In the theme archive you’ll find file creative_by_nature-export.xml. Import it to your WordPress installation from “Tools > Import > WordPress”
5. Go to “Settings > Reading” and:

• Check “A static page (select below)” in “Front page displays” field.
• Select “Home” in “Front page: ” drop-down menu
• Select “Blog” in “Posts page: ” drop-down menu

Adding Portfolio Entry

Here are instructions for adding portfolio entries:

1. Go to “Pages > Add new”
2. Enter Portfolio entry title
3. Insert your image into the post(preffered image size: 290×230 px), then add “more” tag. Add short description for the entry, then add one more “more” tag. Then enter the remaining text. (Check out test portfolio entries for example)
4. You may also enter custom fields “url” if you want to add additional information to each portfolio entry.
5. You’ll need to setup few things in “Attributes” section:

• Choose “Portfolio” page for page parent
• In “Template” field select “Portfolio Item”
• You may also enter position field if you want to specify the order of portfolio entries.

Thank you very much, folks! We appreciate your efforts.

© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2009. |
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Post tags: downloads, free, themes, wordpress

Go to Source

Free Portfolio WordPress Theme: Creative by Nature originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on August 1, 2009.

Comments sections are neglected on many blogs. That is definitely a bad thing, because comments represent interaction between you and your readers. In this article, we’ll have a look at 10 great tips and hacks to enhance your blog’s comments section and give it the quality it deserves.

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• 5 Useful And Creative Ways To Use WordPress Widgets
• Power Tips For WordPress Template Developers
• 10 Useful WordPress Loop Hacks
• Custom Field Hacks For WordPress
• 15 Useful Twitter Hacks and Plugins For WordPress
• Mastering WordPress Shortcuts
• 100 Amazing Free WordPress Themes For 2009

1. Add Action Links To Comments

The problem.
Whether or not you allow readers to add comments without having to be approved, you will often need to edit, delete or mark certain comments as spam. By default, WordPress shows the “Edit” link on comments (using the edit_comment_link() function) but not “Delete” or “Spam” links. Let’s add them.

The solution.
First, we have to create a function. Paste the code below in your functions.php file:

function delete_comment_link($id) {
  if (current_user_can('edit_post')) {
    echo '| <a href="'.admin_url("comment.php?action=cdc&c=$id").'">del</a> ';
    echo '| <a href="'.admin_url("comment.php?action=cdc&dt=spam&c=$id").'">spam</a>';
  }
}

Once you have saved functions.php, open up your comments.php file, and add the following code where you want the “Delete” and “Spam” links to appear. They must go in the comment loop. In most themes, you’ll find an edit_comment_link() declaration. Add the code in just after that.

delete_comment_link(get_comment_ID());

Code explanation.
The first thing we did, of course, was to make sure the current user has permission to edit comments. If so, links to delete and mark a comment as spam are displayed. Note the use of the admin_url() function, which allows you to retrieve your blog admin’s URL.

Source:

• How to: Add “Delete” and “Spam” buttons to your comments.

2. Separate TrackBacks From Comments

The problem.
Do your posts have a lot of TrackBacks? Mine do. Trackbacks are cool because they allow your readers to see which articles from other blogs relate to yours. But the more TrackBacks you have, the harder the discussion is to follow. Separating comments from TrackBacks, then, is definitely something to consider, especially if you do not use the “Reply” capabilities introduced in WordPress 2.7.

The solution.
Open and edit the comments.php file in your theme. Find the comment loop, which looks like the following:

foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
    // Comments are displayed here
endforeach;

Once you have that, replace it with the code below:

<ul class="commentlist">
    <?php //Displays comments only
	foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
       	<?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
       	<?php if($comment_type == 'comment') { ?>
	    <li>//Comment code goes here</li>
	<?php }
    endforeach;
</ul>

<ul>
    <?php //Displays trackbacks only
	foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
       	<?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
       	<?php if($comment_type != 'comment') { ?>
	    <li><?php comment_author_link() ?></li>
	<?php }
    endforeach;

</ul>

Code explanation.
Nothing hard about this code. The get_comment_type() function tells you if something is a regular comment or a TrackBack. We simply have to create two HTML lists, filling the first with regular comments and the second with TrackBacks.

Source:

• Jamie asks: How do I display comments and TrackBacks separately?

3. Get Rid Of HTML Links In Comments

The problem.
Bloggers are always looking to promote their blogs, and spammers are everywhere. One thing that totally annoys me on my blogs is the incredible amount of links left in comments, which are usually irrelevant. By default, WordPress transforms URLs in comments to links. Thankfully, if you’re as tired of comment links as I am, this can be overwritten.

The solution.
Simply open your function.php file and paste in this code:

function plc_comment_post( $incoming_comment ) {
	$incoming_comment['comment_content'] = htmlspecialchars($incoming_comment['comment_content']);
	$incoming_comment['comment_content'] = str_replace( "'", ''', $incoming_comment['comment_content'] );
	return( $incoming_comment );
}

function plc_comment_display( $comment_to_display ) {
	$comment_to_display = str_replace( ''', "'", $comment_to_display );
	return $comment_to_display;
}

add_filter('preprocess_comment', 'plc_comment_post', '', 1);
add_filter('comment_text', 'plc_comment_display', '', 1);
add_filter('comment_text_rss', 'plc_comment_display', '', 1);
add_filter('comment_excerpt', 'plc_comment_display', '', 1);

Once you have saved the file, say goodbye to links and other undesirable HTML in your comments.

Code explanation.
The first thing we did was create two functions that replace HTML characters with HTML entities. Then, using the powerful add_filter() WordPress function, we hooked the standard WordPress comments processing functions to the two functions we just created. This makes sure that any comments added will have their HTML filtered out.

Sources:

• How to: get rid of links in your comments
• How to disable HTML in WordPress comments

4. Use Twitter Avatars In Comments

The problem.
Bloggers find Twitter very useful because it allows them to promote their blog and stay connected to other bloggers and their own audience. Because of Twitter’s popularity, why not illustrate comments with Twitter avatars instead of the normal gravatars?

The solution.

1. The first thing to do is get the functions file here.
2. Once you have that, unzip the archive to your hard drive, and then open the twittar.php file.
3. Select all of its content and paste it to your blog’s functions.php file.
4. The last thing to do is open your comments.php file and find the comments loop.
5. Paste the following line in the comments loop:

   <?php twittar('45', 'default.png', '#e9e9e9', 'twitavatars', 1, 'G'); ?>

Code explanation.
Some months ago here at Smashing Magazine, an awesome plug-in named Twittar was released. Its purpose is to allow you to use Twitter avatars on your WordPress blog. Because of the number of requests I received from WpRecipes.com readers, I decided to turn the plug-in into a hack, for people who prefer hacks to plug-ins.

Of course, you could simply install the plug-in rather than insert its content into your function.php file. It’s up to you.

Sources:

• Twitter avatars in comments
• How to: Use Twitter avatars in comments

5. Set Apart Author Comments With Style

The problem.
For blog posts that have a lot of comments, finding the author’s comments and responses to reader questions is not always easy, especially if the blog don’t have WordPress 2.7’s threaded comments feature. Happily, it is possible to give author comments a different style so that readers can always quickly find your answers.

The solution.

1. Open the comments.php file and find the comment loop:

   <?php foreach comment as $comment) { ?>

2. After that line, paste in the following:

   <?php
   $isByAuthor = false;
   if($comment->comment_author_email == get_the_author_email()) {
   $isByAuthor = true;
   }
   ?>

3. Once that’s done, find the line of code that represents comments (it may vary depending on your theme):

   <li class="<?php echo $oddcomment; ?>" id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">

4. Now we have to output the authorcomment class if the comment was made by the author:

   <li class="<?php echo $oddcomment; ?> <?php if($isByAuthor ) {
    echo 'authorcomment';} ?>" id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">

5. The last thing we do is create a CSS class for author comments. Open the style.css file and insert the code. Replace the example colors with your colors of choice.

   .authorcomment{
   	color:#fff;
   	font-weight:bold;
   	background:#068;
   }

Code explanation.
Basically, this code compares each email address left by a commentator to the author’s email address. If they match, the $isByAuthor is set to true. When comments are displayed on screen, the value of $isByAuthor is checked. If it returns true, then the authorcomment class is added to the container.

It can be done more easily on WordPress 2.7+ by just adding comment_class(); to the comment’s DIV, which automatically adds the class bypostauthor when you’re commenting on your own post (Thanks, Nima!).

Source:

• Highlight Author Comments in WordPress

6. Display Total Number Of Comments And Average Number Of Comments Per Post

The problem.
On your blog’s dashboard, WordPress tells you how many total comments your blog has received. Unfortunately, there’s no function for displaying this information publicly. Displaying the total number of comments on your blog and average number of comments per post can be very helpful, especially if you have a page for advertising opportunities.

The solution.

<?php
$count_posts = wp_count_posts();
$posts = $count_posts->publish;

$count_comments = get_comment_count();
$comments  = $count_comments['approved'];

echo "There's a total of ".$comments." comments on my blog, with an average ".round($comments/$posts)." comments per post.";
?>

Code explanation.
Introduced in version 2.5, the wp_count_posts() and get_comment_count() functions allow you to easily retrieve the total number of posts and comments, respectively, on your WordPress blog. To derive the average number of comments per post, we have to do a bit of simple math, using the PHP round() function to make sure we end up with an integer.

Source:

• How to: Display your average number of comments per posts

7. Display X Number Of Most Recent Comments

The problem.
By default, WordPress provides a widget that outputs a list of however many of the most recent comments. This is great, but sometimes you want this functionality without a widget.

The solution.
This hack is very simple: just paste this code wherever you need a certain number of the most recent comments to be displayed. Don’t forget to specify the actual number on line 3 (after the LIMIT SQL clause).

<?php
  $pre_HTML ="";
  $post_HTML ="";
  global $wpdb;
  $sql = "SELECT DISTINCT ID, post_title, post_password, comment_ID, comment_post_ID, comment_author, comment_date_gmt, comment_approved, comment_type,comment_author_url, SUBSTRING(comment_content,1,30) AS com_excerpt FROM $wpdb->comments LEFT OUTER JOIN $wpdb->posts ON ($wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID = $wpdb->posts.ID) WHERE comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type = '' AND post_password = '' ORDER BY comment_date_gmt DESC LIMIT 10";

  $comments = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
  $output = $pre_HTML;
  $output .= "\n<ul>";
  foreach ($comments as $comment) {
    $output .= "\n<li>".strip_tags($comment->comment_author) .":" . "<a href=\"" . get_permalink($comment->ID)."#comment-" . $comment->comment_ID . "\" title=\"on ".$comment->post_title . "\">" . strip_tags($comment->com_excerpt)."</a></li>";
  }
  $output .= "\n</ul>";
  $output .= $post_HTML;
  echo $output;
?>

Code explanation.
As in the last hack, we use the $wpdb object here, too, this time with the get_results() method. Once the comments have been retrieved by the WordPress database, we simply use a for loop to concatenate the comments into an HTML unordered list. The $pre_HTML and $post_HTML variables, initialized at the top of this code, allow you to define which content should go before and after the comments list.

Sources:

• How to: List most recent comments
• Huge Compilation of WordPress Code

8. Easily Prevent Comment Spam

The problem.
Comment spam is such a pain for everyone. Akismet is a good solution, but why not block spammers outright instead of just marking their comments as suspected spam? This code looks for the HTTP referrer (the page where the request comes from) and automatically blocks the comment if the referrer is incorrect or not defined.

The solution.
Paste the following code in your functions.php file:

function check_referrer() {
    if (!isset($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) || $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] == “”) {
        wp_die( __('Please enable referrers in your browser, or, if you\'re a spammer, bugger off!') );
    }
}

add_action('check_comment_flood', 'check_referrer');

That’s all. Once you’ve saved the file, your blog will have a new level of protection against spam.

Code explanation.
This code automatically rejects any request for comment posting coming from a browser (or, more commonly, a bot) that has no referrer in the request. Checking is done with the PHP $_SERVER[] array. If the referrer is not defined or is incorrect, the wp_die function is called and the script stops its execution.

This function is hooked to WordPress’ check_comment_flood() function. This way, we can be sure that our check_referrer() function is called each time a comment is posted.

Source:

• Yoast.com

9. Keep WordPress Backwards Compatible With Versions Older Than 2.7

The problem.
Released some months ago, WordPress 2.7 introduced a totally new commenting system, allowing you to thread comments and display them on separate pages. Although this is great, keep in mind if you are creating a theme for a client or for online distribution that many users still haven’t upgraded their installation to version 2.8 or even 2.7. This code allows 2.7+ users to benefit from the new commenting system, while keeping the old system functional for people with older versions.

The solution.
You’ll need two files for this recipe: the first is a WordPress 2.7 compatible comments file called comments.php. The second is a comment template for older WordPress versions called legacy.comments.php. Both of these files go in your theme directory.

Paste this code in your functions.php file.

<?php
add_filter('comments_template', 'legacy_comments');

function legacy_comments($file) {
	if(!function_exists('wp_list_comments')) : // WP 2.7-only check
		$file = TEMPLATEPATH.'/legacy.comments.php';
	endif;
	return $file;
}
?>

Code explanation.
This code creates a function called legacy_comments(), which is hooked to WordPress comments_template function. Each time WordPress calls comments_template(), our legacy_comments() function is executed. If the wp_list_comments() function doesn’t exist, the code automatically loads legacy.comments.php instead of comments.php.

Sources:

• Making your theme’s comments compatible with WordPress 2.7 and earlier versions
• How to: make your comments template compatible with WordPress 2.7 and older versions

10. Display Most Commented Posts From A Certain Period

The problem.
Number of comments is a good way to measure a blog post’s popularity and is a good filter for displaying a list of your most popular posts. Another great idea is to restrict a list of your most popular posts to a particular period, like “Last month’s most popular posts,” for example.

The solution.
Simply paste the following code where you’d like your most commented posts to be displayed. Don’t forget to change the dates values on line 3 according to your needs.

<ul>
<?php
$result = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT comment_count,ID,post_title, post_date FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_date BETWEEN '2009-06-01' AND '2009-07-01' ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0 , 10");

foreach ($result as $topten) {
    $postid = $topten->ID;
    $title = $topten->post_title;
    $commentcount = $topten->comment_count;
    if ($commentcount != 0) {
    ?>
         <li><a href="<?php echo get_permalink($postid); ?>"><?php echo $title ?></a></li>
    <?php }
}
?>
</ul>

Code explanation.
The first thing we did was send out an SQL query to the WordPress database using the $wpdb object. Once we got the results, we used a simple PHP foreach statement to display the most popular posts from a certain period in an HTML unordered list.

Source:

• How to: Display the most commented posts of 2008

Related posts

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• 5 Useful And Creative Ways To Use WordPress Widgets
• Power Tips For WordPress Template Developers
• 10 Useful WordPress Loop Hacks
• Custom Field Hacks For WordPress
• 15 Useful Twitter Hacks and Plugins For WordPress
• Mastering WordPress Shortcuts
• 100 Amazing Free WordPress Themes For 2009

About the Author

This guest post was written by Jean-Baptiste Jung, a 27-year-old blogger from Belgium, who blogs about WordPress at WpRecipes, about practical Web development tips at Cats Who Code and about Photoshop and Web design at PsdVibe. You can stay in touch with Jean by following him on Twitter.

(al)

© Jean-Baptiste Jung for Smashing Magazine, 2009. |
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Go to Source

10 Handy WordPress Comments Hacks originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on July 23, 2009.

UIF, didn’t that die?

Well, thanks to this post at Life Rocks 2.0, I converted the UIF file to the standard ISO format!

UIF (Universal Image Format) is an image compression format developed by Magic ISO. Universal Image Format(UIF) is a powerful compression image file format for backing up CD/DVD. It is fast, reliable, and has rich set of features which include password-protected, data encryption, MD5 checksum support and much more. UIF format is available for Windows and if you are using Linux/Ubuntu, you need to convert UIF to ISO format.

How to Convert UIF to ISO Format

You can convert UIF files to ISO using the freeware application UIF2ISO by Luigi Auriemma’s for Linux. This is a command line convertor for changing file type UIF to ISO format.

1. First Step is to install install zlib and OpenSSL with apt-get.

sudo apt-get install zlib1g zlib1g-dev libssl-dev build-essential

2. Second step is to download the freeware from the authors site.

wget http://aluigi.altervista.org/mytoolz/uif2iso.zip

3. Once the file is downloaded we need to unzip it.

unzip uif2iso.zip

cd src

4. Create the executable by compiling the code.

make

sudo make install

5. To Convert the files from UIF to ISO format, use this command

uif2iso example.uif output.iso

Here example.uif is the file to be converted and output.iso is the output file.

UIF in Linux originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on June 3, 2009.

]]> http://shaiperednik.com/2009/06/uif-in-linux/feed/ 0 http://shaiperednik.com/2009/05/auto-update-to-latest-chromium-build/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=auto-update-to-latest-chromium-build http://shaiperednik.com/2009/05/auto-update-to-latest-chromium-build/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 19:07:21 +0000 Shai Perednik http://shaiperednik.com/?p=132 Finaly got Chromium running on my Ubuntu 8.04 Machine.

You could download it from http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-linux/

Below is a script that will download the current Chromium build and get it ready to run.

Theres not much to it, but it automates the process.

6/1/09 Update – I noticed that CRON ran in the user directory, so I fixed that.  Also added an rm to remove any old downloaded zips.  I ran the CRON job manualy and it works.  So we’ll see tomorrow to see if it works.

#CODE START

#!/bin/sh

#Buy Shai Perednik 5/29/09

#Change directory

cd /home/shai/Chromium

#Delete any existing LATEST files

rm LATEST

#Delete any old Chromium Zip Downloads

rm chrome-linux.zip*

#Download the LATEST file that contains the newest chromium build for linux

wget http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-linux/LATEST

#reads the last line of LATEST file

VAL=`cat LATEST |cut -f1`

#Download the latest Snapshot

wget “http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-linux/$VAL/chrome-linux.zip”

#Kill Any Existing Chrome Proceses

killall gchrome

#Extract the archive

unzip -o chrome-linux

#Make the chrome file executable

chmod +x chrome-linux/chrome

#End Code

Auto Update to Latest Chromium Build originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on May 29, 2009.

]]> http://shaiperednik.com/2009/05/auto-update-to-latest-chromium-build/feed/ 1 http://shaiperednik.com/2009/05/large-ziped-drivers/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=large-ziped-drivers http://shaiperednik.com/2009/05/large-ziped-drivers/#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 18:15:00 +0000 Shai Perednik http://shaiperednik.com/2009/05/large-ziped-drivers/ I need a driver for a DLink NIC card for win98. The dirver on DLINKS site is 18MB!!!

Why do manufactures insist on bundling all os drivers together?

WobZip has saved me again! Extracts the zip on their server and I can download only what I need!

Thank you WobZip!!!

Large ZIPed Drivers originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on May 20, 2009.

]]> http://shaiperednik.com/2009/05/large-ziped-drivers/feed/ 0