If you have ever used WordPress in any fashion then you have probably heard of Alex King. He is responsible for some great contributions to the open-source community including being a founding developer of WordPress and some excellent WordPress plugins and themes.

Alex is also the founder of Crowd Favorite, a web development company who specialize in WordPress development and web-based applications.

As the founder of WebDevStudios, my new web development company who also happens to specialize in using open-source technologies, I’m looking forward to asking Alex a few questions to gain from his experience in the industry.

Make sure to join the WordPress Weekly Podcast LIVE tonight at 10pm EST on TalkShoe.com

The great folks at Prevention First, a not-for-profit agency, and the city of Asbury Park New Jersey will be joining together to host Chess Fest 2008 on September 27th. The event is going to try to break a Guinness Book of World Record for most simultaneous chess games. The current record was set in 2006 in Mexico City with 13,500 chess players.

“ChessFest 2008 will be star-studded and attract the world’s finest and most famous chess players. Pre-event chess-related festivities are planned for the week prior to the event and include a movie, a play and much more.”

Chess Fest Social Presence
We are currently working on building a “social presence” for the event. Currently we have launched four social network accounts:

Chess Fest Facebook Group - The obvious first choice. Facebook is becoming the standard for organized groups and events in a social community.

Chess Fest MySpace Group - by far the most annoying site to create an account for. Now have to wait 7 days before being “allowed” to create a group. coming soon I guess…

Chess Fest Ning Social Network - Ning is an awesome site that allows you to create a social network within minutes! Really looking forward to growing this site and getting the discussions going!

Chess Fest Twitter Account - Of course our good, and sometimes bad, friend Twitter is here. Twitter is a great tool to send out short blurbs and news posts for anyone looking for more information on the chess fest.

These four sites will help us spread the word and build a network of enthusiastic chess players! The next phase will include a couple more networks and possibly a social network application or two.

Now I need to study my chess moves so I don’t get hit with a Fool’s mate at the festival!

Sounds easy right? Of course! I quickly found many sites that recommended this rewrite rule using mod_rewrite:

RewriteRule ^(.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

However there is a problem with this method that no article seemed to address. This works great at redirecting from the subdomain (http://newsite.domain.com) to the new domain (http://domain.com), BUT if you navigate to http://domain.com you will hit an infinite loop.

So, how do you correct this problem? Easy, you need to create a rewrite condition to only apply the rule to your old domain or the subdomain in this case. Just add the following two lines to your .htaccess file in the root of your website:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(newsite.)?domain.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Now this rewrite rule will ONLY apply to anyone who hits the old subdomain at http://newsite.domain.com and 301 redirect them to http://domain.com with the entire URL structure in tact. This method is easy to apply to a stand domain as well, just replace newsite in the above example with www.

I was pretty baffled at the amount of bad information there is on this method so thought I would share the proper method with everyone. Hopefully the update rewrite rules will help anyone having the same issues I had.

We covered a lot of topics including the release of WordPress 2.6 beta one and the launch of WPForSale.com.

Jeff also announced that he is looking for a co-host. If you are interested in co-hosting a great WordPress podcast make sure you contact him ASAP! Rumor has it there is a nice finders fee!

Be sure to catch the next episode of WordPress Weekly on Friday July 11th when we will be interviewing Alex King of WordPress plugin fame!

This plugin will display the most recent posts from all blogs in a WordPress MU network. The Aggregator only returns blogs updated in the last 30 days.

Created for WordPress MU 1.5.1

Features:

• Supports permalinks, non-friendly links (querystrings), or a mixture of both
• Pulls new posts directly from the database, not an RSS feed
• Main WordPress MU install is not displayed in the list
• Style-less to allow for easy implementation in any theme.
• Easy to read comments for easy edits and styling
• More features and sidebar widgets coming soon

Installation:
Step 1.
Unzip the file and upload wordpressMU-aggregator.php to your WordPress plugin folder.

Step 2.
Active the plugin in your WordPress Admin section under the plugins menu

Step 3.
Insert this code:

<php wp_mu_aggregator(10); ?>

Anywhere in your theme. That’s it! Change the number to alter how many posts are returned.

Download: WordPress MU Aggregator Plugin v0.5

Please comment with any bugs, comments, feature requests, or hate mail!

I decided to install Apache HTTP Server on my dedicated Windows Server 2003 machine. I thought I would write a detailed article explaining the process for anyone else wanting to accomplish the same task. With just a few minor config changes you can easily have IIS and Apache running alongside each other on the same Windows server.

Step 1: Download Apache Server Win32 Binary (MSI Installer) from http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi
Step 2: Install Apache with the default settings. Read the Apache Windows Help Documentation for more information.

In order to run IIS and Apache on a single server you need to specify what IP IIS and Apache will listen for port 80 on. You must have two different IP addresses available for use.

Step 3: For Apache: Edit the http.conf file to force Apache to run on a specific IP. Find the below text in your http.conf file. If you left the default install location unchanged the file will be located here:
C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\httpd.conf

# Listen: Allows you to bind Apache to specific IP addresses and/or
# ports, instead of the default. See also the
# directive.
#
# Change this to Listen on specific IP addresses as shown below to
# prevent Apache from glomming onto all bound IP addresses.
#
#Listen 12.34.56.78:80
Listen 80

Change the line Listen 80 to:
Listen xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:80

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the private IP address you want Apache to listen on.

Step 4: For IIS: Install the Windows 2003 support tools.
Insert your Windows 2003 CD and open up the file:
\SUPPORT\TOOLS\SUPTOOLS.MSI
This will install additional support tools in “C:\Program Files\Support Tools”

Open up a command prompt (start menu > run > cmd)

At the command prompt, switch to the “C:\Program Files\Support Tools” folder (cd /d c:\program files\support tools)

Type the following command:

httpcfg set iplisten -i xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the private IP address you want IIS to listen on. This must be a different IP from the one used above for Apache.

Restart IIS and Apache for the changes to take affect. You might need to reboot depending on your server settings. Now IIS and Apache will run in harmony on the same Windows 2003 Server!

Troubleshooting Apache
If you run it to problems, the first place to start debugging is in your Apache error.log file. The file is located in your root Apache folder logs directory. The default install location is:
C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\logs\error.log

Common Errors
An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions. : make_sock: could not bind to address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:80

You will receive this error in your error.log if IIS is still listening on the private IP that you set for Apache. If you followed my directions correctly an IIS reset should resolve this problem. If you are still having issues try rebooting your server.

Startup Weekend Indianapolis has been scheduled for Friday September 12th through Sunday September 14th 2008. You can register online if you plan on attending.

I’ve participated in two Startup Weekends to date, but only for one night each time. As luck would have it I should be back for that weekend. I’m flying back to attend the MotoGP race in Indianapolis with my Dad the weekend after.

I’m looking forward to the event and can’t wait to reconnect with some Indy Techies!

Don’t think I’m not keeping an eye on you guys!

Matt will be taking questions from the panel and anyone joining the live podcast. Have a question for Matt? Join in! The show is recording live on TalkShoe.com which allows everyone to participate.

We will be covering a wide range of topics with Matt including WordPress Trademark Usage, Status Updates on all Automattic projects, new updates in WordPress 2.5, and the future of WordPress.

I’m already compiling a list of questions for Matt and am really looking forward to this episode. Be sure to catch the show live tonight at 9pm EST on TalkShoe.com!

SitePoint launched the CSS Reference in March of 2008, and just last week launched the HTML beta reference!

These reference sites couldn’t be easier to use and cover languages relatable to all web developers including HTML, CSS, and a soon to launch section on JavaScript. You can either search for specific elements or drill down in the easy to navigate categories.

Reference sites and books are great for developers like myself that know how to program, but need help remembering syntax from time to time. Do yourself a favor now and bookmark this site!

I’ve decided to shift focus on my technologies track a little. I’ve always programmed with Microsoft technologies including classic ASP, ASP.NET, VB, SQL Server, etc. I’ve been developing dynamic websites with classic ASP for almost 8 years now and I still love that language. I use ASP.NET occasionally when the project calls for it, but I love scripting languages. I’ve decided to focus my efforts on PHP rather than ASP.NET.

Scripting has always come natural to me, so why focus on a more object-oriented language? Exactly, so from this point on I will be primarily developing in ASP and PHP. The logic is the same as ASP, just different syntax so the switch won’t be too dramatic.

Expect to see some sweet PHP applications rolling out in the coming months!