1. Password protecting a subdirectory is not so easy if you’re using WordPress. Here is a discussion and 2 possible solutions.

At the top of /.htaccess add these 2 lines:
ErrorDocument 401 ./error.html
ErrorDocument 403 ./error.html

2. Force Chrome to re-prompt for credentials of a Basic Auth password protected directory – solution found here:

It seems chrome will always show you the login prompt if you include a username in the url e.g.
http://username@mysite.com

3. An old post that I forgot to publish 3 years ago. Found it in the drafts: 3 things about cfcache

More than 2 years and a half after the first post, it was the time for a visual change. For a long time I wanted to switch to a responsive WordPress theme, and Boston-Theme was exactly what I needed.
The goals for the new theme were:

• responsive
• minimalist
• 2-columns

Now theme is optimized for readability and is waiting for some useful content 🙂 I am only updating this blog now and then, so the Twitter widget in the left side is the part with the most frequent changes.

The before and after screenshots:

There are some parts that I still need to improve:

• the Syntax highlighter – not getting along very well with the theme default code styling
• the images of the existing posts – uploaded at full size, but shown at 558px with links to full size
• the Golden ratio (present in the previous version) is now gone, so I must thing about another geeky, subliminal feature

Update: The flickr widget is now one click away, in the right sandwich menu, while the CloudFlare is running smoothly in the background.

We’re already more than one month into 2012, and I still notice websites showing 2011 in their footer copyright notice.
3 examples:
http://webdesignerwall.com/
http://sixrevisions.com/
http://zipalong.com/

The solution is really simple – use PHP’s date("Y") function to get the current year (or any similar functions for the alternative server side languages). No need to manually update your theme’s footer every 1st of January 🙂

<!-- replace -->
&copy; 2011
<!-- with -->
&copy; <?php echo date("Y"); ?>

Today, the users are scrolling to the end of the page. So it’s more likely for them to discover such simple mistakes that look simply unprofessional. It’s time to fix that!