Dovecot version 1.0.0 finally released, after almost 5 years of development.

Dovecot is IMAP and POP3 server, it is one of the best and easiest servers I ever worked with, easy enough for home environment, and flexible and powerful enough for service providers.

I’ve tested it earlier before and hopefully we will migrate to it later this year.

Dovecot integrate very well with Postfix mail server (Postfix handle SMTP, Dovecot handle POP3+IMAP), and can easily support virtual hosting.

On of the cool new features of WordPress 2.1 is “Front Page” options it allows you to make WordPress front page a static page instead of showing latest post.
This make WordPress suitable as CMS for small websites, without any heavy customizations.

UPDATE: I found an easier way to do the same thing Check it out

In my blog I write in both languages English and Arabic, but I have to switch text direction from the template default English direction “Left to Right” to Arabic “Right to Left”.

One way do to it is to add HTML tags in each Arabic entry.

Another way to do it is to utilize WordPress “Custom Fields” feature, WordPress allows you to add custom fields to any entry, so I add a new custom field to my Arabic entries, the key will be “wp_direction” and the value will be “rtl”.

استغرب على العربية.نت تركيزهم على بعض الاخبار التي لاتستحق ذكر، لكنها تثير الجماهير.
وعلى عكس القناة المرئية فهي لاتبدو بمظهر متزن، بل هي اشبه بصحف التابلويد.
هل سنظل نتابع اخبار المرتدين، والشاذين، والعاهرات، لفترة طويلة على هذا الموقع ام سيؤدي دورة المفترض كموقع اخباري متزن.

Lighttpd web server is becoming major player in the web server space, according to Netcraft Lighttpd is the 4th most popular web server on the net, and it is moving fast!

Riyadh is a very big city, with 5.5 Million person sharing it streets, driving in Riyadh can be one of the worst experiences you may ever have.
Many people nowadays avoid the pressure of commuting and prefer to stay at home, I am a big example 🙁
The secret to enjoy the city is to use taxi to go wherever you want, and preferably stay in the back seat, and void the habit of looking at the road and try to enjoy the ride, you will be surprised of how many new things changed without you noticing it.
The other option to enjoy the city is Weekend mornings, Thursday morning is the best, business are open and the traffic is lighter that other days, Friday morning is nice with no one in the roads, but there is no places to go 🙁 may be you will find small fool restaurants, it can be ideal if you want to explore new places in Riyadh.

My dear Friend Fahad AlShenaifi finally found a time to launch his blog, http://fahadblog.com/wordpress/

The blog in English, and talk about Ubuntu, computer security, and him self.

Don’t miss his photo gallery.

After moving alriyadh.com to Lighttpd I had some problem making a CakePHP application I wrote to work properly.

I searched the net for a solution and I found this post, but unfortunately the solution they proposed didn’t work, I spent several hours trying to make it work until I gave up, I decide to do it from scratch and luckily it worked.

The mod_rewrite rules I used in lighttpd.conf file:

url.rewrite-once = (
"^/cake/(css|files|img|js|stats)/(.*)$" => "/cake/app/webroot/$1/$2",
"^/cake/(.*)$" => "/cake/app/webroot/index.php?url=$1"
)

Where cake is you cakePHP application.

When you build AJAX based form, you need to provide visual feedback to tell the user that something is really happening.

I created small template for this purpose:

Ajax Form

Hopefully you will see it in the next alriyadh.com CSS based theme 🙂

Inpired by Flickr’s Dirty Little Secret post, about how Flickr thumbnails make the photo prettier than the original photo.

The article suggest that Flick sharpen the image before it resize it.

So I did my own test, this the result and you are the judge:

Image 1, normal resize.

Image 2, sharpen before resize.

Sharpened and saturated +100:

All I need to know is how to do it from inside PHP.