Vyoma

Well Vujsa, being the artistic person I am, the texture on the header area and the rest of the colour choice - I found it a bit hard to digest. The pastel green is fine, but may be you need to balance the colours a bit. The link on the breadcrumb at the top, looks a bit too saturated yellow. I know, I am talking a bit vaugely, but here is what I will do to help: http://www.wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html Just select the base colour you want, and it gives the other balanced colours that makes the site look balanced. It proposes various schemes within the colour set you have chosen. In the Tetrad formation of the colour wheel, when it is set on the overall green of your site, here is the set of colour I get: The Green series #009999 #006B6B #BFFFFF #80FFFF The orange series #FF6600 #B34700 #FFD9BF #FFB380 The ochre series #FFB200 #B37D00 #FFECBF #FFD980 And blue series #1919B3 #12127D #C8C8FF #9191FF This is ofcourse in the standard setting. You can choose a Pastel, Dark Pastel, Contrast or Pale, and you get different set of 12 colours. Use them appropriately in your CSS and I think you will get a better colour balance. I know this will be a lot of work - but you asked for it.

Thank you for your inputs Pyost. Yes, I did want to make the text to look a bit pixelated. The theme would soon grow to integrate some of the pixel arts I am in the process of making for the realm (of the RPG). And the fonts I used for tabs should be smaller? I am not very sure of that, because if I do that, it would look quite ok on a 800x600, but on a 1024x786 they look too small. I could have gone for a smaller font size, but again, I need it to have the weight, and if it becomes bold, it become illegible (with out the antialiasing, ofcourse). Now, I am in the process of creating content for the RPG. I have created some. I have it as a PDF document now. Is there anyway I can show it to you guys here? Or may be, I will just put it up in Writely and make it public. ... I need to now organize it and put it up in the proper forum sections. But before that, I think I should be installing SMF in my Xisto account.

Yay. My name is there too! That is what I was wondering. I saw that your webpage was suspended for quite some time, and I was a bit alarmed. I pinged dhanesh about it, but he did not seem to have the answer. (Seems like he too is not around these days). Anyway, wish you all the best in your life, and hope you fare well in that (qutie costly) city of Mumbai. I too am employed, but luckily I can spend time surfing net at home most of the days.

Actually, we do need to change that folder name in the theme settings if we need to put custom images other than the standard ones. I finally seem to have completed the themeing. Here is a screenshot of the forum I have running on my local system:

Here I am quoting myself to fork out of the discussion thread we are having in this section itself: Anyway, the title of this thread, PaidPostingTools.com, I found just now. I was amazed my what opportunities people find. I mean, I do not know the credibility of this site and I am not asking any of you to gauge the sites credibility on my word. I have put it in the title, for sake of example. I mean, just look at it from business perspective. There is a need: Forum administrators want members - active members. So, the supply? Freelancers pitch in and deal with them. This is the sort of thing I did, as I mentioned in the quote above. Next level? There are these 'Forum Posting Service Companies' that have the ability to pool writers, and supply the demand of Forum Administrators/owners. Now, out of this solution PaidPostingTools.com found another need: A solution for both the companies and forum owners to manage their transaction. They even included the free writers to be able to join the pool through their system. It brings up an integrated approach. Now, I am not sure what value a Forum has in the first place, but I must say many things are happening. So, just peel your eyes and look out, and grab on the opportunity that arises out of needs, and also out of need and supply chains.

Ooh? Is it that? I just thought it was a self extractible zip that contained a text file within it. If it wanted to install somethings, I would have denied it ofcourse.But I did hear that Site Build It is a reputable site that does not belive in the concept of become-rich-quick and such similar antics that others try to pull. It has pointers to webmasters on how to monetize their site and also to business people on how to lauch a website to increase their revenue.But anyway Mark420, asking for a download manager is suspcious. I would better avoid it.

Damn. I am in a network where I cannot download a .exe. Do you have any link where I can find the text version of it? This particular network does not let me download any .exe or .zip. (It does let me download .tar.gz - dont ask me why, ask the admin).

Well, I did set those up at the Google settings. It is 'Forwarding and POP' (not 'Redirection and POP'). Anyway, I did do it at the Google Mail Account itself.The problem now is just that, it starts downloading, and if the server times out, and when it tries to start downloading, it still does the old ones.And sometimes like I stated above, it just wont download at all. It would just be - it wont hang up or something. During those times, the internet connection is fine, because I would be browsing the net or downloading something.

Hmmm... seems like a handy module. I would just keep away from it for a while though for my site. Anyway, I am not exactly sure how this could cause problems. Have you tried to disable the module (do not uninstall it, just disable) and see if the problem remains. If the problem remains, then it might be possible that this module is not the cause. Else, I would say you take it to the support forums and also raise a ticket against this module in there.

So, I think, the safest way to do it would be to make a copy of Themes/default/images into Themes/new_theme/images, and then proceed to replace all the images within it one by one?Also, within the Theme settings, I think I need to make it to point to Themes/new_theme/images for images. Anyway, thanks for the help, and I think I can take it from here.Once I have the theme ready, I would surely show you guys a preview. The real site would take few more days because I need to work a bit on the content.

Cool vujsa! I tried it out and I think I got it. You were right about the several tweaks it did at several places for various objects. I waded through the main template after copying it into Notepad++, duplicated the full lines that mentioned box_bg.gif (there were 3 of them), and then commented one of them for record. From the other, I just removed the 'background-image:' property fully and let the rest of them as it was. Here is the screen shot of what I got: I tested it in both Firefox and IE and it looks similar. I think that is it. Now, I need to work on all those buttons and icons. Any idea what folder to look into, so that I can replace them all to the theme I want?

Thanks pyost and vujsa for the reply. Styling information in the HTML - that is inline HTML? >< I dont like that. So, I think I should work with that box_bg.gif to work it out? But do I actually need to do that? I do not want any fancy rounded corner box effect or something like that. Can I just not remove that box_bg.gif and change the #eeeeee to whatever (darker) colour I want? Or is it that since it is a inline styling in the template file, it has presendance over the CSS style sheet, and I should either work on the image, or work on the template itself and remove that inline styling? Because, as I said, all I want is to remove that (fat) light gray and just have a simple dark gray line. I am not even bothered if it appears the same way or not in various browsers - at max what may happen? It will be visible in one, and not visible in another - and may be visible a bit fat on another one? So, what I am asking vujsa, is if I can just remove that inline styling information off the template HTML file?

I would require a forum in the near future for another of my project. I had tried my hand at phpBB and found that it had excessively high number of templage (.tpl) files, and I could not easily skin it. Next, I installed SMF on my local server, and am creating a new theme. I created a new theme out of the default theme, and started to change the colours for all elements. I have got almost all of what I want, except for one thing. Here is what I have in the header: I need to change that gray area in the bottom edge of the special header boxes. What property in the standard default CSS stylesheet should I change to get what I want? After I am able to do that, all I need to do is create custom icons and buttons for myself. This is one place where I am stuck and I do not know how to change it. Thanks in advance.

Eh Mafamba Team, exactly what should I PM you with?

I believe GMail does have its own messenger - GTalk. The GTalk can be downloaded seperately OR it is I think integrated into your GMail account where it comes up in a nice chat box using the AJAX technology.I have not used MSN messenger, but from almost a decade back (may be less), I was using Yahoo Messenger. I could easily switch to GTalk, and also convince all of my friends and contacts to do so. I like the intutive interface, and the nifty chat logs that is searchable by Google.

OK. I finally got internet connection at home, and I downloaded all the opensource goodies. I downloaded Mozilla Firefox, and Mozilla Thunderbird. I setup Thunderbird to receive my GMail mails using the GMail POP3 facility. I wanted to download all the mails from my GMail, and hence I chose the proper radio button in the 'Forwarding and POP' tab in GMail settings. What happened then, was that mails would get downloaded, and sometimes when connection timed out, and it started to download, it would get all the previously downloaded mails. That would create multiple copies of same mail, and was undesirable. As a solution, in the GMail settings, I asked GMail to delete the mail from the Google Server once a POP3 download was done for a particular mail. I cleaned up all the mail, and I restarted Thunderbird, and it is not downloading at all. It asks for password, and it connects to pop.gmail.com and authenticates properly. Then it shows 'Downloading 1 of 192...' or something like that. It stays that way for a while, and then does nothing. I understand that GMail makes emails available in batches when asked to download all the mail, but I am not getting any mails. I have some 1500 mails in my GMail account. But GMail does provide the '192' set of mails in the first batch, but I am having trouble downloading it. I had followed all the instructions verbatamin as it was given in the Google Help pages. I am a bit lost here, and would like any suggestions to get all my mails to my local machine from the Google server.

I did suggest a similar suggestion back when I joined the forum. Let me search for it... URL: http://forums.xisto.com/topic/87745-topic/?findpost=1064331331 I does not actauly deal with exchange of services for real money, but is on similar lines.

Those are pretty good sites to go freelancing.One more thing I realized is that you can actually earn freelancing on the net if you know what the demands are for and see if you have the skill set to fulfill those demands.Like a few days back, I was going through few forums where administrators or forum owners got together and discussed of forum management issues. I noticed that there was a requirement for forum assistants who could provide service in making the forum livlier and give it some content.I just wanted to check it out, and put out an Ad in their appropriate service section, and off I was doing a small job for 1$. (1$ is a very low amount, but I just wanted to do a litmus test and moreover I did not have much time at hand due to the personal projects I have involved myself in). I got another one for exchange of some other service and then another, that put a total of 6$ into my PayPal account. I had to put notice at the Ad that I was not taking any more jobs, because I did not have time. I was getting overwhelmed by demands.Ok, may be I pitched in a lower amount, or may be I had few competencies in forum management - but that is not the point. The point I am trying to make is that, we just need to look out for demands, match it with our skill sets, pitch in a fee structure using a similar market as guide, and there you have a sellable service.Sorry to have gone a bit off the subject, but I just could not help not sharing my experience.

Yes, in a way. My present code, finds that exception, and aborts fatally. Using it thus would make it handle it and then continue with the rest of the program. But during this time, I have had a bit of talk with SP Rao, and he suggests I use the WHILE loop infinetly, and manually check for end of rows, and break out of the loop. I will try it and let you all know. The only thing that irks me is that the cursor-for-loop is not working as it has to. Either that, or I am not understanding it properly.

No bakr_2k5. That too is not the case of what I actually want. It has to do something with exception handling, that I cannot place my finger at. Moreover we cannot reference the 'some_record' on its own - because 'some_record' is technically a record of cur_some_record%ROWTYPE. Thus, giving a 'some_record < 2' would throw up a inappropriate variable type compile time error. The problem is that the Cursor-For-Loop continues to loop even after end of processing all the records only when the record count is 1. I have been thinking in the following terms now: CURSOR cur_some_record IS SELECT * FROM some_loaded_table ORDER BY some_sort_column; v_rowcount NUMBER; v_lonerecord cur_some_record%ROWTYPE; And in the PLSQL body block: -- Some intializing code SELECT COUNT(*) INTO v_rowcount FROM some_loaded_table; IF v_rowcount > 1 THEN FOR some_record IN cur_some_record LOOP -- Do processing on each of the record -- referencing it as some_record.<some_column> END LOOP; ELSE SELECT * INTO v_lonerecord FROM some_loaded_table; -- Do the same processing for the lone record -- using the referencing as v_lone_record.<some_column> This is definetly a round about and crude method as far as I can see and defeats the purpose of using the FOR loop. The loop should be able to handle the case of zero or one or more rows. I can only think of either that or something in terms of the following lines: BEGIN -- All the old FOR LOOP code in the first post -- (Not the one I have given in this post) EXCEPTION WHEN OTHERS THEN -- Just put "I am fine! Everything OK. Just one row in table." -- to the log table. END;I would not even like to do the above thing because then, I would not be able to identify any other exception from with in that nameless/anonymus block - any other excecption other than the out of bounds may be thrown and I would not want those to be reported wrongly.

I am not sure I can do that. You see, it is not that the first row is skipped. The first row needs to be processed. The problem is that the the PLSQL block throws an exception whenever there is just one row in the table. If there are more than one row, it does not throw any exception and processes all the records properly. But if it is one row, it processes it and then attempts to fetch the next (non-existant) row. This results in it throwing an execption. I am not sure why a cursor-for-loop is throwing exception with that specific SQL error code because the cursor-for-loop is supposed to handle the cursor implicitally.

Welcome to Xisto bakr_2k5. Now, whatever is bakr_2k5. I mean, I can deduce 2k5 to be 2005, but what about bakr? I like printf() users too. Welcome aboard.

I have been working on some code that has really caused me to loose few of my hair due to excessive scratching. Here is the problem I am facing: I have table, on which I have a cursor defined: CURSOR cur_some_record IS SELECT * FROM some_loaded_table ORDER BY some_sort_column; I am later using it in the PLSQL code as follows: -- Some intializing code FOR some_record IN cur_some_record LOOP -- Do processing on each of the record -- referencing it as some_record.<some_column> END LOOP; So, it is a pretty straight forward requirement. I have a table. I need to select all the rows from it in a particular order. After processing the record, it should pick the next record, until there are no further records. Everything seems to be going fine, when there are more than one records to be processed. But if there is one, and only one record in the table (and thus only one record in the result set of the cursor), it throws an 'OUT OF BOUNDS' SLQERROR. As far as I know, the FOR CURSOR LOOP does the CURSOR handling implicitally and one need not do the OPEN, FETCH, CLOSE and check for exit conditions like in LOOP, or WHILE LOOP. So, I am having out-of-bounds-cursor error if there is one row. If there are more than one row, I have no problem. Anyone have any idea here as to what I am missing, and what I need to do?

SP, I did notice that there was a problem with your website, but I did not realize that it was due to that LoginToBoggan module. I never even heard about that module, and so, I am not sure what could the problem be. Do you have the Drupal.org link for that module? I would look through their documentation and let you know what I think. Alternatively, you could also start a thread there at the support forums of Drupal for the particular error.

Well, the integration of phpBB or SMF forum engine with Drupal is badly needed, but there is a catch in it. Both the fourm and Drupal, use a database layer, that has functions and variables with the 'db_' prefix that are repeating in both. This brings up a problem, where you need to get your hands dirty and get into the code and replace all occurances of 'db_' with 'phpbb_db_' or 'smf_db_' or something similar. And that too, I belive in some places it is a non-trivial case, and one needs to analyze the code to get it done.And even if we do these code changes, I am not sure, it would be easy to upgrade either of them as you would again need to do those code changes. So, it is quite the same problem you would face if you went for UIEForum module.If you are starting a forum from the scratch, or your Drupal forum (or any other phpBB/SMF) forum has very few threads, you can install UIEForum module, if you are ok with the non-upgradability.Else, development of a better forum module, and hopeful inclusion of it in the Drupal CVS and later into the core is the only way I can see. I think this is one thing, that we really have to take into our hands, because no matter how much we complain, I do not thing the rest of the folk would want to do it. (I got this feeling as I was looking through the Drupal.org forums.