Sofie Estolloso Hofmann Designs International

It’s been more than a month since I converted Pandan.gov.ph from HTML to XHTML and PHP. I wrote about it on August 15, 2006, Simply Sofie Blog WP Upgrade, Pandan.gov.ph HTML to PHP. For the past few days, I’ve been also working on the News section of the site.

The News page of Pandan.gov.ph, the Official Website of the Municipality of Pandan, Antique, Philippines, is using WordPress 2.0.4. Now, that the site uses XHTML tags and PHP, and since WordPress uses PHP too, I used WordPress as CMS (Content Management System) for the News section for easy updating purposes. I designed a theme patterned after the original design of the site, spending a lot of time creating CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). The News page is the only section which is using WordPress at the moment. I’m still thinking if I should use WordPress for the other pages. Well, for a start, I removed the Events menu and transferred it under News section.

The News section has several news updates too. Read the latest news update, 2006 International Green Apple Awards Winner. Bugang River Tour has been chosen as a winner in the International Green Apple Environment Awards for Environmental Best Practice.

For other pages, I need to make a template for each section so the subsections will reflect and not just the normal sidebar. It’s a lot of work, and so, for the meantime, I’m shelving that idea. If ever I decide to really do it, then I just have to do it slowly.

I also updated the Services section, added Engineering Services on how to apply for a building permit with links to building permit forms and documents for downloading. The forms and documents are also linked at the Downloads section. At the Downloads section, aside from the forms and documents, several resolutions were uploaded and they can be downloaded as well.

I made several changes at the site, and hope to be able to do more improvements later.

I revised the site Pandan.ph Pandan Antique Philippines. It took me weeks to finish it as I could not make up my mind what to do with the Gallery and News sections. The design is still the same. I just changed the HTML tags to XHTML using simple PHP at the same time. I removed some pages and used .htaccess to redirect them.

I finally ended up installing WordPress for News Updates and Photo Gallery making Pandan.ph finally more interactive. I checked the CSS and XHTML and they passed the validation. I checked them with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Netscape, and everything seems fine.

Ok now, I would like to mention that Pandan.ph Portal was hacked, not the Pandan.ph itself. I was not checking it for several days and when I was checking google for any pandan related sites, I saw that the hacked pages were indexed. I didn’t panic, I just accessed phpMyAdmin, and uploaded my MySQL database. No sweat, in just about 2-3 minutes everything was restored. I just forgot to back up the counter, so the number of visits was the old one.

I use phpnuke for Pandan.Ph Portal, quite an old version, so to say, and because of some bugs, the hackers got into it. That’s why it’s important to upgrade all the time. This is also the reason why, I’m not very fond of using CMS such as this one because I always have to upgrade. Very important?! Don’t ever forget to back up your files and database. If you are not upgrading, it could happen that the hackers could destroy all what you have in your site just like what happened to Pandan.ph Portal. And, if you have no back up, then all that you have worked for will just be gone like a dust in the air. Poof!

I was actually just testing phpnuke and I will not probably upgrade it anymore. There’s too many files and it takes long to upload. For one thing, Pandan.ph Portal was an experiment but I will not remove it because a lot of search engines have indexed those pages already. I just have to check it often that it will not happen again. If ever it will happen again, I guess I just have to uninstall it then.

That’s what I like about WordPress, easy to install, easy to upgrade, easy to upload, easy to manage, and easy to create a theme for it. Everything is just easy with WordPress!

Other updates!

I updated the site of Lux International AG, particularly the Lux worldwide pages. I added the countries Poland, Slovakia and South America. I also updated the Lux Partners page, changing it from Lux Group Worldwide into Lux International Partnership Alliance.

I updated the site of Green Cross Switzerland, particularly the Publications pages. I uploaded the Annual Report for the year 2005 of Green Cross Switzerland, in PDF files, both in German (Jahresbericht) and French (Rapport annuel). Kindly check them out at the Green Cross Switzerland site if you like to read the report.

Ok, that’s all for now. Have a wonderful day everyone!