Why use Open Source Software?
What is Open Source Software?
Open source software can be defined as any computer software, generally developed as a public collaboration, whose source code is made freely available.
Major Benefits of Open Source Software
Public Collaboration - One of the major benefits of open source software is the public collaboration behind each project. Most open source projects are created by tens of thousands of programmers all collaborating to create, and improve upon, a flawless website framework.
Many software development companies use a proprietary, or home built, system as the framework for the websites they create. Open source software, such as WordPress and Drupal, were developed by thousands of talented developers. What would you rather own, a software package created by a handful of developers, or a software package created by thousands of developers?
Open source software promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code. A proprietary solution can not compare to that of open source.
Not bound to a single development company - With thousands of developers already 100% knowledgeable with your software framework, any open source friendly company can work on your website. Don’t be bound to a single development company because you are stuck using their proprietary software.
Auditability - Closed-source software forces its users to trust the vendor when claims are made for qualities such as security, freedom from vulnerabilities, adherence to standards and flexibility in the face of future changes. If the source code is not publicly available those claims remain simply claims. By publishing the source code, authors make it possible for users of the software to have confidence that there is a basis for those claims.
Is my website secure?
One of the most common questions asked about using open source software is about website security. If thousands of developers can view my source code, is my website safe? Absolutely! The website source code only contains the logic and functionality for your website. All database and server login/password credentials are safely stored on your server where no one can access them.
Can anyone change my website?
No. Open source is publicly available software, but it still downloaded and individually setup for each website. Your website is powered by your source code that you own! Only individuals that have access to your hosting server can make source code changes to your website.
If you can dream it, we can build it! Give us a call toll free at 1.877.227.5095 or contact us to discuss your ideas and how WebDevStudios can help you today!How To: Create Custom Page Templates in WordPress Thesis
Using the Thesis Theme with WordPress we recently came across a situation where we needed to hide, or not show, the Multimedia Box and 1st sidebar on a certain page and only show the 2nd sidebar. Learn more about the WordPress Thesis Theme.
I thought we could easily achieve this Thesis design change by using a Thesis hook. We’ve used many hooks in the past so I was hoping a hook would exist for replacing the entire Multimedia Box and/or sidebars in the same manner. While looking on the Thesis Hook Reference List page (http://diythemes.com/thesis/rtfm/hooks) it seems that currently the only hooks that deal with the items I am wanting to change are “thesis_hook_after_multimedia_box”, “thesis_hook_before_sidebar_1″ and “thesis_hook_after_sidebar_1″ . I didn’t find a “thesis_hook_multimedia_box” hook or a “thesis_hook_sidebar_1″ hook like the “thesis_hook_footer” hook we used to directly replace the footer with what we wanted. Hopefully in the future Thesis will ever support such hooks…
function my_multimedia_box() {
echo “\t\t”, ‘test’, “\n”;
}
remove_action(’thesis_hook_multimedia_box’, ‘thesis_attribution’);
add_action(’thesis_hook_multimedia_box’, ‘my_multimedia_box’);
After more Google searching i found that Chris Pearson from Thesis created a No Sidebars Page Template that comes packaged with Thesis which is similar to what we want to do. I figured I would create our own custom Page Template we could use instead of the No Sidebars one. I opened “no_sidebars.php” located in the theme directory and saw:
/*
Template Name: No Sidebars
*/thesis_html_framework();
which told me I would have to hack Thesis core files to achieve what I was set out to do. After looking through the Thesis files I found where Chris Pearson has an “if” statement asking if $page_template == ‘no_sidebars.php’. This code is located in your_theme_folder/lib/html/content.php in the thesis_content() function (the first function in content.php). I saw that for the No Sidebars Page Template a class called “no_sidebars” was assigned to the “content_box” div so i added in my own “elseif” statement. The following code shows my end result of the thesis_content function in content.php: (The only code I changed was adding the elseif) Read the rest of this entry »
