A new template for MusicReviewZone.com.

I feel that the current template is to …. Bloggy. For the site to gain a reputation for being news worthy I need it to look a little less amateur and a lot more “professional news service”.

At least – that is what I am aiming for.

So the layout is going to be completely different. Over the weeks I also want to add a lot of functionality to the site. I really wish BuddyPress was available in something resembling production quality as this would enable a lot of extra functionality very fast – but alas – it isn’t.

I am not sure if I’ll release the new template until I am ready to rock with a Google Adwords campaign and have some paid content writers on board.

If you would like to be paid to write album reviews or to provide your own slant on the current (latest/breaking) news stories then give me a shout using the “Contact Us” link above or clicking here.

Tags: buddypress, MusicReviewZone.com, new template

Categories: Google, MusicReviewZone.com, My Sites

I have created a simple WordPress plugin for anyone who wants it.

Basically it allows you to cloak any links of your choosing so that the user doesn’t know where they are to be redirected when they click on them.

There is a page in the admin section of WordPress to maintain the list of cloaked links as well as a sidebar option list in the “Write Post” page so that you can easily choose which link to insert into the post you are constructing.

The links will be in the format :

<your site>/go/<your link text>

e.g http://blog.mcnicholl.com/go/musicreviewzone

The above example is setup to redirect to http://www.musicreviewzone. There are many improvements that I could make to this plugin, but finding the time is difficult. If there is enough demand for enhancements – then I’ll see what I can do

The plugin is pretty simple but hasn’t been extensively tested – definitely working with WordPress 2.3.2 – definitely not working with 2.6 – I’ll find out why and post an update. So be warned. Any feedback is welcome and if you could drop me a note to say how it is working out for you – that’d be great.

User Manual:

1. Install the plugin
2. Go to Manage->Redirect Links to administrate your cloaked links
3. Go to Write->Post to use the links. You should see a side menu called “Redirect Links” – from here you just have to click on a cloaked link to insert it into the body of your post.
4. That’s it!

Screenshots:

Download the plugin here : 20080827_mcn_redirect

Tags: affiliate, cloak, cloak links, wordpress plugin

Categories: Uncategorized

So, I have been recently trying to get back into Symfony. I had taken a break from it for a while to concentrate on Music Review Zone.

I bought a domain recently that I’d like to develop a Symfony application for and since my current knowledge base is with Symfony 1.0 – I thought I’d use it. Then I noticed the benefits of Symfony 1.2.4  and couldn’t pass it up.

So I started creating my project in the usual way:

php symfony init-project <name of project>

php symfony init-app front

I then setup my databases.yml file and completed my schema.yml file. I then ran:

php symfony propel:build-all

… and got the following output:

symfony propel:build-all
>> schema    converting "C:/wamp/vhosts/private/config/schema.yml" to XML
>> schema    putting C:/wamp/vhosts/private/config/generated-schema.xml
>> propel    Running "om" phing task
>> file-     C:/wamp/vhosts/private/config/generated-schema.xml
>> file-     C:/wamp/vhosts/private/co...enerated-schema-transformed.xml
>> autoload  reloading autoloading

  Phing was run before and used many custom classes that might conflict with
  your model classes. In case of errors try running "propel:build-forms" and
  "propel:build-filters" alone. This is due to a PHP limitation that cannot be
  fixed in symfony.

>> propel    generating form classes

  Cannot fetch TableMap for undefined table: location.  Make sure you have the 

static MapBuilder registration code after your peer stub class definition.

[?php

/**
 * User form base class.
 *
 * @package    ##PROJECT_NAME##
 * @subpackage form
 * @author     ##AUTHOR_NAME##
 * @version    SVN: $Id: sfPropelFormGeneratedTemplate.php 12815 2008-11-09 

10:43:58Z fabien $
 */
class BaseUserForm extends BaseFormPropel
{
  public function setup()
  {
    $this->setWidgets(array(
      'id'                           => new sfWidgetFormInputHidden(),
      'username'                     => new sfWidgetFormInput(),
      'location_id'                  => new sfWidgetFormPropelChoice(

I am beat as to why this is occurring.

My schema.yml file creates a user and location table, among others. Each user has a location which I state in the YAML as :

user:
    _attributes    { phpName: User }
    id:            ~
    username:      { type: varchar(50), required: true, index: unique }
    location_id:   ~

I also define the location table as:

location:
    _attributes         { phpName: Location }
    id:                 ~
    name:               varchar(50)
    created_at:         ~

So I do not know why ‘symfony propel:build-all ‘ is failing.

When I run each of the commands that makes up the ‘build-all’ option – each succeeds. i.e:

• build-schema
• build-sql
• build-model
• build-filters
• build-forms

So is this a bug or are your fresh eyes noticing something that I am missing?

Tags: symfony, symfony 1.2.4, tablemap

Categories: Programming, symfony