Smashing Magazine is one of the premium sources for learning the principles of web design. Their articles and eBooks cover everything you need to know to get started on the web.

Incredibly, you can now get the full library of eBooks — that’s more than 60 titles — and a whole year of free updates for just $45, thanks to our sister-site MightyDeals.com.

That’s less that $1 per week, for access to trade secrets from some of the web’s best teachers. You’ll get access to over 60 eBooks and then, as if that wasn’t enough, you’ll get access to any new titles for a whole year; that’s 24 new eBooks during the course of the subscription.

Some online publishers churn out brief articles dressed up as eBooks, but the Smashing Library averages 175 pages per-eBook and covers a full range of abilities and prior experience. You’ll learn everything you need to know to get started in UX design, the mobile web, web graphics, WordPress, and almost anything else you can think of.

Each eBook is delivered in PDF, ePub and Kindle formats and is DRM free so you can learn wherever you choose; at your desk, on your commute, even in the bath!

Not happy with the selection on offer? As a Smashing Library member you’ll get the chance to vote on upcoming eBook releases, so you’ll get a say on what you learn next.

Gladly I stumbled upon this before buying separate ebooks on Itunes. I love the style of these books, now I just need more time to read… – M. Jean-Joseph

This is indeed a great offer if you’re thinking about purchasing several books and if you want to keep up with current developments. Very curious about what’s yet to come this year! – Joachim

I recently received ‘The Mobile Book.’ That was awesome and I hope this will be 38X awesome. Worth reading. – Erik Royall

At last the bible for mobile design is here. Everyone in the studio is fighting for their turn, this will be an invaluable resource. Thank you, Smashing Mag! – Rob

The normal price of this subscription to Smashing Library is $99, but purchase through MightyDeals.com and you’ll pay just $45.

Are you a Smashing Library subscriber? Which are your favorite titles? Let us know in the comments.

Viral Squeeze: WordPress Plugin to Build Viral Lead Pages – only $17!

Each year, the UMBC Alumni Association presents Outstanding Alumni of the Year Awards to honor alumni for their professional and personal achievements and service to the University. The UMBC Alumni Association proudly honors these distinguished alumni for their accomplishments and dedication to UMBC:

2013 Outstanding Alumni of the Year Award Winners

Engineering and Information Technology
Jeehye Yun ’97, Computer Science
CEO, Secured Sciences Group, LLC

Humanities
Ricardo Zwaig ’77, Spanish
Judge, District Court, Howard County

Natural and Mathematical Sciences
Dr. Mary Loeken, M.S. ’80, Biological Sciences
Research Investigator, Joslin Diabetes Center
Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School

Social and Behavioral Sciences
Dr. Sherece West-Scantlebury, Ph.D. ’07, Public Policy
President and CEO, Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation

Visual and Performing Arts
Brigitte Pribnow Moore ’05, Acting
Executive Director, Young Playwrights’ Theater

The 2013 awards will be presented on Thursday, October 10, 2013, at an awards ceremony in the Albin O. Kuhn Library on the UMBC campus. If you’d like to attend the ceremony and celebrate with us, please register through the Homecoming website. 

To learn more about the awards, past winners, and chances to sponsor this event, please click here.

Congratulations to this year’s winners!

By: Kevin Gosztola – Thursday August 22, 2013 9:45 pm

"The soldier who was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for releasing United States government information that was published by WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, came out as a woman this morning when [her] defense attorney announced that Manning was a [woman] and wanted to be called Chelsea Manning...
 
...Since Manning came out publicly and made the request, one would expect the United States press would universally be moving to covering any future news stories on Manning with the appropriate and requested pronouns. However, “NBC’s Today, USA TODAY, The Boston Globe, Politico, CNN, Fox, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the Daily Beast, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times” are going to keep using the masculine pronoun. The Washington Post is also going to stick with the masculine pronoun as well."

 
Read the full story at http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/08/22/there-should-be-nothing-for-media-to-debate-she-should-now-be-used-to-refer-to-manning/.

------------------------

For questions or support and resources for LGBTQ-identifying, questioning, and allied students, faculty, and staff, contact Zach Kosinski, Graduate Coordinator for LGBTQ Programs at (410) 455-3463 or lgbtq@umbc.edu.

Incoming INDS major and transfer student Sophia Venero Shimabukuro was one of two undergraduate students selected to speak at the August 22 Fall Opening Meeting. Ms. Venero is a transfer student from Montgomery College where she graduated with honors as an Associates of Art, as a Phi Theta Kappa member and Vice- President and as a Montgomery Scholar. She will be majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies with a minor in Biological Sciences.  Ms. Venero has been awarded the UMBC Presidential Scholarship which will cover her full- time tuition for two years. She plans to volunteer at the Shriver Center with the Success Program.  Ms. Venero has also been working as the Program Manager for KEEN Greater DC, which is a non-profit dedicated to providing exercise and recreational activities to persons with disabilities. Ms. Venero aims to become either a Physician or Physician's Assistant.  She is pleased to be joining INDS, and we are pleased to have her!

The Forums on CSS-Tricks started life as phpBB sometime in 2008. There is even an ancient video of how to apply a basic skin. Sometime in 2010 I moved them to Vanilla Forums in a response to heavy spam and the general unwieldy nature of phpBB. Now in 2013, the forums have been moved yet again, this time to bbPress.

This move was inspired by a few things.

• Heavy spam again, with nowhere to turn to fight it. One plan was to force email verification, but that setting had a bug where emails would never get verified and bug users forever. I could never find a fix.
• I didn't love the theming. It was hard for me to figure out what stuff was in what files, then when I did figure it out, you had to copy that entire file over to your theme and customize it there. That made it safe to upgrade, but also meant that upgrading didn't do anything because you are overriding any new changes.
• The Vanilla community is fairly small and I didn't find it particularly helpful. I'm sure they are nice folks, but I could never seem to get the help I needed.
• Every other part of this site is powered by WordPress, so bringing it all under one roof was mega appealing. bbPress is just a plugin for WordPress now, meaning an account on CSS-Tricks works for the Forums, The Lodge, and for commenting on the blog. Not to mention spam blocking via Akismet and custom controls (we were getting terrible "Kitchen" related spam, and now I just mark as Pending any new thread that has that word in it.)

The Conversion Process

bbPress ships default with an import tool. It's in the admin under Tools > Forums > Import Forums once the plugin is activated.

It specifically works with Vanilla as well as several other popular forum software products. All I did was give it the information it needed to connect to the database, check that I wanted to import users as well, and let it run.

It moves everything into your normal WordPress database. There were over 100,000 posts in there, and it moved them all in about 4-5 hours. Normally database operations are pretty fast, but it makes sense that it takes this long in this case. It specifically only moves a little bit at a time and waits in between requests. This is a live site after all, and best not to hammer it. I did take down the Vanilla forums while this was going on, so no new posts would be made that would be lost. It did hang a few times during the process, but luckily the converter is smart. It saves its progress along the way and when you restart it, it restarts from where it left off.

The Transition

Categories moved over to new "Forums" perfectly. The forums were largely ready to rock as soon as the conversion was done.

I was ready to accept that old forums URL's would just be broken. Kind of a bummer, but not too tragic as it wasn't ultra-common to link to threads out in the wild and Google would catch up fairly quickly. However that didn't need to happen!

The old URL's were like:

http://css-tricks.com/forums/discussion/23936/opinions-on-css-frameworks

And the new URL's:

http://css-tricks.com/forums/topic/opinions-on-css-frameworks/

That was close enough to RegEx, and Matt Dolan had the answer for me:

RewriteRule ^forums/discussion/[0-9]+/(.+)/?$ /forums/topic/$1/ [R=301,L]

Another concern was user accounts. Any user who had a Lodge account (i.e. anyone who backed me on Kickstarter or had since signed up) who also had a forums account ran the risk of having the same username on WordPress as they were using on Vanilla. My own account had the same problem.

Fortunately bbPress import is smart about this and creates the new user under username "imported__OLD_USERNAME". Like so:

If a user expresses any confusion on this, I can easily fix it. I simply delete the "imported_" user and choose to attribute all posts to the old user.

There is a plugin for changing usernames too, if anyone ends up wanting to do that.

Passwords were the final hiccup. Of course the passwords are encrypted, so there is no way to import them from one system to the other. I just put up a notice in the forums that let people know that if they had any trouble logging in to just reset their password and it was fine (and expected).

Using Markdown

Why use Markdown as the language for users to write comments, replies, and new threads? There are a bunch of reasons. On any system that allows users to write and post what they write, you'll at the very least need some auto-paragraphing. If people type a bunch of text then return-return, you'll want to display it as two paragraphs. WordPress has autop, but Markdown also does this.

The more obvious advantage to Markdown is that it makes it easier to "just type" out a response. Italic/Emphasize something by *putting asterisks around it* or **bold** it. Links are just [link](url). Quotes are just paragraphs that start with >.

But what made it very important to me is the code escaping. People post a good amount of HTML in the comments and in the forums. They shouldn't have to go out and escape all that HTML just to post it (e.g. turn < into &lt;). Markdown auto-escapes code that you intentionally are specifying as code (e.g. it is within `backticks` or indented 4 spaces). That is extremely helpful.

That combined with WordPress general safety stuff (e.g. stripping <script> tags) makes it a pretty nice system.

I use the WP-Markdown plugin by Stephen Harris which works both in comments and in bbPress. I ended up finding a few bugs with my setup, so I got the help of Justin Sainton to get it working just right. At this second, there is one more little bug regarding lists in Markdown to sort out, but after that I can send anyone the patched version of WP-Markdown if they want it. Stephen is aware of the changes and thinking they might not be right for the public version.

The Aftermath

One of the big bugs after launch was a login issue where users would log in, change pages, and appear to be logged out (as demo'd here). It seemed like a caching issue to me. I use W3 Total Cache for that, but I had that set to not cache anything in the forums or anything for any logged in user.

So far, my best guess is that it's browser-level caching. I found this in the .htaccess:

ExpiresByType text/html A3600

...which is the content-type for the document when pages are served. So that would make sense the the browser was trying to hang onto that page. I removed it, but it looks like something that W3 Total Cache adds by default so it gets re-added when those settings are changed. I'll see if they have any thoughts on this.

The very next day there was a bunch of "Kitchen" spam again, which was amazing to me. That tells me the spammers are very likely human beings, which also explains how they got through the CAPTCHA effortlessly.

All I had to do though was Settings > Discussion > Comment Moderation and put those words in there and it has all but stopped.

The Future

I have a variety of functionality stuff I'd like to add via Plugin, and am looking for someone who wants to take on any of these as a freelance job.

• Alteration to WP-Markdown to allow GitHub flavored Markdown.
• A plugin that allows the original poster of a thread to (or an admin) to mark a particular answer as "the answer". That reply would get a special class so it can be styled, and the thread itself when shown in the forum list will get a special class so it can be marked as "solved" there.
• An alteration to one of the "Mark as Read" plugins which allows you to 1) mark everything as read and 2) will auto-mark a thread as read when you open it.
• An alteration to the Feature Comments plugin that makes it work with bbPress also.
• A plugin that will send a user an email notification when they are @replied in a reply.
• A plugin that will "Clean up users" - e.g. auto-delete users that have 1) no associated posts anywhere on site 2) haven't logged in in X time 3) have no gravatar. I have a lot of spam users this would clean up.
• A plugin that would allow any users to "Report this topic" - in case it is spam or inappropriate.
• Some kind of way to allow forum moderators to see the "Pending" queue of posts that require moderation and publish/delete/spam them.
• A "Nuke" plugin - When an admin sees a spam post, they can "Nuke" it which 1) deletes it 2) deletes everything else that user has posted. 3) deletes the user.

The Move to bbPress is a post from CSS-Tricks

Earlier this week, we posted a position announcement for a Graduate Assistantship at UMBC. This post recaps that position announcement and outlines next steps for semi-finalists.

————————————-

The original Announcement:

This graduate assistantship requires knowledge of computer concepts and programming languages.   The position requires design, trouble-shooting, and support for websites and databases.  Duties include database management.  The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) uses the Xcalibur Scribe Tracking System and Registry (TSR) as part of the national evaluation program, Survey Monkey, and software for webinars.  The position also requires extensive use of social media and includes website programming.  The GA in this position will have knowledge of webpage design using Hypertext Markup Languages (HTML), Cascade Style Sheets (CSS), Extensible Markup Language (XML), and Java; all are necessary for designing and maintaining the program’s website and blogs.

The GA will also have a sense of project management to assist with events and long-term projects.  The following media are used for PROMISE:  WordPress, Google sites, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogspot.    The GA in this position should have background in the following topics: online communities, database implementation (SQL-based interface), project management, decision technology, information management, emerging technologies, system design, system performance, usability, and system architecture.

This position will support several projects; the primary project will be the new Council of Graduate Schools Financial Literacy program: http://www.cgsnet.org/enhancing-student-financial-education, and will be responsible for implementing the “Go Live” project: http://www.cgsnet.org/project-summary-university-maryland-baltimore county.  The applicant should have basic knowledge about  credit rankings and scores, budgeting, and debt reduction. 

Roles: The GA will work with the PROMISE team for the multi-campus AGEP http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/, the Graduate Student Development unit in The Graduate School at UMBC, and UMBC’s campus-wide committee on financial literacy that includes a collaborative team of staff and students from Enrollment Management, the Graduate School, Financial Services, and The Office of Undergraduate Education.

This is a 20 hour/week assistantship. It includes tuition remission, and student health insurance for the GA. Assistantship stipend rates: http://www.umbc.edu/gradschool/funding/minimum_stipend_levels.html

To Apply:

Send a cover letter and CV to Dr. Renetta Tull at rtull@umbc.edu, with the subject “CGS GA Position.”

Additional criteria: The initial email must include links from websites that you have designed, and links to public social media sites that you manage, e.g., Linked In groups, Twitter, blogs. The links must be accompanied by a few sentences that describe your role, e.g., administrator, content provider, editor.

This opportunity is only open to graduate students at UMBC.

————————————————

NEW! UPDATE as of 11:50 PM, August 22, 2013

DEADLINE: 3:00 PM, Friday, August 23, 2013.

Due to the overwhelming response to this announcement, we will stop taking applications at 3:00 PM, Friday, August 23, 2013 so that we can take time to evaluate each applicant.  Applicants can begin to check their emails on Friday afternoon for notifications.  Interviews (for finalists only) will begin next week. Thank you for your interest!

————————————–

NEXT STEPS:

Semi-finalists, please see steps a, b, and c below, and complete them by Monday, August 26, at 9:00 AM. 

Finalists will be scheduled for interviews Tuesday and Wednesday, August 27-28.

a) Produce a short (3 minutes maximum) promotional video that advertises the Funding Seminar to undergraduate and graduate students on Saturday, September 7: http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/jobs-fellowships-grad-school-funding-saturday-breakfast-lunch-seminar-sept-7-2013-umbc/.

b) Embed your video into the comment on the site, http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/jobs-fellowships-grad-school-funding-saturday-breakfast-lunch-seminar-sept-7-2013-umbc/ and convince people to rate it.  Include 2-3 tips about managing a budget (provide sources) within the comment that houses your video. (Note: People who receive fellowships will have to manage a budget. Consider the example of a stipend of $15,000/year.)

c) Use social media or venues to encourage people to post information on fellowship opportunities in the comment section of the site,  http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/jobs-fellowships-grad-school-funding-saturday-breakfast-lunch-seminar-sept-7-2013-umbc/.  Include sources for fellowships for international students. Find a way to ask people to give you credit for leading you to the site, e.g., #YourName. All Twitter and Facebook posts should also have the hashtag: #PROMISEagep and should steer people to follow @PROMISE_AGEP.

Related articles

• Jobs, Fellowships, & Grad School Funding! Saturday Breakfast & Lunch Seminar: Sept. 7, 2013 @ UMBC (promiseagep.wordpress.com)

Earlier this week, we posted a position announcement for a Graduate Assistantship at UMBC. This post recaps that position announcement and outlines next steps for semi-finalists.

————————————-

The original Announcement:

This graduate assistantship requires knowledge of computer concepts and programming languages.   The position requires design, trouble-shooting, and support for websites and databases.  Duties include database management.  The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) uses the Xcalibur Scribe Tracking System and Registry (TSR) as part of the national evaluation program, Survey Monkey, and software for webinars.  The position also requires extensive use of social media and includes website programming.  The GA in this position will have knowledge of webpage design using Hypertext Markup Languages (HTML), Cascade Style Sheets (CSS), Extensible Markup Language (XML), and Java; all are necessary for designing and maintaining the program’s website and blogs.

The GA will also have a sense of project management to assist with events and long-term projects.  The following media are used for PROMISE:  WordPress, Google sites, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogspot.    The GA in this position should have background in the following topics: online communities, database implementation (SQL-based interface), project management, decision technology, information management, emerging technologies, system design, system performance, usability, and system architecture.

This position will support several projects; the primary project will be the new Council of Graduate Schools Financial Literacy program: http://www.cgsnet.org/enhancing-student-financial-education, and will be responsible for implementing the “Go Live” project: http://www.cgsnet.org/project-summary-university-maryland-baltimore county.  The applicant should have basic knowledge about  credit rankings and scores, budgeting, and debt reduction. 

Roles: The GA will work with the PROMISE team for the multi-campus AGEP http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/, the Graduate Student Development unit in The Graduate School at UMBC, and UMBC’s campus-wide committee on financial literacy that includes a collaborative team of staff and students from Enrollment Management, the Graduate School, Financial Services, and The Office of Undergraduate Education.

This is a 20 hour/week assistantship. It includes tuition remission, and student health insurance for the GA. Assistantship stipend rates: http://www.umbc.edu/gradschool/funding/minimum_stipend_levels.html

To Apply:

Send a cover letter and CV to Dr. Renetta Tull at rtull@umbc.edu, with the subject “CGS GA Position.”

Additional criteria: The initial email must include links from websites that you have designed, and links to public social media sites that you manage, e.g., Linked In groups, Twitter, blogs. The links must be accompanied by a few sentences that describe your role, e.g., administrator, content provider, editor.

This opportunity is only open to graduate students at UMBC.

————————————————

NEW! UPDATE as of 11:50 PM, August 22, 2013

DEADLINE: 3:00 PM, Friday, August 23, 2013.

Due to the overwhelming response to this announcement, we will stop taking applications at 3:00 PM, Friday, August 23, 2013 so that we can take time to evaluate each applicant.  Applicants can begin to check their emails on Friday afternoon for notifications.  Interviews (for finalists only) will begin next week. Thank you for your interest!

————————————–

NEXT STEPS:

Semi-finalists, please see steps a, b, and c below, and complete them by Monday, August 26, at 9:00 AM. 

Finalists will be scheduled for interviews Tuesday and Wednesday, August 27-28.

a) Produce a short (3 minutes maximum) promotional video that advertises the Funding Seminar to undergraduate and graduate students on Saturday, September 7: http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/jobs-fellowships-grad-school-funding-saturday-breakfast-lunch-seminar-sept-7-2013-umbc/.

b) Embed your video into the comment on the site, http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/jobs-fellowships-grad-school-funding-saturday-breakfast-lunch-seminar-sept-7-2013-umbc/ and convince people to rate it.  Include 2-3 tips about managing a budget (provide sources) within the comment that houses your video. (Note: People who receive fellowships will have to manage a budget. Consider the example of a stipend of $15,000/year.)

c) Use social media or venues to encourage people to post information on fellowship opportunities in the comment section of the site,  http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/jobs-fellowships-grad-school-funding-saturday-breakfast-lunch-seminar-sept-7-2013-umbc/.  Include sources for fellowships for international students. Find a way to ask people to give you credit for leading you to the site, e.g., #YourName. All Twitter and Facebook posts should also have the hashtag: #PROMISEagep and should steer people to follow @PROMISE_AGEP.

Related articles

• Jobs, Fellowships, & Grad School Funding! Saturday Breakfast & Lunch Seminar: Sept. 7, 2013 @ UMBC (promiseagep.wordpress.com)