Byte Slinger

Simple Machine Forum tip - recover from screwing up a theme

If you manage Simple Machines Forums and do any amount of customization, you are bound to mess up a theme to the point that you can't access any pages. Don't panic, you don't have to hack the database to change the theme values to their defaults. You simply need to use a different theme.

Here is how. Simply add "?theme=1" to your URl:

yoursite.com/index.php?theme=1

Then you can edit the values of the theme you were working on. This only works if you are not altering the default theme. For this reason, if you are going to make changes to the default theme, make a copy and change that version.

Office Slang

One of the most entertaining aspects of geek culture is the language it produces. Over the years phrases created to describe the world from the technical trenches migrate across the web. Sometimes they enter the mainstream. Sometimes they remain active in geek lingo long after the technology that inspired them is no longer used. Here are some of my favorites collected from the web over the years.

Array properties in Spring Framework

Things are so easy and intuitive with Spring that it can be frustrating when you can't figure out how to do something. I recently had a senior moment when I needed to set a String array property. I looked in several books and did a few online searches and could not find an example. I knew it was going to be easy, I just couldn't believe how easy.