:: MIS Insights ::

Have you ever wanted to insert page numbers in your Microsoft Word Documents without counting the first few pages of the document? If you use Microsoft Word’s insert page numbers function, you’ll find that Word starts counting from the first page of the document. This can be bothersome if you have Title Pages and you don’t want to include them in the count.

Here’s what you can do:

1. With your document open at Microsoft Word, click on View and then Header and Footer.
2. Align your input cursor (the blinking pipe where the characters you type pop up) where you want it (Left, Middle or Right). This is where your page numbers will show up.
3. Insert your custom formula for page numbers. What does that mean? Simply put, it is programming your own page numbers. Don’t worry, it’s easy, lets try it out…

To insert your current page numbers:

1. Press CTRL and F9. You will get bold curly braces { }.
2. Type the word page between the braces so that you have { page }.

To start your page numbers from a different number:

1. Press CTRL and F9. You will get bold curly braces { }.
2. Type = in between the curly braces. You should have { = }.
3. Press CTRL and F9 again. You should now have { = {} }.
4. Type the word page between the second pair of braces so that you have { = { page} }.
5. Here’s the cool part. Depending on what number you want to start with, add or subtract as needed.
   If I needed my pages to start at 4, I would use: { = { page} + 3 }.
   If I wanted to start at page 10, { = { page} + 9 }.

To avoid putting page numbers at certain pages:

1. { if { page } < 4 "" "{page}"}. Translation: If the page number is less than 4, we will not write anything (check out the empty quotes - the first set of quotes is the action to be performed if the condition holds true). Otherwise (second set of quotes), write the page number (as described earlier).

So, to avoid numbering the first few pages and start numbering at a specified page:

1. { if { page } < 4 "" "{ = {page} - 3 } "} will not show any page numbers on pages 1 to 3 (less than 4) and start displaying page number 1 at page 4 (4-3).

There you go!

As my blog-readers and colleagues will know, I use WikiMedia as my Notepad. Here are two of the coolest things I’ve learned because I didn’t Read The Fancy Manual:

You can rename page titles!

Page Titles serve two notable functions:

• Title of the Page - This is the Title found at the top of the Wiki Article. duh. Sometimes, you just want to rename the page title so that it becomes more relevant to your content.
• URL Stub - Page Titles become part of the web address that leads to your Wiki Article. An article with a page title of “ATG Setup Notes” might have a local page address of http://localhost/wiki/ATG_Setup_Notes. As such, you may want to fix your Page Title so that people who don’t want to use search will have an easier time of typing or taking note of your article’s page address.

How to rename wiki articles: Use the Move tab found at the top of the page. If you can’t find it, either you don’t have permission rights, the page is protected from such actions or you haven’t logged in.

You can delete pages!

After collating and organizing some of the information I had earlier, some pages no longer became necessary. Here’s how you do it:

Prerequisite: Your account must belong to the bureaucrats and sysop (b&s) wiki user groups.

If you’re like me, you created a separate personal account from the default root account. I use my Pipboy user account to write my local articles while I use the bogart user account to administer the Wiki environment. Pipboy must belong to the b&s user groups to be able to delete pages. How do you include an account into a user group? Use your root Wiki account (in my case, it’s the bogartuser account). It’s the sysop account you created during installation.

After you login to your Wiki installation using your sysop account, go to the Special Pages section (it’s a link on the left) and look for User rights management at the bottom of the page. From there, look for your personal account and include them in the b&s user groups.

Additional (Unlikely) Prerequisite: If you’re my number one fan, you also forgot your sysop account details. No worries!!! If you know how to use MySQL (or PhpMyAdmin), then worry no more! This snippet will reset your sysop account to what you want it to:

UPDATE wikipedia_aug_2007user SET user_password = md5( concat( user_id, '-', md5( 'olats' ) ) ) WHERE user_name = 'bogart';

Where:
wikipedia_aug_2007user - wiki database
olats - new password
bogart - sysop account

If you forgot the username for the sysop account, you can browse the user table and look for the user_name column.

Once you’re done with that, log-in to the sysop account then set up your personal account as I told you earlier.

You should now have a Delete tab at the top your screen when viewing deletable pages!

Very Nice!

Remember, remeber, the Third of September,
The night which changes everything
The age of Rich Text Editing.

A few hours ago, I decided to dissect WordPress. After being stuck with paperwork for the past 2 weeks, I was more than willing to tackle any kind of technical job that can come my way.

Actually it’s more of a configuration rather than something technical. Though I don’t mind however we call it - whatever gets monotype fonts and Dreamweaver back to my blood stream is good. Nonetheless, allow me to share one of the happiest moments of my programming career.

You see, for the longest time, I’ve been deploying online Content Mangement Systems (i.e. blog) with my own html text upload form. Yes, that’s the primitive <input type=”textarea”>. It’s simple, elegant, it works, but I must admit, it sucks. After three years of putting up with such limitation, I decided to see tonight how WordPress can help me.

15 minutes into the Wordpress documentation, I was already publishing WP-created content in my web pages! Mwahahahaha!

Goodbye “To have text in bold, enclose the text in <B></B> tags!”
Hello user-friendly image and text uploading!

Goodbye basic html textareas!
Hello rich text editing!

Goodbye hours of customizing CMS!
Hello hours of getting to do more!

I love WordPress. This discovery greatly improves my ability to deliver products and services the way my customers want it.