The new front page has several nifty features that are results of hours and hours of PHP coding to extract information with added value from the WordPress database and other sources within Nomadig.com.

I’ll explain the major pieces of the page and try to give a picture how the page has been put together from various pieces. As the space is limited (and maybe also your interests :), I usually skip most of the implementation details. If you are a compenent PHP programmer, you can fill in the blanks. And if you aren’t, then you shouldn’t try to do this at home.

The top left corner of the page contains information from the journal only. The next picture contains the most important dynamic elements of this part of the page.

The background image (1) is based on the current season. There are four images and four corresponding CSS classes that use images as backgrounds. PHP code calculates the season from the current month and selects the correct class.

The issue number (2) is the total number of published entries in WordPress database, read with a simple count() SQL clause. The date (3) is the publishing date of the latest entry, also read from the database.

The main article shows the latest published entry with its date (4) formatted with additional field for the day of the week. The entry may belong to several categories (5) that are all shown and linked to the journal.

The end of the latest article has a link (6) for reading the rest of the article. The front page shows the three first paragraphs of the entry.

After the first article, there is a Google ad (7) to gain some income to support the site. If Google does not serve any ads, Nomadig.com ad system is used instead to show some banner here (not that many of them currently).

In the next part we’ll discuss about the middle section of the front page: the latest articles, staff picks and gallery.

Civic Center is the cultural hotspot in San Francisco. The smallish park is surrounded with museum, library, opera house and symphony hall.

As the city is quite wealthy, the shows are good. Obtaining the tickets may be a challenge, though. There are also a lot of independent theatre groups, so the selection is plentiful. There is a ticket booth on Union Square.

The area itself has some issues as there are homeless people killing time in the UN Plaza, between Civic Center and Market Street.

Civic Center, Polk Street at Grove Street, San Francisco, CA, USA

North Beach is the Little Italy district in San Francisco. The area is a Californian version of Italy, so don’t expect such authentic feeling as in Chinatown. North Beach is still nice area to stroll around, as there are a lot of good cafés (even in European standards) and restaurants.

The restaurants are spread on Columbus street, starting near Chinatown. There is also a smallish park and a church.

North Beach, area surrounding Columbus Street at Union Street, San Francisco, CA, USA

I’ve recently taken more serious approach for following the search terms people use to find Nomadig.com. The reviews section seem to gather a good number of hits from Google and other search engines. This journal is also a prime candidate, as all reviews are shown here, too.

Some people either write grammatically correctly or copy’n'paste names and other terms that have uppercase letters. For example, both Spaksmannsspjarir and spaksmannsspjarir have appeared. Unfortunately, ShortStat is not able to count them as one term. Instead I have several variations of the same name in the stats.

I finally decided to do something. Fast glance to ShortStat source code revealed that I could manipulate the SQL query to be case-insensitive. This approach has the basic flaw that if the first search term has uppercase letters, those letters are stored as is in the database. All future searches would just update the count and the search terms display would look ugly.

Instead of fixing the query, I simply added one PHP line to convert the search terms into lowercase before sending anything to the database.

To have the fix, find fuction SI_sniffKeywords($url) and the following line:

if (isset($searchterms) && !empty($searchterms)) {

Add the following line below that line:

$searchterms = strtolower($searchterms);

Presto! Now you have case-independent ShortStat search terms module. There is one bummer, though. If you have used ShortStat for a while, there may be several different variations of the same terms in the database already. I’ve selected not to do anything for those entries for a while, as in the long run they will be pushed down in the display anyhow.

Tenderloin is area north of San Francisco Civic Center showing the San Francisco life in it’s raw form. The streets are lined with homeless people, some of those looking quite unfriendly. There are grudgy corner stores in which you really don’t want to buy anything.

Note that the area is not very pleasant for Sunday strolling, but worth checking for if you aren’t afraid of human contacts in any forms.

Tenderloin, around Eddy Street x Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA

Japan Center is a small piece of Japan in the middle of San Francisco. It’s not the real thing as there are American influences, but sometimes you don’t see any Westeners there.

The place has a soothing atmosphere, so it’s a nice destination for (short) leisure strolls. There is also a few Japanese shops, so this is the place to go if you need your daily sushi meal ingredients fix.

Japan Center, Geary Street x Laguna Street, San Francisco, California

Last few days have been so hectic that I’ve been late in writing about my recent travelling escapades. I’m either suffering from writer’s block or then have too much ideas for entries swirling in my head.

Anyhow, I and Sanna visited Turku and Naantali last weekend. This time our parents took us with them from Helsinki on Friday and we returned with train on Sunday. No flying anymore before the delivery.

We visited Naantali — a small city some 20 kilometers north from Turku — and admired the old wooden town and the medieval church. The church has been built on a cliff near the sea and the views are magnificent. Unfortunately, the church itself was closed.

Naantali hosts also Muumimaailma (or Moominworld in English), but it was closed, too. I think that in a few years we have to visit that place with our child…

The city is nice place to stroll around, even in chilly early April weather (sun was shining, though), as there are a lot of cafés and restaurants on the seashore. The marina is fully packed in Vappu (first of May) when people celebrate the springtime in Finland.

Back in Turku, we managed to get in to the Turku cathedral. Last time there were mass going on, so I couldn’t take photos of the oldest church in mainland Finland. This time most of the church was available, but the altar area was closed from tourists — a baby was being baptised. Still, I got some nice photographs that don’t look like any other Finnish church. They portray a feeling being abroad in some catholic cathedral.

Once famous for hippies, Haight Ashbury has been able to keep its charm while it has been commercialized and most of the shopkeepers care more about money than love.

The neighbourhood is pleasant and there are a lot of shops selling clothes, records, generic stuff and peculiarities. You can get tattoos and piercings there, too.

The main street for the region is Haight Street and the shopping area is between Golden Gate Park in east and Buena Vista Park in west. Both of these parks are also worth of a visit.

Haight Ashbury is quite far away from the downtown and if you do not want to spend the best part of the day walking there, grab a taxi, MUNI or bus to get there.