Harsh J

Memoirs of a QWERTY Keyboard

Archive for the ‘Hacks’ tag

Setup WordPress locally

with 15 comments

Most of you perhaps already know this but still, here we go:

For Windows:

  1. Download XAMPP Lite (A Combo of MySQL, Apache Web Server and PHP5)
  2. Download WordPress 2
  3. Extract XAMPP Lite’s 7z Self-Extractor in a convenient location like, C:/xampp for example.
  4. Enter the C:/xampp or the location of extraction you provided and run the setup_xampp.bat in it to set XAMPP up.
  5. Start the xampp-control.exe executable program and click the Start buttons next to MySQL and Apache options. Now click the tray icon that appears and the Control Panel disappears to that place.
  6. Now test your local server, go to http://localhost/xampp/splash.php
  7. Choose your language there, and in the following panel, look at the left middle bottom to see a “phpMyAdmin”. Open it.
  8. In Create New Database put in a name, (I chose wordpress) and select the encoding as utf8_unicode_ci (optional).
  9. Extract the WordPress.zip to any location of your choice. I chose C:/wordpress
  10. Open the folder you just extracted it in (C:/wordpress here).
  11. Rename the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php. Open the thus renamed file.
  12. In the top part, where you see stuff like define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress'); // The name of the database Put DB_NAME as wordpress (or the name of the database you created)
  13. Put DB_USER as root.
  14. Make the DB_PASSWORD like look like define('DB_PASSWORD', ''); // ...and password Notice the blank quotes instead of it being filled.
  15. Thats it. Now move your C:/wordpress (or whatever your folder name is), into the C:/xampp (or wherever its location is) and then into the htdocs folder inside. Hit http://localhost/wordpress to see your blog in action. Happy breaking.


Written by Harsh

March 6th, 2007 at 10:13 am

Posted in Blog, Software

Tagged with ,

Random WordPress Themes

with 9 comments

Below I’ve reviewed a few themes I found while browsing the Codex and other theme sites.

Vistered Little

Vistered Little : You must have seen this theme in action at quite a few places. Looks real good but for a narrow reading area and slow loading of the post backgrounds and borders which hampers quick readablity.

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Written by Harsh

March 5th, 2007 at 8:16 am

Posted in Blog

Tagged with , , ,

VLC on Windows Vista

with 52 comments


If you run VLC [ Video LAN Client ] on Windows Vista and find that it displays no video output with just audio playing, then this post is for you.

All you actually need to do is to switch to OpenGL Playback.

Do that by going to the Settings Menu > Prefrences. Look at the right bottom of the dialog box that appears and tick the Advanced Options tick-box.

Now just click the plus next to Video. Click on Output Modules under that (Not the plus sign, just the menu item). From the Video Output Module drop down menu, select “OpenGL Video Output“. Thats it, you’re done.

Thanks to Kalpik for the tip and as he mentioned, its actually due to an issue with Aero.

Written by Harsh

February 11th, 2007 at 11:43 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged with , ,

Configuring the Broadcom 2045A Bluetooth Dongle in Windows

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If your bluetooth dongle shows up as a BCM2045A under Other Devices in Device Manager, there’s an easier way to configure it without having to install its bulky driver from the CD you got. And if you didn’t receive a CD with your BCM2045A Bluetooth Dongle, this guide is definitely for you.

Tested on: Windows XP Professional and Windows Vista Ultimate.

First, connect the device to the computer via USB as usual. Now Windows will tell you installing the new hardware has failed and so on, not even Windows Update can resolve it. This is typical of Windows as it doesn’t have the required drivers for this particular Broadcom BCM2045A Device.

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Written by Harsh

February 6th, 2007 at 1:48 pm