For the last week or so my broadband connection has been slow as a dog (I have a bassett hound) and when I heard that the Federal Government was going to start their broadband crack down with their own speed testing tool, I was happy!

Finally big brother was looking out for me.  I’ve had to put up with slow internet connections since the internet began, and before that, don’t even get me started.

So I zipped over to Broadband.gov and ran my system through the paces to test my broadband on an unbiased system.  I was a little suspect about the privacy policy from the government as they took my address but not my name.  They are apparently sampling information on speeds from around the country.  Probably grabbing IP addresses, browsers, computer systems and more too but what the hell, I used to work for the government.  …

Continue . . .

This recession has been dubbed as possibly one of the worst in history, maybe even worse than the recession experienced during the Great Depression in economic terms.  Therefore it is becoming more and more common for people that previously had great credit, great jobs, great income and even a great deal of savings to suddenly find themselves on the other end of a barrage of collections calls.

With collectors getting access to not only home and work number but also cell phone numbers, the calls can seem to come at 15 minute intervals all day long.  This ironically makes it very difficult to get any work done, find a job, drum up new business or even think straight.…

Article syndicated from Home Loan Focus.

Permalink

WordPress despite being a fantastic CMS system and SEO powerhouse is notorious for slow load times of individual web pages.  Google is expected to start ranking slow loading websites below faster loading websites this year (2010).  So if you want to keep your site competitive even at an SEO level, you need to speed up load times.  Besides a faster loading web page will make your visitors happier!

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

Originally posted in full at Softduit Media.

Permalink

Last weekend I ventured back to BlogWorld & the New Media Expo and Las Vegas WordCamp.  The great thing is that all three conferences were consolidated in the Las Vegas Convention Center.  I closed out WordCamp with a Session on How to Design a WordPress Theme in Minutes.  The video from the event is not yet available, but the slides are below:

This was an expanded version of the ‘Intro’ level presentation that I provided a few weeks ago at WordCamp Birmingham. 

The big difference is that I demonstrated how to use multiple themes in a single WordPress configuration.  Multiple themes that anyone could design and later iterate modifications themselves.  I also highlighted a few of the techniques that I utilized to build our strategic partner’s site at Grass Shack Events & Media.

Here is the basic code that I utilized to create and call a default header as well as alternate headers based on an if then else selection:

<?php
//
// example of using header file based on pages
// note that you can either use page ID, Page Name or Page Slug
//
// this one uses page title

if (is_page()){
    include(TEMPLATEPATH.’/header-business.php’);
}
else {
    include(TEMPLATEPATH.’/header-default.php’);
}
?>

 

This month I will also create additional step by step video tutorials to share with people that were unable to attend this session.  Alternately, if you would like me to speak at a conference or event in your area, please contact me to discuss availability.

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

Brett Bumeter is presenting today at WordCamp Birmingham teaching people how to design their first theme in minutes.

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

I’ll make more more materials available later today, but here is my initial slide presentation for WordCamp Birmingham.  This is just the opening remarks for the actual mentored demonstration.  Hoping to add video of the meat and potatoes of this presentation after its done.

The main goal of this presentation is to help everyone give this a try, and if possible design their own theme, while I guide the audience through the process.

If you want to follow along during the presentation, I recommend downloading the free trial software from Artisteer or Cnet

1. Go to Artisteer &amp; follow the instructions to download the free trial via Cnet (Mac users navigate to the News tab, scroll down and download the Mac OSx version of Artisteer)

*If you are using a Mac with Snow Leopard 10.6, there is a early beta (download trial beta) that is workable for most users so far, that early release by Apple has the team at Artisteer working over time like so many other companies I suspect.

2.  Install the free trial software (works on PCs or Macs) &amp; generate your theme.

For more information on the Theme Design Contest . . . see -&gt;

Enter the WordPress ‘License to Design’ Theme Contest 2.0

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

Between now and the end of BlogWorld in mid October, we are going to run a WordPress Theme design contest for new designers or people that want to learn how to design a WordPress theme for the first time.…

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

A friend of mine that is learning how to use both WordPress and Artisteer, the theme design software, sent me a question about what appeared to be a broken sidebar option within WordPress. 

John of TransformativeLifeCoaches.com asks

I am wanting to install an Aweber autoresponder Sign Up Box (for a Giveaway report and a series of autoresponder emails) on our site. 

I believe the best way to do that is to put the Sign Up box in Sidebar 2 which doesn’t appear to be activated on our TLCoaches site. 

I went  to Widgets on the WP control panel to drag the &quot;text/HTML&quot; widget onto Sidebar 2 but it wouldn’t drag nor do any other widgets. 
Can you tell me the best way to get the autoresponder box on every page of our site?

In reality, WordPress and the sidebars on the site were not broken.  Here’s a quick snapshot of the site as of the date of the question.

This particular site only has 1 sidebar programmed into the theme.  With Artisteer (as of Sept 2009) at most you can design themes with 2 sidebars.  You can add more than 2 sidebars to the themes after export but that is another topic for a different day.…

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

Since November of 2008, PC User’s have benefited from the WordPress Theme Generator called Artisteer and now that WordPress Generator desktop application is available for Apple / Mac users.  The initial Mac beta was just released and people that purchase/have purchased a PC license will also have the ability to use the license on a Mac or vice versa on a PC.

I have been giving demonstrations of WordPress as a Content Management System for several months which includes a demo of Artisteer and the first question that is always asked is, “Does Artisteer work on a Mac?”

Now the answer is YES!  Artisteer does work on Macs.

Better yet, existing Artisteer users already know that when you purchase a license, that license will receive free upgrades for a year.  I have personally created almost 100 WordPress themes since purchasing Artisteer last fall, and I have significantly benefited from many many upgrades to the software.  This latest upgrade ads more Avatar support for WordPress, ads support for Dot Net Nuke and past upgrades provided support for Joomla & Drupal templates and much much more.

here’s the latest news release from Artisteer about the Mex Mac Capability

Artisteer for Mac (Beta) has arrived!
Artisteer 2.2 for Mac (Beta) is now available by clicking here. Couple interesting facts:

• Artisteer for Mac joins the family of products based on cross-platform .NET framework known as Mono.
• Artisteer might be the first product for Mac OS utilizing the ribbon interface first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows.

Technical notes and known issues for beta testers:

• Artisteer for Mac runs on Intel based hardware with OS X version 10.5 (Leopard).
• Artisteer for Mac requires X11 which is usually installed by default on OS X 10.5.
• Artisteer may require approx 1 minute to start the first time after installation.
• The "Open" and "Save" dialogs display Windows style folder structure and may require additional navigation to desired Mac folders.
• The top Mac menu bar does not offer an option to quit Artisteer. Use the Artisteer menu, keyboard shortcut ‘Command’+'Q’, or the red window close button to quit.
• Keyboard shortcuts stop working after clicking anywhere within the web design preview area.
• Certain amount of instability and limitations (as above) are expected due to limitations of the current Mono framework 2.4.
• There is a slight chance that your Mac computer may freeze when using Artisteer (this happened once in our tests). Please save all your work often in case you need to reboot your computer.

Customers who purchased an Artisteer license can use it on both PC and Mac computers (one each) during the beta period. An official release date of the Mac version will be planned after receiving detailed  issue reports from our beta testers and determining how much work is needed to resolve those issues.
Please send feedback and report reproducible issues to our support via the Contact Us page.

Artisteer version 2.2 update
We are releasing a new update to Artisteer 2.2 to resolve a few recent issues reported in the previous version 2.2 Beta.

• Artisteer: Added "Options" button in the export dialog.
• Artisteer: Added DotNetNuke Skin export announced below.
• Artisteer: Fixed a bug with the font size being altered by changing Articles -> Line Height.
• WordPress: Improved compatibility with Avatar List plugin.
• Joomla: Resolved custom footer not showing up.
• Joomla: Resolved centered menus not shown correctly.
• Joomla: Resolved a problem with the text "’30′, ‘height’ => ‘30′ near h2" showing on some pages.
• Joomla: Fixed incorrect path to spacer.gif in script.js file in Joomla templates.
• Drupal: Fixed an issue with broken image appearing instead of a logo uploaded in Drupal.

The new version 2.2.0.17297 can be obtained by clicking here and may become the officially released version 2.2 after additional testing.

Note: Cross posted from The LiveWriterz.

Permalink

This year marks the second year that my family and I have run in the Labour Day 5K cancer awareness walk. This year it was myself and my wife and two of our three children, ages five and 10. All of us participated last year, and this is the first year that my youngest daughter in the race finish the race running at almost the entire distance. Last year after the race, I had a very positive experience while waiting during the award ceremony. We didn’t attend the event last year nor this year for any special reason, but last year I had a very vivid reminder of one of the important things in life. So this year our participation was almost a tradition. Sometimes if you have an important reminder of something, it sparks the need to repeat the events or the activity in hopes of at least renewing a refreshing that reminder, if not finding something new the second time around.

I would not say that anything in a life altering way happened this year. I don’t have one of those keen insights into myself or into other people other than the fact that I shouldn’t participate in long-distance runs when I haven’t been exercising regularly. This time around I had been jogging in a couple of months because I’ve been traveling too much, and failing to jog while I’m traveling across the country. I wasn’t terribly bad shape in my time wasn’t terribly bad either although it was nothing to brag about. But I definitely was not acclimatize to running during the humid morning and I felt that run for several days afterwards.

The thing is I now have to figure out if I will participate in next year. I didn’t impart for a good cause, and this year I have to admit that I came back because of the unique insights I had last year which was very important to me at the time and stuck with me all year long. Failing to repeat that insight, I suppose I’m now confronted with the actual insides of introspection into myself and what exactly I was looking for in the event this year. Not say that I have to find something in every event or activity that participate in, but I felt like I expected to learn something once again just like I did last year.

Since I walked away from the event not having found anything in particular, it’s now making me ask the question “what was I looking for?”

I don’t have the answer to that, but I have the suspicion that if I could answer that question I might also find the answer.

well anyway, enough with the philosophy tonight I just needed to Up that story been meaning to mention it and failing to have a really good story like I did last year, I probably need to get to bed and get some sleep. Ironically, I’m in Atlanta this weekend after having to have taken a quick trip to her house here. Our alarm system was suffering from a bad sensor that was triggering the fire alarm over and over, and so I’m sleeping in an empty house waiting for two days for the repair man to show up and replace the sensor. While I’m here, and there may be some irony in this, I’m sleeping on a pillow that is covered with a T-shirt that I received during that run. You see our house here is mostly empty and all I have is a futon mattress and a couple of pillows. Unfortunately the pillows have no pillowcases as we washed and packed those when we moved and so when I got here I needed to make do and find something to use as a pillow case and ended up using the free T-shirt I received for participating in the run.

I’m pretty sure that I was not looking for a T-shirt when I went to that event, as I have a drawer full full of company logo shirts from one tradeshow after another, and no matter how much exercise there’s no way that I can use them all. We donate them by the boxes each year but I still tend to accumulate T-shirts far too quickly, and I’m enough of a packrat that I can’t seem to turn them down or get rid of them fast enough.

Education Only Takes You So Far

I have a double major in finance and accounting and I’ve taken close to 25 graduate hours of course work in both areas of study. Plus I have a Masters in International tax and financial planning.

Experience Far Out Weighs Education

With that disclaimer, I can unequivocably state that even though I’ve studied the principles associated with trading futures, derivatives and various forms of options, I have no experience in actual trading. Years ago before I actually started trading stocks, I gained a great deal of experience and practice trading stocks in a simulated fashion. In fact I first was exposed to this concept in sixth grade before Internet Stock trading had even been considered. We used a simple old-fashioned newspaper to track stocks and trying come up with an investment portfolio strategy.

Learning to Invest From Simulations

Years later when I was in college and studying finance and accounting, the Internet Stock boom of the 90s was just cranking up and I picked up a great deal of experience trading stocks through fictional portfolios on several different systems. That experience gave me the knowledge and confidence to trade the real thing online with my own money and do it effectively.

I’ve studied options and futures and currency markets in great detail especially from the perspective of an accountant attempting to track and account for valuations of these assets, however it wasn’t until recently that I found a service that provides some very interesting online tutorials and trading simulations that investors can utilize to hone their trading skills and prepare for advanced trading mechanisms.

FOREX Simulations through Global Futures Exchange & Trading Co

Global Futures Exchange & Trading Company offers an arsenal of tools that investors can utilize to engage in forex trading and other forms of derivative or options trading. I was especially impressed with their tools for the relative novice (and I use the word novice here rather loosely to refer to people that have a good deal of education in this area as well as a good deal of experience trading stocks or bonds and possibly commodities as well, but like myself no experience in FOREX trading.)

They offer five different online simulation tools that you can run to learn your way around these markets and the way they work online.In addition they also provide a number of tutorials, video courses, and other courses that you can take in order to be guided through this market.

I am definitely a proponent of the benefits of learning from simulations. If you are new to Forex trading and you are looking for the knowledge necessary to proceed in these markets, I would highly recommend combining your study and analysis with the simulation program that can help you but the big picture to work in a simulated model.With simulations it’s always important to go back and analyze the results and test the variables.

Simulations can also be worthwhile for seasoned investors that are looking to test drive a new system or service that they have not worked with in the past. You would not want to buy a Ferari without test driving it first only to learn too late that you don’t even fit into the car!