St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for the ‘web applications’ Category

Create a Post in WordPress Video

WordPress, a web application that supports not just reverse chronological order articles, hierarchical pages, a WYSIWYG content editor with a working image/file uploader and embedder and tons of other features, sounds a little intimidating at first.  But the beauty of WordPress is that it’s easy to use.

Yes WordPress is powerful, secure, has tons of plug-ins and a huge user community.  But it also has it’s basics down.  If you are a basic level user it just doesn’t get much easier than this to work.  Other Content Management Systems (CMS) like Drupal, PhpNuke, Joomla will have even the fastest of learners pulling their hair out within a manner of days.  Don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s them.  WordPress is so widely customizable that it can do just about any job that they can.  But without the heartache that the others cause.

WordPress version 3,.0 has just been released.  This latest  version of WordPress has some exciting features for the more technically inclined.  It’s touting more features for those out there that aren’t.  The trouble is that some of these new features just make it easier for them to destroy their blog. 

There are also some disturbing things about this latest version for those of us “in the know”.  We aren’t going to speak more until we’ve confirmed some things.  But  we recommend holding off for just a little while until we (and the many tech writers out there) have had a few days to do some testing.

Look for the good, the bad and the ugly (if there is any) here.
UPDATE:
WordPress 3.0 is definitely safe enough. A word of caution, if you use the new “custom menu” feature however, your existing menu will be lost forever. If this happens to you, don’t worry we can fix it.
We recommend upgrading your blog to v 3.0

With methodology that’s typical of both Microsoft and the GOP, these two spent millions making and promoting this huge web application that proports to be just what the people want, ( a “virtual town hall meeting”) which doesn’t work and isn’t what it says it is…

For the record I am NOT a Democrat nor a Republican and I am, like most Americans NOT happy with either party.  This story is not about politics, but instead about what happens when you don’t plan, test and launch a web application successfully.  further this article will speak a little about honesty in marketing.  Any comments that try to say that I’m saying these thing because I don’t agree with the politics of the web site will not be published, as will any comments that rant about one political viewpoint or party.  We welcome all comments that focus on the marketing or technical aspects of this web application.

First we’ll address the “doesn’t work” part, then after the fold we’ll address the part where it isn’t what it says it is.

On the first day I heard of it, I went to check it out. It displayed nothing but a blank screen. I checked the source code, there was the complete source code for a blank html page. Well stuff happens I guess. So I checked back a few hours later, same thing. So I tried in the wee hours of the morning, same thing.  I don’t know how they think this is okay, but if this was my web application, it would have been ready for the massive amount of traffic on launch day, it would have been thoroughly tested before release and any errors that somehow made it through this process would have been fixed promptly.  If not, my efforts would be considered and absolute failure. Given the GOP and Microsoft have access to so many more resources than me, these failures are completely unacceptable.

Now it’s three days later and I go there and, lo and behold, we get a front page. But that’s all. All the pages linked to on this page, return the famous asp.net error screen (which some say is a huge security hole in asp.net web applications). See screen shot above.
There is a video on the front page. It does work. Sadly it’s hosted by youtube and has all Google’s tracking systems intact. Really? The GOP can’t afford to and Microsoft doesn’t have the know how to host it’s own video? They really think it’s okay to give up all that info on it’s users just to avoid hosting their own video?  BTW, youtube.com is owned by Google which is Microsoft’s #1 competitor.  I’d have to say that using youtube to host this particular video on this particular web site and Epic Fail, wouldn’t you?
The video goes on and on about how they want the public’s input on policy. The info the founder (Kevin McCarthy) released to the press used the phrase “virtual town hall meeting”. The site couldn’t be anything further from that. But it is designed to make it look like one.
Here’s some of the differences between a town hall meeting and this web application:
Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone knows that cPanel is the hands down, the most effective, most reliable, most feature rich and the most common Web hosting control panel.

Nope, no they don’t.  I’ve heard for the second time in a year, someone say they’ve never used cPanel for a web hosting control panel.  In both times these were fairly bright guys, these were fairly experienced guys.  Neither was really responsible for choosing a web host ever before though.  Both had also worked mostly at larger corporations.  Yet they had never heard of WHM (Web Host Manager) either.  WHM is the multi-domain to entire server level software. sometimes it’s hard for the open source software to compete against the giants like Microsoft in advertising. Even with this disadvantage, cPanel is used on over 1000 times as many web sites as Microsoft technologies.

That’s okay.  If you’ve never tried cPanel you really should.  It really is the most complete hosting management software out there.

Here’s some of the great features and unique features: Read the rest of this entry »

Ocean Conservancy, a non profit with offices in St. Petersburg FL,  is getting some global internet attention.  It seems that Coca-Cola is hooking them up for Earth Day.

First a few words about the Ocean Conservancy and then we’ll talk about the exciting Coca-Cola and Facebook project.

If the name “Ocean Conservancy” sounds familiar, it may be because they’ve had an office, in between downtown and mid-town on Central ave, sometimes they have those real nice brochures setting out, and have been there for many years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today we announce a new theme. This one isn’t just a WordPress Theme, it’s also been ported form many other content management systems and even a plain HTML/CSS version.

Simple and clean, the Desert Sage Theme has two columns, has a fixed width of 1000 pixels and has clean color scheme of light browns. It has a Search Engine friendly text Headline and Tag line space in the header.

• Drupal
• Joomla
• HTML
• DotNetNuke

Support, download and preview links after the fold below:
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