At this time I am also developing a new theme for this site and will submit a similar version of that new theme to the WordPress Repository for inclusion there, also. Hopefully, I will have the new theme, which I believe will be titled “Skyline Colors” uploaded to this site in the next week or so. There will be several theme options and multiple color options, too.

Below you will see some of the different color options available in the new theme.

Skyline Colors (Red Style)

Skyline Colors (Yellow Style)

Skyline Colors (Blue Style)

Skyline Colors (Green Style)

Skyline Colors (Magenta Style)

Skyline Colors (Gray Style)

The theme I recently released on the WordPress Repository, Wordsmith Anvil, has a number of features and some custom page templates. After taking a quick look at several sites that have downloaded this theme, I have made a few observations and thought it would be a good idea to make not of a few of them.

The font size for the title is designed to be fairly large. As a result, if the title of the blog has more than 15-18 characters it will not display very well (up through version 1.6.3). If your title contains more characters, you will need to edit the file main.css, located in the stylesheets directory. Decrease the font size until your title displays correctly … or select a blog title with less characters. NOTE: You will most likely need to also adjust the height, margin and/or padding on the header elements to accommodate your changes. DOWNLOAD VERSION 1.6.6 … I fixed it for you.

I have also seen several sites where someone has attempted to edit the pages and the end result is that the pages do not display correctly. I cannot provide an easy explanation that will address every possible edit to the pages in this theme. However, the best caveat is to save a backup of the page before you attempt to edit it. That way, if you delete something that breaks the page, you can always revert to the original version of the page and try again. One of the most common errors I have seen is removing an opening <div> or a closing </div> tag; and not deleting the companion tag. Every opening tag needs a closing tag. Otherwise, you end up with unexpected results. Your sidebar may not display correctly, or maybe your footer, or the widget areas above the footer, or the page itself may not display properly.

If you would like to use any of the page templates, take a few minutes to read through the FAQs, which you can find here. Without reading the FAQs, it is not likely you will be able to setup the page templates. You will need to understand what the custom fields are, and the directory structure.

I have also seen where a different header image has been uploaded which displays a title or other text. Unless you comment out the site title in the header.php file, you will see the title of your blog displayed over the top of the text in your header image; which, is not likely your intent. I may consider adding the option to enable or disable display of the site title in a subsequent version; as I have done for the tagline, and logo.

I have also seen where people have tried to hardcode in elements that are already made available in the theme options page; or install a plugin that does not have theme styling already built in. Unless you are very comfortable editing php code and comfortable with editing stylesheets your best bet is using the theme options to perform the functions they are designed to perform. If there is not a theme option available, then feel free to make a suggestion about other functionality you would like to see in future versions of this theme. Also, you might find other plugins that will perform functions that are not already built in.

Theme options include:

• Remove those pesky auto p tags
• Custom Logo options
• Custom Header Backgrounds
• Custom Background Options
• Custom Menus
• Five Widget Areas
• Tagline Display Option
• RSS and Social Network linking options
• Feedburner Subscribe Options
• External Feed Display Option
• Coupon or Special Text Display Box Options
• Footer Links Display Options
• Copyright Text Display Option

The current version can be downloaded from the WordPress Repository. At the time of this post, the current version available for download is 1.6.2. There was a minor display issue which only affected certain versions of Internet Explorer. This was corrected in version 1.6.3. If you have downloaded 1.6.2 and are wondering how to correct the display issue, you can find the solution here.

If you have a comment on this post, feel free to leave one here. If you have questions about the theme, or would like to have the theme customized for you, then use the links above. This post was not intended to be a Q & A Forum, or support page for the theme. … However, I may not have made that clear on the theme options page until version 1.6.8. So, because of that, there are a number of Q & A and support related comments found here. For future use, to centralize the support-related threads for the Wordsmith Anvil theme, please use the Feedback & Support Forum Page on the theme’s demo site.

Toms Real Estate Plug-In is being released to compliment the Realty One Theme; which was released three days ago. For your site visitors, they benefit from the added value of seeing listings that contain much more information about the property than they will find on other sites.

Providing added value to your customers and prospective customers will add value to your site, too. Plus, the administration for this plugin is very simple, yet very comprehensive. Here is a glimpse of Toms Real Estate Plug-In admin pages and options in the WordPress Admin area…

The admin area for this plugin includes:

• Misc Settings: A page for Basic Configuration including Google Map API
• Locations: A page for adding or removing cities, states and countries (All countries and US states are listed)
• Listings: A page for adding and editing listings
• Auctions: A page for adding and editing auctions

The main House for Sale Listings Admin Page displays for each listing:

• ID Number;
• PID Number (Property ID);
• Link to the listing page for this property listing;
• Label / Address;
• Status (Active, Not Active, SOLD) [Not Active Listings will not be displayed on the FRONT END];
• Date Last Updated;
• Edit Listing Link;
• At the top of the page: Displays the total number of listings and total number of listings sold;
• At the top of the page: Displays an Add Listing Link

Toms Real Estate PlugIn Admin Screen Shot 1

Toms Real Estate PlugIn Admin Screen Shot 2

Toms Real Estate PlugIn Admin Screen Shot 3

Toms Real Estate PlugIn Admin Screen Shot 4

• The House for Sale Add Listing Page and Edit Listing Page
  • Images:
    • Able to upload up to 20 images:
    • One image will be a featured image;
    • As each image is uploaded it will automatically create and save three re-sized images, in addition to the featured image;
  • Basic Listing Information:
    • Drop Down Select Lists for:
      • Property Status;
      • Property Type;
      • Neighborhood Info Link
      • Country, State & City;
      • Bedrooms;
      • Baths;
      • Zoned;
      • Property Type;
      • Construction Style;
      • Roof;
      • Insulation;
      • Kitchens;
      • Garages;
      • Garage Type;
      • Parking;
      • Levels;
      • Basement;
      • Water Heater;
      • Water;
      • Sewer;
      • Cooling;
      • Fireplace;
      • Heat Stove;
      • Deck-Balcony;
      • Storage Buildings – Playhouse – Structures;
      • Pool;
      • Hot Tub – Jacuzzi – Spa ;
      • Sauna – Steam;
    • Text Input fields for:
      • Title;
      • Selling Price;
      • House Number;
      • Street Name;
      • Other City (if not already listed in City Drop Down Select);
      • Zip Code;
      • Year Built;
      • Square Footage of Home;
      • Lot size;
      • Annual Taxes;
      • Assessed Value;
      • HOA Fees;
      • Low Fix Up Costs Estimate;
      • High Fix Up Costs Estimate;
      • Current Home Low Value;
      • Current Home High Value;
      • After Fix-Up Low Value;
      • After Fix-Up High Value;
      • BOFA Value;
      • Cyberhomes Value;
      • Eappraisal Value;
      • Home Gain Value;
      • RealQuest Value;
      • ValueCheck Value;
      • Zillow Value;
      • Property ID;
    • TextArea input:
      • Description;
      • Property Condition;
      • Email Blast Notice;
    • Dynamically Filled in Text Fields:
      • Listing URL for email blast (generated after the listing is created and you click UPDATE Listing once);
      • Subscribers Only URL  (generated the second time you click the UPDATE Listing link)
  • Comps (create the following fields for up to 12 comps) NOTE: Comps are taken from various sites and sometimes are in all CAPS, or have extraneous punctuation, or improper uppercase and lowercase, which do not display as desired. So, using some REGEX insure that all addresses display proper case; and for consistency insure that there are no periods displayed following “mi” in the proximity fields and likewise “sq ft” is displayed without periods.
    • Address;
    • Proximity;
    • Sales Price;
    • Sales Date;
    • Beds;
    • Baths;
    • Sq Ft;
    • Year Built;
  • More Options:
    • Interior Features (Six Drop Down Select Menus so that each listing can display up to six interior features)
      • Not Available is selected default
      • Plus 30 other interior feature options
    • Kitchen Features (Six Drop Down Select Menus so that each listing can display up to six kitchen features)
      • Not Available is selected default
      • Plus 25 other kitchen feature options
    • Notable Rooms n Areas (Six Drop Down Select Menus so that each listing can display up to six notable rooms n areas features)
      • Not Available is selected default
      • Plus 21 other notable rooms n areas options
    • Exterior Features (Six Drop Down Select Menus so that each listing can display up to six exterior features)
      • Not Available is selected default
      • Plus 41 other exterior feature options
    • Miscellaneous Features (Six Drop Down Select Menus so that each listing can display up to six miscellaneous features)
      • Not Available is selected default
      • Plus 31 other miscellaneous feature options
    • HOA Benefits (Six Drop Down Select Menus so that each listing can display up to six HOA Benefits)
      • Not Available is selected default
      • Plus 35 other HOA Benefits options
    • Terms (Twelve Drop Down Menus)
      • N/A is selected default
      • Else the option is to display the term
    • Showing Options (Twelve Drop Down Menus)
      • N/A is selected default
      • Else the option is to display the Showing Option
  • Contact Information:
    • Agent/Contact Name;
    • Company Email or Agent Email;
    • Company Fax or Agent Fax;
    • Agent Phone;
    • Special Instructions;
    • Contact Display Options
      • Display Contact Information
      • Display Contact Form
      • Do Display Contact Information

Toms Real Estate PlugIn Admin Screen Shot 5

• Other Noteworthy Features & Benefits
  • The House for Auction Add Listing Page and Edit Listing Page
    • This is almost identical to the House for Sale Add Listing Page with a few minor exceptions.
  • The Advanced Search Widget
    • The Search Widget allow your site visitors to search your listings by location, price range, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms and even by number of levels; or by a combination of these different options.
  • The Locations Search Widget
    • The Locations Search Widget allow your site visitors to click on links for cities, states and countries where you have listings.
      • Only Cities, States & Countries where you have listings will be displayed as links in the sidebar, footer or other widgetized area where you place this widget.
  • Display
    • The Google Map displayed on the Homes for Sale Page and on Search result pages displays markers for each of the properties listed.
      • When you click on a marker a small window pops up with the title, price, thumbnail, brief excerpt and link to the property listing page.

You can order Toms Real Estate Listing Plug-In from the link at the bottom of the Order Page.

Toms Skyline Design has developed and bundled a couple of custom plugins to compliment this theme. You have the option of purchasing the theme by itself, or you can purchase the theme and the plugins together, or you can always get the theme now and purchase the plugins separately later.

The delay in releasing this theme and the accompanying plugins was because the first version of the theme had been designed to be compatible with WordPress 2.9.2. However, at about the time it and the associated custom plugins were near completion, a newer version of WordPress was released … WordPress 3 Beta. There were a number of changes in the new version of WordPress and some of the prior code was deprecated. Also, efforts were being focused on another project that was just beginning at that time; which meant there was no time to validate the code in the theme and make any necessary adjustments to make it compatible with the new WordPress 3+ versions. So due to the release of result of WordPress 3.0 and the resulting changes therein, the theme was not released in the summer. Earlier this month I started reviewing the code, made some necessary adjustments and fixed a number of little bugs, too.

As referenced above, the Realty One Theme is available by itself or can also be purchased along with a bundle of custom plug-ins to facilitate listings, require visitors to login to view all or portions of the site, integrate with a comprehensive list application (phpList), as well as, being able to integrate the list application with email blasts that take advantage of sites that require visitors to login. For reference, phpList is an Open Source application that is free to use. NOTE: It does require an intermediate to advanced level of skill and understanding of PHP to fully set it up and integrate phpList with WordPress. Once setup properly both applications can be used on the same site and play well together.

Click to View Realty One Quick View Screen Shots Gallery

Read All the Details About the Realty One Theme on the Theme Description Page …

Realty One Theme Now Only $29.00

Development started using WordPress 2.9.2. Prior to completing the theme, WordPress came out with WP 3 and WP3+. Realty One has not been tested on WP 3+.

Screen Shot of Home Page Featured Slider

Realty One utilizes a couple of back end admin listings pages; with, literally hundreds of options. Adding photos to your listings is a breeze; and all the thumbnails, and various sizes of images are created for you. All you do is upload the large size images you want displayed and the rest of the work is done for you. As a site owner or a site visitor, you will appreciate the Google Maps on the main listings pages and each individual listing pages, too. You can even search the listings by various criteria.

Using the Realty One Theme including all the plugins as initially built, allows the site owner to allow visitors full access to the site, require registration for portions of the site, or require registration for the entire site. Additionally, if the site owner maintains a marketing list, the Realty One Theme is already configured to integrate with a Mailing List application; including a signup page. NOTE: The mailing list application configured with Realty One, is very robust and managed from a separate admin panel.

Click to Play Video

If you are interested in using Realty One for your Real Estate or Manufactured Home related business, please contact me for more information.

When Elsie contacted Toms Skyline Design for this project, she wanted to use the Esther Theme for WordPress. However, the color scheme was not to her liking, she wanted some type of menu boxes on the home page and to compound the navigation issue … there was no menu or navigation system with this theme.

Additionally, the photo frame at the top of the page took up a major portion of the screen; which took up way too much real estate. So, the color theme was changed, the photo frame was reduced for better aesthetics; and a navigation menu was created for use on all pages except the home page. A different menu was created for the home page, using box graphics; which, are carried through the theme, where practical.

On her site, Sonya says she will share

[...] with you inside knowledge of the publishing industry, the process of getting your book published, how to build a platform and additional insights on how to promote yourself.

Interestingly enough, the site does not have its own blog; however, it does link to a blog on one of their new sister sites. LHP says it is their aim to positively impact the world, one book & one magazine at a time. Their mission is to help today’s writers become tomorrow’s authors.

The LHP site is using the latest version of a Bytes for All Atahualpa theme; setup, configured and slightly customized by Toms Skyline Design; who is a Bytes for All Gold Member.

When I talked with Dr Alvarez about the purpose of her site, the plans for her practice and her target audience my suggestion was to create a WordPress site to accommodate the current needs and be flexible and scalable for future usage. Dr Alvarez had some colors she wanted to use and wanted a minimalist Zen-styled look and feel to the site. So, I custom designed a very simple theme that matched the color scheme she wanted and fit the style she was looking for. I titled this WordPress theme, SkylineZen. You will not find any fancy sliders, rotating headers, or ad rotators on this site. However, it does provide the functionality and matches the design that Dr Alavarez desired; and allowed her to be able to have her interim VistaPrint website closed and that url pointed to here new site. In other words, you can access Dr Alvarez at http://www.kathyalvarezmd.com or at http://www.partnersinwellnessswpdx.com SkylineZen is not currently available on the Wordress.org site.

In the past, Dr Wright had maintained this practice as a walk-in clinic. However, Dr Alvarez wanted to convert the practice so that patients scheduled appointments rather than having walk-ins. Accordingly, I asked Dr Alvarez if she wanted her patients to be able to schedule appointments from her site. She thought that would be a great idea, so I added a plugin to the site that would provide this option to visitors on the site. The result of this website and the online scheduling has been a resounding success…

… per a recent comment from Dr Alvarez …

… thanks Tom
the feedback on the website and the scheduling has been all positive!

Dr Alvarez has not yet had time to start blogging, so I have disabled the display of blog posts until she is ready to start blogging and publishing articles on her site.

Let me know if you liked the prior Flash movie header better, or the current header that changes its look when you hover over it.

This WordPress theme includes a slider that utilizes the new set thumbnail functionality in WordPress 2.9.2 and later. The theme includes several options and is a two-column type theme, with a widgetized sidebar and widgetized footer.

I also created this header image of a loupe and documents that I thought I would showcase here as well.

What they wanted was a new WordPress theme that would represent their business and their connection to the local historic aspects of St Johns. Toms Skyline Design created a new site for them, which of course, includes a lot of CSS, PHP and image editing. Now they only need to begin re-adding content. Good Luck to everyone over at Plews Brews.

The site I have been working on is for a local organic restaurant in the St Johns area of Portland, Oregon. Angel, the owner of the restaurant, The LadyBug Cafe, was in need of a face-lift …

and talked with another St Johns business owner, Jeffrey Selin of the Dojo Creative Agency and they decided to make the switch. Jeffrey and the Dojo, whom I perform behind the scene Web & WordPress Development for, asked me to help him make the face-lift for the Ladybug site become a reality.

And … Woila … here it is

[UPDATE: Sadly, a few months later this establishment in the St Johns area closed its doors and went out of business]

What’s wrong here? I double checked the general settings in the admin site and confirmed my time zone was set to UTC-8, which is PST, where I am located. I tried to change it to a different time zone and back to my time zone and saved the settings; thinking maybe they somehow did not get saved previously. However, that changed nothing. My next thought was that my site host server was generating a wrong timestamp. So, I called them to let them know about the problem. They checked their server and it had the right time.

So, I put together a quick little PHP script to display the time and a message and uploaded it to my site, outside of the WordPress installation. To my surprise the time displayed was correct. The good news is that I had isolated the issue to within WordPress. Now, it was a matter of figuring out which file in the new version was causing this problem.
With a bit of detective work I discovered the file that was causing me the grief. The culprit file was wp-settings.php At about line 21 there were two lines of code that were not in my prior version of WordPress. Those lines looked like this:

if ( function_exists('date_default_timezone_set') )
date_default_timezone_set('UTC');

What has happened is that WordPress hard-coded in UTC as your default time zone. So, regardless what time you set your time zone to in the admin panel, this file was going to override those settings and stamp your posts with UTC time. What is UTC time? UTC is the term used for Coordinated Universal Time. You have probably heard of GMT, too. GMT is the acronym for Greenwich Mean Time. UTC is a more technical time and is the standard for this purpose, rather than GMT; although you may see GMT being used synonymously with UTC. However, historically, UTC displaced GMT as the basis for the main reference time scale in many regions about 38 years ago.

The date_default_timezone_set() is a PHP function.

Inside the (…) the timezone_identifier is placed. If the timezone_identifier is your time zone, then timestamps will display correctly with your current time. However, if the information is for a different time zone than yours, you will not see your current time displayed. Additionally, if the timezone_identifier is not valid, it simply will not work at all … which would create more problems.

So, for me there were two ways to fix the problem. I could either change the second line of code to read:

date_default_timezone_set('UTC-8');
or

date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');

Both of those are acceptable timezone_identifiers for PST.

Depending upon where you are located, you may need to enter a different identifier. You can view a list of supported time zones in the second format from the PHP site here; or check this Navy site for an example of various UTC time zone conversions. However, if you want to convert a time from one time zone to another, try this time zone converter.

These are all good questions and most likely you answered yes to one or more of them … and that’s how you found this page.

So, what do I do? How do I get my WordPress site back? How do I recover without losing everything?

Well, fortunately you just backed up your WordPress files earlier today and you can delete all your WordPress files except your wp-config.php file and the wp-content folder; and then upload the files you backed up, right? You didn’t back your files up earlier? Okay … do you have the same version of WordPress files on your computer as you had installed? Or, had you upgraded your installation and have a different version of WordPress on your computer?

It might be this actually happened while you were upgrading from one version to another. Or it could have happened when you were attempting to upgrade a plugin, when you didn’t read the details first. You may have been upgrading WordPress and did not deactivate your plugins first. If either of these scenarios sound familiar, you are probably trying to figure out how to fix this mess. It could be that one of your plugins is incompatible with the newer version of WordPress, too.

Let’s start with first things first. If you do not have all the WordPress files on your computer which you had on your server, you can get a copy of whatever version you had installed by going to the WordPress Download Release Archive. Download the version you need, if applicable. As you get ready to fix the problem, an important caveat is DO NOT overwrite your wp-config.php file because it contains your database name, database username, database password and without this information you will not connect to your WordPress database. That would not be good.

If you delete all the WordPress files on your server, except wp-config.php and the folder wp-content you will be ready to upload the former version that was working. However, depending upon what you were doing when this error occurred, you might also want to consider adding one more step. Create a new folder outside of your WordPress installation and move all your plugin folders to the new folder you created. Now upload the WordPress folders and files and you should have access to your site again.

If you were not upgrading plugins when this happened, you should be able to move your plugin folders back and then reactivate each plugin. On the other hand, if you were upgrading a plugin when this happened you may need to locate the prior version of the plugin and upload it instead. Once you have your site back, make sure to back it up and backup your database, too.

Now, if you were trying to upgrade your WordPress version, make sure to deactivate all your plugins. With current backups, the other consideration is whether or not your WordPress theme will work well with the newer version of WordPress. If you can verify it is compatible, then go ahead and try it again. Once you upgrade, you should be able to reactivate your plugins. You may want to activate them one by one and check to make sure your site is working okay after each plugin activation. This will help you isolate a problem plugin.

If this was helpful, let me know.

However, nine modules are in the Proposed Recommendation stage.

However, historically one of the problems with CSS and the various web browsers is that one browser will support some of the standards and not others, and likewise another browser may support a subset of those standards, or a completely different set of standards. So, building sites that render the same way in each of the popular browsers becomes rather tricky. At the time of this post, it appears that Google Chrome 4.1.x is the most compatible with the current stages of the many CSS3 modules. Unfortunately, from the perspective of the designer or developer, as of February, 2010, Google Chrome only accounts for a little less than 12% of all browsers. However, we could see those numbers change in the future. In fact, statistics show it was only a few years ago that over 55% of all web surfers were using Internet Explorer (IE5, IE6 & IE7) and only 36% were using Firefox. The latest results show that Firefox has nearly 47% of the browser market; while IE8, IE7 & IE6 all combined for only about 35% of the browser market. For many web designers this is a good trend because traditionally, IE has been responsible for countless hours of additional work and headaches in the continuing efforts of web professionals working to get pages that render the same in all other browsers to render the same in IE browsers. According to Microsoft, they plan for IE9 to work much better with the CSS3 modules; getting away from the proprietary nightmares in their pre-IE9 browsers. However, the downside is that with IE9 they will not be supporting Windows XP. So, this may backfire on Microsoft. The other major browsers, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Sarari and even Opera support XP. Plus, in potentially 70% of the world, PC users are still using XP and have not upgraded (term used loosely) to Windows Vista or even to Windows 7. From a designer/developer perspective I will be happy when the proprietary prefixes are not needed and multiple hacks in order to get a page to render the same in one browser as in another.

Also, over the years the display size and color depth that a designer needs to take into consideration have varied considerably. 640 x 480 resolution used to be popular. Then it was 800 x 600 which was most popular. Then 1024 x 768 became a popular screen resolution. Along with this we saw the color depth go from 8 bits, to 16 bits and now 24 to 32 bits is most common. Of course, when there was a large enough demographic using each of those three display resolutions and color depths many companies and website owners would want pages to load the same for each resolution; and colors to be consistent with the lowest common denominator of color depth. With newer technology and wide screen displays, as of January of this year, the 1024 x 768 resolution only accounted for 20% of the current screen size; while a whopping 76% were at higher resolution rates … with 1280 x 1024 being the most common.

Although I don’t recall trying to install an older Office application, several months ago I did have an issue whenever I booted up my computer I would be greeted with a message prompting me to have Outlook Express compact messages to save space. Because I did not have Outlook Express installed, it was a bit frustrating to get this message on startup. So, after a little research, I discovered the only way to completely eradicate the problem required that I manually delete some files and make some registry hacks. FWIW, that did take care of that issue. However,

… it may or may not have been related to the issue that the search feature in Outlook 2007 stopped working. Another possible reason for the search function in Outlook 2007 no longer working, I felt could possibly be related to using Outlook 2007 to open Outlook data files from Outlook 97-2003. At any rate, something caused the search function to stop working. Additionally, I also discovered the Instant Search on my Desktop was not working. However, Advanced Search continued to work just fine.

There have been numerous times when having the search capability would have been helpful. So, recently I did a little more research on this and discovered that if there was a problem with either the Outlook search function or the Desktop Instant Search function, it would affect the indexing of the other. Also, I read that a solution that had worked for some was to select Search Options from the Microsoft Outlook 2007 Search Bar and then uncheck the box for indexing the Outlook data file. Shut down Outlook and then restart it and reverse the action by putting a check back in the box to index the Outlook data file. So, I tried that possible solution and it did not change anything.

I also read about another option that worked for some others. If you restart your computer in Safe Mode and open Outlook 2007 it was supposed to prompt you to repair the Outlook installation. The reported information was somewhat vague, so I wondered if that meant it would want me to locate my install disk and plug it in. As it turned out that was not necessary. At this point I should mention that I hadn’t needed to initiate a start in Safe Mode since I built this computer; and I quickly discovered pressing F8 did not start the computer in Safe Mode. Instead, it went on to a normal startup. Why did F8 not work? The reason for this was because my USB Keyboard was not being recognized when I pressed F8. So, to fix this I needed to enter BIOS setup and enable Keyboard USB Support and while I was at it I also enabled Mouse USB support. That little problem out of the way and I was then able to boot up in Safe Mode.

This is where I got a heart palpitation. Safe Mode loaded and I clicked to open Outlook 2007. However, rather than opening up Outlook, my computer crashed. So, I rebooted and attempted to boot up in Safe Mode again. This time my computer crashed without completing the Safe Mode bootup. So, I tried to bootup with the Last Known Good Configuration. This didn’t work either. It crashed during boot up, too. I thought, maybe this newly developed problem might be CPU related, so I restarted my computer and went into setup to look at the CPU temp and fan speeds. They were within acceptable ranges. So, I decided to try to reboot with a normal startup and see what happened. Better luck this time. I was greeted with a Chkdsk sreen. During stage two of the three stages, two Outlook related files were deleted and then it attempted recovery of the orphaned files. This was followed by a normal startup. I opened up Outlook and expected to see a folder titled Lost & Found Files, which would have been consistent with what I had read on a Microsoft Support site. Instead of the Lost & Found folder all of my folders were listed. However, there were hundreds of emails now in my Inbox, Junk Folder and even a Spam folder which had been deleted, some as long ago as six months or more prior. So, I deleted a couple thousand emails and checked to see if the search function was working. It was not. However, I was happy my computer was able to boot up normally. I tried the unchecking and checking sequence referenced above. That did no good either. I then went online and downloaded Windows Desktop Search 4.0 and installed it. I discovered fairly soon that Desktop Instant Search was working again. Good News!!! Unfortunately, when I opened Outlook, the search function was not working. Again I tried the uncheck and check routine to see if that would fix the problem. Once again, there was no difference. However, the following day, just for giggles, I decided to try the search feature in Outlook 2007 and to my surprise, it was working.

So, if Outlook search has quit working for you, you may want to try these methods to fix the problem. I hope it works for you. Let me know if it helps.

Timing is now great for small business start-ups to become major players that shape the landscape of this industry. Does your company focus on wind, water, fuel cells, efficiency, pollution controls, waste management, organics, or being environmentally best in class?

Understanding your market and targeting your small business marketing will position you to become a major player in the green industry. Have you heard Realtors say the three most important keys to business are “location, location, location?” For green industry entrepreneurs, this is also true. However, it’s internet location which is important. Why is that? Inherent to the green industry your target is not locally confined. It is national or global. This is integral in determining the methods of marketing you employ. This is why it is important you utilize search engine optimization [SEO] as a key area of your marketing focus.

According to a recent Penn State survey 10% of your target audience will be searching to make a purchase or searching for your company. Conversely, there is an 80% chance your target market will be searching the internet for facts or information about your product or service. So, in order to capitalize on the majority of searches you need a website that provides relevant content about your green specific product or service.

Essentially, there are two ways that internet searchers will arrive at your site following a search. You either have to appear high in the organic rankings or be in the top few sponsored search results. To clarify, the sponsored search results are paid ads that will appear at the right side of the page or in a different color at the top of the search results. Interestingly enough, according to another study at Penn State, people are very suspicious of the sponsored ads. In fact, according to their research, about 80% of internet users will click the organic links rather than the sponsored links.

The first lesson to learn from this—in contrast to what Search Engine Placement [SEP] companies will tell you—investing the time to create a website with several highly optimized pages targeted for specific topics and keyword phrases will provide you with a much higher return on investment [ROI] than spending money on sponsored links. In future articles we will continue to explain the differences in SEO and SEP, so that you can have a clearer understanding of how search engine marketing [SEM] can be employed to provide the most value—both short term and long term—for your small business start-up. In the next article we will discuss how using narrow keyword phrases versus broad based keywords will impact your business. Make sure to subscribe so you do not miss out.

Its Another Portland Skyline

Also, several months ago I converted this site over to a WordPress site and also have my old Rants, Raves & Insights blog up and running on this site, too; notwithstanding that I have not posted to it in almost forever it seems. What I noticed was that I had grown tired of the theme I had been using and decided to build a new WordPress theme from the ground up. You are looking at it. I call this WordPress theme, Skyline Two. Website design, coding, Photoshop design and slicing, Flash design and a bunch of PHP coding all go into developing something like this.

This is the second WordPress theme I have built from scratch in the past few weeks. You can see the other theme at Portlands Foreclosures. I also created a landing page for them too. Check out the “Coming Soon” link on that site to see a Real Estate Listings mockup with a nifty Flash intro.

Speaking of Flash … if you haven’t clicked on the PLAY INTRO link on the header image above … do so now. That’s another Flash intro that I am using here; because I Flash adds to a site, but an entire Flash Driven site is not so good for most sites, because Flash still is not as search engine friendly as standard XHTML and CSS driven sites. Nonetheless, Flash still looks cool and adds some pizazz to a site. In fact, I have recently put together a couple other sites that include Flash banners. Check out Just Settle My Debts and Renegotiate My Home Loan websites.

Rather than run on a bunch on this post, I will keep it short by saying that I have also been doing some social media marketing with Facebook and Twitter, some online classified marketing, developed some landing pages, tying some of them to lists and autoresponders. I also put together a few ebooks and done a little bit of work with Joomla, too. I will write more later to update the site.

The bad news for social media advertising and mobile advertising is that they are falling short of the desired results businesses had hoped to see. Continuing to use a blend of advertising appears to be the best way to hedge against uncertainty in the social media and mobile advertising markets. The report indicates a great deal of risk exists in utilizing these forms of digital advertising. However,

it stops short of defining any reason why social media and mobile advertising are failing to deliver the results that other forms of digital ads are delivering.

It may well be the reason they are not performing as well, is due to a general lack of credibility; due to the fact that there really has been no formal regulation regarding claims and endorsements made about products, services and opportunities which are abundant in blogs and social media.

Social media spam may contribute to the lack of delivery for social media ads, as well. We have been dealing globally with email spam for about ten years. Some measures are in place to address this type of spam; not that they have actually eradicated spam from email marketing and advertising though. However, using reputable email marketing companies and utilizing opt in lists, has allowed email marketing to still deliver decent returns with targeted audiences. Blogs, and social media are still frontiers, without any consistent regulation. I wonder if the spam and abundance of non-regulated marketing could be a significant factor in the results found in the survey?

… may soon be under the scrutiny of the FTC.

Clamping down on blogs and bloggers who post tainted endorsements and who make incredible claims, will be quite a task, in and of itself. Enforcement should prove interesting, especially with many blogs being written by people not residing in the United States. Monitoring and addressing deceptive advertising in other forms of social media presents other interesting questions and dilemmas. For example, on Twitter, how can a twit make an incredible claim and disclaim it; plus add a clickable link; all in a 140 characters or less? That would be the challenge for tweets; should they fall under the new scrutiny of the FTC. Once the FTC identifies violators, then what will they do and how will they be able to eradicate the problems?

Although I am opposed to censoring personal expression, I am supportive of maintaining ethics in advertising of all types. To that extent, I believe claims and endorsements in blogs and tweets need to be truthful and forthright; no different than in traditional forms of advertising. If you make claims about your personal results, first and foremost, those claims need to be factual. If you say you are making $50,000 per day, you need to be able to prove you are consistently making $50,000 per day. If you say you have a system that will generate a gazillion users, followers, clicks, or whatever, then you need to be able to prove you have been able to consistently produce those results. If, however, that statement is not factual and provable and you benefited due to actions of others in reliance upon your claims; then you should be liable for all damages sustained by those who relied upon the deceptive statements. Second, in this same example, in the event you are actually realized the results claimed and this realization is not a typical result, then the typical results need to also be stated conspicuously. A simple disclaimer saying these results are not typical is not enough. Ideally, these two rules would be applied similarly to other endorsements and claims; whether they are for weight loss, improved health, or any other quantifiable results. Additional comments relative hereto were recently solicited by the FTC, as noted in the FTC Endorsement Guide

As a side note, although beyond the scope of the newly planned monitoring of blogs by the FTC, this author believes that equally important to consumers and taxpayers, are elections, ballot measures and political campaigns; some of the biggest violators of deception in advertising in this country. Truth in advertising, because of the gravity and magnitude of the potential damage in the election and campaign process, transcends civil damages. Deception at this level should be prosecuted criminally; as egregious felonies or acts of treason.

In this post I am simply providing you with a small handful of Useful Social Shopping Networks that some of us could be utilizing and taking advantage of:

Social Shopping Networks

• Books, Music & Whole Lot More: Amazon
• Connecting Stylish People: Stylehive
• Discover & Recommend Products: Kaboodle
• Product Reviews: Crowd Storm

Note: Toms Skyline Design is not an affiliate of the above Social Shopping Networks, nor does their listing here necessarily constitute an endorsement of their content, policies, practices or effectiveness. They are listed for information purposes only. Hopefully, the information can be helpful and valuable to the readers of this blog.

Coming Soon:

More Market Expansion Listings for

• Horizontal Markets
• Virtual Worlds
• Photo Sharing & Video Sharing Networks
• Mobile Networks

Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog so you do not miss valuable information and important news.

Fail Whale says Twitter is Over Capacity

Notwithstanding there are some companies utilizing the social value of Twitter, one would have to question whether or not tweeting holds much value for smaller companies. The Harvard study seems to indicate that of all Twitter users they will tweet on average only once during their Twitter lifetime.

What do the ten percent that are responsible for 90% of the tweeting, tweet about? Although there are some tweets about news events, there are also some who simply troll for followers, by repeatedly tweeting a rotated set of keywords. However, the bulk of the tweets I have seen are MLM related, or attempting to sell their information or services. The same tweets are repeated over and over again; many of which, are too incredible to be true. Obviously, all of the people who say they are making twenty gazillion dollars per month; or who can show you how to get 50,000 followers in 90 days on autopilot, are not making the money they say, nor is it possible to build these empires on autopilot. It is, however, possible to send out thousands of tweets making these claims.

Twitter needs to figure out a way to minimize the SPAM that is flowing in the tweets; otherwise the value to businesses and to individuals will quickly diminish; and the only sustainability will be the smell of Hormel on Pareto;s plate.

I am talking about this now, because, you may have noticed my site was down for a few hours today. I didn’t really want it to be down. However, the upside is that I am now working with a really great web hosting service that should make my life easier; so I can focus on positive activity rather than spending my time trying to troubleshoot server and support issues.

I transferred several domains over to my new hosting partner today; and for the most part, everything went off without a hitch. In fact, on one of my other domains I was able to quickly install and configure the newest release of Joomla in a matter of a few minutes. This would have taken me several hours with my former web hosting partner. The biggest issue I had with transferring this site was that my database import said it went okay, however, it missed chunks of data here and there. Also, I did not use shell access and ftp’d everything; which, normally is fine. However, I did discover that some files did not upload the first time around. So, this caused me a little grief. Fortunately, I have experienced that before and was able to recognize where the potential issue was at.

All said, I don’t think I lost more than three or four hours, with the transfers and setup. Now, with a great hosting partner, I can focus on design and marketing.

In this post I am simply providing you with a small handful of Useful Recommendation Engines that you and I both, can and should be taking advantage of:

Recommendation Engines

• 500+ Topic/Categories: Stumble Upon
• Media/Entertainment: MatchMine
• Applications: AppScout from NetFlix
• Movies/Film: Criticker
• What’s great and what’s not; in your area: Yelp
• Events Going On: Going

Note: Toms Skyline Design is not an affiliate of the above recommendation engines, nor does their listing here necessarily constitute an endorsement of their content, policies, practices or effectiveness. They are listed for information purposes only. Hopefully, the information can be helpful and valuable to the readers of this blog.

Coming Soon:

More Market Expansion Listings for

• Social Shopping Networks
• Horizontal Markets
• Virtual Worlds
• Photo Sharing & Video Sharing Networks
• Mobile Networks

Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog so you do not miss valuable information and important news.

If you are familiar with Joomla then you are probably also familiar with Community Builder; a highly favored extension by thousands, to the Joomla CMS. I received word from the Joomlapolis Security Team that Joomlapolitan has advised anyone still using CB 1.1 to immediately update to 1.2.1 for security reasons. If you are running CB 1.1 make sure to update A.S.A.P.

For Joomla site owners and developers that are looking for a classified ad solution, JoomClan Classified Listings component has just released news of several fixes, including:

Fixes that address the following:

• ‘uddstart’ is undefined and other errors in IE8
• Unable to select my PayPal account
• Drop Down Select Option
• Free Ad Post Issue

I purchased and downloaded this component not too long back. I think it had the potential to be one of the best, if not the best classified listings component that runs native on Joomla 1.5.10 rather than the legacy Joomla. However, when I downloaded it (I believe it was their beta version, it still was a bit buggy) there were issues with that version that made in unworkable for my application at that time. I removed the application and they refunded my money promptly. There are only a small handful of options for classified ad extensions to Joomla. The JoomClan component, in my opinion, has the most to offer in its environment.

With that said, I have already downloaded the newly released version of Joomla; and I believe I will go ahead and get it setup and give it a test run on another site.

A gentleman from New York discovered what he calls an “oversight” on the part of 99.9% of all marketers that allows him to get otherwise paid-for advertising at Google as well as all other search engines that allow sponsored ads.

And no, nothing about his “secret” is illegal – nor does it require that you know someone on the “inside” at Google, Yahoo, MSN, Overture and others.

Instead, the New Yorker boasts proudly “…this is something that I caught onto just before 2000 when there was so much search engine craze running around, and started doing small just to test things at first … but which I later expanded on after getting the hang of it.”

This same fellow went on to start and operate sixteen separate online companies selling everything from pet food, DVDs, children’s toys & games, books, software, and sold not only his own manufactured products but became an affiliate for other web businesses – all the while applying his mastermind secret.

Over the course of nearly eight years the New Englander confesses “I’ve actually gotten over $87 million in advertising that using my secret I never had to pay for … and the largest share of which was more recently in Google pay-per-clicks as well as other forms of pad advertising at search engines … all of which I got for free …”

So powerful is his secret that he’s able to monopolize any niche online, and can always secure the top premium spots just above the usual organic results featured at most search engines.

He still has to set up an account with the search engines – but after applying his secret he is removed from having to pay for all the costs otherwise involved.
Again, nothing about his secret is either illegal or robs from the search engines.
One spokesperson from one of the most popular search engines said chuckling after being made privy to this amazing secret “Wow! Ha! This is really unique … and in my expert opinion it would only serve to enhance and bring more business to us at [name of search engine withheld for legal & confidentiality reasons] and not cause us to lose business in the slightest. Amazing!”

The northerner revealed that in this nearly eight years’ period of time since applying his secret he’s done well over $300 million in sales revenue with a most diverse line of products, and most recently in the last two years netted nearly $166 million after really “buckling down and pressing my secret to its fullest potential.”

Now to everyone else’s fortune, the city slicker is releasing his secret for getting an unlimited amount of pay-per-click ads to the general public. But he’s not promising any of us for how long.

A bit of an eccentric, the gentleman says “We’ll see just how long I can make it available before it saturates things.”

One famous public web guru pointed out that although this man may gain economically more so as a result of the publication of his secret “he’s already so amazingly rich that whether he continues or discontinues its sale will neither make nor break the man, but not grabbing it for yourself while it’s still available could prove disastrous for you as you may only have one chance, and a very limited one at that, to get this.”

It is currently available

here

…so you may want to head on over there now and get it.

It’s in a very easily readable format and is quickly and readily understood and mastered by anyone with even a 4th grade reading level.

While you’re there, why not scroll down and review for yourself the huge successes others are now having with this incredible breakthrough in targeted advertising now made freely available to the rest of us?

To your success,

-Tom