Latest Site – Tuff Beans Coffeehouse
Tuffbeans.com is the latest work from WebMullet Consulting. The theme is designed and developed to be as cross browser friendly as possible. The coffee house wanted a relaxed feel to the site, clean but not 'boxy'. The blog potential is not being fully realized, but the CMS aspect of the site is definitely appreciated at the backend.
Under the hood, the code is untidy in places, especially some of the CSS files, but with a team of one on this project, it works. Working with WordPress required the use of much PHP, webMullet didn't touch any JS this project.
We use Tweet Blender in the sidebar, and import feeds for current surf, weather and tide conditions.
WordPress 3.1 – Permalink Headache
The latest and greatest release of WordPress is great. However for the last 12 hours I've tried to get my custom permalinks to work properly. Unless set to the default permalink structure, all menu links returned my 404 error page. I'm just developing a theme, so I don't have a bunch of posts or pages, but I'm imagining the headache if I did!
I'm not going to go into detail about all the things I've tried, but I will say that there are many people out there having similar issues. In my case I think I've narrowed it down to the fact that I'm running a local WordPress installation through WAMPserver for my theme developing. As a last resort I uploaded my theme to a server running 3.1, and all works well with my permalinks. I just tested my theme on the remote server, so I'll keep this post updated with any headway I make troubleshooting the WAMP end of things.
PHP mail() – Error Fix
I just transferred a website over to GoDaddy and when testing out the deployment realized that the contact page, coded with PHP for the mail() function, wasn't working:
mail(): SMTP server response: 451 See http://pobox.com/~djb/docs/smtplf.html
I took it upon my self to track the problem down, and a while later realized that I should check online for a fix. I found one with a pretty good explanation. My hosting and specifics are different, but the reasons behind the error and the fix worked for me. Hope this re-post helps someone out there:
Your shopping cart is sending mail with "bare LFs" which Qmail doesn't support. While Qmail is following the official mail standards, most mailers ignore this problem and send the mail anyway. But, if you're hosted here you're stuck with dealing with it.
In mail message headers and content, new lines are supposed to be denoted by both a carriage return (CR) and a line feed (LF). Your cart is using just an LF. If it's php based, you'll find lines being terminated with "\n" when they should be terminated with "\r\n".
You have two options: 1) bug the developers to replace all the "\n" with "\r\n" in all their mailer code, or 2) do it yourself. My guess is that you're not going to get a whole lotta response trying option 1. So, you're going to have to look at the code yourself. Back up the files first, then do a search and replace to change them all.
And then the third option, the one I opted for:
On Windows, with the following entries in php.ini, the script below that works fine.
[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
SMTP = "my.mailserver.dom"
smtp_port = 25
<?php
$to = '"To Display Name" <rcpt@rcpt.dom>';
$subject = 'PHP mail test';
$message = 'This message was sent via PHP!' . PHP_EOL .
'It should work ... and it does.' . PHP_EOL . PHP_EOL .
'From Display Name' . PHP_EOL;
$headers = 'From: "From Display Name" <sender@sender.dom>' . PHP_EOL .
'Cc: "CC Display Name" <copied@copied.dom>' . PHP_EOL .
'X-Mailer: PHP-' . phpversion() . PHP_EOL;
if (mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers)) {
echo 'mail() Success!' . "<br />\n";
}
else {
echo 'mail() Failure!' . "<br />\n";
}
?>
Websites and Social Networking – Keeping Current
It took the purchase of an HTC Windows 7 Smartphone to motivate an update to my Coffeehouse's website. Actually not just the phone, but the package my service provider offered me. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube - always with me.
As I started playing with the 'bells and whistles' of my new toy, all that I'd mentally filed regarding Facebook and Twitter and the such, started surfacing. I realized that my coffeeshop's website had nothing linked to social networking. Nor did it have a blog. Now this realization wasn't anything I was completely unaware of. The website needs to be updated, and now I've got some features to work into it.
My internet provider has basic web hosting so I phoned to inquire about upgrading my plan. I was told that not only would I have to pay to upgrade to a better hosting plan, but that I'd have to pay even more for the database features I'll require to launch my conceived CMS based redesign using WordPress. I use two hosts for two separate websites, this one runs on myhosting.com, and my other site uses ipage. These are great hosts, but I've heard a lot of good things about GoDaddy so I opted for them. I was thoroughly impressed with their telephone support - the transferring of Tuff Beans domain name was a bit more complicated than it seemed - and they walked me through the domain name transfer process with ease.
I'm going to copy the current site to GoDaddy once the transfer takes place, and then upload the new site when its done. I'll post some before and after links when I'm done.
Coastal WebMullet Consulting Opens for Business
Like most things, registering a business is simple, not easy but simple: apply for a name, then register the approved business name, boom, done. That's the simple version. I'll briefly outline the slightly more involved process which the internet makes quite simple, but not easy.
I've always been drawn to the internet and computers. Although I've acquired no formal education on the subjects involved, I've a well rounded knowledge of various aspects of web-design and development, CMS, SEO, HTML, CSS, PHP, XML, SQL, as well as Microsoft Operating Systems and the pitfalls if wireless networking. I apply this knowledge daily as I spend most of my non-working, non-surfing, and non-sleeping hours at my computer desk. I've designed a few websites for friends and helped many people with various technical issues and troubleshooting their PCs. One of my friends asked why I didn't charge people for my help, and another asked if I had registered my business.
There was a bit a lapse between my starting to charge people and the realization that if I had a registered company which charged people, there might be a few tax-breaks. So a few days ago I filed an official Name Request Application online - see links at the end of this post. At a cost of $31.50, I should have read the guidelines better, as my first request was denied with no refund. My second request was accepted and I got verification within 24 hours via email with my certificate attached. This certificate is included in the fee, but were I to lose it there would be a cost for a re-issue. There is a two-month window in which to use this reserved name, so I got right on it.
I knew that webMullet was going to be a sole proprietorship. I was a bit impatient while filling out the online forms. The procedure is quite painless though, and my business was registered almost as soon as I submitted my form. This time the $40.00 fee was a one-time deal, and again the registration certificate was included, but additional copies carry a fee. There are other options and further things to register for. In Canada for example, if your business doesn't make $30000 before deductions, GST/HST registration is not mandatory (make sure you check this out yourself though, as I am not an accountant by any stretch).
So there it is. Now I await the end of a tax year. I'm waiting to hear back from a business associate about the specifics in regards to tax breaks, banking and accounting details, but I'm pretty excited.
Here are the links I found particularly 'useful'. This information was useful to me because I am a Canadian in British Columbia. Your situation may be different. :
After a Name is Registration Request is Approved
or
webMullet Video Picks
Spaghetti Trees DocumentarySons of Anarchy Season 3 Finale
Season 3 Finale - Best Episode Ever
Jax and the crew definitely coudn't have fit more into this season if they'd tried. From Cali to Ireland and back. The greatest thing about it was that I was the one taken for a trip. I had to admit that some of the Ireland episodes took a while to grow on me. But by time Jax was crossed by the cross, the flute was playing a different tune!
Although the season started off with a bang, I found the first few episodes a bit slow . All that groundwork needed to be laid, because the rest of the season was insane! And have I said how awesome the finale was!? If the whole season was as good as "NS", I wouldn't have seen the last episodes because my head would have exploded from too much "HOLY FU$#NESS"!
I thought having to wait for the upcoming season of Breaking Bad was tough, season 4 of SONS seems millennia away!
Learning Through Visual Osmosis
\Men's Online Magazine
Funny Videos Clips and Pictures
The word "stuff" covers a plethora of subjects, scary with the amount of UFI available at my fingertips. With nowhere and nothing specific to look for online, I checked out the daily optical illusion widget on my iGoogle homepage. I have to say that I don't have iGoogle set as my actual browser homepage because I am too easily distracted - not Google's fault as I am the one that put all the mind-tugging-mentally-lethargic offerings on the page. I click on the illusion, comprehend it and of course links to "The Stupidest Criminals of 2009" , "The craziest of WTF Body Modifications" plus many more intriguing choices are right there for my still-hungry mind to ingest. Click, so it begins...
SEO or Not
Regardless of whether my blog has been SEO'd or not, it has been almost a week since I reinstalled WordPress and started everything from scratch. The search results are still from old content when I search for webMullet. I've only tried one search engine, and webmullet.ca I'm pretty sure is not high on the Bots' priority list. It will be interesting to see when the results change.
The reason I started everything from scratch is that I want to apply some SEO to the site. I want to start as fresh as possible. I played around with the old blog so much, I fear that I may have tainted the code. I definitely overused tags to the point of bots not liking me. Any way, if anyone wants any of my old posts, (I doubt it), but I do have the database backed up and safely stored away, so I can repost if desired.
I'll keep y'all updated on how much house cleaning the spiders and bots get up to in the next while. If anyone has an average time-line or a really cool explanation, we would appreciate it. Thanks again.
Affiliate Websites
Wow, I never realized all the options out there. It really is amazing. It still comes down to having something that people want. In this case I need to have a website that people will come to. If people won't come, I won't have any visitors, and no referrals, and no cheques. So I need to design and develop and develop and design.
