Building Templates for CRELoaded

Posted on May 25, 2007
Filed Under Design | Leave a Comment

CRELoaded is one of the loaded flavors of osCommerce and is by far the most common commercial variants.

Templates for this application can be either difficult or simple depending on your approach. So what I did is created a post that articulates the fundamentals of good design for osCommerce, CRELoaded and osCMax to be published today after I get the supporting images completed.

Be sure to check back.

WordPress 2.2 Theme Conversion

Posted on May 24, 2007
Filed Under Design | 1 Comment

Updating WordPress broke my theme

If you have recently updated your WordPress to 2.2 you may have noticed that your columns are mis aligned or simply fall below your content.

This is a very common issue and I’ve fixed literally dozens of these in recent days and figured I’d write a summary on this.

To begin with, MANY existing WordPress themes on the market free or otherwise are usually some sort of modification of other themes. In fact those themes are modifications of the original themes which you could essentially trace back like a genealogy or family tree.

The most common thing I encounter when fixing the layouts is the issue of MARGINS which breaks the layout. With the new widgets integration people are finding the layouts breaking. So I’m going to take a quick break and assemble some demo files for this article so you can see the steps.

……… Update to follow

HTML Tables to CSS Conversion

Posted on May 24, 2007
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CSS Layouts that Validate

There really isn’t an HTML to CSS or Tables to CSS converter that can do much more beyond casual conversions of simple layouts. After examining all the things available on the subject including wizards I think we can safely conclude that the best way to do a conversion is by coding it line by line.

What if your not a CSS expert and don’t know where to start? Well given the vastness of resources available on in regards to layouts using CSS a new person or one that knows little CSS could relatively easily adapt free solutions found on the web to meet their objectives.

In the years I’ve been doing CSS I’ve been asked only about a few dozen times to convert table layouts to CSS layouts while preserving content, layout integrity, and menu structure. Although not difficult for the most part, forms and tabular content I most always leave in table format largely because ease of change for site owners isn’t at all easy for someone who doesn’t understand CSS alternatives.

So how then can a person convert HTML Form layouts to cleaner and lighter CSS layouts? There is no simple answer so I’ll elaborate on a few fundamentals and pointers.
Read more

bbpress and WordPress matching themes

Posted on May 23, 2007
Filed Under Design | 2 Comments

Creating beautiful matching templates for WordPress and the sister project bbPress can be a daunting task especially if you have recently upgraded to WP 2.2. Going through all my inventory this morning as I wrapped up some drop ins I stumbled upon about 8 real nice designs I’m giving to The Brokers Edge for its new Real Estate Member Blog users.

Rich with features that are not specific to WordPress these designs are adaptations of their original intended target application, Open Realty. Although I still support Open Realty in terms of template design WordPress has proven to be much more powerful and clean.

Please visit The Brokers Edge for details. Oh yeah, I don’t put links on my front page anymore.

Open Realty Templates - Themes - Joomla

Posted on May 21, 2007
Filed Under Products | 2 Comments

Two for one

Well I had thought long about this today and what I’m going to do is this. I’m going to release for both OpenRealty, Joomla OpenRealty, and WordPress with the current inventory.

I’ll publish more on this later but until then send me an email if you have questions.

Real Estate Listing Plugin - Pre Release Update

Posted on May 21, 2007
Filed Under Products | 4 Comments

Ok it looks like its pretty much unavoidable. Have you ever noticed that nearly all plugins for WordPress don’t require you to edit and or add a database? It was obvious from the get go that our plugin would require a full blown install of the listing manager database and that the plugin would be the WordPress part that provided the interface and display of the listings.

Well today it looks like a few things are not going to be able to be avoided right up front. Here is the news I got from my programmer first thing this morning.

A ) The database will have a separate installer built which will be simple on the first release and subsequent releases will ask you a series of questions about the field names you want to have of which those necessary for normalization will be required such as State, Agent, City and so on as these things are entered only as many times as needed and not duplicated.

B ) Manual editing of tables is required first release as stated before but as mentioned before we told you that using the WordPress Loop in regards to PAGES and not just posts is how you will control the layout of the listings details page. So for example if you had say 3 or 4 different Listings Details Pages you wanted to use for various property types (rentals, luxury, condo, residential) you could have a custom layout per each. Thats the good news. The silly issue we are encountering is the widgets display of featured listings either 1 up or up to 6 up and rotating them from the database. Not a problem per se but people are likely going to want to install this on existing sites and THAT is a problem because it WILL NOT WORK.

C ) ONLY ONE Search Results Page can exist and at this point and the layout changes so far MUST be made in the functions.php file of the WordPress theme of which I’ll supply a pair, an unedited generic no images bare naked one for designers and a default one from my design inventory.

I’ll keep you posted. In the mean time get your FREE Real Estate Blog by emailing me and I’ll set you up with plugins and pre-mods already configured for you.

EDIT: Real Estate Plugin and K2 Sidebar Modules

BTW I forgot to mention that even though the K2 Sidebar Modules are more powerful and work better when developing templates themes in the past following the methodology of the wordpress loop, too many people are going to have issues with this so Widgets is the direction for displaying featured properties and short links to listings. I’ve always been a fan of the K2SBM as many of my themes were based on it but I see no way around this.

Migrating WordPress 2.2 to Joomla

Posted on May 18, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio | 1 Comment

Joomla and SEF Advanced to replace WordPress 2.2

Yep, I’ve mentioned it before and this weekend this site will be migrated to a Joomla site and the blog will be moved to the /blog directory as I prepare to start publishing dozens and dozens of templates and other resources for download.

WordPress is certainly up to the task especially when considering using the WordPress Loop as a mini CMS system. I am a real fan of WordPress more so than ever before as I delve into it for some personal projects I’ve had tucked away for a long time. But WordPress as versatile an effective as it may be does not have a feature I most like about Joomla, the ability to designate menu positions on a page by page basis.

Joomla will give my new design and site some critical features specific to my long planned objective. I’ve wanted to publish tutorials, videos, templates and other resources for download to members where I can change the theme or template ever so slightly to reflect a unique look depending on the area of my site you are in. If for instance you will be visiting the tutorials area the tutorials template is what will be displayed and I can organize the menu’s a lot quicker than using WordPress, which also has the capability of individualized menu structures per “page” not “post” .

So I’m back to work to finish the WordPress projects I’ve started for clients and then over to complete the Forum design on TBE and then back here.

PAY CLOSE ATTENTION to the URL’s. I’m going to use it as an example of how to preserve links and page rank while switching systems and I’ll provide a quick link list page in Joomla to demonstrate how it all works. So often people tell me they don’t want to migrate their site to Joomla for fear of losing their much valued and established indexing of existing links. Well I’m happy to tell you its very possible to preserve every single link regardless if its ASP, HTM, HTML, PHP, or some other flavor of file extension.

The Difference Is In The Details

Posted on May 18, 2007
Filed Under Products | 1 Comment

Even though I changed my slogan from “The Difference Is In The Details” a few years back to “Where Beauty Meets The Web” I never forget how very important both statements are in articulating quality of design and coding.

As I cruise through archives today I noticed all the projects I’ve done have now exceed 250+ sites, layouts, and letterhead or print documents in the past three years. I’m amazed to notice that a large percentage of them were what I’m now calling Design Rescues because they almost always had something to do with me being hired to fix what should have been done in the beginning. I also noticed that a good quantity of these projects were conversion requests where existing bulky HTML sites were to be converted to cleaner and lighter CSS / XHTML projects as people become more and more SEO minded.

Designers forced to face a global Walmart mentality

As I go into my weekend preparing to complete a few projects that have been long and semi drawn out on a personal level I’ve decided to revive the entire project for www.CodeFreelance.com after abandoning the idea more than a year ago. CodeFreelance was my answer to all the design jobs being sent outside of the US, Canada and Western Europe where the technologies were born. Fear of being considered a bigot had been a motivating factor of me shelving the project in addition to the code base not being completed until recently.

I respect coders and designers the world over and make no judgment about others in disparaging terms but time and time again I find good designers working for dirt pay in order to compete with the massive migration of jobs and project revenue being sent over seas as a result of this apparent belief that you can buy a Ferrari at the price of a Hundai which contradicts common sense in many areas. My design kit was assembled to try and level the playing field for designers in the US and Western Nations seeking to stay competitive without living in subject poverty.

United States of America - Made In China

Early this morning I updated the code base on CodeFreelance.com a accepted commitment by individuals willing to babysit the site after it opens. My intention is to open it as a 100% free (no fees) freelance bidding site to designers and project managers who share the same ideology as we do. When I say we I mean designers and coders that would love to be hired by their own people and not side stepped for this Walmart mindset. Jobs leave this nation, Europe, Australia, Canada and Mexico at break neck speeds and evidence of this exists more so than ever before as one only needs to lift the corner of the United States from the tip of Florida what you will see is the label “United States of America - Made In China”

CodeFreelance.com is yours free of charge to post, share, bid and hopefully to prosper at no expense to you for the service.

WordPress 2.2 A Realtors Dream.

Posted on May 16, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 1 Comment

Well my Real Estate Listing Plugin is going to be tested today on this new release of WordPress to see if there are any issues to raise concern. WordPress 2.2 and the Real Estate Listing plugin should be a marriage made in heaven now that the Widgets features is integrated as standard feature elements. This release is truly anticipated and exciting possibilities have just become a bit more user friendly.

Lets look at some features

WordPress Widgets allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity. This functionality was originally available as a plugin Widgets are now included by default in the core code, significantly cleaned up, and enabled for the default themes.
Full Atom Social Networking Support, including updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement our XML-RPC interface This same XML - RPC interface can be accessed using desktop applications.
A new Google Blogger import utility. that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login. Ever wonder why you should have a WordPress blog instead? Consider this, google is a responsible company that downgrades its blogger ranks as not to show bias. Downgrades! yep.
Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment it will bring in another comment in the background so you always have 20 items on the page. (I know it sounds geeky, but try it!)
We now protect you from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break your blog.
Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy and lighter on your server.
We’ve added a hook for WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari.

Webmaster Client Management Tool

Posted on May 15, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio | Leave a Comment

Web Designers, Hosting, and Webmaster Client Tool

Man I despise losing things or forgetting what DVD I do an archive to when I backup my system. I’ve always wanted to have the resources at my finger tips to manage projects, clients and modified code elements all wrapped up into one convenient application. The problem has been that no such application worked exactly as I want it to. So I created a fast and dirty one using MS Access which is going to get some professional treatment and you are more than welcome to a copy of it.

It solves problems for WordPress, Joomla, vBulletin and other application administrators woes.

Before you say, big stinking deal how stupid is that, learn what it was created to solve.

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