AWBS Template Tool

Posted on April 30, 2008
Filed Under Design | Leave a Comment

Update to the AWBS Template Tool

Only a brief moment available to drop in and make post about a few updates to the AWBS tool. Previously I had posted that more than 16k errors or should I say declarations and code structure were changed in the default template to make an all new one based on XHTML coding standards. Yesterday and the day before I found dozens and dozens of additional changes I needed to make in order to get my broke template master to work. Fixed I decided to make a Dreamweaver snippet and extension tool real quick which although isn’t super beautiful it is fully functional.

AWBS Template Dreamweaver Extension

What I did is take all the code out of the templates that were considered tags that can be used elsewhere and put them in to three snippet categories in the extension. After visiting the AWBS documentation site I took a list of the available tags and simply put them in the drop down menu for the extension.

I have NO IDEA what changes AWBS has in store for future releases and I’ve offered the template to them as a master layout if they so desire which is cleaner, lighter, faster and validates better. Its loaded with comments for novice persons to easily and quickly build a template for AWBS.

I’ll still keep the extension, support files and template masters as part of this very affordable template kit for AWBS. If AWBS decides to implement the new reworked template as part of their release, I’ll still provide minimal support for it in the new forums I’ve installed on my domain.

I have literally been up to my neck with catch up tasks and have turned down freelance projects as a result to get these projects complete and out the door.

If you want the kit now, without the tutorials or video guides, you can purchase the kit for $29.95. Please note however that when other elements of the kit become available I will notify you of download location. What is pending is the video how to guide, the dreamweaver extension needs testing and I just wrapped up the photoshop action and image TDK for AWBS standard icons and I’ve included several reworks in that area too.

AWBS is a great product written by intelligent programmers. We all know that programmers and designers don’t always see eye to eye so all the above mentioned errors and issues are design related and should not reflect poorly on the quality of AWBS as an ideal solution for hosting companies. Besides, AWBS is likely the most affordable and easy to use solution among the many I’ve tested. I’m a fan and a user of the product and have it on no fewer than 33 client servers ( last count ) at any given time.

Please EMAIL me or contact me to purchase the kit without the videos or documentation until they are complete.

Kissing Freelance Goodbye!

Posted on April 25, 2008
Filed Under Design | 1 Comment

No longer accepting project commissions for now!

The time has come that my existing contracts with real estate website service providers is so demanding that free time to pursue any projects of a freelance nature is not realistic and delays are just foolishly long and simply un manageable. I’ve decided to wrap up my existing commitments and agreements which can be easily done today and tomorrow which I will then publish my existing open-source projects and free plugins which have been delayed time and time again and I do not want to anger people so its time to put these "delays to rest permanently".

As it stands I will only wrap up my existing projects I’ve agreed to. I’ll refer and and all requests for request and proposal to a designer I’ve worked with in the past who is well versed in Open Realty, Joomla and WordPress and has a substantial background with server migrations and integrated solutions. My teaching schedule along with my above mentioned contracts are too demanding and rather than have things slip beyond any possible control I’m going to step out of the freelance arena for a period of time.

Any requests for work related to the posts that led you here may be submitted which I’ll forward to a designer who is competent and qualified for most entry level to mid level design projects.

NEW Production Workstation

Posted on April 21, 2008
Filed Under Design | 2 Comments

The ideal solution to lengthy project delays

A complex lesson learned during the build of my new production machine making me realize how little I actually know about the building of computers or hardware in general. The entire weekend from Friday about 1PM until late Sunday evening I spent building the machine to replace my tired old production work station. The process may be interesting enough for some readers facing the challenges I had with projects being drawn out sometimes months because the tools for the trade were just simply out dated and not up to the challenge of high end production. So herein before I get my Monday morning started I’ll share the details with you at this early hour.

The first objective, a new local linux box for testing.

My old machine, a dual CPU AMD 1.8 Ghz was plenty fast for many things but not at all current or ideal for things like Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash Pro or Photoshop CS3. So rather than toss it to ebay for $100 I spent Saturday converting it to a linux server to test apps and websites on before they go production. It was simple really, the installation and configuration of CentOS with the necessary server software to run a local linux box on my network, so it gets only casual mention in this series of events. The real challenge was the build of the work station.

Lengthy project delays became a serious problem.

One thing that has nearly crucified me time and time again is the lengthy time frame it has taken me to complete MANY dozens of projects of the hundreds I’ve undertaken over the past three and a half years. A lofty chunk of these delays was due to over booking projects or multitasking which really isn’t a bad thing if you have the infrastructure to handle such a daunting schedule. Teaching Photoshop at the College the first 3 hours of my day leaves time for freelance projects usually from about 11AM until about 11PM daily (which seems to be my average schedule). Over stacking or over booking projects is common with designers, especially those in freelance given the nature of the business. But such practice can be dangerous and costly if you are not experienced or well versed in how to juggle projects with a little finess. Hardware does in fact matter and even though you have all your finest procedures down to an effective set of steps, things bottle neck with outdated and troublesome equipment as I’ve experienced.

Can a person really claim that better computers can help with production time with design? YES! Experience has shown me that people who are able to produce high levels of output and production in the design business either have a well placed standardized procedure for turnkey production or a serious inventory of resources which usually includes an impressive production work station. Naturally there are other factors in successful design procedures that I’ve left out only because my post is really geared toward the individual designer and not design firm involving many individuals. Because of this, proper design systems then tends to look like the solution I built with the help of Shane Gibby at Click Once Computers.

The graphics work station, a PC platform.

When I set out to solve this nasty history of lengthy delays in project completion I had strongly considered the transition to a Macintosh noted for its reliability and impressive super computer like characteristics. I work with the Macintosh at the college three times a week and the speed and reliability of a Mac is difficult to compete with as many would tend to agree. However two key limitations in that platform motivated me to stick with the PC for my specific need.

The importance of graphics horsepower can not be underestimated in our business and although a Mac certainly has this down to a science the PC can be build to rival a Mac in this area leaving the balance of the required features all pointing to the PC for my concern. Hard drive space, graphics power, speed and ram were all top priority with peripheral components as secondary considerations.

Here is what we came up with for my new work station.

The CPU needed to be ideal for graphics and video related production and a dual process was my original plan until I discovered the very impressive criteria of the AMD Phenom X4 9850 Quad Core Processor. More cache per CPU than the competitors coupled with true quad core chip structure the hyper transport feature provides separate pipes for data, a major motivator for me.

The 800MHZ front side bus speed of the DDR2 memory sticks was sure to provide substantial performance improvements over my existing older 2GB setup. Now when considering this I had to decide if I was going to install Windows Vista in order to take advantage of the 4GB I installed or stick with XPSP3 Pro which would only see 3.5GB of the total available. Most would agree that XP would run much faster given the current setup but we had to be sure.

Trial and error is sometimes the best teacher so having spent Saturday installing Vista, it took only a few hours of testing and examination to quickly motivate me to re format the drive and simply go back to XP which I knew would run circles around Vista in terms of speed. So I took the half a gig loss with XP for the compounded increase in speed when compared to Windows Vista.

Next was the drive space. One thing my old machine was infamous for was rebooting during the save of large files like Photoshop files or video tutorials from Camtasia studio. There were times that this reboot during the save to the hard drive would deliver a blue screen of death as the NTFS system file would be corrupted forcing me on more than a half dozen occasions to recover data and start over. Frustrating and costly these delays have forced some projects to literally go into certain death overtime as my systems lack of quality RAM and drive space just beat me up with tragic performance issues. Hard Drive and redundant backup would be essential.

The net results looks like this;

AMD Phenom X4 9850 Quad Core Processor 2.50 GHz / 4MB Cache running up to 2000MHz FSB
ASUS M2N SLI Deluxe2 Mainboard
Thermaltake 140MM ORB CPU cooling fan
The "Ultra Black Box" 1000 watt full tower case with slide in hot swap drive bays, 2 120MM Case Fans and a spank of room for components.
3 SATA 160 GB HD’s 2 of which are on RAID 0. ( I chose the 160GB only because I don’t trust high density drives for mission critical data storage having had many high volume drives crash to frequently )
2 EIDE 160 GB HD’s migrated from my old box
1 Multi media card reader for USB and other types of data cards like those in my digital cameras.
1 DVD-CD-RW Drive
1 DVD Blue Ray
2 Married Visiontek Radeon HD 3870 X2 Video Card - 1GB GDDR3, PCI Express ( With SLI you can put two of these together with an SLI card bridge.)
1 21" flat screen trinintron monitor which will soon be upgraded to 2 View Sonic 24" DVI flat panel LCD monitors (on back order)
4 GB 800MHz FSB DDR2 EPP RAM ( 3.5 actual with Windows XP )
CL Audigy Pro 4 Sound module with the Sanson C01U USB condenser microphone ( podcasting naturally ) I added a 31" boom stand for the mic and a professional model PF1 pop stopper and a 60" X 54" acoustic box to keep external sounds out.
1 WACOM ArtZ-2 12×12 art pad (migrated from my old system)
1 Epson pre press printer with Ultra Chrome 7 ink features and Kodak’s Matchprint roll feeder. I use this when I get hired to create print materials and need to produce a match print for examination. This system costs 1/10th the cost my Fargo Dye Sublimation printers and can easily match its quality under most conditions.

When done my new system will feature dual monitors, all my printers on a network hub, and the Sony digital video production box for producing video for real estate clients.

There you have it, my new motive for this Monday morning in getting all my outstanding projects caught up and completed. Eager to get rolling, I’ll be back later today to post the release of all my plugins and modules.

AWBS Template Master Layout

Posted on March 26, 2008
Filed Under Design | 1 Comment

AWBS Hosting Solutions Template Design Master Layout

I absolutely love AWBS for domains in need of a software package for their hosting solutions and shopping cart but one thing that has given me the biggest headache is skinning a template for AWBS. Now before you AWBS experts sound off and beat me up understand my perspective;

AWBS templates are in fact exceptionally easy to build because the template method is quite similar to the old DRUPAL or even vBulletin method where you break your design down into 4 regions (head, footer, left, right) and the you simply wrap your template around AWBS. Not difficult and really no different than the designs I’ve done for aMember. The frustration comes in when I try to make the design compliant and without errors.

AWBS is a great tool but having taken all the template files apart and re assembled them I realized I’d NEVER do it again so I’m going to do it right the first time and then create a template master and a few snippets in dreamweaver to make the task easier in the future. This however assumes that AWBS keeps the same template method. I think I’ll just give away the template master once complete. Its basically a template for AWBS in which I’ve cleaned up all the nested and broken nesting of tables and added module boxes throughout as well as adding <fieldset></fieldset> throughout the layout so styling can be done entirely in CSS and no major edits would be required to style a custom theme per se`. Anyway you can visit the solution on The Brokers Edge here shortly and I’ll make this download available once I get it cleaned up.

Now Hiring PHP Coders

Posted on February 17, 2008
Filed Under Code Snippets, Design | Leave a Comment

Seeking PHP / MySQL Coder

Are you a good PHP coder who can code snippets quickly? I’m looking to hire another PHP coder to help with some small customization and snippets for projects we are working on. I’m taking all my years of code that we have held for commercial projects and converting them for FREE resources in my new resource directory. I’d like a person to be well versed in PHP 4+ and although 5+ is the current thing its not the supported thing universally so I need someone who is conscious of that. I’d like the coder to also be well versed in code sanitation to prevent potential security issues in these old snippets once updated.

The criteria for the coder is as follows;

Commit to a 25 projects minimum and charge accordingly.
Have a valid phone number in either the US, UK, or Canada preferably but not required.
Can be paid by certified funds or a verified PayPal account.
Must use my RTDS (Rapid Template Design Series) coding guideline.
Should understand AJAX and certainly databases.
Should understand XML at least from a dynamic generation perspective.
Must code cleanly with well commented code.
Dont Steal other peoples code.
Must be at least casually familiar with a few open source applications and have a good understanding of string replace type template engines.

Please contact me using this sites contact form and in your contact please include a phone number and the times of day or week you can work. Please be fair and competitive in pricing.

Now Hiring Photoshop Designers

Posted on February 17, 2008
Filed Under Design | Leave a Comment

Photoshop designers needed for layouts based on our grid system

Are you an Adobe Photoshop designer? I’m looking to hire a full time Photoshop designer to create layouts using our RTDS system in design. I’ve considered hiring through freelance gateways but language barriers have always proven to be burdensome and quality isn’t always guaranteed. NO XHTML or CSS required, just Adobe Photoshop.

The criteria for the designer is as follows;

Commit to a 25 - 50 layout contract and priced accordingly.
Have a valid phone number in either the US, UK, or Canada preferably.
Can be paid by certified funds or a verified PayPal account.
Must use my RTDS (Rapid Template Design Series) for layouts via our GRID system.
Have a good solid understanding of color and color theory. ( I can send you my guides and application )
Home based worker is the ideal for a very specific reason related to the RTDS.
Must be attentive to details and I mean small details as well.
Dont Steal other peoples work.
Yeah, its been said that "Good artists copy and great artists steal" but these layouts must be original work. Inspiration or being inspired by other designers work I’m fine with, after all, who is so arrogant to believe they have an original idea anyway. Just be honest is what I’m asking.

Please contact me using this sites contact form and in your contact please include a phone number and the times of day or week you can work. DON’T quote a price to me without knowing the details first. I want this financially realistic for you so low balling me on price will make me think you are desperate. I want FAIR pricing for good quality work, I’m not looking for a steal, just industry average pricing is fine. I can show you pricing charts if you so desire.

Open Realty IDX RETS MLS Joomla WordPress

Posted on November 23, 2007
Filed Under Design, Real Estate News | 2 Comments

Multiple Listing Services with Open Realty

It seems I get a lot of questions regarding IDX and RETS with Open Realty even though I post all over the web clear answers to how this can be achieved. Apparently confusing and sometimes conflicting information is encountered by people that read what others have written on the subject and end up avoiding the venture all together as a result.

To me that is a tragic conclusion to come by considering that most integrations with standards compliant RETS or IDX providers offer. I’m going to just very briefly write about the summary technique we use and later expand on this with some instruction on how to do this yourself with PHP. Lets begin with the most common formula we use.

Open Realty MLS IDX or RETS Import

Open Realty as the listing manager is one of the more common tools Realtors are using given the lofty inventory of features the developers at Transparent Technologies have included.

When using Open Realty, most people discover that in situations where RETS is available, the tool more often than not chosen is vieleRETS (see support list here) developed by Mark Lesswing, this application comes with provisions for importing data directly into your Open Realty site out of box. Coupled with a little PHP scripting the process can be automated and designed to run outside of the domain root for optimal results.

IDX and Open Realty are a bit different all together and although there are many options available the method we most often employ is straight PHP and extraction of the listing data into the Open Realty database which is configured to run daily via CRON. Somewhat complex for the non programmer this method is likely the better choice when compared to applications that attempt to convert the listing data to a CVS text file format first. More on this later.

Joomla MLS IDX or RETS Import

Using Joomla for real estate sites is actually so dramatically on the rise that my coders developed 4 proprietary code tools specific to the real estate industry that allow the easy integration of MLS listings into your Joomla site. Requiring either Open Realty or ezRealty to work effectively our snippets will be bundled when the release of Open Realty 2.5 becomes available as a turnkey solution.

WordPress MLS IDX or RETS Import

Once the venture I had financed heavily was the development of a listing manager that integrates with WordPress. Still on the project task list for completion, I’ve been more often asked to simply integrate Open Realty with WordPress using our MLS IDX and RETS methods. Again dependent on an external application to bring in the listings from the MLS, this method is actually the ideal as we often suggest people do not use their Open Realty install for all their text content exclusively as a blog may be better served.

This technique again does require the use of some proprietary code soon to be bundled but is none the less available upon request now. Pricing depends largely on the MLS system you need code for.

I’ll write on this extensively in future posts.

Why you should avoid paid links like the plague.

Posted on November 13, 2007
Filed Under Design | 1 Comment

AVOID PAID LINKS - OR SUFFER GREATLY

Here is a small little blurb about a recent discovery I encountered with a client of mine that got brutally crucified by Google for selling paid links. I’ve never entertained the idea of selling advertising of any kind on my site aside from Google Ad Sense and after doing some detective work on options available for future reference one thing surfaced as an absolute dangerous practice.

Selling links seems to be this little fad that site owners feel they can beat ole google at its game and I’m simply going to say this. You play with fire, you will get burned eventually. Selling links is deception in the eyes of many SEO experts and although I haven’t been able to find many people outright calling the practice “Black Hat” I’m under the belief its exactly that.

Reciprocal Link Exchange Programs - Fraud?

Long long ago before people got beat up with the reciprocal linking fall out, I was involved with a client that was smack in the middle of financing and producing a PHP script that would put most link farm solutions to pure shame. Had it not been for the brutal reality of reciprocal linking rising up and taking many by surprise this person would have continued investing tons of cash in his dream machine application. At the time this person felt it could be marketed globally for hundreds of dollars a copy.

I’ve never liked the notion of people exchanging links because of the cheaper than cheap appeal and quite honestly it looks like fraud to many. I’ve always asked myself “why would a Realtor link to another Realtor anyway”? Or any industry for that matter. I’m sure Google has asked that same question a few times I’m sure. I mean seriously, people who sell clothing or watches or even jewelery online don’t have links to competitors even if they are in different markets.

Not to single out Realtors specifically but this market and the Realtors who represent it, I find I have a great deal of compassion for. I’ve been providing services to Realtors for 11 years having started out in the print industry and I’ve always been amazed at how “industry firsts” approach Realtors for every stupid gimmick, gadget, and fad wasting time and resources the moment they are out of the gate. Intelligent Realtors know that fundamentals never die and all the car magnets, door hangers, balloons in the air and faceless institutional advertising mean little in providing a service to clients. But some one sold Realtors on a bag of tricks that was based largely on black hat principles working under the white hat pseudo facade. That trick was forecast almost 5 years ago as a negative that would surface to bite, and that was reciprocal link exchanges. What is a safe alternative then?

Paid Links ARE Bad - Is There A Safe Alternative? I think so!

About a year ago on one of my blogs I DON’T cross link to this one began by publishing “Content” written from those who wish to provide a link leading to their sites. Today that blog, which again, I don’t link to from here or the reverse, has risen from a nothing site to a PR6 blog ranking #1 in google for every single one of my chosen keyword terms. WHY? Well I have a theory and its one I’m going to start practicing here at my personal blog as well as the blog at the college I maintain. My theory is this;

Content is King! End Theory!

Look at it this way. A standard ole hyper link is about as exciting as watching dust settle on my Hummer because I can’t afford the gas. But when a person asks me for a link, I reply and say yep no problem, you write content or an introduction about what it is that you want the link to and I’ll give you the link, NO COST. It needs to be RELEVANT and it needs to be in some way related to a category that I have in the blog and it shouldn’t compete with that blog. I gain search engine food, the content, and you gain a one way link or several if need be to articulate your article.

I’m starting this practice for this blog now that I have the updated scripts installed and anyone who provides content related to something in design, testimonial, art, templates, Joomla, Open Realty, you name it. I’ll even entertain competing content links providing the article is intelligent and informative. Tutorials are the ideal. If my THEORY is correct, the results garnered on my 6 other blogs will replicate herein. The old saying should ring true; “you follow the same recipe, you get the same results”. That being the subject of yet another post forthcoming.

In conclusion: You want links on other peoples sites? You want those links one way? You want links that are relevant and in my opinion more effective than any paid link could be? Then offer unique well drafted content to site owners. Paid Links will hurt you if you are caught by Google offering them or even buying them as I understand it, so don’t do it.

For more information on the subject you can visit a few sites of people I have a great deal of respect for. Matt Cutts, Greg Boser, and more to follow.

Jared Ritchey Blog Reaches 141,000 visits

Posted on November 11, 2007
Filed Under Design, Products | Leave a Comment

Today checking the logs I see this blog has reached 141,000 visits (hits and visits I should say) in just 9 months.

Annoyed at my lack of motivation to complete this site after God knows how many announcements that I would, leaves me embarrassed. 141,000 is a large number of visits that could have been better served had I added and provided what I’ve been promising for eons to provide. It’s like the old story of the shoemakers kids without shoes. We seem to neglect ourselves many times as we work for others and its always been my belief that a customers project comes first above all else.

Well a little hired help is in order so I’m sporting the funds to find a competent PHP programmer to wrap up a series of snippets I’ve had on the books for some time and to invite ANYONE interested in testing my Dreamweaver extensions for bugs to please drop me a line.

Do designers hire designer? Yep as 80% - 90% of all my template designs go to template clubs, sites and other designers who outsource to me on a regular basis. Now however this designer is in need of a designer. I’m looking for people who can quite simply use Photoshop skillfully according to industry standard design parameters to complete a handful of designs for me. Again, email me if you are that person.

Template Monster Conversions - CMS CSS / XHTML

Posted on November 9, 2007
Filed Under Design, Products | 5 Comments

Real Estate - CMS - Joomla - WordPress - Open Realty Template Monster

It seems to be an increasingly popular request by people wanting to take a design they find in a template club or template house and have it converted to function with a CMS. The converting of stock templates from Boxed Art, Template Monster, and other template suppliers into a fully dynamic solution for popular CMS can be a rather complex chore. Many of these template suppliers provide visually attractive designs in largely static variants that are all to often also coded using standards now since expired.

Taking one of these designs and converting it to a valid XHTML / CSS layout then porting the template to work with Joomla, Open Realty, WordPress among others is really a task best suited for the Rapid Template Design Series. This single minded approach assists myself and my partner with the kind of conversion speed necessary to put the RTDS through its paces.

But how much is a conversion to one of these flavors of CMS solutions? Lets look at just three in summary to help you get an idea.

Joomla - Converting templates to XHTML / CSS for Joomla CMS $125+

Joomla as many would agree, is likely the worlds most popular and effectively built CMS solutions available today. What once cost corporations and government agencies tens of thousands of dollars in the past can now be done for a fraction of the cost. What I mean by that statement is that CMS solutions were and quite honestly still are expensive investments. With the availability of applications like Joomla the cost can be reduced and better allocated toward training and features in design that better suit the visitors needs.

Taking a template from one of the template suppliers and converting it is by no means a quick operation as many things need to be taken into consideration. When such requests are asked of us we always recreate the design in XHTML / CSS valid layout prior to porting it to Joomla.

WordPress - Converting templates to XHTML / CSS for WordPress $125+

WordPress stands in my fully biased position as the ONLY blog worthy of attention by serious site owners. I make such a bold statement like that after spending several years working with this marvel of publishing prowess and I have found no application quite like it anywhere on the web.

When serious businesses want to improve market effectiveness many opt in for WordPress. Every single real estate site I’ve ever built that ranked and did so well, did so because of WordPress. I can go on for hours on the ways we achieve this but very few words would articulate what WordPress is prepared to provide out of box.

The simple fact is no one wants a site that looks like someone else’s (carbon copy that is). So many times we take clients Photoshop concepts or templates from a variety places and convert them to work with WordPress after XHTML / CSS validation is achieved. The powerful benefits in the RTDS makes this possible for a fraction of the cost of a custom design and reduces turn around to an afternoon in most cases. WordPress template conversions are particularly suited to my field of expertise.

Open Realty - Converting templates to XHTML / CSS for Open Realty $125+

Open Realty is one of the premier Real Estate Listing Managers available today. One of the difficult things that has troubled Open Realty site owners is the lack of good quality templates at turnkey prices. Custom designs begin on average at $350 and quickly go up depending on integration and features.

Using the RTDS with client provided designs reduces costs to well below $200 on average. Frequently I encounter people who wish to have an attractive template monster design converted to operate with Open Realty. I’m happy to say that in the three years I’ve been building templates for Open Realty I’ve only encountered two designs that could not be effectively converted. Some designs are simply better suited for CMS systems like Joomla with an Open Realty Integration.

Open Realty Joomla WordPress Integrated - Converted templates as XHTML / CSS $425+

Not yet in my product list, the conversion of a commercial template from a template club to an integrated solution is by no means a simple procedure. However with the code snippets we use for integration we are able to bring together truly impressive designs in a valid XHTML / CSS solution to site owners at a fraction of the cost of full blown custom coding.

Feel free to contact me with questions regarding templates you are considering for conversion.

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