Great Website for Freelancers

I stumbled across this site for freelance designers and have been enjoying it ever since. I really love the layout as well. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Read more

New Look Same Crappy Content

I got a bug up my ass to change the layout. Nothing fancy, just a wordpress theme I found. I’m far too lazy / untalented to come up with something on my own.

Hopefully this will encourage me to actually write something of substance.

Wordpress as A CMS

Yes, I know this isn’t anything new, but I’m quickly becoming a big advocate of using wordpress as a CMS for client websites. Read more

Building a Strong Web Based Community

What does it take to build an online community these days? Not much. With packages like Drupal and phpBB, the means to run a community oriented website are literallly just a few clicks away. But what are the factors involved in making a community site successful?
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Yaro is Smart

Just a quicky today. Don’t worry, we can cuddle afterward and I’ll even call you tomorrow. There I go digressing again.

Over at Entrepreneur’s Journey, Yaro has a quote up that kinda hit home today. That quote is:

“When you own your own business you may not make any real money until you sell it.”

As both of you know, I recently started a small IT Consulting Company here in Idaho. Although I have begun to make ends meet (meat?), I have yet to see any real advantage over the normal nine to five, except the hours, of course.

So maybe I’ll hang on to this little company of mine and sell it to Bill Gates for a small profit!

If you don’t already read Entrepreneur’s Journey, well….then start.

Affiliate Programs are Cool

Being a wannabe web entrepreneur, I’m always on the look out for new ways to monetize my websites. One of the most popular ways to monetize websites these days is by using Google Adsense, Google’s PPC text ad program (see far right column). To be honest though, I’m not a big fan of the program. It seems to me that it is far too easy to fraudulently click on ads to make money. Plus it doesn’t seem like a great deal for advertisers as they are paying just for traffic to their site and not for legitimate sales opportunities. So I’ve been testing other affiliate programs lately. Read more

PHP and Paypal

I consider myself fairly versed in the programming language PHP. I prefer it over M$ languages because its free and open source, also because the majority of shared web hosting servers available are linux based. PHP and Linux play very nice together. Although you can run PHP on Windows-based servers.

When developing a new site, if I need a php script that I don’t already have in my library, I try to find a free one online that requires minimal alteration to suit my needs. I find this cuts my development time considerably. As it stands, there is an abundance of free php scripts available for just about anything one could possibly need. Most of them are fairly easy to understand and alter to your liking. This is not the case with paypal IPN scripts.

I’ve been looking for a PHP Paypal IPN script for a very long time. There are many of them out there, but until yesterday I couldn’t find one that worked first time AND didn’t require server alteration to run. Then I found Paypal Web Services over at Sourceforge. Paypal Web Services is a collection of paypal scripts that cover all your paypal payment needs. After configuring the config.inc.php file, I was accepting Paypal payments in less than 20 minutes. This beats trying to read Paypal’s 122 page PDF explaining how Paypal payments work. Yes, I’m not linking to the PDF for spite!
php, paypal, programming, IPN, free scripts

Get It In Writing

If I had a million dollars for everytime I’ve been burned on a design deal, I’d have…well at least a million dollars. I won’t name names or point fingers, but deals always seem to go sour when not in writing, especially when dealing with web design. Read more

Domain Names

As many of you know, I’m trying my hand at starting a design/hosting company with my good friend Jim. Pretty much everything is inline to get things moving except for one minute detail. We don’t have a domain name!!!!!!

We’ve been racking our collective brain to come up with something catchy for the last couple of weeks now. I have to be honest, if I have to check Register.com one more time to see if a domain name I like is available, I’m going to change my major to Social Work! Domain squatting is so annoying!

To remedy my recent frustration, I decided to dump my problem on friends, family and generally anyone who would listen long enough. Also, I decided to create a SitePoint contest to get some input from other web designers.

If you have any suggestions for a domain name, please DO NOT POST IT IN YOUR COMMENT. It will more than likely be snatched up before I have a chance to even look at it!!!!

Open Source Business Model

Lately I’ve been playing with the idea of developing some sort of open source software. As I near graduation, I’m trying to find ways to add to my awkwardly thin resumé. I feel a well planned open source project might be just the addition to my resumé that could land me a job in the already flooded php developer market. Read more

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