A company familiar with developing applications for Facebook did the initial development, and I’ve spent the past couple of weeks formatting it to make it look very close to the website we developed late last year.

The application tracks the pregnancy of someone who has received this application.  They can track the progress on their Facebook Profile.  But it’s not just for the Mother-to-be:  any friend or relative can also have a ticker, tracking the progress of the expectant Mother.  There are many background images and ‘sliders’, so there are quite an array of combinations.

So, if you have a Facebook account, you can checkout the application at http://apps.facebook.com/happymamagifts/

I’ll be making improvements to the code in the upcoming weeks, although the code is completely functional now  One changes will be to let the Mother-to-be change the due date, if necessary.  I’ll also be making the flow a little better for both the sender and recipient of the ticker!

I’ll keep you posted!

Have a good day!

Ralph

So she has set up a business where Mothers-to-be and particularly Fathers-to-be may purchase exactly what they need for the hospital visit without having to scramble around looking for all of the necessary items.  If fact, for the first child, they may not even know what they need until they don’t have it AND need it!!

There are also items available for use during the pregnancy and for after the newborn has arrived.

You may visit the site  at Happy Mama Gifts!  I’m sure you’ll be glad you did!

NOTE: New products are being added regularly!  Also checkout the contest – the winner will receive the premium ‘Mother Load Birth Bag’ – everything that is needed for the hospital during the delivery stay!

Have a good day!

Ralph

I got the smallest dedicated server they had.  With that, I got the least expensive control panel that they offered.  The control panel is not a brand name, such as ‘CPanel/WSH’, ‘Plesk’, or ‘Direct Admin’, all of which I’ve used at times.  This control panel, called ‘Simple Control Panel’ was built specifically for Go Daddy.  I am here to tell you that it works great!  It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the other control panels, but it has everything I need to setup and host my websites.  I have complete control over the server, which can have it’s drawbacks if you are unsure of what you are doing.  But for me, I like it!

I’ve used Go Daddy for many years for their domain service.  As far as I’m concerned, they have the best domain service I’ve ever seen – and again, I’ve seen and used many.  It gives you the best control of all domain features of any system I’ve seen!

Now, I’m still not sure of their Virtual Private Servers (VPS), or any VPS for that manner.  When my last host convinced me I needed to go VPS, I did so.  I had nothing but problems.  I then purchased Go Daddy VPS to see if it was any better, and also, nothing but problems (I finally stopped using the Go Daddy VPS after a few weeks, and lost a years payment also – they are good – except maybe VPS – but don’t expect refunds unless they state it directly)  I stuck with the other host’s VPS for quite a few years, until I seen that Go Daddy had a small dedicated server – I then gave that a try!  I’ve never been so glad I did.

In fact, the VPS I was running was so bad I came very, very close to just closing the website for good! Yes, it was very frustrating and annoying trying to keep the VPS up and running.  That’s when Go Daddy sent me an offer for their new small dedicated server.  I’m so glad they did!!  It works like a dream!

As I said at the beginning of this post, these past 3 months have been the easiest I’ve ever had operating that website.  No problems at all related to the server!!!  I can now dedicate myself to the actual design and implementation of the websites instead of messing with the server!!

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Ralph

Setting up the page is straight-forward.  If you also have a Facebook identity, you set up the page under your own ID, and it creates its own entity.  Basically the page is like a Profile page, with all the capabilities of a Profile page.

However, now that I had a page for The Woodburner, I had to fill it up.  That was more of a challenge.  Can’t have a page on Facebook for others to ‘Be A FAN of The Woodburner’ and have it be empty.  So I created some content: we are in the middle of the 10th anniversary event, so that went up.  I had a video for the event, so I loaded that.  Then filled in the additional information on the website.  But it still looked a bit empty.

I then did a search and found a good application that allows you to put a feed on your Facebook page.  There you go!  Content right from the website.  People could then comment on it and that would be good.  Setting it up wasn’t too bad.  Making it look good was another story.  After spending serveral hours on it, I finally had what I thought was a good start.  Oh, for those of you who are interested, that application is called ‘Social RSS’; and it works great!

The one catch to the application is that at first you should set the time between feeds to the lowest, 30 minutes.  Otherwise you will have to wait hours to get content rolling in.  Once I got the initial feed, I then set it to a more reasonable number of hours.  Didn’t want to overwork my server.

Of course you can’t have a Facebook page for your site unless you let those who visit your site that you have a Facebook page.  That means adding the ‘Fan of The Woodburner’ code to the website.  Getting the code to work wasn’t too bad.  The hard part was making it match the website colorations and fonts.  To find that information I actually had to search the developers forum on Facebook concerning that code.  I got lucky – someone on there had the similar problem, and someone knew what css tags to use to get the Facebook code to respond.  So I downloaded that css, updated it for what I use on The Woodburner, and now it’s working great!

The Fan code allows you to set 3 items on your website:  The FAN button (gotta have that), a list of Fans (that’s nice), and a feed from your Facebook page.  Well, since my Facebook page was just all feeds from The Woodburner, I didn’t want to feed them back, so I blocked that part of the code.  Maybe later if interesting things occur on the Facebook page, I’ll turn it back on (and everyone at the website will know what they are missing.)

The only ‘problem’ is that The Woodburner page is not linked from my regular Facebook page.  I create links for it, but it’s not very visible.  I think the reason Facebook does this is so it can get advertising dollars for you to advertise your page on Facebook.  You’ve seen those click to be a FAN ads.  That’s why they do it.  But anyway people from the site now knows it’s there, and that’s the main point anyway.

Once I created the page I sent it to a few friends I had on Facebook that were also associated with the website.  That made 4.  Now The Woodburner Fan page on Facebook has about 14 FANs, so I think we are making progress.  Maybe something good will come out of it.  We will see.

Oh, since I found that feed app, I decided to feed this site into my main Facebook account.  That app does a great job of doing that, and it looks good also.  Now my friends on Facebook can also visit me here if they like.  That linking feed area is actually more highly visible that the link to The Woodburner page.  Go figure!  It’s all abut the dollar!

Well, that’s all I have for now.  If you need to know how to make the Facebook FAN code work for you, let me know and I can send you the css file – you won’t get it from Facebook!!!

Have a good day!

Ralph

Hello and Welcome to All!

As I’ve said these 10 years have been quite interesting and wonderful, and now we are into the second 10.

10 years ago I was going to the university for my Business Information Systems degree. During some of the coursework, we had to investigate various aspects of the Internet as it applied to what we were doing. I think it was January 1999 that I was trying to determine what would be a fun project, what type of website I could setup; I just wanted to see if I could do it – build a website – never did it before, I thought about a lot of my interests, and did a lot of online research on those interests, to determine what would be useful.

I explored all of what interested me to see what was out there at the time. I actually started with a list, and went down the list doing searches on Alta Vista (I don’t think Google was around then) and actually making notes on what there was on the Internet related to my interests.

One solid interest I had was pyrography – I’ve always loved the arts, music, and I saw some sites that displayed very good works of pyrography by various people. The website of David Kreider (www.kreiderart.com) was the first one I found. He was and is a fantastic artist! And there were other individual artist/pyrographer galleries, and a few grouping of very good pyrographers. But what I noticed was that there were no websites were someone could go to find information on learning the artform from a very basic level.

When I first started pyrography back in the very early 1980′s, there was next to no information that I could find. All I had to work with was what I could find, and most of it was from Walnut Hollow. Now, that’s not bad, but it was a rather limited resource. So that’s how I learned and I improved a bit. I had done oil and acrylic painting before that, since about 1973. But I found that I could do pyrography in a much more relaxed manner. I had lived in Italy for 3 years from 1972, and it was the artwork of Florence, mainly, but also Venice, that really made me aware of what art was and could be. That’s what piqued my interest in art in the early 70′s.

So, I decided that I was going to start a website for those who had an interest in pyrography, but had no idea where to go to find the information they needed to get started. So I took some photos of what I had done, wrote some introductory lessons (very basic), and studied what was needed to be done to be on the Internet. By then I knew I could build the initial website (all simple html at the time), but I had no idea how people would find it. I did a lot of research, and I did whatever I found seemed to work for others. I did a lot of things to get the site our there, but probably the most valuable thing I did was to get the site listed with Yahoo. At that time, Yahoo wasn’t very large either, and they were still listing sites in their Directory free of charge! I listed it there, at Alta Vista, and several other web portals that I don’t remember, probably because they are no longer around. I still today get people who stop by because of that listing in the Yahoo Directory (not search engine, the Directory).

I also thought about the name for a long time before deciding on The Woodburner, with the domain of woodburner.com. I was asked by many people why that name, and I always told them because the site was for the beginning burner, not an accomplished pyrographer. And anyone, at least back then, who started burning when they were young, knew the ‘craft’ as ‘Woodburning’. And that’s the reason the site has the name it does. It was to be a site where someone who wanted to learn the artform could come to find out about it.

There was also a side goal. I thought that if I could get more people interested in woodburning, by providing the information they needed, then more people would actually know and learn about it. The more people who knew about it, the more would find out that it is so much more than a ‘craft’, but rather a valid artform. So another goal was to have some part in spreading the word about pyrography. And in some small way I think the website succeeded in doing that.

At this point, the website is actually the people who stop by to share their experience, techniques, and knowledge on this wonderful artform. The website provides some of the tools to allow that to happen, but it is definitely the people who keep it moving along. And I hope I am able to keep the website going so that The Woodburner Family will be around to assist others down the line.

I still go into the older Galleries of this site, 1999, 2000, just to see how this all started, and to look at the names of those who got the ball rolling. That’s why I keep those older galleries around. All of those Galleries are a kind of monument to everyone who has passed this way over the last 10 years. I hope there are many more!

Thanks to [link=http://www.southwestwoodcrafts.com]Bill (Mesquiter)[/link] for suggesting this story! And thanks to all who have stayed with us. It’s been quite a ride

And thanks to all the new members, upcoming Pyrographers, without whom this site would server no useful purpose!

I wish you all a wonderful day!

Ralph

http://www.woodburner.com

So, the site is now back to using a Linux box. Just like I like it.

So now I know – I won’t use a Windows server again. I’m too familiar with Linux to not use it.

So, that’s what I’ve done today!

So, I got a small dedicated server from Go Daddy.  I’ve used them for many years for domain control, but had a bad experience with their VPS (maybe it’s just that VPS aren’t as good as they should be?).  When I seen the price on their small dedicated server, I decided to give it a go.

It took me about a week, on and off, to set it up the way I wanted and test it out.  Then last Friday I copied all Giga Bytes of data of the VPS and copied the 100 MBytes of data from the MySQL server.  On Saturday morning I set up the dedicated server with the domain name, registered it as a DNS, and set up the name servers pointing to it.  Then copied all the Giga Bytes of data on the dedicated server.  I also had to create the appropriate database, and upload the sql data.  After a few hours, the DNS was re-routed and the dedicated server with my website went live.

Everything worked except the gallery.  Once I went into the admin area to check that out, I realized the gallery was based upon a server path to the image files.  After changing that path (which is much shorter now), the gallery worked also.  I didn’t have to change anything else!!  It was amazing.  I’ve never moved a website that easily before.

I also use the  e107 CMS for that website (see previous post).  I think the e107 is the best software for creating a complex cms – best I’ve ever used (or that I’ve tested, and i’ve tested many, many CMS, including the most popular ones, which are terrible if you are very particular about what the site needs to do!!)

So, once again, e107 CMS, along with Gallery2, convinced me that I made the right decision when I changed to them late last year (that’s another story altogether – maybe I already told it).

I’ve put a plugin on the website that calculates server load (told you e107 is good), and so far it looks good.  I’ll give it another week before I clean up and turn off the old VPS.  This small dedicated server by Go Daddy is looking good.

You all have a good day!

Ralph

Overall, though, I usually deal with designing, building, installing and maintaining websites using various CMS (Content Management Systems).  Currently, I prefer the e107 cms over all of the others (for assorted reasons).

I am currently working on a project where it would be real nice to be able to create multiple websites from one e107 fileset.  I figured if WP MU could do it, then I should be able to do the same for e107.

Well, yesterday I finally finished the task, and it was successful.  I can now run multiple websites, each on its own domain, using a single installation of e107.  I was surprised how easy it was (which is why I use e107, since it is very easy to work with and to modify.)

Like WP MU, each site admin can only deal with the various themes and plugins that I have made available on the master install.  This provides a certain amount of security, since I can let the customer play with it all day without damaging the installation.  All of the addons that I make available are checked thoroughly by myself to ensure that they all play well together.

If you would like to take a gander, the three domains are as follows:

http://www.run-for-funds.org

http://www.pyrographers.com

http://www.pyrographers.org

I used these particular domains simply because I had them available for this test.  There’s nothing of any special significance in the names.

These are all running on the same server space, with a single install of e107, with assorted themes and plugins (addons).

With this knowledge, I can continue on my project knowing that I can successfully complete it using minimal disk space and minimal maintenance.

BTW, the reason these domains run so slow is that they are on a Go-Daddy shared hosting server.  Even before I started the test, this server (the first domain) was very slow.  They give you all the resources you need to run the site, but Go-Daddy sure does control WHEN the resources are available.  Their dedicated servers are much faster – which is to be expected. (This site is also running on the slow server, at least for now.)

Well, you all have a wonderful day!

Ralph

I’m also working on a new web project. I may mention more about it later. It’ll be a difficult one and could take quite a while.

Well, talk to you all later!

Ralph

A few days later I then got a notice to upgrade to 2.6.2.  Seems there was a problem that was discovered, and a new release was made available.

To make a potentially long story short, I’ve just upgraded to 2.6.2, and all seems to be well.  Hopefully it stays that way for a while.

What I do want to say, though, is that WP is the easiest piece of software I’ve ever had the pleasure of upgrading.  It’s quick, and very seldom have I had a problem afterwards.  In general, WP works very well.

I also want to mention that before I performed this upgrade, I installed the Maintenance Mode Plugin, which displays a splash page to visitors so they know that I’m working on the site.  I looked for this since someone I know visited the site during my last theme upgrade (which took much longer – it’s a good theme, but the instructions are terrible!!).  So now if someone stops by while I’m doing some maintenance, they will know it. The creator only tested through WP 2.3, but it seems to be working on WP 2.6.2. All the setup is done via the administrator’s panel. Hopefully it continues to work.

Catch ya later!!