• I need a bookie web application for 52Lives.
• I have a distant dream of getting my workouts, diets and calendar to work in sync. They need to be available both on the net and on my mobile phone.
• I fell in love with Ruby on Rails.
• There’s not much documentation yet for Rails version 2.0.

This equation made think: what if I create the applications I need with Rails 2.0 and create tutorials as I go on?

That sounded interesting enough, so now on ap2man is not about great apps and software anymore. Now it’s focused on Ruby on Rails 2.0 and creating magic with it.

After googleing for EML I got the instructions to view the message. EML is used by bunch of email clients, but the following solution will work at least with Outlook & Outlook Express.

1. Save the EML file to your computer.
2. Scan it for viruses (e.g Nimda worm uses EML files, so be cautious!).
3. Double-click the file. It should open with Outlook or Outlook Express. You will see the contents as a new email.

Oh yeah, there were some funny pictures in my friend’s email, so it was worth the trouble :)

First, the time wasted on this upgrade must be massive. It took me 30-45 min to make the upgrade in addition to read the upgrade guide, so in total it took roughly 1 hour. Now think about those millions of WP users, that had to make this 1 hour effort… MILLIONS OF HOURS just because one individual had to show off his black hat skills. I hope you break your hand or something equally painful… I thank you for teaching me patience.

Second, I was happy to notice that my hosting company has very powerful tools in their arsenal:

1. The database backup was a picnic. On the page where all my databases are listed there’s a backup button. With a single press it created the SQL file on my web root folder. I didn’t even have to use phpMyAdmin. Plain and simple, thankyouverymuch!
2. Network drive. Servage offers free tool called Servage Web Drive, which shows my web folders in the Windows Explorer as a network drive. Sure, I could just use the FTP capabilities of Explorer, but this network drive is IMHO an elegant solution.
3. Unzip tool. WP comes in zipped package, so you usually have to unzip it on your local computer. Servage has implemented the unzip function (plus others, e.g. importing SQL files with couple of clicks) to their web admin interface. This allows me to upload the zip files and unzip them on the server itself. This saves a lot of hassle, since I don’t have to wait hours while FTP’ing thousands of files instead of 1 zip file. Also the file permissions stay the same as they were set in the zip file in the first place.

I have now activated the plugins, taken a fresh backup of the 2.1.2 version and right now everything seems to be working. Any comments on the WP upgrade topic are appreciated!

The Magic Of Modelling

Let’s say you want to learn Tai Chi. You sign up for a beginner course which you attend every week. You are guided by an old Tai Chi master who has been practising Tai Chi since he was a kid. He also started on a beginner course years ago and was guided by another master. And that master was guided by another master and so on. But in the beginning there was an ordinary guy who didn’t have a master. He had to create the moves and stances by himself. I bet he spend hundreds of hours just to create basic hand moves. So, after years of development and hard work the guy had a ready package of moves and he named the sports Tai Chi. He taught it to other people, so they would not have to go through the same amount of work he had gone. Over the years people have learned Tai Chi by imitating the moves their masters are showing. Those moves are the same as the original master taught to his students. (I don’t actually know the history of Tai Chi, but I imagine it has been something like this ;) )

So the important lesson about modelling:

• Find a succesful way to do things. A proven method that somebody else is already using. (Tai Chi is a sport that is practised by millions of people).
• Learn how it’s done. (Tai Chi master shows the moves to his students).
• Copy it for your own use. (You imitate the moves with your body).

To learn Tai Chi by modeling can take months or years. To model a design is a matter of minutes!

How To Use Modelling With Design

In the previous chapter we learned the basic idea of modelling. To use that information with our design challenge we do the following action plan:

• Find a cool design that is proven to be succesful.
• Download the design.
• Copy the basic elements to your own design.

Now some words of advice. We want to respect copyright laws and we do not want to upset other people by stealing their intellectual property. So, don’t copy designs that are protected or bought with other people’s money. There are legimate ways to do modelling!

Source For Your Inspiration

There’s a gold mine called Open Source Web Design. There were 2080 free designs available while this post was written. From that huge collection you can find a design that pleases you and you can use it without stepping on other people’s toes. After your design is ready include a link to the original design/designer web site, so the designer gets his credit and you don’t break the CC (or other) license. You both win and increase good Karma!

Cool Design In 10 Minutes!

OK, it’s time to roll up sleeves and start the clock!

1. Find a cool design that is proven to be succesful.
   1. Go to Open Source Web Design.
   2. Click ‘Our Favorite Designs’.
   3. Filter the results by number of downloads (choose ‘by Downloads’ from the dropdown list).
   4. Go through the thumbnails. When you see an interesting design, open it to another window. Right-click on the ‘View’ button and choose ‘Open link in new window’ (or in new tab). Don’t judge the design by it’s header image, since the image is going to be changed.
   5. When you have opened 10 templates, stop.
   6. Think about the site your going to implement this design. Is it for your personal or business site? Is going to be a community site or just your articles? Would the readers/users of the site prefer simplicity or a variety of menus? There’s a huge difference between your simple personal site and your money-making, ad-rich community site.
   7. With the answers from the previous step, start comparing the designs. Choose your favorite design and compare others against that. Use Alt-Tab (Windows) to switch between windows or Ctrl-Tab to switch between tabs.
   8. Close the designs that are not suitable for your site’s needs. Do this until you have 3 options available.
2. Download the design.
   1. Create a Designs folder on your computer. This is the place your going to save the final 3 designs.
   2. There’s a Download button on the upper left corner on every design. Click it and save the designs to your Designs folder.
   3. Unzip the packages.
3. Copy the basic elements to your own design.
   1. Choose the best design out of the 3 you just downloaded. This is the base for your own, unique design!
   2. Leave the other two designs in the folder, since if you change your mind you can immediately start working with your second best option!

Stop the clock! Did it even take 10 minutes? You now have a cool design and you got it with reasonable effort. In the next post we will integrate the design to WP.

PS. How did you like this article? Please leave a comment.

At the moment this series is still being published, so new posts will appear in 3-5 days. Two (or more) of the upcoming topics will be shown on the list.

Posts in this series

1. Cool Design In 10 Minutes!
2. Integrating The Cool Design With WP Theme (not published yet)
3. Making Your Own Header Image (not published yet)

OK, here are the series:

1. Making and publishing your own videos (not published yet). I think the best way to demonstrate application development is to make a video of the process itself. For that reason I need screen and audio recording tools, video editing software and publishing tools. In this series I will write about the tools I used, share usage tips and have a look at the publishing forums. With this information you can make a video of something your interested in!
2. Blog makeover. This series is like the “Pimp My Ride” on MTV. I’m happy with the functionality of my current Anaconda theme, but the layout needs to be spiced up! In this series I will have fun with CSS and Gimp. Have a look and you’ll create your own unique layout in no time!
3. The greatest WP plugins (not published yet). WordPress is rich with plugins, there’s basically a plugin for every need. I’ll blog about plugins that help you to interact with your audience and minimize the work which is not related to writing. This way you will have more time to communicate with your readers!
4. Developing a cool web cam game (not published yet). I’ve been surprised how easy it is to develop apps with Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition. Now I want to make the ultimate test with it: how to mix real time video with shape recognition and make a game out of it. To be honest, I don’t know yet if I can pull this off. Though I believe with a little help from the C# community this project can be a successful one.
5. Optimizing the processes of a small internet business. Everybody (with some exceptions, of course) would like to see their business on autopilot mode: money coming in with less or no work. In this series I will concentrate on optimization of small Internet business processes, so that you use as much automation and other resources as possible. Maybe there’s even work that can be cut off by adjusting the process. That way you have more time for developing and marketing your business. The rest of the time you can use to make your dreams come true and that’s the most important part of the story! Otherwise you wouldn’t be in the business, would you ;)

If there’s a series that you find interesting, I would like to ask a little favor. Please click the link of your favorite topic(s) and leave your comments and suggestions of the things and issues you would like to see within the series. Thanks for you help and remember to visit ap2man.com again!

This series is about optimizing the processes of a small Internet business.

With processes I mean the things you are doing for your business. As I’m writing this post to my blog, I’m going thru a “post creation process”. When I go out there to tell people I have published a new post, that’s my “blog marketing process”. These processes can also be divided into smaller processes, like “searching background info for a post” or “marketing my blog thru MySpace”. And so on.

Okay, so what about that optimizing?

The reason behind optimizing your processes is the fact you only have 24 hours per day. You have to eat, sleep, take your dog out and feed the fish. If you also have to work every day, the hours to run your Internet business are limited to couple of hours per day. And with those hours you should be as productive as you can. You cannot use those hours for non-productive things like backing up your database or posting your customer’s order. This is the place where optimization kicks in.

So let’s go back to the original question: how to stand out from the crowd? The answer is simple (generate dedicated traffic as much as possible, offer quality content), but the bad news is you cannot do it by yourself. When your hours are limited, you have to have leverage to accomplish all the necessary things. In this series we will go thru the steps needed for creating leverage. But before you can have leverage, your processes need to be optimized.

At the moment this series is under “publishing process”, so new posts will be published every 3-5 days. The next 2 topics will be listed in advance. In the meanwhile you can post a comment and suggest issues you would like to read about within this series.

Posts In How To Optimize Processes Of A Small Internet Business

• Defining Your Business Processes (not published yet)
• How Much Is Your Time Worth And How To Calculate It (not published yet)

With my previous hosts I had been confronting limitations (e.g. database size limited) and lack of service (it took 2 weeks just to get SSL working), so I made a list of the things I would need from my next hosts.

1. Customer service. When you are paying for hosting, your outsourcing the task from yourself. Eventually there will come a situation where you need to tweak some setting, but you cannot do it since you don’t have the permission to finetune the hosting company’s server. So you email them and ask them to do it for you. A good hosting company answers promptly and takes care of the thing - a.s.a.p!
2. PHP support. This feature is mandatory (and common) nowadays, but there are some hosts that lack PHP support. And when you really get down to business, you appreciate the freedom to fix some PHP settings, e.g. safe mode and register globals.
3. MySQL databases. I didn’t want to pay extra just to use databases. Usually the database size and the number of databases was limited to some low value, like 100MB and 1 database, so this cut most of the available hosts. MySQL is essential for WordPress, osCommerce, forums, etc.
4. SSL. I want to have the ability to have web store and a secure payment system. Without SSL all the information would be unencrypted over the internet, so that’s not an ideal situation.
5. Enough bandwidth. My sites weren’t breaking the normal limits (3 gigas / month), but if I would be selling/hosting software, the bandwidth would be consumed fast with 10-20MB downloads.
6. Enough disk space. Software requires space. Space + bandwidth = you’re ready to deliver software, baby! Yeah!

With this list I started to search the forums and I found couple of interesting hosts. I had promised myself not to go with first intimidating offers. So I wrote down what extra features these hosts had and what was the monthly fee. I also paid attention to customer support. Then I continued my search. Finally I came up with an host, that seemed to have everything and the price was really a bargain!

I am now their proud customer and have only good things to say about them (a raving fan maybe?):

• Reliable customer service. I’ve asked help from them 8 times. Every time they have answered within 24 hours. One time I suggested an enhancemet to the mailing list control. I wasn’t expecting even an answer, but I got one: they had implemented the feature! And that happened within 4 hours 26 mins!
• The disk space is amazing 250 gigabytes! And the bandwidth? Breathtaking 2100 gigabytes / month!!!
• You can have 1000 MySQL databases. Okay, it’s limited but who has 1001 databases? Hands up. Anyone?
• Free SSL is provided with every account.
• Server uptime is 99,98 %. Wow!
• The admin control panel is used thru web browser. I got to admit, I would have preferred shell access, but this panel blew my mind! It has the common features I would use with shell (e.g. tar, gzip, mv, create file/folder) and plenty of more features.
• They are constantly developing new features. There’s plenty already, but they are putting the effort to stay in the top!

If you are you looking for a host I can sincerely recommend using Servage. Use this referral link to receive additional 25 gigabytes of more disk space!

I’m a subscriber of Joel Comm’s newsletter. He’s an expert on AdSense and he has also written a best-seller called “The AdSense Code“. And of course, he’s promoting lots of different products thru his mailing list.

I usually read what Joel has to say and thanks to that, I didn’t miss this good offer. Or maybe be “gift” is a better word. Since Joel has been around doing Internet business since 1995, he has made contacts with people running big businesses. This time he had hooked up with Kontera and made a deal for his subscribers: everyone could apply for Kontera and get approved!

I thought to give it a try and went to sign up. After 22 hours I got an approvement email! Look at me smiling now :D I don’t know if Joel still has this offer available, but join his list and maybe there will be similar good offers coming!

Here’s a guide on ContextLink™ for WordPress users:

1. Download Kontera DynamiContext Plugin from shupe.ca. The version I downloaded is 1.3.
2. Upload the plugin to your /wp-content/plugins folder and unzip it.
3. Login as admin to WP and click the “Plugins” tab. Activate Rodney’s Kontera DynamiContext Plugin.
4. Next thing is to configure the plugin. Go to Options -> DynamiContext. Now find the approval email you got from Kontera. There’s a code snippet there:
<script type="text/javascript">
var dc_UnitID = xx;
var dc_PublisherID = xx;
var dc_AdLinkColor = 'xx';
var dc_adprod='xx';
</script>
<script src="http://kona.kontera.com/javascript/lib/KonaLibInline.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
5. Copy the code and paste it to the text field in the DynamicContext config page. Click the “Update options” button.
6. Congrats! You’re done!

You should see the links at midnight PST. If you have problems, check that your WP template has the following code in the footer.php (thanks shupe.ca!):
<?php do_action('wp_footer'); ?>

As I’m finishing this post the ContextLinks are already working! I will write a follow-up after I have tested the links for a while.

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I was checking out Andy Wibbles’ blog for the Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. I was feeling stupid: why hadn’t I been looking for a plugin to solve this problem :) The thing I like in WP is that there are many skillful people developing plugins that solve many tedious tasks. Respect to you all!

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