Tonight I’m checking out the new Artisteer 2.4 which just became available.  The new version (in beta still) supports to major feature advances:

Vertical Menus for WordPress or other CMS systems like Drupal, Joomla etc

You can essentially run two menu systems now (at first glance). 

In the image example above within the Artisteer design environment I have the option of both a horizontal menu and a (new) vertical menu. 

No idea yet how that will be managed in WordPress as I haven’t exported one of these puppies yet, but that’s coming up next!

Category Driven Menus

Update – I just heard through the forums that not only have vertical menus been added, but now category driven menus are possible.  There appear to be binary options for this.

• You can either have a Category based menu OR a Page based menu in the Horizontal menu or in the Vertical Menu.
• You can have a category in the horizontal and a Page based in the vertical or vice versa.
• You can NOT have a category AND a Page based menu in the vertical at the same time.
• You can NOT have a category AND a Page based menu in the horizontal at the same time.

All that said, this is just the post export (standard) options.  There are probably some easy ways to hack some additional combinations into a theme after the fact

Flash Header Support for WordPress Theme Design

There is also flash headers support for WordPress themes now.  I can add some very basic animation templates that Artisteer includes with the software, or if I have an .flv file I can import it into the theme header.

I haven’t tried that out yet, but I can’t wait to give it a go. 

Changing a Template from one System to Another (Ergo WordPress Theme to Blogger or Drupal)

Here’s a nice cool upgrade option.  If you have designed yourself a nice little template in say WordPress and you want to use the same exact design in Drupal or Blogger or Joomla or DotNetNuke or just an HTML page (for like a WP page template with modifications!) you can now do this with a click of the mouse (ok 2-3 clicks).

After you have the design you like, just change template type.  Then save file as something else if you don’t want to lose your original theme/template etc and you are off to the races. 

If you have a website powered by WordPress and you have a blog powered by Blogger, you could then easily cobrand the sites to look very similar as one working example.  Gonna have to ruminate on some additional practical applications.

Extending Free Upgrade License

For just over a year now, I have received free upgrades to Artisteer.  That’s part of the license.  Buy Artisteer and you get free upgrades for a year.  When I first picked up Artisteer in November of 2008, they were just moving to beta version 0.8 I believe.  1.6 versions later or from my perspective about 20 improvements, updates and upgrades later, it was now time for me to update my license.

For $59.95 I purchased another year of Artisteer upgrades, and now I’m cranking through the possibilities with 2.4.

In case you are wondering, it only took moments for my order to process and my old license became good for upgrades all over again.  There is a huge amount of value in this program, but every time I download another free upgrade (yeah I paid for it, but most software companies don’t give away free upgrades at all), it feels great and puts a smile on my face.  In total, I’ve invested just short of $200 in this software over the course of about 15 months, and I have earned a return on that investment of about 100x. 

You can check your own
upgrade subscription status here.

Artisteer Discount Code/Link

If you would like to get a 5% discount on a new Artisteer license (home/education or standard) feel free to use my referral link http://www.artisteer.com/?p=brett

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Between now and the end of BlogWorld in mid October, we are going to run a WordPress Theme design contest for new designers or people that want to learn how to design a WordPress theme for the first time.…

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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I just wanted to point out an interesting article by Blake at EZPCRepairandConsulting.com .  He talks about some things that went well and some things that didn’t go so well initially when he setup Sugar CRM on Inmotion Hosting.

SugarCRM on InMotion Hosting

July 25th, 2009 by Blake Urmos

I have been using SugarCRM on dedicated servers for several years. I find it to be the most cost effective (free) customer relationship management solution out there. Having root access to these servers made installation and configuration easy. When it is hosted remotely, things can become a little hairy. I chose InMotion Hosting because of their extensive support for content management systems and was told on the phone that SugarCRM would work.

I personally like doing business with InMotion Hosting and highly recommend them.  However the challenges that Blake faced seem to be indicative of the challenge of doing business with Inmotion.  They are great, but sometimes in their attempts to be heroes their tech support team will make a fix like this.  Even more problematic is their tech support will not always communicate with other techs, let alone document it in a ticket and almost never call the customer and let them know what’s going on.

They have some good people, but their processes seem to need some fine tuning to avoid the challenges of a hero culture.  Its fine when someone jumps in and saves the day, but far better when the machine is oiled so well that it doesn’t need saving.

here’s a gem of a broken situation from Ipower in regards to registering a new domain.

I recently tried to register a domain from Ipower under an existing account.

Why you might ask?  Because I’m an idiot that likes punishment.

Instead of getting a message stating that my domain had been registered, I get a message stating that I do not have enough credits to process a registration.

I did NOT try to pay for the registration with ‘credits’.  I did try and pay for it with a working credit card, which prompted the follow up question, “WTF IPower?”

Then, I tried to buy the domain a second time and got the same message, but notice at the top of the message it shows that I have 2 Outstanding Domain Credits.

Then I checked my email and I had 2 transaction confirmations for registration but they did not list the domain name I had ordered.

Ergo IPOWER took my money and didn’t register the domain!

So it looks like I have a IPower hold situation in my future. 

Tip to the wise, don’t do business with IPower.

Since November of 2008, PC User’s have benefited from the WordPress Theme Generator called Artisteer and now that WordPress Generator desktop application is available for Apple / Mac users.  The initial Mac beta was just released and people that purchase/have purchased a PC license will also have the ability to use the license on a Mac or vice versa on a PC.

I have been giving demonstrations of WordPress as a Content Management System for several months which includes a demo of Artisteer and the first question that is always asked is, “Does Artisteer work on a Mac?”

Now the answer is YES!  Artisteer does work on Macs.

Better yet, existing Artisteer users already know that when you purchase a license, that license will receive free upgrades for a year.  I have personally created almost 100 WordPress themes since purchasing Artisteer last fall, and I have significantly benefited from many many upgrades to the software.  This latest upgrade ads more Avatar support for WordPress, ads support for Dot Net Nuke and past upgrades provided support for Joomla & Drupal templates and much much more.

here’s the latest news release from Artisteer about the Mex Mac Capability

Artisteer for Mac (Beta) has arrived!
Artisteer 2.2 for Mac (Beta) is now available by clicking here. Couple interesting facts:

• Artisteer for Mac joins the family of products based on cross-platform .NET framework known as Mono.
• Artisteer might be the first product for Mac OS utilizing the ribbon interface first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows.

Technical notes and known issues for beta testers:

• Artisteer for Mac runs on Intel based hardware with OS X version 10.5 (Leopard).
• Artisteer for Mac requires X11 which is usually installed by default on OS X 10.5.
• Artisteer may require approx 1 minute to start the first time after installation.
• The "Open" and "Save" dialogs display Windows style folder structure and may require additional navigation to desired Mac folders.
• The top Mac menu bar does not offer an option to quit Artisteer. Use the Artisteer menu, keyboard shortcut ‘Command’+'Q’, or the red window close button to quit.
• Keyboard shortcuts stop working after clicking anywhere within the web design preview area.
• Certain amount of instability and limitations (as above) are expected due to limitations of the current Mono framework 2.4.
• There is a slight chance that your Mac computer may freeze when using Artisteer (this happened once in our tests). Please save all your work often in case you need to reboot your computer.

Customers who purchased an Artisteer license can use it on both PC and Mac computers (one each) during the beta period. An official release date of the Mac version will be planned after receiving detailed  issue reports from our beta testers and determining how much work is needed to resolve those issues.
Please send feedback and report reproducible issues to our support via the Contact Us page.

Artisteer version 2.2 update
We are releasing a new update to Artisteer 2.2 to resolve a few recent issues reported in the previous version 2.2 Beta.

• Artisteer: Added "Options" button in the export dialog.
• Artisteer: Added DotNetNuke Skin export announced below.
• Artisteer: Fixed a bug with the font size being altered by changing Articles -> Line Height.
• WordPress: Improved compatibility with Avatar List plugin.
• Joomla: Resolved custom footer not showing up.
• Joomla: Resolved centered menus not shown correctly.
• Joomla: Resolved a problem with the text "’30′, ‘height’ => ‘30′ near h2" showing on some pages.
• Joomla: Fixed incorrect path to spacer.gif in script.js file in Joomla templates.
• Drupal: Fixed an issue with broken image appearing instead of a logo uploaded in Drupal.

The new version 2.2.0.17297 can be obtained by clicking here and may become the officially released version 2.2 after additional testing.

Note: Cross posted from The LiveWriterz.

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Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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This week we are kicking off two more Labs on the Lake.  This week we will hold two labs.  One today, Monday(5-18 at 2pm est), covering the topic of Blog Monetization, walking through some blog revenue sources, adding some new ones to the list and giving some advice on how to navigate these options which can be murky on a good day. [Meetup RSVP link] 

This like many of our topics will be covered several times.  Blog Monetization is definitely not something that can be covered in a single day, let alone a single lab.  Many people are looking for ways to earn extra money, raise revenue to market their companies more, or even start their own business.  We will help people get started with the process of making money with a blog (a blog is required to follow along with this lab in person or on our live show at Mogulus.com/wificove ).

Then on Thursday(5/21 2 pm est) we are going to cover the topic of building traffic through networking.  [Meetup RSVP link]

Again this is a very deep topic and one we will revisit many times in the future, but you can tune into either lab at 2 PM est or if you are in the Charlotte area, RSVP through our Meetup group (cost $5 to attend) and spend an afternoon on the lake learning some great web skills that will make you money.

We are following up on our first Lab on the Lake last week, which covered WordPress Installation, WordPress Configuration, & WordPress Theme design with our favorite WordPress Theme Generator-Artisteer.  The video from this event (our first live broadcast) didn’t take to well, but we got the bugs worked out the next night when we held our weekly WordPress Meetup in Charlotte and do expect this weeks events to go off without a hitch.

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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In our previous articles we have talked a bit about some video examples that really don’t help the consultant, expert or specialist on the other side convert people to pay them to teach or do things.

This video below is a little bit better.  The audio quality for the first half is better (not great, but better).

The presenter keeps things nice and simple by capturing a PowerPoint presentation in this web video and it seems fairly professional.

Unfortunately the video (and this does date back to 2007, so you have to take age into consideration) loses all the ground it created when it goes into its ‘demo’ as it offers up very bad electronic 80’s music, but worse yet shows how to edit a rather extra basic looking landing page.

This video is definitely due to be removed or archived, and if you are reading this article and there is no video here any more, then hopefully the owner of the video has done themselves the favor of removing the video. 

It certainly isn’t going to help people learn how to convert sales for adware or spyware products and couldn’t touch more mainstream topics like pushing people to an electronics blog, converting people on a political poll, or enticing people to leave lead information.

The main thing about this video is that it is really mis-named.  It should not be called the Landing Page Secret Video.  A better title might actually help to set the expectations at a more appropriate level.

As we continue down the rabbit hole of exploring conversion on a website, I wanted to share with you a video that is rather . . . um . . exceptional.  I mean that in a nice way.  The actual copy of the video that is being spoken all makes perfect sense.  It is not incorrect.

However, the demonstration or example provided by the video serves to prove that the site sponsoring the video is less than credible.  They are trying to convince people that putting video on a landing page can help convert people. 

On the surface that is true.

They are also trying to convince people that you need not have to pay an exorbitant amount for video and audio production to convert people on a website.

Again, on the surface that is true.

Unfortunately, the video example is not likely to convert anyone to do anything and in so failing as a video itself, it actually serves to convince people not to trust the website it is pitching!

In fact, I challenge you to watch the entire video and still feel inclined to even go check out the website at the other end.

This video does not perform well and is likely harming the site on the other end more than it is helping.  It certainly isn’t going to help a person learn how to develop higher performing affiliate pages regardless of what they are trying no matter if it is genko extract, hydra-anything, or even discount PS3’s.  The video just doesn’t work.  It proves that if you are going to be in the business of teaching people how to convert, you better no how to execute the strategy yourself. 

I just wanted to say a quick Merry Christmas to my favorite Hosting Company.  They have made me biased towards their services by providing very good service and especially customer support.

Many people across the web have rapidly become something of an ‘automated expert’ when it comes to search engine optimization.  There are many many web design solutions that can help a person, even a novice create a website designed to pull people into their site from a search engine search.

SEO is not the only answer.

What are you going to do with those people once you land them on your site?

Its at this point where things like landing page optimization comes in to play, but even that is not the ‘BIG’ picture.  The video above gives kind of an amateur or novice perspective on what the big picture is, but the video itself also serves to demonstrate that there is more to conversion rate optimization.  If you want to achieve website optimization, then you have to execute on all of these levels: landing page, PPC campaigns, SEO, E-commerce, but also on internet presence, PR and buzz.

The video below gives a quick but slightly dated example of just how easy it is to publish a basic web page to the internet or to an account on a hosting plan.   A hosting plan is essentially the collection of files on the internet where you can upload web pages or files for other people to see through a browser.

This particular video is slightly dated.  Mozilla no longer supports the program referred to in the video called Composer.  This has pretty much been replaced by a new program that includes and html editor known collectively as The SeaMonkey® Project. 

Filezilla is also referenced and this program is still available and widely used by many web designers.

Whether you want to build complex websites or something simple for your mother, or maybe something that will earn you a few bucks offering information on diet pills.  These are some of the first tools of the trade that you will need to become familiar with.  Keep in mind there are many different tools that will help you achieve the same result.  These are just two free and very common tools to help get you started before you consider possibly spending some money for a more complex tool, which may or may not really be necessary depending on what you intend to do with it.

Here is another video in a developing collection of youtube videos that features tutorials and useful explanations of web site hosting.  In this video, TheInternetEducator talks about how website hosting works, how much it costs, and some of the issues that can come up (and have to be dealt with).

Now, if you grew up in an era before the internet, you might be predisposed to hit a book store or even Amazon books and attempt to learn about website hosting from a book or a text book.

On this topic, that is actually not a good idea.  Many bookstores will often feature books that are several years out of date (especially discounted books).  If you try and learn the fundamentals of website hosting from a book, you are very likely going to learn some outdated information that may not be very useful today at all.

At a very minimum, I recommend that you do your initial research on the internet, and once you have learned some of the basics, if you still must walk through a book to learn more, you will hopefully at least be able to recognize an old outdated book from an up to date book.