WordPress despite being a fantastic CMS system and SEO powerhouse is notorious for slow load times of individual web pages.  Google is expected to start ranking slow loading websites below faster loading websites this year (2010).  So if you want to keep your site competitive even at an SEO level, you need to speed up load times.  Besides a faster loading web page will make your visitors happier!

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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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.

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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For those of you out there who are “hard-core” in regards to your hosting plans, you may be interested in learning more about Alien Hosting. Alien Hosting offers three distinct services titled Lite, Medium and Advanced. All three plans have no setup fee, and offer a wide variety of great features that increase exponentially as you upgrade your service. 

Some of the features associated with their packages are 50, 200 ad 450 MB of storage, 5, 15 and 30 GB of monthly traffic as well as a wide array of extras including email accounts, autoresponders, PHP, SSI etc. per service. If you have been considering making a move to a more “advanced” hosting services, then you should give Alien Hosting a solid look. Who knows, you may even decide to send this info to other folks or even small businesses who are searching for hosting via corporate holiday cards. I am pretty impressed with the features offered by Alien Hosting, I think you will be as well.

While we are on the topic of great hosting services, I’d like to mention Fat Cow Hosting. Offering a hosting plan for only $78 per year, backed up by some “beefy” specs (pun intended) and great customer support, Fat Cow Hosting has plans designed to meet your hosting needs. 

With a plan featuring 1,500 GB of disk space, 15,000 GB of monthly bandwidth (500 per day), unlimited POP boxes as well as 24/7 customer support, Fat Cow Hosting has all the beef you need. Not even Plantar Fasciitis should keep you from checking out Fat Cow Hosting due to their incredible features and unlimited domains! 

This year I will be attending Blogworld in Las Vegas for the second year running.  I’d like to mention a few reasons why this show is really important as it is not always obvious with industry trade shows or for that matter internet technology events.

The thing that makes this trade show important is the opportunity to do with a number of other bloggers and people who touch the Internet world in a new media fashion. That’s unlike a lot of Web 2.0 hype, but what really means is that the people that you want to do business with, the people that can help you get attention, and the people that know how to achieve the goals that you’re striving for are going to be at this particular conference.

You can learn as much from the people that will be at the conference as you can from the actual sessions of the show itself. After all this is the Internet were talking about and most of the speakers are going to show for going to be preaching in explaining things that those people at the show already know. The speakers are just people that happen to be a little bit more successful at these individual practices or possibly further along in exercising these practices.

So I highly recommend this particular conference especially if networking is a strong point for you. If you know how to network with people, collaborate with people and brainstorm new ideas and projects then you’re going to get a lot out of this conference. If you’re a wallflower and you’re not very experienced at trade shows or if you’re not very good at talking to people and you may not get your money’s worth out of this conference at the hundred dollar level. However you could definitely get your value from the show again for the sessions that $3-$500 a pop.

Where will everyone be networking at the BlogWorld Expo?

Probably at the Tempo Bar downstairs in the Hilton, next door to the convention center.

So you’ll have to decide what the right level is for you, but the reality is that the opportunity is definitely there and I highly recommend. I say all this as I write this blog article from Myrtle Beach a few hours south of the Outer Banks. I’m from North Carolina these days myself a spending the weekend at the beach in South Carolina, and I’m writing this particular article while it away dishes and the vacation house were staying in. I’m using Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 10 WriteNow to write this article while I put these items away as the rest of us prepared to box dinner this evening.

I mention this because this is the type of thing that you’re not going to hear at any conference unless you actually talk to people that are doing this type of thing. You’re not going to a conference where they will tell you my Dragon NaturallySpeaking such an enjoy life while you’re working as a blogger. For great tips like that you actually have to talk to the people that do it and let it in day-to-day.

This week I received a troubling email from IPower hosting, which is likely the new last straw in my relationship with them.

They sent me the following message about one of my domains:

Your “Your-great-domain.com” domain name has a June renewal date and is enrolled in our domain privacy service, which protects your identity by keeping your contact information from being published online.

To ensure that Your-great-domain.com remains protected, we will automatically initiate a one-year renewal of the domain privacy service on June 26. We will charge $8.99 to the credit card we have on file for your account to renew this annual subscription.

So now that they have changed their pricing policy to charge $8.99 for domain privacy through Who Is, they are now going to automatically charge me for this brand new fee, unless I change something in my account.

I will change my payment settings, but this is a warning to anyone that has a number of domains with IPower to transfer out of them as soon as possible or manually change all of your domain settings (very tedious if you set up accounts with them before their system upgrade and account consolidation – I’d rather stick my head in the hot sands of Death Valley hoping to discover the best acne treatment known to man, while literally burning my face off to spite myself).

My friend AndrewIanDodge of DodgeBlogium is trying to win a trip to the Superbowl and be featured in Superbowl ad.  He’s one of 10 finalists.

Please consider dropping by to sign up and vote at

http://www.fuelmyblog.com/index.jsp?t=mybowlad

Google launched an innovative new tool.  Its Google Site Search for Small Businesses. 

What is it?

Its the same search tool that Google is made out of.  Its also the same search tool that Google has offered through Google Adsense Search for a long time.

What’s the difference?

Nothing that I can see.

Google Site Search enables a small business to provide their visitors with the ability to search the site they are looking from or search the internet.  They offered

When is it right to use Google Search on your site?

Most sites are looking to make their sites stickier.  It doesn’t make sense to put a function on your site that sends people away, possibly to a competitor.  Most sites with shopping carts like this site that sells tonneau cover and other accessories for cars and trucks offers a search function that doesn’t use Google technology.

When do You Use Google’s new tool?

Not Here – Now if that same site had used a Google search button it would allow people an easier out from their website with little to no benefit.

Not Here – Other sites that earn money from Adsense probably wouldn’t want to use the new function either as they don’t earn any money from it.

Here – but Why? - So that really only leaves that odd site that wants to share their traffic with Google and not earn anything in the exchange.  Why do something for free when you could earn money doing it?  Regardless, Google still leaves their ads mixed in with the results.