This week Softduit Media is working with graphic designer Jennifer Slagle in Urbandale, Iowa (near Des Moines, IA) to migrate her website from a static Apple MobileMe platform to a WordPress as a CMS (content management system) setup.

Jennifer runs the graphic design firm, Design 26.  She has an extensive portfolio of graphic design work for customers in Iowa and the midwest.  Her former website successfully incorporated examples of her portfolio, but the site lacked the flexibility of a CMS in both communicating with potential and existing clients as well as simply attaining decent listings and rankings through the primary search engines.…

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

I’ll make more more materials available later today, but here is my initial slide presentation for WordCamp Birmingham.  This is just the opening remarks for the actual mentored demonstration.  Hoping to add video of the meat and potatoes of this presentation after its done.

The main goal of this presentation is to help everyone give this a try, and if possible design their own theme, while I guide the audience through the process.

If you want to follow along during the presentation, I recommend downloading the free trial software from Artisteer or Cnet

1. Go to Artisteer & follow the instructions to download the free trial via Cnet (Mac users navigate to the News tab, scroll down and download the Mac OSx version of Artisteer)

*If you are using a Mac with Snow Leopard 10.6, there is a early beta (download trial beta) that is workable for most users so far, that early release by Apple has the team at Artisteer working over time like so many other companies I suspect.

2.  Install the free trial software (works on PCs or Macs) & generate your theme.

For more information on the Theme Design Contest . . . see ->

Enter the WordPress ‘License to Design’ Theme Contest 2.0

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

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.

Permalink

A friend of mine that is learning how to use both WordPress and Artisteer, the theme design software, sent me a question about what appeared to be a broken sidebar option within WordPress. 

John of TransformativeLifeCoaches.com asks

I am wanting to install an Aweber autoresponder Sign Up Box (for a Giveaway report and a series of autoresponder emails) on our site. 

I believe the best way to do that is to put the Sign Up box in Sidebar 2 which doesn’t appear to be activated on our TLCoaches site. 

I went  to Widgets on the WP control panel to drag the "text/HTML" widget onto Sidebar 2 but it wouldn’t drag nor do any other widgets. 
Can you tell me the best way to get the autoresponder box on every page of our site?

In reality, WordPress and the sidebars on the site were not broken.  Here’s a quick snapshot of the site as of the date of the question.

This particular site only has 1 sidebar programmed into the theme.  With Artisteer (as of Sept 2009) at most you can design themes with 2 sidebars.  You can add more than 2 sidebars to the themes after export but that is another topic for a different day.…

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

Here’s a very good video that shares some insights in where social media is at today, where its been, and likely where its going.

This is probably one of those videos that you will want to watch a couple times, just to make sure you understand the insights and information within. 

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

Permalink

I’ve been covering Dragon Naturally Speaking from Nuance for a long time but have not seen the prices this low before.

Right now you can buy Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 for $29.99!  For your average user, that’s all you need!  If you want to have the extra ability to utilize an MP3 voice recorder (I use a Sony) you can get the Preferred version for as low as $117.99 and the ‘wireless’ version for $155 (that’s bluetooth wireless, I personally use an after market 2.6ghz wireless logitech headset that will work with any version).

You could buy the basic version for $30 and an $90 logitech clearchat wireless headset for a total price of $120 or just jump to Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 bluetooth wireless at $155.

No matter what these are great prices.  Typically the lowest prices you will se are about $80 for Basic, $150 for preferred and $250 for bluetooth wireless.  The best part about this is that at $30 for Basic, this is a great price for a first time user to get in and see just how great this software is these days.

Note: Cross posted from Maven Mapper’s Information.

Permalink

The Social Media Douche Bag Cabal that runs the world recently convened meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, LA, and NYC to confirm amongst themselves that they were all in agreement that the company pitch to be issued by Social Media Douche Bags around the world would be that Sponsored Tweets Suck.…

Note: Cross posted from TOP 10 TECH.

Permalink

1. Scooby and His Meddling Family – This site is on blogger and relatively new (just like Scooby) but its a great little blog and has lots of potential.
2. Observing German(s)… – This social commentary almost politico blog does something in English that you don’t see very often, it talks about Germany.  Being of partial German descent myself and being completely bereft of the ability to speak or read German, it is not terribly easy to get a feel for the place and culture as it exists today, but this provides some interesting little snapshots.  Note it is on blog.com, has some good content but the site owner should really move to wordpress and own their own content. 
3. Anything But Wind Chimes – A lot of people come up with some pretty terribly profile bios on Blogger, hell I’m probably one of them, can’t even remember what I may have as a profile there, but I think this bio is cute and funny and does actually capture the essence of the blog articles that I read (cute and funny but also something more there than just cute and funny)
1. “I’m 19, Stressed as hell, and always striving for a chance to just goof around.”
4. Winged Emotion – Nice looking site and I knew I had to click away fast because this post with the Best Smart Ass Replies of 2008 was sure to make me lose a lot of time today.    Seriously, great site, could definitely benefit from a SEO upgrade and new permalink structure to drive more traffic, but doing a lot of things well.
5. runswithscissors – this is a great blog that I have followed for quite some time, more as a lurker reader.  This also one of those sites that has been around for a long long time.  I think this would make a great addition because this blogger is also a writer as in book writer.  I’ve thought for a long time that novelists could definitely get a big boost from both earning money through Social Spark but also the networking opportunity with a network of 200k + vocal bloggers, maybe even a little advertising from time to time.  On a makeover note, I think this blog might be on TypePad.  TypePad is good for many things, but I believe WordPress has eclipsed it with its power house of open source plugins and CMS functionality.  I just did a TypePad migration to WordPress for a friend and client, Dave Courvouisier, who is a blogger, voice over artist, an anchor man in Las Vegas on KLAS-TV, and an Emmy Award winning broadcaster/producer/writer.  I think runswithscissors could move to a higher level off of the TypePad plateau, an extra revenue stream wouldn’t hurt either, even if it is just used to pay for more marketing for the books on the site!

If you are looking for some examples of sites that could work well, make sure you check these blogs out.  A couple of them are so new that they would not yet qualify into Social Spark, but if they keep up what they are doing, I don’t think they would have any problems getting in if they chose.  Some may already be in the system even. 

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.