Designs By Johnson

Links for 2009-04-13 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Sliding Boxes and Captions with JQuery
Really cool effects for Captions or additional information on top of images.

Links for 2009-04-01 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 PDT

How To Create A Great Web Design CV and Résumé?
Design inspiration for a resume or cv

I Am, I Have, I Will

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:31:00 -0700

This morning this just sort of started flowing out of me, and so I went with it. It’s a simple list of the first things that come to your head for each of the saying’s: I Am, I Have, and I Will.

I Am

- am stronger than my minds eagerness to break me
- am more forgiving than even I would like to be
- am 45 lbs lighter than I was less then two years ago
- am often misunderstood
- am a good listener most of the time

I Have

- have persevered through major life crisis
- have made many mistakes
- have lost my creativity somewhere (has anyone seen it?)
- have taken life too seriously at times
- have made work/internet too much of my life

I Will

- will not take my relationships for granted
- will scale back my non-work computer/internet use
- will run a half marathon
- will meet my goal weight
- will perceiver

Links for 2009-02-06 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:00:00 PST

Album Reminder
Get notified when your favorite artists are going to release a new album via email or RSS.

Working Out Too Hard

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:19:40 -0700

Last week I stumbled across something I wasn’t too sure was possible. I was working out too hard and as an effect my body wasn’t giving.

One of the things that one of my fitness mentors always is saying is to keep your heart rate at about 75% of your maximum target heart rate. For me that zone is roughly 135-164 beats per minute based on results from Mayo Clinic’s Mayo Clinic's Target Heart Rate Calculator.

Up until last week I had never really paid much attention to this number, it was just something that Scott continually said and it went in one ear and out the other. As I continued to work out, I used the Precor’s built in heart rate monitor to see where my heart rate was out of general interest, but never put much stock in the numbers.

Readings coming from the treadmill were indicating my heart rate as being about 180 beats per minute which according to Mayo Clinic’s calculation is very near the limit of what my cardiovascular system could handle.

Tale of the Tape

Until discovering how much stress I was putting my body under I was having a hard time getting weight to drop. In fact after 2 weeks of good solid work on the treadmill 4-5 days a week and proper eating I hadn’t lost anything.

I made a slight change in intensity of my cardio workout. Keeping the same amount of time I dipped down the speed just a bit. Despite the small change in speed I found that I was still burning pretty close to the same amount of calories. I was able to continue my run/jog for longer amounts of time without the need for breaks.

Since that change I have seen a 3 lb decrease in as little as a week or two. Just goes to show you the the small things can make all the difference, and who knew that you could workout too hard?

Persist, adapt, achieve!

The Year that was 2008

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:55:20 -0700

Well it's that time of year again where it's time for everyone to reflect back on the year that was, and although I know it's cliché and over done, I think it holds value for me if no one else for no other reason then personal reflection, and with this year being one of probably the most change ever I think it bears getting it all down as best I can.

So lets start out with the Year in Review (Runtime: 12 minutes 10 seconds) a look back through photos and videos of the last year, set to some nice light tunes. If you don’t have that long, let’s skip ahead.

A Move Across Country/New Job

Late in the year 2007, I got a phone call response to a job application that I had submitted a week or so before. Two phone interviews and a quick trip to Seattle for an in person interview and it was pretty much settled. We were moving.

Seattle Children’s Hospital recruited me to fill their Senior Web Developer position. The skill set they were looking for very closely matched that of my own, and the job description was almost the exact same as what I was currently doing. My wife and I had been looking for some time at making a move West, we just weren’t sure exactly where, and this provided all the incentive we needed and more to make that happen.

The trip was a long one, which started off badly, and we dealt with a lot of weather all the way here, but a lot of luck got us here between and around storms.

In January we will have lived in Seattle for a year already.

Presidential Politics

One of the things that I think had a profound impact on me as well as millions of others was that of the Presidential election.

I don’t look upon Obama as “The Savior” that some do. I don’t feel that he will be able to fix all the world’s problems. I do however look at him as a step in the right direction. A figure that can inspire the world to move, unite, and pursue greater things. Obama is something that this country has lacked since Kennedy, a young powerful, influential leader and I think that America’s youth really are excited, myself included.

The night of the election we spent time in downtown Seattle at a cabaret bar called “The Can Can”. After the election party ended we headed back up to street level where we ran into people in the middle of the streets yelling, dancing, waving banners, high fiving, hugging, and slowing or stopping traffic as people banged on windows and jumped on beds of trucks. As I started to take all this in I began hearing a drum beat in the distance and as I looked down Pike St. there was a huge swell of people marching down the street to the beat of drums. Soon more then 3000 people crowded at the intersection of first and Pike just in front of the famous Pike’s Market.

More about the rally in the streets was printed up in Seattle’s Post Intelligencer newspaper.

5 Years

This September also marked my wife and my five year wedding anniversary, which is a milestone in itself. We have been together for a little over 7 years now.

Conferences

Ektron Developer Training

I got to make my way to the East coast for the first time in my adult life and got to go to Nashua, NH for a 3 day training on a new product that we had purchased at Seattle Children’s. Nashua is just about an hour outside of Boston, and although I never made it there due to time, jet lag, and a number of other things, just seeing that area of the country was pretty cool. Lots of beautiful old buildings.

South By South West

In 2008 I got my first taste of South By South West, a conference held in Austin, TX. I have been wanting to go to this one for 4 years and finally got the opportunity.

This was a huge conference and I got the opportunity to mingle with a lot of the designers and developers that have been mentors to me, even though I had never met them. Although I am not going to make it back again for 2009’s event, I certainly want to get back again next year if possible and perhaps even make the music side of things.

Concerts

Hot Hot Heat, The Editors, Louis XIV
This was the first concert we attended in Seattle and was at the Showbox Downtown. At the time we were really only familiar with Hot Hot Heat, though we came out of the concert huge fans of the Editors. All in all it was a great lineup from top to bottom, and a great intimate venue.
Eartha Kitt
We got the chance to see Jazz legend and actor Eartha Kitt at a local Jazz club. Not only was 80, but she didn’t act a day over 30. Showing off plenty of leg with a dress that had a slit up to her waist she purred her way through a number of great songs while throwing jokes and laughing all the way. We were really looking forward to seeing here again at her next performance in Seattle, but she succumbed to colon cancer on Christmas day 2007.
Conor Oberst
We were lucky enough to be walking by Easy Street Records, a local record store, and Conor Oberst was playing a show that was standing room only inside the store. It was very cool to see him play in such a small intimate venue.

Hiking

Something that we have always wanted to get into a little more was backpacking. Since arriving in Washington we have been looking various hikes and new gear. We have been able to take some amazing day hikes as well. Here are the hikes we made this year along with photos to their corresponding Flickr sets.

Columbia River Valley – Portland, OR
Cougar Mountain - Issaquah, WA
Mossbrae Falls – Dunsmuir, CA

Books/Reading

2008 brought in more reading for me then I had done in nearly 8 years. I began using the bus system with a 45 minute commute which allowed a lot of time for reading. In addition to this, my wife and I started a new Book Club in Seattle called The Book Pub, that meets once a month to drink good beer, and discuss the monthly selection.

The Catcher in the Rye
The Road
Water for Elephants
Amsterdam
The Speed of Trust
The Audacity of Hope
A Christmas Carol

My Top 10 Albums of 2008

2008 brought a lot of new music to my life. From the music scene of Seattle, to a couple of friends of mine introducing me to a number of new artists that I love, to KEXP, a great local radio station that caters to indie artists.

As with last year, not having to try to compile this list manually is one of the reasons why I love Last.FM. monitoring what I listen to everyday on my Laptop, and my IPod it reports back to the Web site and keeps everything neatly listed for me. This years list is again dominated by Zero 7, however a number of new albums make the list along side them.

Here are the most played albums from my list for 2008.

Simple Things - Zero 7
For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver
When It Falls - Zero 7
Plans - Death Cab for Cutie
An End Has A Start - The Editors
The Garden - Zero 7
Boys And Girls in America - The Hold Steady
We Are Not Alone - Breaking Benjamin
In a Safe Place - The Album Leaf
Where Shall You Take Me? – Damian Jurardo

2009 Predictions & Goals

Taking a look ahead I think especially with the world the way it is, it’s important to set some goals for the next year. Something to work for, and that is attainable within that year.

Run a Half Marathon
This is my primary goal for 2009. A half marathon is 13 miles, or 21 kilometers. Although i run several times a week, and usually around 4 miles each time, this should present a real challenge for me, and this goal tightly couples with the next one and should I complete this goal, the next should fall into place nicely.
Hit my Goal Weight
Cliché number two! I am also looking to hit my goal weight of 190 lbs this year as well. Now that we are settled in, visitors have come and gone we can get back into our workout and diet routine. This is not a cliché goal in that I am starting back on it early. In fact I had started about 3 weeks ago until I injured my foot. I am starting out early so that I don’t have to say at the 1st of the year that my goal is to lose weight. Sounds like a small thing but it’s a big moral victory.
Overnight hiking trips
One of the things my wife and I love to do is to hike. Taking trips into the wilderness is a very calming Zen like experience for us. We are well on our way and now have a number of the materials needed to make this happen including our tent, camp stove, and number of other small items. We are targeting Spring of this year to get in our first overnight backpacking trip.
Quit Biting Fingernails
I am already well into this one, but this has been a bad habit of mine for a really long time, and it’s really time to get it taken care of, and I think I am going to do it!

Links for 2008-12-07 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST

Best of 2008
The best of 2008 music lists by Last.FM determined by number of plays but it's users.

Sustained Fitness - Diets

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:53:00 -0700

Just about everyone has been on some sort of diet program. Most people think of a diet as a large departure from what you normally eat. Things like the Atkins diet, or the South Beach diet might come to mind. Some of these work, some don’t, but there’s a reason that most people don’t keep the weight off with these diets.

When setting up my goals I didn’t want to lose the weight on some trendy diet, only to gain it back when I quit practicing that particular diet’ program. What’s the point? There’s an awful lot of work involved in losing weight, so why risk putting it all back on when you leave the programmed diet?

Technically you are on a diet right now. It might not be a very good one, but you are on one. Maybe you are on the Big Mac diet, or the Ben and Jerry’s diet, or maybe it’s the 3 cans of Coke a day diet. So instead of some radical departure from what you are already doing, why not tweak it just a bit. This will help you stick with it, but lose the weight over time. The plan here isn’t to lose 30 lbs in 2 weeks or something like that. Its more like lose 50 or 60 lbs over the course of a year, and it’s really not hard. Something as simple as going from 3 Cokes down to 1 per day, or instead of that Big Mac, get a hamburger, or instead of Ben & Jerry’s do low fat frozen Yogurt. To quote one of my favorite fitness gurus: “Be more gooder than badder”. Simple changes like these make all the difference.

Mixtape #2 – Weekend Relaxation

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:45:00 -0700

Just in time for the weekend I have restarted the mixtapes. With a great new software called OpenTape. This mixtape is a mix of light tracks perfect for a relaxing winter evening at home.

Weekend Relaxation [Retired]

Thule – The Album Leaf.
Futures – Zero 7. One of my favorite groups. Their music is so mellow and rich.
Skin of the Night – M83.
Pavanorama – deviationsPROJECT. Just heard these guys at Barnes & Noble. Great classical music with a rockin twist.
Cocaine Lights – Phosphorescent.
No Ones Gonna Love you – Band of Horses. A little local Seattle flavor that sounds a lot like another Seattle band you might know… Death Cab for Cutie.
For Emma – Bon Iver. Bon Iver has been my favorite group for a while now. With a haunting yet exhilarating sound
Lua – Bright Eyes. A great bad from my former home town Omaha.

Let's Talk Fitness

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:50:00 -0700

A few nights ago as I was watching Boston Legal, a commercial for some new workout miracle machine popped up with some character that had the body anyone would be envious of; came on telling you how he achieved that body with just 20 minutes a day on this great machine. As I watched him make his sale shirtless, muscles bulging I was rather insulted to be honest.

Fitness is going to be a new topic that I write about here and hopefully with some frequency, as over the past year and a half it has become one of my passions. The guy in that commercial may indeed use that machine, but like many politicians, this is really only a half truth if a truth at all. In addition to his 20 minutes on the miracle machine he is also spending numerous hours at the gym per week.

Look, I know that physical fitness is not everyone's cup of tea, and most people couldn't stomach running a mile let alone 4 a day. If it's not an interest of yours, that's ok, but stick with me on at least this post.

Let me say first and foremost that I might not be the epitome of fitness.

That said, my weight doesn't dictate what I know about the subject. In the past year and a half I have done a lot of research on health and fitness. Not just fitness, but sustained fitness. More on that later. I am currently 5'11'', 212 lb 27 year old male. I'm not going to be shy about this. My Body Mass Index (BMI) is .4 away from technical obesity even after losing 43 lbs. At my peak (if you want to call it that) I was 255 lbs, which is when my wife called me out on my weight, and probably in essence saved me from an early death caused by heart disease, stroke, diabetes or other weight related conditions.

You might think this "calling out" would cause bitterness and hurt feelings... it did at first. More then anything though it gave me a reason to get started. It sparked that little bit of drive to do something about it if not for myself, for the sake of my wife and family. So past those hurt feelings there is also a feeling of gratefulness. So that started me on a track of running. Just a little at first, then more and more as I could handle it. I ate less of the same foods I ate everyday anyway and within weeks things started changing, and I have ridden that change 43 lbs forward. You see the greatest lesson of that period of my life was that if you are a wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, mother, father, sister, brother or have a son, or daughter the fact is you owe it to them to keep your body in shape. Even if you are ok with what is happening to your own body, they have to look at you, they have to walk around with you, they have to be proud of who you are both mentally and physically.

Sounds shallow a little doesn't it? But be honest with yourself, it's true isn't it? It's a respect for those you love, and it deals with so much more then looks. Overall health, activity, lifestyle, confidence, pride, and so many other things are balanced on something that we all know we should be doing.

So why aren't you?

Links for 2008-11-10 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 PST

Oomph
A Microformats Toolkit is for web developers, designers and users, making it easier to create, consume, and style Microformats.

Links for 2008-11-04 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 PST

Vischeck: VischeckURL
Tool to check what your Web sites or images look like to people who are color blind.

Links for 2008-10-20 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Rands In Repose: FriendDA
As epiphanies go, Holy Shits are few and far between. My gut says you’re lucky if you stumble upon one a year. However, smaller versions happen all the time.

Blog Action Day - Nickelsville

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:02:00 -0700

Today is the 2nd annual Blog Action Day, and I am proud to be participating again this year. For those of you unfamiliar with Blog Action Day, please take a moment to watch the great video put together by the organizers below.

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty Video

Nickelsville

Here in Seattle probably the most prominent display of poverty is the significant number of homeless or near homeless. With recent economic conditions this number has been magnified even more. With shelters and help programs already over stretched and under funded they are forced back out to the streets.

The result is what has been termed "Nickelsville" by it's inhabitants. A literal tent city of those who have no where else to go. A sprawling landscape of small pink dome tents donated by local Girl Scouts.

Nickelsville, who's name is a rub against Seattle city Mayor Greg Nickels has been moved several times now by the mayor and the city government, and now that the camp had been moved to what was thought to have been Native American ground, however the city claims that it belongs to them and again put up eviction notices throughout the Nickelsville camp.

The current state of the economy is one problem. A symptom of that problem is poverty, homelessness, and grief. Although this is a reality of the current economy it isn't something that can be accepted.

Micromanaging the Web

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:27:00 -0700

One of the things I have valued tremendously in my last couple of jobs is the freedom to work unrestricted. Not having management intrude into your work isn't a luxury I have always been afforded, and with that I wanted to jot down a few thoughts on the subject of micromanagement as it's reared it's ugly head through a close personal contact of mine.

Most everyone knows that micromanaging is a management style, albeit not a very good one that promotes management where the manager closely observes or controls the work of his or her subordinates or employees. This might include things like bouncing in and out of offices, time reporting and mandatory response times on phone calls or emails.

The Speed of Trust

Micromanaging is first and foremost a trust issue. Beyond that anyone who has read Stephen M. R. Covey's book The Speed of Trust will understand that this creates a downward spiral of discontent employees, lost productivity and in the end these factors tie in closely with your profitability.

Sparking Creativity

The Web industry as a whole weather you are a developer or designer relies on creativity. Creativity is a product of it's environment, and so your surrounding which includes those that you interact with is extremely important. Adding distractions to a creative types work is like

Mr. Insecurity

I would also go out on a limb and say that micromanagers have a high amount of insecurity, and primarily in their own ability to lead. Instead of inspiring and motivating with ideas, praise and demonstration they instead rule with an iron fist. They demand respect, rather than earn it.

State of Politics

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:59:00 -0700

Here we go a blog post on politics and the state of the political scene here in the United States. I wanted to spout off my opinions on a couple of things that are going on in the campaign that should be highlighted more in my opinion. So here goes...

War Hero's

John McCain's primary running platform so far has been that he's a maverick, a decorated war veteran, POW, and has the military experience we need for hard line foreign policy. This up to this point is primarily what I have heard coming from his campaign which is not what this country needs at this point.

The run and gun shoot first think later style of leadership isn't working. This was Bush's style and McCain and his VP choice Palin seem to both support the hard line stance on foreign policy. The United States cannot police the world. Diplomacy and better foreign relations are need more then tough words and brute force. There is a reason for the United State's reputation falling in the world and it might have something to do with the fact that we worry about other people's business more then our own.

Long story short, I applaud John McCain and his service to the country, but this is not a political platform to stand on. The fact is tough talk and hard lines have gotten us into more years of war and debt then anyone in this country wanted to take on contributing to an economic decline and the weakening of the American dollar. Do we really want to perpetuate this situation?

Punch for Punch

There has been a recent callout for Barack to start swinging back at ads that attack Obama's credibility, and yet to this point he has not. There have been some counter ads but McCain's are getting more publicity.

Now McCain is obviously doing a good job here. His ads are working and are obvioulsy spooking the Obama supporters. However I think there's something to be said by that silence and Senator Obama has added to this in numerous campaign stops that I have watched via the Web. Obama wants to stick to the issues and how it is that he is going to tackle things, while on the flip side McCain is pretty bent on sending out the attack dogs. And that's fine but this is the way things have been done for years when it comes to politics, and although he's preaching changing things he's resorting to those same tactics.

Obama on the other hand has taken a beating in the media from McCain and his ads and hasn't really swung back. Yes I am sure there have been some ads which might be quote attack ads, however they are not nearly as prevalent even during a large swing in the campaign triggered by Governor Palin's entrance into the mix.

Debates

This is where the battle I believe will be won. In an arena like this I have to give the edge to Obama's ticket. Palin has yet to have someone battle back at her points. Biden is extremely seasoned in Washington and is known for being a bit of an attack dog. Obama is also a much more electrifying speaker then McCain and has yet to trip up or look flustered over questions so far as McCain has on a couple of occasions, most recently being on "The View".

I encourage everyone on both side to really evaluate what the candidate stands for. Don't hone in on just one issue that effects you the most because in the grand scheme of things it's not about one issue. It's about what effects this country, and guns, and abortions, health care, and all the other hot ticket items really don't mean anything when you are faced with a major economic crisis, and 2 wars, with a possible 3rd looming. Those are important don't get me wrong, but there are many things that we can't get wrong even before it comes to those.

Make it Official: HTC Diamond Coming to Sprint

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 09:24:00 -0700

This is a device I have been waiting for since I heard about it many months ago, and if you weren't already convinced that it was coming to Sprint, there is more information now that all but locks it up. The touch diamond is a direct competitor to the IPhone that runs on Windows Mobile and utilizes a beautiful Touchflo 3D interface.

Rumors have been swarming for months about when it would come to the U.S., and under what carriers, and as if there wasn't already enough evidence about the device making its way to Sprint, here are some more pieces that make it really, more then official.

The following Web sites and domains have been found by various Sprint users and diamond enthusiasts pointing to the future of this device on Sprint's official Web site.

So now it's just a matter of how long Sprint will wait to launch the long awaited device. Most plausible dates seem to be that most stores will get delivery of the device on or around the 16th of August and will then begin training their employees on it for a release on September 2nd.

Price is another sticky point as no one really knows how much Sprint will offer up the device for, however it's believed that it will be under the $300 with a 2 year contract agreement to compete more directly with Apple's IPhone.

Failed to enable constraints

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:07:00 -0700

While working with a Web application this evening I ran into this error: "Failed to enable constraints. One or more rows contain values violating non-null, unique, or foreign-key constraints".

As I researched the origin of the error I found a lot of people having the same issue, and no real great solutions, however there was a lot of people pointing to the database properties itself, some thought it was the enable constraints set on the dataset in the code-behind.

After researching further I was pointed towards by Datasets in my .xsd file. This file contains the duplicate copies of the field length values that were set when you created the table adapter. I had changed a few of those values in the database after creating the table adapters in my project.

You can reset these values by selecting your the column in your tableadapter and open it's properties where you can set the max length.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Pages

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:55:09 -0700

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) should not be a standard. I have said it before and I will say it again. FAQ pages are overused and outdated in an age where Web pages become increasingly easy to use and find information.

A recent client project that I am working on brought this issue back to my mind and after thinking it over in more detail I am writing a about it again just to better organize my thoughts and add some bits here and there that I have learned since my last writing in Jan '07 that further solidify my position.

Misnomer

Lets start with the fact that nine times out of ten, a FAQs are not even that. They a list of generated questions that the company or organization perceives to be common questions that are put out there before the site has presented itself to generate questions. When a client comes to you for a brand new Web site, one of the things that most people know and want is a FAQs page. What FAQs does that client really have at this point?

Investing in Content

The FAQs page is often a dumping ground for pieces of content that don't seem to logically fit anywhere else, or perhaps are added later after the site it full built and deployed. In both these cases the content was not well thought out or organized. Nine times out of ten the content fits better into a content area rather then FAQs.

Step through the logical progression of a user for a moment. The user is looking for something, something specific. They surf through the content sections they thought it might be relevant in with no luck, then perhaps turn to search, then maybe the FAQs, or maybe even the sitemap. By now you have forced the user to do a lot of looking when if you developed the content well up front they would have found what they were looking for on step one.

So why not invest in that content in the first place and find ways to integrate and fix the issues of customers having trouble finding that particular content. Create links to more developed content pages that talks about the subject in more detail then a paragraph. Make the content (if it already exists) pop out a little more using heading tags. You could even add that same FAQ to the sidebar of a content page that is related.

The point here is with a little more work and thought there are better places to put these bits that the customer will find in the first place rather then having to hunt in the FAQs page.

SEO Considerations

When you look at FAQ pages from an SEO standpoint they really provide little or no value. Small amounts of undeveloped text from all sorts of different topics with no content to back it up all on one page.

If these are "really" your most frequently asked questions why not (as I talked about in the above section) invest in some content to answer these questions clearly to better help your customers? Dedicating content to these questions should improve their search rankings and make them easier to find via search weather that be your internal site search or external like Yahoo, Google, or alike.

Not All FAQ Pages are Bad

So as with almost everything there are exceptions to the rule, and in fact there are some sites that do FAQs very well. Linking the questions to highly developed content sections instead of using the FAQs page as the only source of that data.

Great Podcasts

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:30:00 -0700

Podcasts are a great way to get some excellent content delivered straight to you rather then you going out to get it. The best part my be that the majority of podcasts are free.

I make pretty heavy use out of podcasts for a variety of reasons. Weather it be work, fitness, news, or just music in general there are podcasts available for nearly any subject you could think of.

Since it seems that a lot of people don't take advantage of podcasts or understand them I thought I would throw out the list of the podcasts that I am subscribed to.

Boagworld

Category: Web Design
Frequency - Weekly
Cost: Free
http://www.boagworld.com/podcast/

Boagworld is a UK podcast dealing with all aspects of Web design and development and covers many topics from beginner to advanced.

Diggnation

Category: News/Technology
Frequency - Weekly
Cost: Free
http://www.revision3.com/diggnation/

Covers some of the weekly top submitted stories from the social news Web site Digg.com that's D, I, G, G .... dot com. I think I managed to rip that pretty well.

The Rissington Podcast

Category: Web Design/Development
Frequency - Weekly
Cost: Free
http://www.therissingtonpodcast.co.uk

Another UK based podcast, the John Oxton and Jon Hicks provide a hilarious question and answer session each week that deals with mainly with Web design and development, however there is often discussion of cheese and other topics.

This podcast has a long running tradition of trading pot shots with Paul Boag of Boagworld.com about who is the better podcaster, more famous, etc.

Neverrain Recordings

Category: Music
Frequency - Monthly
Cost: Free
http://www.neverrain.com/

Neverrain Recordings is created by professional DJ/Producer Eric Jordan. These trance/techno/electronica style mixes are lengthy, but great for getting into work, or for your workouts.

Motivation to Move

Category: Fitness
Frequency - Daily/Weekly
Cost: Paid/Free

http://www.motivationtomove.com/site/audio_programs

This is the only podcast on the list that has a paid option. Although some of the podcasts are released for free it might be only 1 out of every 3 or 4. Motivation to Move is run by Scott Smith who has been mentioned here before. He runs a number of motivational fitness and well being podcasts varying from 10 minute daily podcasts to 30-40 minute full shows. If you are looking for help getting in shape I highly recommend these.

Todd N Tyler Podcasts

Category: Radio
Frequency - Daily
Cost: Free

http://tinyurl.com/4tglhl

These two so called Shock Jocks are from my former hometown of Omaha, and are pretty funny dudes with a cast of regular characters and comics. If you have some spare time, try them out. Their humor takes a while to get used to though.

These are the majority of the podcasts that I am subscribed to. There are a couple more, however they deal with sports in my home state as well in Seattle, so I left them out as most wouldn't have any interest in them.

Hope you find some of them interesting if you check them out! Anyone have any others that I should check out?

Umbraco Installation

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:10:00 -0700

Alright so here is part 1 of 5 of Guide to Umbraco as promised. The first part of the Umbraco Guide covers the installation of the product. When you are finished with this tutorial you will have a fully skinned and functional Umbraco install, without writing a line of code.

NOTE: If you prefer print materials, please do so now as these articles will get a little long. There is a pretty clean print style associated with the site that eliminates most things other then the content itself.

Quick Overview

Before we get started, lets take a quick overview of the steps we will be taking during the installation process.

Requirements
Assets / Downloads
Create Umbraco Site
Creating Umbraco's SQL Database
Installation Files
Permissions
Web Installer
Install Web Site Package (Optional)

Requirements

At the most basic level the Umbraco CMS requires a few things. There are a large number of configurations you might be setting up the Umbraco CMS in, and because I can’t cover them all in this tutorial, I will go ahead and focus on installations on both Windows based IIS on a local machine as well as installing Umbraco on a Windows hosting plan.

This is what you are going to need on your hosting provider, or local installation of Windows:

A Windows 2000 or above, or Windows hosting plan supporting the ASP.net framework.
Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL) or SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
ASP.Net 2.0 Framework installed.
Finally to state the obvious, you will need a Web browser to access the back end of the CMS and build your site(s). (At the point of this being published Umbraco’s backend seemed work in most of the browsers that I tested including IE, Firefox, and Safari)

I am not going to get into the installations and configurations of any of these products. there is plenty of documentation on these, so if you are having trouble use Google for help with those.

Downloads

Before we get into the installation steps, take a few minutes and download the Umbraco Source below. Additionally if you don't already have Visual Studio or another editor that you will be using to code your ASP.net files, you might want to also download and install Visual Web Developer.

I will be using Visual Web Developer to manage code. This is freely available software from Microsoft, and although you don’t have to use this, but I would encourage it. During the tutorials this is what I will be using as well, so it will help make the setup a little easier to follow.

Installation

Ok, so lets get into it. The installation of Umbraco to your server is a 9 step process, and should take about 20-40 minutes.

STEP 1 - Create Web Site

Umbraco is best installed in the root level of a Web site. Trying to install Umbraco to a Virtual Directory will leave you with a lot of headaches if it will work at all.

If you are using IIS simply create a new Web site, if you are using a hosted solution you may want to create a sub-domain if you don't have access to or don't want to modify an existing site. This is what I am going to do for my example and in my case the domain will be umbraco.designsbyjohnson.com.

If you are using a hosted solution this is also a good time to verify that you have an FTP user account that has access to publish files to the site.

STEP 2 -Create SQL Database

Umbraco stores all it's data in a SQL database, so you will need to create a database on your server. You should be able to do this using your control panel of your hosted account or using your SQL Server Management tool if you are installing locally.

You will also need to make sure you have a user created and assigned with permissions to this database, preferably as the database owner (DBO), or with admin rights.

NOTE: There is plenty of documentation around for help creating SQL databases, so if you need help with that search around on Google, and you should be sure to find something.

STEP 3 - Extract Installation Files

Next we need to extract the Umbraco installation zip file that we got from Codeplex earlier. If you didn't rename the file when you downloaded, it should be named something like "v303.zip".

Go ahead and extract the files to a new directory preferably. If your installing locally to IIS it would be preferable that you extract to a new folder inside of "c:/inetpub/wwwroot/your_install_folder".

STEP 4 - Create the Solution

NOTE: If you are installing on your local machine, you can skip to step 6.

Once you have all the files in your staging folder, we need to FTP them to your hosting server. This is done by creating a solution using Visual Web Developer. Doing this is pretty straight forward.

Open Visual Web Developer
Click the "File" menu and select "Open Web Site".
Select the "File System" option on the left, and navigate to the root folder you extracted the Umbraco source to, then click "Open".

You should now see all the files listed in the Solution Explorer, usually docked on the right side of the development environment.

STEP 5 - Modify the Web.Config

Before we FTP our files to the server we need to update the Web.Config to give Umbraco the information it needs to connect to your database.

Open the "Web.Config" file in the "Solution Explorer"
In the "appSettings" section of the Web.Config file, look for the "umbracoDbDSN" key. In the "value" for this key enter your username, password, server, and database names into the appropriate sections.
Save the file, and exit.

STEP 6 - FTP Your Files

You are ready to FTP your files up to your hosting server. This is done by clicking on the "Copy Web Site" button highlighted in red below. This icon is located in the "Solution Explorer"

If for some reason the Solution Explorer isn't there for you, you can open it by selecting the "View" menu, and select "Solution Explorer".

Once you have clicked the "Copy Web Site" button you should be presented with a dialogue like the one below. Be sure to select "FTP" from the buttons on the left side, and fill in your hosting plan FTP instructions.

With all your information entered, click "Open". You will be presented with the "Copy Site" window. This window should be a split view representing your local files, and the directory you chose on your remote server.

Select all the files on the left side (Local Machine) and click the arrow in the middle that points to the right. This process may take several minutes depending on your connection details. Let it finish, now's a good time to get a cup of coffee or tea.

NOTE: At times Visual Web Developer may look like it's not responding, let it run several minutes, chances are it is working just fine.

STEP 7 - Apply User Permissions

Umbraco requires ASP.Net to have modify (write) permission on several folders for correct operation. The directories you need to set these "modify" permissions on are:

bin
config
css
data
media
umbraco
usercontrols
xslt

If you are using Plesk on your hosted solution, follow the steps below

NOTE: If you are installing locally skip this section.

Log in to your Plesk Control Panel.
Click on your domain/sub-domain where you uploaded your Umbraco source files.
Click on "Web Directories".
Click the padlock icon next to the appropriate folder.
Uncheck the box "Allow inheritable permissions from the parent to propagate..."
Check the box next to "Replace permission entries on all child objects..."
Click on the user named like this: "Plesk IIS WP User (IUSR_)"
Under the column to the right, "Check" the box next to "Modify", then click OK.

Repeat steps 2-6 for all the other listed "Plesk" user(s).

For an IIS install, the process is much the same, with a couple of exceptions.

NOTE: If you are using a hosted solution, skip this section.

Right click the folder, and select "Properties".
Click the "Security" tab, and click the "Edit" button. (If you are using Windows Vista you may get a security warning, click "Continue" if you get this warning.)
Find and highlight the "ASPNET" user in the "Groups or usernames" section.
Check the "Modify" and "Write" permissions for the user.
Click "Ok"
Repeat steps 1 - 5 for each of the folders above.

STEP 8 - Run Umbraco Web Installation

At this point everything should be in place to begin Umbraco's Web installation package which will setup the necessary database tables, files, and modifications to get a base site started. This can be started by going to the site you installed Umbraco to followed by /install. So in my case "umbraco.designsbyjohnson.com/install".

Click "Next" on the introduction screen

Click "Next" to accept the Licence Agreement
Click "Next" to allow Umbraco to populate your database.
The next step is a simple verification of your permissions. Click "next to continue.
Enter in your admin password, and click "Next".
Note: This field for whatever reason is entered in clear text. So be careful when entering this information when others are around.

Finished! You should now be at a finished screen of the Web Installation.
NOTE: Often times however Umbraco is unable to write the correct values, and so one more step may be required. Read through the Finished screen and see if you need to perform the following steps.

Open the Web.Config file, and update the AppSetting key umbracoConfigurationStatus to the value of '3.0.3'.

STEP 9 - Install Web Site Package

The final step to installation is an optional one, and that is to install a pre-built Web site package. If you are building an Umbraco site from scratch this isn't a necessary step, but for the purposes of this tutorial going forward we will install and use the Creative Web site package.

Click the "Launch Umbraco" button at the bottom of the Web installation complete page. If for any reason you have already closed this, simply navigate to your domain and add /umbraco to the end of it.
Login to Umbraco using "admin" for the username, and the password you setup during the Web install.
Once you are logged in, click the "Developer" section at the bottom of the page.
Right click on the "Macro" folder and select "Import Package".
In the Import Package dialogue, click the link at the bottom that says "Go to the package repository".
Click on "Website Packages"
Click on "Creative Web Site Package"
Click "Download and Install package" and confirm the popup by clicking "OK".
Accept the licence by checking the "Accept License" checkbox, then click the "Install Package" button.
Congratulations you have installed the Web site package! Click the "Click here to view your site" link.

This should give you a live working site similar to my mine which you can view using the link below.

Finished Umbraco Installation

Wrap Up

That's it! Good job, you should now have a fully installed Umbraco installation on your server. For now we will hold off on diving into anymore of the back end then we have already seen.In the next part we will get into the creation of data types and templates which are the core building blocks to creating simple pages in Umbraco.

Back in the Midwest

kylepauljohnson.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Kyle P. Johnson) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:00:00 -0700

As I am writing this I am sitting in Chicago's O'Hare airport waiting to depart on my flight to Manchester, NH. being back in the Midwest brings back some interesting feelings some good and some bad. Good from the perspective that this is my old stomping ground. It's familiar, it's the sites and smells that I grew up to. Yet all the same it's bad. Bad from the perspective of just how completely uninteresting the terrain and people really are here in Chicago, and the rest of the Midwest for that matter.

The terrain isn't the only thing that brings on bad memories. Some people that I have encountered in my professional life whom I don't like very much live in this city... but that's not the point of this post so let's move ahead.

Why am I at O'Hare? I am on my way to Nashua, NH for a training on a new enterprise CMS product that we will be using at Seattle Children's Hospital. During my week long stint in New Hampshire I will be attending 3 days worth of developer training on the product, sandwiched by a couple of days of travel. Among other things I am hoping to get to Boston, MA as well as I haven't really been on the Eastern coast very much in my life. We really don't have many plans as far as things to do in Boston, or Nashua for that matter, but will hopefully be able to check out and do some cool things.

On a side note, with the large amount of time on my hands in transit, I have gotten a lot written on part one of the Umbraco guide, and should have the Umbraco Installation posted sometime early this week.

That's it from Chicago, see you again from New Hampshire!