WP-PortalTheme features a built in color scheme picker where you can select the color scheme from the theme options admin page.  Colors are on a separate stylesheet from the design CSS, allowing easy customization to suit your tastes.  Also included is a header PSD file to easily change the header design or color scheme to your liking.

Included color schemes are orange, green, red, blue, and gray in the /colorschemes/ folder to get you started.  A modified version of the gray version is currently used on this site.

It is ad ready and is laid out for 4 125×125 banners that can be edited by changing the sponsors.php file.

You can download WP-PortalTheme from the Wordpress Theme Directory

Man, I can’t say enough good things about Dropbox- Jacob and I use every day it to quickly and easily share our working files between two computers (in two different states!) and maintain online backups of client work-in-progress sites.

They have a Windows, Mac, and Linux client so Jacob can use his Mac, I can use my XP box, and we can even sync with our numerous development and production web servers!

Its hard to explain just how awesome Dropbox is without using it, but trust me- its the coolest damn product I’ve tried this year and I can’t wait for them to offer paid plans with more space so I can give them my money. I’m a damn Dropbox fanboy over here.

Everybody go get your free beta account.  Even if you don’t have someone else to share with, an easy drag-and-drop private (and optionally, public) web / backup folder is damn handy to have.

Get Dropbox

Sponsored By: Secure Delivery Automatic, easy to use digital product delivery.

If web 2.0 is the “social” web, I sure hope web 3.0 will be the “lets have a fucking purpose and actually contribute to improving mankind” web.

Sponsored By: Secure Delivery Automatic Digital Product Delivery

Writing about my personal life and side business (which is doing super awesome, btw) is really no fun when I know my boss knows my blog url.

1. We had a 4 letter domain that a good friend gave us.  There are no more 4 letter domains available, so it seemed silly to have it idle in the registrar account without a site.
2. We needed some more portfolio sites for the new Portal Labs contract web development site.
3. We wanted to see how fast we could develop a rails app and launch a site… a competition with ourselves of sorts.
4. I wanted to see how many ways I can say “make shorter” with nonsense made up words.  Shortify, shortalize, shorticated, etc…

The result?  rtxp.com, a simple short URL generating service.  Its simple and free.

All told, it took around 4 hours of work spread out over a week or so to design and code the site. We worked on it when we had a few minutes between jobs in our idle time.

The site is built using Ruby on Rails.  The captcha system is Simple Captcha.  The web2.0hyeah! design is by yours truly :)

No ads, no popups, nothing silly.  Just a simple short URL generator.  Give it a try!

Lately I’ve been working on a number of projects that run the gamut of web development, doing accounting crap, and discovering new lands.  Read on to hear more about it.

eCommerce Development

I’m building a quasi-ecommerce site using the excellent Magento Commerce package.  This is a modified “quote-to-order” site that functions like a shopping cart but with no prices.  People add items to their quote (cart), complete the submission process (checkout with no payment info), and submit.  On the back end I wrote some custom code to export orders to the client’s quoting, CRM, and accounting systems (Peachtree / Act Premium / Quotewerks).

I really like Magento- its powerful but its not the easiest to wrap your head around if you are not used to object oriented programming. if you’re coming from osCommerce and want to do some heavy customization (and are the average “wtf is a function?” osC user) it will blow your mind, be warned.

Access Controlled Resource Site

I’m working on a access controlled site that shares company information with outside distributors.  Its based on Drupal and is nearly pure function- blog, download catalog for video, brochure PDFs, promotional CD images, etc.

We wrote a custom account expiration module where users have to click a reactivation link sent to their corporate email after x number of days/weeks.  The theory here is that if an employee of a distributor leaves their company they won’t have access to their company email anymore and can’t reactivate their account, effectively cutting them off after their activation period has expired.   I don’t think its the best idea in the world, but its what the customer wanted so what can you do?

We’ll probably release the module publicly as a Portal Labs joint once we test it thoroughly and clean it up a bit.  Promotion is promotion, right?

Portal Labs Site

We redid the Portal Labs site to focus more on contract development and highlight our technical prowess.  Still a work in progress, it shows some stuff we have done and explains what we can do.  If anyone is looking for custom web application development we have one partner working full time on contract work now and he’s good- probably the best I’ve ever seen.  I’m kinda jealous of him, that brilliant asshole.

We’re very reasonable on our rates, especially for what you get- PHP/Ruby/Python developers with Symfony and Rails experience who code well and work fast.  After all, its more cost effective to pay someone good $60/hour for 4 hours instead of paying some rube $30/hour for 10 and still get crap.  Yeah, I’m still working on the sales pitch.

Of course, those with requests like “I want you to make me a site like Amazon for $200″ need not apply.

The 4 Letter Domain

We’ve had a 4 letter domain name for a while now that a good friend of mine gave us.  We’re writing a ruby-on-rails app for it so its not just sitting there idle.  After all, all the 4 letter domains are gone and it’s silly to just have it sitting in the domain registrar not doing anything.   Its a drop dead simple short-URL service like all the others out there.

It was kinda a competition for us- how fast can we write an application to utilize the domain.  We spent about 3 hours on development and have a fully functional app, which is cool in its own special way.

Eventually we’ll integrate the service with Digital Product Delivery so affiliates and whatnot can generate cloaked short URLs from right inside the app.

As soon as the design work is complete we’ll announce it here or on the new (and currently barren) Portal Labs blog.

Other Stuff

I spend $200 on QuickBooks so we could do quoting and whatnot.  Portal Labs is making some ok money now, which is a good thing.  Now that I have accounting software I can do cool things like profit and loss statements, see where expenses are coming from, see where income is coming from, etc.  Nifty fact- 6% of our expenses come from bank and merchant account fees!  I know, exciting right?

Lets see, what else… While walking around my yard this weekend I found that the property pins that mark the boundary of my lot- about 75 feet farther back than I where I thought they would be.  As my lot is around 200 feet wide, it turns out I have an extra 15,000 sq/ft of land.  Its behind a berm and is full of brush and trees.  The berm will be handy for concealing the area as it’s about 5 feet tall (2m or so)- I’m thinking of clearing the brush and putting ugly things like a compost bin and workshop wood scrap pile back there.  Once a year I’ll rent a chipper and make free mulch for landscaping or something. Of course, all this will take place after the 95F+ temperatures in Georgia die down.

Um, oh I switched from Comcast Cable to Dish Network for my TV service.   Dish has an HD-only package thats right up my alley, and at around $40 a month (with DVR service) its a lot less than what I was paying Comcast for all the channels+HD+DVR service (around $80 a month).  I only watch HD channels as the non-HD stuff hurts my eyes now- its amazing how your eyes get used to clarity and fuzzy non-HD channels give you headaches after a while.

Oh yeah- I’ve been using aging CRT computer monitors in my home office, but one finally gave up the ghost this week. I bought a shiny new 20″ widescreen LCD to replace it and I just love it.   I’m going to buy a second one next month so that both my monitors match- I have a dual DVI video card so I’m going to have ultra digital clarity in stereo soon. Its amazing how you get used to a blurry old monitor and don’t realize how crappy it was until you put it beside a sharp new one.

Funny thing though- With my old square 19″ CRTs I was used to opening Dreamweaver full screen on one monitor and Firefox, etc. full screen on the other when I’m working.  Edit in DW, Crtl+S, Alt+Tab, Crtl+R, preview in FF, that sort of thing.  Now that I have a widescreen monitor everythig is wide as hell full screen, so not making everything full screen and actually utilizing the extra desktop space is going to take some getting used to.  I hope I can fit two of these badboys on my computer desk.  After all, widescreen monitors are, well, wide.  Wider than my 19″ CRTs anyway.

Add to that the 19″ LCD I use on the ubuntu dev server thats also on my desk and the desktop is going to be cramped.  I know, ultra-geeky with the 3 monitors, two keyboards and mice.  Perhaps a KVM switch is in order.

Anyway, thats whats been going on.  Stay classy internets.

Sponsored By: Secure Delivery Automatic Digital Product Delivery

Business Stuff

Secure Delivery is doing well.  We’re delivering over 1000 products now and we have hundreds of subscribers.  Some of them even pay us! Really though, the free thing is working out well- aside from the normal tire-kickers you get with offering anything for free, we regularly get “upgrades” or people that convert from free to paid plans.  Lately, we’ve had a lot of people converting from basic plans to high level advanced and pro plans too- always nice since its basically the same amount of support (our big time sink) for a basic or a pro plan!

I don’t normally do “income reports” like some other make money online bloggers as I generally don’t believe its anybodies damn business, but I’m feeling pretty good about where we’re at so I’ll share a bit.

Our income was growing pretty steadily at a rate of 14% or so a month throughout the beginning of this year- nothing to write home about, but growth to be proud of none-the-less.  Recently we signed some big hosting / development / support deals that are going to bring in hundreds of extra dollars a month, so I expect our growth to accelerate from here on out.

Portal Labs is doing more and more contract work and as a result our income is moving in to the “oh my god we’re a real company that actually makes money!” range.  My business partner has transitioned to working full time on contracts and Portal Labs interests, and as a result our income is really going up.

We’ve made some major investments in hardware lately, so our costs have gone up, but its not outpacing our income. Honestly, our biggest financial problem at the moment is looking in the PayPal account seeing its back over $1000, and remembering that and we need to drop cash to our corporate banking account (after all, I don’t think any vendor really trusts PayPal, not really).

Home / Personal Stuff

Summer is upon us and I’ve been trying to get away from the computer for at least one afternoon each weekend.

I spent one weekend fertilizing the lawn.  I’ve learned a few things from this:  First, I really suck at growing grass.  Second, it sure is hot outside in Georgia.  Third, did I say it was hot?

I spent another weekend digging out, planting, and mulching the flowerbed in front of my house.  Here I learned that Georgia clay is too damn hard to dig through.  I also learned that while not everyone can be a rocket scientist and the world needs its ditch diggers, well, its not the life for me.  Oh yeah, did I say that its hot as hell here?

Lets see, what else is going on… I put some new downspout and splash block thingies on my gutters after I discovered our infrequent breaks in the drought were eroding little canyons around my foundation.  We’ve painted the whole house, including my super cool bonus room over the garage (my office, or if you like, my Fortress of Solitude).  We hung up some cool floating shelves in the living room that I made from scratch.  I divided a storage closet in a shared wall between the garage and the kitchen in to a new pantry and a smaller closet as the builder of the house seemed to have thought we wouldn’t need anywhere to store foodstuffs.

I split a bottle of Bourbon with the neighbor.  Ok, maybe 2 bottles.  I’ve also split more 12-packs of beer than I care to count with him too.  I’ve been grilling out and smoking meat a bit- I love me some outdoor cooked food.  This is where the beer drinking came in.

I set up a linux server at home (Ubuntu) to learn more about configuring and installing linux beyond the basic web server management stuff.  IPTables, advanced file sharing, that sort of thing.  I’ve been studying for my MCSE and CCNA exams which will help with IT type contract work.

Oh yeah, and my wife really wants a baby.  I’m going to have to bite the bullet and knock her up sooner or later, but I’m hoping I can keep her ovaries reined in for another 3-6 months (just kidding honey! I love you!).

That’s about it.  Whats going on with you people?

Left the doctors office, drove 45 minutes across the countryside to my neighbor’s work.   The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and not a single pokey ass old person in their mint condition 1993 Buick LeSabre ruined my ride by going 35 in a 55mph zone with their left blinker on.  I opened the sunroof and rolled down the windows on the TL, popped on the shades and enjoyed the ride.   Spring is a beautiful time- probably my favorite season.

Went to the Chinese buffet for lunch- it was ok.  I like to wig out the waiters so when they ask me how it was I replied “Momma hoo hoo” and it always gets a laugh.  I have no idea how thats really spelled, but its by far the most fun Chinese word to say and its one of the 3 words I learned on my visit to China.  It means “meh, so-so”.  Just for the record, the other two words I know are “nee-how” (hello) and “shi-shi” (thank you).  I didn’t have to learn “goodbye” because I always just smiled and did the little Chinese half nod when people were ushering me away :)

After lunch I headed to the house and checked on Secure Delivery.  I decided to check awstats and see how it was doing traffic-wise, something I’ve been avoiding doing because its so adictive.  Turns out we are having our best month ever with an almost 400% increase in traffic.  Free signups are up, free to paid conversions are up, and the number of paid subscribers are up.  All in all its a banner month for SD.

I’ve been keeping this a pretty closely guarded secret, but I guess I can spill the beans- we’re adding cart support to SD that will give us a massive ammount of flexability in the future for checkout options.  Its going to really expand our offering for multi-product sites and allow sellers to still use the single product buy now buttons or, if they want, use a actual SD hosted shopping cart across all their sites or a mix of the two.  PayPal and soon 2Checkout will support the cart first, and later we’ll bring on other processors and honest-to-god payment gateways as they are requested.

We’re going to launch that with the redesign / rebranding to I am working on for the SD sales site along with a slick product grouping feature (to make combo products including 2 or more individual products) and expanded affiliate control.

I’ve also ordered new advertising banners from Banners Mall and I expect them to show up any day now.  My crappy home made banners like the one shown on this blog are cool and all, but we have the money so why not get some professional advertising matterials?  Of course all new banners will be available to those promoting Secure Delivery through our affiliate program as soon as they’re finalized.

Tonight my wife is going to take me out to a local pizza joint for a Chicken Alfredo Pizza.  Its my fav, and while not very “high class” or “heart friendly” it sure is damn delicious.

Its been a pretty shitty month with health issues but today has been awesome- I hope you guys are having as great a day as me.

The warning bar has mouse rollover effects and can be linked to any page of your choice. You can see a simple example here: Warning Bar Example

I went ahead and zipped up my version and uploaded it to Secure Delivery- its a free download, so if you want it feel free click below and begin your download- no signups, mailing lists, etc.

It’s nothing special- a few lines of code- but it might save you a few minutes one day.

Sponsored By: Portal Labs Custom web application design and development that doesn’t suck.