Any color you like, with Impact…

Impact is a completely updated version of an ancient (2004) WordPress theme - with header and links colors configurable by javascript color picker from the admin panel. The original had a cookie-controlled stylesheet switcher.

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It is possible to switch a theme’s CSS, depending on whether widgets are enabled or not - whether, like a lot of things in programming it is a good idea to do this, just because you can, is another matter…
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With the arrival of WordPress 2.5, time to get some layouts reorganized for coding and plugin compatibility.

LouiseBrooks is a fixed-width, 2 column with right sidebar theme, with a little Deco styling, not too much, enabled for widgets and compatible with WP 2 upwards. The theme has been tested on Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 6,7 and Opera 9.
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So, yes, I decided to take the PayPerPost dollar for a while - just while things are working out on the job front.

As an American now well used to the European way of life, what gives me some small pang of pleasure is the often-stated reluctance to mix blogging with pure capitalism, as if there were off-limits even in the American dream. Continue reading »

You will need a little knowledge of PHP and MySQL to get the hang of this - but it is perhaps easier than it looks at first sight, and it’s also a good way of expanding your skills in this area…

You want to get some info from the database, and you want it more flexibly than built-in functions like, say, wp_list_pages - this is the general how-to …
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Well, just given version 2.5 a good try out on a XAMPP install. Aside of the usual, everything’s changed so I don’t know where anything is - which should be ignored - there’s definitely work gone in, the password hash is now (visibly) salted, presumably wasn’t before, also I love and adore the revised editor, and the glorious lack of paragraphs inserted gratis and totally unwanted… Continue reading »

WordPress version 2.3 arrived with the new feature of the update warning message prominently displayed across the admin - as soon as the version was out-of-date, or, more exactly, on release of another full version.

Well and good,  but what if you have 35-40 clients running WordPress…?

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A cautionary story first - last month, I had a client who rang up in a bit of a state, he couldn’t reach his web site, it was down and it was clearly all our fault. Well, trouble is, we could reach it no problem, the site was definitely up and running. So we went through the usual things, is the computer switched on…
Then he said, “I did send a mail shot this morning…”

Turns out he had tripped his ISP’s controls, so they were locking out his range of IPAs from the IP of our servers. He has this very complicated patent method of doing something from his desktop machine, via some other domains and then the final mail goes from the mailserver on his site. And this is with a small list…

Ironic a little, is it not - our unhappy client can reach any part of the internet except the part he pays quite a lot of money for …

So now for the moral of the story - it’s probably best to get your mailing lists handled by people who know what they are doing. Campaigner.com have been around for a while now in the field of email marketing services and offer the full range of packages, with plans starting at $25 per month, extending up to a full pro service for the accurate targeting of email based campaigns - and here, the bottom line is all about accurate targeting.

For North American users, wishing to stay well within the opt-in rules currently operating on that continent, their online marketing software allows a campaign to be quickly created without the risk of falling foul of anything - even in these days of RSS and complete data interchange, email marketing still has its part to play in sales and general client communication, we’re not all geeks just quite yet…