American Discount Web Hosting

Google+ Wins Best Social Application At The Crunchies

Josh Wolford — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:33:17 +0000

Google has plenty to boast about when it comes to Google+. Last week, they announced that the new social network had surpassed 90 million users. They service is breaking through on a cultural level, as major players have begun to …

Facebook IPO May Be Slightly Delayed

Zach Walton — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:35:35 +0000

All you eager people waiting to cash in on Facebook’s IPO may have to wait one more day. The rumor being passed around by several sources is that Facebook won’t be filing its IPO until this afternoon according to All …

The Facebook Timeline Is Coming, And It Scares A Lot Of People

Josh Wolford — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:05:01 +0000

The new Facebook Timeline is not the most popular feature that Facebook has ever introduced. Granted, it’s well documented that Facebook users are often super-resistant to change, but for some the new Timeline goes beyond minor annoyances like crowded layouts …

Facebook Timeline Movie Maker Lets You Create A Video Of Your Life

Chris Crum — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:30:25 +0000

Facebook is rolling out its timeline to the masses, whether they like it or not, and the company partnered with marketing agency definition6 to let users create mini movies out of their timeline. Basically, it lets you create a video …

Politics and the Internet: The Relationship Is Growing

Abby Johnson — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 11:30:56 +0000

In 2008, politics changed in a big way. This change was driven by the impact that the Internet and social media had on the Presidential election. Since that time, this same influence has been evidenced all across the world such as with the protests in the Middle East.

Photonic Version 1.10

Sayontan — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:24:02 +0000

I just released a small patch for Photonic in version 1.10. SmugMug albums, upon clicking were not resulting in a popup. This should be working fine now.

Suffusion Beta Testers, please provide your feedback on the beta version!! I have only received one person’s response regarding it.

Suffusion Version 4.0.0 – Beta Release 1

Sayontan — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:10:30 +0000

I am putting up the first beta for Version 4.0.0. You can download it from the Google code page. I welcome you to test this version and put it through the grinder. Try out different combinations of layouts, test it with plugins etc. and let me know what comes up.

To reiterate, here are the highlights:

Mega-Menus:
To see what the fuss is, go to Appearance → Menus. Then create a menu. For the root level items in your menu you can pick a Mega Menu Widget Area. Pick one, assign it a number of columns and do the other settings as required. Make sure you assign this menu to a menu location.
Then go to Appearance → Widgets and add widgets to the Mega Menu area that you have selected. Now check it out on the front page.
Typical things to test would be:
1. The menu shouldn’t overflow the wrapper’s borders if the menu width is less than the wrapper width.
2. Check with the different widget height settings, such as “Auto-arrange” or “Equal height for the same row” etc.
3. Vary the number of columns and see the effect.
4. If you have picked an empty widget area, you shouldn’t see the tab in the navigation bar.
Custom Layouts:
Go to Templates → Custom Layout Template. Save the settings as you wish. Then create a page and assign the “Custom Layout” template to it. Upon “Save Draft” or “Publish”, in the “Additional Options for Suffusion” box you will see a new tab for “Custom Layout”. You should be able to save the settings. Add the widgets to the widget areas and then visit the page in the front end. Your new page should conform to your selections.
Typical things to test would be:
1. You should be able to create different pages with this template.
2. For each page you should be able to control the number of columns in each Custom Layout widget area.
3. Each page should respect the corresponding selections.
4. Try the different widget height settings.
5. Use this capability in conjunction with Widget Logic and see the effects.
Page Layouts:
Instead of picking a “Single Left Sidebar” page template, you can now pick a “1 Left Sidebar” layout for a page / post. This gives you the advantage of combining third-party templates with Suffusion layouts. With this, the regular page templates with sidebar options are deprecated. You can still continue using them, but using a layout is going to be much easier.
Things to test would be:
1. If you have a page template such as “1 Left Sidebar” assigned, then you assign “2 Left Sidebars” layout, your page template will get the preference.
2. Pick any other page template and assign a layout to it – you will be able to get the combination of both.
Featured Content:
I added a lot of new options to the static Featured Content and widget. You will now have options to display icons, position the slider index and the controls differently etc.
Magazine Template / Tiles Layout:
I have changed the markup here to use div instead of tables. This will now prevent the unbalanced column widths that you currently see. Do give this a thorough test with all your layout combinations.
General Checks:
Try the following general checks (not a complete list, but it should give you some idea):
1. There were issues with the latest version of the NGG plugin – that should be gone.
2. Activate another theme, then come back and activate Suffusion – you shouldn’t see any errors of any sort in this process.
3. Check if the menus are working correctly in terms of custom colours, rightly showing a downward or sideward arrow etc.
4. Try sharing posts with this release – you shouldn’t see any fatal errors reported when you do this.
5. You should see some “pointers” with tips in the back-end if you are using WP 3.3.x.

Note that this is a beta release. So please don’t use it on a live site! Feel free to post your comments and bugs here.

Update on Suffusion Version 4.0.0

Sayontan — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:44:48 +0000

As alluded to earlier, I have been working quite furiously on version 4.0.0 the last few weeks. Broadly speaking this release doesn’t change too much of how the theme used to work, however there are a few major additions:

Mega-menus:
I know that I have been dangling this carrot for a while, so hopefully the delivered functionality will be worth the wait. Suffusion will be the first free theme with this functionality, so no pressure.
Page layouts:
I did mention this earlier – you will be able to associate a page template separate from a layout for your pages. This will let you utilize templates offered by plugins and bundle them together with a specific layout.
Custom Template Layouts: This is another biggie. You will be able to assign a “Custom Template” to a page. That will let you do some awesome layouts by utilizing widgets. E.g. if you want to create a product page, you will be able to define a specific layout that has one row with just one big featured slider, then two rows with 3 boxes each, with specific product features, then one row with 2 boxes, with testimonials and pricing options.
If this feature isn’t good enough, you can create multiple pages with the custom template and either keep the same defaults across all of them, or create specific layouts for individual pages.
Since a very very long time I have had one particular feature request on my plate. Although this request is 2 years old, I have always had it in plan for different releases, but then pulled it when the releases became big. Even during the release of the Photonique skin I wanted to improve the look and feel for the Featured Content and I did make some changes for the same. Yet I chickened out at the last moment when it came to specific aspects of improving the look and feel. This time I bit the bullet and finally put it in place. The Featured Content now has options to do a whole lot of cool things in terms of look and feel.

In addition, the regular improvements to speed, performance and usability are included. I have finished coding all the major items and am hoping to wrap up development in a couple of weeks. As I mentioned, I will be pushing this release out for beta testing.

Upcoming Changes in Suffusion Version 4.0.0

Sayontan — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:30:19 +0000

As I wrap up the development of version 4.0.0, there is one very important note for people using the Magazine template.

Current users of the theme see an option, Templates → Magazine to change → Sidebar layout to adopt, where you can pick a particular layout. If that is set to “Default” for you, you have nothing to worry about. But if you are using a specific layout, this will temporarily stop working. The fix though, is very quick. You have to open the Magazine page for editing, and go down to “Additional Options for Suffusion”. There you can pick the appropriate page template and save the post. Things will work as usual after that.

I will be doing a beta release for 4.0.0 in a couple of weeks. Hopefully this beta will be fine, unlike the fiasco of 3.7.5!

Boycotting GoDaddy (Reprint)

Dawn McCarroll — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:14:31 +0000

Boycotting GoDaddy…..

There is a lot of hubbub about legislation that is threatening online internet freedoms — SOPA – Stop Online Piracy Act. This is another lamely veiled attempt to control what goes on amongst the internet. While it pretends to be upright and wanting to protect copyrighted material, it’s actual application isn’t very well thought out (imagine that — coming from politicians) and it aims to more control rather than to actually care about the root cause of the issue. But I digress.

Many tech bigwigs such as Google, eBay, Yahoo, etc are against this bluthering legislation for good reason. However, many of them are very upset because one of their own, GoDaddy, is actually supporting SOPA. And there is quite a movement to actually boycott GoDaddy and not do any business with them.

Well, I say “It’s about time! Welcome to the bandwagon. What took you so long?”

You see, this blog used to be hosted by GoDaddy. When I started writing this blog over 7 years ago, I wanted to focus on writing, not the technical aspects of hosting, domain registration, DNS servers and the like. There weren’t too many easy choices back then which led me to GoDaddy. However, that was before the trampy, soft porn advertising that now oozes from what I now refer to as “HoDaddy”. And while my spiritual and family values have strengthened and grown more conservative, HoDaddy’s have become looser than a thrift store turtleneck.

Now please don’t paint me as some sort of prude. I can appreciate a beautiful woman and I know that sex sells. However, to dress down or nudify (is that a word?) women and parade them on a daytime or prime time broadcast during NASCAR or football insinuating nothing other than raunchiness, is crass. It makes the Victoria’s Secret and beer commercials look mild and tame in comparison. I guess to compete with “Jersey Shore” and “Desperate Housewives” this is what we as a society have devolved to. I’m sure others have spoken out about this and I am sure that HoDaddy will be bested and surpassed by someone else soon. But I don’t have to pay into it. And I don’t have to expose my kids to it on daytime TV.

So almost 2 years ago I decided to make my own personal dollars speak for me. I gladly departed HoDaddy and found a web hosting company that aligned with my values and morals. A friend connected me with one of their friends who runs American Discount Web Hosting. Dawn is the owner and not only provides a great value, but also has awesome customer service and practices the values and morals I cherish. She is a great Christian businesswoman and if you have any web needs I highly suggest you give her a call. Especially if you are looking at alternatives to GoDaddy , er, HoDaddy.

As for the rest of y’all technies, while you and I are not doing business with HoDaddy for different reasons, welcome aboard.

Here are some media articles on the topic:

PCWorld article

LifeHacker – Ditch GoDaddy’s SOPA-Loving Butt

LifeHacker’s GoDaddy Jump Ship Checklist

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

This entry was posted by Dan on December 23, 2011 at 5:22 pm under Links ‘n Stuff, Rant. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.