Live February 2012 – www.WeddingVideosIreland.ie

Live December 2011 – www.QAServices.ie

I’ve done a few of these and quite enjoy them but this job had a little more detail than normal website logos. The process is normally the same each time, I import whatever low-res original I have into Photoshop and blow it up to the required size and proceed to trace out the detail using mostly the ‘Pen’ and ‘Selection’ tools. I fill each large Pen traced area with colour, using gradients if required. I create ‘Paths’ for the circular text and let the text follow that.

For details that can’t easily be traced with common shapes, ie – the fish, water, etc below, I use the ‘Free-form’ Pen tool and just trace by (steady!) hand then use the ‘Stroke Path’ option and some custom brush settings to get some nice line art effects.

Before and After below:

Live November 2011 – www.WeddingChairCovers.ie

Anyway, here’s how you block ads:

Login to your Google AdSense account at www.google.com/adsense and click on the “Allow & Block Ads” tab at the top. Yeh, it’s pretty obvious, not sure how I missed it!

On the left under “Blocking Options” you can block ads in several different ways:

• Advertiser URL’s – Input a list of web addresses you want to block.
• General Categories – Block topics such as Health, Travel, etc…don’t go mad here!
• Sensitive Categories – Similar to above but with topics such as Drugs, Religion, Sexual Health, etc..not illegal stuff but stuff that not everyone might find appropriate.
• Ad Networks – These are known ‘Google Certified’ ad networks. You’d need to do a fair bit of research to know which of these to block so I just left them alone.

Live November 2011 – www.GlampingIreland.ie

WordPress installed, configured and training provided. Client executed the design/template themselves.

Live November 2011 – www.LoughRynnGatehouseBandB.ie

My Car key fob casing (Toyota Rav4) was cracking at the blade and about to die and the local Toyota dealer wanted to charge around €250 for a totally new key and transponder. I said it was just the casing that was broke and could they just replace that and he said no! Same story with the other dealers I tried.

Here’s my broken key with some bits of failed fixes including Sugru and Tape!:

Solution:

I reckoned there must be cheap replacement casings for sale somewhere so off I went to good ole eBay. eBay seller Goodtrade.Purple was selling this replacement casing and after a bit of careful reading and matching of Blade sizes, I bought a couple. Both my main key and replacement casings were cracked. They come in the below form with a blank blade that needs cutting:

I gingerly approached the local key cutting shop and asked if they could cut the new blank blade against my existing one and after a bit of head scratching they said they’d give it a go. I thought maybe they wouldn’t be able to get the fob into their machine because you can’t separate the blade from the casing but it cut fine. Next, I removed the Transponder unit from my old key and put it in the new case and screwed it back together.

The new key and replacement both worked perfectly with the car!

Total cost of replacement:

Casing,  Blade & Postage from the UK – €6.95
Key Cut – €5

SAVINGS: €238.05!!

Here’s my new key:

Leon

Live October 2011 – www.GoodSeedPR.com

Trying to delete or process these comments in bulk is not supported very well in current wordpress versions as you can only show a max of 999 comments on a page so it leaves you going through pages and pages of unapproved comments. Until wordpress provides a simple “Delete all unapproved comments” or similar button, here’s a quick way of processing more than 999 comments at once.

It requires hosting and database/phpMyAdmin access so it’s not for the faint hearted but it only takes a couple of minutes. Backup your database first, then run one of these SQL commands:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = "spam";

Or

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = "0";

Or

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_type = "spam";

And you’re done.

It might be wise to install a spam filter to avoid these comment build ups in the first place. Akismet or SI Captcha for WordPress are good.

Leon

Live October 2011 - www.BrunosRestaurant.ie

First of all the standard definition:

“Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet).” – Wikipedia

And in English:

“Rather than access software on your computer, you access it through a website.” – Leon

Why Cloud Compute? The Benefits:

• Cheaper or FREE,
• More secure,
• Easy access via any internet enabled device,
• Data backed up automatically,
• Syncing between devices,
• Flexibility,
• More Scalable.

Ireland pretty much has a clean sweep of the top IT companies in the world now including Facebook, Google, Paypal, eBay, Linkedin, Microsoft, Intel, Yahoo, Zynga, IBM, Apple and HP – an incredible list and surely one that puts us firmly on the international business map.

Here’s hoping the government will now throw everything it has at IT support in Ireland from Education to Broadband infrastructure and guarantee we lose the twee image of Ireland and replace it with one of innovation, modernity, hi-tech and progression, leading us out of recession and showing the world how it’s done.

Ole, ole, ole..

Leon

Live September 2011 – www.MonthlyChallenges.com

Live September 2011 – www.DrivingLessonsLeitrim.ie

Live September 2011 – www.WeddingSaver.ie

The obvious way to add a single Google +1 button is to just use a WordPress Google +1 plugin but what if you want to keep plugin numbers down for performance reasons or want to add multiple instances of Google +1 to your site, all promoting different url’s, ie – one at the top of your home page for your main site url and one on individual blog posts? Well this is what I needed to do and found it wasn’t that easy! Here’s how I managed it:

Go to www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button and grab your button code, making sure to enter a target url for your main site, then paste it into your site template, taking care to paste the right bits in the right places. The following goes in your header.php file in the <head> section:

<!-- Place this render call where appropriate -->
<script type="text/javascript">
  window.___gcfg = {lang: 'en-GB'};

  (function() {
    var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true;
    po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
  })();
</script>

And the following goes wherever you want the button to show, typically inside the header.php file somewhere after the opening <body> tag:

<!-- Place this tag where you want the +1 button to render -->
<g:plusone annotation="inline" href="http://www.reverbstudios.ie"></g:plusone>

Now, if you wanted to also have a button on each blog post, to specifically target that blog post url, you need to paste the above code into your single.php template file, somewhere inside the loop but this time change the url to “<?php the_permalink(); ?>”, ie:

<!-- Place this tag where you want the +1 button to render -->
<g:plusone annotation="inline" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"></g:plusone>

What this does is automatically grab the post url of the post your’re currently reading and allows it to be +1′d!

See the top left of this site and the share section just below this blog post’s title to see both buttons in action.

Leon

Live August 2011 – www.HealthyMoney.ie

Live August 2011 – www.PrueandSimons.com

Live August 2011 – www.CTEC.ie

I wanted one to print and hang on the wall behind my monitors so I could refer to it quickly when needed.

Here you go, hope it’s of use:

Download the Google Cheat Sheet PDF

The problems started for me when they decided to require database dumps to get the template looking the same as the one demoed, ie – you need to import a database to a fresh wordpress install via phpMyadmin or something similar. Not for the faint hearted. Otherwise, you face a massive job trying to re-create the functionality that was sold to you via the demo.

Lately, the quality of more than a few templates has been awful – to the point where the whole reason for using templates in the first place, ie efficiency, is compromised as you try to fix layout and css issues that result from even the most minor of hacks/customisations.

The latest issue I’ve had and the one that will probably mean me not using Template Monster again concerns a template that only works with a rather old and insecure WordPress 3.0 and not the latest version 3.2.1. After some testing in Internet Explorer 9.0, my client and I found issues with wordpress that meant we couldn’t use version 3.0 but when we tried 3.2.1, certain, very important parts of the template wouldn’t work.

I was pretty snookered and after weeks of bouncing back and forth in Template Monster’s support system, during which they done nothing but supplied useless information, never read what I’d already said and wouldn’t refund me, I’ve had to abandon the template and them along with it!

Leon

It’s worth noting that you can avoid a certain amount of hassle straight away if you were already syncing your iPhone with the likes of Google Apps which can sync Contacts, Email, Calendar, etc…

HTC WILDFIRE

Contacts

This was the first new phone to arrive and I was really impressed with the setup steps when first turning it on. The HTC prompted me to transfer stuff from my old phone via Bluetooth and even though iPhone’s useless Bluetooth can’t normally connect with ANYTHING, the HTC managed to pair with it and drag in all my partner’s contacts. But that’s all it took in unfortunately.

SMS/Texts

This turned out to be the trickiest one. We both had important texts we didn’t want to lose on our iPhones and were a bit stumped when we seen no obvious way of getting them onto the new phones. A bit of googling turned up this handy article Faked.org/isms2droid/ which explains how to locate your iPhone SMS backup file, convert it to XML and import it using the Android SMS Backup/Restore app.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S II

Contacts

Because this was my own phone and I was already syncing with my Google Apps account, setup was pretty damn easy. Pretty much the first screen you see when turning on the phone was the create or login to your Google account one and once I’d logged in, all my Contact, Calendar and Email information was synced with and added to the phone!

SMS/Texts

I had to go through the same process as for the HTC above to get my texts/SMS’s from the iPhone but I done it a lot quicker now that I was experienced! All texts and conversations were restored from the iPhone backup perfectly.

Media

The transfer of media such as Photos, Videos and iTunes Music was straightforward for both Android phones:

Photos

If you’ve been syncing iPhone photos to a particular folder on your computer then it’s a simple matter of connecting up the HTC via USB and just dragging them to the new phone. If you havn’t been syncing then you can just open the iPhone as a folder and copy the photos out of it then on to the HTC.

Music

Wasn’t sure whether the iPhone or iTunes would put some kind of protection on music downloaded from iTunes but it turns out it doesn’t. Simply locate your iTunes music folder on the computer and drag the music onto the HTC.

Conclusion

So the only thing we really lost from the iPhone were our apps but the ones we used most on are all available in the Android Marketplace, ie – Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Foursquare, etc..

PS – We’re both now delighted to be free from iPhone/iTunes limitations and be proud owners of 2 excellent next gen smart phones running on a much more refreshing and potentially much better Android OS.

Leon

PS – if you are a client of mine and not on this list, it doesn’t mean I hate you. I’m just taking a selection here!

• John Loughran – www.HGVIreland.com
• Anthony Joyce – www.AnthonyJoyce.ie
• Simon Palmer – www.RepublicPR.com
• Sharon Sweeney – www.Cacamilis.ie
• Michelle Phelan – www.Carosel.net
• Linda Coogan – www.GoodseedPR.com
• Cerian Gilhooley – www.LittleBlueCottage.ie
• Stephen Hennessy – www.CountryCooking.ie
• Michael Murphy – www.Dtectafire.ie
• Vincent Durkin – www.DurkinMemorials.com
• Francis Davitt – www.DavittPlanningDesign.ie
• Carmel Murphy – www.HRSolutions.ie
• Simon Ruud – www.MissingLink-eu.com
• Roberta Howett – www.RobertaHowett.com
• Anne Hurrell – www.WeddingChairCovers.ie

Live June 2011 – www.Knockalla.net

Case 1:

A former regular client with monthly bills who went without paying for about 4 months and left me in debt to the tune of about €700. Not once did I get paid by this guy on time having worked for him for years and he made me hand deliver printed invoices (16 mile round trip for me) then told me to come back some other time to collect a cheque! He told me on numerous occasions that he couldn’t pay because a pile of bills just came out of his account only for me to find out soon after that he was sunning himself abroad just after I talked to him.

Case 2:

One of my best ever clients financially but who would think nothing of ringing me 15/20 times a day or asking me to do his shopping for him on the way over for meetings. He once asked me to drop all my other clients and work exclusively for him! It was a real Boss – Employee situation. It felt like I sold my soul for his work and offloading him was a massive relief.

Case 3:

A local estate agent who gave me a spec and time limit both of which I adhered to exactly. I even got the site approved by people in his office but when I sent the final invoice all went quiet for months. I named and shamed and suddenly my work was under par and I got threatened with litigation. I took down the website but the client gained control of the .ie domain and site because I bought it in his name.

Regular issues:

• Slow payments,
• No Payments,
• ‘Surprise’ at yearly hosting and domain renewal fees,
• Slipping in extra work after acceptance of quote,
• Projects with no end point,
• Clients who can’t use email,
• Clients going quiet for months mid project.
• Blah, blah..

Leon

Live June 2011 – www.yogaandpilateswithaisling.com

Live June 2011 – www.CafeLounge.ie

.ie addresses remain the best domain extension for your site if you’re an Irish company trading mostly in Ireland and .ie websites continue to perform well in Google Ireland searches.

Please note that some .ie renewals may still be charged at the old rate of €28 depending on when the renewal date falls.

Leon

For one of my latest projects I’m building a property site and using an off the shelf template that comes with a custom post type called Listings which has contained within it custom fields and taxonomies such as:

• Property Type,
• No of Beds,
• Location,
• Price,
• etc..

I figured initially that this should be easy enough but on researching found it wasn’t! Luckily the Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types plugin does pretty much all you need. Here’s how it works:

Install and activate the above plugin and go create a new Gravity Form as usual and add a new Title field from the ‘Post Fields’ section. This will be the title of the post and in my case, property name. Go into the advanced settings for that field and tick Save as Custom Post Type. The drop down box choice will list any custom post type created already. See below:

Next create either a drop down, multiple choice or checkbox field and go into the Advanced tab of the field settings and tick ‘Populate with a Taxonomy’, choosing your taxonomy from the resulting list. If you add a list of taxonomies to the custom post type in wordpress admin then these will be the values that populate that drop down/checkbox list on the front end when someone uses the form! See here:

For this particular site I’m working on I can now have a client register an account, list a property (with ‘Pending’ status) and pay for the listing all through 1 form. Cool!

Leon