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Looks like our theme was broken and so I have reverted the website back to the default theme.  I will be changing it shortly, so please look past the generic style.

There are a lot of amateur web designers out there.  They post on forums, and advertise freakishly cheap prices, like $150 for a website.  The differences between them and those of us that do this professionally are too many to be named.  Obviously the pricing is a huge difference, they charge for an entire website what my hourly rate is.  But then again, I don’t really make just the brochure 4 page websites, we actually write custom applications that do very complex things ranging from e-commerce to mission critical business processes.

Another huge difference is the professionals actually stick to standards and try to keep up with trends and new technology, unlike the 15 year old designers working from mom’s house.  I found out recently about this “company” (LR Web Design).  First, they call HTML “coding” which is a complete misnomer.  And then talked down Dreamweaver, and yet their “code” is at least 10 years out of date.  No CSS, inline font tags, UPPERCASE tags, image maps for menus, and tables for very basic positioning.  Here is another one of their websites: http://knbcolo.webs.com/ .  They don’t even use a true host, but a free website company.  Let me fill you in, none of this is what you want your company to have on its website.  It is unprofessional and doesn’t really put your best foot forward.  But if you want a slow loading website on a free host with no custom anything, by all means go with one of these people.  Otherwise, go with someone with training, experience, and credentials, as well as a portfolio with real clients you have heard of.

Like wine & cars, you get what you pay for with websites.  I wouldn’t want my company looking cheap.

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To everyone out there that thinks it is “cool” or “neat” to put music on your website, do the rest of us a favor, and don’t.  While I understand the aesthetic nature of some sound,  for the most part it is just annoying.  When online, I usually listen to iTunes, and the last thing I want is some hideously encoded streaming .wav file repeating the same 6 seconds of music over and over again.  Unless I really need to be on your website, I hit back on my mouse and try to immediately start repressing the memory that is your website.

At the end of the day, music requires a lot of bandwidth for those of you hosting the music files, a lot more than even a complex page (assuming your images are optimized, but don’t get me started on that today).  And for every Pro:fx out there, there are a 100 Hampsterdance websites.

If you aren’t an amazing DJ, or awesome Flash/Shockwave/Silverlight developer, do us all a favor, and leave the music off your website.  I like my thousands of MP3‘s, and I don’t force you to listen to them.

I admit, I like to find gigs on Craigslist.  There are horrible things on there, and some stupid requests (“I need a PMP certified Project Manager with 12 years industry experience that can start today for $12/hr.”), but every now and then, something decent appears.

I was browsing, wondering about competition and stumbled on this website : LeoScorp, LLC .  What a bad name for a company, but when you first look at the site, you are amazed they claim to be in the website building business.  Bad use of colors, background image is distracting, and let’s face it, picking something like Astrology to base your company name/theme/logo on could actually turn people off, especially down here in the Bible Belt.

Assuming you make it past all that, check out their About Us.  Does anyone care they swam together at a public pool?  Does that make them better developers/designers?  If this was their homepage, sure knock yourself out, but on a business site, keep it professional.

Then go to the Services page, where they have a stupid little computer extremely slowing typing out the content.  First, it is slow, I type much faster than that and read WAY faster.  Let’s go already.  I don’t have time to sit there and be annoyed at a little graphic you thought was cute.  Furthermore, doing that stuff isn’t even close to SEO helpful, so maybe it is a good thing you are on Craigslist looking for jobs since Google just isn’t working out for you.

But let’s face it, no matter how bad a site is, it could always be worse.

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Well, it has been a while since I did a new look for our homepage, so here it is.  What do ya think?  This is a theme instead of the usual totally custom method I do, but I like it.  It is a very magazine type of look, but it gets a lot more content on the front page, and uses the sidebars better.  So it should drive a little more traffic, and be easier to use for those that do show up.

My good friend Kat over at Self Symmetry recently posted a really nice blog entry thanking me for some work I did for her on that website.  So here is the post, not to toot my own horn, but hopefully get some of our friends more interested in a great yoga teacher! ~ Ryan

With the help of an amazing IT guy, Ryan Meinzer, I am proud to announce the relaunch of my website.  Actually, it’s  just the shopping cart area of my site.  BUT — I do hope you’ll check it out (and Ryan…he’s fast, efficient, easy to understand (he is an IT guy afterall), and can totally hook you up if you need any help in this department.  And, he writes a really good blog too!)

Getting back to me…haha  As you can tell by the name of my company, Self Symmetry, I’m all about finding balance.  I believe that when you find balance; physically, mentally, and spiritually, that you are completely and wholly healthy!  I’m also all about feeling good.   If we can get ourselves feeling good all the time, then our lives will be free flowing and easy.  (I’m not saying that we shouldn’t experience any other emotion, but just that our dominate state should be good and positive.)

With my strong belief in finding balance and feeling good I teach yoga, make jewelry, and now this blog.  If you’re in Dallas/Plano, I would love to have you come take a class of mine.  See my schedule for details.  If you’re not in Dallas, then just go check out a class in your ‘hood.  It’s really amazing, transforming, and healing.

If you’re interested in jewelry, browse around my new shopping cart.  I hand make everything and use semi precious gemstones.  Gemstones have healing properties to them.  They are from the earth, so they hold all kinds of positive energy…making you look good and feel good!  I attach a card to each piece of jewelry describing the stones used and what they do for you energetically.  Because of this, they make awesome, thoughtful gifts (Mother’s Day coming up…hint, hint).  However, if you don’t wear much jewelry, check out BE Charmed!  Who can’t use some extra positive energy?  Side note:  Guys…I don’t have any man jewelry on my site, but I can make you something.  I’ve made several pieces for guys so just email me and we’ll come up with something really manly!

If you’re reading this, then you found my blog.  Congrats!  I would say this blog is on the spiritual side.  It’s about my attempt to live life to the fullest, and all the things that I’ve learned and am still learning.

So there you have it…my shameless self promotion.  I hope you leave my yoga class (or any yoga class) feeling good.  I hope you feel good wearing my jewelry (I know you’ll look good!), and I hope reading my blog leaves you feeling inspired, hopeful, and optimistic!

And Ryan, you rock!  I can’t thank you enough!

Balanced and feeling good – Love, Kat

Well, it has been about a year since I officially stopped working on PHPX.  And last week someone came forward and asked to take over the project.  It has been a very interesting thought process on this since it is a lot more complex than I originally thought it would be.

First, there is the problem moving trademarks and copyrights.  PHPX is a trademark, PHPX is also a 501(c) non-profit dedicated to the distribution of free and quality software in order to better facilitate communication between communities of people in a virtual environment.  Sounds all official doesn’t it?  Well, sadly, it is.

I want to give over PHPX for someone that cares about it to develop it, but I am not really sure how to disentangle myself from all the legal stuff that goes along with it.  Perhaps I should just fork it and let them take over that.

What do you think?

As I have gotten more and more involved in the WordPress world, I have released a couple of plugins, working on several more, and have already learned a few things.

One, it is always a good idea to release early, and release often, except where WordPress release system is invloved.  The system is based on SubVersion, which has been great getting to learn, but it lulls you into making some assumptions.  The problem with this system, is the moment you upload code to the repository, it releases publicly.  While that is fine if it is a small plugin and your first release should be public, it is not a good thing for larger projects that are going to require a lot of testing and iterations to get it ready for an actual public release.  WordPress does disclaimer their system, saying it is not a hosting service just a listing service.  Which begs the question, “Why are you using SVN?”.  Probably because it is familiar to most people that will be contributing code.

With all that in mind, I have moved my development versions over to Google Code.  It is a hosting service, is faster than Sourceforge, and I like the interface a lot better; it is a lot more clean and easy to understand.  All my WordPress plugins will be there, under the project SuiteX, and eventually the other projects I have going, like LadderX will move over there as well.

This doesnt really affect any of you much, except for questions/concerns/bugs/requests, I ask that you go over to the Issue Tracker on Google and post there.  It will keep everything a bit more organized, than random comments on this website or on the WordPress forums which do a horrible job of notification or even categorization.

Per the usual, if you have questions, please just ask.

Per the usual, just posting that the PHPX License has changed very slightly due to some recent lack of understanding of basic OSS principles.  Just clearing up the area about warranties.  Yes, Rebel and GMORG, I am aware this has been in production for almost a decade without issue, however, everyday is new and brings new things.

As usual, the current license applies to all new downloads, changes, forks, etc.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

My dad has a domain, (http://www.cmmeinzer.com) but uses it almost totally for emails.  I have tried to show him the evils of WordPress and blogging, but to no avail.

That said, and in the spirit of my constant giving him a hard time, I have highjacked his webpage!  Since it is on my server, I thought, “What the heck, not like he will ever do anything with it.”  So, it is now mine! (Insert evil laugh here).  Maybe he will see what you can do with a spiffy domain, but maybe not.  Either way, it is better than a dumn “Coming Soon” site that will never change.