1. Soak the sweater in warm water with a mild soap for about 10 minutes.
2. Lay the garment out on some towels in a cool place (I hung it up on a hanger).
3. Stretch the sweater out to its original size.
4. Allow it to dry.

The website explains in a little more detail the whys, but I tried this and it worked. If you try it, good luck! Let us know in the comments if it works. Other tips are also welcomed!

1. Download all of the site files from the old host
2. Export the entire database WordPress is using. If you’re not sure how to do that, there are instructions here.
3. If there are existing files on the new host, back them up by downloading them. Do the same for any databases on the new host.
4. Upload the site files from the old host to the new one.
5. Create a new database on the new host. Each host is different, but you’ll have to create a database, a database user, and then give the database user all privileges on the new database.
6. Import the database from the old host to the new database.
7. Change the wp-config.php file info to the new database name, host, username, and password.

Some Things to Consider:

• Most hosts keep the database host as localhost but not all of them. If you’re not sure what your host is, you should contact the new host’s support.
• This is just moving WordPress to a new sever; I assume you’ve already pointed the domain. If you’re changing domains, you will also have to change all of the domain references in the WordPress database, most notably in the wp_options table (there are two references there). If you don’t change the wp_options table, your site will not work. The best way to change all of the references (most of which being in the posts table) is probably to do a Find/Replace on the .sql file in your favorite text editor after you complete step 2.
• If you’re moving a WordPress MU/Multisite install, you will also have to configure the sever to handle subdomains. The codex has instructions on how to do that here.

$100 for talk and text + $30(x2) for their data plans = $160 or $80/person. $10. Big Whoop. However, if you bump it up to the next plan for each person, it would be $110 vs $90. $20/month saved. Close to (essentially) a free data plan. If they add one more person to the plan, it would be $170/mo ($10 for the extra line), which divided by 3 is $56.60 per person. Plus, monthly charge savings tend to add up!

Seems like a no brainer at that rate. You will save a good amount of money by playing your cards right with a family plan.*

*note: These numbers are using Verizon Wireless’s plans. Results from other providers may vary.

Note: You need to be at least a little bit familiar with the WordPress API, and coding themes.

Go into the theme page where your posts are printed (in most themes, this will be at least 2 places: index.php and single.php) and find The Loop. Here you will either find the div that is wrapping each post or write a div to wrap each post.

For the class, call this function: category_classes() (don’t worry, I’ll provide the code in the next steps). You should have something that looks like this:

<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
     <div class="<?=category_classes();?>
          /**You Loop Stuff**/
     </div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Next, we are going to open up our functions.php and add this function:

function category_classes(){

   global $post;

   $cats= "";

   foreach((get_the_category($post->ID)) as $category) {

      $cats.= $category->category_nicename . ' ';

   }

   return trim($cats);

}

This function grabs the categories of the current post, and adds each of their names (or in this case, the slug to make is a CSS friendly class name) to a string. It returns that string, trimming any extra white space from the ends.

Since we printed it in the first step, now all we have to do is add the CSS. For the WordPress nicenames (or slugs), generally the slug will be all lowercase, where spaces are replaced by dashes (-). So if I have a category called “Quick Tips,” I would define the CSS class .quick-tips.

And there you have it! You can now create different styles for any (or all) of your categories! Just keep in mind, this adds all of the category slugs as css classes, so you may have some conflicts (ie if you have a post in Category A and Category B, you will get class="category-a category-b").

First of all, the two tools I used were User Level Themes plugin and any old Coming Soon Theme.

1. Install both tools and activate User Level Themes
2. Make your coming soon theme the default theme (Note: with User Level Themes, this won’t matter; but it will later when we deactivate User Level Themes)
3. Go to Appearance->User Level Themes and scroll down. You will see three options (screen shot below)
4. The default theme will be your current default theme. Again, this won’t really matter while User Level Themes is active.
5. For the Administrator Theme, make it the theme your developing. This theme will only be available to those who are logged in to WordPress.
6. For the Visitor Theme, make it your coming soon theme. This is for anyone who is not logged in.
7. Create a username and password for your client(s). Be sure to send instructions explaining that they must be logged in to see your theme.
8. Once everything has been approved, deactivate User Level Themes (at this point your default theme wil take over) and change your default theme (Under Appearance->Themes) to your shiny, new, client approved theme.

1. Log into Facebook
2. Go to this Privacy Page
3. Uncheck Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features with my public information when I first arrive on their websites.
4. Confirm

After that, you’re good to go.

This year I resolved to be more aggressive in getting clients, my marketing campaign, and my business in general. a few days ago I started compiling a list of business in my target market to reach out to. I decided to choose Google Maps to create a custom map of  those business. Here’s the Why & How.

Why?

You need a way to manage the potentials. Things you should record are Name, Address, Phone Number, and Website. These are things that Maps keeps track of. But instead of  the information being in an excel sheet, they are plotted on a map- this adds an extra piece of information: Your Footprint. You can now view how far your target reach is, where each business is relative to you, and where each business is relative to each other.

How?

The how is easy:

1. First, make sure you’re logged in to your Google Account. Head on over to maps.google.com
2. Click on “My Maps” next to the “Get Directions” link in the top left corner.
3. Click “Create New Map” and name it “Call List.” Click Save
4. Now search for businesses. I usually do “<type of business> <city, state>”
5. Click on one at at the bottom of the information bubble, you’ll see “Save to.” Save it to your new map.
6. Add a few and view your map!

A nice built-in feature of GMail is that you can append anything to your email address by adding a “+” to it. For example, if I want to keep track of all my client emails, I could give them the email address myemail+clients@gmail.com and it will get sent to my GMail inbox. With that in mind, whenever I sign up for a newsletter or email blast, I use myemail+subscriptions@gmail.com.
To manage these subscriptions, in GMail do the following:

1. Go to Settings->Labels and create a new label called “Subscriptions”
2. Next Click on the Filters tab and scroll to the bottom. Click on “Create a new filter”
3. In the “To”  field of the “Create a Filter” box, put your email address with “+subscriptions” after the username (IE youremail+ subscriptions@gmail.com)
4. Click Next Step
5. Of the checkboxes, check “Skip Inbox” and “Apply label,” selecting “Subscriptions” from the  drop down box.
6. Click “Create Filter” and you’re all set!

Now you won’t have your email subscriptions filling up your inbox, but kept in one spot for you to review when you’d like. Just remember to sign up for them with your ‘new’ GMail address!

In your GMail account, the first thing you need to do is enable Quick Links from the labs tab. Click the beaker icon in the top right corner:

Once on the page, about 1/4 of the way down, you’ll see the box for Quick Links. Enable that and click, ‘Save Changes’ at the bottom.

Now back in your inbox, we are going to create a search page to save. In the search box at the top, type from:you@email.com and replace “you@email.com” with someone’s email address. Once the page loads, Click “Add Quick Link” in the Quick Links box and give it a meaningful title. Click OK and you’re done! Now you have a quick reference for any email sent from that specific email address.

For more complicated ones (for example, someone who uses 2 email address), you can reference GMail’s advanced search page. Quick Links works for any search.

]]> http://casabona.org/blog/2009/09/manage-email-correspondence-with-gmail/feed/ 0 http://casabona.org/blog/2009/09/create-a-tempsplash-page-in-wordpress/ http://casabona.org/blog/2009/09/create-a-tempsplash-page-in-wordpress/#comments Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:25:34 +0000 Joe Casabona http://casabona.org/blog/?p=1392 Often times I will be working on a WordPress theme that I want to live test, but I don’t want to reveal it to the world yet. The solution would be to throw up a temp page while you work. However, you may have noticed that throwing an index.html file in the WordPress directory or similar solutions break WordPress. Today I’ll tell you how to get around that.

This solution is pretty simple. First you create the temp page, which will probably have reduced mark-up, CSS in the header, and the whole 9 yards as far as temp or splash pages go. Take that and make it a page template in the WordPress theme you’re working on (do that with the comment /* Template Name: Splash */ at the top of the page). Now make sure to add the 2 tags that make your page a WordPress ready page. Somewhere in the head, add <?php wp_head(); ?>. Right before the </body> tag, add <?php wp_footer(); ?>. Save it!

From there, go into your WordPress admin panel and create a page using that template. Then create a regular page; that will be where your blog posts show up (Just a title, no content needed here). Once you save them, go to Settings->Reading and Under “Front page displays” choose the radio button, “A static page.”  Make the front page your temp page and the blog posts page the second page you created.

Your WordPress domain will now point to your temp page. Just remember the URL for the blog posts page so you can get in to view  the rest of your site while testing!