I wrote the other week about Selling Code and how I had a shopping cart script which someone had shown interest in purchasing. Nothing more came of that mainly due to the end client, however it started the ball rolling on my thoughts. I often wondered if I could just sell my script to my own clients, offer designer friends the option to knock up templates and allow clients to buy an premade shop or have a custom design made. Then I wondered if my code was worthy of being sold (yes I know, no self esteem or confidence!).nnAfter I realised that I may be able to get some interest, I then started to wonder whether it would be a good idea to have a pair of fresh eyes on the project, someone who could point out obvious points that I'd missed, essentially telling me what else was needed, then between us selling the code be it as a product or to a client for a new shop. I know others who are interested in seeing if I could write an osCommerce conversion script to allow them to upgrade from that to mine etc. All of which I think would be quite a good package, but alone I have no confidence in what I've done, whether it's even worthy of being sold etc.nnBurt's post about fulltime online job got me thinking further today especially with his 8th point/tipnn

There is nothing better than going into a partnership with your online friends. If you have chosen your partner(s) well enough, there’ll be no problems at all. And seeing all of you becoming successful is very satisfying.

nnThis is so true, afterall I'm not an overly business person, I hate dealing with clients and I'm definitely not one for sales, but I'm happy to put the scripting work in etc. So perhaps I need to start thinking about finding someone who can do the jobs I can't. I think the only issue I have at present however is that I don't want to let anyone down, and despite trying to clear up all current business work and doing my best to ignore new quote requests coming through (it's my way of saying 'No'!) I'd still be concerned with letting a partner down who'd point out further updates to be done and me taking longer than hoped for etc. I think it's something to look at in the future when I know I can dedicate my time better, hopefully this summer. I also think my code will need rewriting into OOP too, which is something I'm still coming to grips with!

I came across a new WordPress plugin the other day. WP Ajax Edit Comments now allows you to be able to edit your comments for up to 15 minutes after you made your original comment. I know from personal experience I tend to comment and then realise I've made a mistake, missed something or just simply doesn't sound how I wanted it to sound. So this will let you edit the comment inline once you realise you made a mistake

I've also added Live Comment Preview, which means that as you comment you'll see the comment appear to the right of the comment form. Ideally meaning you shouldn't need to edit it! But again, I figured the two may be handy to have!

Note, both plugins require JavaScript to be on, being Ajax 'n all. Having JavaScript disabled won't stop comments but you just won't get the effect of the features. Let me know what you think

The last bank holiday weekend until August. And it's raining! This week has been pretty nice until now – hot sunshine every day. I've got a few chilli plants out in the garden, picked my first radish and started to 'feed' the strawberries.

We finally got a big site live that we've been working on since before Christmas. It was integrating a redesign (supplied) into an existing ecommerce and mail order site. Of course the minute it went live (late Wednesday evening) some problems started, and then the owner decided then to send across further changes. How to apply the pressure!

On Friday however we forgot all about work as we set off to Leicester to visit friends and attend their stag and hen do's. The Hen do consisted of going to a place called 'Bistro Live' in Leicester where we got a 3 course meal, pop quiz (which we won!) and had a live band with people dancing on the floor, chairs and tables. It was 90% women so any men there were in heaven! The stag do (which Dave was on) was a day of playing 'Airsoft' (ie. wannabe boy soldiers!) followed by dinner and a fair few beers in the pub. We both had a good time and will be back there in just under a fortnight for what sounds to be a great wedding. Certainly the people we met this weekend were a right laugh!

We're now down at my parents house as we have a meeting in London on Tuesday with another client and then are going to meet up with a good friend who we've not seen for over a year, and grab dinner with him. Then back home Wednesday evening in time for my tooth pulling first thing Thursday morning!

Right, time to enjoy my Sheridans

WordPress Configuration

So we've got a new version of WordPress installed. Next job is to configure it to suit you and your own personal requirements. First of all I'll briefly explain each section in the WordPress admin:

Dashboard

This is where you see the latest WordPress news – keep an eye out for new versions and update notices. On the right you see some basic statistics such as who's linking to you, how many comments in moderation, your latest few posts etc.

Write

This is where you can create either a new post or static page

Manage

Allows you to manage existing posts and pages, and also allows you to manage your posting categories, files and uploads. You may get extra options from plugins in this section.

Comments

You can moderate, view and edit comments here.

Blogroll

This is the links section where you can add and manage the external links you want on your site.

Presentation

Allows you to switch Themes at the click of a button and also edit Themes directly online too. You can also edit the Widgets on your sidebar which allows for an easier way to add information and extras to your sidebar without having to code them yourself.

Plugins

This lists all of the plugins available in your plugins directory (more on that later!)

Users

Allows you to add and edit User accounts. You can allow people to have differing access levels to your site.

Options

The site configuration

So first place to go is 'Options'. The first page you get is the General Options where you can change the title and tagline of your site. You can also change the URL of your site but it's best not to touch this unless you know what you're doing else you could lock yourself out of the website! On this page I would change the title, tagline, check your admin email, allow people to register if you want, and check the default time is correct. Once you've made your changes click to Update them before continuing. Move on to the Writing tab under Options. Here you can update a few more options to make posting a little easier. At the bottom there a box called Update Services. If you wish for the world to know everytime you make a new post (recommended if you want to be seen!) then you'll want to add a few extra addresses to this box. I've posted my list at the end of this section for you to simply copy and paste into the box.

Moving onto Reading. The first section allows you to use a static page as your front page, changing your blog into more of a standard website. If you want to use WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) then this is where you would make your front page to be whatever you like. However until you have some pages it's best to leave this as the default and return later if you want to change it. You can also control the number of posts displayed per page under the Blog Posts section and control how many posts and whether they're in full or excerpt in the RSS feed.

Discussion allows you to control how comments are dealt with on your website. Comments are a great way of adding to a post, sparking a discussion and generally having more content added to your site. It allows people to participate and voice their own opinions on your chosen subject, and can often bring about a type of community, especially when other bloggers comment on your site, and you comment on theirs. However comments also attract a lot of spam, mainly from bots coded to spam your comments on various posts. Luckily WordPress does have a good comment moderation system and this page allows you to control it. The default options are usually good enough, where you queue all first time commenters but once they've made their first comment, subsequent comments are made public instantly. You can turn this off if you wish however it may promote less commenting.

Privacy simply allows you to control whether your blog is available to blog search engines such as Technorati. This promotes your site and gives it the coverage it deserves. However if your site has been set up for just family and friends then you probably won't want the world knowing about it.

Permalinks is where you can determine the structure of your site links. For the time being it's best to leave these as they are.

Miscellaneous options can again be left alone.

So that's the general configuration of your site. You may find you dip back into the section as your site progresses and evolves.

Update Services List

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

Themes

First up, Themes. This is an easy one. You want to change the way your new site looks? Take a look on the WordPress Themes site and have a browse through the stacks of free themes available for your use. There are other sites that have WordPress themes too, some free and some for sale, however this is a great starting point. You can narrow down the selection by using the categories on the left, or just browse through them all. There is also the option to take the theme for a test run, allowing you to see it in full action on a WordPress site. Once you've found one or two you like, download them to you computer.

You then need to unzip/extract the themes and keep each theme in its own directory. To add the theme to your site you just need to put the theme, contained within its directory, into the following path

/wp-content/themes/

This is relative to the root of your blog. If you're working on your own computer then you can copy these directories over, else you'll need to FTP the files to your server.

Once all the files are in place, log in to your WordPress admin. Click on Presentation in the horizontal menu. You should see each theme available for you to use. Some will have a thumbnail to go with it, some won't (so don't worry if your new one doesn't!). To activate the theme you've chosen simply click on it and that's it. Some themes will come with an extra little control panel where you can change various things easily. I can't go into each individual theme as it would take me all month! However the additional control panels should be fairly easy to understand. If you're capable of editing HTML and CSS along with maybe a little PHP, then you can always venture into the Theme Editor (found under Presentation), however I would recommend that you edit a copy of the files offline and upload them to replace the files online so that you always have a backup copy.

If you do wish to edit the Theme then the basics such as altering styles to suit your taste, colours, photos etc. should be straightforward enough for most people capable of creating web pages, just word around the template tags. Also the WordPress Codex is a good reference to use.

Last week was amazing! After my previous week of dental pain, I spent last week pain free. I've not taken any painkillers since last Sunday morning. I've not been eating on that side of my mouth still, partially because I'm used not to and also because I'm concerned of making the pain come back somehow. However I have to say after a month of pain I'm now in heaven!

I saw the dentist again on Friday for a checkup. My first for almost 3 years, and besides a filling needing replacing (which I was already aware of), plus the other tooth being pulled out, there was nothing else to report. Got to see the hygenist today for a straightforward scale and polish (not much fun) and then the tooth is coming out next week on Thursday. So all in all, not so bad. I feared a lot worse with the rest of my teeth simply because the back tooth has put me in a no-confidence spot. But all fine and dandy.

I spent last week trying to get back into working mode. It wasn't easy after spending 2 weeks off work (kinda). However with the work piling up I had to pull my finger out and get something done. It was all fine until my boss called me on Thursday to complain that the old website was still running on our main domain despite all the other sites being the new ones. This was simply because the designer's gone on holiday for 2-3 weeks so nothing else could be done on the new flash version (yes it's flash, let's not go there!). So with taking a screen shot of the flash, cutting the shot up into individual images and a few hours later, I produced a new website, without flash, but still looking the same However that took up a bulk of my day on Thursday which meant I had to work over the weekend to get another site finished off – a mammoth site that I'm so happy we've almost finished. It's caused me so much stress for the past year.

Business aside, I did manage to get into the garden a bit. Last week I started picking lettuce for some dinners. On friday the wind got up quite a bit and our Gazebo ended up in next door's garden! Luckily I was able to reach over and we managed to pull it back over. It's now tied securely to the house and pinned in where possible! We've got it right outside the backdoor so even if it's bad weather we can still go out to the bins without getting too wet. Plus it'll be nice when the sun is out more permanently as we can always sit under it and have dinner or still BBQ when it's raining. On Saturday I finally managed to pot my Chillis, well some of them. I ran out of pots and compost so only managed 49 plants. I have another 28 to do. I've since learnt that they won't all produce fruit so I need to keep hold of them all a bit longer before I can give any away, just to be sure that we don't keep duds and I don't give any duds away either! However they're all looking fairly happy still since the repotting so fingers crossed I've got a good batch.

And yesterday the sun finally came back out and we got back out on our bikes. We only did a 5 mile ride as it was in the evening. We went down to the Boat Museum, then got onto the cycle track that goes alongside the canal towards Chester. It goes all the way to Chester (about 8 miles) however we only rode for about a mile. We then cycled under the motorway and back through town. Unfortunately the last half of the ride was on a slight uphill gradient which was the killer for me, especially being so unfit! Still, it was a nice evening although a little chilly. We're hoping to go out a couple of times a week and perhaps start to go out for a few hours on a Sunday as I'd love to cycle the canal path all the way to Chester.