They are two bills going before Congress. The Protect IP Act (PIPA) is being presented before the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) before Congress.  What do these bills do? In short, they censor the Internet and put harmful regulations on businesses. This bill is aimed to protect copyright infringement, but it’s setup to poison the Internet. The bill has huge lobbying dollars behind it from Hollywood to global media publishers.

Take a look at this short video explaining the harm PIPA and SOPA will do

Click here to view the embedded video.

Who supports PIPA and SOPA?

• RIAA, MPAA, News Corp, TimeWarner, Walmart, Nike, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Sony, Juicy Couture, Ralph Lauren, VISA, Mastercard, Comcast, ABC, Dow Chemical, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Rupert Murdoch, Lamar Smith (R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI)

Who opposes PIPA and Sopa?

• Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, Zynga, EFF, ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX), TECKpert

Do you want the Government to give powers to Companies giving them the ability to censor the web? If you don’t, then sign the petition: http://sopastrike.com/strike/

Here are some good tips for designing a mobile website.

Brand Focus

Make sure your logo, colors and slogan are prominent on your mobile site. Keep the same look and style from your main website.

Ease of Use

Your design should consist of big buttons, calls to action and a clear descripton of what you do along with your products and services.

Local Information

If you’re a local business, having a ‘click to call’ button with your phone number is  a must. Same goes with providing a map of your location with hours of operation.

Content

Write content for your mobile device. Nobody is going to browse 20 pages of content on their iPhone. It’s just not going to happen. Keep it brief and to the point.

Incentives

If you have any deals or coupons, they should be front and center on your mobile website.

 html { margin-top: 28px !important; }	* html body { margin-top: 28px !important; }

The reason this is happening is WordPress is making space for the new admin panel that displays when admins view the live site. There are two fixes for this:

1. Insert wp_footer() in your footer.php file
2. Or you can open your user profile (Users > Your Profile) and uncheck the ‘Show on Front’ option to make it disappear.

Hope this helps someone.

First we need to examine the way that Cforms sends data,

We see that data is sent according to the way that the form has been setup in Cform’s Administration panel. While we’re looking at this image, notice cf7_field_7 it’s a bit odd and it’s what’s responsible for mapping out Cform fields with WP Highrise Contact.

By default the WP Highrise Contact plugin accepts only a person’s name, a company, an email, a phone number and a website as well as a message. Here we see that our first input field is “Your name” and would map to name. The second is “Your Orginization” and would map to company.

• Your Name -> name
• Your Organization -> company
• Your Email Address -> email
• Your Telephone Number -> phoneNumber
• Your Website -> website
• Message -> message

Now that we’ve defined the basic syntax for mapping your cform fields to make them work with WP Highrise Contact then we get to the code modifications that must be done. When you’ve installed the WP Highrise Contact plugin open up the file named wp-highrise-contact.php and look for a code block that looks like the following:

if (!empty($_POST['honeytrap'])) {
			/**
			 * Send notification email
			 *
			 * By default, this is commented out. Simply remove the comments to enable it and reeive a
			 * notifiation when a robot fills the form. Yes, I know, it defeats the purpose, but it's only
			 * if you want to see how the Honey Pot spam control is effective 
			 */
			/*$to = get_option('wphc_email_address');
			$subject = 'SPAM - ' . get_option('wphc_email_subject');

			$body = print_r($_POST, true);
			$body .= "\r\n";
			$body .= 'Form: ' . get_permalink() . "\r\n";

			wp_mail($to, $subject, $body);
			*/
			header('location: ' . get_bloginfo('url'));
                         die;
}

Right after this conditional block we’ll add the following loop to sort out the Cforms data that actually contains data:

        /** Convert post fields to our highrise compatible entries **/
        $cforms = array();
        foreach($_POST as $k => $value)
        {
            if(strstr($k, 'field_'))
            {
                $cforms[] = $value;
            }
        }

Because of the way we’ve added the field in Cforms the hidden field containing our mapping is the very last, from here it’s a simple matter of association so we’ll add this right after the above block.

        $cfCount = count($cforms);
        $mapping = explode('^', $cforms[$cfCount - 1]);
        for($i = 0; $i < $cfCount - 1; ++$i)
        {
            ${$mapping[$i]} = filter_var($cforms[$i], FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS);
        }

Via this process we’ve made some lines redundant, so we can remove this. This the block we don’t need anymore.

		foreach ( array_keys( $_POST) as $k ) {
			$$k = filter_input( INPUT_POST, $k, FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS, FILTER_FLAG_STRIP_HIGH | FILTER_FLAG_STRIP_LOW );
		}

In our forms we normally only specify one field for the form and Highrise has a firstName and lastName field so we need to split up the name and feed it accordingly. Look for this block:

if ($highrise_connected) {
			$contact = new inbox_highrise_Contact();

Immediately afterwards we’ll insert this block of code:

            if($name)
            {
                $namePieces = strstr($name, ' ') ? explode(' ', $name) : array($name, '');
                $firstName  = $namePieces[0];
                $lastName   = $namePieces[1];
            }

What we’ve just done is use a ternary operation to check if we have two word blocks, presumably your first and last name. If not, we’ll assume we only have a first name. Then we’ll assign them to the variables the plugin uses normally.

The only thing left to do is stop the plugin from replacing the quicktag with the form since we’ve let Cforms handle the form generation, look for these two blocks:

if (file_exists(TEMPLATEPATH . '/plugins/wp-highrise-contact/form.inc.php'))
    		$form = include_once(TEMPLATEPATH . '/plugins/wp-highrise-contact/form.inc.php');
    	else
        	$form = include_once(dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/form.inc.php');
        $content = str_replace('[wp-highrise-contact]', $form, $content);

replace this one with:

$content = str_replace('[wp-highrise-contact]', '', $content);

if (file_exists(TEMPLATEPATH . '/plugins/wp-highrise-contact/form.inc.php'))
    		$form = include_once(TEMPLATEPATH . '/plugins/wp-highrise-contact/form.inc.php');
    	else
        	$form = include_once(dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/form.inc.php');
        return str_replace('[wp-highrise-contact]', $form, $content)

replace this one with:

return str_replace('[wp-highrise-contact]', '', $content);

• The GartnerGroup estimates that by the end of 2012, there will be 150 million people using mobile devices to purchase goods and services worldwide.
• An ABI Research study predicted that shoppers will order $2.2 billion in physical goods via mobile devices in 2010 and by 2015, $119 billion worth of goods and services will be purchased via a mobile phone.

Here is how it works:

First you need an eCommerce website powered by Magento (feel free to contact us for help on that). Second, download the extension from Magento and purchase an application key ($799 setup / $69 monthly).  And that’s it, you have an online store in an iPhone! Magento will complete the submission to iTunes and manage updates and releases. Pretty cool right?

Check out the video here:

1. Open up your iPhone’s web browser and enter www.teckpert.com/cp.
2. Login using your username and password. If you don’t have one, request it by emailing projects@teckpert.com.
3. At the bottom of the screen, click the plus (+) button.
4. Click on “Add to Home Screen” when the window slides up.
5. Click the “Add” button on the top right.

And that’s it, we are there with your other apps. Hope to hear from you soon!

So if someone starts typing words into the search bar for Google, it usually relates to something they are looking for. We call those “keywords”. Let’s give an example. If I am looking to buy a house in Coral Gables, I will go into Google and type “real estate in coral gables” or “homes for sale in coral gables”. Once I hit search, I will be presented with various results ranked by relevance to my search terms. How does Google do it? How do certain websites get ranked higher than others? It’s a mystery to most people, but companies that provide SEO know this.

What exactly is SEO? Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the method of performing analysis and creating web pages and websites so they can be found, analyzed, and ranked based on the content and structure so they can be indexed by various search engines. In case you didn’t get that, SEO basically tells search engines your site is important and relates to what someone is searching for. So in our home search example, if I am a realtor who concentrates on selling homes in Coral Gables and I have a website, I would want my site to appear at the top of the rankings when someone searches for “real estate in coral gables” or “homes for sale in coral gables”. In order for that to happen, I would have to have SEO being done for my website.

SEO is not a onetime thing and its impact is not felt immediately. Usually based on the levels of effort undertaken on your website combined with what your competition is doing with their websites, determines how long SEO will impact you. Typically SEO is a monthly service with companies undertaking various tasks and efforts determined by constant analysis of consumer search behavior and competitor tracking (what your competitors are doing). A sustained, focused SEO campaign will have lasting effects on the quality and level of traffic to your website. Whether you’re selling a product or trying to get new clients, increasing quality traffic through SEO is a win-win for any business.

Now I know sometimes it may not be that simple. Even though WordPress developers make it as easy as possible,  there are some things you should know. Below I list some tips you might find useful when extending your WordPress website with plugins.

What You Should Know

Not rocket science here, just plain old bullet points for you.

• Know before you install – Read the developers documentation on the website or the notes (called a Readme.txt) that come with the plugin.
• Plugins require downloading and uploading to install – Some plugins come in a zip file and you should have an understanding on how to upload it in the Plugins tab or how to upload it to your website via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Plugins are stored in the /wp-content/plugins folder from your website root.
• Plugins may require modifying WordPress files and templates - Sometimes those really flexible or powerful plugins may require some modifications to your website theme files or even your web host. If you are using a plugin you don’t understand, it might be a good idea to consult your web developer.
• Record modifications – Whenever you make changes to your wordpress theme files or plugins, you should either (1) create a backup before making changes, or (2) comment in the code where you made changes. This is good practice in case you have to go back and undo any changes you made.
• Make frequent backups – If a plugin is making changes to your database or requires modifications to your content and files, you should most certainly make a backup before implementing the plugin.

Manual Plugin Installation

Here is the general process for installing a plugin. Remember, read the developer documentation and make a backup before installing!

1. Read through the “readme” file thoroughly that usually accompanies a plugin, or the website article from where you found the plugin. It is often helpful to print out the instructions so you can check off the installation steps as you complete them.

2. Upload the plugin to the wp-content/plugins folder in your WordPress directory online.

3. Make any changes to templates or files as required by the Plugin instructions including adding Plugin template tags.

Activate the Plugin:

1. Access the Plugin Panel in your Administration Panels

2. Scroll down through the list of Plugins to find the newly installed Plugin (if not visible, start from the beginning to check to see if you followed the instructions properly and uploaded the file correctly).

3. Click on the Activate link to turn the Plugin on.

4. Continue making any modifications necessary from the “readme” file instructions to make the plugin’s actions meet your needs.