In a day or two, I'll be moving this blog to Drupal... I am very excited. I have wanted to do this for a while and I am finally getting around to it.

If you are subscribed via RSS, you may not be subscribed to the right feed. I'll be using Feedburner exclusively for my feed management. continue reading...

I was doing some research on the web tonight ('cuz that is what I do). I found a website whose internet marketing indicates that she teaches people how to use HTML. Her goal is to teach people how to use HTML because HTML is so important for the average person to know.

Her site says,

I get so frustrated when I read about some software package that claims you don't have to learn HTML.  HTML is the foundation of website building.  The more you understand the basics, the more productive and effective you are going to be in your Internet business. continue reading...

These instructions are now outdated. I have moved the latest version of these instructions to our development site on Tribute Media. Please check them out there.

I posted a couple of days ago on Windows Live Writer for Drupal 6. You can follow the instructions there to set up your WLW instance on your Windows machine. We just released beta 4 of the WLW Blog API, so I thought that I would share a couple of configuration items.

First, let me share with you the goal of the Blog API.

When we are building websites, we always add a lot of content for our clients. We will often write 40 - 50 pages of content for our clients. We'll have custom URL aliases depending on how the organization of the site is to be and we add all the keywords.

On Drupal 6, we use FCK Editor and it works really well. It still has some problems with MS Word content (even though is has a paste from Word function). FCK Editor just doesn't offer enough simplicity for loading content for development and especially not enough simplicity for teaching the novice how to post a blog or a page. Using FCK editor just takes a long time. Especially if we need to load a number of images.

The problem we found with WLW was that it wouldn't load keywords, menus or URL aliases. So, we fixed that.

Excerpt Field

After you have installed the WLW Blog API Module, you need to go to /admin/settings/wlw_blogapi and you will see the settings at the left. Your blog types are the content types that you can manage through the Blog API (of course, your permissions need to be set for the user). continue reading...

This is my 500th blog post. I guess you could say that I am a bit prolific in my writing.... or, I am just a bit long winded.

The best advantage for this blog is an opportunity for me to learn new things. I get the opportunity to research and formulate ideas as I write. I feel a little withdrawn from learning when I don't write.

I thought that I would share the top ten things that I have learned during the course of writing this blog (I guess you can call it my best of...)

These are in no particular order. continue reading...

These instructions are now outdated. I have moved the latest version of these instructions to our development site on Tribute Media. Please check them out there.

Using Drupal as a blogging platform is pretty powerful. The challenge is that many blogging tools, like Windows Live Writer, don't seem to support it very well. It was okay with support on Drupal 5, but then it got broken. A few people have found some ways to hack the Drupal core, but that is not reasonable.

So, we built a WLW Module for Drupal 6. It is in beta right now, but we have some cool things we are doing on it. If you have some features you want to see, let us know now while we are developing. If you run Drupal (or if I have built a site for you... which is done in Drupal), you can use this module to manage your blogging.

You'll need to go to http://drupal.org/project/wlw_blogapi and download the latest version of the module.  After you install it, you'll need to make sure that your permissions are set right for your user to access it and you'll need to make sure that the content types that you want to manage are set on www.example.com/admin/settings/blogapi. continue reading...

Almost two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go to Las Vegas for Recharger Magazine's World Expo. It spawned a post about one positive experience and one negative experience there.

The show was geared toward toner rechargers and print resellers. My take away was the opportunity for resellers and customers alike in manage print services.

I had the opportunity to write an article on the show. BERTL posted the article on their site. I also decided to repost at OfficeProductNews.net. continue reading...

Well, we had a great time (and very truncated) building FMAudit's new website. We built the new logo, new website and all new marketing collateral in about six weeks. I am pretty pleased with how it all turned out.

I just loaded the press release over at OfficeProductNews.net.

Here is an excerpt:

FMAudit is proud to announce the launch of its new international brand and website. The new materials can be seen online at www.fmaudit.com.

 “We believe we have developed the industry’s best suite of remote meter reading and managed print services technology,” said Kevin Tetu, President of FMAudit. “We knew our next job was to be able to communicate how that technology can be used to help our clients grow their businesses.”

“What Could You Do With FMAudit” is the theme of both the new website and a new advertising campaign. “We wanted to get resellers dreaming about how they could use our solutions to grow their business and reduce overhead.” continue reading...

I used to be employed by IKON Office Solutions. Today, both companies announced that IKON will be purchased by Ricoh. You can see Ricoh's release here and IKON's release here.

It is interesting to me. Ricoh buys IKON for $1.6 Billion or $17.25 per share. A little over a year ago Xerox bought Global Imaging for $1.5 Billion or $29 per share.

Why the big difference? Well, Global Imaging positioned itself for a sale for a long time, as such, it worked on being profitable by growth.

IKON Office Solutions seemed to have a different approach. When I worked for IKON a number of years ago, I remember year after year was the concern that sales weren't where they needed to be.

They still needed to be profitable, so the only other option was to cut. I remember thinking every year, "Oh, boy, here we go again... cutting our way to prosperity." continue reading...

Two weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to try an air card so that I wouldn't have to find a wi-fi hotspot for my internet needs. I was going out of town on a couple of trips, so it made sense. I talked with the sales guy at AT&T and Sprint.

I decided to go with Sprint. They have a location about 1 1/2 miles from my house. Prices were the same as AT&T, but Sprint was where I ended up. When I was at Sprint, they said they didn't have a card in stock and I would have to go downtown to pick it up... about 10 miles away.

No problem... I was actually going right past the location about 15 minutes later.

I picked up the card and for the most part, it worked fine.

There was one area on my travels it didn't work (I am pretty sure the AT&T card works) so I decided to take them up on the offer of returning the card within their 30 day time return policy. continue reading...

I am proud to launch another client site. I have been working with Ken at Kearns Business Solutions for some time now. He is the brains behind ChangeForge.com... which I highly recommend as a great read.

He decided to trust me enough to put together his new company website. I posted a press release over at OfficeProductNews.net.

Here is an except.

Kearns Business Solutions is proud to announce the launch of their new website, www.TeamKearns.com.

Several months ago, the company launched the Team Kearns initiative, geared towards communicating the value a team approach brings to outlining and executing their clients’ strategies. This website is another step towards helping Kearns not only communicate their message to clients, but ultimately providing valuable resources to augment their clients’ document strategies. continue reading...