Jerry D. Russell dot Com

If you’re going to get serious about running a blog you need to consider going to a self-hosted solution.  Not only do the search engines prefer blogs that have their own domain names and servers, but hosting your own blog also gives you access to countless options that blog services either just don’t offer or charge extra money for.

The first step in this process is choosing the right web hosting company. Picking the right company can be a daunting task.  Most companies offer very similar services, but at vastly different prices. making sure that you get the services you need at a fair price can be a bit tricky without doing a little research.

Sites like webhostingchoice.com can help you with this decision.  They provide reviews of the top hosting sites so that you can get a feel fro what these companies offer without having to hunt down all the information on your own.  having all the information in one place can greatly reduce the time it takes to choose the right web host.

Jerry Tools of the Trade Hosting, nc, Tools of the Trade

If you work with WordPress or any other CMS platform there will undoubtedly come a time when you need to modify the template files to suit your own needs. Off the shelf templates are a great starting point, but there always seems to be something that could work better if it was tweaked just a little or look a lot better if just one or two little nudges were made to the layout.

If you’ve ever tried modifying the template files in the built-in WordPress theme editor, you’ve probably already run into some pretty significant issues, such as lack of error checking, wonky layouts and poor handling of php code. Editing themes in this manner is nothing short of nightmarish, even for seasoned developers. Another option is to use a decent desktop text editor such as BBEdit for Mac, CodePad for Windows based systems or Gedit or Kate for Linux, but these editors are still lacking in fundamental features that developing in php requires, such as code completion and advanced syntax checking that can keep you from accidentally causing your entire site to go offline due to a missing semicolon or open tag.

Enter Aptana Studio, the only editor you’ll ever need to download. Not only is Aptana rich in all the features that you might need to get your themes and templates up to speed, including syntax checking, code tidying and code completion, but it’s also available in versions for Mac, windows and Linux, which means that even if you work on multiple platforms as I do , you will be working in a nearly identical editing environment on each computer you use, which can increase productivity exponentially.

While Aptana is incredibly feature-rich in the area of code editing, the lack of a WYSIWG editor may be a put off for novice users. My advice in this case is really a preference, but I honestly feel that code should never be edited in a WYSIWYG environment. Visual editors have a nasty habit of reformatting your code. Even the venerable DreamWeaver does so on occasion and these changes can be a nightmare to find and repair if you haven’t noticed them very quickly. Also, if you’re developing template files for a CMS, a visual editor isn’t going to do you much good anyway, as the editor does not have the ability to actually run the code that displays the template.

Aptana shines in other areas of development as well. If you’ve ever wanted to develop an iPhone App, you can with Aptana. The iPhone plugin even supplies a virtual iPhone browser so that you can do preliminary testing in the IDE, not on your iPhone. Once you’ve gotten things working the way you’d like, just install the app. Aptana also offers full support for Adobe air development, Ruby on Rails, Python, and Nokia phones.

Forget your FTP software. Aptana’s built in project manager handles file uploads and full site syncs with ease. this feature was what set DreamWeaver above most other editors, but Aptana Studio has tackled this head on with one of the most robust remote toolkits I’ve seen.

If you’ve been looking for a good, solid, robust and reliable development IDE, Aptana might just be the one you need to look into. The professional edition does come at a cost, but unless you work as part of a large development team, i doubt you will ever need to use the features provided by Aptana studio Pro. The Free Standalone edition will work just fine for you.

But hey, I’m just a satisfied customer. I love Aptana so much that it’s installed on every one of my computers. (though it is mind numbingly slow on my micro-notebook). Everyone has their own personal preferences in a development environment. I know people who happily develop web templates using Microsoft Word, though why in the world they would do that is far beyond my capability to understand. (And their sites rarely work properly.)

Try Aptana for yourself. I really do think that you’ll fall in love with it. And just in case you’re wondering, no one is paying me to write this. I’m an Aptana evangelist and I’m on a mission to get everyone who has ever needed to work on a php file to give it a shot. The more people that use it, the better it will become, as the developers will have more motivation to build bigger, better, badder versions of the software.

That’s all for now kiddies. I’ll get back on the ball and get more posted in the next few days, now that I’ve shaken the funk that I’ve been in through most of the Holidays. There were a lot of reasons for it, but I’m back and I want o start the new year of with a bang!

Jerry Productivity, Tools of the Trade, WordPress, WordPress Themes growth, Productivity, Products, WordPress, WordPress Themes

No, it’s not the name of a law firm, it’s the fundamentals of good journalism.  If you plan on writing any thype of journalistic article, you’ll need these questions need to be answered.  It’s a simple formula that has worked in journalism for a very, very long time, but that some reporters, especially on the Internet, seem to have forgotten.

Let me break the “Five W’s and an H” down for you.

Who: Who is the article about?  Is it a person, an institution, a government body?

What: What event are you covering?  What makes this newsworthy? What is the point of this article?

When: When did this event take place, or when will it take place? (In the old days of news, this would have been the dateline.) Without this little piece of information, the story is useless to the reader.
Where: Where did the event take place, or where will it take place?  Obviously, if you are reporting something happening in Hoboken New Jersey, it probably won’t have a lot of impact on someone in San Diego California, but may have significant impact on someone in New York.

Why: Why did this happen, or why is it taking place?  Knowing that it is happening loses a lot if it’s importance if you don’t know why it is happening.

How:  How did this event or these events take place?  How did they play out?  How was a problem resolved?

As you can see, these are pretty straightforward guidelines.  In journalism all of these questions should be answered as close to the beginning of the article as possible and it is recommended that they are answered in the first two paragraphs.

I’ll let you mull this over for a bit and come back later today with an example of a short article written in this format.  Until then,

Happy Writing!

Jerry Helpful Resources, Tools of the Trade

Let’s face it, a lot of online book reviews are done by people who have absolutely no training in writing, let alone how to write a review.  If you’ve ever come across one of these reviews, you’ll know it.  I’ve personally seen reviews with a 4.5 star (out of five) rating, but to read the review you would think that the reviewer despised the story.

You really need to think these things through before you hit “publish”, don’t you?

I just had the responsibility of writing a review myself.  In doing so I stumbled on this article at Schoolastic by Rod Philbrick.  It is hands down the most informative I’ve ever read.  Give it a read, you’ll be glad you did!

Jerry Helpful Resources, Tools of the Trade, writing for the web

A pitch is a letter or email sent to an editor for approval of a concept. Think of it as a sales tool designed to excite the editor enough to want to read the article you’ve been wanting to write.

Just mentioning “the pitch” has been known to send writers into the fetal position. Most writers absolutely abhor the idea of writing a pitch. Somewhere along the line writers have begun to think of the pitch as something complicated and almost magical. The reality that this is a simple, structured format that is extremely easy to create has been overshadowed by a need to over-analyze the concept, in turn causing the writer to turn something simple into a very daunting task.

It is time to allow the fear of the pitch to slip from your consciousness. There really isn’t anything more difficult about writing a pitch than there is about writing an article, a poem, a short story or a novel. If you can write any one of these things well enough to have it accepted then you have no need to fear writing a pitch. What you do need to do is actually write it. Once you’ve done a few the stress factor will wear off, I promise.

Now that I’ve covered that, let’s jump in and cover the mechanics of the query letter (or pitch.. They are one and the same.)

Read more…

Jerry Tools of the Trade essentials, Submissions, Tools, writing