Spam email overload is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I’m overloaded with spam emails. I get over 200K in sp;am emails in my Spam folder for my primary Gmail account but another 200 per day slip through and its getting to be old. I’ll start by saying i created many of my own problems. I’ve used that email address for just about everything over the last 5 years including any kind of online submission you can imagine.

My spam comes to me with unique names I chose for my many online personas and I can tell how a spam originated either by the email address it was sent to or the name they are looking for when they contact me. I have use this domain as an email account provider for years and there a zillion spam messages directed here each year to addresses such as google@thisdomain.com which was used exclusively to setup my Google Ads account so many years ago. Some employees have been spamming that account almost since I created it.

I don’t know what more to do then start using Thunderbird again and run some fuilters to junk it before it reaches my screen. Gmail seems to be having trouble keeping my inbox spam free and many of the emails I get are actually labeled SPAM in the title.

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WordPress blogs for musicians is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I’ve been building a lot of blogs lately with great success on most of my sites. I’ve been able to use them to kick start a number of new websites and boost traffic to what used to be some parked domains.

I started to work with some musicians here in Jamaica that were in need of more than a website. I’m hoping to use the blog as a communication platform for a group of Jamaican musicians who want to post their music, videos as well as sell music online. The music selling is going to be a trick I think but I’ll get to it over the next few weeks.

The first three sites are still in early content stages and I am hoping to have the artists and their fans help us with the content development because I simply cannot do it myself. My first blog was for my bredren Ras Slick who turned out to be a much better performer than I expected. His live shows are great and he has a way with the crowd that seems to set him above so many other musicians around here.

I’m looking for the best solution to allow music downloads from these blogs. Anyone got a tip on the ebst way to sell mp3 files in a wordpress blog?

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WordPress 2.3.1 in review is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I have been using WordPress since Version 1.5 but most of my blogs were installed as 2.04. With the recent upgrade released I though it was time to upgrade some of my blogs. I have since moved ahead with updating them all as it was pretty simple really. No, I have not done this one yet but thats for other reasons. I have some custom work I’m working on before I upgrade this blog. Upgrading the others has opened up some pretty neat features and made me lose one plugin I really liked. I was really surprised to see whats happened with Ulitimeate Tag Warrior a former must have WordPress plugin and no longer operating under 2.3 because of the built in support for tags one assumes.

Aside from losing such a cool plugin everything else was great and the new software seems much better. I don;t know if it’s me but it seems posting is smoother and I get less errors or timeouts on my customized blogs. I added some new plugins to my list of faves and I’ll have to write some more about them soon. All in all I think WordPress 2.3.1 is a vast improvement over 2.04 and well worth the trouble for one or even 100 blogs.

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Switching from Photoshop to GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

In my quest to convert to all open source applications for running my business I seem to have overlooked one key software application that although did not cost me anything other than some time does in fact come at a hefty price to registered users. Adobe Photoshop has been a mainstay graphics manipulation program for web developers for a long time and will remain such but there are many alternatives taht are worth looking at and the leading open source graphics package is GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program.

GIMP was designed as an open source graphics application for Unix based systems but has been ported to run on my windows machine courtesy of some fans at Sourceforge. I installed it and it’s a very smooth running program with loads of tools and an easy replacement for Photoshop if like me you barely use all the features in it anyway. I don’t think it will be difficult at all to switch over full time but I’ll have to uninstall Photoshop first or I’ll never start using GIMP as I want to.

It looks like the project has some serious support and I expect things will get better fast. There are already a number of plugins available and it should be nice to see what comes with further development.

GIMP – Introduction

Introduction to the GIMP

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be  augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.

Features and Capabilities

This is only a very quickly thrown together list of GIMP features.

• Painting
  
  • Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone, etc.
  • Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing
  • Extremely powerful gradient editor and blend tool
  • Supports custom brushes and patterns

• System
  
  • Tile based memory management so image size is limited only by available disk space
  • Virtually unlimited number of images open at one time

• Advanced Manipulation
  
  • Full alpha channel support
  • Layers and channels
  • Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
  • Editable text layers
  • Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
  • Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy and intelligent
  • Advanced path tool doing bezier and polygonal selections.
  • Transformable paths, transformable selections.
  • Quickmask to paint a selection.

• Extensible
  
  • A Procedural Database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs as in Script-fu
  • Advanced scripting capabilities (Scheme, Python, Perl)
  • Plug-ins which allow for the easy addition of new file formats
    and new effect filters
  • Over 100 plug-ins already available

• Animation
  
  • Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format
  • MNG support
  • Frame Navigator (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
  • Onion Skin (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
  • Bluebox (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)

• File Handling
  
  • File formats supported include bmp, gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, ps, psd, svg, tiff, tga, xpm, and many others
  • Load, display, convert, save to many file formats
  • SVG path import/export

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Open source development for educational purposes is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I have begun to really consider my use of open source software and my desire to go totally open source at some point in the future. I’m planning a working vacation to Jamaica beginning on June 1 and I planned to take a computer with me to show some kids how to build webpages and put themselves and their communities on the web. I’d like to grab a few dozen cheap digital cameras and turn them all into vloggerrs but that’s another dream.

For now I think I plan to show them some basic web access and development using open source tools such as OpenOffice.org and NVU HTMl editor. I think a basic intro to web browsing with Firefox and the use of extensions will for the base and then I’ll show them some basic coding with the html from websites we visit. The whole idea has me thinking about my move from Microsoft based operating system to a free OS like Ubuntu. I really want to learn more and offer a totally open source development platform for my business but I think I’ll need a windows machine for quite some time just to cover some of my windows software needs for the office.

Any thoughts on a Ubuntu laptop for my business needs?

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Programming and Web Development Help is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

As a self taught webmaster I have become the master of the copy paste. Many of my websites are a compilation of code and scripts that I have patched together for my own uses. I am definitely not a programmer but as a webmaster I am forced to do a lot of programming and finding the right information is a daunting task. There are simply so many webmaster resources out there with many of the same junk scripts and overworked software applications that finding a great programming resource that offers professional web development assistance is hard.

Dream.in.code is a very active online community of web developers and programmers that launched in February of 2001 to provide free webmaster and programming tutorials, developer resources, and help to anyone interested in programming or web development. This programmers community is an incredible resource to a junior programmer like myself and finding information on my latest programming error was a snap with their dedicated members.

It looks like I have a new programmers and webmaster resource for all my php and database development needs.

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Online storage and backup solution at iBackup.com is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I think we all know we should do it but truthfully how many of us bother to properly back up our important data on a regular schedule? I have dabbled with data backups since I began using a PC over 10 years ago now and to this day i do not maintaining regular backup schedule or replication in my backup system. My backup solution consists of a mix of data solutions. I have about 30 GB of content that I have copied over to multiple hard drives on my home network that keeps current copies of my important data based on scripts that I run on  my PC occasionally.

I also have a collection of CD and DVD backups with large amounts of older data like my picture collections and software I have installed in the past. I seem to have a lot of junk data I like to keep around including legacy applications that I will most likely never use but seem to have the need to keep for some reason. All these different backup solutions has become a hassle and I am considering moving to a new online backup service from iBackup.com

The IBackup Online Storage solution offers award winning performance in the webs best selection of features which enables their small business customers to get enterprise-class protection for their mission critical data at a fraction of competitors costs. IBackup.com and their Online Storage services provide an industry leading feature-set for the most secure online storage including professional level Network Drive, Sharing, Collaboration, Sub-Accounts, WebFolders and Mobile Access.

I’m hopeful that they offer the online storage and backup solution my business needs.

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Affordable Web Pro is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

Affordable Web Pro has been about affordable website development and marketing services since 1999. In that time this site has undergone many changes. Today we announce yet one more change and a new direction for AffordableWebPro.com in general. The old site is gone and has been replaced by this WordPress Blog you see before you. This new blog will showcase the development of the Affordable Web Pro network of websites and the tips adn tricks we use to make affordable websites.

Our primary focus will be on open source development platforms and scripts and aoftware used to power the Affordable Web Pro Network. Stay tuned to some great tips and articles on PHP, MYSql, WordPress, SMF and so manyother great open source projects.

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