HarperVance.com :: Latest Posts on Ranwilli's Blog

RIP Edward Moore Kennedy

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 12:18:56 -0400

As a life-long Republican, I often thought Ted Kennedy was the Anti-Christ. I get that out of the way early so as not to be mistaken for a Democrat.

No matter what my politics or yours, it is impossible not to admire much about Ted Kennedy. Others have eulogized him far better than I could, so I won't attempt that here.

He will be missed.

What are the "Time Sinks" in building a website?

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:48:24 -0400

The toughest and most time consuming tasks about building a website are not what you probably think.

The programming and "code busting" can really be done quite quickly, especially with a CMS (Content Management System) like Joomla!

The real time sink is content: What shall we say? What is the best way to say it? How should it be illustrated? How sh

Sometimes Old Dogs CAN learn new tricks

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:07:53 -0400

Working on some sites for a new client, we noticed an oddity on one of them, and as we are "cloning" the sites one from another (with new content in each domain) the oddity showed up in the latest clone as well.

In all my days with Joomla (about 1800 and counting), I had never seen anything like this:

The entire back office of Joomla was full of "dots" wh

End of an Era...

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:41:55 -0400

As promised, the Joomla! Community has formally "retired" Joomla! 1.0

A new entry in the blog at jooomla.org made it official on July 30.

So... what does this mean to us?

All new site development should begin at Joomla 1.5.14 (as of this writing).
If you are still procrastinating abo

Combine Training with Problem Solving

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:49:02 -0400

Through my volunteer work at Joomla.org, I meet lots of folks who "get" most of Joomla!, but there are one or two things they can't quite master.

Certainly the forums are a lot of help. When I am stuck, which happens more than I like to admit, I go straight to this link, which I got from Brad, the Forum Wizard at Joomla.org (and Rochen).

If it ain't broke...

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:29:47 -0400

Perhaps you already have a website. Perhaps it works well for you. That being the case, don't fix it!

Many have found that their websites don't work particularly well for them, and are trying to figure out what they need to do to find the success that they keep hearing about.

As far back as I can remember in internet history, about 1996 (I was a latecomer), I had a dozen or so sites that I tried to check every

Joomla! Security

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:04:54 -0400

I subscribe to Google Alerts, which lets me know whenever Joomla! is mentioned in a new article indexed by Google. I get an email alert as they are discovered, and it sometimes is as many as 4 or 5 per day.

Today's mail contains a link to this article.

It is a constant source of amazement and frustration to me that site owners don

Migration to 1.5.X from 1.0.X

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:41:02 -0400

Just the other day a company posted a request for quote to migrate their corporate website from 1.0.X to 1.5.X in the "Professional Services" section of the forum at the Joomla! website. He starts by saying, "I understand its only a 20 minute job for someone who knows what they're doing."

Here are some of the "provided that"s which have to be true for that mi