I choose option four.  With a theme framwork, all of the code that wordpress needs to function is already there, but there aren’t really any colors or tons of CSS to try an sift through.  The end result is that you get a fully customized wordpress theme without having to try and modify a bunch of garbage code.  Your code will be clean, search engine optimized, and once you get used to starting with a clean slate you’ll never go back.  There is a bit of a learning curve, but its worth it.

There are also a few different choices on which framework to use.  I prefer the Thematic framework by <a href=”http://www.themeshaper.org”>Ian Stewart</a>.  In this article, I will go through the steps I use to create a basic website and get it looking the way the customer wants.

First off, you will need to install WordPress.  You can either download it from wordpress.org and follow their install instructions, or some web hosting providers have tools that enable you to install it from your control panel.  The easiest way to find out if your web host has this option is to create a support ticket through your web host’s support area.  The rest of this article is writing as I do it, from a base wordpress install.

The first thing I do, is install the thematic theme.  To do this, just go to appearance->themes and search for “thematic”.  Install the theme, but no need to activate it.  We are going to create a child theme.

Next, you need to FTP (I use filezilla) to your website, and copy the sample child theme from wp-content/themes/thematic and paste it in to the themes directory so it sits at the same level as thematic.  Just copy the entire folder called thematicsamplechildtheme and paste it.

Now rename the folder, thematicsamplechildtheme to something more relevant.  In this case, I’ll name it essthematic.

Now I’ll modify style.css to reflect the correct information.  When it comes to editing these files, you can either edit them from inside of wordpress (by going to appearance, themes, editor), or by downloading them and editing them in your favorite program (I use notepad++), and the upload them back to your webserver.

here is my modified style.css

/*
Theme Name: ESSThematic
Theme URI:
Description: A custom theme built for ESS using the thematic framework
Author: Bryan Wirth
Author URI: http://www.allianceitpro.com
Template: thematic
Version: 1.0
Tags: Thematic
.
Thematic is © Ian Stewart http://themeshaper.com/
.
*/

Next, you will want to copy the file wp-content/themes/thematic/library/styles/default.css and paste it to your child theme directory.  Now lets edit style.css to reflect the new location of our default.css.  Line 29 of style.css looks like this

@import url(‘../thematic/library/styles/default.css’);

make it look like this

@import url(‘default.css’);

Now we have the basics for our child theme.  If this is a new website, I’ll activate my child theme, and develop it live.  If I’m doing a conversion or changing the theme of an existing website, I’ll build the theme out before I activate it.  In, this case, its a new website so I’ll go ahead and activate the theme.

More to come

Process to Reduce RAM Usage :
1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.

2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.

3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.

4. Now select True and then press Enter.

5. Restart Firefox.

Now whenever you minimize Firefox, it will automatically attempt to reduce the RAM usage to minimize the RAM usage on your computer.

Here are a few tests you can do to check up on your MSP, and make sure you aren’t getting the short end of the stick.

1.  Do you pay for monitoring?  If so, turn off a server and see if they notify you, and if they do, is it in a reasonable timeframe?

2.  Do you pay for service monitoring?  For example, is your MSP supposed to notify you if your email stops flowing?  If so, stop the MTA (message transfer agent)

3.  Do you pay for network monitoring?  If so, unplug your cable or dsl modem (if used) and see if your MSP calls you.

4.  Do you pay for patches and updates?  If so, on a server or workstation, go to http://update.microsoft.com and see what patches and updates are missing.

More to come, stay tuned…

If you are concerned about the honesty of your MSP, call Alliance IT.  We can check up on them for you and make sure that you are getting the services you’ve signed up for.

-Bryan Wirth

Alliance IT

All files, programs etc. will be removed.

Once you boot to the disk you will select “next”

Select “install now”

Click the checkbox “i accept”, and click “next”

Click “custom (advanced)”

Select the partition to install windows to and click “drive options (advanced””

click “format”  note: it is at this point everything will be erased from this partition.

Click “ok”

windows setup now copies files to the hard disk

windows will reboot and then it will resume the install

After it completes, you will see the following screen.  Pick a username, and type a name for your computer (this can be anything you want really)

Lastly, enter your windows 7 product key and that’s it.

-Bryan Wirth

Alliance IT

first, I searched the event logs and found

Event ID: 14103 Source: WMPNetworkSvc

and

EVent ID: 4373 Source: WindowsMedia

I did the following to remove the windows update cache

1.  Click start>run>cmd

2.  Stop the Windows Update Service (net stop wuauserv)

3.  Change to the update cache directory (CD /d %windir%)

4.  Delete the director (rd /s SoftwareDistribution)

5.  Start the Windows Update Service (net start wuauserv)

That’s it!  I was then able to install Windows Media Player from Windows Update. (I actually didn’t have to run windows update again, just launched media player and it continued the setup)

-Bryan Wirth

AllianceIT

Simply go to http://www.kaseya.com/products/kaseya-free.aspx, create your account, log in, click on “add computer” and follow the instructions to install the agent on your pc. 

Once installed, you can access your computer from anywhere by simply logging on to the website.

You can also send out invites to your friends and family, which include instructions for them on how to get connected to you.  They do not have to create an account to allow you access to their computer.

Bryan Wirth
Alliance IT

Just for the record, this is awesome.

Sync your files

Keep important files up to date on all your computers, PC or Mac.

Share your work

Use shared folders to sync files with friends or coworkers.

Access from anywhere

Sign in to the Sync website for remote access to any computer where you’ve installed Sync.

Here is my scenario:

a coworker and I both use the same tools to detect and clean viruses on customer workstations.  Sometimes these applications need to be updated, replaced, or removed. If I make a change, he doesnt know unless I tell him and vice versa. 

So, the question is…how can we share a directory for our applications that we can both access even though we are not on the same local network?  Drumroll please……windows live sync.  Here’s how it works.

1.  go to http://sync.live.com

2.  create a live ID if you don’t already have one…then climb out of the cave you’ve been living in because really….who doesnt have a live ID?

3.  download and install sync by clicking the link at the bottom right of the page

4.  open live sync from your start menu

5.  give it your windows live id and password

6.  now you will be taken to your sync.live.com page, which is where you make changes to the settings (like adding folders or users)
–if you arent automatically directed to this page, look for the sync icon in your system tray and click on it   , then click sync website.  Go ahead and log in if required.

7.  Here is my control panel

8.  From here, you can create a shared folder or personal folder.  For our example, we want to create a shared folder.  Note that in this step you can either create a new folder, or share an existing one.

Next, I’m asked which device to create the shared folder on.  Each computer on which you install live sync and give it your live id will show up here.

9.  I’ll click on Bryan-Desktop since it contains the apps folder I mentioned earlier.  It will then show me the drives on that computer.  I drill down to the folder that I want to share, then click     

10.  It will then show up under “shared folders”, like it does in the screenshot in step 7

11.  Now, if you want to sync this folder to another computer but your account then just go to the second computer and follow the same process except you wont have to share the folder.  This time you will click on the shared folder, then click add a computer, select the second computer, then select the local location where you would like to store the shared folder.  If you want to share this folder with someone else, then click on edit permissions and type the other persons live id email address and click add.  You will then get to choose appropriate permissions.  Once you are done adding people, click next, customize your message, and finish.

12.  The other person receives an email invitation, logs in to sync.live.com, downloads the sync tool, hits the website and then will see your shared directory.  That person can add the shared directory to sync locally, and add files to it if you’ve get them the appropriate permissions.

If you need any help with this, let us know!

-Bryan Wirth

AllianceIT

[download id="9"]

If you are locked out of your PIX firewall then you will need to do some password recovery, this procedure will reset the enable password and remove any AAA username and password settings on the PIX.

Note: If you havea PIX 520 (This has a floppy drive, and the process is different) CLICK HERE

-Bryan Wirth

AllianceIT

From: “msnews.microsoft.com” <rajibc@hotmail.com>
Subject: Very Very Strange problem with OMA and Activesync – Synchonise only the read-emails
Date: Sunday, January 10, 2010 3:14 PM

Hi all,

I am having very strange problem. I use iMATE Touchphone with windows mobile
5.0 , ActiveSync 4.5 . The PDA synchronizes with Exchange without any error
every time I ask for and as per schedule and it seems it downloads the
emails also (not sure though) but when I check in my outlook mobile, it does
not show any emails. Surprisingly when I use my laptop to access outlook web
access for the same mail server and read the emails from web and then
synchronize again in my PDA, it works perfectly and the emails get
downloaded in my PDA. I have gone through multiple newsgroup and now I am
convinced that only the expert can help. Please help!!!

rgds

Rajib

Solution:

Depending on your Antivirus software installed on your exchange server, the solution will be different. We have read that Sophos has issues with active scanning of emails before allowing download. In our case, we were using AVG and the exchange component was causing the problem. In the configuration there is a particular setting that allows the emails to be downloaded without a problem if you are having this issue. After a bit of troubleshooting, found that by default, the “proactive scan” option is disabled.  Enable this option on SBS servers to fix activesync. See the image below.

CLICK TO ZOOM +