Front Page of the Vermont Quilt Festival Website

We just finished a project for a local quilt festival.  This is their new website, built in conjunction with Graycat Studio:

Vermont Quilt Festival

The entire website is wrapped around Joomla! template and completely customizable for them.  This was an interesting project, and we still have a lot more work to do for them.  We’re going to be building a registration database as well.  Exciting!

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Recent Project: Vermont Quilt Festival

This is a handy script for managing an out of office message on your website.  I find this very useful on business websites when you’re tired of making that one little change to let people know when the office will be shut down.  With about 15 minutes of extra work, you only need to do it once a year.

Let’s say for instance we’re doing all of the major U.S. Holidays in 2010, observing weekend Holidays with a day off on either side of the weekend.  This means first we need to determine what those dates are.  I just happen to have looked up the six most common, listed below:

• New Year’s Eve – January 1st
• Memorial Day – May 31st
• Independence Day – July 5th (July 4th is Sunday)
• Labor Day – September 6th
• Thanksgiving – November 25th and 26th
• Christmas – December 24th (December 25th is a Saturday)

Now that we know our dates, we can build them into an array:

$date_array = array(
   "New Yearís Eve" =>
      array("leaving" => "2010-12-31", "returning" => "2011-01-03"),
   "Memorial Day" =>
      array("leaving" => "2010-05-31", "returning" => "2010-06-01"),
   "Independence Day" => // July 4th is a Sunday
      array("leaving" => "2010-07-05", "returning" => "2010-07-06"),
   "Labor Day" =>
      array("leaving" => "2010-09-06", "returning" => "2010-09-07"),
   "Thanksgiving" =>
      array("leaving" => "2010-11-025", "returning" => "2010-11-029"),
   "Christmas" => // December 25th is a Saturday
      array("leaving" => "2010-12-24", "returning" => "2010-12-27"),
 );

The date array can easily be stored in a database or be made up of more complicated functions that would calculate the holidays across multiple years with some basic logic.  Maybe we’ll cover the latter part in another post some day.

Now we need to build the function itself.  This function will be run every time the page loads.  You can even include the function in a separate file to be included on multiple pages:

function holiday_message($date, $date_array) {
   $date = strtotime($date); // Reformat the date so we can do math on it.
   foreach($date_array as $key => $value) {
      $leaving = strtotime($value['leaving']);
      $returning = strtotime($value['returning']);
      $early_warning = $leaving - 86400 * 7;
      // If the date is between (7 days before) leaving and returning
         if($date > $early_warning && $date < $returning) {
            echo
               "We will be observing ".$key." from ".date("Y-m-d", $leaving).
               " until ". date("Y-m-d", $returning).".
               When we return we will be more than happy to assist you.";
         }
   }
}

Now we just need to execute this function anywhere on the page:

holiday_message(date("Y-m-d H:i:s"),$date_array);

This code can be customized in numerous different ways, so the the message is more formal, or works for your specific situation.  You can also change the way days are stored or calculated, like the example above.  This is a core to get you started.  Where can you go from here?

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Tidbit Tuesday on PHP: Holiday Notices for Business Sites

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could highlight weekends in Google Analytics?  I could be missing something and it’s possible, but I don’t know how to do it.  This is the layover I photoshop together for clients:

Google Analytics with a Weekend Layover

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Why can’t Google Analytics highlight weekends?

Have you ever wondered why fonts use points, or what that unit of measure is in Photoshop – the Pica?  Did you know that pixes and screen fonts are very much related to old school printing?  Here’s the place where I can bring it all together for you.  First the definitions:

Points

There are 72 points in an inch.

Picas

There are 12 points in a Pica.

Printing

Standard printing methods use points and picas to measure the size of fonts and paper or other objects on the print.  For instance a newspaper may use a 12 point (1 pica) font on a peice of paper.  Try dividing a regular 8.5 x 11 peice of paper into thirds.  It’s much easier to say 11 inches is 66 picas, so it’d be three 22 pica folds instead of every 3.66 inches.

Pixels and Screen Typography

It’s interesting to see the correlation of old school typesetting when looking at modern day computers.  The standard resolution is 72 pixels per inch, which means each pixel is one point.  That makes things easy.  Did you ever wonder why the largest font size in Word is 72?  It’s because that font should be one inch high on you screen – and who would want to go bigger than that?

I just learned all of this from a customer of mine recently.  Have anything to add?

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Printing, Picas, Points, and Pixels: How’re they related?

Ok everyone, here is part three of the pictures.  They’re somewhat out of order from the other posts.  Imagine that they go between the two sets.  These are from the “missing” memory card that my wife had!

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Affiliate Summit West 2009 Pictures (Part 2)

Ok everyone, I misplaced a memory card and I’m waiting for some pictures from others, but I have some pretty good pictures from Tuesday night.  When I find the other memory card and get the other pictures, I’ll post a final gallery.

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Affiliate Summit West 2009 Pictures (Part 1)

So Affiliate Summit hasn’t officially started yet, but check out some of the cool things Michelle and I have been up to – mostly pics.  I’ll be adding captions later, but I need to hurry up and get down to registration.

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Affiliate Summit: On Location (Pre-Conference)

Hey Everyone,

I’m laid over in Manchester, New Hampshire right now killing some time writing up the intro post.  I’m headed to Affiliate Summit West 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada.  I’m going with my lovely wife, Michelle, and we’re going to have a friggin awesome time.  We’ve both got Platinum Passes to the conference, which means that we pretty much have access to everything except the really exclusive VIP parties.

We’re also planning on checking out CES (Consumer Electronics Show for those of you that live under a rock) when we get there.  We should get there around 8:00PM tonight, and we’ll probably jump right into some gambling.  I’ve set up some meetings with people – details to come later.

I’ve been checking out some of the other ASW arrival posts, like Shoemoney and Robb Cheuvront.  I hope to see you guys there!

More information to come.  If you’re going to be at ASW or are already there, please leave comments and I’ll buy you a drink sometime when we’re there.

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Affiliate Summit West 2009 – Here I come.

Goals and resolutions are not the same thing.  Let’s look at their definitions as advertised via dictionary.com:

goal

–noun
1. the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end.
2. the terminal point in a race.

res⋅o⋅lu⋅tion

–noun
1. a formal expression of opinion or intention made, usually after voting, by a formal organization, a legislature, a club, or other group. Compare concurrent resolution, joint resolution.
2. a resolve or determination: to make a firm resolution to do something.
3. the act of resolving or determining upon an action or course of action, method, procedure, etc.
4. a solution, accommodation, or settling of a problem, controversy, etc.

What’s the difference?

When you resolve to do something, you are setting up an action that you will carry out without measurable results.  For example: “I will exercise more this year,” “I will lose weight,” “I will spend more time at home,” etc., etc.  A goal is the vessel by which you take a resolution and define a measurable outcome.

What this means to me:

Every new year, I define a set of goals for the year, both personally, and for my business.  I express those goals for my business through an annual review of the business plan – a document defining my finite goals for the year, next three years, ten years, and life of the company.  I define my personal goals here on this blog.  All of the goals I set for myself follow a specific format.

Formatting a Goal

I use a simple acronym for defining my goals: SMART.  Smart stands for:

• Simple
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timelined

For instance, looking at my previous post: My Goals for 2009, we can pick out the goal: “Put $10,000 into my IRA.”  This goal is simple because I only need to do one thing.  Tracking it isn’t complicated.  It is measurable.  Each dollar I put in is a measurable unit.  It’s attainable.  I’m pretty sure I can do this if I hold myself to it.  It’s realistic.  I’m not putting more than I make into my IRA.  It has a timeline, because these are my 2009 goals, I have until Dec. 31, 2009 to complete them.

Following Through

Goals are only useful if you follow through.  I like to set goals far enough in advance and broad enough that if I fall short for a couple days, I can recover.  I like to make “thermometers” to track how close I am to acheiving goals as well.  I can organize all of my thermometers into a dashboard of sorts and rate myself on my progress.  I can find places I fall short and work on improving those areas.

I hope this helps you turn your resolutions into goals and your goals into results.

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Goals vs. Resolutions

Lose 33 lbs

I currently weight 213 lbs, and I would like to slim that down to a cool 180.  I have a treadmill and a rowing machine, so it should be pretty easy to exercise.  I will post my workout strategy in another post sometime.

Put $10,000 into my IRA

This goal may actually change, depending on what my financial adviser says about contributions to my IRA.  Essentially I would like to put the maximum legal amount into my IRA that I can.

Make $10,000 from affiliate marketing

I’d like to make what I put into my IRA from affiliate marketing. ’nuff said.  I think I can do it if I really put my mind to it.  I’m going to Affiliate Summit right at the beginning of the year, so there is no excuse for not reaching the goal right?

Shake Shoemoney’s hand

I think this would be great.  Shoemoney will have a booth at Affiliate Summit, so this should be easy.  He’s somewhat of a role model for where I’d like to go in the industry.  I’ll see you soon Shoe.

Reach 1,000 unique page views per day on this blog

I’d like to make this blog something people look forward to looking at each day.  I need to drive traffic here to create a more interactive, richer environment.  I think 1,000 uniques a day is very feasible.

Finish the concrete work in my basement

My basement has a whole mess of concrete issues that I need to clear up.  This is a big project, but it needs to get done in order for me to set up an office down there.  I hope to get it done by mid-august.  We’ll see how it goes.

Go to Las Vegas

This is easy.  I’m headed there for Affiliate Summit West next week.  I’ve never been to Vegas or a conference before, so this should be fun.

Make at least 250 blog posts

250 posts is about 2 every 3 days.  That kind of number will keep me honest.  I plan to put a counter somewhere…

Take a vacation that is not work related

The trip to Vegas does not count for this one.  My wife and I are planning a trip to Mexico sometime near the end of the year.  This one may happen early January 2010 if scheduling doesn’t permit during 2009.  We’ll see what happens!

What are your goals or resolutions for 2009?

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: My Goals for 2009