July 7th, 2008
by
Brett Bumeter
After using WebAssist’s Menu Writer for a couple months now, I’ve learned through practice that the program likes to get hung up on itself from time to time.
It doesn’t ever seem to recover. 
Since the program has no save button, you have only one choice to end a hang.
Close the program and lose your work.
However, if you want to curb your work practices to fit with the tool, there is a goal that you can shoot for when using this prima donna software program.
Race through your menu creation and hit the finish button. Once you finish you can not edit the menu again (that will screw things up seriously, even though they make it appear that you can edit menus through the program, you have to go into the menu.php file generated by the program and edit menus the old fashioned way in html and css).
Tip for Tempermental Tool!
You can however, save your current menu as a new preset, just before you hit the finish button.
Then you can delete that actual menu file set that is generated, and start what menu writer will believe to be a new menu, choose your newly saved preset, and pick up the pieces of work where you left off.
Repeat this as often as it takes to get your menu right.
Its a pain in the whazzoo, but until they come up with a more stable version, a save button, or an option to edit menus from the program, I think this is your only choice.
June 13th, 2008
by
Brett Bumeter
When I first started working on the web I had a severe level of cynicism when it came to purchasing things from other companies on the web. I’m not talking about buying a book from Amazon, or even a computer or a car from ebay.
I’m talking about buying web products, web themes, templates, how to guides etc. There are so many people out there selling things for websites that it is very difficult to tell the difference between good companies and bad companies, good products and services and bad products and services.
So when I was a relative newbie I used a general rule of thumb that if it wasn’t free, then it was either a scam or I was not educated enough in how to use it so I wouldn’t buy it. That served me very well for several years.
It didn’t stop me from buying things, but I typically learned how to use them before I bought them, so by the time I made the purchase, I knew that I would get more than enough value for my dollar.
In the early days one of the services that I initially shied away from was a company called dreamtemplate.com. Back then they seemed to have a great product offering, pay a one time fee of about $150 and you could download all the website themes they offered.
Today DreamTemplates web templates prices are even cheaper. Its $59 and they have more themes. Plus they give you access to the psd files with websites so you can change graphics and banners easily without having to do a lot of cutting. If you are a PowerPoint guru, they also have lots of presentation materials and basically anything you can think of in the graphic design premade theme or template department, all for $59.
How it Works
You pay a one time fee of $59.95. They call it a subscription but its a single charge. If memory serves it used to be a subscription years ago and cost a lot more, but it has gotten cheaper and basically gives you access to almost everything they have.
Tip! They do offer about 300 themes for free if you want to try it out and see how things work.
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| Above - Screenshot of DreamTemplate website with multiple themes available. Member ship fee gets you access to themes, you can also buy exclusive themes for your site or business for an additional fee if you do not want to share a theme with anyone ever. |
Years back, I didn’t have the clientele nor know-how to get my value for the dollar out of this service. I did a lot of custom theme work building sites from scratch myself and that was in some ways reinventing a wheel that already existed. Plus, while these themes do see circulation, they are not nearly as heavily circulated as many of the free WordPress or Joomla themes that are already on the market. The great part about that last comparison, is the original psd files that come with the themes. Even if you pick up a theme that is somewhat popular, you have the original art work and can quickly make significant changes to the artwork and remake the theme into something extremely unique.
Now, I’m not saying that I’d go back in time and convince myself to use this service sooner, the wisdom I gained doing things the hard way was well earned, but now that I know better, I will not waist as much time.
May 22nd, 2008
by
Brett Bumeter
Back in the 90’s (early 90’s), it was still cool to find a new CD with a hundred or so fonts for $30 (clearance $5) at Office Depot or something. Fifteen years later that just isn’t cool but there is a growing need again for fonts. Instead of trying to get some obscure font for a Word Perfect document, people are trying to get an obscure font for their website, logo, or blog.
Well, with the power of Adobe and 1001Fonts.com, that is pretty easy and it just happens to be free too!
Download Free Fonts @ 1001 Fonts .com
They actually probably have more than 1001 fonts, (I haven’t and won’t count, but I’d bet you could add a zero to that number).
So the next time you just have to set up a niche blog for outdoor furniture or people that love to polish teak chests, and you need that perfect font that no one else will find. You know where to go!
