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Hostgator Sucks

I have moved my hosting off Hostgator because frankly, they suck.     My site was suffering repeated down times, crashes, database disconnects, SSH daemon crashes/hangups, ..etc..

The big pisser for me though was the SSH restricted access that they had given me, combined with the more recent downtime..

For whatever reason I’d try to SSH into my account and it would fail acting as if there was no SSH daemon running..  I’d have to contact them via their live chat system, wait in queue forever for some support monkey to help me, only to have them either tell me that;  A) nothings wrong.  B) I don’t have an account with them or best of all C) “Oh yeah we changed the SSH port to ### now.. use that.. ”

Seriously?  You just up and changed the SSH port?  Why?!  It’s been 22 for ever.. Now suddenly its 2222? … WHY?!

Apparently their support team is filled with more assholes than a donkey in an iron maiden..

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Holy crap, SRS Solutions has done it again..  Previously I pretty much gave up my own theme creation in order to simply use their EOS theme.  It was superior to what I was creating and saved me a whole bunch of time.. But this time they have out done themselves.

The Arjuna theme is outstanding..  I especially like that it works in the exact same way as EOS and so theme switching is 100% seamless!  Thank you guys a bunch.. This is awesome..

I highly recommend this theme, or the EOS theme.

Social Bookmark Icons

So I have added several links to social networking bookmarking sites to each of the pages within the theme..  I really wasn’t sure which ones most folks used so I went with the 4 that I knew the most.. I’m sure I’d be better served by adding twitter, google and others.. but really I’m not sure which ones most folks use.

I had thought of using an addthis.com bookmark button but I don’t know that I want their button on my site.. it’s kind of ugly plus I don’t know that I want to link to them.  I think they do popup ads and I’m not really keen on that..

If more networks are required I’ll likely create my own button system to house them all..

SRS Solutions EOS

So while I am still working on my Windows 7 WordPress theme, I wanted to go ahead and update off Microblue.

I scoured the internet looking for a theme that I thought looked good and went well with my style.. as well as being well written and designed such that it would be easy to upgrade and edit.

I settled on SRS Solutions EOS.  A very well written theme that has everything I wanted.   Firstly its not a CSS or design nightmare that many themes tend to be.  The colors are well planned out and everything fits together quite nicely.

I have already started to make modifications and I hope to one day get the PSD file for the LayoutBgs.jpg so that I can make minor graphical tweaks..  In a day or two I hope to send them an email asking for the PSD file so I can proceed with my ideas but I’m pretty sure they wont just give it to me.. its their business after all.. 

I just hope they understand they aren’t losing money by giving me to it, as I have no intention of paying for their help (I can do it myself) and that if I have to recreated the PSD file myself I will..   If anything it would only serve to endear me to them even more by giving it to me..   We shall see..

Either way, the folks over at SRS did a good job and I’m more than happy to give them credit where credit is due.

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WPOS7 Screenshot

So I have been plugging away at creating my OS7 theme.. I previously stated that IE8 sucked completely and I have to take that back.   It doesn’t suck completely.. infact, it sucks a lot less than I realized..

I found that I was using IE8 in “quirks mode” and of course it behaved quirky.  My main question is;  What the hell is the point of quirks mode?!  “Here have our browser in a mode that is completely broken.” I just don’t get it.. I guess quirks mode is basically IE6 as they seem to render similarly.. (I have IE6 on my laptop still for testing purposes..) If that’s the case it couldn’t be better named..

Apparently since I had a misspelling (or something) in my doctype it defaulted to quirksmode.. Once I found that I was in the wrong mode, found out why and fixed it, I started to test my new UI in IE7 and IE8.. It actually works!!  Ever so minor bug in IE7, but its hardly worth mentioning..   IE8 works fine, but a little slow. er.. in fact, a lot slow.. IE8 ain’t zippy at all.. Read more…

Wordpress OS7 Theme

So I have been using Windows 7 for a while now and I really do like it.  It’s no Snow Lepoard but it’s what I have.. heh  Honestly, its not bad at all..  I also have been using wordpress for a goodly while with the same theme “Microblue” a theme I created a year ago.

I’m getting bored with Microblue so its time for a change and I thought it would be fun to combine Windows 7′s look and feel into a wordpress theme.    This lead me down the road that I had started with my jQuery Windows post and posed an important question;

Do I implement a windows manager within a webpage?    God what a pain in the ass..

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