Akarin Weatherford

Useful Stuff for Executives and Small Business Owners

Welcome to my site! This is my bucket for collecting information about using technology for both large corporations and small business owners. I'm not a theoretical guy and I don't have a Marketing or Business degree (I do have an Electrical Engineering degree from Florida Tech). However, everything here comes from practical experience where the rubber meets the road. I have over 13 years of practical business technology consulting experience working with clients from Fortune 500 companies to single entrepreneurs. Feel free to browse this site and take away some useful information.

Relocate to the Florida Keys – Greater Marathon Chamber of Commerce

Mar 17

Posted by Akarin Weatherford in Chamber of Commerce | No Comments

The Home Page Layout Similar to the Brochure

This site was commissioned as part of the Marathon Red Carpet Program.  This program was created to generate awareness about Marathon as hub for both low tech and high tech businesses.  This is one of many marketing programs Brand Excellent will be doing as a joint venture with the Greater Marathon Chamber of Commerce.  The design is based on a newly created brochure for the program.  Many design elements were carried over for a consistent brand and image with the programs online and offline marketing efforts. Visit the live site at http://www.relocatetothefloridakeys.com

The framework for this site was the open source Website Baker (visit site) CMS.  We chose Website Baker over Joomla because the site really wasn’t complex.  We always use Website Baker for smaller applications and Joomla for the larger ones.

There were a few custom programming tasks beside the usual pain of browser comparability CSS testing.  I hand coded a Google Maps object using the Maps API and I added a Flash slide show/gallery.  If I had time (lol) I would love to baseline these snippets and release them back into the community.

The Custom Flash Slideshow

Multiple Sites With One WordPress Instalaltion

Mar 1

Posted by Akarin Weatherford in WARNING! Super Nerdy Posts | No Comments

I needed this so bad because having a ton of WP installations for one client was a pain to maintain.  So I developed this hack that simply goes in your wp-config.php file.  It’s simple and works beautifully.  The benefit is that you only need to upload and maintain updates for one set of code for all sites for this client.   The drawback is that you have to install each site and activate and configure each plugin individually.  It is a pain to do and I suggest an assembly line method with each site loaded into it’s own tab and then do the same step across all of them one at a time.  Oh, another drawback is you must upload a unique template for each site since only core files are shared and not the template files.After this pain, life is 10x easier.  Enjoy! :)


//**************************************************
// WordPress Infinite Sites w/ Single-Codebase Hack
//**************************************************
// 1) In webserver config point all domains sharing
// the installation to the same wwwroot
// 2) Install WordPress
// 3) After install creates the wp-congig.php,
// (after the screen that asks the DB info, but
// before you add the site title and email)
// replace line $table_prefix = "wp_"; with this
// code below and edit code for your domains in
// Step 1 in the wp-config.php
// 4) Now visit each domain in a browser to
// complete each install
// NOTE: All sites will share the same plugins so
// install plugins as normal for all sites and
// activate as needed
// NOTE: Like plugins, all sites share templates
// so you will want to upload all templates and
// then select the appropriate template on a
// site by site basis
//**************************************************
// Akarin.com 2010-01-25
//**************************************************

//Configure Domain Array
$allowed_domains = array(‘yourdomain1.com’,
‘yourdomain2.com’,
‘yourdomain3.com’,
‘yourdomain4.com’);

//Grab the Domain
$requested_domain = preg_replace(“/^www\./”, “”, $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"]);

//Test the Domain
if (in_array($requested_domain, $allowed_domains)) {
if (!$allowed_domains[$requested_domain]) {
$table_prefix = “wp_” . md5($requested_domain);
}
} else {
die(“No domain match in allowed_domains array!”);
}

Quote My Car for the McMahon & Hadder Insurance Agency in Pensacola, FL

Oct 15

Posted by Akarin Weatherford in Insurance Agency | No Comments

The QuoteMyCar.com web site.

The QuoteMyCar.com web site.

The McMahon & Hadder Agency, a multi-line insurance agency in Pensacola, Florida, contracted Brand Excellent for this web site engagement.  This web site is basically a funnel to catch car insurance quote leads.  For this particular site, the online form connects to a real-time online quoting system on the InsuranceMosaic.com platform. Since this is what we call a “Mini-Site”, we did not use a backend Content Management System and coded everything by hand.

For insurance Agencies, this is called a single-line web site.  If you are interested in one of these sites for your  Agency or even a multi-line site for your Agency, then please visit http://www.MosaicReady.com for features and pricing.

Visit QuoteMyCar.com

Brevard Auto Insurers Site for the Moulton Agency, Inc. in Rockledge, FL

Oct 13

Posted by Akarin Weatherford in Insurance Agency | No Comments

This is the BrevardAutoInsurers.com web site.

This is the BrevardAutoInsurers.com web site.

This leads funneling site was created for the Moulton Agency, Inc.  This is a single-line site created to funnel auto insurance leads to the Agency.  Since this is a small site with static content, there is no backend Content Management System.  However, the front page zip code form links into the InsuranceMosaic.com real-time quoting engine.

For Insurance Agencies, this is called a single-line web site.  If you are interested in one of these sites for your  Agency or even a multi-line site for your Agency, then please visit http://www.MosaicReady.com for features and pricing.

Visit BrevardAutoInsurers.com

Grand Visions Photography and Flight Line Photographer

Oct 5

Posted by Akarin Weatherford in Photographer, WARNING! Super Nerdy Posts | No Comments

The GrandVisionsPhotography.com web site with core Gallery2 install.

The GrandVisionsPhotography.com web site with core Gallery2 install.

The FlightLinePhotographer.com site with the cloned Gallery2 install.

The FlightLinePhotographer.com site with the cloned Gallery2 install.

These are Two Gallery2 sites for my sister’s company she has with her boyfriend.  The install is on our Brand Excellent hosting servers and it uses the Gallery2 Multi-Site feature where there is one core Gallery2 install and subsequent installs leverage the base code.  This saves on disk space and maintenance time on multiple sites.  The main problem I had with this is that if both sites use the same template, then they share the same CSS files.   So that really hosed the way I displayed my header images to be specific for each site.

I could have copied the whole template to make a renamed cloned template but that seemed messy and like a lot of work.  So the quick hack was to create a new CSS header style in the template with the alternate header image background and do some SMARTY template programming:

{if $smarty.server.SERVER_NAME == 'www.grandvisionsphotography.com' || $smarty.server.SERVER_NAME == 'grandvisionsphotography.com'}
<div id="header">
{else}
<div id="header2">
{/if}

Visit these sites at http://www.GrandVisionsPhotography.com and http://www.FlightLinePhotographer.com