When the leaders behind qloader™ - the world’s best paintball loading system – sought to add new life to their aging Flash-based website, they called on GRAPHICpilot.com to get the job done.

About the Client – Qloader

From their website: 
The q-loader system is a product of necessity. Move undetected, Depend on your weapon, and most of all, Look good doing it! The components of the q-loader system are precision crafted from high quality metals and plastics and come with a Limited Lifetime Warranty. The Design and functionality of the q-loader is like no other, it combines engineering, innovation and performance in a way that seems to be years ahead of anything else on the market today. The q-loader is undoubtedly the next step in the evolution of paintball.

Incorporated Features

The new qloader.com is packed with ecommerce tools and functionality as well as the ability to take their products to the social networks. Some of such features include:

• Easy to use product posting using WordPress custom post types
• PayPal and Authorize.net integration
• Live shipping cost quoting through USPS and UPS
• LiveFyre social networking plugin for Facebook and Twitter conversation integration
• jQuery slideshow presentation that plays on virtually all devices including Android, iPhone, iPad and more – no Flash plugins required!
• Multimedia integration including embedded YouTube videos
• Blog functionality to update their customers and fans of the latest product news and events

Often times, for one reason or another, I find myself wanting to develop a WordPress site for a client in a different location than where it’s going to end up. For instance, the client already has a website and this new WordPress will be a replacement for it – so I can’t just plop into their domain until everything is A-OK. Or sometimes I just need a development location but I need the site to be live for collaboration with other developers not located within my network. So I elect to develop and then move WordPress and/or the newly built theme to the production server.

Today my [WordPress] world changed forever… enter Duplicator plugin.

In this particular case, a client was wanting to move their WordPress site that I built for them from their in-house server to a higher-performing server that could handle more bandwidth. I always recommend hosting with Hostgator and they elected to take my advice. I like it when clients do that! 

So here I was with the task before me of moving a WordPress site with many users and posts and quite a few utilized plugin. A quick search on Google for something like “move wordpress site plugin” yielded a plugin called Duplicator at WordPress.org. Sweet!

Today I gave Duplicator a shot and it was successful. It was surprisingly painless and the new duplicate site was humming in no time.

What does Duplicator plugin do for you? Most notably (to me at least) it will:

1. Move the ENTIRE WordPress installation – a great way how to move WordPress without installing, configuring and customizing WP all over again!
2. Move the WordPress users – you can include the entire user base – profiles, passwords and all without having to re-create them.
3. Move the WordPress plugins – yup! They’re swooped up in the move too. All plugins will go with it.
4. Move the WordPress theme as a package – you betcha! Since the themes are part of the installation, they all go too.
5. Move the WordPress database – yeah, this one’s a doozy! You don’t have to do any extensive phpMyAdmin (or other) hackery to make it happen.
6. Cleanly intall your own custom WordPress copy - here’s one I’ve been pondering for a while. Now I know that I can make a generic installation with all my usual tricks (plugins, options, permalinks, etc.) and more quickly install it on client servers, saving me tons of cumulative time!

What the Duplicator plugin process looks like (roughly):

1. Install Duplicator Plugin. First, you install and activate the plugin at the WordPress installation that you want to relocate. (You can download it here.)
2. Create and Download Archive Package. After consulting the documentation, you create a package of your entire site AND an installer.php file that will execute the unpacking. In most cases it only takes a couple moments!
3. FTP Package Files to New Location. Using FTP or really any file transfer method, upload the zip archive package of your WordPress AND the installer.php file into the directory where you want WordPress installed at the new host.
4. Run Installer.php. Open a browser and browse to the full URL of installer.php where you uploaded it to. Follow the on-screen prompts.

You MIGHT have a snag here… but fear not! For hosts that prevent installation (and those capable of working with databases):

If your hosting provider denies installer.php from creating a new database or user for you, you’re going to have to create a new DB and DB user for your new WordPress install location. I almost always use cPanel hosting, so I’m giving advice for that specifically.

• Create a New Database (DB) for WordPress to Use. Using cPanel’s easy database management functions. You can even use the same DB as your original WP install if you want (it can be found in wp-config.php – open it with FTP).
• Create a New Database User and Add it to New DB. Just like it sounds.
• Put the new DB title into the appropriate box in the Duplicator installer dialog.
• Put the new DB user and password into the appropriate boxes, like above.

If you’ve done these steps right, your installation should now proceed without a hitch. When it’s done, you’ll have a fully-installed WordPress site – a perfect clone of your original site!

There are Things You Can Do to Protect Your Privacy on Facebook

I bet you’d be surprised to find out how many apps on Facebook have full access to your information. That means they can use it for all sorts of uses that you probably didn’t imagine they would. For example, a game you got bored of 6 months ago and never use still has access to your profile, contacts, communications and more.

To review and remote these stale privacy leeches (and fine-tune the ones you DO use):

1. click on the arrow at the top right of your screen on FB
2. click Privacy Settings
3. click on “Apps and Websites” -> Edit Settings
4. click on “Apps you use” -> Edit Settings

You’ll most likely next see an astoundingly long list of Apps that have access to your info, some grouped into “More than 6 months ago”. Each one of these apps typically has access such as “Access any time” and “Access my contact information“, letting them see when you are online.

 My suggestions:

1. remove ALL apps you don’t use any longer
2. remove the settings like ‘Access any time’ and anything that you don’t want the app to do
3. repost this so your friends can become aware too.

Feel free to comment back too if you were surprised to see the list!

Beware of a supposed release of Instagram for Android by a publisher called “App for Android“. It’s not a real release of Instagram at all. I don’t know how this actually made it into the Android Market but I doubt it will take long to disappear.

3 huge giveaways that its fraudulent:

1. The fake app requires you to rate 5 stars before it will allow the use of filters.

2. The app is embedding AirPlay advertisements in the notification area immediately (currently the moat lucrative form of Android advertising)

3. The grand daddy: the screenshots are of an iPhone!

I was so anticipating this app, but alas, it looks like you and I will have to keep waiting.

Hard Drive Issues on a Mac – A Rarity, but a Pain Nonetheless

Earlier this week I received a call from a local business client who was having problems publishing a self-maintained website for their store. Although my service call began with troubleshooting a problematic website, the situation promptly escalated to showing symptoms of a serious hardware issue.

At first it seemed like the Macbook Pro owner’s issues were purely related to iWeb and needing to be properly configured for their web hosting account. It wasn’t long before I discovered that her Mac was having issues accessing files from its hard drive. And that’s when it happened…

Upon a system restart, the Mac would not boot past the initial gray screen with Apple logo, spinning wheel and frozen progress bar.

It was quite obvious the computer was not successfully accessing its operating system files but it was too early yet to be sure whether it was due to mechanical issues with the hard drive or motherboard, missing or corrupted files stored on the hard drive. I was going to have to narrow it down before making a diagnosis that could cost the client unnecessary data loss, expenses for hardware or labor.

I would suggest the following steps that I tried prior to assuming a hard drive failure:

1. Attempt to repair your system drive using Disk Utility.

Obviously if you are stuck at the gray screen of agony, booting past it isn’t an option. But you can boot from your system disc labeled Mac OS Install DVD. To do so, pop it into your optical drive and hold the Alt/Option key while you power up the computer. Keep holding it til you see your boot drive options and then click the Mac OS Install DVD to boot from it. Once past the language selection, you can access utilities from the top menu. Disk Utility is the one you want. When it opens, click on your hard drive in the left column sidebar and the click Verify Disk followed by Repair Disk under First Aid. If your computer completes its process, then it might just be your lucky day. You should now initiate a normal restart to see if your problem has been resolved. But if your situation is like mine, you might get failures indicating the hard drive is unreadable. Pass go, but do not collect $200.

2. If you DON’T have a Mac OS install DVD OR you DO have access to another Mac and a firewire cable, try booting in Target Disk Mode.

This is when you boot your afflicted machine as though it was an external drive to a healthy Mac. To do so, first turn on your sick Mac while holding down the T key and you will see a gray screen with a large occasionally moving Firewire logo. You can now connect the two computers via firewire cable and boot the healthy computer while holding the Alt/Option key as described above. Your sickly computer’s hard drive in target disk mode should appear as a boot option on your healthy computer. Choose it and proceed. If you are able to boot to it successfully, you can try again to run Disk Utility from Applications->Utilities and to verify/repair the hard drive. If this works without a hitch, again try and reboot your computer normally to see if your problem has been solved. If not, keep reading.

3. This option is the one that surprisingly worked for me: Boot into Mac Safe Mode while showing its progress in a command line UI.

Your Mac will automatically attempt some more gloves-come-off disk repair measures when you boot into safe mode.

To start up into standard Safe Mode (to Safe Boot), do this:

1. Be sure your Mac is shut down.
2. Press the power button.
3. Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
4. Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).

To start up into Safe Mode with display of the progress in a command line UI, do the same as above EXCEPT hold the Command and V keys along with Shift.

In my case this process worked and I was able to boot into safe mode with the affected computer. You can now restart the computer as normal and you will likely be able to boot now, possibly after a brief progress bar display during bootup. If this works for you, you should still be concerned! Even though your computer is working seemingly normally, you should consider yourself blessed (I don’t do luck). If you’ve found my advice helpful so far, heed my next directive: use your extra life to immediately make an entire Time Machine backup onto a reliable clean external hard drive. You will need this if/when your hard drive crashes if you want to recover your documents and/or applications.

If none of the above worked for you, it may be time to bring out the big guns if you really need to save your data.

4. Try an advanced data recovery software such as DiskWarrior or Disk Drill.

Short of sending your hard drive to an expensive data recovery specialist, this might be your last resort for a DIY fix. These solutions may require you to remove your hard drive, use a live boot cd or target disk mode. You should refer to their respective developer’s website for a thorough outline of the process.

In Conclusion and in Summary

In any case, there is a reason your hard drive is having these issues. Replacing your hard drive very soon should be your plan especially if you have a hard drive more than 3 years old and you don’t have a strong hunch that you caused your own issue in any way.

My Recommended Hard Drive Purchase to Fix or Upgrade Your Macbook

I recommend Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM hard drives and I use them in my own and client’s machines. Replacing my original Hitachi hard drive (which had incidentally NOT failed, but was critically full at only 160GB) truly breathed new life into my Macbook Pro. Not only did it provide tons more storage space for me, but the 7200RPM performance and larger 16MB cache has greater responsiveness and performance.

• 320GB Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM Hard Drive – Price Check
• 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM Hard Drive – Price Check (The one that I chose for my 2007 Macbook Pro)
• 1TB Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM Hard Drive – Price Check

If you’re like me and have realized the impressive power of WordPress, whether as a CMS or just simply a blog, then you’re probably quite familiar with the frequent WordPress update notifications in your dashboard. And probably also like me, you’re zealous about always being up-to-date and taking advantage of the latest featured and newfangled functions.

WordPress makes it super easy to do an automatic update to your installation (and even to your beloved plugins). So why not just do it?!? I’ll tell you why:

because your theme might not support the new version yet.

Before upgrading to the latest and greatest WordPress update, you’ll want to check in with the WordPress theme author for compatibility before you go and make the leap.

Question: How do I know what version of WordPress I’m currently using?

See? It's right here! In the top left corner.

Answer: The answer is right under your nose! Simply login to your WordPress admin dashboard (in most cases, located at yourspecificsitedomain.com/wp-admin) and it’ll be displayed in the upper section of the dashboard home page.

Don’t worry… You’re not alone. I overlooked this for years.

Sometimes we just like to over-complicate things for ourselves, don’t we?

If you’re looking for assistance with your WordPress based website or perhaps a brand new web design in Redding, California - please feel free to contact me using my easy contact form!

If you’re a ‘techie type’ and you’re anything like me, then you are probably constantly getting calls for computer help from friends and family all over the place. And probably also just like you, keeping food on the table and a roof overhead keeps me as quite a busy guy.  But all of those concerns somehow come to a screeching halt when Mother Dearest sends you a email message that says something like this:

Honey, I know you’re busy, but I’m having major computer problems and I can’t do any work! I understand if you can’t get to it for a while, but just let me know. If so, I’ll have to call Geek Squad.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! You and I both surely know one true thing: Friends don’t let friends, and sons don’t let mothers, call Geek Squad to solve their tech issues!

This actually happened to me today. Fortunately for my mom, although I’m busy, I love her too much to let her throw her money down the drain only to worsen the issues that are crippling her computer. Since I live in Redding, Northern California and my mom lives hundreds of miles away in the Long Beach area, putting hands on her computer in person just isn’t an option. In most cases, I have been able to solve her minor problems using any garden variety remote desktop utility (for example, Windows Remote Desktop, RealVNC, LogMeIn, etc.). But in this particular case, things got just a wee bit trickier.

How to remotely remove the infamous ‘Xp Home Security’ malware virus

My mom’s vintage Dell running Windows XP SP3 somehow got infected with the famous ‘XP Home Security 2011′ pseudo anti-virus (but really virus) malware. Like many PC infections of this type, it’s preventing me from running my favorite virus and malware removal tool: Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.

OK, Kyler… get to the point! How do I run MBAM if the virus is preventing me from opening it? And remotely?!? (Hint: Safe Mode!)

Just a little Googling just now revealed that my favorite easy-to-use remote desktop utility LogMeIn (which is also famously free for personal use) will permit you to remotely restart a computer into Safe Mode With Networking and with LogMeIn ready for remote control! Windows Safe Mode is what you will need to reboot the computer into before you can run Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware without the malware and/or virus causing it to be killed before running. Once remotely booted into Safe Mode With Networking, you’ll be able to remotely run this or other virus/malware removal tools to get your job done.

How to do this:

1. Have LogMeIn installed on the remote computer and running (see LogMeIn.com for details on this)
2. Connect to your infected remote computer
3. On the left sidebar of the initial remote computer page, click on ‘Preferences’
4. Click ‘Advanced Settings’
5. Under ‘Reboot Options’, click on ‘View Reboot Options’
6. Choose ‘Safe Mode Reboot’
7. Be sure that any bootable media is removed from the remote computer (OS CDs, boot discs, floppies, etc.)
8. If you are ready for the remote computer to reboot, click on ‘OK’

The remote computer will reboot and, after about a normal boot cycle’s delay and almost like a magical miracle, the remote computer will become available again in your list of LogMeIn computers. You can then reconnect, initial remote control and git er dunn!

If you are in the Redding, CA area and need help with healing your computer of viruses or mal-ware, or other Mac or Windows issues, please feel free to contact me to arrange a service call in your home or business.

I posted a year or two ago on my original blog about this, but since I revisited the site today I figured it was fitting to shout it out again. To my knowledge, this is the best free utility out there for creating a font out of your own handwriting… or any letters that you can draw on their template for that matter! It’s free, really cool and pretty darn easy. Make sure you read (and follow) the directions.

Try it for yourself:

http://www.yourfonts.com

If you have a website, need a website, were ever thinking of having a website or have a cousin who’s got a roommate who has a friend that could conceivably want a website… you need to check out this deal!

Any day of the year you can get excellent web hosting services from me provided by the excellent folks at Hostgator.com. As a reseller, I provide my clients in Redding, California and beyond with my personal support of their web hosting accounts for the event that they might have questions or a problem. Additionally, as a Hostgator.com Affiliate, clicking on my links on my website to Hostgator.com‘s website is another way to support my small northern California business.

But tonight I’m writing to you with this simple plea:

PLEASE! LET ME HELP YOU GET AN UNBEATABLE DEAL ON YOUR WEB HOSTING!

I have never seen a deal as good as what Hostgator is offering on their Black Friday 2010 specials!

Here’s what Hostgator.com is offering for it’s Black Friday hosting deals, as described straight from Hostgator:

We’re offering 50% OFF EVERYTHING From 12:00AM CST – 5AM CST That’s 10:00PM – 3AM Pacific

We’re offering 80% OFF EVERYTHING From 5AM – 9AM CST WHILE SUPPLIES LAST (first come, first receive; so definitely don’t miss out!) That’s 3AM – 7AM Pacific

From 9AM – 11:59PM CST OR after 80% OFF accounts have sold out, we will continue to offer 50% OFF EVERYTHING That’s 7AM – 9:59PM Pacific

This applies to ALL Accounts and ALL Term Lengths. So [my] visitors and friends will have the opportunity to receive up to 80% off of up to 3 years worth of Hosting! That would come out to $35.64 for 3 FULL YEARS!

That includes Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, VPS Hosting AND even Dedicated Servers!

[...]

This will apply to the client’s first invoice (first term length they sign up for whether that be 1 month or for 3 years).

Now here’s the part where you get a deal even if you already have hosting!

Hostgator will transfer your data, databases, email accounts and the whole shebang for you FOR FREE! So if you’re on another hosting provider already that costs any more than these deals - and trust me – you are! – then you can still get in on this deal and save some major money.

Some examples of the ridiculous deals that you can get on Black Friday, this week:

1 year of UNLIMITED storage and UNLIMITED bandwidth hosting for as many domains pointing to the site for $23.88!
(Baby Plan – 12 months prepaid)

3 years of UNLIMITED storage and UNLIMITED bandwidth hosting for $35.64
(Hatchling Plan – 36 months prepaid)

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via Email, Facebook or Phone and I will be glad to help!

And remember… you’re gonna have to get up early – but it’s the early bird that gets the worm!

Use coupon code “graphicpilot” when you sign up so they’ll give you the ‘special treatment’!

Let’s face it: when you’re still new at WordPress, even the easiest of tasks to even the brainiest of computer geeks can be like solving a word puzzle devised by some superior alien race.

Don’t worry, I get it. I was there not so long ago myself. So lets take a look at how to login to your WordPress administrative control panel, affectionately named the “Dashboard”.

Here are your super-simple 3 easy steps:

1. Assuming your WordPress installation is in the root of your public folder (“public_html”), your administrative login is located at http://www.yourdomainnamehere.com/wp-admin
   • For regular non-jedi users like the commenting public – it’s at http://www.yourdomainnamehere.com/wp-login
2. Enter your WordPress user name into the ‘Username’ box
3. Enter your WordPress password into the ‘Password’ box, then click ‘Log In’
4. Voila! You’re in. Ok, that’s not really a step. But just the three steps just seemed so lonely without this one

A picture says more than a thousand words.
WordPress makes it easy for you to add images to your WordPress site. There are 2 steps involved to inserting an image into a post. First, the image file must be uploaded onto your web server before it can be inserted into a post. The second step is to actually insert the image into the post in the appropriate location.

The simplest way to do this is to use the “Add Media” function on the page/post screen (see the Upload/Insert buttons to the left of the “Visual” and “HTML” tabs). Choose the appropriate button depending on whether you are adding photos, videos, audio, or miscellaneous media (e.g. PDF files). This method will complete both steps as outlined above.

In the “From Computer” area of the screen you need to upload the desired image file. NOTE: Before hitting the “Upload from Computer” button it is recommended that you select the “Browser Uploader” instead of using the default Flash Uploader.

Click on the "Browser Uploader" link in the lower right for a simpler, more stable upload

After selecting the “Browser Uploader”, hit the “Browse…” button and choose the desired image file on your computer. Then, hit the “Upload” button. Your image file is now on your web server.

Make sure you give the image an appropriate title, as well as a relevant description if desired. Choose the desired alignment and size, and hit the “insert into post” button. Your image is now inserted into the post at the location where your cursor was last active.

Every time you upload an image to your web server it is added to the “Gallery” of images that are available for that blog. If you want to insert the same image into another post go to the “Gallery”, hit the “Show” link next to the image title, and then follow the same instructions to insert that image into another location or post.

This time, if you want to use an image you already uploaded, use the Gallery tab and then click 'show'. NOTE: The image shows the word 'hide' because it is already shown.