Cirtex Blog » Misc

Top 5 FREE Stylish WordPress Templates

Cirtex — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:11:42 +0000

Below is five stylish wordpress templates that we believe are some of the best wordpress templates available today for FREE!

Newsmag - Download

Maparan – Download

Futubive - Download

Florance – Download

Altair – Download

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Using the Functions of WebCalendar

Cirtex — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:11:19 +0000

Depending upon the type of site you run, you may find that one of the ways you can really expand your users’ experience is to create a calendar for events that will be happening either on your site itself or are related to the interest area of the site. Those who want a fully functional solution will find that they often need far more than the bare essentials if they are hoping to get some serious visitor interaction going on. Whether you broadcast materials that you want people to be aware of going up or you simply believe the that the much loved WebCalendar iCal solution could help you put up more content on your site that your users will love, WebCalendar should definitely be your first choice. After all, it is open source software which means you aren’t going to need to pay a dime to have it live and fully functional on your site.

You can take a look at the WebCalendar demo and you will see that it is not only meant as a single user calendar, but you can actually have an org WebCalendar that is usable by entire groups of people. This is a great way to either let your site’s staff post what they find to the calendar or even track work groups to make sure everything needed is completed on time. Since you can set up a separate account for each WebCalendar user, it is easier than ever to get the results you crave when you want to have a site that is hopping with new information so that it becomes a real feeding ground for your visitors. These are the types of users who come to rely on your site for its content and therefore come back over and over again to keep current on what is happening with your web site. These are the absolute golden resources when it comes to building a truly successful site that is going to stand the test of time and give you the ultimate in a solid fan base.

Those considering allowing multiple users to all have their own calendars you can do this by creating ‘global categories’ to point your visitors to a calendar while only displaying certain categories of the calendar to them at any given time. This layering effect allows certain users to see certain events, but does not display everything all at once since that would be entirely confusing. Also, by setting up multiple ‘Nonuser calendars’ you will be able to allow publicly accessible viewing of other user created calendars. With this option you can either link to a Nonuser calendar or alternately, set up a view which will contain one or more Nonuser calendars. This allows you, the site admin, greater flexibility when deciding how you want your users’ calendars to be shown on your site.

When you are wanting WebCalendar to blend in better with your site, customizing it is a definite option that’s easy to do. If you simply navigate to System Settings and set Custom Header to Yes before saving, you can then hit Edit and add what you want for a header. The header always shows up after the tag, but prior to the display of any WebCalendar content. For a footer, simply add the same content right before the tag.

There are many more customizations and functions to learn about with WebCalendar, but these get you started towards making your calendar work for your site.

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Organize your site For Better Indexing & Exposure, Learn Seach Engine Optimization

Discover What the Nucleus CMS Can Bring to Your Site

Cirtex — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:28:28 +0000

There are a lot of different blogging platforms out there, but some people want a bit more power for their blogging needs. If you are one of those people, then checking out what Nucleus CMS has to offer certainly won’t hurt you. Whereas a lot of other blogging solutions require you to confine your blog to a specific website, with the CMS (Content Management System) that Nucleus offers, you can be sure that you can have your site hosted wherever Nucleus hosting is provided. In fact, those who want a very robust blog are going to find that Nucleus solutions provide a whole lot of flexibility with a high level of user friendly customization that’s a snap to do on your own.

One of the prime advantages of a Nucleus blog is the fact that it has an excellent list of features that you will likely want, but the package itself is not overly stuffed with a ton of extras you might not want to use. You can get plenty of Nucleus CMS plugins to really tweak your blog into the shape that you are looking for, but let’s go over the core functionality that this particular platform gives to those who choose it:

Customizable Author Settings – You’ll be able to determine who gets to post where and exactly what their level of power is. If you want someone to be able to post and not change the settings on your blog, this is no problem. The power really is in your hands.

Operate Multiple Blogs – Nucleus software gives you a sweet option that allows you to not only set up more than one blog, but actually display those blogs on the same page. As an example, if you wanted to run a sports blog site, but run separate blogs for basketball, football, soccer and hockey, you could have all of these set to show up on your main sports blog so users could see everything, but still navigate to the particular blog of their choice. This is a perfect solution for big blog networks.

Interactive Commenting System – Just about all blogs have a commenting system built in, but with the Nucleus CMS, you get a karma system that allows viewers to express their approval or disapproval of the comments on your blog. In a day and age when commenting can be the life blood of a blog, this is a great feature that is going to improve interaction quickly and lead to more commenting on your blog.

Bookmarklet Adding – A great feature, the right click bookmarklet feature allows you to post to your blog about something you like on the web with a simple click. This beats the time consuming process of logging into the admin area and going through all kinds of hassle just to point out something on the web that you want your viewers to see.

Other than these features, Nucleus contains everything you would get with any of the big name blogging platforms like WordPress, Movable Type or similar solutions. However, there are a whole lot of plugins available that really up the ante and these include:

Shoutbox for chatting
WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editor
Fully integrated Google searches of your blog
Fully integrated Amazon searches
Polling for voting booths
Weather forecasts for your hometown or any city you like
Who’s Online to let your visitors see who all is visiting your blog
Highlighting of search engine keywords so that users can quickly find the subject that brought them to your blog

These are only a few of the useful plugins for Nucleus. Overall, this is an excellent choice for those who want a lot of power in an easy to use blogging platform.

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Install Crafty Syntax Live Help by Yourself

Cirtex — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:21:02 +0000

Websites are constantly growing more competitive, no matter which particular field a given website is in. Surfers continue to demand new and better features, expect more interaction on the part of the site admin and flock to sites that are able to meet their needs most effectively. If you have been thinking about expanding the power of your own site, particularly if you run an online store or other ecommerce type site, then Crafty Syntax Live Help is definitely something you want to look into. This is a script designed by Crafty Syntax, of course, that gives you a very quick and efficient way to interact with visitors to your site who might otherwise simply get frustrated and leave. Imagine the change in sales and return visits you are going to experience once you have genuine live help available by chat for anyone who wants it and you will be on the right track to understanding why Crafty Syntax Live is such a well respected addition to the webmaster tools community.

If you are worried about getting it all set up yourself, you really should not be because it is quite easy to do and we’re going to walk you through the process. Even if you have never installed anything like the Crafty Syntax Help system before, you are going to find that it is a breeze to set up and even easier to use once you have it going. Those who can chat online already know everything they need to know about how to use the software once it is set up, too. You will be able to chat with multiple customers at once through a handy tabbed system, record all of the keywords mentioned in the chats to see what the visitor’s biggest concerns are and even save transcripts of the chats for later review. Very handy if you plan to employ someone to offer professional help on your site for you.

First off, you will of course need to download the latest version of Crafty Syntax. The best idea is to grab the installation package from their site since you know that is going to be the most up to date and also that it won’t contain any malicious programs.

Once you have the download package, simply uncompress it and take a little time reading the documentation provided to familiarize yourself with any key things that you might need to know. After that, send the files to your web host account for the domain name you want the script installed on and then open up this line in whatever web browser you prefer:

http://www.YourOwnDomainName.com/livehelp/setup.php (www.YourOwnDomainName.com will of course need to be replaced with your actual domain name that you own)

After this, the rest of the installation takes place in your web browser, a real help for those of us who like to keep things simple. You’ll choose your language, name your live help section and create an opening message to welcome users into the system.

That’s all you have to do in order to have live help right on your own site

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How to use ACTIONSCRIPT

Add Your Own Logo to b2evolution

Cirtex — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 02:33:32 +0000

For those who aren’t aware of this blogging platform, b2evolution is a software solution along the lines of other popular platforms like WordPress or Movable Type, which allows a blogger to have their own blog hosted on their own server through b2evolution hosting on a web host they trust. This freedom is what many seek because they aren’t interested in being tied to a specific website. While not currently the most profoundly popular of the open source blogging platforms out there today, the b2evolution blog is definitely moving up in the world.

A big reason for this rise in popularity is the fact that b2evolution gives users quite a bit of power and flexibility that are not found in other packages or are harder to use. The multiple language support, multi user system and multiple blog capability has drawn quite a crowd to this recent entry to the blog software world. Users looking to add several blogs and manage them easily will certainly appreciate the fact that this particular software can do that easily, centralizing all of the control so you don’t have to leap around the web attending to all of your blogs. You can put up a b2evolution post in seconds. That’s an advantage that plenty of website owners and bloggers are going to love.

Another strong point with this platform is its customization factor. There are a few professional grade media sites running b2evolution and they’re not only good looking, they’re quite powerful, too. Having access to a system that is powerful enough to run a pro level celebrity gossip blog that gets a few million hits a week? That’s another advantage that plenty of bloggers feel like taking. It’s that customization feature that is going to allow you to add your own logo so your blog has exactly the look you want. You can even add a custom b2evolution skin.

It’s actually really simple and all you have to do is go to your b2evolution folder using either web access or your standard ftp client. Next, go into the “skins” directory and in there you should see a directory titled “custom”. In this directory you’ll see a file named “_main.php” and if you already have a program for editing php files then you should be use the one you are familiar with. If you don’t, then search for NotePad2, a free open source txt editor that makes php editing simple.

Look for this section of code within the _main.php file:

disp( ‘name’, ‘htmlbody’ ) ?>

disp( ‘tagline’, ‘htmlbody’ ) ?>

Once you’ve located it, all you have to do is insert this line of code between the

and

lines

After that insertation, the end result should make that block of code look like this:

disp( ‘name’, ‘htmlbody’ ) ?>

disp( ‘tagline’, ‘htmlbody’ ) ?>

Go ahead and save this change when you are done, close the file and upload the changed _main.php file back onto your server to replace the old file.

See where it says ‘img src=”img/Yourlogoname.jpg”‘? Well, that Yourlogoname.jpg needs to be replaced by whatever the jpg image of your logo is named. In order to insert the logo properly, you need to navigate to the “img” directory of your b2evolution installation, in the /skins/custom/img folder. The key point here is to make sure that the name of your jpg image in the _main.php matches up with the name of the image in the /img folder. You can also alter the ‘alt=”My logo”‘ bit to whatever you would like the image to have as its alt tag.

Once you’ve completed these steps, go take a look at your new logo because that’s all there is to it. Now you’ve got your own logo on a blog powered by b2evolution!

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Learn How to Create Better WordPress URLs

Get Your Website Ready for Christmas Today

Cirtex — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:08:02 +0000

If you blog or run a website of any kind, then you might have noticed that ’tis the season! That’s right, even on the web, people like to do a little merry making and there’s no sense in being a scrooge when it comes to your website design, especially when it’s now easier than ever to get some Christmas cheer going out to all of your visitors.

Here are some great ideas to help your visitors get in the mood for a merry good time:

A Christmas Theme or Background -

This is probably the single easiest thing that you can do to get your blog up to speed for the season of presents, mistletoe and eggnog. If you use WordPress or other CMS blogging software then you are going to find it is incredibly to locate Christmas templates with nothing more complex than a simple Google search. There are literally hundreds of great templates out there that you can take advantage of for free, but if you prefer custom work then there are a great many designers who are capable of providing you with this service, too. You can get themes that fit right into the whole santa, sleighs and Christmas trees theme or you can go with a more culturally neutral winter holiday theme that features falling snow, snow men, wreaths and other iconic images of the season. Your choices are wide open when it comes to a way to add a visual spark to your whole site, all at once.

Christmas Icons -

Don’t forget that during Christmas, as always, it’s the little things that count. If you can add that special touch, a lot of people will happy with you. You’ll be able to find Christmas themed icons for a wide variety of services that you may already use on your site such as Twitter, RSS feeds, YouTube, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Technorati and a host of other blogging and web related websites that are commonly used by a wide variety of site owners. This is a fun way to add a small touch that shows you are definitely embracing the spirit of this festive time of year.

Advent Calendars and Countdown Clocks –

There is a nice selection of already made calendars and clocks that you can set up on your site. All of these are offered for free and a simple search of the web is all it takes to locate them. Whether you’d like to mark off the days of the Advent season or simply have a fun countdown clock that gets us all in the mood to hear Santa’s laugh echoing through the neighborhood, these tools will help you do it right.

Christmas Music Jukebox -

If you haven’t thought of this one, you are forgiven. After all, plenty of people do not keep their speakers turned off with they browse the net or might get a little bit irritated if they are listening to songs on their music when your site serenades them with seasonally appropriate tunes. However, there are an equal number of folks who love nothing more than singing along to carols and other songs of the Christmas variety. You can find jukeboxes that are simple to install on your site or blog and they might do quite a bit to get people to stick around a bit longer, leave comments or otherwise use your site. You can even set up a poll to see which songs everyone likes best so you’re ready for next year!

These are just a few ideas for your site, but don’t forget that the real fun of Christmas is giving gifts. That’s why a lot of bloggers try to create something they can give to their loyal fans and the same goes for many other sites, as well. If you’ve got the skills, maybe you could code a short script for others to use. If you are good with graphics, try making something your visitors would like as a wallpaper. If you can write, a poem might be appropriate. Whatever it is that you can contribute, be sure not to miss this season as a great opportunity to give your viewers something special.

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Mistakes to Avoid When Using Website Templates

Cirtex — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:28:56 +0000

Often times many people will use website templates to start their website. There are many advantages that can be brought on by using a template. First is the cost issue. You can find a well designed template much cheaper than paying for it yourself. Second, you can find many free templates that you can use over the web.

With free templates there are many issues that can come up. First many of these templates are not going to be of high quality. Secondly you will notice that the developers place their links in the bottom of their templates. This is the cost of using the template as it helps increase the back links to their website.

Avoiding Common Mistakes

So how do we avoid the common mistakes that many people make when using templates? First do not choose a template that is very popular. This can often happen with free templates that have been well done. What happens when the template gets over the web is that people start getting used to it. This means that your site will lose the appeal that it has. The site looks generic and loses credibility to the eyes of other people. No matter the content on the site it will be hard for people to look at as unique because people see the template.

The next biggest problem is that people use the templates without changing them. This is why many of the sites don’t look unique. There are plenty of options when altering a template. Often times there are many images that come with a template. A quick and easy way to change to format is by altering these images. If you are using a free template make sure you have the option to change these images. Often times the creator will never know, but in the agreement they can ask you to take it down if they do find out.

Purchasing Website Templates

As you go to purchasing website templates look for sites that distribute them in limited amounts, instead of ones that distribute an unlimited amount. Often times the cost of these are not very different at all. Another added benefit is that these templates can be used across many different types of niches. This allows your site to still look unique to people searching around in your niche.

The biggest mistake people make is choosing a template that does not meet their site’s needs. Templates are meant to be appealing to the eyes. This is how they sell and distribute their website templates. What happens if you pick one that is not suited to your content is that the information gets lost. People will only stay so long on your site if they cannot access the information they were looking for.

There are a few keys to look for when looking for a website template. First, get a limited edition template. Secondly, look for one that loads quickly and is appealing to the eyes. Finally, make sure you can customize it and add the content you want to keep people coming back.

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How to COPYRIGHT

Cirtex — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:40:20 +0000

HOW TO COPYRIGHT

Introduction

Copyright is a protection to the work done by the author. It gives the author of the original work an exclusive right regarding that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation for a certain predefined period after which the work is said to enter the public domain. Copyright is the right granted for the expression of the idea. Thus, it is different from a patent which is a far more strict right granted for the protection of new inventions.

What May be Copyrighted?

A copyrightable work must be

fixed in a tangible medium of expression and
original

Copyrights do not protect ideas, procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, or discoveries: they only protect physical representations, thus expression.

Who May Hold a Copyright?

A copyright generally lies with the creator or creators of a work (known as the author(s)), and is inherited as ordinary property. Copyrights are freely transferrable as property, by the sole decision of the owner. In some cases, however, the actual creator is not considered the owner of the work for copyright purposes. This is the case when the work is done or created by an employee during the course of his employment under the employer. Here the employer, not the employee, gets the ownership over the copyright work. In case the employer is working for a govt. agency or an organization, then the govt. or the organization will get the ownership over the copyright work.

Rights Protected by Copyright?

the right of reproduction (i.e., copying)
the right to create derivative works,
the right to distribution,
the right to performance,
the right to display
The digital transmission performance right.

Copyright in different countries

Different countries have different copyright laws. The major differences lie in:

whether or not the government work falls under copyright,
how much longer copyright lasts after the author dies or after the work is created or published, and
what is and what is not fair use

Because of these differences, a certain piece of work may be under copyright in one country, and in the public domain in another. However the copyright laws of all the countries are in tune with the Bern Convention, 1886 or Universal Copyright convention, 1952 which provide a standardization of the national copyright laws of different countries.

Length of Copyright Protection

The copyright protection period varies from country to country, however it is usually over 50 years. When the period of copyright protection has ended, the written document, musical composition, book, picture, or other creative work enters the public domain. This means that everyone is free to copy, use and change the work without any prior permission of the owner.

Getting the copyright

To obtain a copyright is not a tough task once you are clear with the concept of copyright. In most countries, you can avail this protection right with a simple 3 step procedure to follow. For e.g. in the US to obtain a copyright on your work the 3 steps are a) filing an application b) submitting a nominal fee (usually 45$) and c) mailing the work to be copyrighted, which will not be returned. To be honest every work created gets automatically copyrighted, the above procedure is just to be on the safer side to avoid any dispute regarding ownership.

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How to use ACTIONSCRIPT

Cirtex — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:39:00 +0000

Introduction

Based upon ECMA Script, Actionscript is the scripting language of Macromedia Flash. A scripting language is a way to communicate with a program; you can use it to instruct the Flash what to do and to ask it to interact with other programs. Hence it opens Vista to create interactive movies.

Actionscript finds a wide amount of uses in the industry of website and software development. Besides, Actionscript is also quite handy in database applications and elementary robotics.

Programming Fundamentals

Ø Variables and constants

In ActionScript, a variable is composed of three different parts:

variable name
type of data that the variable can store
actual value stored in the computer’s memory

E.g. var value1:Number = 19;

In this case, we’ve created a variable named value1, which will hold only Number data=19

On the similar lines we have a constant .The difference between a constant and a variable is that a constant can only be assigned a value only once in a program. The syntax for declaring a constant is almost the same as that of a variable, the only change being the use of keyword const in spite of var.

E.g. const Pie:Number = 3.14;

Ø Data Types

ActionScript is rich in data types. For Example: number, int, uint, Boolean

A few complex types are: Movieclip, TextField, SimpleButton and Date.

How to make an application in ActionScript

The creation of an application through ActionScript can be best gasped by an illustration. Although you may find it hard to comprehend it at once, a repeated insight will help you to understand the process quite easily.

Ø Here we are going to illustrate an animation portfolio piece in which we will add interactive behavior to animation. This will be done by adding two buttons which the user can click: one of them is to start the animation, and the other to navigate to a separate URL. The process of creating this piece can be divided into these main sections:

Prepare an FLA file
Creation and addition of the buttons.
Write the code.

Prepare an FLA File: Open the FLA file and chose where you want the buttons on the screen. Now place a new layer for addition of buttons, above the other layers in the Timeline; name it as buttons. Now add a new layer on similar lines but this time add actionscript code, above the buttons layer, and name it actions.

Creation and addition of the buttons: Create and add two buttons and name them as playButton and homeButton.

Write the ActionScript code:

Code to cease the play head when it enters Frame 1:

Select the key frame on Frame 1 of the actions layer.
To open the Actions panel, from the main menu, choose Window > Actions.
Enter the following code in the script pane:

                  Stop ();

Code to start the animation when the play button is clicked:

Enter the following code at the bottom of the script:

function startMovie(event:MouseEvent):void

    this.play();

Now add

            playButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, startMovie);

Code to send the browser to a URL when the home page button is clicked:

Enter the following code at the bottom of the script:

function gotoDesiredPage(event:MouseEvent):void

    var targetURL:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://example.com/");

    navigateToURL(targetURL);

The above code defines a function called gotoDesiredPage(). This function first creates a URLRequest instance representing the URL http://example.com/, and then passes that URL to the navigateToURL() function, causing the user’s browser to open that URL.

Now enter this line of code:

homeButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, gotoDesiredPage);

Thus with the use of functions you can split your program into various sub problems and programming becomes easy.
It is the same with any other programming language. It also reduces the redundancy in the code.

The bottom-line is- ActionScript runs on similar lines as that of other Object Oriented Programming Languages with similar class structures, flow control, packages and so on.

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The Top Five Reasons to Use Joomla

Cirtex — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:51:52 +0000

In case you haven’t heard of Joomla before, it is an open source content management system. Whether you are creating a personal homepage, a small business web site, an online magazine or a full blown e-commerce website, Joomla is flexible and powerful enough to accomodate your needs.

If you still aren’t convinced that Joomla is the right platform for your online project, let’s take a look at the top five reasons that you should make the decision to use Joomla:

It’s Free: Everyone loves things that are free, and Joomla falls directly into this category. Unlike an expensive piece of software, you really have nothing to risk by downloading Joomla and giving it a test run for yourself.

The Extensions: If I had to choose just one feature that makes Joomla such an amazing platform, I think my choice would be the extensions that are available. Currently, there are over four thousand different extensions available that can be downloaded, and this is a number that will just continue to grow overtime.

The reason that I would pick the extensions as the single most persuasive reason to use Joomla is because they make it so much easier to start and finish a new project. Instead of needing to start completely from scratch, there is a good chance that regardless of what you want to do with Joomla, there are one or more extensions that will allow you to get everything setup in just a short amount of time.

The Community: Although the extensions are my top pick out of the numerous reasons to use Joomla, these extensions would not exist if it wasn’t for the very active Joomla community, so in reality this reason is just as important as the previous one.

Although it would be impossible to get an accurate count of the entire Joomla community (because there are so many unofficial communities and websites that are spread across a multitude of languages), the official Joomla forum has close to two hundred and fifty thousand registered users. With this many people who are passionate about the Joomla project, it’s easy to understand why it has become such a powerful platform.

The Documentation: The problem with many platforms that allow you to build web sites or other web-based applications is that it can be difficult to figure out how to do certain things with these platforms as a result of their lack of documentation. However, this is not something that you have to worry about when you use Joomla. The Official Joomla Documentation is a collaborative Wiki, and it covers everything from the Absolute Beginners Guide to Frequently Sought Information to even very advanced topics.

It’s Open Source: In case you haven’t caught on yet, all of the reasons on this list relate in some way to the fact that Joomla is an open source project. Because the Joomla project is open instead of closed, you never have to worry about problems like no new features being added or support suddenly

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