AGn Designs

I have to say that I’m unhappy with the fact that Christmas makes itself known in July, by this time people are usually done paying off the gifts from the last holiday season and they’re already reminded of the ones they’re going to have to purchase over the next six months. I think it’s absurd but when it comes to the world of making money off just about everything, I can see why businesses do this. With Halloween being over with, almost as quickly as it came, I know now that Thanksgiving is just around the corner. After that is the wonderful world of Christmas and I’m stuck as to where I’m even going to go with things. It was great having a large family when I was younger and glorious presents just seemed to fall into my lap. As you get older, the whimsical experience just seems to fade. You’re now spending the money and getting very little in return, only because family members are also shopping for 20+ people for the holiday season. Naturally the kids are given more than the adults but with how well things are going this year, naturally I’m not going to stiff anyone out on things either.

I’m unsure of whether or not I’m going to even make it up to New York this year to enjoy Christmas the way I have in the past. I know that my father is working on Christmas but when the money is just that good and your daughters aren’t really around – what’s the point in staying home? I may wind up sending cards to everyone, I don’t see actual gifts as something of importance considering I rarely see these people throughout the year, but they’re still family so discounted online stores where I can load up on the coupons is really the only option.

I figure I’ll float around sites like Harriet Carter and ABC Distributing to pick up these items. They’re fairly inexpensive, but at the same time have some really nice products that do actually last quite a bit of time. I figure I could get my mothers side of the family taken care of for under $150 which won’t be easy considering I’m shopping for about 15 people. With my fathers side it’s just my aunt and my uncle so that’ll be an easier shopping trip, I may wind up going straight to the store for that though, at this point I’m unsure.

For years I’ve gone through every weblog program known to man. I started off on blogger.com with the FTP support, then I graduated to Greymatter when it was the “cool thing to do”. I then moved to B2 which was my first taste of PHP based blogging. From there I played around with Movable Type but found it to be too much of a hassle to really get it to do what I needed it to. I dabbled in CuteNews for smaller sites, quickly upgrading to AcidBlog – a script I wrote quite some time ago. I’ve also gone through quite a few other PHP scripts, mainly ones found on sites like Condango and other PHP related resources.

I’ve finally settled upon Wordpress though, I honestly don’t see myself changing over to anything else. It’s rare when you can run multiple blog installations on a single MySQL database and it doesn’t interfere with anything. It’s nice when you can quickly log in and post an entry without having to alter things on the template because thousands of plugins available to you for Wordpress are now doing the work for you. And for those of you that like the “page builder” kind of a template, the ajax based sidebar options in the control panel really help you to organize everything. Even if you know nothing about designing your own template there are THOUSANDS of free ones available to meet your design requirements. It’s even great for content management. It’s one of those rare all-in-one programs that really has proven itself time and time again.

I know I’ve recommended this particular program in the past, and no I’m not being paid to push Wordpress. It’s just a solid program that I highly recommend to anyone I come across. Even someone wanting something SIMPLE where they just login and type something out. This is the best route to take.

I’m not sure why I’m still sitting here at 11pm but I’m sure my addiction to completing deadlines early has a lot to do with it. While waiting on a response from a client I’ve found myself floating through quite a few job posting sites such in search for a few new jobs to pick up before we actually make the move out to Ohio, this way there’s work waiting for me and it’ll help get that loan paid back much sooner than expected. I’ve noticed a rise in business leads looking for a designer for their new online store. They list their requirements on many aspects of it and they’re so in depth that you wonder why they’re incapable of finding affordable ecommerce hosting and just setting things up for themselves. I don’t quite see how it’s hard to find business hosting on the Internet if you can find yourself on a not-so-well-known freelance site looking for a designer. That’s just my take on it though.

A few listings did make sense to me though, mainly because they admitted that they knew how to use an ecommerce based software, they were just unware of how to go about designing for certain ecommerce programs. That’s something I can understand, but for those who can go to the extreme of giving you a PSD and then telling you it’s already marked up for the site, they just need someone to load it into the template boxes, you wonder what you’re actually being paid for? I’m sorry but I’ve never once taken any form of compensation other than a “Thank You” if I was just copying and pasting something for someone. However, that someone wasn’t giving me a step by step break down of how to go about using the software either. It’s kind of odd.

Anyway, I have noticed a rise in people running their own personal online stores. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that eBay just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anymore. Sure, selling things here and there to a large market is always a great thing but when you’re limited to as how much customization you can really do with your products, then why not start up your own website to help your Internet business.

A site that’s sticking out for me at the moment is AQHost.com, they offer small business hosting with a focus on cheap ecommerce hosting. I can say that with as many home-based stores that are around these days, a company like this may do very well in this particular field. Best of luck to them.