That being said, I am constantly searching for and learning how to do things with 3 - and one of those sort of mundane seeming yet hard to grasp issues (for me anyway!) has finally been solved. Specifically - I was looking for a way to include data from MT into my static, non-MT, non-CMS web pages. Eventually all of this stuff will be in MT, but I needed something now that could give me the capability to put headlines from MT into a regular HTML file (and the solution will probably work for entries, etc.).

Previously I had used a pretty horrible solution of taking the MT feed, burning it with FeedBurner, and then using BuzzBoost to embed the headlines into the home page of Caribbean-On-Line for the Travel Tips section. This had a whole set of issues involving styling the thing, having to include it with an iframe tag (don't ask!), and a lot of other assorted issues that arise from poor planning and cobbling together stuff on the fly.

So as I was searching around for how to burn a separate feed per MT Category with not much luck (which I was then going to use utilizing the system described above), I somehow, finally, had one of those light bulb goes off in your brain kind of moments - I could set up a new Archive Template, and a new Archive Mapping - the template would "publish" whatever it was that I was looking for from MT (in this case, just the last 5 entries for each category - the category name, and the entry titles linked to their respective posts), and then I could include those using SSI (Serve Side Includes) wherever I needed them in my flat HTML files. Now, maybe this is a no-brainer for some people, but I couldn't find anything on the web about it - so I decided to document the process and let all you other MT 3 users in on it. The nuts and bolts are coming in Part 2.

"A smart, personalized targeting ad solution that provides premium content. This ad unit is CPC and is designed to be your highest performing ad unit (eCPM)."

So I went back to Network Solutions, and there I was able to register the name - at three times the price. I think this practice is wrong on a lot of levels, but the main one is that contrary to what Netsol CEO Champ Mitchell is saying to the media lately ("After the search ends, we will put the domain name on reserve. During this reservation period, the name is not active. If a customer searches for the domain again during the next four days at networksolutions.com, the domain will be available to register. If the domain name is not purchased within four days, it will be released back to the registry and will be generally available for registration."), it is bad for the consumer. Their pricing is prohibitive to other registrars, and just because someone searched on a name, doesn't mean it should be temporarily taken off the market, in effect giving Netsol a monopoly on that name for several days. This issue needs to be addressed by ICANN or someone who has the regulatory powers to ban such practices.

This was about 5:30 AM EST - I guess they are working on something.

After some searching we found a post on the Google Calendar Help group that solved our problem: you can append to the end of the iframe tag (used to embed your calendar into an html page) a language parameter that will force the calendar to display in the specified language. The code is &hl=(2 letter code) - or for example for German the code would be: &hl=de There are also some additional variables.

We tried to do this job as inexpensively as we could for the client. I will try to give you an idea of what the means from a web designer/developers prospective.

First, since the client is in Italy, we had to find an e-commerce solution that would work with their banks, etc. I did a pretty thorough search and came to a lot of dead ends. I finally decided that Zen Cart could give us what we needed in a shopping cart (too much really) and decided to use PayPal for all forms of payment (Zen Cart has a pretty straight forward integration with Pay Pal).

One of the reasons I went with Zen Cart was that I found a pretty decent template for a jewelry store that I planned to adapt to fit our clients needs. In hindsight this may not have been the best way to start with Zen Cart - I may have learned more about their templates and page creation options, etc. if I started with their default template (which is so ugly though it may scare you away from the solution altogether).

Anyway - we ended up changing the template quite a bit. You can change most of the layout of the page from the control panel (where things show up, when they show, etc.) and you can change fonts, colors, and other elements from the style sheet. We now have a custom header in place, and have changed most of the colors.

The most time consuming part of this project was getting the photos of the jewelry. We went through a couple of fits and starts, and once we did finally get the images, we did spend some time doing some extra editing. Then you have to upload the images, put all the products info in, etc. Zen Cart handles this all pretty well - but it does take time when you create 50 new items.

So the site is now live, but we have yet to do any promotion. Depending on what the client wants to spend we will take some time to submit the URL to search engines, make some blog posts about it, and look for directories and other places where it is appropriate to list it. On their end they need to figure out who is going to be in charge of filling the orders!

This project came in at about $5,000 US. That included registering the domain and finding the host, installing the shopping cart, designing the cart and site, inventory upload, and PayPal integration. If you need an on-line shopping solution, give us a shout.

They have a pretty cool page strength tool that every webmaster should probably check out from time to time. They use a proprietary blend of factors from publicly available sources (Yahoo!, Google, Alexa, etc.) to come up with an overall "Page Strength" score that shows you how "strong" your site is on the web.

My advice is always to never do anything "black hat" - it just isn't worth it. If your business plan/model doesn't allow some time for natural search engine growth, and a marketing budget to get off the ground, then you probably need to rework it. I will be writing more soon with some specifics on what you can do to help a new site get found.

There is a lot of good video to look at and some real meat and potatoes stuff for webmasters and marketers.

$100 Million Payday For Feedburner - This Deal Is Confirmed

Rumors about Google acquiring RSS management company Feedburner from last week, started by ex-TechCrunch UK editor Sam Sethi, are accurate and are now confirmed according to a source close to the deal. Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.