DISQUS

I think WordPress is an excellent blogging platform, but also use ExpressionEngine and other software when appropriate. Most of my blogs run WordPress. I'm a geek, so I can hack them to my heart's content.

But almost 100% of our client websites including blogs, marketing sites and content sites, all run Expression Engine. It's very easy to use, has excellent support, and is so simple to customize that our designers can just cut up a layout into HTML/CSS and skin a site. There is no need to ever see PHP, write a query or FTP a file.

I think there are excellent free and paid blogging and CMS solutions available. They all have different features and appeal to people with different technical capabilities. Use whatever is a good fit for you.

That said, $100 or $200 for a good software package is not a big expense. Add that to $50/year for hosting and $8 for a domain and it's still cheap enough that just about anyone could start a blog. If $100 is going to break the bank, use a hosted service like wordpress.com or Blogger.

I completely agree. I am personally not a huge fan of Loren's comedy, but respect it. When I watched the video, I wasn't laughing, but I didn't think he was a racist for one second.

I actually think it's a little sad that Loren and this video got so much publicity, enough for Verizon to pull him from the network, when REAL racism and discrimination still abound. Aren't there more important things going on than a short parody video somebody dug up from a year ago?

IT'S ABOUT TIME! Where do you get off, thinking you can take a vacation and leave some incompetent failure in your place?

Hey, pretty soon you'll be getting 'ole Bill to post for you too. After all, he's unemployed now.

I just wanted to follow-up my last post with an article supporting the high school graduation rates in metro cities:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,344190,00.html

Im not going to argue with you on the Iraq issue... but on the other two I'll offer a rebuttal.

Waiting in line 2 hours isn't bad. Right now if I go to the emergency room I'll probably wait 5-6 hours to see a doctor. If I had a gaping wound I'd still probably wait 2 hours, as long as I could stay conscious. It's when something goes really wrong that you'll be in trouble. Having chest pains? Get on a three-month waiting list to see a cardiologist. Think you might have a tumor? You might have to wait half a year to get an MRI. With socialized health care there are only so many dollars to go around, so no matter what you do, you just can't speed up the process. Everyone has a budget, and you're just a number. Take a hard look at other countries' social health care plans and see how effective they are for people with LIFE THREATENING problems. I'm not worried about getting a common cold or a cut, I'm worried about getting cancer and dying before I can even get diagnosed.

Regarding education, I live in Georgia and we have the HOPE scholarship. It makes money off the lottery and sends anyone with a B average in high school to a public university for free, as long as they maintain a B average throughout their college education. I'm all in favor of creating a system where we reward those who are willing to do what it takes academically to receive a college education. I think you'd be surprised how many people just can't or don't want to cut it though. You can't take a kid that's a high-school drop out and throw him in college and expect him to survive. That wastes money and doesn't solve any problems, because he'll just end up where he started in the long run.

The better solution would be to FIX our primary and secondary education system first. There is a fundamental breakdown in how children are (or more importantly are NOT) being educated. The high school dropout rates have hit 50% in many metropolitan cities.

I think the first major hurdle against poverty is not a college education, but rather getting everyone* to graduate high school. Studies have shown that high school graduates make far more than dropouts... and it is above the poverty line.

Once we have a 95+% high school graduation rate and the public schools are teaching things like personal finances to young people, I think it's more feasible to look at a nation-wide program to help them get into college.

* There are people who just are not capable of completing a high school education. Whether we like to admit it or not these people are there, and we have to find a place for them in society. There ARE jobs for these people, and they can make a contribution to society, but we can't expect EVERYONE to be equal or be able to achieve the same goals academically or financially in life.

My suggestion would be to have all your email forward a copy to an online email service that has a good SPAM detection suite and then use your Blackberry to connect to that service and check email. It has its drawbacks, but works pretty well at eliminating spam. The only problem is messages you've already read on your PC will still download to your blackberry when you connect.

I personally have all my mail go through my own server and I have SpamAssassin configured. It's not the best spam filter, but it does get most of the bad spam, and when it downloads into my Mail.app I get the rest with junk mail filters.

I've got everything configured, including port 587 and am still not able to send.

Also, there may be some issues sending email from your own SMTP server, like recipient's mail server thinking you're sending SPAM.

I'll keep tinkering with it, but I think it might be easier just to set my web server to a different port.

That's cool - does it go out on port 25? Most ISP's that want you to use their outgoing servers block port 25. Would having your mac act as a server get around that?

I'm going to give this a try and see - I work from 3 different locations, all of which restrict SMTP mail to their own servers.

Thanks for the tip!

Just when I read that we were under a draught and couldn't water our lawns... must be Georgia govt's twisted sense of humor or something. I've got a lake in my back yard, why in the hell would I want to turn on a sprinkler?? LOL

Congrats on the impending move. My wife and I have seriously looked at moving to Virginia (from Georgia - around Atlanta) because it's so pretty up there. It would really upset a lot of our family though; most of them live here in the same town.

Anyway, hope the move goes well... make sure to post some photos of the move and new house on Flickr!

I guess you could consider me a "consultant" - I'm not that great of a programmer but am pretty much just an all around web developer. Design, programming, CSS, usability, e-commerce and business. I do it all.

I make a pretty nice living too. Between my own sites and businesses and consulting, we are able to keep the mortgage paid and food on the table. My wife is now a stay at home mom and it gets tough sometimes but it's going well.

As for just programmers, I have one programmer on staff and am looking for a few others (with proficiency in Ruby and Rails primarily). I think there is a lot of "freelance" work for good skilled programmers.

And about the "web 2.0" apps... there are a lot of unique ideas out there still. The problem is most people are looking at other services like MySpace and trying to come up with something similar. Solve a problem for yourself and chances are more people needed the problem solved too.