GDS Computer Services

PC Screen Capture

Bob — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:12:47 +0000

Sometimes you may want to grab an image that is on your computer screen. Like in a .pdf file or part of a web page. Maybe details or instructions. Do it using a “screen capture”. Hitting ” Alt – Print Screen ” will copy your active window to your clip board. Then open your favorite graphics editor, or MS Paint, and start a new document, pasting your copied screen image into it. Now you can crop out and save any piece of the image you want to keep.

Simple and very useful.

Artisteer 2.5 still preliminary

Bob — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 03:28:20 +0000

Artisteer 2.5 is still a preliminary release and does contain some bugs and glitches. If you decide to try it remember just that. Check out the Artisteer Forum to see the types of problems still to be worked out. If you want a very stable version get the latest 2.4 release and you can create your templates with confidence and ease. If you purchase version 2.4 you will be able to upgrade later or like me you can load both versions on your computer and play with 2.5 all you want. To install both versions you say no to deleting the previous version and then change the directory name that you install too. This way you can run the stable version and experiment with the new one.

Artisteer 2.5 New Features

Bob — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:08:14 +0000

A new version of Artisteer is almost ready for release. This new version adds many new features and support for WordPress 3.0. Also with the 3.0 menu support you now have the ability to add widgets to the footer or above and below the article block. So you can add text boxes and custom menus everywhere. There is a preliminary release version available for download that we are playing with now and it seems very stable. Artisteer is the only way to go if you want to quickly and easily create your own blog templates and web page designs. As a developer we use Artisteer because we know we get a stable design to start with before we go and add other features and functionality. If you haven’t checked out what Artisteer can do for you click the banner below.

New Free WordPress Theme

Bob — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:43:03 +0000

My Guitar Blog Theme

Here’s another theme you are welcome to use for your guitar blog, performer site or even a personal site. It features a verticle page menu and a hoizontal menu bar for categories. Dark in design but very readable. Widget ready and an editable footer for link and text of your own.

Download Guitar Blog 10 (46) Now!

This and other music WordPress Themes available on our
Free Music Themes Page…

WordPress 3.0 is here!

Bob — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 19:05:25 +0000

On Thursday, June 17th, the WordPress camp released the new version 3.0 to the world. New enhancements and features make it the latest and greatest. This is an official release and you can upgrade through your dashboard or download the latest version and upgrade yourself.

http://wordpress.org/development/2010/06/thelonious/

Click the article title for the video….

Is WordPress 3.0 ready?

Bob — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:15:55 +0000

The folks at WordPress have released version 3.0 RC1. This means they are one step closer to an official release of the newest version. 3.0 has some new features that people have been asking for and it all looks good. We are already running it on our other website www.gdscomp.net and have had no problems. So get ready cause here it comes!

Here’s the official word…

http://wordpress.org/development/2010/05/wordpress-3-0-release-candidate/

Free WordPress Website 2 Theme

Bob — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:38:37 +0000

A New Theme created with Artisteer 2.4 with a couple added features!

This is a more Page Oriented Theme with a verticle menu to show your Pages. The menu expands when clicked to show sub pages.

The Date is built in to the top of the sidebar.

I have also included support for the Breadcrumb Navigation Plugin to show a page trail at the top of Pages. The plugin is included in the archive and needs to be uploaded to your plugins folder.

Nice professional look with tan and orange colors.

Footer is editable from the dashboard and you can add your own text and links.

If your looking to build a website for your business, club or association this theme will give you a nice looking and easy to navigate site.

Download WordPress Website 2 (45)

WordPress 3.0 beta 2

Bob — Sat, 08 May 2010 15:31:21 +0000

WordPress 3.0 Coming Soon!

We are getting closer to a new official WordPress 3.0. The second beta version is now available for anyone that likes to stay on the cutting edge.

Lots of new features coming including customizable menus and the merge with WordPress MU. You can always read more about it at www.wordpress.org!

Limiting Spider Access with robots.txt

Bob — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 05:54:35 +0000

Spider or crawler robots that access your website are using your bandwidth. Just like the real visitors that browse your site.

So, in the case of WordPress, they are also causing php calls to be made increasing your site’s CPU load and memory use. This is all normal except when you see certain bots hitting your site a few hundred times a day. In this case you may need to deny them access using your robots.txt file. Hopefully they will follow the rules and leave you alone. If they don’t you may need to ban them by IP address. Try your robots.txt file first though and see what happens. It usually works.

Here’s an example of a robots.txt file disallowing access to a crawler. Your robots.txt file should be in your website’s root directory and it is just a text file with something similar to the following.

#this one blocks all from the cgi-bin folder
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

#this one blocks MJ12bot from all folders
User-agent: MJ12bot
Disallow: /

#this one blocks Yandex
User-agent: Yandex
Disallow: /

# This one keeps all robots out.
# User-agent: *
# Disallow: /

If you have a WordPress site, using a plugin like StatPress Reloaded will give you a list of spiders that are visiting your site and you can see how often they are crawling and what impact they have.

Solid State Hard Drives

Bob — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 18:28:04 +0000

Hard drives have come a long way. New Hard Drives won’t be drives at all but big blocks of memory that will replace your mechanical hard drive all together. Mechanical Hard Drives eventually fail. Why? Because they are mechanical. They have a motor, moving heads, and spinning platters. The new devices won’t have any moving parts and kept from over heating should last a long, long time. Prices right now are a little high but soon this will be the standard type of device used in computers to store your data and files and prices will come down. Click the banner below and see what Tiger Direct has to offer you and learn more about available Solid State Hard Drives.

Free WordPress Website Theme

Bob — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:35:51 +0000

Website 5

This is a theme created with the new Artisteer 2.4 Theme Creator. Complete with the new features released with this version like a verticle menu in the sidebar, horizontal Category menu bar, and a little flash in the header. It would make a nice business site or club website. Widget ready. Customizable footer. Plus we’ve added a full width page template. Feel free to download and use as you wish. Help and customization IS available if you need it. Just use the Contact Us menu tab.

Available for download HERE!!

New Version – WordPress 3.0

Bob — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:56:55 +0000

A new WordPress 3.0 beta has been released for download. So it looks like a new official version 3.0 is on it’s way. The beta version that is out is really only for testing purposes and is not something you should jump into. If your into making backups and database backups and familiar with restoring things back a few steps then give it a try but I would wait for the official release before upgrading especially since this is a first release beta that probably has some glitches.

Read more about WordPress 3.0 at wordpress.org

Your site on the iPad

Bob — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:47:21 +0000

The iPad is here!

Wonder what your website or blog will look like on the new iPad?

You can check it out here at ipadpeek.com .

We picked this info up from weblogtoolscollection.com by Mark Ghosh, who tells us lots of useful and informative things about WordPress. Thanks Mark!!

Artisteer 2.4 Official Release

Bob — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:35:24 +0000

Artisteer has officially released version 2.4 and it includes some great new features.

Some new features in 2.4 include:

Vertical Menu support
Flash effects in the header
Sidebar design/skinning
Color picker in color selection dialogs

Artisteer is a fantastic program that lets you create very nice website templates, WordPress Themes and more! If you are into web design or creating your own themes and templates for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other CMS/ Blog systems, you should check into it.

WordPress Static Home Page

Bob — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:17:07 +0000

We get a lot of questions about using a static homepage with a WordPress Website. Here’s all you have to do. First make a page called Home or Welcome. Insert the content you want into your page, pictures, whatever you want. Then save it or publish it. Next create another page called Blog or News and save that also. Now go to the Settings section of your WordPress Dashboard and click on Reading.

There you will find an area labeled “Front page displays”. Select “A Static Page” and then using the drop down selections choose Home or Welcome as your Home Page and Blog or News as your Posts Page. Now your Home Page will be the static page you chose rather than the blog. Your blog will now come up as your newly saved Blog or News page. You now have a static Home page that people will land on when going to your domain and you still have the ability to post news and announcements or a blog.

You can take it even farther by creating a slide show at the top of your page which will give your new home page a more custom look. A simple way to do this is to install the NexGen Gallery plugin along with the NexGen Smooth Gallery plugin. Create a gallery of photos or graphics in the NexGen Gallery and then use the Smooth gallery to display them at the top of your home page. Here’s an example.

You can even go farther with a custom page template and even add something like the Featured Content Gallery plugin that will also give you a slide show but it’s images are linked to specific posts or a category.

WordPress is NOT just Blog Software it is a website engine with many built in features and even more add on features. It can be used for many different type of websites. We would be glad to help you with yours. Contact Us!