Notepad++ Compare Plugin

I wasn’t aware this plugin even existed for Notepad++!  This is awesome, I have been using another application altogether to compare side by side files for errors / changes while I code.  The cool thing is that it also works with all of the languages that Notepad++ supports and works with also.  My partner Greg and I both use Notepad++ for simple inline code editing, it’s fast and very clean.  My dream for the Notepad++ project is for them to throw a WYSWYG visual editor onto it (I would completely uninstall and burn my Frontpage / Expression DVD’s).

You can download this compare plugin on SOURCEFORGE. (click here)

Snowboarder Jumps Groomer!

Okay, I am pretty upset about not being able to head out to Keystone w/ my friends this year on our annual trip because my partner is going to be out of town the same week at a training event.  I have been so down in the dumps about it I have refrained from even following the snowfall this month in Colorado.  I was taking a "break.com" today and ran across this video of some dude almost colliding with one of those snow groomers and couldn’t resist posting it for all of my knucklehead friends who are still getting to go this next week.  (…This looks eerily similar to the trail on the way to our condo last year at Breckenridge, the same trail that I had to almost carry my friend Brian Vondette down!)


Snowboarder Jumps Over Groomer – Watch more free videos

I am not for sure who this person is but I have to say that the first person who entered my mind was BR Casilio!!  Last year he ended up coming home w/ some broken ribs and we came home with a memorable story of him coming down the hill on the sled behind a Ski Patrol snowmobile!  Priceless!  Go BR!!!

jQuery Javascript Library

I have known about this library for a little while now but haven’t ever really taken the time to get my mind around it.  My partner Greg and I were looking at some  projects today that were built using MODx and noticed some pretty cool behaviors on different pages.  We started looking a little deeper and found that it was jQuery.  In the past I have always used a WYSIWYG desktop program to build behaviors (often quite a few lines of unintelligible code) to get similar effects but even then the movements weren’t near as fluid and smooth as what I saw today.  I think that I am going to install this library on one of my test boxes and give it a test drive.

jQuery: The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library

Treadmill Ownage!

This is pretty funny if you can get past the girls giggling throughout the whole thing.  Keep your eyes on the girl in the white t-shirt standing behind the girl on the treadmill, it doesn’t end so well for her.


Treadmill Sick of Annoying Girl – Watch more free videos

Pleth Launches Web2.0 Church Website!

This is a copy of the press release published on Pleth’s corporate website regarding the recent launch of The Church Alive’s web2.0 website.

Pleth, LLC | Web Site Design, Managed Hosting, Email Hosting, Email ServicesCotton Rohrscheib, partner and co-founder of Pleth Networks, LLC, an Arkansas Based Web Design & Development Firm announced on Tuesday that his firm had launched a web2.0 redesign for The Church Alive in Conway, Arkansas.

"The Church Alive is my home church and my wife and I are very active in the ministry there, this project has been one of my pet projects this year," said Rohrscheib.  "I have communicated back and forth with the ministry staff at the church throughout this past year to pinpoint what our goals were going for this redesign project.  We also enlisted a group of web saavy church members to serve as our test group, we would bounce design revisions and functionality issues off of them during the development process to get their feedback.  We then went to work on putting together the finished product that is online today." added Rohrscheib.

The new Church Alive website features a lot of web2.0 capabilities such as an ajax driven online store and podcast feed.  In addition to web2.0 and social networking capabilities the church website also features the Trumba events calendar and staff blogs. 

"We have also taken some extra steps to improve on a few things we already had," said Rohrscheib.  "We streamlined the online giving process so that it starts on the church website and ends up flowing through PayPal’s secure online processors.  Our church bookstore is also a lot more user friendly than it was in the past, it used to be a seperate component on the website but now it all flows through the site fluidly." added Rohrscheib.

"One of the industry’s top buzzwords was in the back of my mind going into this project" said Rohrscheib.  "User generated content is a popular term, in the case of this project it’s my hope that it will be a platform for our church membership to interact with one another online through the various blogs and components."

The Church Alive website is also managed by an internal staff consisting of volunteers, media technicians, and staff pastors.  The new website also features some contributed content from a church member who has been compiling poetry for the past year.  The content management aspect of the new website is driven by the wordpress framework, an open sourced php/mysql framework that has been modified for ease of use and user level access.

"I am really excited about the launch of the new Church Alive Website and look forward to watching it grow.  We know from our past Google Analytics reports that the old website had an impressive global reach, hopefully this new build will pick up where the old site left off," added Rohrscheib.

To visit the new Church Alive website, please visit www.thechurchalive.org or click on the screenshot below:

Pleth Officially Launches NascarView.com

This is the official press release posted on Pleth’s corporate website regarding the launch of our newest online property, www.nascarview.com.

Pleth, LLC | Web Site Design, Managed Hosting, Email Hosting, Email ServicesCotton Rohrscheib, Partner and Co-Founder of Pleth Networks, an Arkansas Based Web Design & Managed Hosting Provider announced today that his firm had recently launched NascarView.com, a fan driven online community and news website for NASCAR fans.

"Nascar View is updated on a weekly basis with News, Information, and Commentary regarding that weeks racing highlights in all of the top NASCAR series.  The website follows the top series, the Sprint Cup Series (formerly the Winston and Nextel Cup Series) the closest but also makes mention of the other two series (Craftsman Truck and Nationwide Series) as well, said Rohrscheib.

"There are also a couple of sections on the website that we feel will be pretty popular among NASCAR fans.  One of these sections is the "Flying Helmets" section.  It’s widely known that NASCAR drivers have a tendency to let their emotions run high during and following a close race.  When these emotions run high sometimes helmets can be thrown and cars can be wrecked, that’s just the nature of the beast.  The flying helmets section will highlight these incidents and offer some behind the scenes information as well as flaming commentary that is destined to spawn user feedback" added Rohrscheib.

In addition to Race Reviews and Driver / Team News, the Nascar View website will also feature a NASCAR Collectibles blog that will showcase some of the most sought out NASCAR collectibles on the market.  Visitors the the Nascar View website also have the ability to sign up for email updates when the website is updated as well as subscriptions via RSS Feed.  A new Community Forum is also planned in the very near future as well as a Video Vault that will showcase some of NASCAR’s finest moments as well as high-impact crashes. 

"We are also in the process of putting together some driver interviews in the very near future" said Rohrscheib.  "I have been in talks with one driver in particular that is looking at running a partial season this year in the Cup Series and he has agreed to come on and be our first interview" said Rohrscheib.

Nascar View is an online property owned and operated entirely by Pleth Networks, LLC, an Arkansas Based Web Design & Managed Hosting Provider.

"This is the first online property that we have launched for ourselves.  We actually purchased this website a couple of years ago and are just now getting it ready to go live.  We are extremely excited about this website and look forward to watching it take off.  Currently we are seeking a team of Bloggers to offer their commentary and perspective as well, if anyone is interested please contact us by email to: corporate@pleth.com" added Rohrscheib.

The Nascar View website is also syndicated on various media websites around the web.  Any media outlet interested in syndicating the Nascar View website should contact Pleth Networks via email to: corporate@pleth.com.

SEO, URL’s, and Modx | Greg Smart

My partner Greg posted an entry on his blog the other day talking about SEO friendly URL’s and how MODx works to help you have an extremely search engine friendly website using .htaccess.  This is just one of the many upsides to using MODx PHP Framework, there are quite a few others that I am sure he and I will go into as we explore this framework a little deeper, here’s his post:

After looking over the SEOmoz article 11 Best Practices for URL’s I began thinking it might be beneficial to record my recent experiences with Modx. Particularly as it related to quick and easy creation of SEO friendly URL’s.

By utilizing the .htaccess file packaged with Modx to harness the power of Apache’s mod_rewrite engine, URL naming flexibility is within reach in minutes. All you have to do is uncomment the appropriate lines in the .htaccess file and upload it to the root directory of your install. The rest is just a matter of a few simple configuration tweaks inside of the CMS control panel.

Go to Tools->Configuration->Friendly URL’s and choose ‘Yes’. Also don’t forget to choose your appropriate suffix (.htm, .html, .php, etc.) that will be applied to all URL’s generated by the CMS.

Next within the document editor of any page within your site type the URL name within the ‘Document Alias’ field. This will be applied, along with the suffix, as the URL name.

That’s it, it’s that easy to create well formed, SEO friendly URL’s within a dynamic content management system. As I have been learning the ins and outs of Modx over the past few weeks I have found it is one of the more versatile tools I have come across as a developer. It is not a CMS for everyman due to it’s relative complexity, but it is just what the doctor ordered for a commercial developer in desperate need of a robust CMS system.

SEO, URL’s, and Modx | Greg Smart

Site Note: Issue w/ Comments! (update)

Just wanted to update this earlier post about the Comments being hosed up on my blog for the past month or so.  I honestly knew about the issue and just haven’t taken the time to run down the problem and fix it.  Turns out it was with the OpenID coding I was trying to get to work on here that hosed things up, I forgot to comment out some mods that I had made and that’s what was breaking!  It’s fixed now!  I am posting this to test the pingback feature to make sure it’s working correctly now.

The Cotton Club » Blog Archive » Site Note: Issue w/ Comments!

MODx PHP Application Framework.

I am a visual learner so whenever I have a new technology that I want to get up to speed on I usually turn to YouTube.  YouTube is not only the best place on the web to find off the wall videos of folks blowing things up in their backyards, it’s also a great resource for boring training videos!  I have used it quite extensively to get up to speed on various aspects of PHP and MYSQL programming in the past.  Since my partner Greg and I are digging into the MODx CMS pretty heavy I figured I would get on YouTube and see what’s out there, I was surprised, there’s quite a bit of stuff available, here’s a sampler:

If you are wanting to see all that YouTube has for MODx, click here…

MODx Content Management System

My partner Greg Smart and I have been evaluating the MODx CMS on a couple of our clients websites. So far we have really liked the framework. Greg has spent a considerable amount of time working with it, a lot more than I have but I plan on getting into it a little more this week. I am creating a category on my blog to discuss my findings related to MODx. If you have used MODx before or are curious about it, please don’t hesitate to jump in on the dialog with us…

MODx Content Management System | Home