Website Designers and Webmasters

This is a question I’ve been asking for a few years.

Recently, I’ve heard a lot about WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, but it’s practically impossible to find someone who knows all three and is unbiased enough to tell you the pros and cons of each.

Through Montana Programmers, I’ve been able to find a very unbiased Polson Website Developer who has been an excellent resource for asking all sorts of random questions. Although he knows more programming languages than I have fingers and toes, he hasn’t spent years of time testing out CMS’s.

As you can tell, it’s pretty hard to find a unbiased website developer who knows a lot about many of the Content Management Systems, who could give me a good comparison of the Pro’s and Con’s of each. There are a few problems here:
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It has been a crazy year so far, and we barely finished the first quarter. Websites in a Flash has been keeping me very busy, so I have been neglecting all of my blogs.

But at least I do have something to show those who ask “What has Ashton Sanders been up to?” This blog is the first unavailing of the new Websites in a Flash logo and website design branding. It’s been a long process, and it turns out: Ashton Sanders is the pickiest client I’ve ever had to deal with.

They say the cobbler’s children go without shoes, and that has really happened with Websites in a Flash. It has been years since I was able to update it. (Some of the spacing is even mixed up on the Website Clients in Internet Explorer 7.0… that’ll give you an idea of how long it’s been.)

Other things to note: I have joined a group called Montana Programmers which has quickly grown to 12+ “extreme programmers” (of all skill levels). We have monthly meetings where we can connect with and share ideas with other website programmers in the area. I’ve been working on websites for 4 years in Polson Montana, but only knew of 2 other website developers in the area.

Tomorrow will be the second meeting I will attend and will be doing a 45 minute “brain dump” (seminar) on CSS. I’ll be covering the very basics and some more advanced items.

That seems to be a good update for now. I plan to finish the new website design for Websites in a Flash, and then will be back to routine updates on this blog!

Enjoy,
Ashton Sanders

(P.S. I’ve got a great new project in the works for those looking to learn everything there is to know about CSS!)

Ah ha! I have finally won something! Last month, Dell had a silly crossword-type game where once a day you can get entered into a drawing for some large prizes, and every time you enter, you also get a chance to win instant prizes. I’ve never won anything and didn’t think I would win something, but there’s always a small chance.

And Voila! I won a computer mouse! Yea, I know, it’s just a mouse, and I thought it was going to end up being one of those crappy, corded dell mouses (mice?) that you get when you buy a desktop from them.

Then today, I got a suspiciously marked package…

It took me a couple seconds to find the “Dell” and then figure out it was my long awaited prize!

Logitech has always been a big favorite of mine, ever since my Logitech mouse died after 2 years, and they replaced it for free. And this mouse is just as awesome as I’d expect from Logitech!

Here’s a picture of the mouse:

This is a compact wireless laser mouse. As you can see it’s red, but the coolest part about it is that small little black/silver thing in the plastic. That is a USB wireless adapter to connect a computer to the mouse wirelessly. The reason that is so cool is because the USB plug is 3 times as large as the actual adapter.

I gave this sweet mouse to my wife as a late Valentines Day Present, she plugged the USB adapter into her computer, turned on her mouse and it worked perfectly. Plug-n-Play for the win!

If only Logitech had an affiliate program, I’d never stop raving about them
-Ashton Sanders

I’m a big music buff, and I almost always have music playing on my computer. I really need an iPod… I know, I’m kind of ashamed for not having one yet, but I’m always on my computer so I haven’t really needed an iPod.

I’ve recently run across a number of advertisements for iPod Docking stations that have an HD Radio. This brought me to this Jensen JiMS 525i HD Radio iPod Docking Port. It’s a little expensive for my tastes, but it looks cool. The image they have on that page has a iPhone in the iPod port, so I’m assuming that the docking station will accept either iPods or iPhones. I didn’t realize there were so many HD digital radio stations out there, but you can find all of the digital radio stations in your area by going to new music stations.

Probably the coolest thing I’ve seen is the iTunes Tagging. It looks like what happens is while you’re listening to music on a HD radio station (on this receiver) if you happen upon a song you want to download, keep or get the info for, you can click the “tag” button on the receiver and it will save the song’s information in a play list on your iPod. The next time you connect your iPod to your computer (iTunes), you’ll be able to download all of the songs you tagged.

Of course you’ll have to pay for them.
-Ashton

Well it has been a year since my first post here on Website Design in a Flash, and this will be my 104th post!

This was my first blog that really got me started in the world of blogging, and I have learned a lot. I hope that I can continue to provide useful information for people working to tame the Internet. My posting frequency has slowed down over the last couple months, but I will try to pick it up again.

Here’s to another year of Website Design Tips and Tricks!
-Ashton Sanders