I’ve been working on a few different web sites for work the last 30 days and I’ve been doing a lot of the development in WordPress using the Thesis 1.7 theme.  I hit full on panic mode tonight when I was trying to tweak a custom function and added some bad pieces of code unknowingly to the theme footer.  I clicked on my “Big Ass Save Button” (of which I have renamed to a little bit classier version) and went to check on my site and poof! EVERYTHING on the site went blank.  I started breathing into a paper bag as I could not even login to the WordPress backend, like I said EVERYTHING was blank and nothing would load.  O….M….G….

So, if this happens to you, here is how you fix it:

1) Login to your host (cPanel) backend and re-name your Thesis file.  You can find it in your File Manager by clicking on Public HTML > wp-content > themes.

2) Select “Thesis_17″ and rename the file.  I just added four random numbers behind the 17.  This will cause WordPress to reset your site to the default theme allowing you to be able to log back in and getting rid of the kiss of death blank site screens.

3) Once you are logged into the WordPress backend.  Click on “Appearance” > “Editor” on the left hand side of the admin screen.

4) In the top right hand corner, select “Thesis” from the drop down box under “select theme to edit”

5) Click on “custom_functions php” in the right hand column.

6) Find the botched/bad code in the editor window and delete it.

7) Click “Update File” at the bottom.

Repeat step 1 above, except this time change your Thesis file name back to the original “Thesis_17″.  Meaning, erase the random numbers you added.

9) You’re almost done… Now go back to “Appearance” > “Themes” and activate your Thesis 1.7 Theme.

10) And now you’re done. Yay!!

I must tell you though, I had help getting to this point by perusing the WordPress support forums on this issue and also by reading this site.

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I got to know some great people while in Fayetteville this past weekend.  First, I got to know a fellow #sgftwitterchick, Jenny.  Jenny with a famous phone number.  We had an easy two hour drive across the border and there were no GPS errors like my previous Wordcamp road trip.  Then I met a kindred spirit, an evolved mommy who was absolutely hysterical.  And when I say kindred, I don’t mean in the mommy type way, but in the type 1 way as she told me a heart-wrenching story about how type 1 diabetes affected her life with someone she loved.  In addition to these fun, witty women, I also met Q-tip and his creative friend who let me in on their Google Wave for live blogging the event.  (Q-tip is not what you think, it is an alternative name I gave him to not use his real name on this blog. It is meant in the sincerest form of respect.) I’ve embedded the Wave if you want to read the collaborative group effort conference notes.

But only read it if you’re a nerd like me.

I like to pride myself on having a sense of direction. I have a good idea on which way is North, East, South and West just like I know you should Never Eat Soggy Waffles.  Last week I traveled to Nashville, TN for a two day conference for Real Estate Barcamp Nashville (#REBCNASH) and Wordcamp Nashville. (#WCNASH).  Nashville is approximately an 8 hour drive almost directly east of Springfield, MO.  So if you travel on Highway 60 east of Springfield, you cross the great state of Missouri, go through a hodge-podge of small Kentucky towns, you’ll end up in the beautiful city dubbed the country music capitol of the world.  Not too hard, three states and just a couple of highway changes.

On a side note, the “camps” were amazing and worth the trip.  As expected out of an REBarcamp, I gained lots of knowledge and new ideas from my fellow colleagues in the real estate field.  And Wordcamp was a whole new thing for me where I could camp out (in a wi-fi enabled, air conditioned room) with fellow tech nerds who love the WordPress platform.  Holla!

I was lucky to have a friend come with me and we chose to the make the long trek back to Springfield after the closing sessions.  We left Nashville at approximately 5:00pm which put us crossing the Missouri State border and the dead simple, westward 4 lane highway back to Springfield around 9:00 pm.  It was dark and quiet highway and that is where I lost my beloved sense of direction (I can only guess).

Somewhere I decided to take an exit and drove 26 miles out of my way.  I didn’t realize it until I saw a sign that said “Welcome to Arkansas!” I yelped (not socially as in “Yelp!ed”, but as if I had been a kitty with my tail stepped on).  I looked at my friend and we both gasped “how the heck did we end up in Arkansas?!”  I guess I got sidetracked and lost my sense of direction.  The only way back to the right highway was to go back the 26 miles.  I think I made that 26 mile trek back in about 12 minutes because I was so mad at myself.

Go ahead and laugh.  But you can’t say that you’ve been in four states within 8 hours.  I’m now registering for Wordcamp Fayetteville.

Yeah...I'm not supposed to be here.

QR Codes are barcodes generated for use in all sorts of things such as print, billboards, signs and even business cards.  Anything that you can print or post to, you can place a QR code on.  QR stands for “quick response” and they are to be used on-the-go with your mobile phone.  The idea is to scan the code using an app on your phone and instantly receive information about the product.  That information may be a phone number, a clickable web site, contact information that immediately adds to your address book, or a calendar event that automatically posts to your calendar.

So imagine driving by a real estate listing (or in my company’s case, a rental property) and you see a sign in the yard.  Now you want to know how much the house is listed for, but you don’t really want to call the agent.  However, the agent is tech savvy enough to place a QR Code on the sign or rider and you can scan it on your mobile phone as you drive by.  Wah-la you have all the information about the listing delivered instantly to your phone.  See! You will start to love QR Codes too.

I downloaded the QuickMark app for my iPhone from the App Store thanks to the suggestion of a friend.  It cost me 99 cents and so far I have been somewhat pleased with the purchase.  Granted, I’ve only been creating my own QR Codes and scanning them to test it out.  (I know, I’m a little bit of a nerd.)

It will be interesting to see where this goes and how we will use it, afterall it intrigued me enough to buy the shoes mentioned above.

Remember, I’m still a newb at this.  Got any suggestions for me?

Go ahead, give it a scan.

I’ve been learning to code in Objective-C in order to get the Dizmang Properties GetPaul iPhone app launched. It will be a very minimal app but will have the ability to pull our available rentals if you’re in the market for one. However it’s more of a project goal for me as I love to learn new things.  It’s been a pretty interesting ride thus far.  I started this in late December and really thought that I could have it done by February 1st.  But considering that February 1st is tomorrow, I don’t think I’m going to hit my anticipated deadline.  I guess I didn’t take into account all the other stuff I have to do for work, such as 2009 year end reports for all of our Investors, closing out the year, taxes, and a whole load of other stuff.  I sorely misjudged my time commitment.  Oh well, it will be finished when it is finished.

Our app will be a free app.  The goal of it (besides my self satisfaction of accomplishing and completing a new project) will be to keep our available rental properties rented.  Three months ago we had 40 vacant rental properties (out of the 200+ that we manage) and that hurt us big time. Today we are down to only 9 vacancies, which puts us and our Investors in a much better position.  It feels good to finally get property rented.

Things you need to know about programming an iPhone app:

1)  You have to use the Apple SDK (software development kit) that uses Cocoa frameworks and the programming language is called Objective-C.

2) You must use a Mac to develop the iPhone application.  And yes, it looks pretty sweet on my new 27″ 1TB iMac.

3) It takes approximately two months to develop a good app.  Unless you are pressed for time because of other commitments (see mine above), then you just need to take your time and it’s done when it’s done.

4) The Apple SDK download is free, but you must pay $99 to Apple to submit your app to the App Store when it is ready. I’ll let you know once I get to this point.

5) There is a weird feeling of accomplishment when you finally see the app coming together in the simulator (see pic below).

Of course there is way more to it than what I’ve described here, but I felt that I needed to share with you what I was working on.  I’ll keep you posted along the way.  Maybe I should focus on just updating the Dizmang Properties web site.  That thing sucks.  I’m just saying.  (Yes, I am also the developer of that outdated piece).

Blogging can be very effective, especially for the real estate professional that is on a tight budget.  You see, search engines constantly scrape the interwebz for fresh content.  Blogs offer this constant fresh content (that is if you update often) to these crawling search engines.  The more you blog, the more the search engines recognize you and push your content and your name to the top of their search engine ranks.

I didn’t realize this until business started increasing for my company back in 2006, shortly after we began blogging.  Most of the calls that we were getting were coming form the internet.  People had read my blog and Paul’s blog and watched our videos too.  So I randomly Googled the term “property management springfield, mo” and was shocked when I saw that Dizmang Properties was listed on the first page.  And, we hadn’t paid any kind of SEO expert a dime to get there!  When I started looking at some of the stats, I then realized that it was our blogging that got us there.

So…here’s to blogging.  And hopefully it’s a good inspiration and motivation to keep up with my own blogging.

At first it was cliche or kitschy.  Now it is just annoying and in my opinion, arrogant.

So what makes one a guru?  According to Wikipedia, it would be someone who is considered of great knowledge.

However, just because you put the word “guru” on your Twitter profile doesn’t make you one.  Guru of what?  Or is it, just because you say you are, then you are.

I don’t know where this post is going, the word guru just happens to be harshing my mellow right now.  It ranks right up there with “life coach”.

After all, when you Google “what is a guru?” you get all sorts of web definitions that go along the lines of “God,” “Spiritual Master,” and some sort of obsessed yoga instructor.  It has nothing to do with some sort of real estate fanatic on Twitter with 248 followers, following 2,401 and 49 updates.  Stats like that do not make you a Twitter or social media guru.  And I’m not the only one who thinks this.

I’m just ranting.

To re-cap, The Donald and I have been selected to present our “8 Effortless Tips To Tackling Rental Property Management” seminar by the National Association of REALTORS® at the national conference and expo in San Diego, CA this November.  I am so excited about it as I have attended the national convention every year since 2001 and always find it to be inspiring.

Back to the video thing, the conference is offering all presenters the opportunity to post a two minute video about their session.  There are some pretty tight guidelines, understandably so, as they want the videos to project a professional image of the REALTOR® brand.  We submitted ours last week, and they have sent our video back.  I guess we weren’t very clear in delivering our “speaker’s tip” to entice people to attend our session.  They also said something about nail polish, but I lose track of the details.

Nonetheless, it’s back to the drawing board and I have been re-scripting the video and we are hoping to shoot it this week and upload the revised product.  I’m still hammering out details, but the tip that we will share is about using the power of Web 2.0 to advertise your available properties for free.  You know the drill, Google Base, Postlets, Craigslist just to name a few of my favorites.  Where I really need help is using some sort of creative, yet professional, way to deliver the goods.  Any suggestions?

Download the application to your Mac (or PC).  Book mark the web site for easy login.  Install the Firefox add-on.  Follow Evernote on Twitter.  And finally, download the precious app to your Blackberry.  Now your whole world can come together into one single vehicle as all of those things sync together seamlessly.  In my job, we are constantly taking photos, voice notes, web site links and files while on the go.  The Blackberry app makes it all go back to my computer so that I don’t have to bluetooth, micro SD card read or listen to myself as I transcript my own voice recordings.  It’s all right there!

Believe me…transcribing my own voice notes is worse than an enduring another boring blog post like this one.

Being a devoted Firefox user, I got all excited about the recent news of  the new “Prism” add-on.  However, my excitement quickly faded over Prism once I discovered “Fluid.”  The big difference between these two apps is that Prism is universal (Mac or PC) and Fluid is Mac only.  And in my opinion, Fluid is much prettier.

What they are:

• A slick application designed to create Site Specific Browsers (SSBs).

What they do:

• Turns your favorite web pages into a desktop app that can be run completely separately outside of your internet browser.
• When launched it provides a tiny little window for you to enter your favorite web site URL, your preferred icon and then creates the self sustained application.  Also known as a SSB.

Why you would want them:

• If you’re obsessively checking your Facebook, constantly uploading images to Flickr, watching Hulu or YouTube on your computer often, or even Twittering several times throughout the day, then Fluid and/or Prism will solve the irritating problem of having to your internet browser and having numerous tabs open all at once just to check these sites.
• It will give you the ability to hide certain things.  If you’re an idiot who visits a specific porn site at work each day, then you can “hide” it by giving it a work icon and labeling it “TPS reports.”  Not my cup o’ tea, but it was the best reason I could come up with for hiding something.
• Did I mention that the icons for Fluid are pretty and make your Mac dock look all shiny?

Photo Credit: http://www.fluidapp.com/

How do I get started?

• Down load the Prism app or the Fluid app to your machine.
• Follow the instructions from there.  The programs are pretty self explanatory.

How do I find the pretty icons to use?

• You will have the option of using the web site’s favicon.  You know that little graphic just to the left of the web site URL address at the top of your screen?  If you choose this option, you will be at the mercy of the web designer.
• Your other option is to pick your own icon.  This is where it gets serious for you designer types.  If you’re not a designer fluent in Adobe products, then just Google the term “Fluid App Icons” and you will find all sorts of sites and blogs that have these icons.  Some icons are pretty, some are not.  One of my favorite icon designers is Chris Ivarson.  In my opinion, his icons are well polished and look nice.  Or you can search the Flickr Pool of these Fluid icons and download them from there.