Web Design Discussion

It’s a fact that people and companies that set goals are more successful than those that don’t set them. You probably know the phrase: “you’ll fail if you fail to plan.” You achieve happiness and fulfillment when you make and accomplish your goals.

Michal Phelps (Olympic Gold Medalist for Swimming) often says the only way he attained his success was by believing in what he could achieve then working towards it by setting specific goals.

What are S.M.A.R.T. Goals?

These are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results Oriented, and Time Specified.

Specific – your goals should be focused not broad and ambiguous. Eg I want to double my income this year.

Measurable – you should be able to see the steps needed to achieve your goal. e.g. I want to earn 120,000 by the end of the year.

Achievable – only set goals that you know and believe you can achieve. It should be challenging enough to motivate you but not so difficult that you’ll lose motivation.

Results Oriented – your goal should focus on the results not on the activity to get there. For example you can do a flurry of activities but not achieve the desired result.

Time Specified – create a deadline to achieve your goal. You can break them down into yearly, monthly, weekly and daily goals.

Here are some ideas for working towards the fulfillment of your goals:

• Visualize or meditate on your main goal by creating a clear picture of it in your mind. For example if your goal is to purchase your dream house, take a photo of it, place it on the wall above your computer, and visualize it in your mind each day before you start work. This will keep you focused on the big picture as you work on the small steps to get there.
• Have a clear purpose for achieving your goal. e.g. my dream house will be the place where my children or grandchildren will love to live or visit.
• Balance your goals. Create spiritual, family, business, health, financial, educational and social goals that harmonize with each other.
• Write down your goals. Keep them close to your computer so you can refer to them each day.
• Share your goals with your friends. This will help make you accountable to them.
• Focus on your goals several times a day. Ask yourself, “Is what I am doing right now helping me achieve one of my goals?” If the answer is no, stop what you are doing and do something that helps reach your goal.
• Reward yourself when you’ve completed one of your goals.
• Break down your large goals into smaller ones then write down the tasks you’ll accomplish each day that will move you towards attaining your small goals.
• Be disciplined. Sometimes you may not be inspired or motivated on the tasks for the day. In these times you need to discipline yourself to “just do it.” For example in martial arts you keep repeating the basic moves to perfect the advanced ones. Even if it gets boring you “just do it” knowing that you are moving towards mastering the advanced styles.
Creating goals and achieving them will guarantee to bring you continuous happiness and prosperity.

Make 2009 your best year ever!

Before setting goals for 2009 reflect on what you accomplished in 2008. This will help you move forward into next year with more confidence and clarity and prevent you from making the same mistakes.

Here are 10 questions to get started with your reflections:

1. Did you keep a deep sense of purpose for why you are making money with your online business? It’s not enough to just run a business for the purpose of making money…make it more specific. Such as buying a new house, creating a college fund, funding a trip overseas for the whole family, etc.
2. Did you keep focused on your purpose or did you sometimes lose sight of it?
3. Did you have specific goals for what you wanted to accomplish by the end of the year?
4. Did you write down daily, weekly, monthly goals that helped you move towards your end of the year goal?
5. Did you prioritize your daily tasks by working on the most important ones first or just worked on the easy ones first then procrastinated on the difficult ones?
6. Did you set deadlines for achieving your goals?
7. Did you reward yourself when you achieved your goals?
8. Did you balance your business goals with your spiritual, family, educational and social goals?
9. What things prevented you from achieving your goals ie procrastination, lack of focus, etc?
10. How many of goals did you accomplish and what action are you going to take to make next year more profitable?

How to create your mySQL database

Make sure you have already created a mySQL database within cpanel on your web host (preferably Linux) and make a note of your database details. They will be needed later on.

1. After uploading all your files to the server generated from phpformgenerator insert the address of the installation file ie http://www.domainname.com/form/install.php (this is assuming you have named the folder “forms”

2. A box will pop-up asking you to enter your database details ie
hostname: usually you enter localhost
user: enter user name for database
password: enter password used to create the database
database: enter database name

3.Click continue.

Your database should now be created. Test it by entering information in the form then submitting it. You data will be sent to you by email (if you checked email when creating the form) and also appear in a table (if you checked/named a table when creating the form).

How to view the data in your database

1. Login to your cpanel with user name and password
2. Click on the mySQL databases icon
3. Click on phpmyadmin (bottom of page)
4. Click the database shown on the left side of the page
5. Click “export” You will have the option to save your data as a PDF, Excel etc
6. Check excel as it displays your data in easy to read columns.

Note: You can also sort your data by clicking “Query” It can be listed in ascending or descending order.

Conclusion

Now you have no excuse to quickly and easily create forms and store the data in a database without learning html or php/mysql programming.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Maryland WebSite Design

Are you looking for an easy way to create forms and either submit the data to an email address, store it in a mySQL database or do both at the same time?

To do this go to phpformgenerator to create the form then select the delivery method ….database, email or file. Check database if you want to store your form records in a mySQL database.

Benefits of storing form data in a database

1. Quickly access and view your stored data
2. Ability to sort, search, filter, modify, add and delete information.
3. No need to know html or have php/mysql programming
4. Easily convert form data to database

Requirements:

*Free form generator
*Web Hosting for your web site and form files
*mySQL database (you will need to install mySQL database from your cpanel)

How to easily create your html form

1. Visit http://phpformgen.sourceforge.net/new_demo/phpformgen/ to create a new form
2. Make sure you check the database option for the delivery method
3. Save the zipped file to your computer.
4. Unzip the file. The file will be named “tmp”. Within this folder will be another folder named “persistent” then another within this one named “form67838” Within this folder will be the files:

style
processor
monofont
install
confirm
CaptchaSecurityImages
imgs
files
calendar

5. Change the name of the form67838 folder to something else ie “form”
6. Upload this folder to the server that contains your web site files.

My next post will discuss how to create your database

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Maryland WebSite Design

Recently a friend asked how to add your videos to his Joomla web site:

Here are a few ways to add videos:

1. Embed your video

Go to YouTube.com, select your video then copy and paste the embed code (top right) into your page content. The video will play on your Joomla web site using the bandwidth from YouTube.

2. Host video on your own web site

This benefits of doing this is that you don’t have to rely on YouTube (or any other video sharing site to host your videos) and you keep all the visitors on your page without getting distracted by all the other videos and ads that YouTube dishes up. You also don’t need to fear your video will disappear if YouTube closes down or withdraws its videos.

How to host videos on your own Joomla web site:

*Download the mgmedia2 component and bot for Joomla from http://www.needful.de/mgmediabot-demo/
(mgMediaBot displays various multimediafiles in your content)

*Make sure you publish mgmediabot

*Download video from youtube to computer (visit http://www.savevideodownload.com/download.php to learn how to do this)

*Upload video to your media manager and place it inside this folder: images/stories/video using Joomla Explorer component

*Add this line to your page content…

{mgmediabot2}path=images/stories/videos/videodatei.wmv|width=300|height=300{/mgmediabot2}

Replace videodatei.wmv with your own video file.
(PLEASE ensure that no html tags are in this line, this could have some funny side effects)

*Save page

*Preview page to test if video is playing correctly(check with Internet Explorer and Firefox..you may have to download a plugin to view some video files)

**Media files supported (video) rm, rv, wmv, mpg, avi, mov, mp4, flv, swf, (audio) ra, ram, wma, mp3

Notes:

For a popup link:
{mgmediabot2}images/stories/videos/videodatei.wmv|true(Click here to play)|300|300{/mgmediabot2}

Parameters:
{mgmediabot2}[1]|[2]|[3]|[4]{/mgmediabot2}
1. your media file, supported for now (video) rm, rv, wmv, mpg, avi, mov, mp4, flv, swf, (audio) ra, ram, wma, mp3, you can use absolute, relative and full URLs, if you use a subfolder for your joomla Installation and like to display the media inline you have to use only relative or full URLs
2. false for displaying inline, true(Link title) for displaying a link with “Link title” as linktext to popup
3. width of displayarea/popup
4. height of displayarea/popup

MP3: for using multiple mp3s you can enter them like this: file1.mp3;file2.mp3;….

I took a 2 week break from blogging to visit my relatives in New Zealand while enjoying the warm weather and sea breezes…it’s summer there. I also took time to go swimming in the warm sea every day and hiked lots of trails through the sub tropical forests.

Even though I took my laptop I didn’t open it once the whole time because I could check email from my brothers and sisters dial up connections or visit the local internet cafe. When I did finally need to use my laptop it didn’t work because NZ uses a 240 volt plug and the transformer I bought didn’t convert the current correctly.

Take a break from your business

I’ve run my web design business almost non-stop for the last 8 years (except for a week off in the summer). Taking a 2 week break to enjoy nature and not have the pressure of work, I slept more, ate more, relaxed more, exercised more, conversed more than any normal day of work.

My only regret

It was great to experience all the beauty individually or sometimes with a relative (when I could persuade them to come hiking with me) however it would be more rewarding to experience it with the whole family or even one of my kids.

Plan your break

Nothing gets done without making a plan. I planned when to go, what to bring, the most cost efficient way to get there, and how much to spend. My purpose was not only to visit relatives and attend a nieces wedding but to take a much needed vacation by charging my batteries for another year. Since New Zealand is a sportsman’s paradise I made sure I swam in the ocean each day and hiked the lush green forests.

Take a look at the vacation photos below to see one of God’s most beautiful countries.