Did you notice? ?  There is an orange heart in some of our Browser Page Titles. Why?

It is to remind us of a very dark time and horrific practices in very recent Canadian history. It is to remind us that every child matters, that in fact, every life matters. It is to remind us that there is no reason or justification  EVER to discriminate against one group of people based on their race or heritage. There is no justifiation for cultural genocide.

For those of us who may not know what happened between the years of 1894 and 1996... here is a brief overview:

The Canadian government funded a network of residential (boarding) schools exclusively for indigenous children aged 4-16 in most Canadian Provinces. The Catholic church and some other Christian churches were responsible for running  the schools and educating the children. Attendance was not voluntary.

Essentially, children were taken by force from their home, their parents, their families, their communities, their culture... their entire support system and dropped into a strict, authoritarian setting where they were then 're-educated'. This meant, they were forbidden from using their own language, even their given name, visiting their families, and everything that had had meaning in their familiar cultural upbringing was stripped away, all in an effort to assimilate them into the rest of Canadian society. 

Duncan Campbell Scott, a civil servant involved with Indian Affairs stated in 1920: “I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone. . . . Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.” 

Children subjected to residential schools were to have the 'indian' removed and to feel ashamed of their heritage. To make matters even worse, many were abused; physically, sexually, and emotionally. And many never made it out alive. They perished and were buried, often in unmarked graves. Over 6000, that we know of, thus far. They died from disease, abuse, and suicide.

So... the Orange Heart is to remind us that we (collectively) have an obligation to protect and advocate for every child. To remind us, that this must not EVER happen again. To remind us that just because an order is given or a bill is passed by our legistature, it is not to be accepted without questioning its purpose, its morals, its effects on our fellow men, women, and children; orders are never to be followed blindly, and none of us have the right to impose our beliefs, ideologies, or way of life on anyone else - ever. It is to remind us that we have a voice and we need to speak up when we KNOW that something is terribly wrong or, even when we are not sure but our gut feeling says so.

I was born, raised, and educated in Northern Germany. I did not learn about Indian Residential School until a few years ago, even though I have lived in Canada for over 30 years now. My country of birth has its own dark past. My heart aches for every child who became a pawn in the struggle for money, power, or politics. My heart aches for every parent who lost their child. My heart aches for every human who was or is at the receiving end of racicm, segregation, hatred, or who has suffered at the hands of others while those who bore witness just didn't care enough and looked the other way.

? I will not forget. I will not look the other way. 

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 14 December 2021

So, in conclusion... I kinda miss the old days. Designing a new website was more exciting back then. There weren't nearly as many rules and I somehow think that creativity has taken a bit of a back seat. I often find myself discarding a design idea, because it will be next to impossible to make it work on all platforms or devices. Then again, every now and then, I come up with something brilliant and that's still exciting

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 13 December 2021

Do you have some real characters among your clients? We sure do.

Too funny! I came across this blog post from 2009 while (finally!) updating and upgrading our site. I might as well update some of the content here:

1. Of our named clients below, Dan, Lori, and Stan, 2 have retired. The third is still very much an active client. (That's over 2 decades now).
2. I no longer complain about troublesome teenagers. Mine have long grown up. It's my grandkids now, who are approaching the dreaded teenage phase.
3. I still relay horse antics, often followed by "good thing, they don't fit on the BBQ".
4. We have moved offices THREE times in the past 20 years.
5. I am still incredibly grateful for every one of our clients. 

Here's the original post:

We've got the demanding sort (hey Dan!), the mildly neurotic (luv ya, Lori - and those are YOUR words), and of course the forever apologetic type (It's ok Stan, really - we'll gladly go over your email setting one more time)...

I' don't know how other people or companies handle the customer relations part but in our case here, most of our clients can almost pass as extended family or frinds. Sounds corny, but it's true. Many of them have been with us for many, many years, some from the very beginning in 2000.

We know about their kids, their spouses, their professional relationships, and their health. And, speaking for myself, I know which operating systems my clients are using and which printer stopped working - AGAIN. We talk about offline marketing, media relations, and a host of other subjects. In turn, my clients know all about which teenage offspring is causing me grief and which one of my horses refused to get on the trailer last weekend.

I guess my point would be, that no matter how difficult a client demand or attitude may be at the time it comes through the phone line or drops into my Inbox - I wouldn't change a thing. Not only do their quirks give me frequent chuckles and make for interesting and sometimes challenging days, but these clients have stuck with me through some rough times. They've been incredibly patient during my months of recovery and rehabilitation from a serious riding accident in 2006, while moving the office TWICE in 10 years, and they have essentially BUILT my business by word of mouth.

I have an awesome bunch of clients and I am grateful for every one of them.

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 12 November 2009

Whew.
I had skipped working with VM 2.x all together and lemme tell ya... it's a learning curve from the original Virtuemart. 

I still believe that this is one of the most comprehensive shopping carts around (especially with a price tag of $0) but the documentation sucks. Well, it's non existent. At least, for the new Joomla 3.x compatible version. And, while previous versions were well documented, all, or almost all of the Wikis 'n whatnots are no longer relevant.

Again, this is an Open Source Project and the hundreds of developers are devoting and donating their own time. I would happily volunteer to work on documentation, except I haven't even come close to figuring things out yet. In any case, we did manage to put up one Virtuemart 3.x store: www.whhrescue.com/shop 

Go check it out!

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 02 November 2015

Here are the most notable new features in Joomla 3.x:

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 16 January 2014

We've looked at the Administrator Control Panel, which (at least visually) was revamped the most. Now, let's get to added functionality and what that'll do for your website. Number one on the list ought to be Bootstrap. Joomla! 3 is built on Bootstrap framework. I'm not going to bore you to death with technical specs; what this means is that your Joomla 3 website is responsive (mobile ready) out of the box. Except, there's no box  Personally, I detest the never ending chatter of people on cell phones (you know... at the grocery store, the doctor's office, at a restaurant, even the movie theatre) but if your business is trying to attract customers under the age of 75 - you better get 'mobile'. So, thanks to Bootstrap framework and grid layout templates, your website will expand and collapse according to the viewer's screen size. 

This brings us to Templates. If you like to play with templates yourself, there's a lot of good news for you. Creating a copy of your template to mess around with, is but 2 clicks away. Very handy. Btw, if you make ANY CSS changes (or create new template positions), you should create a copy of the template you are using and make the changes there. Otherwise, your edits will be wiped out with the next Joomla! update. Joomla! still comes with a Beez template.. but the default front end template is Protstar. So far, I have not come across anything I couldn't do with that template. I love this template. 

Let's move on then, to the best new feature as far as usability goes - for you, the administrator of your site. Article Versions. This is something not enabled by default (see our Tutorials for instructions) and you'll have to manually enable it before reaping the rewards. Basically, every time you save an article, a copy of the article at the time you save it, will be stored. So, if you messed up royally and your page turns into gobblygook, you can revert back to your last working copy. Lemme tell ya... it has cut down the cussing during working hours by nearly... well, some. Oh, and from what I'm reading, the Versions feature will eventually also apply to modules. Yesss!

Here are the most notable new features in Joomla 3.x:

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 16 January 2014

Holy cr*p, really? Good God. Where did this year go?

So... much like any other year, I've completely dropped the ball on the blogging bit. Sorry. Again.

As the Joomla! team is getting to the home stretch with Joomla! 3.5 (this will be released at the end of the year, and subsequently, support for Joomla! 2.5 will be phased out), there have definitely been some growing pains. The last update didn't quite work as advertised and eventually had to be installed manually...

I ended up taking down our demo site (at least temporarily), as it was getting hacked and abused left, right, and center. Really ticks me off, too. That site is supposed to help people and act as a reference. The hacker community as a whole has been very industrious, this year, making that job at the grocery checkout look quite appealing at times. Anyways, I do plan on putting the demo site back in service and continue with video tutorials. 

Back to you.

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 23 October 2014

I promised to share a more in-depth review of Joomla! 3.x and the migration process... so, here it is. Or, at least part one.

The initial migration from Joomla! 2.5 to 3.0 was... well, interesting. However, those issues seem to have been ironed out for the most part, so we won't dwell on it. We've actually just recently completed a migration (from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 3.1) on a live client production site and it wasn't nearly as bad as expected. 

By the end of this year, eveyone will (or should) be migrating to Joomla 3.5 and I'm fairly confident at this point, that most of you can manage doing it yourself. The only issues I foresee are for sites with either an ungodly amount of, or very unusual extensions and where such extensions are no longer supported. And it won't be that such sites can't migrate... but whatever content was in the obsolete extensions will have to be redone.

In fact, I ran into this myself with our Portfolio. I had just (as in a few days prior to starting the migration) renewed the license for the component and made sure, that it was updated to work with Joomla 3.0. Well, there was a hick-up during the data base migration and when I contacted the developer for support, I learned that the company had closed. So much for that. As a side note... there is a definite advantage to paying with PayPal: After I received no response from the developer, I opened a dispute with Paypal and in less than 2 weeks, Paypal agreed with my assessment of the situation and refunded my purchase. Thank you, Paypal.

The other issue, of course, is going to be your template. If you have a Joomla 2.5 commercial template installed, the chances are good that the template will be updated and made compatible with Joomla 3.5. You may have to pay the license fee again. If you're not able to reuse your template, you'll unfortunately have to get a different one. Mind you, Joomla 3.x comes with a fabulous default template ("ProtoStar"). Props to Kyle Ledbetter - he did a great job with it.

Ok, let's get reviewing. I think we'll do this in stages or parts. Otherwise, you really will end up dehydrated and/or comatose.

1. Administrator Control Panel

The biggest change in Joomla 3.x is to the Admin Cpanel layout. As I had previously mentioned, I'm not all that crazy about the whole Dashboard thing but I'm getting used to it. There are actually a few advantages to this layout... e.g. links at the left side pertaining to where you are. So, if you're in Article Manager, you'll also see Categories and Featured Articles - no need to hover back over the top menu. Mind you, my saving grace is probably, that I've always favoured the top tool bar over the large icons... and that top menu/toolbar is still there.

Speaking of Admin Panel and tool bars... the bottom 'sticky' tool bar in the default admin template is highly annoying and often interferes with drop down options. Why it is positioned there by default, is beyond me. Thankfully, you can change the positioning and I've covered this in our first YouTube video tutorial Joomla! 3.x Admin Setup » Similarly, the reasoning behind not having "Template Preview" enabled by default also eludes me. But again, it's just a couple of clicks if you know where to look. The same video covers that, as well. So, once you've made a few adjustments and can cope with the new look, you should be good to go.

The Joomla! and Extensions update notification is worth mentioning: It's not quite as obvious as it was... look at the bottom left corner of your Admin screen (first screen, Control Panel). Remember to keep your installation and all third party extensions up to date. The update process itself has not changed from Joomla! 2.5.. click, select, and click 'update'. Easy peasy. Oh... while on the subject of updating and installing extensions... We now have an "Install from Web" plugin. You'll be able to activate it the first time you open Extension Manager on your Joomla! 3.x installation, or it can be enabled/disabled via Plugin Manager. This is in addition to the existing (and remaining) Install options.

Also new in Joomla! 3.2 is "Two Factor Authentication". It's an added password (created on the fly and sent to your mobile device) - read more about it (if you dare! - it's rather technical) at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Authenticator. I'm studiously ignoring it, since I don't have a cell phone and don't want one.

Let's take a break here and pick it up again another day. I'll do a pro/con table or something like that at the end of the reviews, so that we'll have something nice and compact to look at.

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 10 January 2014

Seeing that 90% of our new business turns into either Joomla! conversions or new installations,

I've decided it was time for a more extensive Joomla! Support Section. I'll be working on that in the coming months. For starters, though, I've created a short video tutorial dealing with the settings, or changes to default settings, you should make in order to start using some of the newer features.

Note: Please bear with me as I'm getting the hang of the world of video recording/editing.

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 08 January 2014

Whew.

After 2 days of fighting with Google/YouTube trying to get videos posted to our COMPANY account (not a personal one), I'm happy to report that we have, in fact, a working YouTube Channel.  

In keeping with New Year's resolutions 'n such... we're finally getting started on making Joomla! training videos available. 

Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/user/ontariowebdesign

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 04 January 2014

Good grief... last year has just flown by. Anyhow... I hope you had a lovely journey into 2014 and are well into recuperating  from recent festivities.

I don't usually do New Year's resolutions but I'm making an exception this time around. There have been far too many ideas and projects twirling around my head without ever materializing...

The first pet project on my list is a major overhaul of our Joomla! support section. By the end of this year, most (if not all) of you will be migrating to Joomla 3.x and it would probably be a nice idea if you had training resources tailered to your website, your CMS installation. Which then brings me to a sub-project - Video tutorials. I actually think that could be fun! Stay tuned 

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 01 January 2014

Whoohoo! We've successfully (albeit not without difficulties) upgraded our own site to Joomla! 3.2. I wanted to know what's coming and what is going to be involved when everyone will make the leap (not until the end of next year, mind you). Basically, I had to satisfy my nerdly curiosity...

So, let's have a quick review, then:
The number one thing I ADORE is a new button under Article Admin... "Versions". Remember, when you made changes to an article and screwed something up? The "Uh-Oh" moment when you realized that your working article was history and you were left with some discombobbled nonsense? Well, Joomla! now saves instances of an edited article. Meaning.. if something went wrong, you can roll back to a previous version. Awesome! And.... about time!

I'm coming to really, REALLY like the Protostar template (default template with J3). Understanding the Bootstrap frame work and adjusting overall template width and whatnot takes a bit of getting used to.. but once you got it, this template is a great 'master template'.

I'm not crazy about the whole Dashboard Admin thing but I guess, I can get used to it. There are some annoyances with docked tool bars that you can get around and I will post a more in-depth description of those when I have a bit more time.

Extension Manager - Much like Wordpress plugins, an array of extensions can now be installed directly from the Joomla! Extension Directory - without having to download it and clutter up your hard drive. There aren't a whole lot there yet, but then, this is brand new. By the time the rest of the world will be using J3.x, I'd expect MOST components, modules, and plugins to be installed instantly.

This will have to do for now... more when time permits.

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Written by: Gina Geick

First published: 26 November 2013