Saman really went above and beyond. Earlier today I noticed that he wrote a blog introducing my blog to his community! Saman has interesting perspectives and great technical writing abilities. Because of this, his community has grown quite a bit. So for him to introduce me to that community is a huge deal and I am very very appreciative!

With more visitors coming to this start-up site comes some responsibilities. First off, I have noticed, when you comment on a site, whether you are doing it for promotion of your own blog site or you truly are passionate about the given subject, you still like to get “credit” for these comments. So I have added the Top Commentators” plugin to my site. Currently, I have it set to tally on a monthly basis and show the top 10. I have actually upped it to the “all” setting now. I’m looking at it from the non-scare factor. If readers see such low numbers, they may be scared away. So until my site starts to see a lot more participating traffic, I’m going to leave it at “all”. If my traffic and comments show a great increase, than I will definitely have it cycle more than that in the future as my friend Saman does.

I have also shifted the items in my sidebar around a bit. I think it is just right to Prioritize and give credit to those who stop by your site. So I wanted to make sure that the Top Commentators and Recent MyBlogLog visits are at the top of the page. Because without a doubt, it is the bloggers that make other blogs successful!

Speaking of giving credit! It has only been a short time since Saman wrote that blog, and already both Shawn Knight and Culture Shiok!, members of the Samanathon.com community, have stopped by to welcome me aboard with comments!

Thank You Saman!
Saman’s most recent technical article was entitled “Windows Hack: Delete The eBooks Folder Forever!”. You will find his site full of useful information like this. When it comes to Saman’s site, it is actually hard to pick just a few articles to write about. He has so many great ones and his site keeps you very entertained!

Thank You Shawn!
Shawn just recently wrote a great article titled “Blogging for Money: My Thoughts”. Its very interesting to see his perspective on this. I think I am in the middle here too when it comes to this subject. Sure I would like to blog to make money, just not only blog to make money! Its a great read - check it out. Shawn, you have been added to my RSS list buddy!

Thank You Culture Shiok!
This man does not seem to blog as often as the usual blogger, but don’t hold this against him. He is very active in the blogging community and is constantly commenting on other bloggers sites. In my way of thinking, that is one of the best bloggers you can find on the net - you want to make sure you say something nice about a guy like that - so maybe he will come back

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I just noticed something very scary - and completely coincidence. Look at my new header above. Isn’t it funny how I threw on all the technical items to the left and all the fun items to the right? I just happened to notice this and when I made the connection, I got a good laugh from it.

I know it only happened because I pretty much went in the order of things I am most likely to talk about. Starting with PHP items and than finishing off with Nonsense. I guess I thought from the left brain to the right

INFO: Just in case you could not make the items out in my thought cloud, they are:
from [left to right | logical to fun]
php logo, mysql logo, zce logo, computer with ubuntu logo and windows logo, wordpress logo, firefox logo, spongebob, film roll, tv, bowling ball, & finally a nintendo wii

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So I have decided something. If I wait to blog until I have designed my own site from scratch, well, I will never ever blog. I code all day at work, than I come home and code some more when I can for my company. I have a large back log of coding I still need to do, so why I add to it?

Therefore, I just made a couple tweaks to the default WordPress theme. I liked the theme itself (except for the extremely large header), but I still have to have a few personal touches that I can call my own. So I designed up my own custom header real quick (you will notice that it is much smaller) and played around with some of the css styles to make it more “what I would have done”. Which basically just comes down to smaller headers and footers.

I think as default themes go, WordPress has an excellent one. I was amazed by how easy it was to start right off the bat! I was so impressed by it, that I have no problem keeping it as the one I use.

So anyway, since I’m no longer waiting, I have also added some more content. You can see on the right side I have 2 about pages. I have added a great deal of content to both of these pages.

If you are even reading this, you are either Saman, or somebody who came here from Saman’s site. I’m new enough to not have been spread around much, so any traffic that I get, I know that I can pretty much say 98% of it comes from Saman’s site. So first off, thank you very much for stopping by! I hope after doing this for a while I will have some great content, and hopefully will keep you stopping by!

If you are that 2% that came here from some other route, you need and I mean need to check out Samanathon.com. Saman’s website is packed full of great blogging articles and has a community involved with it that will welcome you right in. Follow that link, and it will hook you too!

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I am a user note maintainer on the php Documentation team. I spend a lot of time everyday reading new notes and comments that have been added to the documentation. It is us maintainers that decide whether a user note stays in the documentation or needs to be removed. We simply just have to ask ourselves: “Does this note or comment truly bring a good amount of benefit to the reader, or is it just taking up space and/or repeating what has previously been said?”.

There are definitely some gems. A lot of passionate people out there come up with some excellent ideas, examples, and suggestions. If that was all there was, we would not be needed to help maintain the user notes. Unfortunately, the majority of the notes fall more into the garbage category.

I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about a certain php function that just does not get used in situations it ought to be used in. I am talking about strtotime(). I can not tell you home many times I have had to delete a note because it consisted of 10+ lines of code that in the end, determined what day was last Monday. With strtotime(), its as easy as writing strtotime(”Last Monday”) - and than bam, you are returned the Unix time stamp of last Monday.

Is strtotime() limited to just this use? - NO! They have packed in so many amazing string variables into this function that its ease of use is amazing. If you have a badly formatted date string that strtotime() does not understand, its easy enough to correct that date string and put it in a readable format with other php functions and still in the end, you have coded so much less than you would have if you were using some of the functions I have seen.

I guess I would understand if this function was a php5 only function, since it seems so many people are out there and not up to date with the latest php. But that is not the case, strtotime has been available since php4! This simple little function can be so useful. I highly suggest that if you code php and deal with a lot of awkward formed date strings, you need to look into this function.

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Okay, please take your mind out of the gutter real quick. JohnChow.com and 1234Pens.com have teamed together to make an offer that I can not refuse. They are giving away a Nintendo Wii! You too have the opportunity to enter, as long as you have a blog. You can read more about it here: Evil Blog Contest - Win A Nintendo Wii!. Me, I have a Nintendo Wii already, so at first I did not want to enter. But what is better than winning one and than giving it away to somebody else for free? That is what I intend to do if I win…..not in a contest or anything, just to a friend of mine who I know would appreciate it.

So please go visit these sites!! JohnChow.com is named after its owner, John Chow, a hard working blogger who will help you make money online. 1234Pens.com is a company that offers the service of creating for you great promotional pens.

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