When we think about social responsibility, and the companies that have infamously violated major ethical and/or legal standards, the names Enron, Goldman Sachs, Walmart and BP come to mind. Yet, it doesn’t always take a giant corporation acting heinously to garner a label of “irresponsible.” It’s not so uncommon to see small companies, and their employees, acting outside of the acceptable practices of their communities.

That taxi driver portrayed an accurate representation of his or her company’s stance on social responsibility. Either the driver did not know that it is a law to stop for school buses with red, flashing lights, or negligently chose to ignore the law in favor of reaching some destination of more importance than the safety of the children blissfully starting their school day. In either case, it shows that the taxi company itself does not stress the importance of the law or of others’ safety.

Of course, the third case would be that the driver did not see the stopped bus, but since there were two lanes of stopped cars behind it, I’d find that hard to believe. However, if this were the case, maybe the taxi company does not require eye examinations, or does not provide enough awareness training, or does not offer mandatory refresher training, or does not…

As you can tell, I am merely speculating as to why that taxi driver did not stop for the school bus. Whatever the reason, from my point of view I saw a vehicle, with a company’s name written all over it, doing something unsafe and illegal; as I am sure the others that were stopped for the bus, and the parents on the side of the road did. Due to the actions of a single employee, that taxi company has earned an unfavorable reputation.

Yellow Brick Code specializes in web site design, social media and conventional marketing, 2D/3D graphic design, SEO, instructional education and more! Their portfolio is small, but they are owned and operated by veterans of the web design industry and offer years of experience behind their work.

Check them out, and keep Yellow Brick Code in mind the next time you’re considering a web project or marketing campaign.

Download it from here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7-campaignmonitor-addon/

Or read more about it here:
http://www.bettigole.us/published-work/wordpress-contributions/campaign-monitor-addon-for-contact-form-7/

I’ve scrapped my previous version that required core changes to the Contact Form 7 plugin.

jQuery Menu

The jQuery Menu by Filament Group adds a unique twist to the typical nested, hierarchical drop-down menu by incorporating an iPod-like navigation experience as an option. The highly configurable jQuery menu also provides standard drop-down/fly-out style navigation and fully integrates with jQuery UI Themes. A full explanation, examples, and source can be found on the Filament Group’s Web Site.

Fisheye Menu

The Fisheye Menu, included as part of the Interface Elements for jQuery package offers a dock-style menu similar to that found on the Mac desktop. The menu allows for the use of custom icons and backgrounds, setting minimum and maximum sizes, and the proximity required for the fisheye effect. A demo, documentation and source can be found on the Eyecon Web site. Another demo with customized icons can be found on the N.Design Studio Web Site, and yet another demo can be found directly below this article.

Features:

• Allows for connections using the bbPress installation’s database or to an external database
• Provides functionality to authenticate with phpass (bbPress, WordPress, PHPBB3 default), SHA1, MD5, and plain text passwords.
• Can be configured for single Full Name fields or split First Name/Last Name fields.
• Ability to set the default role of users.
• Disable/Enable user and administrator access to profile management functionality. Disabling this feature prevents users from modifying their data from within bbPress.
• Disable/Enable new user registration in bbPress. Disabling this features allows for providing a link to send users to your current registration page.

Limitations:

• Currently uses the bbPress database functionality, limiting connections to MySQL only.
• Does not use the bbPress users table at all. Current members will need to be created in the table specified in the plugin configuration. (I may, at some point, add functionality to automate this process, dependant on interest.)
• This plugin does not duplicate the single-signon functionality in the built-in WordPress Integration and although it’s possible that it would work for authentication-only instances, the built-in functionality would probably work better.

We’ve all seen web sites that look like they were designed by Jr High students; which are fine if you are a Jr High student or vying for the attention of Jr High students. In the professional world, a site like that will hold no credibility. Your web site should say a lot about who you are, as a person and as a business. It should also appeal to your intended audience as well. For example, having a website dedicated to your favorite car can incorporate any element or design that you wish because it’s about who you are, and your visitors will have similar tastes and share a similar view. Having a web site that sells cars, however, should incorporate elements that are important to your intended sales demographic because the site is entirely about them. Let me stress; ENTIRELY. It needs to say “I care about who you are” and not scream “Look at my rotating email icon”. As a web site owner, when you start imposing unnecessary, outdated, and/or irrelevant content on your visitors, you are telling them that you want their business only if they like who you are. A poorly designed web site is a direct reflection of how you conduct business. How you actually conduct business is irrelevant because you are perceived by your first and continuous impression to visitors looking to find out more about you.

So, lets explore some ways to make sure you look credible to your visitors.

• Keep it current:
  How quickly do you think new visitors will offer up their credit card info when your web site looks like it was designed 10 years ago? Not gonna happen!! Web design is like fashion design… people will always be looking for the latest and greatest and will gravitate toward brands with the best reputation. And like fashion design, you can only get away with an awful web site if you have already built your reputation. Not only will a current design help your credibility, but regularly updating your web site keeps you in good standing with your visitors. Keeping the web site current says something about how current your business is too. Do you want your customers to wonder how much longer you’re going to be around? Most won’t click the “Submit Order” button if they have to worry that you’re not going to be there to support their purchase or honor warranties.
  
• Minimize dominant colors:
  Designs that “pop” are designs that will potentially flop. If you can describe your site with words such as “vibrant”, “exuberant”, or “flashy”, you’re driving away your visitors. These terms loosely translate to “gaudy”, “too bright”, and “motion sickness”. Tone it down to at most one bright color, one complimentary color, and the majority left to shades of gray. Photographs that compliment your color-scheme are worth a thousand clicks. This is really all you need to let visitors know you have style yet know how to be professional. The more eye-pleasing your site is to your visitors, the more willing they will be to stay there and complete a transaction. A site that is visually annoying also makes the statement that dealing with your company could be equally annoying.
  
• Eliminate broken links and functionally-challenged pages:
  A web site that shows signs that its not completely perfect in every way will make your visitors think twice about doling out their precious credit card information to your questionable store. Poorly designed or non-functional features only frustrate visitors who may be inclined to go someplace where they don’t feel so bothered. For a great test of your site’s user-friendliness, borrow a 12 year old (legally) if you don’t already have one and ask him or her to go through the process of buying something. If he or she can’t do so with ease, your adult visitors probably won’t be able to either. Think of your store with the same reasoning that grocery stores use when putting the candy right up there by the registers. There is nothing complicated about it, and even a child can make easy work of a purchase.
  
• Feedback:
  A sure-fire way to let your visitors know that you care about them is by letting them complain about you. A forum or comment page may make you the target of some nasty remarks, but then again, if you deserve them, you probably shouldn’t be in business anyway. Opening up your web site to allow your “community” to talk about you, to you, or even for you is a great way to gauge how favorably your business is viewed and provides you the opportunity to publicly resolve customer issues. This also gives you the home-field advantage when people do talk unfavorably about you. It’s a lot easier to defend yourself (or delete nasty comments) on your own web site than it would be somewhere else.

Think about how you felt the last time you came upon a horrible web site while attempting to get information about a company, or how your on-line pizza order gets messed up every time you try it. Would you want your customers to feel the same way? Do you think they would repeat, if even complete, an order with you? Even if you are the only place that sells your product, you better believe that people would rather go without than put up with a bad experience. If you can’t dedicate the time, energy, or budget toward keeping a favorable web site, you’re better off just removing it altogether.

To use this added feature, just select the “Use CampaignMonitor” checkbox, ensure the Subscriber Email field contains the proper [email] tag based on the form above, and the requred API keys are entered. Subscriber Full Name can either be a single [full-name] field, or a combination of [firstname] [lastname] fields.

Because CampaignMonitor uses keys to determine the destination subscriber list for your contacts, you can forward different forms in Contact Form 7 to different subscriber lists just by using the proper List ID when setting up the form. Or, you can send them all to the same list, your choice.

CampaignMonitor requires an account, but does not charge a monthly fee. They only charge when you send a campaign; $5 plus $.01 per recipient.  A list of 500 recipients only costs you $10 per mailing.  They also integrate templates, to take the trouble out of re-creating your mailings each time.

I have sent the modified code to the developer of Contact Form 7, Takayuki Miyoshi, in hopes that it makes it into the next version.

Direct link: http://jbettigole.users.phpclasses.org/package/5018-PHP-Generate-select-inputs-to-choose-dates-and-times.html

The intended use for this class is to add date/time selectors to forms using the PHP Date() function syntax.