I keep getting calls about my “Windows computer” from some idiots who say they are from the “Service centre for windows operating system”. This looks to me like an attempt to sound like they are calling from Microsoft. I get other phone spammers trying to make out they are calling from Orange when they are not. When pressed they admitted to being from a company called “PCEFIX”. I consider this unethical “sharp business practice” to be dishonest and bordering on fraud.

Their sales pitch is ridiculous and their badly trained operators are clearly reading from a script. They told me that they had received messages about errors from my Windows computer and were calling to help me fix them. We use Apple computers.

This is a shitty business model and no way to get new business or treat potential clients. Why would I let some random caller access my PC to remotely “fix” it? The staff are inept and I have been rudely hung up on without a goodbye for telling them I use Apple computers.

If these are any other idiot spammers call to waste your time, I suggest you string them along for as long as you can and waste their time in return.

After a fresh install of Steam on Windows 7 64bit, I got the following error message when it launched and tried to update itself:

“Delete of steam.exe failed, Win32 Error 5 Access is denied”

After much swearing and Googling, the answer was to turn off AVG completely during installation and update of Steam. FFS.

This thread helped.

If you are trying to install the lovely Textpattern CMS on 1and1 hosting (you poor thing) then you’ll probably get the following error:

Error 500 - Internal server error
An internal server error has occured!
Please try again later.

Most hosts work with the default .htaccess file that comes with Textpattern 4.3, but 1and1 don’t for some reason. Easy fix though for a change – just uncomment the RewriteBase line after the ReWrite engine is turned on and make sure it’s right for your site. The following worked for me:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

Pow – now Textpattern works on 1and1 hosting with clean URLs.

Nickikoni

FCS Websites recently launched another of our heavily customised Zen Cart shops for a Nottingham business selling organic skincare, jewellery and baby products. The front end templates have been completely changed, social networking links and attractive icons added and the admin system has our Paramita theme applied to make it more pleasant to use.

We have had great feedback on the modified system and have recently added lightbox style popups for information links instead of standard pop up windows. With all these modifications made, Zen Cart is able to compete with commercial shopping cart systems in terms of usability and attractiveness – a far cry from the standard templates which came from the 1990s!

This is what makes our Zen Cart ecommerce sites a cut above the rest – customised templates, bespoke designs and a much more usable control panel. Contact FCS Websites to get a quote on a new or upgraded Zen Cart.

Ferret’s Domain is now running on WordPress 3, which seems like a significant increase in smoothness since the last version. All the plugins I use carried on working much to my relief.

I’ve also been checking out theme frameworks. This month I have seen:

WooThemes
commercial framework and template – extremely slick and transforms the control panel/front end. Uses the 960GS grid system CSS framework. Very high attention to detail and the admin interface is very pleasing. The front of the site was changed to an events based format, which really impressed me.

Atahualpa
Difficult to spell, very easy to use, free and everything can be dealt with from the control panel with no file editing required. SEO improvements over a standard WordPress install. Atahualpa saved me some serious hours on a client project this week so comes highly recommended.

Thesis
Commercial, very powerful framework that allows you to replace anything in your WordPress install with a different layout or coding. Good for SEO too. Probably a bit over the top for most projects, and a more flexible CMS would possibly be better in some cases.

BuddyPress
Install WordPress with Buddypress and you have a ready made social network in about 5 minutes. Seriously impressed with Buddypress, which saved me hours of customising a normal WordPress install. Good community behind it too, so a big thumbs up.