Well, a few changes have been made recently, and a few more are coming.  Most of them aren’t very exciting, but they are important.

First of all, we changed the site.  If you’ve been with us for more than a few days and haven’t noticed the new look, then…  umm…  You might want to talk to your optician–or start using a browser other than lynx.  The new look is the biggest change but it’s not the only one.  Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be going over all of our content to update it, make it cleaner and more relevant, and make it easier for our customers to navigate.  We’ve gotten a lot of comments on the site–both possitive and critical–and we’ve listened.  We can’t please everyone, but we’re working to make the site more friendly to the majority of people.

Secondly, there are quite a few changes going on behind the scenes with the control panel and billing software.  A while ago, the company that produces Plesk Control Panel bought the company that made Modern Billing.  Now… on the surface, this sounds like a good thing–both aspects  of your account are now handled by a single company.  In reality, it’s been a bit bumpy.  The integration has been less smooth than we’d like.  However, we’re getting to the point that most of the issues are small and rare.

Finally, we’ve been working on some changes to the way we do business.  We started Geek Niche a little over 4 years ago with the idea of providing simple services to a niche market.  That market has faded away.  In the mean time, we’ve found new niches to work with.  This means we’ve had to take a look at how we work with our clients and change to meet their  needs.  Instead of trying to provide everything to everyone all in one site, we’ve decided to create “Geek Niche Projects”–different websites that focus on specific areas of interest.  This allows us to focus attention and resources on presenting information specific to a particular niche.  It’s all still us doing the work.   We’re not trying to hide anything or pretend we’re someone we’re not.  We’re just making better and more focused decisions on how to present the products we have without being distracting or overwhelming.

One of the aspects of the Geek Niche Projects is that it can be expanded almost  without end.   If you have a niche that you think would be popular, let us know.  If we think we can support it, we’ll create a new Project site and design packages to meet the needs of that niche market.

Hopefully, we’ll be moving forward with new projects on a regular basis, and I’ll have more interesting things to talk to you about.

Currently, GeekNiche.com is a series of php & html pages written by yours truly about 3 years ago. The news section (what you’re reading right now) is a WordPress blog. WordPress has come a long way in the last 3 years. I’ve been recommending WP as a great CMS (Content Management System) to for new clients. Well… I’m going to put my money where my mouth is: I’m converting the entire site over to a WP-driven site (well… not the [i]entire[/i] site; there are some areas that need to remain as they are).

Why am I telling you this? Because over the next couple weeks, you may see some strange things (such as duplicate pages), and I just wanted you to know why.

–
M Blaze Miskulin
Chief Tinkerer
Geek Niche, Inc.

Starting Dec 25th, and running through Jan 6th, we’re offering a little present to new members. $15 off any new account. Just use the coupon code 12geekmas07.

That’s the present for your friends. What about the presents for you?

Well….Nothing says “holiday spirit” like kickbacks! As always, tell a friend about us, and if they sign up, you get 10% of their monthly bill taken off of yours. Get 10 friends to sign up at your level, and you’ll be hosted for free. Just tell your friends to let us know who sent them, and we’ll do the rest.

Have a happy Geekmas!

–
M Blaze Miskulin
Santa’s Little Helper

If you log in to your control panel, you’ll notice something new in the sidebar. It’s called 4psa Integrator. At this point you’re asking “What is this new feature? What does it do? Well… I’m here to tell you! (Convenient, isn’t it?)

4psa Integrator is a replacement for the Application Vault. It’s the new “one click” installation tool. Not only does it have more applications to offer, it has much more recent versions.

The Ap Vault has been always been a bit of a let-down for us. It’s always been far behind the times with version updates. In the world of internet applications, this can be a serious issue. Integrator takes care of that.

If you’re looking to install a new application, use the Integrator. It’s a nice and simple way to set up the best applications on your site.

If you’ve got any questions, let me know.

–
Blaze Miskulin
President
Geek Niche, Inc.

When we signed up for an ad, we decided to let Randy do whatever he wanted (though Paul insisted on using the Little Blue Thing in the ad), and let him know that we’re not above making fun of ourselves. The result is great!

A big thanks to Randy and the crew at Something Positive.

Tell your friend to use the coupon code “Stocking Stuffer” for their discount–and make sure they e-mail me so you get your $10 off. And… if they stick around for 3 months or more, you still get your kickback.

Ain’t it just a joyous season to be a Geek Niche Customer?

–
M Blaze Miskulin
President & Chief Elf
Geek Niche, Inc.

Here at Geek Niche, our filtering ability is at its limit. Pushing our defenses higher risks deleting real e-mails. If this new wave of spam turns out to be more than a short-term spike, we’ll look at alternate, more aggressive, means of filtering–even though we run the risk of catching real e-mails in the filters.

Part of the problem appears to be that a lot of the applications and themes being used aren’t coded properly, so the new stricter rules broke them. New installs of Gallery should work fine (if they don’t, please tell me!). However, there’s a bit of an issue with the Ap Vault version of WordPress. Plesk included a version that doesn’t like to play well with Plesk. I’ll be looking into this promptly. Installs by hand should work however. Until we can get this issue resolved with our software provider, feel free to let me know if you need a copy of WordPress installed. I can have one up and running usually within 12 hours (a whole lot sooner if you catch me when I’m not tied up in the office).

Some old WP themes won’t work. Their code contains a line that’s considered a security flaw.

If you run across any errors on your sites, please let us know so we can fix them promptly.

–
Blaze

Go to your blog (or where your blog should be) and add “/wp-admin/” at the end of the url. So, you’ll have an address like this:

http://www.domain.com/wordpress/wp-admin/

You should see the login screen. Log in, go to the “presentation” tab. Select the “WordPress Classic” theme as your active theme. This seems to bring back most of the blogs.

Right now, subdomains aren’t working. I don’t believe that’s an issue for any of you, but if so, let me know.

If your WordPress blog isn’t working, FTP into your site, copy all your plugins to your computer, then delete them from the server. This should bring the blog back. Then, you can upload the plugins again and reactivate them. The only one we see a problem with is Live+Press. I’ve made note of this, and it will be looked into.

Gallery2 is still violating security rules in a number of places. Some times it works, some times it doesn’t. Please let me know if there’s anything wrong with your gallery. This will help us to track down the problem and fix it.

Some of these issues are extremely complex, and may take some time to fix. I will keep you up to date here on this blog.