Focus Web Works has been hosting websites since 1990.

Focus Web Works have been has been hosting WordPress websites since 2009.

Focus Web Works is located in Tucson, AZ and we are happy to meet with you in person.

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We’ve got a lot of friends using WordPress (WP) these days, and many have a question or two.

I’ve spoken with folks who wish they could sit down with their peers and see how they use WP, I’ve also talked with people who wish they could just run their site more smoothly.

Well I think it would be helpful to get a group together, have a website with links to all the best plugins and have answers to common questions and help a group out.

If this idea appeals to you, please fill out the survey below so I can work out a plan.

We’ve been pretty quiet at Focus Web Works lately.

This is partly because of projects and partly because our awesome clients have asked for some research and development.

If you missed it, we wrapped up the Ed Slott project in November: edslottintucson.com

We built a support site for a big client, Event Driven Media Partners: eventdrivenmedia.org

We’ve also added a new slide show for Tucson’s Golden Corral’s specials and community service: tucsongoldencorral.com

We’ve been busy updating press releases and updating staffing pages for DeConcini McDonald Yetwin & Lacy, P.C.: deconcinimcdonald.com

On The development side, we’ve been collaborating with software developers to create one of the best survey and quiz tools/plugins for WordPress. WP Survey And Quiz Tool: It’s become a very robust tool to add value to WP sites.

We have also been leaning some sophisticated new features for WordPress 3.0+, so it’s been pretty exciting.

Lifehacker.com posted a fantastic info graphic that you should read at least once in your life.

Guess who’s not using his brand new Droid Razr? | ZDNet http://zd.net/sKC3Za

Christopher Dawson of ZDNet uses 2 pages to document how horrible Verizon’s service is. Sigh.

Google has updated its Caffeine web indexing algorithm to display more recent search results when searching for time-sensitive events and information… Link to article: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/new-fresher-google-rankings-affect-35-of-searches/3439?alertspromo=&tag=nl.rSINGLE

Summary: Google results are now more current. 35% of searches now show recent updates. This will be good for everyone who keeps their site up to date. This is bad news for people who do not add new content more often.

Before starting:

1. Make sure your domain name loads. If it doesn’t load your your email account won’t work.
2. Make sure you have setup your email accounts at yourdomain.com/cpanel .
3. Make sure that you already have an account setup

You are now ready to begin setting up advanced email account settings.

1. Open Outlook Express
2. Go to “Tools” and click on “Accounts“
3. A “Internet Accounts” window will pop up. High-lite you account and click on “Properties“
4. This will open a window with 4 or 5 tabs. Click on the “Servers“tab.
5. Verify your mail server in each box.
   In the Incoming mail (POP3) field type mail.yourdomain.com
   In the Outgoing mail (SMTP) field type mail.yourdomain.com
   (so if your domain name is elitepolls.com, then you would put “mail.elitepolls.com” there). Click Next.
6. Now type in your username that you have setup from cpanel using the following format:”yourusername+yourdomain.com” rather than “yourusername@yourdomain.com”
7. Verify that “Outgoing Mail Server” has a check mark next to “My server requires authentication“
8. Next click on the “Advanced” tab. Set the “Outgoing mail (SMTP):” value to 26.
9. Just click “OK” and “Close” – send a test message. — Your done.

Remains of the Day: Rumor Has It the iPhone 5 Wants to Be Your New Assistant [For What It's Worth] – http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/vip/~3/t4Hpp7TC7Io/remains-of-the-day-rumor-has-it-that-the-iphone-5-wants-to-be-your-new-assistant

Ouch. That’s a lot of people thinking that their phones have faster data downloads than they actually have. Millions of people.

Photo from ZDNet

The article also points out that:

24 percent of BlackBerry owners and 29 percent of Android owners thought the same thing.

From a marketing perspective this is pretty horrible because it means that the cell phone carries are doing a poor job of educating the public about 4G (faster service) and have failed to create a demand for it. Or…The sales teams have done a very good job of letting people think they have 4G.

The problem as I see it, is that people will not want to pay (again) for a speed bump, when their carrier finally delivers 4G in their area. For instance: In Tucson, Sprint sells 4G phones but does not actually provide 4G service. They still charge a $10 monthly premium though. Last I checked, AT&T and T-Mobile still have not kicked off their 4G networks in Tucson.

Original story found here.

Think the “4? in iPhone 4 stands for 4G? Join the 34% of those participating in a recent poll. They thought the same thing.

WordPress 3.2 is out – Handle with Care

If you spend any time in your WordPress site, you may have noticed that version 3.2 is available for an update.

If your website uses a slideshow/slider, this update will probably break it. Right after testing the new version on our Focus Web Works site, I upgraded one of our clients. The first thing we noticed (after the cool new look for the dashboard) was that her slideshow stopped working.

I’ve since done quite a bit of research and discovered that most slideshow/slider plugins are not working.

One more thing… It turns out that the WordPress developers group has decided to sunset Internet Explorer 6.0. This means that you should avoid upgrading if a large portion of your clients use IE 6.

If either of these situations are a concern for you, we recommend that you wait on that upgrade or at least contact us about your options.

Sincerly,

Nohl Lyons