Since updating this website to WordPress v2.8 in the middle of June they’ve released two additional security updates. Unfortunately, the latest update also required a little extra tinkering and work on my part. I look on constant security fixes for this fantastic (free!) open source software as a small price to pay for increased security.
Again, the calculators should all be completely impervious to changes in the WordPress program itself. However, its theoretically possible you might notice a little weirdness in how the website looks/acts. If so, please drop me a line and let me know so I can take a look.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled rating…
Wrote a new plugin to handle the disclaimers on guest articles
Added several features to the plugin that displays the related posts
Edited the theme for this website
Added a little search engine optimization magic to the site
Added to and edited the “About” page
Put together a database of the various WCAB district offices so that I can continue my series of posts providing photos, contact information, and driving directions to each office
Here’s an easy way to save your law practice several hundred dollars in the next few months. The next time you have to purchase a new computer do not buy a copy of MicroSoft Office, MicroSoft Word, or WordPerfect. Even basic versions of these programs can run several hundred dollars per computer. ((Photo courtesy of Krug6)) You don’t have to purchase these programs!
Try OpenOffice instead! I have been using OpenOffice on my home and work computers for the last three years and have been extremely happy with it. I have given copies of this program to family, friends, and colleagues who are also all very happy with it. I’ve used it for simple correspondence, legal pleadings, spreadsheets, and presentations.
Here are a few “real world” benefits:
OpenOffice is totally 100% free open source software
Free as in free. Give it to your friends. Install it at home and on your kids’ computers. Don’t worry about software piracy. Its totally, completely, free.
OpenOffice has better document recovery
Its important to know that OpenOffice is much more stable than anything MicroSoft or WordPerfect has to offer. It is extremely rare that OpenOffice crashes on me. If you’re using MicroSoft Word and you haven’t saved your document at least once, a single crash will completely erase all of your progress. The very few times that OpenOffice has crashed on me I have gotten all of my data back – even when I haven’t saved the file once.
OpenOffice has everything you need
OpenOffice has all the features of MicroSoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and WordPerfect. You can also use the OpenOffice suite of software to open, edit, and save to MicroSoft Word and WordPerfect formats. It won’t automatically open the MicroSoft Office 2007 formats yet, but you can find plugins and software to do this for you (also for free). OpenOffice has spell check, grammar check, autocorrect, macros, and templates (even legal pleading templates!).
OpenOffice can do more than its competitors
OpenOffice can save as, open, and even edit a PDF. Editing a PDF requires a plugin, but it is very easy to install (and also free!). Just being able to print to a PDF is going to make your documents easier to share with others and, hopefully, one day easier to share with EAMS too. ((Not that EAMS will share with you.)) (( Don’t take it personally – EAMS pretty much hates everyone.))
If you’re not convinced to make the leap with your next computer purchase, then download OpenOffice now and give it a shot on your current computer. Here’s their website link:
Last night I updated this website to use WordPress v2.8. There’s a lot of new features under the hood. One that I really like is the ability to browse new website themes.
The calculators should all be completely impervious to changes in WordPress. However, its theoretically possible you might notice a little bit of weirdness in how the rest of the website looks/acts. If so, please drop me a line and let me know so I can look into it.
A friend of mine owns and operates a number of websites – all of which run on ASP/.NET/MS-SQL servers. He knows what he’s talking about, but he’s fairly dismissive of WordPress, PHP, and MySQL.
All this time I’ve been raving about WordPress, telling him that you can basically do anything with it. I’ve mentioned how easy it is to use, how easy it is to maintain, its open source, how many global corporations use WordPress to build their websites, how its the tool of choice for so many designers, and how huge the WordPress community is.
In the meantime, he’s referring to his millions of rows in his “real-SQL, MicroSoft SQL” database. I believe he’s been stuck thinking of PHP and MySQL as “kiddie” stuff, just not ready for big time.
That is, he’s been dismissive of WordPress until about two months ago. In the last two months other people (SEO consultants, professional designers) have been raving about WordPress to him too.
