Simmons Consulting, the Website of Toby Simmons

Web Development

Why it costs so much

14
Dec

If a client asks “Why do you charge so much for X hours of work?” simply tell them “You are paying me for the X hours of work and the 35,000 hours it took to learn how to do your project in X hours.”

New website launched!

10
Dec

A large ecommerce project of mine recently launched. The site is called Ridge City Media and they offer disc repair services, for CDs, DVDs and game console discs. If you have scratched or unworking discs, CDs that skip or won’t play, check out their site for excellent disc repair.

Cindy Lou’s Books website

19
Nov

It’s been a long time since I have had a new site launch, but just recently I designed and launched a site for a friend who was opening a used bookstore in honor of his wife who recently died from ovarian cancer. The book store, in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, is called Cindy Lou’s Used & Loved Books. You should go there and read about Cindy and what Mark is doing now.

Integrating WP in external PHP pages

24
Jun

I have several external pages that use the WP theme engine to wrap the content. I use the method found here, which worked great under WordPress 2.9.2. After upgrading to WP 3.0, these pages no longer worked as expected but instead generated 404s; it turns out the fix is rather simple.

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Facebook ads malware

22
Feb

Not sure what is going on with Facebook but I logged on this evening and within two clicks, received a scareware/malware-type popup message. It said something about “Hey your computer is infected, Do you want to scan it now?” This was a Javascript popup message with an “OK” and “Cancel” button. I clicked “Cancel” and immediately the browser window was covered up with a fake Windows dialog box showing a progress bar and a flashing “Scanning!” prompt. I closed the browser immediately and noticed the URL of the malicious page. It was from (DO NOT LOAD THIS WEBSITE)

http:// 217.23.5.205/ index.html

The IP address appears to be owned by an outfit in the Netherlands.

This page had some simple attempts at Javascript obfuscation but essentially it covered up the browser window with a <div> that looked like an Explorer window with infected files. Bear this in mind while browsing.

Google thinks I’m a robot?

24
Aug
Screen shot of Google error message



So Google thinks I’m a robot? I was doing a fair amount of searching because I had a server down and needed to fix it, but seriously?

Facebook boom

16
Jun
Screenshot of Facebook error screen



Good grief. Seriously, is it just me? Is the whole Internet crashing? Google, YouTube and Facebook in the last week.

Youtube boom again?

12
Jun



Is it just me? Why oh why?