It has been a while since I have posted here. I decided to take a bit of a break over the Christmas period, spend some quality time with friends and family and work on some goals for 2009. I would like to take this opportunity to with you all a Happy New Year and thank those of you that have read my ramblings, commented on my posts, and given me advice over the past year.

Looking back on the past year it is difficult to sum up, in that I didn’t set out clear goals for 2008. The past 12 months has without a doubt been a success; I have made new friends through this blog, I have several new clients, and have developed many new skills. I am sure it could have been better, mainly through setting goals and ticking them off, but that is something I will rectify for 2009.

I will keep this post short, I just wanted to say Happy New Year to you all and I will be back to regular posting very soon.

Jim

LowestCostCreditCard.com officially went live today. This is an idea I had last week so I haven’t had too much time to fill it with content, but hopefully over the next week or two I can get some articles online and see if we can’t get it noticed!

The idea is fairly simple. A site offering latest news, advice, and tricks of the trade concerning credit cards. In the UK (and certain other countries) there are many many different offers by credit card companies, and there are certain tricks they don’t necessarily make clear before you sign up. This site is there to educate the consumer and will be funded by affiliate links.

This is one of a few projects I am working on at the moment. I will report on progress in coming weeks and see how it goes. I want this project to be as transparent as possible, so others can learn from the ups and downs of a spur of the moment decision to cobble together a website in 24 hours and see how long it takes to turn it into a success (or otherwise!).

Please feel free to click the link, take a look and let me know what you think. I am open to criticism here, just please keep in mind the short timeframe I have put this together in.

Our first online forum has finally hit 100,000 posts. In terms of internet forums it is still young, and has a fair way to go to be as big as some of the others out there, but for just over a year old it has done very well.

The forum was created in June 2007 as its predecessor disappeared overnight and we needed a replacement. It has been a fast learning experience and I could recommend it to anyone, but a word of warning, there is actually quite a lot of hard work that goes into making a successful forum.

I won’t go into the details of what it takes to succeed in the forum world, that’s for another post, but I will say it is very rewarding when it really takes off.

We can now offer the facility to provide multi-language versions of websites. This feature is great for travel sites, information sites or any site not specifically based in a single location.

Here is an example of a multi-language website:

If you would like a multi-language site or would like further information, please contact us.

We have successfully rolled out the upgrade to version 2.6 of all Wordpress sites we host. The upgrades were smooth and the feedback so far is good.

If anyone has any questions regarding the new features in version 2.6 please let us know.

Regards,

The ThinkSynergy Team

Wordpress have announced the release of version 2.6 of it’s software. There are some major changes in this release that will enhance the user experience.

Here are a few:

Press me now

A bookmark that when you press it opens up a new window and allows you to grab content from that page and enter it into your blog post.

Gears

This allows you to store copies of your javascript and CSS files locally on your laptop, amking working on your blog easier. This is great for low bandwidth connections ling GPRS.

Word Count

There is now a live word counter on the right of the screen… useful for some I guess.

Versioning

This is a nifty feature. Wordpress now stores versions of posts, so you can go back and see what was done when, restore to previous versions, or even compare two versions. This is a great feature and very well done!

Gallery adjustments

If you upload multiple images into a gallery on your post you can now re-order them using drag and drop. Simple yet effective!

Theme Previews

You can preview what a theme will look like before you set it live. This is useful if you want to see what a theme will look like before you unleash it on the public.

There are a few more features in the 2.6 release that I won’t go into right now. If you want to know more drop a comment on this post and I will do my best to answer.

We will be upgrading all our customer’s Wordpress installations over the coming weeks, if you would like further details on this please drop us a line.

We are proud to announce the launch of the Wirral Model Boats community website.

The site provides a platform for anyone involved in model boats to take their first steps onto the Internet. There is a central news repository and links to sub-sites which members will maintain themselves.

We have produced a property for sale site to assist in selling a property. The idea is to get the site to the top of the search engines for the term “roodepoort property” or “property for sale in Roodepoort”. Using our search engine optimisation techniques we should certainly get the site into the top ten quite soon.

Click here to see the Roodepoort Property site

For those who are interested, the property is located in Eagle Canyon Golf Estate in Honeydew, Roodepoort, just outside Johannesburg, South Africa.

Update (23/6/2008): The initial prognosis is good. We hit Google pretty quickly and now we have a co.za domain name for the site (roodepoort-property.co.za) we invisage rising up the ranks for searches of “roodepoort property” as the days go by. It is important to note that we are targeting google.co.za and not google.com or google.co.za as the intending audience is South African. This is vital when planning a sites Search Engine Optimisation.

Our first large scale community site is officially 1 year old today. We founded z4-forum.com on 14th June 2007 as a replacement for a previous community of BMW Z4 enthusiasts that disappeared overnight.

We started from scratch with no information, no database and more importantly no members. In just 12 months the site has grown to have over 71,000 posts, over 5000 topics and nearly 1200 members (from Harrogate to Hawaii!). The site is growing more rapidly than ever and the knowledge base we have built up is unbelievable.

Z4-forum is a prime example of how a web community can be built up, with a bit of effort and the right people involved.

We are proud to announce our new online shopping product, featuring full shopping cart functionality, multiple categories, full user interaction and of course full customisation.

We have been working on this for the past few months and have decided to launch with a special cut-price deal. We are offering a fully customised and customer-branded shopping cart solution together with full setup and support.

Take a look at what this package has to offer:

FREE Domain name
FREE 1 Year Gold hosting
Shopping cart installation
Full corporate branding
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Features

Multiple product groups
Featured products
Newsletter management
Product promotional codes
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Order status and history
Address Book with unlimited addresses
Full Point of Sales (POS)
Automated invoices and packing slips creation
Email Notifications of Orders
Audit records of all customer communications
Paypal integration (as well as other gateways)
Support for multiple currencies

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Click for details