So it’s 4 months in on my new job and I’ve finally just launched the brand new Result Group website. It’s three solid months of development, hundreds and hundreds of tweaks, 1500+ lines of CSS and thousands more of XHTML programming and PHP. It’s built entirely by hand, no cheap CMS systems and no limitations on scalability. It also runs part of the site on WordPress (see the Rental News section).

Result Group develop world leading Rental Management Software and they needed a world class website to go along with that. The site was redesigned from the ground up by myself and there has been a lot of work chucked into a very fast moving three months. We finally went live last week and as of now, all hiccups seem to have been rubbed out.

It also uses GeoIP technology to direct you to the correct regional site (United States visit us.rentalresult.com while UK visit www.rentalresult.com).

It really was a mammoth task and one in which I’m very proud to have built solely.

Go check out Result Groups rentalresult website for their rental software and check out the design and jQuery loveliness.

Fancy riding 1,200 Miles across the UK starting from Lands End and finishing at John O Groats? No? Me neither!

These two guys are though (Adam Fisher and Oliver Frearson) and I felt obligated to build them a website promoting their journey. It’s in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support and they are trying to raise £3000 (that’s only £2.50 per mile!).

Check out the website, visit their blog (which will be updated en route) and give them a bit of support.

If your feeling generous you can also donate by clicking the big donate button on the top left corner. Anything will do, even 1 pence, it all adds up.

Exim statistics from 2009-02-15 04:04:33 to 2009-02-19 17:38:11

Mail Rejection (No such person at address)
5210 Emails
Mail with viruses
123 Emails
Emails Sent To Server
14,238 Emails – 5976 Rejected
Biggest Hour
12:00-13:00 – 798 Emails

Pretty large statistics there for 3 days worth of emails! Now, here is the part where I hold my hands up and say I made a mistake. When moving some of the files from one of the website I realised the following:

That is a mailbox statistic which states it has 1.76GB worth of email in there! Thinking this was a little strange I opened up the email inbox…

That image above says there are over half a million emails in the inbox unread. Obviously it’s all spam. Pretty impressive I would think.

This happened due to one simple mistake. I never setup the server to discard emails if the user doesn’t exist. If an email was sent to a random email address this account would “catch” it and store it. Bad idea.

Anyway, if you have a website make sure you disable this feature in cPanel and save youself some HDD space! (also, use SpamAssasin as it’s awesome :D)

Theme Demo – Download Now 670kb

I am pleased to announce that you can now download the brand new WordPress theme named “Olivia” direct from our website and soon from the official WordPress themes gallery.

It has been in development for a long time but good things come to those who wait!

Key features of the theme:

1. Seven brilliant styles including a Grunge style and Magic style!
2. Beautifully designed
3. WordPress 2.6.3 compatible
4. Widget ready!
5. Built on the famous 960 grid system
6. FamFamFam Silk Icons
7. jQuery functions including text size modification
8. Basic stylesheet for accessibility
9. Thumbnail generation

To coincide with the release of the theme I have written a quick tutorial explaining how to use the features explained…

Tutorials

The theme is ready “out-of-the-box” but there are some features built into the theme which you may not know about upon installation.

1. Stylesheet Selector
   Olivia comes pre-built with SEVEN different styles to choose from. They include Red, Green, Blue, Grey, White, Grunge and Magic. To select which theme you would like to use simply login to your WordPress dashboard, click on the Design tab and then (as long as Olivia is the current theme) you should see a tab named Olivia Options. You will then be presented with the seven styles provided. Simply click on your desired style to enable it!
2. Thumbnail Generator (requires GD library*)
   To ensure your post images are the perfect size I have built a simple PHP thumbnail generator. To use it simply upload your image as usual using WordPress’ in built media uploader but copy and paste the image “Link URL” into the box below your write panel (see image right). The theme will automatically resize the image for your post!
   *There is however a drawback with this. Your server must have GD Library installed. If your not sure about this simply login and click on Olivia Options under the Design tab. There will be a title further down notifying you if your ok or not.

That’s it! Your ready to make full use of your theme!
Please note that this is the very first full release of the theme and it may still have some hidden bugs somewhere. If you find any at all simply drop me an email or leave a comment (good or bad) and I will look into it immediately. The same goes for feature requests.

Theme Demo – Download Now 670kb

Version History

• V0.9.0 (23/09/08) : Initial Release
• V0.9.1 (24/09/08) : Fixed some CSS issues
• V0.9.5 (25/09/08) : Fixed CSS issues, widget sidebar issues and a bit of XHTML.

Please note the licence below.The theme is released under a GNU Public Licence. Please leave the author information intact in the footer of the document. You know it’s only nice for a free theme ;-)

Olivia WordPress Theme by Mark Goddard is licensed under a The GNU Public Licence Version 3.
Based on a work at blog.0100.tv.

It’s not far off release date! (well within a week hopefully!)

Features of the theme:

1. Clean fluent design based on the 960 grid system
2. Beautifully selected colour tones
3. FamFamFam silk icons (as they are very pretty)
4. Various stylesheets (colours)
5. Widget ready, as all new themes usually come
6. Other neat little features!

Check out the image of the design above and leave us some feedback and request for features!
We will post the download right here next week and will also submit it to the WordPress Gallery.

Check back soon!