The 9th annual TD IRIE Music Festival is a four-day cultural extravaganza taking place from Friday, July 30 to Monday, August 2nd and it is absolutely FREE. TD IRIE Music Festival features a variety of music, food, arts and ideas at three main stages: Nathan Phillips Square, Queen’s Park and Yonge-Dundas Square. If you’ve ever been to Caribana, you may have already been to the IRIE Music Festival… they are divisions of the same festival.

The MMA Expo is back!

Coming to Toronto June 12th and 13th, the MMA Expo brings the world’s finest fighters, instructors and athletes under one roof at the International Centre. The video above is a compilation of 2 shows I cut together using my own original theme song (an instrumental packed with midi hits and apple loops).

The expo is now it’s in 5th year and has branched out to Philidelphia, Vancouver, Montreal, and Atlantic city, all since it’s inception here in Toronto back in 2005. I am pleased to present a 30 second commercial I produced for the MMA Expo which is to be aired on the Fight Network throughout the end of May and early June leading up to the event.

30 Second Commercial

There will be auditions to join some of the most notorious fight teams in the world for submission wrestling including but not limited to “Paradise Warriors” and “Abudabi”. I myself will put the gloves back on since my last bout in 2005 for the Ontario Championships and be contending for the light weight division in Sport Jiu Jitsu.

I urge you to come to the event not only to shake hands with celebrity fighters but to cheer me on as I step into the ring with other wannabe fighters

I am pleased to introduce Grace Corps Studio founded by Nikki Bergen in Toronto, Ontario. Nikki is a business graduate from McGil University who took-off to Mexico where she taught Salsa Dance and choreographed the shows presented by the local resorts as evening entertainment for tourists. Her true passion however is Ballroom Dancing, where she connects with lovebirds to make those first few steps into their new life at their first wedding dance.

But that isn’t all this entrepreneur has done with her young life, nope this lady surely has a heart of gold for the work she does in the capacity of medical rehabilitation. It was while working with a ballroom dance student coping with Multiple Sclerosis that Nikki decided to pursue her Stott Pilates Mat and Reformer certification. Her vision is to make body movement accessible to all people. Nikki now works with the non-profit “Dancing With Parkinsons Inc” and teaches weekly group classes for students coping with the disease.

Last but not least, Nikki is a member of Mambo Dream Team, an internationally renowned performance group that combines Latin dance with acrobatics and aerial work. The Mambo Dream Team also offers entertainment for private parties and has performed in some of the country’s largest dance competitions.

Grace Corps Studio has a new website coming this summer and I suspect there will be much more photography available when we launch using the NextGen Gallery as seen in her current WordPress website’s banner; http://www.gracecorpsstudio.com/

I’ve already bought my ticket and hope to be one of their speakers next year. I’m looking forward to learning more about WordPress MU, e-Commerce integration and branding. There will be some terrific keynote speakers, networking opportunities and q & a sessions. Take a look at their schedule for more details.

Hope to see you there!

So as you may or may not have noticed, our sister company EPKhosting.com has just had a  face lift not only on the front-end but the back-end as well. On the front-end of things, we have opted into using the Modularity Theme by Graph Paper Press.

It is a commercial theme complete with theme styling. how to video tutorials, and forum support. For as little as $50 USD you can download their entire family of themes and keep them for life.

The bulk of this themes premium features is the customized blog page. You can easily add a welcome note, video, photo slideshow, post thumbnail slider, and much more. Check the themes page for screenshots of the theme options.

Here is how EPKhosting.com put it to use on its blog page; http://epkhosting.com/blog

On the back-end of things, EPKhosting.com is now powered by WordPress MU; a multi-user wordpress platform viewed as a blog ring. It is the platform used by the free blog service at www.wordpress.com

Now members of EPKhosting.com don’t need to worry about doing arduous maintenance on their WordPress websites like upgrading plugins or staying on top of the latest security standards.

Instead, members of EPKhosting.com piggy back on the EPKhosting.com benefiting from all the commercial themes and plugins that are bundled with web hosting.

More importantly, some of the plugins and themes that are part of EPKhosting.com’s WordPress MU service require a commercial license which could cost the customer hundreds and hours upon hours to install. EPKhosting.com steps in to buy that license for you and install it too, i.e. commercial themes and plugins.

If you’re a musician in need of an official website that you want to manage and brand yourself, I suggest you take a look at what’s available at http://epkhosting.com

You’ll be amazed at how powerful, graceful and easy it is to use. There are plenty of artists using WordPress today, including Jay-Z, Beastie Boys, Matthew Good, and many more. Go to EPKhosting.com to learn more and watch some terrific live concert videos.

Now they say that what makes an artist is not his talent, skill, looks or personality, but his/her story. I think it essentially comes down to how they will remember you. For example, let’s take 2 of the greatest artists of the 21st century; Elvis Presley and Bruce Lee.

Elvis Presley was remembered as a “niger lover”, he was one of, if not the first caucasian singer/songwriter to follow the negro music known as “the blues”. His story lives on as the man who opened the “white audience” to “black performers”.

Similarly, Bruce Lee was the one of, it not the first asian martial artist to teach the “gwylo” (non-asians). Bruce Lee was challenged in the ring by the community’s elders to put an end to teaching non-asians. Bruce Lee won the match, but shortly after was ambushed and had his back broken.

This didn’t deter him from teaching non-asians at all… as a matter of Fact, he went further by bringing the martial arts to Hollywood where he finally became a movie star. To date, Bruce Lee is remembered as one of the founding Father’s of “mixed martial arts” having been the first to create his own art; Jeet Kune Do (available to all creeds/races).

Now back to George Chevalo… most Canadians especially baby boomers know him well as the Canadian hero of boxing and the father who lost three children to heroin.

After the loss of three children to drugs, many of us would simply die of a broken heart. George took his pain and used its energy as a means to raise awareness, by sharing his story, in an attempt to fight against drugs.

Today, when I ask someone if they’ve heard of George Chevalo, they will usually say “Yes, isn’t he the guy who put Muhamah Ali in the hospital” or “Yes, didn’t his son die of a heroin overdose”. These are both events, both “milestones” in his life… they don’t remember George based on his talent, looks or character but by his story.

There is a very compelling video I’ve placed on his home page using the “WordTube” media player plugin for WordPress. We used this plugin so that he could host the video exclusively on his own website as well as assign any image as the thumbnail preview… even brand it with his own watermark.

The video is a public service announcement that gets me every time. Take a look at his website to preview the video and the WordTube media player.

Categories are used to group the listings by “location”, “price” and “type”. Within these parent categories we have child categories (sub categories) for more precision. For example;

• Location
  • Kingsway
  • Sunnylea
  • High Park
• Price
  • 100k – 200k
  • 200k – 400k
  • 400k – 800k
• Type
  • Condo
  • House
  • Commercial

Once we have our content structure in place, we need to get a search funtion that is category based that allows multiple selections, enter the WordPress theme by Theme Shift; deCondo. It is designed specifically for a real estate agency complete with agent profiles, property search and photo thumbnails.

The one thing it does not have is a mortgage calculator and land transfer tax calculator. These are handy real estate tools that would serve as great real estate resources for the public viewing your website. Fortunately, we managed to write our own real estate calculators right into the deCondo Real Estate WordPress Theme for Julian Pilarski, an acclaimed Toronto Realtor.

Visit http://www.julianpilarski.com for more details and to preview how you can rebrand the deCondo WP Theme.

Do you have a smart phone? I just bought myself an iPhone and I am blogging while in a taxi using the WordPress iPhone app. There also a wordpress app available for the black berry and on both counts the app is free… I love wordpress!

The interface is very simple, it does not have all the same features as the advanced mce editor found in the admin area when you use your browser. You can’t create tables or embed media as easily, but if all you need is to post some text, links and perhaps photos, the wordpress app is a steal.

I have frequently been at a loss not having a smart phone to blog on the fly when inspiration strikes or when I bored to tears waiting for the next train. I used to drag my MacBook around with me so that I could check email or write proposals, but now I essentially those functions available to me my pocket.

What’s more, is that this phone has a media player I can use to showcase all my music and video projects as well as the websites I have built. Now I will never be empty handed when I bump into my next prospect.

On the downside, in looking at some of the websites I have built through a mobile browser I have discovered a few design flaws that I was unaware of until now. For instance, because of the limited screen view, websites are generally remade with a conditional template that only loads when a mobile browser is detected. Flash objects are all missing from mobile browsers as well… so those pretty flash slideshows, videos and even navigation bars are all lost.

The essential goal of a mobile theme is to enlarge all links and remove all flash elements for an alternative, i.e. youtube video versus flash video or javascript navigation versus flash navigation. That being said, if the mobile internet market is your target, you might want to speak with me about creating a mobile template designed specifically for the iPhone and BlackBerry. Use the quote form to request an estimate for your website.

When i first started working for Kevin, I amused him. Here he was, a middle-aged man outdoing me; a young and healthy male student who trained in the martial arts. Slowly but surely I began to grasp what was happening. I was moving the hard way which it could be, whereas Kevin was moving the easy way which it should be. With all his experience, he could move more boxes than me in less time and with less sweat. He could even move a couch from a living room onto his truck BY HIMSELF!

How? Tools!

To start… use your head he says! Why carry when you can roll? Why lift when you can hoist? Why force something through when you can articulate the angles? Here I wanted to plow through some heavy lifting, burning myself out before the job is finished dying to go home. This experience taught me one of the most valuable lessons of my life, i.e. pace yourself… there’s a hard way and an easy way always. That being said, I would like to bring your attention to Kevin’s company The Gentle Giant

Of all the professional movers in Toronto that I have ever worked with, the ones who have been trained by Kevin have always been a pleasure to work with where as the ones who have not been trained with Kevin have always been counter-productive. For his humour, his wisdom and all his cool tools, there is no better mover in Toronto than The Gentle Giant

This can get your website blacklisted by Google and other search engines. When search engines find excessive links to the same url within your content, it’s seen as a “fishing website” which is essentially a fake website in their eyes… one used to redirect traffic.

The WordPress community has released security updates in version 2.8.5 but advises to install the WordPress Exploit Scanner to determine whether or not your wordpress website is at risk of a similar worm. The plugin will only report your security exploits. It will not fix your security exploits.

Examples of an exploit would be having your website configured with some of the default settings such as the user name “admin” or table prefix “epk_209_“. These are often used by hacking programs that count on users not customizing such settings.

It’s the same story with your wifi home networking that has the user name and password of “admin” & “admin” fresh out of the box. This is often “exploited” by people living in your area who leech off of your connection because you never customized your user name and password.

If you have never had a security scan of your wordpress website then you are likely to have several security exploits that need be fixed. To have us perform a security check on your website and fix all wordpress exploits, please place an order in our online store.