this past year there were a lot of new versions released. They had some trouble with hackers and some new features that they wanted to get out there. So now we have version 3.0 – that’s notable.

Thank you to all the volunteers who work so hard to make WordPress as great as it is!

One of the most interesting bulletin boards that I found recently is based in India and helps the people having issues with various businesses as a public consumer forum.

One of my company’s franchisees is from India and he still has a lot of family there. He was in a meeting with me this morning and during a break he went online to check his emails and surf a few web sites. He showed me the consumer court India website and shared some of the recent posts with me. It was truly fascinating.

There are a variety of topics available for comments and discussions. I read the laptop computer forum and was very surprised to see how many complaints were lodged against all the major laptop manufacturers. It was a real eye opener and worth considering when shopping for a new laptop.

But today when I went to Hallmark.com, I found out the they are not doing free email cards anymore. They want 99 cents for each email card, or you can sign up for a membership type thing and get unlimited cards for a flat fee each year.

I’ll have to think about that one. I like sending free cards and there are other sites that do it. But I don’t blame Hallmark for wanting to make a little money from their efforts. So I’ll think about it for a bit, and maybe sign up for the membership thing.

A good friend of mine, Adam, has several web sites that he maintains for friends and family, and he has had ongoing problems with hackers this summer because of flaws in the WordPress programming. So I take the threat of security issues very seriously and upgrade as as soon as I see that a new version has been tested and released.

They released the new version over a week ago, and I figured the dust has had a chance to settle by now. In fact, they did find a few more bugs and have already taken steps to fix those.

Just this past year, the improvements made to WordPress have been very impressive. It keeps getting easier, better, and more secure. I have to give big kudos to the volunteers working so hard for WordPress.

The upgrade process was very easy and took less than one minute and – knock on wood – everything seems to be working great! Thanks again to the good people behind the WordPress software.

Earl is out by the way. He lost the password to renew the domain, then it became a huge hassle to get our domain back and the site online. Earl let the hosting bill go for so long we lost all of our previous posts. If you have any of our past writings please resubmit them. Earl has been no help with backups or anything, he has left the group.

It’s not in shambles, but it will take us time to rebuild.