We are getting nearer and nearer to the annual Hell’s Half Mile Film and Music Fest! It’s been a lot of work in a very short period of time, and there is a lot of work yet to be done, but please check out the site and let me know what you think. We can’t credit for the look, that was the work of 989 Design, who did a great job creating an identity that could be reused in the years to come.

I decided early this year that I wanted to support to the fest because I feel that this event promotes creativity in the area like no other event. I think that the key to real improvement in this area is a strong creative community.

The amount of time and money we have invested in this event is probably in the $2000 range, which is a big commitment for a very small web design company like MJ Media. We will also be submitting some of our code from this project to the Open Source community to benefit other similar events. I’m so happy with our work thus far.

In just over a month I’ll be getting married and heading to Las Vegas with my bride. Now that I am the sole owner of this place, I’ll have to set up an out of office that doesn’t direct clients to contact my partner. Taking a cue from Josh Kopelman, I’ll be doing something very similar to this:

I am currently out of the office on vacation.

I know I’m supposed to say that I’ll have limited access to email and won’t be able to respond until I return — but that’s not true. My blackberry will be with me and I can respond if I need to. And I recognize that I’ll probably need to interrupt my vacation from time to time to deal with something urgent.

That said, I promised my wife that I am going to try to disconnect, get away and enjoy our vacation as much as possible. So, I’m going to experiment with something new. I’m going to leave the decision in your hands:

• If your email truly is urgent and you need a response while I’m on vacation, please resend it to interruptyourvacation@firstround.com and I’ll try to respond to it promptly.
• If you think someone else at First Round Capital might be able to help you, feel free to email my assistant, Fiona (fiona@firstround.com) and she’ll try to point you in the right direction.

Otherwise, I’ll respond when I return…

Warm regards,
Josh

Now I’ll be putting my fate in your hands, and if you have ever been in a relationship, I think you’ll understand the need to unplug for a little bit. I’m also considering this post as fair warning. I’d get those projects to me soon or you’ll be out of luck.

Have a great day!
Mike

Photo: M.Peinado

Source

When a client hires us to develop their website and it contains an ecommerce element, we typically take a close look at Magento. We like developing for Magento because it had an enormous amount of features and capabilities, and ends up with a much nicer result than what we have seen with many OScommerce and ZenCart solutions.

Recently, one of our development servers had a very old version of Magento on it, and before we could start development on a new extension for a client, we had to upgrade it.

This is the script that I use whenever I am upgrading Magento:

wget http://www.magentocommerce.com/downloads/assets/1.5.0.1/magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz
cd magento
tar cf - . |(cd ..; tar xvf -)
chmod -R o+w media var
chmod o+w app/etc
rm -rf magento/ magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz

Let’s take a look at what is happening here.

First, we download the next newest version of Magento (click the “Release Archives” tab) and untar it. While theoretically Magento will cleanly upgrade from any old version to any new version, I’ve had the best luck when I don’t skip versions.

wget http://www.magentocommerce.com/downloads/assets/1.5.0.1/magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz

Next, we do my favorite part. First go into the new magento directory, and then use tar to gather all of the files, retaining permissions and ownership information, and untar them into the root directory of the site.

cd magento
tar cf - . |(cd ..; tar xvf -)

Then we just have to set the directories that have to have write access.

chmod -R o+w media var
chmod o+w app/etc

And finally we cleanup the excess Magento directory and tar file.

rm -rf magento/ magento-1.5.0.1.tar.gz

After you have run this, visit the home page of the site to allow it to go through the database upgrade process. I’ve received errors while trying to upgrade the database in the past. Usually these can be solved by deleting the file mentioned in the error.

Then, just like shampoo, you’ll want to repeat the process, changing the version numbers on all three lines until your site is at the most current stable version.

I can’t guarantee that this will solve all of your upgrade woe’s, but I can tell you that this has helped me limit my woes to just those caused by deprecated code.

In the beginning

It was late into 2004. Josh Taylor and I had been sitting in our accountants office house signing the papers that would make things official. We were starting a web design company.

On December 15th, 2004 we were notified that MJ Media, LLC was now a registered organization in the great state of Michigan (bonus points if you read that like Mason).

First gigs

Our first few projects came in from family and friends. Eventually, after a quick email to The Bay City Times, we scored a short bio and color photo in the “New Business” section. We quickly picked up 3 or 4 very low budget websites. A few of those brave souls remain with us today.

It wasn’t all lollipops and gumdrops though. There was one early client that ended up disappointed when we were unable to deliver what they expected for the price that we had agreed to. I blame this on their unrealistic expectations combined with our unrealistic confidence. It’s a shame too, because I still think about how cool it would be to really help this company out.

Somewhere in the middle

After those first few gigs, we started meeting the people that would really help to shape and mold our beliefs. Some of the people that were instrumental to our success are Shawn MacDonald of 989 Design, Ron Acker and Chris Gruber of F.P. Horak, Francis Soehnel of Looks Unlimited, and the many other clients we worked with early on. They were passionate people, that enjoyed putting out the best work possible, even when less expensive options exist.

Things were still just puttering along though. Josh and I both had full time jobs, and the company became nothing more than a weekend hobby.

“Hey dad, I quit.”

At the time I was working for my father at Pyramid Paving. I was working very hard, and making pretty good money. I knew that I liked working there, but I felt I needed to give MJ Media the shot it deserved. After a being laid off for the winter, I began seeking higher profile clients. We scored big when Kate Cardinali of IMD brought us in to help with an E-commerce website for Franks Great Outdoors. I estimated it to take the rest of the summer, and decided not to return to Pyramid for the upcoming season.

Things seemed to be going well, until they didn’t. The old site was being bombarded by hackers on a daily basis. We were forced to make emergency patches just to keep it running long enough to develop a replacement. For one reason or another, we also went through a couple of server moves at this time.  One of our moves was interrupted by a tornado that touched down dangerously close to the server building and caused what I seem to remember as a few days’ worth of downtime. Eventually, the old website was so far gone, that we decided to launch the new site, untested and unfinished.

It was a bad idea. Development came down to a punch list, and because our contract was pretty vague, the client had a different punch list than we did. Upon completion of our list, the client declined to pay the final invoice.

I was heartbroken. I didn’t want this project to fail.

Seven months into a five month project, I was broke. And to make matters worse, we were so busy trying to launch this site, that we hadn’t been seeking other work. Things were rough, and my personal credit cards started taking a beating.

It’s not all doom and gloom

Let me make one thing clear; most of our clients are bad-ass! I have met some very interesting small business owners since we started this company, and helped them to begin their foray into the digital world. While I always have a sore spot for the failures of yesterday, I remember most projects as successes.

I still enjoy doing what I do. I feel that we stack up closely with the best in the business. Even more than that, I still enjoy learning what I do not yet know. It’s such a fast paced field to be in, that you are able to see the landscape change before your eyes.

So what’s the point?

There is one, I promise.

Nearly seven years into this magical trip, my partner, Josh Taylor has chosen to leave MJ Media. I’ve heard some of his plans for the future, and I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of him. I’m going to miss him as a partner.

So, it’s with mixed emotions that I wish Josh a fond farewell. Please feel free to wish him good luck in the comments below!

(photo by bengrey)