From an unknown author comes the all-important question to every seeker for success:

Upon a time—I do not know
Exactly when, but long ago—
A man whose riches were untold.
Silver and precious stones and gold-
Within an Eastern city dwelt;
But not a moment’s peace he felt,
For fear that thieves should force his door,
And rob him of his treasured store.
In spite of armed slaves on guard,
And doors and windows locked and barred,
His life was one continual fright;
He hardly slept a wink by night,
And had so little rest” by day
That he grew prematurely gray.

At last he dug a monstrous pit
To hold his wealth, and buried it
By night, alone; then smoothed the ground
So that the spot could not be found.
But he gained nothing by his labor:
A curious, prying, envious neighbor,
Who marked the hiding, went and told
The Sultan where to find the gold.
A troop of soldiers came next day,
And bore the hoarded wealth away.

Some precious jewels still remained,
For which a goodly price he gained,
Then left the city, quite by stealth,
To save the remnant of his wealth;
But now, by hard experience taught,
A better way to keep it sought.
Broad lands he bought, and wisely tilled ;
With fruits and grain his barns he filled;
He used his wealth with liberal hand;
His plenty flowed through all the land;
And, hid no longer under-ground,
Spread honest comfort all around.

Thus calm and prosperous pass the years,
Till on a fated day he hears
The Sultan’s mandate, short and dread,
” Present thyself, or lose thy head!”
Fearful and trembling, he obeys,
For Sultans have their little ways,
And wretches who affront their lord
Brave bastinado, sack, or cord.

Before the dreaded throne he bowed
Where sat the Sultan, grim and proud,
And thought, “My head must surely fall,
And then my master will seize all
My wealth again.” But from the throne
There came a calm and kindly tone:
” My son; well pleased am I to see
Thy dealings in prosperity;
May Allah keep thee in good health !
Well hast thou learned the use of wealth.
No longer buried under-ground,
Its comforts spread to all around.’
The poor man’s blessings on thy name
Are better far than worldly fame.
I called thee hither. Now, behold,
Here are the silver, gems, and gold
I took from thee in other days;
Receive them back, and go thy ways,
For thou hast learned this truth at last—
Would that it might be sown broadcast!—
That riches are but worthless pelf
When hoarded only for one’s self.”

S. S. G.

I have been working on some code for a site that’s integrating a lot of social media links, and everything was going swimmingly until I noticed that the “Post to Twitter links were no longer working.

It turns out Twitter has made a few changes, but the fix was very easy.

All that was required to fix up the links was to replace instances of

with

So.. begin with a call to the twitter javascript, so that your links will pop up in a nice neat window:

Then, if you’re using PHP, you’ll want to get the variable that defines the current page:

And then finally, you can put that variable into your twitter link:

And, YAY! It works.

I’ve noticed a lot of people wondering how to use WordPress as a sales page. Now, I wouldn’t recommend using it for this if all you’re going to have is a sales page, but if you’re planning a blog in the back end, or some other pages that you want to easily edit, then maybe it’s not overkill.

Anyway, to make life easy for those folks looking to integrate their existing sales page into a WordPress install, here’s the secret…. YOU DO NOT NEED TO USE A PARTICULAR THEME, OR EVEN INTEGRATE THE PAGE INTO THE SITE….

Here’s the quick and dirty way to add your page to your blog:

And that’s the hard part.

Now, go to your WordPress admin area and create a new page.

Make the title Buy It Now or something like that, just in case you have the page listed in your blog section in the future. Leave the body of the page blank.

In the righthand sidebar, in the new Attributes area, choose your newly created page from the Template dropdown box.

You’re done. Save the page.

If you preview the page now, you’ll see your sales letter. All that’s left to do is make your sales page the front page of your site.

You can do that by clicking the Settings item in the left sidebar, then choosing the Reading settings.

Select “A Static Page” for your front page display, and choose your Buy It Now page from the drop down list.

And that’s it.

Now when you go to your front page, you’ll see your sales letter. If you want to change your sales letter, just change mysalespage.php or whatever you named the template page, and reupload it. It’s not elegant, but it is better than paying someone to make a new page template for you.

IF YOUR NEW PAGE DOESN’T SHOW UP IN THE TEMPLATE LIST

Someone told me their newly created page didn’t show up when the followed the directions above. The best thing to do then, is grab a copy of page.php from your template folder. Rename it mysalespage.php and change the code at the top to
<?php
/*
Template Name: Sales Page
*/
?>

Follow the rest of the directions, and at the very end of the process, replace the faked sales page template with your real sales page.