A week or two ago I talked some with Aaron Ogle and we decided to try our hand at things again. After a couple tries of trying to create a logo, I gave up and told him that we needed to find an Apostolic graphic artist. He agreed and I started looking, and it was God that I found one (and a very good one at that). Apostolicbook now has it’s very own graphic designer. What does this mean for us and for everyone else? The world!! Or at least it seems like that.

Last night we had a so called “business meeting” that lasted from around 8 till 11 (my time). You’re thinking “Wow that’s a long time!” and you are correct, but we needed that. I think we all went away from it feeling very accomplished. We got several things much needed out of the way. Of those things, the main one I’m happy about is our logo! It’s very sweet looking and most defintally will be recoginzable any where. I won’t give any details of what it looks like (and won’t post pictures of it), as it’s not time for that. Cause like the Bible says, there’s a time and place for everything!

We did a lot of other things about Apostolicbook last night, and they are all very important too. The last thing I’m going to say is this… Be sure to start checking our Twitter, Status blog, and our homepage for updates! Cause who knows, sometime soon we might reveal a little here and there!

This is all for now! Hopefully you can tell I’m ready to start doing stuff on Apostolicbook!!! God Bless,
Bradley Hilton

Here’s just a quick update about something I recently did. As many of you know I love coding, especially website coding. Many people have asked me why I like it so much, and the only truthful answer I can give is the fact that it’s sometimes a challenge. I love challenges even if I get mad or angry while doing it. Why? Because after I’m done and get it working 100% correctly, I’m happy and excited about it.

With that in mind, you also know that I’ve coded a couple websites. Including but not limited to My Pastors, My School’s, My School District’s Welcome Center, and mine (new one in the process).

As of just recently, I can now add another one to that list. Also in a couple days from now I’ll be able to add two more, but for now I’ll just talk about one.

This picture is a screenshot taken from my phone (since it’s what I’ve typed up this blog post with) and it’s of the site I can now add to my portfolio. It’s for a real estate company as you can maybe see from the screen shot. It is a Joomla! template and it’s also a Joomanager theme. There was a little bit of a learning curve going from just coding a Joomla! template to adding and making sure that Joomanager worked and looked correctly. I was excited to do this site and glad that I got it done before my deadline. The link to the live website is: http://www.svcliving.com/ even though they currently don’t have it all the way up as they are learning how to use Joomla and Joomanager. Just thought I’d share this with you all.

And upcoming sometime soon is a post called “Who Are the Best Actors”. I’ve still got a ways to go before that post is complete, but I’m hoping it’s going to end up good.

God Bless,
Bradley

This new design that we have in our mind is very different and I don’t think I have seen anything like it on any other social networking website. We’re not completely sure that the design that we have right now is going to be the final one, but it is a concept of something which is more than nothing! Haha – I wish I could post some pictures of the design that we are thinking of, but the colors don’t really match. It’s a horrible reason why not to post them, but i’m just not going to post them. I will say that we are implenting as much effects as we can without making the website slow so that the users will enjoy using AposolicBook.

If you have any suggestions for us or would like to give us some input, please feel free to let us know!! After we start getting the whole website up and going, we will probably be looking for some people to Alpha Test (not Beta since Alpha comes first) for us. During the Alpha Test we will require the users to give us input and take surveys either every week or every other week, and we will also require users to inform us whenever they run into an error or bug. That way we can see how users like it and improve the website based on their feedback.

Hopefully I will get to post another AposolicBook entry sometime soon and not in another three months. Lol – I’m hoping that by three months from now we will already be in Alpha Testing phase. If we’re not that far into the development of ApostolicBook, then I’m hoping to at least have a majority of the pre-Alpha Testing done. So, pray for us that we have enough time and creativity to do this! Thanks.

God Bless,
Bradley Hilton

Then there’s awesome church!!! I love my church (Truth Tabernacle) and love being an Apostolic young person! I wouldn’t and won’t trade it for anything this world has to offer!! As most of my readers know I am my church’s lead sound man. What does that mean? It means a lot of different things, but I’ll summarize it for you.. We have a very nice sound system and a very nice mixer, there are areas of it that we could improve on but you have to have money for that. We also have a very nice piece of equipment that let’s us record professionally. This was a somewhat expensive too, but it wasn’t too bad. In fact here in the next couple of months we (the other sound man and I) are thinking about adding onto this so that we can have all the drum mica recorded separately and not remixes like we are doing now. We make preaching CDs and we record all the special singing so that we can make a special singing CD and sell. We’ve made one in the past, but it was all remixed and so we couldn’t really make it sound better and more professional. (As a side note, if anyone wants to buy the first special singing CD please let me know.) Back in the sound booth during worship service we control the projector that displays the lyrics to the songs that are being sung. We also display the first scripture that the preacher reads. I personally am not a fan of this because some people no longer bring their Bibles, but that’s why we only do one scripture so that if someone really wants to follow the scriptures that the preacher is reading they will bring their Bible.

I’ve learned a couple things since I’ve made a blog post. One of those things is the fact that if you give God your tithes and then more than just the 10% that he requires, He will bless you. I’ve experienced that first hand. Ever since I got my job I’ve been getting paid every other week (I think that’s how it is) and so I get to pay my tithes to the Lord. Well the other week I was going to put the money into the offering and realized that I had money the a spot where I usually keep the money for tithes. I was confused by this cause I was pretty sure I had paid tithes last time.. Well just to be sure that I did pay it I put it in the offering. That week I got some side jobs to do that are earning me some extra money! It’s a total blessing from the Lord!!!

I’ve recently been getting some thoughts for articles. The thing is though that I’ve yet to have enough time to actually sit down and collect my thoughts together and write a good article. I want to do this so bad!! I’ll have to make some time to sit down and write an article. One that I really want to sit down and write badly is “What Will It Take – Part II”. I’ve got some other thoughts running through my head, but I won’t want to share them with you cause you might steal them. Lol :p

That’s it for right now.. I’ve got to start studying for a practice A+ test I’m taking tomorrow morning before I head out for a youth service that I’m going to in Guy, Arkansas.

God Bless,
Bradley

Another thing that has been keeping me busy is work, which if you’ve read my blog that’s working for my school district. Well, I just got my check in the mail today and it’s way more than I expected! I’m excited about that, but I think half of it is going to be gone cause of paying my mom and dad off.

Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time working on getting new features for my school’s websites. There are two main features that I’ve added, and you can see them from the picture on the left. The main feature is what I call “highlighted articles”. This is a scrollable list of articles that have been posted to the website, and it also can have pictures of the subject. I’ve ran into a ton of problems with this! I’ve over came a couple of them, but I’m still running into a couple of them. Another feature is the search bar at the top right of the menu. The positioning of this took more work than I had originally thought it would have, but hey I love a good coding challenge every so often! I also had to edit one of the Joomla! files to make the search appear in a different page than the front page. I’ve made a good amount more of changes to the site, but those are all little details that a majority of people will never know… Haha

I hopefully will be posting an article this week or weekend that has some good meaning behind it, and might get you thinking.. Who knows.

Bradley

This week has been an interesting one all things considered. Monday at school my P.E. teacher wouldn’t accept the letter that my mom wrote to excuse me from working out since my hands weren’t healed yet. He told me that I had to have a doctors note to fully excuse me from working out. This then caused me to have to go to see a doctor, so that Monday night I did go. The doctor said that I bruised my bone and that my wound(s) were infected. She gave me some medication to take to get rid of my infection and then wrote a note to excuse me from working out until the 21^st. Tuesday another day of school and long one at that, posted a blog post, and then that night I went to puppet practice and meet up with my friend. Yeah that’s him pictured to the left, me and him are really good buddies, we’ve done I think too puppet shows together and we’re really good together! Ha-ha. Wednesday night was a another day of school, but it kind of went pretty fast which felt good. That night I got surprised because there was a visiting preacher, Elder Eldon Eckles. His preaching was AWESOME, but he had a young apostolic lady with him. I was wondering who she was because honestly she was pretty good looking. So, service went on and Pastor Chalfant introduced the preacher and then said that it was Elder Eldon Eckles’ grand daughter. Knowing me, I haven’t got the guts to talk to her because I’m too shy when it comes to talking to girls and meeting new Apostolic people in person… I’m determined to do it though! (I’ll tell you my plan here shortly.) Thursday was a pretty good day because it went by pretty fast, and I learned that I will be paid $600 for working 60 hours, working for USD469 doing technical work and things related to that. Also, Thursday night I worked on converting a website layout and design that I had done a while back into a Joomla! template, I got a good amount done, just got a whole bunch more to do. Friday (today) wasn’t the best for the first half of the day, but after school things got a ton better! Got home and worked on the Joomla! template some more (fixed some bugs here and there), then left for prayer meeting. After prayer meeting was over I stayed to practice a song for the youth service that is coming up the 23^rd at Truth Tabernacle. As we was practicing, they asked me if I could lead song service. What could I say, besides yes? So, I’m leading youth service song service on Wednesday night. That’s been this week. What about this weekend and my plan of me trying to talk to Elder Eckles’ grand daughter?

My answer is as follows. Tomorrow there is a Youth Rally at New Life in Olathe, KS. I’m excited because it’s the first one in a long time and I’m ready to be in a service with other young people that is directed to young people. I’ll try to post some pictures of it if I take any… As for my plan to talk to Elder Eckles’ grand daughter, I’m planning on getting or making myself talk to her tomorrow since they are going (my dad asked Elder Eckles). If any of you read this and are going tomorrow, want to maybe help me out or give me any pointers? Ha-ha

That’s it, except the picture to the right is the starting of what I hope is my second to next blog post. And if you’re wondering, yes I do actually write down some of blog post because I get ideas at school and can’t really type them up on a computer or on my phone. If you click on the picture you might be able to read what my title might be, in case you can’t I plan to title it “Me, Myself, and You?”. Thanks for taking the time out of YOUR day to read my blog!!!

God Bless,
Bradley Hilton

So, you know how I have done my school’s website (http://usd469.net/lhs/)? I have also done the Lansing PTA’s website (http://usd469.net/pta). Both of those sites are based off the CMS called Joomla. I love using Joomla for websites because all that I have to do is create (code) the template and then install it and make it the default theme. Then train the people on how to update their website by creating articles and stuff. After I’ve done that it means that I don’t have to worry about updating their content myself, or I don’t have to worry about teaching them the HTML they would need to know to update the website.

You may also know that my 7^th hour is dedicated to updating the High School’s website, Twitter, and other websites we’re doing. I’m not the only one in that class, but I am one of the four. Mr. Wessel is the technology coordinator for USD 469 (my school’s district). I’ve helped him a lot with some server, website, and computer things. Well I decided to ask him one day if there was any chance that I could get a job helping him out or something of that sorts. That was before school started, so about four or five weeks ago.

As time has went on, things have went slowly but surely. First it started off with he didn’t know if it was actually possible since a couple of things. Then after he found out it was possible, we had to create a list of things that I could do or things that I would do with some quick training. So, after we had that done another problem arose – he didn’t know how they would be able to pay me if this went through. He finally figured it out with the help of some other people. Now after 5 weeks (or more), I see the light at the end of the long torturous tunnel! (Got that from a song lol).

This Tuesday (September 15th) I have a meeting with Dr. Bagby, Mr. Wessel, and myself. I was told that we would discuss my pay, the things that I would be doing and/or helping with, and hours. I think that I will be getting $10.50 an hour starting off with, but probably will only be doing a couple of hours a week (like maybe 6-8 hours a week or less or more). That’s not a lot compared to normal jobs, but hey I think the pay is good for a first job.

Please pray that God helps me and He gives me the correct words to say when I’m talking to them. I really want this job because it’ll be a good one and I’ll enjoy it. Sorry for such a long post, thanks for bearing with me through it!

God Bless,
Bradley

The only thing that I have left to do is to edit the “templateDetails.xml” file to be up to date and to include all the files when installing. Then the next test will be to test the installing of the template and work out all of the errors that I get. Let’s pray that I can get it all working before I go to bed!

On a side note, I’ve been texting this girl since last week sometime, and then this past Saturday a local church had a youth service with fellowship afterward. I stayed for it and talked to someone about this girl and to find out she’s on fire for God which is AWESOME! This means that once I talk to my pastor about his rules for talking to girls, then I am going to move on from there and I’m praying that she actually likes me!!! Lol – I’m sure most of my readers don’t really care about this, but I just thought I would put that in there! Haha – That’s all for now, will update later some time, that ain’t a promise that it’ll be within a week, but I will try.

God Bless,
Bradley Hilton

Link: http://www.graywolf336.com/joomla
Preview:

I know that the preview image isn’t that big, that’s because this is the only image that i have myself. If you want to look at it with a “bigger” image, then feel free to visit http://www.graywolf336.com/joomla/ Thanks and let me know what you think!!!

God Bless,
Bradley Hilton

If you’re like most people, then you probably have no idea what Joomla! is. Correct? Well, let me try to explain to you what it is and hopefully you’ll have a better understanding. Joomla! is a Content Management System, or rather known as CMS. What this means is that someone can easily manage a website without any XHTML, CSS, or PHP, or any other website/server language. The only downfall to doing that, is someone will either have to settle for a free template (thus being not very good) or they can pay a good chunk of money for a template for it that has a good amount of features already built into it. I’ve seen, on average, a template for Joomla! costing about sixty dollars! There was also a website that I saw that claimed it had it’s “own” content management system and they would host and design your very own template, well when I got to looking at the CMS they had, it was straight up Joomla!! Here’s the part that really got me, it cost a ton of money up front and then a good chunk of money per month if you went with them.

Well all of information has got to my head and I’ve started to realize that if I could create templates for Joomla! and then start hosting some, I could possibly get a good amount of money! This whole week (except for Tuesday and maybe today) I have spent all day acting like a geek and being a geek. Which means I have been learning how to create a template for Joomla!. Now I have a totally different way of learning how to any type of coding or learning a language. I’ve applied this same concept for learning how to create a template for Joomla! and I believe that it’s actually working!

So far I have successfully create ½ of a template. You’re probably wondering how in the world this is possible and let me know you it is. Lol – It’s possible because to create a template for Joomla! you really only need one page for whole website. This page is the “index.php” and  it contains many and many lines of code. Not only does it have html and php but it also has some sort of special coding language that is for Joomla! and I think by Joomla!. I have wrote a complete front page of the template, but I need to (or rather find out how to) include some PHP coding so that it checks and see if there is any content being posted on the right side of the page, and then if there isn’t anything  there then not display that stuff. Wish me luck my readers and peeps! Lol

God Bless,
Bradley Hilton