Fortunately there is a pretty simple fix, I had to edit formatting.php in order to keep wpautop() from removing my deliberate breaks. I commented out the following line which replaces two occurrences of BR separated only by whitespace with two newlines:

//$pee = preg_replace('|<br />\s*<br />|', "\n\n", $pee);

Then, I commented out this line found towards the end of the function and replaced it with a version that exempts BRs from being removed:

Commented out:
//$pee = preg_replace('!<br />(\s*</?(?:p|li|div|dl|dd|dt|th|pre|td|ul|ol)[^>]*>)!', '$1', $pee);

Replaced with:
$pee = preg_replace('!(\s*</?(?:p|li|div|dl|dd|dt|th|pre|td|ul|ol)[^>]*>)!', '$1', $pee);

This keeps wordpress from stripping the breaks, but it does not keep Tiny MCE from doing it if you go to visual mode.

Customer loyalty can never be mis-underestimated but it often is. It is a proven fact that it is much cheaper to re-market to your current customers and costs less in time and money to resell to them than to find new customers. Why do you think the multinationals bend over backwards with discounts when you are threatening to leave them. Mobile Phone & Pay TV providers for example suddenly offer amazing new deals & handset upgrades when you are showing that you are about to go to their rivals.

But how do you keep customers and keep them keen. Here’s a few tips that might help you…

1. Communications
If you keep communications hot with customers then they will more likely be in a position to buy from you in the future. This could be through a blog, email marketing campaigns or even printed newsletters. Keeping in touch is key as the buyer (customer) goes through different buying cycles and decisions. By giving them information on the latest skills you’ve acquired (hired) or latest technologies applied to your recent website creation in your portfolio, they may just want that upgrade too.

2. Add Value
Be there for your customers and deliver a good quality product. It’s not all about how cheap it is, there are more important things for customers. Are you there to answer phone calls or emails when they need support? Are you active on your support forum? Do you do extra work such as logo design or brochures on top of website design? Can you SEO the site for when it launches? Do you throw in a couple of email marketing templates too? There are lots of things you can do to add extra value to the purchase a customer makes other than just a discount.

3. Loyalty Schemes
A successful loyalty scheme can encourage frequent purchases from customers over time. Ideas might include yearly discounts on hosting over the monthly price; buy 5 hours of changes for the price of 4 and even a yearly refresh in design for a % off the usual design price you charge. Be creative, reward loyal customers and they’ll keep coming back for more and even turn into your advocates. When that happens, you won’t be able to handle the work that comes your way.

4. Customers are God
In Japan, there’s a well know proverb that says that “customers are God”. Customer service is very important for your brand, business and customer loyalty. Make sure you handle complaints effectively, manage their expectations and answer any questions promptly. The biggest problems for designers can often be managing expectations with the design brief. My advice is to always under promise and over deliver and you’ll do just fine.

5. Listen to your Customers
The more you know and learn about your customers, the easier it is to shape your business’ and its direction to meet your customers’ needs and desires. Yes, add getsatifaction.com’s feedback widget to your site, ask customers for feedback through surveys and referrals, call customers and find out how they are doing if you’ve not heard from them and listen to what they have to say. Then, act on it. There’s no good hearing and disagreeing. Remember, customers are gods and although they don’t know what a CMS system or an H1 tag necessarily is, they know what they want and you have to give it to them for your design business to succeed.

Whether you think your customer is a God or have a strict policy to answer all support emails within 48 hours, there are lots of things we can all do to improve our customer relations and ultimately our bottom line. Happy customers equals loyal customers. And, loyal customers equals healthy business.

As the Holiday Season is well and truly upon us, we here at ChillyBin Web Design & Consultancy find ourselves reflecting on the past year and on those who have helped to shape our business in a most significant way. We value our relationship with you and look forward to working with you in the years to come. We wish you a very happy Holiday Season and a New Year filled with peace and prosperity.

I’ve compiled a list of my favourite applications, most of them I use on at least a weekly basis, and in no particular order.

Perian
A must have download for anyone who wants to consume video content on thier mac. Install it and let Quicktime open all your video files with ease.

Tweetie
Tweet much? Well if you haven’t already downloaded Tweetie for your iPhone or your mac then you are missing out. It’s a wonderfully designed application that features multiple accounts, independent compose windows, search trends, threaded dm’s, user details & bookmarklets which make it my Twitter application of choice. Best of all, they offer a free version (ad supported)

Billings
Since starting my own business (ChillyBin Web Design & Consultancy) earlier in the year Billings has been an essential piece of my daily routine. It looks after all my job estimates, client briefs, time tracking, invoicing and accounting. It’s a very powerful little tool for small business and something that I could not do without.

Things
I’ve been using the GTD method for a few years now to manage my tasks and Things is a neat little app for iPhone and mac that facilitates all my todo lists and syncs across both devices seamlessly. I no longer have to worry about forgetting anything either with ChillyBin or in my personal life. I’ve recently integrated it with Mail.app so I can send new items to it effortsly from my email.

Textmate
I’ve recently just upgraded to Textmate after running BBedit for a number of years. Textmate now looks after all my text editing across my systems, it opens, reads and edits any file I throw at it. Since I spend most of my day writing and editing XHTML & CSS this is one tool I could not do without, it also has a set of really strong bundles inbuilt which allow textmate to be extended easily.

Adium
I use chat for business and for pleasure and Adium is my multiple protocol application of choice, there are tons of community developed plugins, icons, message lists and contact lists themes available which makes this app a constant on any system I run.

Transmit
I love Transmit, it’s been my SFTP/FTP application since i first migrated to mac and it’s developed my the Panic team who really make some great software. I use this religiously to get web content around to both client and personal websites.

Transmission
I don’t tend to download much through bittorrent anymore but when I do it’s with Transmission. It also monitors a folder hooked up to Dropbox so I can download even when I’m out of the office or on my iPhone.

Speed Download 5
Multiple threaded download management application which I use to download and sort anything downloaded through the web, it also allows me to connect it up with my rapidshare account.

Adobe Creative Suite
Photoshop, Illustrator, & Dreamweaver are my tools of choice out of this suite which has been the main tool of any creative project I’ve undertaken.

Pixelmator
For those little image edits which I can’t be bothered opening up Photoshop for.

VMWare Fusion
Alas, there are still times we need to run windows software, especially when testing and checking a new website design across multiple browsers, helps with streaming and decoding any files specifically written for windows too (I’m looking at you WMV!) I highly recommend checking it out and the new Unity mode in v3 is fantastic.

Parachute
Backups are important, I use this little app in conjunction with Time Machine to keep backups of my hard disk content across on my 2TB NAS storage device.

1Password
Strong Password generator and managment application that keeps all my passwords synced, strong and secure. Helps when I am setting up new passwords and websites for clients as it allows me a quick and simple way to archive these very strong passwords and bring them up when I need them very quickly. Oh, and it syncs across to my iPhone too.

Balsamiq Mockups
Prototyping tool developed in Air which allows me to quickly send clients a basic mockup of their project quickly without having to worry about colours and/or opening up Photoshop at the first stage of a project. A real lifesaver!

Sequel Pro
Helps me manage online and offline database content for client websites.

Bowtie
iTunes notifier and last.fm scrobbler that sits alongside my dock and allows me to quickly see what track in playing in iTunes and either rate it or skip it, has a strong set of keyboard shortcuts too.

CandyBar
I use CandyBar to customise icons & docks across my systems with a little help from the amazing icon designers at macthemes2.net & deviantart.com.

Dropbox
I love my dropbox, it allows me to send files aroundthw web seamlessly and effortleessly. I can sync a new design file easily with a client which will then get downloaded to their dropbox folder on their system. I also use it to share large files over the net via email to clients or friends as I’ve got 2.5GB of storage to play with. I also sync my .torrent files here with Transmission.

iWork Suite
Pages, Numbers & Keynote are all really undervalued applications in my opinion and they take care of all proposals, briefs, spreadsheet and presentation tasks I throw at it. They also all open ad export files in PDF and the Microsoft Office file formats so you can share this with PC users too.

MainMenu
Set of system tools which allows me to clean and maintain my snow leopard installations and keep them running up to spec. I also use it to clean my browser and dns caches when editing and viewing website designs as well As repairing and corrupt file permissions.

iStat
Remote monitoring tool that allows me to check the status of any of my machines my iPhone.

Drive Genius 2
For anything that MainMenu can’t handle I load up Drive Genius, it also helps with defragmentation of my drives (yes, it happens even on a mac), repartitioning, shredding files, scanning & integrity checks.

iLife Suite
If you own a mac you will have at least used these applications, but I really couldn’t do without iMovie, iPhoto & Garageband.

UnRarX & The Unarchiver
For all your unarchiving needs.