Archive for December, 2004
· December 18, 2004 at 3:05 pm · Odds & Ends
I thought this was a really fun idea, just wish more people could have joined in! Fun and entertaining, here’s the Geek Week Before Christmas, brought to you by the fine folks at Lockergnome.
T’was the week before Christmas, and Chris asked some of our contributors to give us insight as to what they’d like the jolly fat man from north of the border (no, not Boris Yeltsin) to drop down the chimney this year. Their answers? Well, they’re geeky! What did you expect, eh?
Read the rest of “Geek Week Before Christmas” at Lockergnome!
· December 17, 2004 at 3:11 pm · Web Hosting
When I first signed up at the Web Hosting Toy Drive, they had barely raised over $200. I thought it was a good cause, so I contributed my sum to the pot. Now congratulations are in order to all those who made the first Web Hosting Toy Drive a success. $8,056.96 was raised by the time all was said and done, and I couldn’t be happier.
I plan on being a part of it next year as well. This just goes to show you that the world of Web hosting is not as cut throat as many may think that it is. When there is a good cause, it is nice to see that so many people can come together to help. This is the true meaning of the holiday season for sure.
· December 16, 2004 at 5:57 pm · Web Hosting
Sorry I wasn’t around much yesterday. Since Tuesday I’ve been battling a cold that I caught from my sister’s kids. On the bright side of things though I do have some news about the Web hosting book I’ve been working on. Yesterday I finished a rough draft of the first chapter. Things are coming together nicely so far.
I’ve set a target date, for the end of January, for me to reach a finished “rough draft” of the book. Then I’ll probably go through and make some modifications, then let a few other folks play editor for me, then I might be ready for a public release.
· December 14, 2004 at 1:13 pm · Odds & Ends
Getting yourself noticed in the sea of Web sites we call the Internet is hard work. Some folks never get noticed, and for that the only pleasure they get is having their house cat see what hard work they have done. It doesn’t have to be that way though. You too can get yourself noticed. No I’m not going to sell you anything, no matter how much this sounds like an infomercial.
The best rule of thumb I can think of would be to be unique. You have to make yourself stand out as a different voice from the crowd. No mater what kind of Web site you are building, chances are somebody has done it before. Chances are even better that several people, maybe even hundreds, have done it before.
Read the Rest of “Getting Yourself Noticed!” at Lockergnome!
· December 13, 2004 at 1:25 pm · Odds & Ends
The fine folks over at Ice Rocket have developed a new service in which you can build your own RSS feed and have it placed on your Web site. Now this is not the tool for those of you with an RSS feed already, but for those who’s updates, news, or anything else might be published via the “old way of doing things”.
Using the new service is as easy as it can get. First you need to do is register via their Web site. Then you can start your RSS building adventure! You give your new feed a channel name, channel link, channel description, channel image url, managing editor’s E-mail address, Copyright, and the number of minutes before the channel should be refreshed.
Read the rest of this article at Lockergnome!
· December 13, 2004 at 1:09 pm · Web Hosting
Ever been confused on the ways DNS works? Do you know what DNS is? Don’t be ashamed if you don’t because you are one of many not know all the facts behind it. Our good friend Google tells us DNS is, “(Domain Name Server) – Used to map names to IP addresses and vice versa. Domain Name Servers maintain central lists of domain name/IP addresses and map the domain names in your Internet requests to other servers on the Internet until the specified web site is found.”
What does that mean? It is pretty bad when you need a definition of the definition. The friendly folks over at Splodgy Web Design have put together one heck of a tutorial on this very subject.
DNS stands for Domain Name System. It is the process that connects the domain name you typed into your browser, to the server that serves or hosts the information for that domain.
People often get very confused when it comes to understanding DNS and nameservers. They get all mixed up with domain names, web servers, resolvers and IP addresses. Even people who are very computer literate can get in a complete fuddle over DNS. But it’s not really that difficult really. It’s just that whenever someone starts to explain it to you, they end up using all manor of buzz words. Things like bind and resolver. In some ways, DNS is like the offside rule in football (soccer). Everyone can play the game but just try an get them to explain the offside rule and things get very complicated. This tutorial is intended to help you understand how DNS works.
If that didn’t get your questions answered then try looking over at Webopedia:
(1) Short for Domain Name System (or Service or Server), an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Because domain names are alphabetic, they’re easier to remember. The Internet however, is really based on IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name, therefore, a DNS service must translate the name into the corresponding IP address. For example, the domain name www.example.com might translate to 198.105.232.4.
The DNS system is, in fact, its own network. If one DNS server doesn’t know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one, and so on, until the correct IP address is returned.
No mater which source you turn to, they are both well written, full of information, and right. There is no such thing as a stupid question, and with the Internet at your fingertips you have a plethora of answers to choose from!
