Archive | May, 2007

Marketing Tip – Plug Yourself. Love Yourself.

May/31 in Personal, Web Development Tutorials

If you have several mildly successful Web sites, how can you gain even more attention and readers without doing much work? Well, one technique I have been doing since day one is self promotion. Think of it as loving yourself when nobody else wants to do so.

Learn to Love Yourself

Now we all put links back to our own Web sites and projects. There is nothing new or different about that advice. If you have several dynamic Web sites though, you can plug links in that will lead to real content and not just give you another link or two. Let me explain.

Love YourselfThanks to a few WordPress plugins here and there, I have at the bottom of my three major Web sites links where you can find “other work” I have done. So if somebody was reading this for an example and thought, “Damn that Mitch is pretty cool, where can I find more of his work?” they have it right there for them.

Thanks to that and to me linking to my other projects – I bring more links into myself than anybody else on the Web. In a way, I guess you could think of me as my own little “network” of Web sites with each one promoting the next one in the circle.

No Super Tool To Help You Here

There is no special extension or super plugin that will help you make this happen. You just have to use a little imagination and the tools that are available to you. Remember you are giving your visitors just a little more content – not an advertisement.

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Best Stylish Tweaks for Firefox

May/30 in Desktop Apps

StylishWant to fix a few simple design flaws with the Firefox?

Raise your hand if you have ever played with the Stylish extension for Firefox. Now raise your other hand if you knew where to find some of the cooler application style for Firefox.

For all of you who have both of your hands in the air – I want you to wave them like you just don’t care. For the folks with one hand still on the mouse, scroll down to see some of my favorite tweaks to Firefox you can do with the Stylish extension for Firefox.

Stylish IconAdd Something to the about:blank Page – Why does the about:blank page have to be so – blank? There are several cool styles you can load up here to give your about:blank page a makeover. Here are a few more cool ones to pick from: About:Blank – Foxkeh and About:Blank – Washout.

Stylish IconAuto-hide Statusbar – Tired of your ugly statusbar getting in the way of your browsing? Load up this style and it will only show when you hover over the bottom section of your Firefox window. Move your mouse, and it disappears again just like magic!

Stylish IconSliding Menubar – Menubar getting in your way too? Load up this style and you can set it to only be shown when you need it. Click on the Firefox icon in the old menu bar place to show it and hide it. No reason to show all of those options up there if you don’t use them all the time.

Stylish Icon Bookmark Folder Icons – Add your own icons to specific folders inside of your bookmarks. This is helpful if you have a load of bookmarks and folders for the bookmarks and want an easier visual way to navigate inside them.

Stylish Icon Colorize Firefox 2.0 Active Tab – Tired of your active tab looking like all the rest of them? Wish it was a little easier to see the tab you were on in comparison with all the other tabs that are in the background? This user style does the trick and allows you to set your own color combination.

Have a favorite that I might have missed? Leave a comment so I don’t miss it again and so we can share it with the rest of the class.

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Create a Web 2.0 Layout

May/29 in Web Development Tutorials

Feel like your not keeping up with the times?

Web 2.0 Layout

Generate the Web 2.0 layout of your dreams! Want a generator that promises to make you look like some of the top dogs out there in the Web 2.0 fight? Well I can’t promise you any venture capital – but I can give you a link to get a Web site to make it look like every rich guy with a check book it handing you money.

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Audio Guide to WordPress Hosting

May/28 in Web Development Tutorials, Web Hosting

WordPress Hosting GuideLast week on the Web Hosting Show we covered the world of setting up your own blog from head to toe. From picking out the right Web host to getting your blog configured – it is all there. There was little surprise that for the “cooking show example” I used WordPress, since it is a personal favorite of mine.

With that said – I figured I’d share with the masses the week long guide that we got published over there in hopes that it helps somebody else out there with getting WordPress installed and configured right.

If you want to listen to the entire show or save the mp3 to listen to later – you can download it and listen to it over at WebHostingShow.com.

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SB-Wedding

May/28 in Personal

Here’s the first set of photos from the big Barton wedding that happened yesterday. Sean and Monica pulled it off perfectly – and I’m sure I’ll be pushing out even more photos via SB-1 Online in the next few weeks (as they come in). Three cheers for everybody’s favorite hyphenated hero SB-1 and the Adidas loving punk princess herself – Miss Mo.

S & M Wedding - Photo 10 S & M Wedding - Photo 13

+ Check Out More S & M Wedding Photos!

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Support Tip: Give Me All The Details!

May/27 in Personal, Web Hosting

When asking any business for support, you should make sure you do so by including all the details that might be needed to answer that support request. Sometimes just posting a simple question is not enough and you need to make sure you explain yourself so you can get an answer quicker.

First thing you should do is state your question. Make it short, simple and to the point. You see after this simple step many people stop and just send that in to a support team. That alone is not enough.

You need to include more details about what it is you are asking about, why you think you need it and what it is exactly. The more oddball your question – the more information somebody might need. For example this question here:

Do you support WordPress on your Web hosting accounts? WordPress is a blogging engine that uses PHP, MySQL and more. Here is an example of the specs list needed for hosting it.

Is easier to answer than:

Hi there I want to install a script for something but I need to know if you support my thingies I need for it thanks.

Support professionals in any arena are not mind readers. You have to try to do your best job at layout out the question in a way anybody could understand if you want the quickest results.

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Hosting Help from the Vault

May/26 in Personal, Web Hosting

I was just looking at some classic posts of mine from back in 2004 here.

I don’t know by how much I have grown as a writer in that time – I like to think there has been a little leap in quality and class. I’ll let you be the judge of that though. Still relevant even after all these years – here are a few of my very first posts for this blog right here.

Many of these made there way in one way, shape or form into Lockergnome’s Guide to Web Hosting. I’m really starting to get the itch to do another self-help book about the hosting industry – just need to find the time to get it all written.

In comparison with what I know now with what I knew then I think I could help even more people out. What do you think?

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For a Darker WordPress Theme

May/25 in Web Development Tutorials

As somebody who likes the unique and different stuff out there on the Web, when I see a nice looking WordPress theme I can’t help myself – I have to go “ohh” and “ahh” with the rest of them. One nice theme that you could get giddy over for hours and hours is The Dark Theme.

Dark Theme for WordPress

It has a classy look, yet still has that new Web 2.0ish feeling to it. I like it.

+ Download The Dark Theme for WordPress!

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Who Owns Dig.com and Diggg.com?

May/24 in Hot Web Topics

DigggCall it curiosity or call it boredom.

If I owned my own cable news network, I could call it an investigation. When you tell somebody who doesn’t know about tech and Web-like things – you tell them to check out “digg” on the Web – they are going to first try “dig.com”. They aren’t going to find what they want though. Dig.com goes to a Disney Web site.

Diggg.com is also registered, although it does not go anywhere. It is owned by some guy in Norway? You can go look at the whois domain name information for yourself.

How about digggg.com? It is taken.

Work fast though, Diggggg.com is free for registration from what I could find.

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Mitch’s Top 10 Offline Applications

May/23 in Desktop Apps, Personal

I have reviewed a ton of freeware applications for Lockergnome’s Windows Fanatics over the years. So many, I’m not sure if people really know which ones actually make it into my day to day life. Here are ten offline applications that I use on a day to day basis. Some are free, some are not – they are all quality goods though that you should all check out.

  1. Firefox
    It has been my Web browser for year, and unless they do something extremely crazy – don’t think I’ll be moving away for one of the other browsers anytime soon.
  2. NoteTab Pro
    NoteTab Pro is another program I have been using forever and have never found anything better. Three reasons I love it are: basic text editing, spell checker and word count. If your a text editor without those three don’t bother me.
  3. WinRAR
    Out of all the zipping and un-zipping tools out there, I think WinRAR does the best job and stays out of my way unless I need it. Good stuff all around.
  4. VLC Media Player
    I mainly have this one loaded up to play all the wacky video downloaded from the Web that doesn’t play right in your standard video players.
  5. CoreFTP Lite
    I am not deeply in love with this FTP client – but it does the job without choking much. If I could find a better client – I’d probably use it instead. Alternatives welcome!
  6. Audacity
    A must have for any podcast that is working with a $3 budget. Totally free and easy to use even for a beginner in the audio editing arena.
  7. CDBurnerXP Pro 3
    Toss out your old CD burning software because you no longer need it. CDBurnerXP Pro 3 does for free what some of the other burning packages can’t even get done for $50 or more.
  8. XNeat Windows Manager
    This is one I just ran across not too long ago. It allows you to hide things on your taskbar, send anything to the tray, show and hide windows, and a heck of a lot more.
  9. Foxit Reader
    Adobe can bite my Web hosting butt. Foxit Reader gives me a PDF reader that doesn’t ask to update itself every five minutes with crap I don’t need. Thank you Foxit!
  10. OpenOffice.org
    Anybody who says you can’t live day to day inside of Open Office is wrong. For me, at least – it does what it needs to do when I need it to do something. Usually I only use it for editing and creating invoices though so maybe I’m not the spokesperson they are looking for.

What about you? What do you think of these suggestions – or can you suggest a replacement for one? Let me know and make sure to leave some links for them as well.

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