geeky tutorials, tips, guides and reviews
Looking for a free script to use that can give you a way to publish multiple authors, run multiple blogs, draft and schedule posts, and is fully extendable via pugins? No, I am not talking about WordPress – I am talking about Nucleus CMS. This alternative to WordPress is well worth checking out if you need a blogging script that is reliable, time tested and very solid.
The Easy Musicplayer For Flash, or otherwise known as EMFF, is in my opinion easily the best free audio player, built in flash. I have been using it to provide a player on up to six of my latest shows on webhostingshow.com.
What makes it so cool? Well, for one, it does not take a college degree to get started with. The creator of the player gives a simple four steps to get it up and running:
It does not lack in the features department either. It provides volume control, keyboard shortcuts, play, stop, pause, previous, next, Show information about a track and much more.
So if you have looked at my past list of the 5 best flash podcast players, and they didn’t do it for you, give EMFF a chance at playing your MP3s.
Nucleus CMS is like WordPress’s less popular friend, that does all the same things but doesn’t get the same love from the public. A light, flexible and secure publishing platform, Nucleus CMS is definitely worth check out if you are looking for an alternative blogging platform.
The Nucleus CMS install process isn’t rocket science, so that is defiantly a good thing. Any basic Linux hosting account should make a good home for it.
You can check out more screenshots of Nucleus CMS in action here. You can also play with the demo too, if you what to try some of the features out for yourself.
Here is a little more about Nucleus CMS from the developers:
Thanks to an international community of sophisticated developers and designers, Nucleus CMS remains simple enough for anyone to learn, and expandable enough to allow you to build almost any web site you can imagine. Nucleus CMS lets you integrate text, images, and user comments in a seamless package that will make your web presence as serious, professional, personal, or fun as you want it to be.
The must for any blogging platform, skins and plugins are both there. So this means you have even more possibilities when it comes to customizing Nucleus CMS to meet your own needs.
You can download Nucleus CMS for free, so why not give it a shot?
A “state of the art blogging solution” is how LifeType describes themselves. For me, they were filed in the drawer labeled “blogging engines I had never heard of”. It does a good job at covering all the blogging basics.
They have ping and trackback, RSS, blogroll, permalinks, and come reading for moblogging too.
How easy is it to install? The installation process looks pretty straight forward. Should be good to go on any Linux-based hosting setup with MySQL database support.
LifeType also has a very interesting history, as described by their about page:
The LifeType project started in February 2003 when its leader, Oscar Renalias, needed a set of dynamic scripts for his personal web page. Even though he did not know about the idea of weblogs back then, the outcome of the first iteration of the project already resembled one. A few weeks later Francesc, another one of the founding members, suggested that developing a blog with support for multiple users and blogs could be a better idea, and so pLog 0.1 was released on the 2nd of September 2003 featuring most of the features that are still part of the core features nowadays: multi-user and multi-blog from the ground up, template engine, localizable and extensible via plugins.
It seems it was also known as pLog for some time, but they had to drop the name due to trademark concern with Amazon.
Here are a few more links you may wish to have handy:
If you want to give it a whirl before you install, you can try out the admin and user interface demo over at OpenSourceCMS.
LifeType’s biggest feature is that they support multiple blogs and users in a single installation. You can download LifeType via their web site, and if you have had any experience with it, I would love to hear your feedback. Is it really the state of the art blogging solution it claims to be?
Tired of the way Gmail looks? You can give it a new super clean redesign, if you have Firefox and Greasemonkey installed.
As you can see, this changes the way Gmail looks from top to bottom. I like the lighter colors and the more “clean” interface myself. You can pick up the user script for it here:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7646
Also, be sure to stay tuned on the Super Clean Gmail blog, so you get the latest updates on how the project is going, and when it has been updated:
http://gmailsuperclean.wordpress.com/
Is it about time Google did a refresh of Gmail themselves? I think so…
Continuing the e-mail trend from yesterday, today I thought I would share some of my favorite Firefox add-ons and themes. Listing the add-ons I use with Thunderbird is an easy task. Why? Well… there are only two of them.
Quicktext – Keep a list of pre-written messages to use in your e-mails. It also accepts variables so personalizing a static message with information you have in hand is easy to do.
Minimize to Tray – This extension minimizes Thunderbird to the system tray on the task bar. This way I can keep Thunderbird running without it getting in the way when I don’t need it.
There are only a handful of themes really worth checking out too. Here are a few of my favorite themes for Thunderbird:
Azerty ‘mail – Brighter and unique icons, but still keeps the same look and feel.
Charamel – A tan colored Thunderbird theme that is awesome, except for a few little things here and there that keep me from using it 24/7.
Silvermel – A silver port of Charamel, same look (and bugs) – just a different color.
The rest of the popular themes out there all look like Apple/Mac clones (insert yawn here), and do we really need more than one of those? I think not. Really wish DeviantArt had some better ones too, but they seem to be a little lacking with the Thunderbird skin section.
While waiting for the Gmail folks to upgrade my account – figured I’d go out and look at some of the alternative themes out there for it. This one I found over at Userstyles.org – the home for scripts used with the Stylish Firefox extension (or with some, Greasemonkey).
I do have to say it looks pretty slick.
It has been a while since a visual style for Windows XP has tickled my “I like to dress up Windows” fancy. The TangoXP visual style though is pretty simple, pretty slick and hey, yeah it is just pretty too.
Need help on using different visual styles on Windows XP?
Now I usually love to browse through the Windows XP visual styles on Deviant Art, but lately all of them have sucked.
They are either ugly or Vista and OS X ripoffs. With that in mind, I have to say I was pretty surprised and happy to see SlanXP had been released. I have been using it this morning and I can’t find a thing hardly wrong with it. Personally I just had to change a few of the font settings – other than that it is as good as they get.
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Mitch Keeler is nothing more than your average Joe trying to leave his mark on the world though both his professional work and his online projects, articles, podcasts and more.
