When you run multiple websites, it can be difficult to log into each and do any updates that need to be done. Thankfully though, if you are using WordPress on each website you manage, I have found a very interesting new service that lets you manage all of your blogs from one dashboard, ManageWP.
Tag Archives | updates
Multiple Blog Management
More Free Custom Icons
Over the past couple of years, I have created a lot of free custom video game inspired desktop icons for you all to download. While keeping a running list of these on one page worked for a while, I figured it was about time I cleaned up and organized my free icon collections I have created for you to enjoy.
Happy 5th Birthday to Mitchelaneous.com
Firefox isn’t the only thing celebrating it’s fifth birthday this year. This very blog, Mitchelaneous.com, is also now half a decade old. As one of my oldest web sites still in existence, I have much love for the web site that really inspired me to write more.
Thanks to the powers of the Wayback Machine, here is the earliest layout I can find for Mitchelaneous (then hosted as a part of the lockergnome.net blogs). Actually, you could probably say that Chris Pirillo (and the old Lockergnome team of writers) played a big part in this web site’s existence.
PlayStation 3 3.0 Firmware Praise and Moans
Yesterday afternoon I went ahead and updated my PlayStation 3 to the latest 3.0 firmware, to see what all the praise is about. After playing with it for a while, here is what I like.
- Bigger Interface – It was kind of a shock at first, but after using it more and more I really do like the enlarged interface. Makes the screen much easier to read.
- New Video Control – Being able to control of video playback (slow motion, fast forward and rewind) using the right stick is pretty neat.
So what did I not enjoy from the PS3 3.0 firmware update?
- Glitter! – The new “dynamic” theme is stupid looking. I don’t want “glitter” all over my screen, even if it is “interactive”. Thankfully you can change the theme back to “classic” to remove it.
- Ugly Background/Border for Friends List – I don’t use the friends list much (I have no friends!) but I can still say I don’t like the interface change from having a sleek background with no visual interruptions to having little grey boxes behind everybody on my friend list. It is just a little annoying. Seems like it was thrown in there as a, “Oh crap, we forgot to do that!” feature.
So there you have it, not going to rant too much positively or negatively about it, seems to still get the job done, so I am happy about that.
3 Web Apps I Can’t Do Without
As somebody who constantly tries new things, earning a spot in my day to day application use is a special thing. It used to be honored by parades of midgets gleefully dancing down the street, however since the lawsuit I had to resort to praising them in a blog post instead.
I would give my left leg before I’d stop using Ping.fm.
This web site is my social buddy. It helps me pimp promote my posts and thoughts across many a social network, in one simple, yet easy to manage location. From Ping.fm you can instantly update your delicious favorites, facebook, myspace and dozens of other social sites.
Between Google Analytics, and my hair – I’d pick Google Analytics.
I love check out web site statistics, so that is why I have Google Analytics plugged into nearly every web site I manage or post at. I have even picked using Google Analytics over most stats programs that come with your everyday hosting package. It is that good. The exact number might not always be correct, however I have found that it does give you a good general idea of where your web site popularity goes up and down.
Instapaper would be the pick if somebody made me choose between it and my toes.
I do not always have the time to read every article or post I run across, and due to that lack of time, I need a way to save things for later. Instapaper is my quick and easy, “eh… I’ll look at that again later” bookmarker. Once you sign up and start using it, you can consider it your temporary bookmarks list.
Is there any web site out there that you can not live without? Let me know what sites you are dependant on, and if nothing else, we can start an addiction group based around the ones with have in common.
Web Hosting Show Podcast Updates
For those of you who might not have noticed, one of my other projects – WebHostingShow.com got a little ‘bit of a face lift yesterday, mainly as far as the logo goes. This did give me an excuse to spruce up a few other features that are well worth checking out too.
How do you like that new logo, by the way? It was designed my my good friend and graphic design specialist, Sean Barton. I’m personally pretty proud of it – as it is pretty much the logo I always wanted for the show, but never had the time or the skill to put together. Want to learn more about the web hosting industry? The web hosting show is both a podcast and web site dedicated to helping anybody from novices to experts learn more about how to make the web hosting world work for them. If you haven’t before – be sure to bookmark WebHostingShow.com, subscribe to the e-mail updates, and add the RSS feed to your favorite news reader.
Free Custom Desktop Icons from Mitch!
I have done a number of custom icons in the past few weeks and months, so I figured – why not dump them all into a category so you can pick them up one by one? Hence, the reason for the brand new (and reeking of awesomeness) custom icon category:
http://www.mitchelaneous.com/category/desktop/free-icons/
Browse through all the past icons, and if you have any requests – be sure to let me know! More will be coming soon too, so look forward to seeing some updates there.
Does Your Twitter Handle Pass the Test?
Yes, you can even grade yourself on Twitter now. Thanks to the Twitter Grader, you can see how you stack up with the other twitterers out there. All you have to do is plug in your Twitter handle, and hit enter.
Once you do so, you will be given a grade – based on how much “power” you have. I was pretty happy with my grade of 81 out of 100. The Twitter Grade measures the relative power of a Twitter user. It is calculated as a percentile score. A grade of 81 means that the user scores higher than 81 percent of the other user profiles that have been graded.
Here are the main factors that they say go into play when deciding the score:
- The number of followers you have
- The power of this network of followers
- The pace of your updates
- The completeness of your profile
Go get yourself graded at http://twitter.grader.com/. Then feel free to add me on Twitter to help both our scores. (insert evil laugh here)
Reliable Web Site Monitoring with Site24x7.com
With both paid and free versions, Site24x7.com looks to be a great web site monitoring package. They do monitoring of uptime and performance of your web sites, online services and servers. They also promise to deliver instant alerts the moment something goes wrong.
You can set the monitoring tools to check the web site in question you wish to monitor in intervals ranging from 5 to 60 minutes or above.
If the worst might happen, and you need to be told, here are the various ways they can alert you to trouble:
- RSS
- SMS Messages
For those of you just wanting to beta test the service; when you first sign up, you are given a fully functional, 15-day trial account. At the end of 15 days, your account will be downgraded to free unless you upgrade to either Standard or Premium account.
Check out the screenshots, then give them a shot at Site24x7.com.
WordPress 2.6 Rocks
Thus far I have to say that WordPress 2.6 looks like a pretty awesome upgrade. Just did a few upgrades myself, but haven’t had time yet to play with everything that is new…
I’m happy to announce that version 2.6 of WordPress.org is now available, almost a month ahead schedule. Version 2.6 “Tyner,” named for jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, contains a number of new features that make WordPress a more powerful CMS: you can now track changes to every post and page and easily post from wherever you are on the web, plus there are dozens of incremental improvements to the features introduced in version 2.5.
Also here are some of the improvements, updates and upgrades:
- Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
- Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
- Bulk management of plugins.
- A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
- Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
- Plugin update notification bubble.
- Customizable default avatars.
- You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
- Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
- Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
- You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
- Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
- Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
- You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
- A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
- Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
- Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.
You can read more (and watch a video tour) from WordPress.org about it here:
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/07/wordpress-26-tyner/
You can download WordPress 2.6 here:
http://wordpress.org/download/
Also looks like somebody has already found the easter egg in it too.
For those of you using cPanel/Fantastico to manage your install and upgrades, the upgrade for you might not come for a couple of more weeks. Are you excited about WordPress 2.6 yet?
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