Understanding Your Site Needs – Shared, VPS, or Dedicated Hosting?

I’d bet that most sites on the web today are low-traffic sites that can easily be served on cheap shared hosting accounts. That’s not a criticism by the way, because that statement refers to most of my own sites too. I’m perfectly happy using shared hosting for most of my sites. There comes a time in many site owners lives, however, when they realize that their best site has outgrown... read more

If You Don’t Take Control Of Your Site Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

Imagine opening up a store in a mall somewhere, and just when the profits start rolling in, the mall decides to close down forever, but they don’t tell you. In fact, they not only fail to inform you, but they place tons of dynamite around the mall, and completely blow it to smithereens. Your store is gone in a flash, and no matter what you do, you cannot get your store and its inventory back, nor can... read more

New Tool To Help Fight Web Site Hackers

I released a new open source, free tool that will hopefully help everyone in the fight against having their sites hacked. We all hear about how often people’s sites get hacked. This tool won’t stop that from happening, but here’s what it *will* do. Let’s say a hacker places some malicious code in either some existing files on your site, or in new files on your site. Regardless of... read more

Online Backup Services I Highly Recommend

How often do you backup your computer? Have you automated the process? Do you have a backup off-site, in case some tragic event wipes out everything in your home? Do you backup nothing, cross your fingers, and hope you never need a backup? I used to be like most people who would answer those questions with the following answers: “Huh?”, “No”, “No”,... read more

Web Site and Business Disaster Planning

Ever noticed the fact that I display a post called Emergency Preparedness List in the Featured Posts section of the sidebar? That’s because I went through Hurricane Katrina and I know how important it is to be prepared for disasters. I want to make sure each of you is aware of it as well. But this post isn’t about real life disaster planning. This one is about planning for your web site or... read more

The Basics of Feed Readers and Your Choices

I mentioned the use of feed readers in yesterday’s post, and I thought it might be a good idea to delve into the topic of RSS feeds, subscribing to blogs, and and feed readers in more detail. What are RSS feeds? A feed is a special file that lists summaries or full posts from sites or blogs, with a link to the original post. This feed might contain the last X posts from one blog, or it might be a... read more

Is Your WordPress Blog Wearing Protection?

The WordPress admin is fairly vulnerable to hackers. Hackers know where the admin is; they know the username for the admin is usually “admin”, so that only leaves one problem – the password. For a hacker, that’s not a really big problem. Just run a brute force attack and in a matter of time, there’s a good chance of figuring out the password and logging in. What comes... read more

Using Music Recordings in Your Project

Adding a music clip to your audio or video project can make that project stand out and be noticed. You need to be aware though, that you can’t simply grab a clip of your favorite Top 40 song and use it on your latest Youtube video. Why? Because that’s illegal. Short and sweet. So what can you do? Music and lyrics published before 1922 are in the public domain, but sound recordings of any... read more

Designers Need To Reject Gray On Black

Lately, I’ve seen quite a lot of sites (usually blogs) put gray text on a black background. Tonight, I noticed it from StumbleUpon (a site I love, btw), and was just dismayed. (Yes, the screenshot above is from something SU wants me to know). Stop it, people! Just stop it. I don’t care how uber-cool it might be, it just plain sucks for readability. Show off your dark side in some other... read more

Portable Apps Will Not Be My Future

I had hoped that I could become less hard drive dependent by running off of Portable Apps, but my hopes were dashed today. This might be useful for some people, but the fact that the apps load and run EXTREMELY slowly makes it a deal-killer for me. If you do decide to try it out, make sure you have several hours free to install the apps. Some are quick, but some take a really long time to install. Oh... read more