‘tips & tricks’

Buzzwords ahoy!
I’m a hip and with-it computer internet person; running a business that is all about the web, you have to be!
Mailing lists are old favourites on the web and are based on the assumption that people like to receive email messages with information in them, be they specials you’re offering, general information or even [...]

I’ve been approached by a couple of clients recently to find-out if they can get a website with a “Members Only” section.
A quick opinion before I start…
There’s a catch with making things members-only: it actually works against page rank and your site SEO. It’s effectively what Rupert Murdoch (among others) is talking about when they [...]

If you’re like me and forgotten to set posts and pages so they don’t have comments and posts turned on by default then the Extended Comment Options plugin is a great time-saver.
FYI – turn OFF comments and options in the Settings panel by clicking Discussion, then turning off the checkboxes for:

Allow link notifications from other [...]

Today in The Guardian online there is a report on their top 100 websites, with some analysis of the winners and losers this year:
100 essential websites
It makes for interesting reading, especially the part how Twitter has effectively steamrolled the opposition and now has become, in my opinion, the tool of choice for citizen-journalists (remember the [...]

It’s Finally Ready!

Google releases Chrome for Mac and Linux

Chrome has been out at least a year for the PC, but unfortunately for us on the Mac (and Linux by default) there hasn’t been anything to use but the rather good Safari or the (in my opinion) slightly disappointing Firefox.

I say disappointing with regard to Firefox [...]

TweetDeck by TweetDeck inc is a neat Mac app (there’s a Windows and a Linux version, too) for keeping your Twitter, Facebook and even MySpace account up-to-date without having to continually log-in.
It’s downloadable from the tweetdeck homepage.
The nice thing about it is that it’s relatively small and lightweight; so your mac won’t pop a cog [...]

If you’ve chosen to have your website hosted with Tall Poppy Digital, you can now check if there are any problems just by visiting here and looking in the sidebar.
I’ve added a widget there for the Dreamhost Status feed, through Twitter, which gives updates on any issues that may be occurring.
As annoying as website and [...]

It is the fate of everyone who uses a computer to lose something important because of a hard disk crash, a virus, or through simple accident.
Sometimes things don’t work, but you can take precautions by backing-up your data.
DBC Backup will do this automatically for you, but does need some slightly technical know-how.
You can install DBC [...]

With thanks to Randall Munroe of XKCD.com:
The Tech Support Cheat Sheet – be the envy of your colleagues and co-workers and fix your family’s computers using this highly sought-after free guide
You can download it here: Tech Support Cheat Sheet at XKCD.COM

The XML sitemap plugin is a great time-saver for your Wordpress blog. It constructs search-engine readable sitemaps on-the-fly (ie. whenever changes take place) and immediately advises major search engines like Google, Bing, and ask.com.
One tip: once it’s installed, scroll down on the page and in the change frequencies panel, change the page and post update [...]