I’m building a new content site, and I know the trick is lots and lots of pages of content, and that means oh-so-much writing. I don’t think I can pump out three decent articles per day on this new site, and keep up with other sites I have to write content for.
My initial idea [...]

Posted in Development & Design No Comments »

If you use Firefox, I’ve found a really handy extension for making quick and easy screenshots from your browser in the .png format. It’s called Snapper, and it works on Windows and Mac. A little red shark sits at the bottom right corner of your browser window. Click him, and his mouth [...]

Posted in Development & Design 1 Comment »

Ever notice your database-driven sites getting slow to load, or sticky? Maybe the comments take forever to post, or the admin panel seems wonky (I believe that’s the technical term). You may need to optimize your database.
This is not as scary as it sounds:
First of all, backup your database! That way, you’re [...]

Posted in Blogging, Development & Design No Comments »

Here are a couple of sources for free graphics for websites.
Bloggrounds offers a really nice assortment of free tiled backgrounds, designed specifically for blogs - but I can see them working on most any site. Terms of use are very fair, and don’t exclude commercial sites. I’m using one of their backgrounds on [...]

Posted in Development & Design No Comments »

A representative from GoDaddy contacted me privately after my latest article on my troubled domain transfer. Since then, my domain has been transferred, and my PayPal account credited with the amount of the last renewal I was forced to order, or risk losing the domain.
While that doesn’t help customers who don’t have a blog [...]

Posted in Development & Design 4 Comments »

Remember the domain I tried to transfer from GoDaddy, only they set up an impossible scenario in which I couldn’t possibly set everything properly to make the transfer, and was forced to renew the domain with GoDaddy, or lose it?
Now that their 60-day squatting period is over, I’m trying once again to transfer it. [...]

Posted in Development & Design, The BS Files 6 Comments »

Has anyone found a better stats tracking package than AwStats? On two different sites this month, on two different hosts, I’ve had AwStats simply not report any unique visitors for a day or more in a row, while StatCounter.com confirms I have indeed had the normal number of uniques on those days.
I like StatCounter [...]

Posted in Development & Design, Traffic 2 Comments »

I’ve got a PHPBB forum on one of my sites, and it’s been getting spammed daily. I removed the memberlist a few days ago and made it so new accounts have to be manually approved by me: that stopped the profile spamming, where they just sign up to put their website on a page.
But [...]

Posted in Development & Design 2 Comments »

When I first started buying domains, I used GoDaddy because someone recommended them and they had a sale. Their website was more complicated than it needed to be, and everything loaded very slowly. When I tried Namecheap next, I found out it didn’t have to be that way.
Namecheap is less expensive, and offers [...]

Posted in Development & Design 2 Comments »

Here’s a tip I learned from the brilliant Garvin of Serendipity blog. Have you ever lost your ability to change permissions, edit or delete a particular file on your server? I’ve had it happen on a couple of sites where I was using php software that had the ability to fetch and install [...]

Posted in Development & Design No Comments »