Anyone who’s followed me for any period of time knows that I like to change Simply-Basic’s appearance ridiculously often. And I’ve decided that since this is a personal blog and not part of a blogging network, I can do it without feeling guilty! So with that said…ready for more changes? I’m currently on the hunt for a nice, simple minimalist theme. Lot’s of white and open spaces. The current theme is a straight free theme that I didn’t even alter much because I ran out of time. The new theme will be more of a lifestream: showing my Twitter posts, personal thoughts, releasing plugins, etc. And for those who started reading Simply-Basic because of the tutorials I’ve made, don’t worry, there will be more of those when I have time too.

So stay tuned for some changes. If you’re hungry for content make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed over at Techlyzer.com, where I add new screencasts 2-4 times per week.

Well another week down, and what a week it has been! Not only has it been busy with school but I had the successful launch of Techlyzer.com, a screencasts only website that I’ll be participating in frequently. Here are my thoughts and reflections for the week:

• I launched Techlyzer.com this week, and I have been very happy with the results. I know numbers mean very little, but here are the stats for the first week:
  • In its first six days, Techlyzer has had nearly 1,300 page views from 800 unique visitors
  • The most popular screencast, Creating Click & Drag Options Boxes in WP 2.7, has been viewed nearly 550 times this week.
  • The WP Advanced Code Editor WordPress plugin has been downloaded nearly 130 times in it’s first full day
  • Both of the above items were featured on the WordPress Weekly Podcast by Jeff Chandler of Weblog Tools Collection
• I’ve also come to realize that I like WordPress 2.7 much more then I thought I was going to
• I’ve realized that there’s never enough time to get everything done that I want to.
• I’ve really started enjoying and finding use for Twitter, more then I have before. Infact, follow me here!

So there you have it, my week in brief!

For those interested, I wrote a plugin for Techlyzer.com that was just released. It’s called WP Advanced Code Editor. It integrates EasyArea into the WP post editor to allow for real time syntax highlighting, line numbering, full screen editing, and more! I pretty handy plugin indeed!

Hi all. I’m happy to announce the launch of a new website that I’ll be trying to participate in frequently. Techlyzer.com is home to nothing but screencasts ranging from reviews, tech news, tutorials, and more.

As of launch there are three screencasts available. The first is a review of Be-A-Magpie, service which monetizes your Twtter account. The second is a tutorial on creating click-&-drag options boxes in WordPress 2.7. It’s a great video for WordPress plugin authors. And the third is a video submitted by a good friend on how to add a vignette in PhotoShop elements.

Videos are going to be published a few times a week (looks like around three right now). So hop on over and check it out: Techlyzer.com.

Being a tech-centric blog I’m always on the lookout for other technology related websites. For those with a hungering for gadgets and gizmos, tech blog Gadget Advisor has a plenty! Although it’s a relatively new site, it already has a host of useful information.

Web users will find the list of Best extensions for Firefox quite useful. I actually found several plugins that I hadn’t heard of before! Gadget Advisor has even released its own Firefox extension. The Google Cache Checker Firefox extension allows you to immediately see if a page on your website (or any page for that matter) is cached by Google. This is quite useful for webmasters! Gadget Advisor also does straight up reviews, such as their Blaze Media Pro review.

Gadget Advisor looks like it will be a great technology resource. I know it’s going into my RSS feed.

After a lot of deliberation I’ve changed the permalink structure of Simply-Basic. When I started the blog over a year ago I had no sense of SEO (or common sense, apparently). Thus all the links were /archive/1941.... A few months later I realized my mistake but didn’t want to change the permalinks for fear of losing inbound links already in place.

Luckily I came across Dean’s Permalinks Migration WordPress plugin. It creates a 301 direct from your old permalink structure to the new one. Not only will it automatically forward visitors to the page’s new URL, but it tells search engines to update their indexes quickly. Thus things like page rank and search engine positions are unaffected.

The new permalinks are /category/post-name/ and will be easier to see where the links are taking you, and much more search engine friendly. Check out the Permalink Migration plugin if you’re in a similar situation.

Earlier today I was surfing the web and mistyped a URL. Rather then getting the customary “The page you’re looking for cannot be found…” DNS error, I was presented with a notice from Qwest that I was now enrolled in a new service.

Its purpose: “to improve the customer experience, we have replaced these [DNS errors] with a list of alternative sites which we hope are relevant and useful.” Apparently Qwest has launched a new service called Web.help, a service that intercepts DNS errors and displays their custom page.

Here’s what the page says:

Qwest has launched a new service Qwest Web.Help
Qwest Web.Help will help you quickly find a destination website that meets your needs.

When Qwest.net and Qwest MSN customers mistype a URL (e.g. www.qwest.cmo) in a browser address bar or type a search term using Internet Explorer in the browser’s address bar, Web.Help will aid them in quickly finding their intended destination. You may avoid seeing this notice a second time by clicking on the button below.

[button here]

Otherwise, you will see this notice at least twice before the service is launched for you. The Qwest Web.Help search page may impact applications that rely on an error message being returned and override similar browser-based search result pages.

So basically either you click the button confirming you’re in the program, or they’ll show the message to you once more and then put you in the program anyway. Personally I find it very annoying and intrusive. So what did I do? Promptly found how to opt-out.

How to Opt-out

To opt-out of the program visit this Opt-Out page and click “Opt out of Qwest Web.Help”. Once your opt-out it will take a few minutes to take effect. If all goes well, you should now see your usual error message:

There, that’s better.

Mac only - I frequently use Mac’s built in screen capture ability to create the images you see on Simply-Basic. By default the screenshots are saved to your desktop has a PNG. Before I’d upload them to the web I have to manually convert them to JPGs in Preview. Not anymore.

The following changes require you to restart your computer.

To change the default file type for screen captures, open Terminal and enter the following and then press enter:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type format

For example: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg, you could also enter pdf, tiff, png, etc.

To change the default path for saved screen captures, open Terminal and enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location path

For example, enter defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/John/Desktop/Screens

Important: You’ll need to restart your computer for these changes to take effect.

I just noticed that Lifehacker is joining the ranks of sites using the new Facebook Connect, a protocol being released shortly which allows you to login to other websites using your Facebook profile login. It joins other sites, such as Digg, ABC, CBS, Hulu, Plaxo, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Vimeo, and others. Looks like Facebook is the new “Open ID”. Rumor has it that a WordPress/Facebook integration plugin is already in the works.

Mac Only - I’m not a big fan of blogging directly from WordPress’ web interface. I prefer to be able to work directly from my desktop, especially when internet access may be limited. The problem is that typically a desktop-based interface doesn’t give you enough control over your post (categories, custom fields, etc). Enter Blogo (cost: $25).

Blogo works great for WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Typo, Drupal, and others. It even supports Twitter. For this example I’ll be testing it on a WordPress.org installation and Twitter. With Blogo you can create new posts and edit existing posts. It even let’s you save the draft your working on to you WordPress blog, great if you’ll be editing the post later from a different computer.

The editor itself is very functional. If you need a distraction-free environment, turn on the fullscreen mode. You can add keywords and categories, future-publish your post, upload files, and insert images through an intuitive drag-and-drop feature. One drawback for myself (maybe a bonus for others) is that the editor is purely visual. I’ve not found a way to have it accept manually inserted HTML tags.

Blogo will also automatically notify your Twitter account every time you post a new article, conveniently making the link into a TinyURL. Also handy is the preview feature that is built in. With my WordPress account, I was able to preview the post in my own blog, just as if I was writing the post from the WordPress administrative menu.

Blogo isn’t without it’s faults. It could desperately use a spell check (as I’m sure you noticed!). And as I mentioned before, I’d like to be able to include HTML in my posts. Also, I found a large problem, while creating this post, which included a number of previews and saving it as a draft at least three times, Blogo created 64 images. That’s right, it uploaded each image again, and again, and again… This seems like quite a big problem to me that needs to be addressed. How about, only upload the images when I save it as a draft. Each subsequent time, just overwrite the previously uploaded images?

Overall, though, Blogo is a top notch program. It looks great, has a plenty of features, and makes blogging even simpler. Is it worth the $25? Even with it’s problems, you still get your money’s worth. UPDATE: Definately use the free trial first to make sure it works for you. I’ve heard from several people that they’ve had problems when they go to publish.

Click here to download a 21-day trial of Blogo.

Well with my busy schedule I’ve been struggling to find time to update Simply-Basic. Because of this I’ve decided to change the focus of the blog slightly. I’m going to turn it into a slightly more personal technology blog where I can feel free to write about anything of any length. This will allow me to update the blog much more frequently.

In that spirit I’ve changed the theme (yet again) to one that reflects a personal blog rather then a magazine style. I’m using Portfolio Press by Blog Oh! Blog with only minor modifications. You may find a few bugs or things that got missed in the transition. If you do, let me know. Thanks guys.

I just noticed that iTunes 8 was released moments ago. A key new feature is the “Genius Bar”, which will automatically create a play list for you based on songs it thinks are similiar to your current song. It also supports purchasing and viewing of HD TV shows from the iTunes store, and plenty of other bug fixes. You can download your copy from the iTunes homepage.

LifeHacker recently posted an article regarding a simple hack that can be used to bypass airport systems that require you to pay for Wi-Fi. The hack is to simply add ?.jpg at the end of the URL. This requires, of course, that the airport isn’t filtering image urls.

I’ve not tested this at any airport to see of it works, but I wrote a simple Greasemonkey script that will add ?.jpg to the end of every link in the page your viewing. This would allow for seamless browsing at the airport. I’m not condoning stealing bandwidth. So don’t do it. :)

To use this, just add this script to your Greasemonkey FireFox plugin. If you type URL’s in manually you’ll have to add the ?.jpg manually, but it will alter any links you encounter in the websites you visit.

Downloaded 1042 times from this page

or try installing this directly from FireFox (with Greasemonkey installed) if you have trouble installing the above file:

Free Airport Wi-Fi (direct download) (307)

Mac only software - Recipe programs are usually outside my realm of interest. No offense, I just have no need for them. A new program I came across, however, has made even me want to keep a recipe book. YummySoup!, by Hungry Seacow Software (interesting names, huh?), makes creating and keeping a digital recipe book easy and even enjoyable.

My favorite feature is the easy importing of recipes from high profile sites such as MyRecipes.com, MarthaStewart.com, and others. However, even more intriguing is the ability to import recipes from any website.

Import from Any Site

Importing recipes from any site is simple. Drag the webpage from your browser into YummySoup. In the screen that presents itself (shown below), you highlight text and then tell YummySoup what you’re highlighting. If you select the recipe ingredients, you just click “Ingredients”, and so forth. When you press “Import”, your recipe is added perfectly.

Standard Features

YummySoup! also includes a lot of other great features: easy emailing, grocery list generator, full screen mode (great for cooking), Apple’s remote support, and voice support. Overall it’s a great program which truly displays the power and elegance of Mac programs. If you’re a Mac user who’s looking for a great recipe organizer, give YummySoup! a try. Cost: $20

In the past few weeks I’ve had a few people email me and ask me how I get the numbering to show up on my comments. It’s really more of a PHP question then a WordPress question, but it’s quite simple. There may be plugins which do this for you, but anytime I can have a simple fix and avoid the overhead of a plugin, I’m happy. The following tutorials is for someone with no PHP experience and basic HTML/CSS knowledge. Here’s how to number your comments in three steps.

Example:

Step 1

Locate and open your theme’s comments.php file. Theme files are found in wp-content/themes/themename/. In your comments.php file you’ll be looking for the following code:

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<?php if ($comments) : ?>

Directly after that line, type <?php $i = 1; ?>, so that it looks like this:

1
2

<?php if ($comments) : ?>
<?php $i = 1; ?>

What were doing here is saying ‘If there are comments, set the variable “i” equal to “1″‘. This will be the number for your first comment. If you set this to something else, like 15, your comments would begin numbering at 15.

Step 2

Next, look for the following code:

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<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>

Any code that found in between the above foreach code and a special endforeach code will be run for each individual comment. It is in this block of code that you’ll need to enter the following code:

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<?php echo $i; ?>

What this does is tell the browser to display the value of the “i” variable, which for the first comment would be “1″. So where would you put this? You position this in the HTML of your comments so that it is displayed in your desired location. Treat the above PHP code as if it were a single number. You can surround it with any HTML and CSS that you want.

For example:

1
2
3
4

<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
<div class="comments">
<strong> <?php comment_author_link() ?> </strong> said: </cite><span class="commentnumber"><?php echo $i; ?></span>
...

Step 3

The last step is to increment the variable so that each comment has a higher number then the previous one. To do this, locate the following code:

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<?php endforeach; ?>

Directly before that line of code, enter <?php $i++; ?>, so that it looks like this:

1
2

<?php $i++; ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>

$i++ increments the value of the “i” variable. Since this is done for each (thus the “foreach”) comment, each successive comment will have a higher number then the last one.

Done

And that’s it. In three steps you’ve just added numbers to your comments. It’s quite simple. Numbered comments are useful because they let you easily reference previous comments. Now you can have them on your blog!

I’m happy to announce the release of RSSless, a new WordPress plugin. RSSless is a WordPress plugin which allows you to hide specific content in your posts from RSS readers. This is helpful for bloggers who embed videos, images, or other content which doesn’t display or embed correctly in RSS readers. Rather then having RSS readers get blank content, you can simply replace it with customizable message, such as “Please view the original article to watch this video.”

RSSless uses WordPress’ built in short code API. Simply surround the content you want to hide from RSS readers with the [rssless] [/rssless] short code tags.

I created RSSless because of a specific need I had. Since it seemed to work pretty well, I’ve decided to release it to the public.

I’ve also created a video review of RSSless which you can view here:

You can download or read more about RSSless here. Please leave support questions for the plugin on its official release page.

Mac only - I spent part of this week working on transferring some family videos to DVD. I have a pre-professional grade HD video camera that obviously shoots in widescreen. After working on it and sending it to iDVD for a quick menu and then burning it, I noticed that the widescreen video doesn’t get letterboxed on standard (4:3) TVs as I expected. Rather, the video gets cropped (much to my disappointment).

Luckily I came across myDVDEdit, a tool which lets you modify the contents of an unprotected DVD image on your computer. By following these directions I was able to get myDVDEdit to force my DVD player to letterbox my widescreen videos on standard TVs. It’s too bad iDVD doesn’t have this ability built in, but this is a nice work around.

Have you ever come across a website or comment that was written in another language that you wished you could read? Well, if you’re anything like me you typically have no idea what language the site is written in. Luckily Google Translate will automatically detect the language of a phrase or website and translate it for you.

Just paste the URL or the phrase to translate, select auto-detect, and you can read the page in your native language. Trust me, though, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to understand it!

I’ve been looking for a new RSS reader ever since I bought my Macbook a few weeks ago. When I heard about Apprise, an RSS reader built on Adobe Air, I jumped at the chance to try it out. Here’s my reactions to it in my first ever screencast.

I just released version 1.3 of Admin Favicon, a WordPress plugin which adds a custom favicon to the WordPress administrative backend. It’s a minor release that makes the favicon link XHTML valid. Admin Favicon is fully functional with WordPress versions 2.3+, including 2.6.

Visit it’s official page to download the latest version.

I’ve been doing freelance work for some time now. It’s generally a very smooth process. I send them a quote. They pay 50% upfront. I complete the work in a timely fashion, turn the product over to them for final testing, and then they pay me the remainder of the balance.

I’ve been happy with all my clients, until recently. A client hired me to customize and tweak 7 blogs he owned. We agreed upon an hourly rate and he payed a two-hour security deposit upfront. The customizations only took a few days and any time I asked a question he answered very promptly. He was friendly, and nice to work for. He even talked about future projects he might hire me for. So everything seemed fine.

At the end of the project I tallied up my hours and sent him the final invoice. A few days passed by and I sent him another friendly reminder. It’s now been nearly two months of me contacting him with no response back. As a freelancer, what am I to do?

Well, I did something that may be controversial. I “repossessed” his site until the final payment is made. See, the customizations I did require cPanel, FTP, and administrative WordPress access. Thus I had all opportunities to change the administrative passwords until the payment was made. As a freelancer am I allowed to deny a client access to his site if he is refusing payment? If I give MORE then adequate time for payment, send several invoices, and genuinely try to settle the dispute in other means and still don’t receive any contact from the client are extreme measures warranted?

What do you think guys?

After a recent discussion about why I would never use Linux, I decided to take the advice of one of the commenters and “just switch to Leopard” (Crock). That’s right. I bought my very first Mac. After owning it for nearly a week I’ve come across some tips, tweaks, and plugins that have made my first Mac experience very pleasurable.

Note: all of the following were tested on an Intel Mackbook running Mac OS X 10.5.4 (Leopard)

Built-in Shortcuts and Time-Savers

One thing that makes Macs great are the built-in time-saving shortcuts. These shortcuts can save you a lot of mouse clicks and a lot of time. Here are a few of my favorite:

Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts

Further reading: Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts

Utilities and Plugins

You can find quite a few “best-of” or “essential” lists of Mac software out there. This section isn’t intended to be either of those. This next section is a collection of utilities or plugins that I found especially useful or just darn entertaining.

Letterbox

URL: http://harnly.net/software/letterbox/

Letterbox is a simple, great plugin for Mail, Apple’s built in email manager. It converts the top-bottom mail preview into a three column display. This takes advatange of the widescreen monitor and gives you much more room when reading your emails. Oh, it’s free.

Magical 8bit Plug

URL: http://www.ymck.net/english/download/index.html

Magical 8bit plug is a fun Garage Band plugin that adds electronic sounds that mimic old video game consoles to your instrument list. Now you can compose an authentic sounding Mario or Zelda theme song right on your computer. It comes with a number of options and sounds that you can modify to your liking.

NuFile

URL: http://www.growlichat.com/NuFile.php

Having been a long time Windows user I’m used to my right click. One feature of the right click that I used extensively on Windows was the “Create New File” command that would create a blank file with a simple mouse click. So imagine my frustration when I was unable to do this on my new Mac. Well, problem solved. NuFile creates a new context menu when you on your secondary-click which let’s you easily create a new, empty file. Ah, that’s better.

AppZapper

URL: http://appzapper.com/

AppZapper, self-titled the “uninstaller Apple forgot”, is a useful tool that removes all traces of a program you are trying to uninstall. Even though all you usually do is drag and drop a program to your Applications folder, many install temporary folders, cache, set preferences, etc. Drag and drop your program to AppZapper and it finds all the extra folders and files and deletes them for you. It’s only $12.95. If your looking for a free alternative I’ve heard that AppCleaner and AppTrap are okay, though I’ve read a few reports claiming they’re not as thorough.

InstantShot!

URL: http://projects.digitalwaters.net/index.php?q=instantshot

Although Leopard has screen shot capabilities built in, sometimes you just need more options. InstantShot! is a free screen-capture program that comes with a plethora of options. Here’s some of my favorites: time-delayed capture (great for taking an image of a menu), multiple capture, hide the wallpaper (screenshots are much more professional when my dog isn’t in every one of them), custom shortcuts, and others.

Transmission

URL: http://www.transmissionbt.com/

Transmission is a free BitTorrent client that is extremely lightweight and easy to use. I don’t need a lot of bells and whistles, just something that does the job.

ZipLight

URL: http://www.bartastechnologies.com/products/ziplight/

Ziplight is a free Spotlight plugin which allows Spotlight to search within zip files. It’s a very useful feature if you store documents or downloads in zipped files like I do!

MacPilot

URL: http://www.koingosw.com/products/macpilot.php

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the slightest idea how to use Terminal. Well, with MacPilot you can tweak hundreds of advanced operating system settings without having to worry about it. A license costs $19.95.

iDMG

URL: http://web.mac.com/patrickjamelo/idmg.html

iDMG is a free application that creates DMG (Macintosh disk image) files. It has an intuitive drag and drop feature. You can customize the appearance of the mounted DMG be setting background images, icon sizes and images, and sounds. It also supports encryption, compression, and a host of other options. For a premium alternative I’ve heard DMG Architect is easy to use and has a lot of great features. It costs $29.99

That’s It

So there you have it, a quick list of shortucts and utilities I’ve found that have improved my first experience on a Mac! What would you recommend? Leave your suggestions in the comments. Remember this this isn’t a list of “best applications”, but a “useful utilities and shortcuts” list.

If there’s one thing I hate doing it’s upgrading the version of WordPress I’m using. I know how to do it, that’s not the issue. People actually hire me frequently to upgrade their WordPress installation. It’s just such a process: back up your database, back up your web files, upgrade your plugins, upload the new files, visit your site and pray everything isn’t all messed up. It’s lots easier and less pressure when it’s not my own site I’m working on!

Well I’m happy to announce that I’ve upgraded Simply-Basic to version 2.6 of WordPress. The installation was painless and everything still works! There were some pretty hefty upgrades in 2.6, but compared to 2.5 it seems like their quite minor!

Everyone should get upgraded to get the latest security fixes. I’m sure you’ll be able to do it as painlessly as I did! But if you’re worried about it, hire me to do it for you.

I’ve never been much of a photographer, but a few months ago I bought a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (due to the pleading of my wife). It’s a pre-professional grade 10.1 megapixel camera that takes amazing photos. Of course, we just kept it on automatic and used it like all our other cameras.

Well this past week my wife and I sat down with my brother-in-law who taught us some great photography techniques. I don’t usually post personal images, but these two were too good to pass up. Both of these images were taken on my digital camera by my wife. None of them have been edited or doctored in anyway (aside from being resized).

Spelling my name with a sparkler (click for full size ~3.5mb):

A small fountain firework explodes (click for full size ~3.5mb):

I have a problem: I am a Microsoft Windows user. But it’s not my fault, I was born that way. The first computer I remember using seriously (for more than a game of Menace on my AmigaOS) had Windows 3.1 installed. I have Windows XP on my laptop, Windows Vista on my PC, and Windows Mobile on my phone. Heck, my next refrigerator will probably have “Diet Windows” installed. But at least I recognize that I have a problem.

You see, I tried breaking the mold. That’s right, I cheated on Windows. I installed Ubuntu Linux. Although I had guilty feelings just thinking about it, I was determined to break the bond of corporate tyranny and join the open-source freedom fighters.

After downloading my new OS for free, I carefully installed it on a new partition. No, I didn’t force Windows out of my life completely, just in case my affair with Ubuntu turned into a one-night stand. The install was actually remarkably simple. Not a single error. After a few reboots it was official, I was using a Linux desktop. I had finally joined the ranks of the technology elite.

And that’s about where it ended. I consider myself slightly more computer literate then the masses: I maintain my own blog, am a PHP/WordPress freelancer, and know the difference between FTP, HTML, PHP, XHTML, and FBI. But I’ll be darned if it didn’t take me nearly an hour to figure out how to install software. I mean, it was so complicated that I found entire articles about how to install software in Ubuntu.

This is what it’s come to? I have to find tutorials on how to install software?

I’m sure many of you are thinking “you’re an idiot, you could have just done XYZ”, or “it’s so obvious!”. That may be true. But the fact is that it wasn’t obvious to me. If Linux distributions are ever going to be more then a tech nerds hobby operating system, they need to be easy to use, fast to install, and simple enough that my mom and dad could do it (ok, maybe not that simple, but you know what I mean).

Needless to say, I promptly removed Ubuntu. It was a quick and dirty affair that made me realize I don’t need to be searching for another operating system…as long as Windows XP is still available. But that’s another issue all on its own.

Getting comments from users on blog posts is a very rewarding experience for bloggers. Often bloggers want to encourage comments by giving something back to those that comments. On Simply Basic I keep track of the months “Top Commenters” in the sidebar, rewarding commenters who contribute the most. Another common reward method is to make your blog “dofollow.” This means that links have ther “nofollow” tags removed and that the links help their search engine rankings.

The nofollow versus dofollow topic is a heated debate. I used to be a dofollow blogger but changed after I noticed a large increase in worthless spammy comments.

The other day when I was browsing through a freelance website I noticed something that was quite disturbing. Someone was actually listing a freelance position to help them spam dofollow blogs. That’s right, spam for hire. Here’s an exerpt from the listing:

This project involves downloading a software program…and using the software to locate “do-follow” blogs. I will give you a list of 200 phrases and I will need you to enter each key phrase into the program, 1 phrase at a time. The program will take a few minutes for each key phrase…to locate blogs with the key phrase. Then you will sort the results and copy the URL of ONLY the “do-follow” blogs to a spreadsheet.

So is there any doubt dofollow blogs are being targeted? Luckily, spam blockers like Akismet make keeping spam off of your blogs a little easier. But still, be carefull when making your blog dofollow, you never know who’s sniping your blog.

Today Jeff Chandler at Weblog Tools Collection published an interesting article discussing the cost of a WordPress installation. The comments that followed were quite interesting to read. A lot of developers agreed that $20-$70 for a raw installation was fine. Of course, there was a strong argument that it should be free.

So how much is a WordPress installation? If you want my services, I charge $35/hour for a basic WordPress installation (minimum one hour). Why would I charge by the hour? Clients want different things in an installation. Some just need WordPress installed straight up. Others need plugins downloaded and installed. And others need a database created, FTP set up, plugins downloaded, and a theme customized to their liking. By charging a flat, agreed upon hourly rate I’m able to adapt to the clients needs on the fly with out always requesting an increase in the bid.

What are you really paying for?

As you know, WordPress is free to download from WordPress.org. You are not paying for the software. You’re not paying for plugins or themes I may install unless they are professional (for-sale) items. So what are you paying for?

When you hire me you are paying for:

• my time
• my expertise and knowledge
• peace of mind knowing it will be done right
• nearly two years of WordPress experience behind me

Of course, I highly recommend learning to install and configure WordPress for yourself. I’d much rather you higher me in a month to develop a custom plugin! So how can you learn it for yourself? Here are some resources that will help you on your journey to basic WordPress self sufficiency:

Basic WordPress Guides

• Famous 5-minute Install: The official “how to” guide.
• Step by Step WordPress Installation: Just as the name suggests, a hand-held guide through the installation process.
• How to Install WordPress on Your own Server: includes a video guide to help you on your way. Walks you through FTP and database creation. A great guide for beginners.
• How to Install the Latest Version of WordPress: Another excellent resource with graphics that walks you through every step of a WordPress installation, includes an FTP guide and a guide creating a mySQL database.
• How to Install, Configure, and Use WP Plugins: a great guide by Lorelle on WordPress on installing plugins

To sum it up, WordPress is a great blogging platform that is easy to use and easy to configure, if you know what you are doing. Even with all the resources available, however, some users are just more comfortable with others installing and configuring it for them. If you’re one of those, I’m here to help you, as are other developers. But don’t expect it for free unless you can do it yourself.

So as you can tell I’m quite happy with my new domain emails hosted by Google Apps. I just purchased Sohail’s Gmail Notifier for Google Apps because the normal Gmail notifier doesn’t work with it (for a very cheap $6.99). I realize I could have used the Google Talk client but I don’t like having to keep it open all the time.

So because I’m in such a good mood I’m having a Google Apps Giveaway. Here’s what’s up for grabs:

• Four (4) copies of Sohail’s Gmail Notifier for Google Apps (one for four different people)
• and to one lucky person I’ll personally set up your domain on Google Apps, get your domain verified, switch your domain’s MX servers over to Google’s, and make sure every thing’s working. Plus, you’ll get a copy of Sohail’s Gmail Notifier for Google Apps.

So how do you win? Leave your best (clean, non-adult) knock-knock joke in the comments below. I’ll chose a bunch of good ones and randomly make the awards. That’s right. Nothing fancy, no blog posts, just a knock-knock joke!

A few days ago I was sending an email from my Simply-Basic administrative email account and it got sent back with the following cryptic error message:

host mx4.hotmail.com [65.54.244.104]: 550 SC-001 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. Reasons for rejection may be related to content with spam-like characteristics or IP/domain reputation problems. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your E-mail/Internet Service Provider for help. Email/network admins, please visit http://postmaster.live.com for email delivery information and support.

Apparently Windows Live (aka Hotmail) blocked my entire mail server permanently as spam. I contacted by web hosting company and they said that since I’m on a shared server it only takes a few people sending or forwarding spam messages for Hotmail’s strict spam server to block it.

So what were my options? According to my hosting provider I’d have to purchase a static IP for $50/year that would allow them to give me a mailing server all to myself. Ok, I suppose that doesn’t sound too bad. Then I remembered reading about something called Google Apps that allows you to host your emails on their servers. Better yet, you get to use the Gmail interface to access them. Well, last night I sat down and got it working. It was quick to set up, and works excellently!

Here’s a screenshot from my new Google hosted email account:

Those who aren’t comfortable adjusting their mail MX records or aren’t FTP savvy (for domain verification) may feel a little overwhelmed by the process, but Google has a plethora of help information available. I must say, it’s been great bringing my emails back to the Gmail interface. If you aren’t using Google Apps to host your email accounts, you’re missing out. Oh, and the version I’m using is absolutely free (6.5 gigs is enough storage for me).

As the title suggests, my email’s back up and running. It’s now hosted with Google Apps. I’m going to spend some time messing around with it and will let you all know how it works.

Email’s back up. Disregard the below message. Just to let everyone know, I’m working on getting Google Apps to host my emails rather then my current web service due to some errors sending to some domains. If you try to send me an email and it gets sent back, wait a bit and try again. It should all be resolved here in a little bit.

If it is urgent, sent it to kolbert.john [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks for being understanding! I’m anxious to get it back up as well.

There are thousands of PhotoShop tutorials available freely (and not-so-freely) on the internet. When their written clearly and documented nicely they can be quite useful. Today I came accross a tutorial that wasn’t only well written, it looked downright fun! It’s called Face Off and was written by Richard Isbell.

Here’s the original photo:

And here’s the final project:

The tutorial is easy to understand and seems fairly straight forward to follow. Check out the Face Off PhotoShop tutorial to see how to do it yourself.

Images shown originally published at http://xtro32.com/tutorials/face%20off/faceoff01.htm and used under “fair use” rights.