amarogue

Links: week ending 3-18

Mar 182012

Edtechideas is a website for teachers to integrate computer technology in the classroom, net websites that illustrate and assist the teacher in the lesson plan for the day. Parent and school aged child can do the same. Visiting the websites with parent encourageing and helping child expand their imagination while learning together – those moments will become priceless memories as the child grows older.

Paul Salvette has been posting a series of html format coding tips for the Kindle Fire since January. It is best to start from the introduction - How to design an e-book for the Kindle Fire.

Oatmeal illustates: 10 words you have to stop misspelling. I am guilty of 3 words, one being spelling wierd. Of course, whether to use affect or effect is mind boggleing for me. After seeing and laughing over his illustration of definately – don’t think I will misspell that word again. Scroll down past the posters and view 6 more grammar comics.

Backup a wordpress website

utilities, wp tips No Responses »

Mar 042012

Noupe has an excellent post on how to backup your wordpress website and exporting to another host. I knew nothing about backing up, post was very helpful. I looked at the plugins but the files seemed to go to online websites for storage. I would rather have the files on my computer. I read about backing up and restoring files thru cPanel. I signed into my host and looked thru the icons. My setup was alittle different but the files section was about the same. I clicked the backup wizard because I really didn’t know what I was doing and knew the wizard would be helpful. Below is the screen that it brought up.

I started with the home directory and did a full backup. It zipped it into a tar.gz file which compressed to 134,000 kb. The download was 130 mg. Next I downloaded two SQL database files. I’m just wondering if the next backup will just download for the intervening days or the whole enchillada. Guess I’ll find out with a partial backup.

Review of author websites

themes No Responses »

Mar 012012

Chris Ball is a christian fiction author whose website mainly promotes the books he has written (with comments open and rate this / share this plugins used – not sure which ones they are). There is no blog to speak of. His first website I viewed was on the Andreas09 platform. I read an article he had written for Polka Dot Banner entitled “marketing ideas for Indie authors“. He changed themes to Pilcrow and uses alot of features. He has a 3 column layout, with the sidebars giving much useful information to authors: listing authors, message boards, review / promotional sites, and self publishing links. He also has a contact page, which some authors do not have. I am assuming with the extra features, website is hosted by wordpress.com and author pays a monthly fee.

Girlswithpens uses a recently added theme: iTheme2 - a very colorful theme. I did not see it on wordpress.org – not for selfhosting. I believe with the domain name, owners (Marcy Kennedy and Lisa Hall-Wilson) must pay a monthly fee for hosting. Theme is 2 column with a fixed width and very uniform in structure. Posts deal more with writing and publishing, which is why I find the blog interesting and am sure authors will feel the same. Website uses a facebook-like plugin and a “Connect with Us” text wiget (icon) box in lower sidebar (don’t quote me on that). Thumbs up for a well done website.

Aly Hughes is an unpublished author that talks about writing. I saw her website a week ago and her post on “first person vs second person vs third person PoV” interested me. She posts many thoughts on different aspects of writing. She uses the zBench theme and has an additional navigation bar that lists her categories (what she calls genres in sidebar). I believe she has the free wordpress.com hosting. I am reviewing her website because her posts would make an author think.

Links: week ending 2-17

links No Responses »

Feb 182012

De Dion Bouton Et Trepardoux Dos-A-Dos Steam Roundabout was commisioned by French entrepreneur Count de Dion in 1884. It is the worlds oldest running motor car, a steam powered quadricycle that can travel 20 miles on one 40 gallon tank of water. It sold for $4.62 million at RM Auctions in early October of 2011. What is the oldest toy in the world?

A few celebrities are endorsing reverse mortage in commercials. I could not believe the closing costs - on a $200,000 home the closing is $6,000. Added to initial upfront cost on that price home is $4,000 for mortgage insurance (which is a federal requirement). They sure don’t say this in the commercial.

Healthcentral has a slide show on 10 foods to avoid if you have high cholesterol. I was surprised that duck was number 5 on the list. Shrimp is very low in fat but very high in cholesterol. The slide next rolls into foods to raise your HDL cholesterol.

zBench …. my review of theme

themes, wp tips 8 Responses »

Feb 132012

zBench is a good starter theme for a new author to experiment and begin to understand wordpress and the various themes and features (layout, plugins, fixed or fluid width, columns, etc). This theme is a two column – which is what I wanted. It has ample widgets but I had to upload a few, which is a somewhat easy process. I don’t care for the comment plugin that came with the theme – too much spam gets thru. I visited this page on 5 essential comments and chose GASP. I go to dashboard – plugins – add new – search – gasp – install – and activate the plugin. I installed 4 other plugins: enhanced text widget, fast secure contact form, image widget and sidebar login. For my purpose, I don’t like the bold type in the text widget, would rather it be plain type. If anyone knows how to change it in the css or php files, please comment and let me know what to edit. Sidebar login replaced the default meta widget. Many don’t know about the image wiget for photos in the sidebar with this theme. This codex page will help if you are having trouble figuring out how to add categories like I did. In this theme its in the posts dropdown menu. I changed the default title tagline in the theme to WP themes (settings / general). Otherwise people googling would see on your site “just another wordpress blog”. I downloaded the background file from Subtle Patterns, hopfully bringing about a soft relaxing tone to site. Same zBench theme, Cat Taylor delivers a different tone.

A few google plugins to consider would be google analytics (free traffic report) or an advanced wordpress plugin analyticator (wp directory), connects to your registered analytics account. Another may be a sitemap generator to aid google indexing your blog – automatically generates code of new or updated post. A third may be google webmaster tools.

Jason Cordova is an example of a feature rich zBench theme website. He uses a 3 column layout, with a visitor stat count, calendar, twits and a few other plugins.

I got hacked but why – some idiots amusement?

miscellaneous No Responses »

Feb 102012

I got hacked a while back by VatanTim.org. When going to page it redirects you to another page and then clicked a link to site and I find the account has been suspended. This is the website and owner info on whois and their address is protected by privacyprotect.org. I reported the hacking abuse to privacyprotect and asked that they make the organizations address open to viewing by the public. This is the reply I got when abuse sent “We have received your complaint and have forwarded the same to our Abuse Department. If this domain name is determined to be involved in the specified illegal activity, we would disable Privacy Protection Service for this domain name and take appropriate action against this domain name.”

This is the email I got back – what a crock of cat poop! They got paid for that service.

Dear Ron,

Thank you for contacting us. Privacy protection is just a service enabled on the
domain to hide the owner details. The below complaint needs to filed either with
hosting service provider or the Registrar FBS Inc. 

To contact the Domain owner, you need to fill up the form listed at
http://privacyprotect.org/

Fill up the form listed under &quot;Contact Domain Owner&quot; and if you do not
receive a legitimate response from the domain owner, you can fill up the form listed
under:  Request Domain Owner Contact.

Have a pleasant day!

Regards,

Abuse Desk

Ticket Details

Ticket ID: 64163

Status: Closed

My reply:

Dear Hypocrite:

What part of hacked into website is not illegal? You post standards that you do not adhere to. Action taken by the abuse desk was the two step – dancing around the issue. VitanTim.org was engaged in illegal activity and you refuse to disable Privacy Protection.

Have a plesant day,
Ron