Only Network

Moving to new laptop

2009-11-10T20:46:53Z

I just got my new laptop from Solidsoft, the company I work for this week. It’s an HP like the old one, but has a massive 17″ screen, which is just awesome on a laptop. It took me all of 10 minutes to get used to 1600×1200 and unfortunately now I’m spoilt! I can’t see myself using a smaller screen, which is going to be a problem on my next laptop.

It’s a nice machine, with 4Gb of RAM and and Nvidia Quadro FX 1500M graphics card. It came with an 80Gb hard drive, but considering I had that much data on my old laptop, I bought a 500G 7200rpm disk for it. It has Windows 7 installed on it, and it just flies. I’m really pleased with it; should keep me going for some time

Anyone remember Only Postcards

2009-11-04T21:36:25Z

Well, it’s been some time now since I took down Only Postcards, and I haven’t had anyone email to say they miss it. Basically I moved the server off a Windows platform to a *nix box and it was the best move I’ve ever made. The one thing that kept me from doing it was a handful of ASP websites that wouldn’t run without a Microsoft OS. Only Postcards was one of them allowing people to send holiday cards and holiday cards from all around the world. It was a bit of a headache as it proved a magnet for spam and had to be managed.

There were another couple of sites that had to be dropped, but I had a soft spot for that one as I had devoted quite a bit of time and effort to it. Who knows, I may rebuild it some day …

What’s your target market?

2009-11-01T00:59:32Z

When building a new website, always keep in mind who your target market is. Why? you may ask? Well, different segments find different things attractive and compelling and getting the formula wrong can spell disaster for your website. For example, if you’re building a website about fitness equipment, then your audience is probably going to be young, dynamic and vital. Choosing a dull colour scheme is going to be detrimental to the site; you want something bright and vibrant.

Have you seen a site recently that brought this principle to mind?

WordPress vs Joomla

2009-10-29T23:29:05Z

I had an interesting conversation today with a colleague of mine who has decided to build a site in Joomla. We were comparing the relative merits of Joomla and WordPress. I tend to prefer WordPress because it’s a simpler product, I’ve had a great experience with it and well, that’s where my skill set lies now. Joomla is interesting for me, because it presents a growth avenue, but there’s also the risk that it takes me longer to deliver what I need to deliver. So, if I had to put together a simple site, say for a life insurance company, WordPress would be my product of choice.

Which do you prefer WordPress or Joomla?

Google Listen on Android

2009-10-23T20:03:07Z

One of the applications I have been using most on my Android phone recently is an app by Google called Google Listen. Here’s what the blurb says:

Listen from Google Labs brings podcasts and web audio to your Android-powered device. It lets you search, subscribe, download and stream. By subscribing to programs and search terms it will create a personalized audio-magazine loaded with fresh shows and news stories whenever you listen. In this release Listen is indexing thousands of popular English-only audio sources.

I’ve found it a great way to listen to podcasts when I’m sweating on the elliptical trainer at the gym. Favourite podcast at the moment is TWiT – This Week in Tech. If you get a chance, give it a listen.

Thunderbird – Spam control

2009-10-20T20:59:37Z

I came across an interesting post on spam control in Thunderbird, my current mail client. Well, I’ve been using it for around 5-6 years now, so current might be an understatement. Anyway, the article talks about junk control in Thunderbird and I think it’s mandatory reading for anyone using Thunderbird.

Unwanted mail can be a bit of a pain. You may be interested in “How to lose belly fat“, but then again, maybe you don’t. You may be interested in how to get taller, but then again, maybe you don’t. Best if you read through the article and see if it can help you out.

Are you riding the Wave?

2009-10-11T21:53:28Z

Are you one of the lucky few who has been sent a Wave invite? If so, you may want to hook up with me at owen.cutajar@googlewave.com. It’s a brand new way of communicating with people, letting you talk about whatever you want in something that’s a cross between email and instant messaging. Here’s a video that will explain a bit more:

You can use it to talk about anything you like, whether it’s the latest news that Obama has received a Nobel Prize or debating the best weight loss pill on the market. If I have any invites to give out, I’ll blog about it; just let me know if you’re interested.

Choosing a web host

2009-10-07T21:58:53Z

Which web host should you use? Well, it can be a pretty difficult question to answer just because of the number of different options available to you. You can choose a host on price or capabilities, or just because of a positive experience you had with them in the past. Obviously, some hosts can be more restrictive than others; I mean, not everyone would want to host a site specialising in colon cleanse reviews, but some won’t really object.

Just remember that it’s not just about price. Sometimes it’s about building a long-lasting relationship with an organisation and about finding the trust that you can leave your business in their hands. So don’t be afraid to shop around and look to the long term.

Does your website scale?

2009-10-05T19:53:57Z

Scaling can be a bane if you don’t think about it in advance. By scaling I mean the ability of a website to handle a substantial increase in traffic without falling over. I found a good post that outlines the risks that come around scaling considerations. Here are some risks that are mentioned:

Not enough resources and site goes down
Too many resources and waste your money
Going with the cheapest solution

There’s some good advice in there. The last thing you want to do is build the best website selling top rated weight loss pills in the world, then get knocked off the Interweb because of the awesome marketing campaign you’re doing.

Do you backup your website?

2009-10-01T19:51:32Z

What would happen if you lost your website? The answer to that depends on the type of website you have. If you have a static website, then all you really need is one backup when you deploy the site and an on-demand backup whenever something changes. There are packages out there, like the one that most control panels have, that you can use for this sort of thing.

If you have a dynamic website, you need to backup more often; depending on how oftne your website is updated. I use WordPress a lot and use a plugin called BackupWordPress. I usually configure this to take full backups one a month and SQL backups once a week. The full backup picks up things like themes and images that change infrequently, while the SQL backup contains all the content of the website; which changes on a more frequent schedule. Some websites have a variation on this, depending on how fluid they are, but you get the idea. Backups to me are like car mats: they protect your investment and don’t really take that much effort. So make sure you’re covered.