Why Green?

I help run a children’s site dedicated to green things such as climate change and the environment, this has made me really look into how everything can be greener. At home I’m now recycling much more and I am using an energy monitor to see how much electricity is being used. I ownt go into all that right now but it I have been looking into finding a green hosting company. It does seem an odd request as surely data centres should be running an efficient as possible to save money but some aren’t. I am also looking for data centres that at least buy their energy from providers who use wind and solar energy. There are many hosting companies that are getting wise to this and are promoting they are green. Some however just say they offset their energy use by planting a tree. This I find quite amusing as planting a tree doesn’t do much at all. The tree will takes time to grow and won’t be of any effect for some time so in fact it is initially pointless. One site I found which made me laugh was that they made a point of stating they used recyclable coffee cups in their office. Oh that makes all the difference

There are a few sites that state they are selling green hosting which I have been looking into and I think on paper they look good but the thing that puts me off is that I have never heard of them. I much prefer it when I have been recommended to the company so at least I know someone has had a good experience with them. Do any of you know of a green hosting company?

Right now I’m looking into my existing host to see if they are green and in fact they have won some awards for trying to be green but they don’t buy their energy from any green providers they just try to reduce their energy usage. Is this enough do you think?

Would you go green? Is it something that if you saw on a site that they were using a green hosting company, it would interest you?

Would you expect a site providing a green product or service to be using a green host?

Something I have been pondering over for a while now is the choice of how to build a web site.

Do you always go for a CMS solution and build from there or do you just build from scratch using any code you have used before as a library or do you mix and match?

More recently I have been more focused on developing on existing platforms such as Wordpress or a commercial CMS but is that a good thing? Using Wordpress does allow you to easily integrate other code or scripts quite easily, in fact if you wish you can develop Wordpress plugins to integrate into Wordpress so that the user doesn’t even know there is bespoke code inserted into the site.

So on the surface it would seem developing on an existing platform is the way forward, however using a commercial CMS I find this more difficult. What I mean by a commercial CMS is using a hosted CMS which you would pay a license to use. Most of the time you wouldn’t have access to write bespoke code into the site,  so you can be a bit limited with what you can do.  There are many upsides to using a commercial CMS though such as support and many supply the developer with API’s to play with which can achieve the results you want.

Is it worth looking at developing bespoke sites with an administration panel which is unique to that site? In the past this is what I would have done but I have found users expect a certain level of tools such as WYSIWYG editors, news feeds (RSS feeds), ability to upload images and even video.

Do you develop your own or use an existing platform?
Wordpress or Joomla for example both have the ability to upload images and video, have RSS feeds and WYSIWYG editors all as default or by installing a plugin.

The downside is that the open source software needs updating and in the case of Wordpress this can be a lot. Again though is this good or bad? Ok so you have run a few updates but at least the code is free and is being updated, providing you with new tools and further features to make sites.

If you make a bespoke web site then you are left to develop this yourself. There is an upside to bespoke sites and that is that you have control over the site and how it will be used. You get to build your own funky scripts that no other site will have and make it different from anything else you have seen. Clients can be willing to pay the extra to get the new feature or maybe they are requesting it in the first place so you get to create it.

As a developer what do you do? If you were a would be client what would you prefer?

Now the update is just about finished and they have now signed up Yahoo for their search results, so not only do you get paid for searching they now use a good search results provider.

if you fancy taking a look check out Homepages Friends - oh and this is their new name as well

now head on over to 1month.co.uk now!

What I do want to say is that I do like the fact they are trying to move forward but I just don’t see why they made some of the changes. I’ve heard others like Sarah mention that some of the code has changed or at least some of the ways you were able to control things like the output of pages isn’t the same. Of course the final release might be ok so ill keep an eye on it for now but I hope it doesn’t change too much as upgrading a site would be such a pain and time consuming which is ok if you have enough time to do it.

I hope they continue to move Wordpress forward to more of a cms with blog capabilities. I know there are many using it in this way including myself. I would also like to know if they are planning to update the way templates are used to be more like a cms. I know you can already choose a template for each page you write etc but if for example each template could have its own way of having widgets without being too complicated that would be very good. At the moment if you have multiple sidebars it can get a bit messy in the widget admin.

I would also like to see if they will enhance the way custom fields work, or at least how a user uses them. We shall see

MySearchFunds is a site that pays you to use their search engine which is ASK.com. the search results are ok and it is a nice alternative to using google as some times google’s results have so much spam it is very annoying.

If you use Flash a lot and design lots of nice looking interfaces then this is the tool for you.

Sadly it only works with Flash 8 at the moment but it is worth checking out.

If you use filters then you know this little extension will be good for you. You can not only save certain groups of filter for that great looking button you designed to be used over and over again instead of having to remember all the settings you used before.

It even allows you to export them to carry them alround in case you need them or share them with your friends.

I definitely recommend this extension

Google images is something i myself use a lot to get inspiration on sometimes or if i need to show sometihgnto someone for an explanation it is a good source.

When you use Google images do you ever look at the site? I think in my experience i don’t, i generally look at the image and move on.

Is there a way of using that traffic or is it something that if you get someone looking a the site it is a bonus?

Would it be better to block Google from indexing the images?

I think that blocking the images would be a bad idea unless it was causing you problems with the use of bandwidth. If the site is useful then you might find that users will look at the rest of the sit. It should be something you experiment with and you may be able to use it to your advantage.

For now i will be experimenting with the site and seeing how i can manage to get some traffic that stays on the site.

Tags: google+images, ais

Which search engine do you use to find information on the Internet?

I generally use Google but more and more i try other search engines to compare results.
Yahoo seems to be getting more professional and many state that Yahoo is better. What do you think?

I was looking through Text Link Ads and they use yahoo to trace back links for their stats. Google has to be the front runner but for how long? With Google having it’s fingers in many pies will it continue to dominate or risk diluting the very foundation it was built on.

MSN have become very popular but they have always seemed to lack the professional touch. With most opting for the obvious choice of Google or Yahoo.

By making it a widget you don’t have to insert any code into the template and you can control where it appears on your sidebar within the wordpress widget admin.

To install;

 Download the what others say widget

Then simply upload the others.php file into the plugin folder of your wordpress installation and also upload the cachetime.txt file into the root of your wordpress installation.

chmod the cachetime.txt file to be 766.
The plugin does try to create this file for you but as servers aren’t reliable it is best to do it yourself as it is so easy to do.

Login to your Wordpress control panel and activate the plugin in the plugins page.

Finally go to presentation > widgets and drag the new widget to where you want in your sidebar - You are done!