Here are five favorite websites and/or tools you can check out for this weekend.  I hope they enhance your web explorations.  Whether old or new these are some of my faves that I came across this past week.

1. FFixer

FFixer is a customizable script that enhances your Facebook experience using Firefox or Google Chrome web browsers.  You install Greasemonkey and then install the FFixer script.  This will allow you to hover your mouse over images on Facebook and the image will pop-out to a larger view.  FFixer also allows you to customize your account settings to control what displays on your Facebook homepage.  There’s quite a few other features packed into FFixer.  Get all the details over at makeuseof.

2. Facebook Plugins

This past week the F8 Facebook conference took place and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg took the opportunity to introduce some new stuff.  New stuff like the social bar plugin, the recommendation plugin, the activity stream plugin and the Facebook login plugin as well as the most talked about “like” button.  Check out the wrap up at Search Engine Journal.  Learn how to install the plugins at Digital Inspiration.

3. Design Inspiration

Whether you need a new business card or not you can always get your fill of design inspiration from some of the business card designs created in the last few years.  OddStuff Magazine has a list of 90+ Most Unusual Business Card Designs Of All Time to get your inner creative designer juices flowing.

4. Twitter Permalinks

Need to reference a twitter tweet?  Twitter permalinks are available with every tweet via the time setting of the tweet.  At the end of each individual tweet is the time of the tweet or how long ago the tweet was tweeted.  That is the permalink to that tweet.  If you click on the time of the tweet you’ll be taken to an individual web page that displays that tweet.  So if you need to reference a twitter tweet or bookmark a specific tweet for future reference, now you know.

5. Chrome Extensions

If you’re an avid Firefox user you probably already know about and use Firefox Add-ons.  Add-ons increase the functionality of your Firefox browser.  Well Google Chrome has Extensions.  These are the same as Add-ons only for Google Chrome.  In Google Chrome you can browse their extension web page to try some out.  My favorites right now are the Shareaholic for Google Chrome extension and the StumbleUpon extension that displays the StumbleUpon bar in Google Chrome.  Don’t know what StumbleUpon is?  Read more about StumbleUpon at StumbleUpon – How To Channel Surf The Web.

Post from: The Spinning Donut

Five Faves for the Week Ending April 23rd, 2010

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Today is Thanksgiving 2009 and some folks celebrate at mom’s house.  Many people support their parents or siblings computers and today is a day to take the time and update, enhance and in general make YOUR life easier when you have to provide support.

So here are 5 things you can do to provide quick and easy support to your loved ones and hopefully they’ll be extra thankful today for your generosity.  

1. Firefox

If you haven’t already installed Firefox on their computer, do so.  In general, it’s a bit quicker, a bit more secure and renders web pages in a more standard way.  Plus, most likely your family member’s computer is an older one.  Firefox can load quicker than most browsers on older computers.  Make sure you provide shortcuts to their top 3 or more favorite sites on the desktop.

2. Virus Update

If their computer already has virus protection, make sure it’s up to date.  If they don’t have virus protection and its a Windows computer, download and install the freely available Microsoft Security Essentials.  Make sure you set it up to do a daily Quick Scan.  You can do the scan when your family member sleeps and then…

3. Automatically Shutdown Their PC

You can pick between any of my articles on How To Shut Down Your Windows XP Computer, or How To Automatically Shut Down Your Windows Vista Computer, or How To Automatically Shut Down Your Windows 7 Computer .

Now, depending on what Anti-Virus software you’re running, that software might include an automatic shut down as well, after a virus scan.  So go for a scan when they’re sleeping and then auto-shutdown the computer.  A computer that’s turned off is a safer computer.

4. Remote Control Software

Don’t ya’ just love those late night calls or in some cases every night calls?  Ease the pain by installing remote control software on your relative’s computer.

I prefer LogMeIn Free.  But, I’ve also used Copilot.  Copilot is one of the best and quickest ways to connect to someone.  However, you only get 2minutes free.  If it’s someone you support occasionally, CoPilot also offers a Day Pass for $5.00 that gives you 24 hours of support.  The Copilot Day Pass has worked wonderfully for me.

5. Backup, Sync and Share

While working on Mom’s computer, you might need to transfer files or keep a quick backup of necessary tools, documents, etc.  For that, I use Dropbox.  With 2GB of online storage for free, Dropbox is incredibly fast and a secure way to backup, sync or share files that you might need while supporting computers.

There’s plenty more tips, tricks and techniques I will share in future articles, so make sure you subscribe.  Happy Thanksgiving!!  

Post from: The Spinning Donut

5 Tools You Must Have to Take Care of Mom’s Computer

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Well, here we go again.  In addition to my How To Automatically Shut Down Your Windows XP Computer I showed how to set it up so you can use the ShutDown.exe command to schedule and automatically shut your Windows XP computer off. In my How To Automatically Shut Down Your Windows Vista Computer we stepped through the same idea.  And now, here’s Windows 7.  Guess what?  Not too different.  So let’s get going.

For this How To, I’m using Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC).  Hopefully not too many changes between now and the final version of Windiows 7  changes in regards to running a scheduled task.  Below is the first screen shot after I clicked on the Start button and Control Panel.  You’ll find the Scheduled Tasks under System and Security.

Click on System and Security and you should see the Administrative Tool selections at the bottom of the control panel window.  Click on Schedule Tasks and you’ll be presented with the screen below.

Click image for larger view (800px)

The Task Scheduler is pretty much the same in Windows 7 as Windows Vista.  The Task Scheduler can look intimidating but it’s not too bad. Just move forward. We are going to look at one task and not all the extra stuff in Task Scheduler.

In the Actions column on the right, click Create Basic Task…

You’ll see the following window and I’ve already filled in the Name and Description of our task.

Click image for larger view

After clicking Next you’ll see the Task Trigger screen. We want to shut down our Windows 7 computer in the middle of the night, every night so we’ll pick Daily.

Click image for larger view

The next screen you’ll see is the Start Date and Time screen.

Click image for larger view

The following screen is the Action screen. Let’s Start a program.

Click image for larger view

The next screen you’ll see is the Start a Program screen.

Click image for larger view

And finally the Summary screen.

Click image for larger view

Let’s take a look at our task in the Active Tasks list.

Click image for larger view (800px)

Double-click the Task Name if you need to work with the settings.

Here’s the screen when the task fires off and starts to automatically shut down Windows 7. A window pops up telling us that Windows will shut down in less than a minute. You can click on the Close button but that will just close that window and Windows itself will continue to shut down.

Click image for larger view

There’s quite a bit of detail with the shutdown.exe command and here is the output when you run the shutdown.exe /? command at the command prompt in Windows 7. It lists the choices of how you want to run the shutdown.exe command.

Click image for larger view

Photo Credit: Marcin Wichary

Post from: The Spinning Donut

How To Automatically Shut Down Your Windows 7 Computer

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This contest is now over and thanx to all who participated.

Hey folks. I’m running a contest over at DailyTwiTip.com. I’m giving away a flip minoHD camcorder valued at $229.00 or a $225.00 gift card to buy.com (winner’s choice).

I’m trying to get past the 2,000 followers mark by Monday, 5/4/09 at 10:00pm United States Central Standard Time. If I do, I’ll give away more prizes just in time for Mother’s Day.  That is also when the drawing will take place.

Here’s what you have to do to  win – browse over to my Mother’s Day Contest – 2009 blog post and do the following over there:

1. Follow DailyTwiTips on twitter (opens in a new window).
2. Simply send this tweet “I entered to win a flip minoHD. To win, follow @DailyTwiTips and retweet. http://xr.com/mom2009” (opens in a new window).
3. THIS IS IMPORTANT!! Enter your twitter username below and click on the Submit button.  You’ll have to do this one over at my Mother’s Day Contest – 2009 blog post.

Of course, you’ll have to be on twitter to enter.

Good Luck!!

Also, I would love to get some more subscribers to my DailyTwiTips blog as well as folks commenting.  I appreciate the support.  Thanx!!

Post from: The Spinning Donut

The 2009 Mother’s Day Contest

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When you sign up for your own web hosting account you typically receive x number of free additional domains.  This means you can host other websites (domains) on your one web hosting account.  These are called Addon Domains or Sub Domains.  We’ll be discussing Addon Domains for this post.

For example, with my HostGator account I pay for one site and get unlimited free additional sites (domains) that I can host on my one account.

So what does that mean?  Well, let’s take for example a main website called www.mymainsite.com.  When you install this site on your web hosting site, it can be located in the root folder which is /.

Control Panel (cpanel)

When you want to add another website to your hosting site, you would pick Addon Domain.  I’m using HostGator and the management tool called cpanel or Control Panel as it’s called.  Here is a screenshot of what the Addon Domain menu selection looks like.

After selecting Addon Domains you’ll be presented with the following screen.

After adding the my2ndsite.com to your main website, you’ll have a tree structure like this – /public_html/my2ndsite.  This is where you can add WordPress if that’s what you’re wanting to do.  So you have a WordPress installation in the root at / and one at /public_html/my2ndsite.

Fantastico

With cpanel under my HostGator account, I can use the Fantastico software tool to install another instance of WordPress.

Now that I’ve created an Addon Domain, when the WordPress install asks me what domain I want to install WordPress on, I can slect the my2ndsite.com domain.  The install directory would be left blank after selecting the my2ndsite.com domain.  This will install WordPress into the root of the Addon Domain my2ndsite.com.

The admin username and password asked for during the WordPress install is the username and password you will use when you want to administer WordPress on your my2ndsite.com/wp-admin.

The Site name is the blog title and the Description is the blog tag line that will show up under the blog title.

Name Servers

A Name Server is where you’re web hosting is located.  Although there’s more to a name server than that, I’ll leave it at that since all you really need to know for this task is where your name servers should be pointing to.

Let’s say you used GoDaddy to register your new domain name my2ndsite.com.  You need to go change the name servers from GoDaddy’s default name servers to your web hosting account name servers.

For example, let’s say the two default nameservers are nsx.godaddy.com where x is a number.  You would edit the name servers and change them to your name servers that you get at your web hosting site, which could be for example nsxxx.hostgator.com.

Now you and the rest of the world can browse to your new website www.my2ndsite.com.  Woo Hoo!!

Recap

1. You have a main site called www.mymainsite.com and you want to start another website using your current web hosting site because you can add unlimited domains.
2. You create an Addon Domain called my2ndsite.com.
3. You installed WordPress into my2ndsite.com.
4. You change your domain’s name server to point at your my2ndsite.com domain located at your web hosting site.

Capiche? I know, clear as a bell.  Ask any questions if you need help in the comments or contact me using the contact form.

Post from: The Spinning Donut

How To Create An Addon Domain

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DotNetNuke is a Content Management System or CMS. It is written in the Microsoft Visual Basic .NET programming language.

A Content Management System allows you to get a professional website up and running quickly.  It provides functionality to easily manage the users of a website, the content, design aspects, and many other attributes of a website.

With DotNetNuke, it’s not only easy to get a website up and running quickly but to manage and maintain its content.

For developers, specifically Visual Basic developers, DotNetNuke offers a programmer to get started with web development quickly and learning MIcrosoft’s ASPX technology.  Since a VB programmer understands Visual Basic they’ll be able to pick up the programming languate Visual Basic .NET fairly quick.

To get started read my article 4 Programming Languages To Help You Become A Programmer.  Download the freely available Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition by Microsoft.  Then head over to the DotNetNuke website and download the Install Package of DotNetNuke.

Here’s the quickest way to get started:

1. Download and install the Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition.  This can be a pretty long install and I accept all the defaults during install.  Especially the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express option.  You’ll need to install it so you can run DotNetNuke.
2. Download the DotNetNuke Install Package and unzip it to C:\DotNetNuke.
3. Fire up Microsoft Visual Web Developer and select File -> Open Web Site… and select the folder C:\DotNetNuke.  Click Open.  This will open DotNetNuke as a web site in Visual Web Developer.
4. Once the web site is open in the development system, press Ctrl-F5.  This will start and run the web site wizard without the debugging system.
5. You’ll notice an ASP.NET Development Server pop-up in the lower right-hand corner of your window.  This is the built in web server that comes installed with Visual Web Developer so there’s no need for Microsoft’s IIS web server.
6. After the web site has been compiled you’ll be presented with the first wizard screen to install DotNetNuke.  On this screen the installation method default is “Typical”.  Change it to “Auto” and click the Next link.  There is a possible issue with the “Typical” install that hangs on a screen where the database scripts get run.  To avoid this just select the “Auto” method.
7. The install will complete and you’ll have one web page that displays the output of the install with a link at the bottom that says, “Click Here To Access Your Portal.”  Below is your DotNetNuke web site after a successful install.

Click image for larger view

So what do have?  We installed the development environment so we can develop custom modules in the future for DotNetNuke.  We downloaded and installed DotNetNuke.  We opened the web site on our local hard drive at C:\DotNetNuke, compiled and ran the wizard to setup DotNetNuke.

This article was about running DotNetNuke on your computer.  There is a bunch of other stuff to do and take into consideration to run a DotNetNuke site for public or private consumption.  I’ll go over that type of stuff in a future article.  So make sure you subscribe to my blog by email or by RSS Reader.

Here’s the video walk thru.

Post from: The Spinning Donut

An Introduction To DotNetNuke

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Here are 10 tweets from Twitter on Social Media including statistics, links, tools, people and opinions.

1. Report: Social Web Usage Tipped in 2008 by ReadWriteWeb in care of a tweet by lizstrauss

2. Social Media Now 10.31.08 by Social Media Club in care of a tweet by jfouts

3. 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for PR Professional and Journalists by Mashable in care of a tweet by leadingzero

4. Social Media Exposes the Corporate Psychopath by BusinessWeek in care of a tweet by PheonixREGuy

5. 17 Un-Pimped but Kick-Butt Social Media People by altitude in care of a tweet by brianadrian

6. Election Day 2008: The Best Blogs and Social Media Resources by The Blog Herald care of a tweet by MLx

7. Yoono Releases Onslaught of New Features, Finds an Interesting Business Model by Mashable in care of a tweet by Mashable

8. Negative Online Behavior is a Product of Culture, Not Your Social Media Tools: What I’m Learning from the Work Literacy Course by The Bamboo Project in care of a tweet by brittgow

9. 7 Signs You May Be A Social Media Addict by FurtherNow in care of a tweet by rampantheart

10. The Top Five Books on Social Media Marketing and Public Relations by Dianosphere in care of a tweet by BuzzToNews

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Loops are things in programming languages and operating systems that process stuff. Loops do what they sound like. If you were to run around in circles you are also looping around in a circle. So, if you can imagine running around in circles in the same spot, you have the ability to process stuff while you loop around in circles.

Processing stuff while you run around in circles could include catching something that someone throws to you, a ball for instance. In turn, you could throw the ball as you run around in circles as well. All the while, processing stuff that comes in and out of the loop.

That is what a loop structure is in programming languages. So let’s look at some examples.

WordPress

WordPress is written in a language called PHP which is a scripting language that is well suited for web application development. A great resource to read up and learn more about PHP is the W3 Schools website where they walk you through PHP in their PHP Tutorial.

Here is the WordPress loop that processes is the common index.php page.

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>

The while and endwhile statements are the loop structure that processes what shows up on a common WordPress blog home page – blog posts.  My interpretations is, “Run around in a circle while blog posts show up on the page.  When there are no more blog posts, quit.”

As you look at loop structures in PHP as well as other languages, you’ll find out that there are different types of loop structures used for different purposes.  These include statements like do..while, for, and foreach.  Again visit the PHP Tutorial at the W3 Schools website to study more examples.

Visual Basic

In Visual Basic one type of loop structure looks like this:

for x = 1 to 100

debug.print(x)

next x

The Visual Basic loop tells us that x will count from 1 to 100 as the loop executes.  There are other loop structures that can be used in Visual Basic just like any other language to process various actions in various ways for various reasons.

Windows Operating System

At another level, the Windows Operating System even has loop structures.  Whenever you type on the keyboard or click the mouse a message is sent to a queue.  The message queue (or list) gets processed and sends those messages to a program running in Windows where the program then interprets what the message is and what to do about it.

Once you understand how a loop structure works it’s pretty easy to figure them out in other languages.  It then becomes a task of figuring out the nuances of those loop structures for each language.  They don’t always work the same in every programming language.

Photo Credit: frostnova

Post from: The Spinning Donut

An Introduction To The Loop Structure – Everyone’s A Bit Loopy

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Hey, it’s WordPress Wednesday and I got more on the Thesis Theme for WordPress.  Now, I’m not trying to stick to a strict editorial schedule but since it’s Wednesday and I’m trying to update my Thesis theme I thought I’d write about it.

Shortly after I talked about some of the stuff I would like to see in the Thesis Theme for WordPress it was released with some of those very features. Three column layout was already in the previous versions but now you can have a column on the left side of your content and on the right side of your content.  The two column also allows you to put content on the left or right side of the sidebar. All with a click of a button. Pretty cool.

Layout Constructor

The layout constructor as it’s called allows for a lot of flexibility with varying column widths and order. Excellent. All this is provided by the Thesis Design Options page under the Design menu in WordPress.  The Design menu is currently named Appearance in the soon to be released (November 10, 2008) WordPress 2.7.

The following screen shot might look a bit different than the current WordPress 2.6.3 since it’s the Appearance menu selection in WordPress 2.7 at this time.  You never know what we’ll get with the final version of WordPress 2.7.  But, notice the different layout options available with the Thesis theme.

Chris The Plumber

Developer Chris Pearson has also reworked some of the internal plumbing of the theme.  These changes are necessary to provide ultimate flexibility in the theme.  It might be a bit confusing now but going forward with Thesis updates the rework will allow for a more flexible framework for everyone to do good theme stuff easier.

Also, if you’ve customized some of the Thesis code you’ll have to figure out where it goes.  However, as I take the time to move stuff around that I’ve customized and understand what’s been done, I am trying to use the custom.css and custom_functions.php files to provide the functionality I want without touching any of the core coding files.  Make sure you head over to the support forums for help and reviewing other folks who might have some of the same questions you have.

The Hook System

At the end of my Thesis Theme 1.2 for WordPress post I wrote how I wished upon a star for more places for hooks. Guess what? The Thesis theme is getting tricked out with hooks. Again, hooks are spots in the core code where you can insert your own custom code.  You can also remove existing code as well, using those built-in hooks.  All of this is controlled in one file, the custom_functions.php file.  Kind of a centralized area to do your customizing which is nice.

What’s needed now?

I don’t know what the plans are for future versions of Thesis but I would like to see hoards of menu structure navigation designs.  In other words, for the designer challenged among us, we don’t design our Thesis theme too much unless we know design or hire someone to design it.  A few different menu designs that act and look different than the stock menu navigation look and feel would be good.

Also, do the same thing with headers.  Promote a ton of different header images that are sized right and slide right into Thesis.  When you don’t do heavy redesign with the Thesis theme, everyone using the Thesis theme starts looking the same.

Actually they have revealed a magazine style fuctionality that will be included in the Thesis theme.  This was going to be a separate project called Cosmo, but it sounds like we’ll see it in the next versions of Thesis.  Looking forward to it.

So that’s it for now and go get the Thesis theme to help with your WordPress theme implementations.

Post from: The Spinning Donut

Thesis Theme 1.3 for WordPress

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Searching Windows Vista begins with the Start Search box located on the start menu.  This little search box is pretty powerful.  Working in Windows Vista recently, I found myself paying more attention to the Start Search on the Start menu.

The Start menu search box offers fast results by returning categorized, matching results as you type.  The search box searches the following:

• Your Start Menu
• Web Browser History
• Web Browser Favorites
• Emails
• Contact Information in Outlook
• Folders and Files

Typing the word wordpress in the search box returns the following results as I type on my Vista PC.

The results will only fill up what can fit in the window.  Hovering your mouse over one of the results will display more information in a pop-up help window.  If you don’t see the result your looking for, click on the Search Everywhere link at the bottom of the results window.  This will open an advanced search window with more results.  If you’re using Google Desktop search that will open up in a window instead of the default Vista window.

The Search the Internet link will search your default Internet search provider.

The search box on the Start menu has been optimized to search the items on the Start menu.  So clicking on the Start menu button or pressing your Windows key on your keyboard (if you have a Windows key on your keyboard) and typing in the search box the letters re will find Remote Desktop Connection faster than clicking on the Start menu button and navigating to the Remote Desktop Connection menu item.

Post from: The Spinning Donut

Windows Vista Search – Getting To Know You – Part 1

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