Category Archives: blogging

The beauty of a new laptop

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Benq laptop

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been wanting a laptop for a long time. When I went to Sydney to take photos as well as stay with my oldest friend I had to use her laptop to download my photos. My camera, a Canon EOS 1000D, does not have cards like the compact digital cameras do. So once you have used all the space in the camera, you need to download to a computer. So my trips to the country to take some landscapes seemed doomed without some storage device. Hence the laptop. What I bought though was a factory scoop at JB HF. For the techies amongst you, have a look just to see the specifications. It really is a desktop quality to carry around with you.
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My site was attacked

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Google webmaster central wrote to me several times to notify me that one of the pages on this blog had been attacked by malicious software and had therefore been blocked by google. But I didn’t get notified via email. I just stumbled across it. I recommend that you visit webmaster central often.

I asked my host to fix the page and notify me because I need to notify Google now. My host suggested I upgrade my word press platform, so I did that. There is one error, so far. I’m having trouble getting to Post, although obviously I did because here I am.

Since I did all this maintenance I went back to google webmaster central, only to find that SOMEONE else now owned my site. But after I settled down after the panic attack, I realized that my host has taken over in order to fix the problem. Boy, I hope that is it. Then again, that seems to be a bit naughty, don’t you think?

More posts soon when problems fixed.

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Great tutorials for the newbie web designer

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Quackit teaches beginners how to create websites. They start off slowly, teaching you the basics such as HTML and CSS. Then they introduce you to more advanced topics so that you can add more features to your website.

It is similar to my own site, but has many more tutorials on css coding, xml, and

  • JavaScript Tutorial
    Learn how to add functionality and interactivity to your web pages.
  • ColdFusion Tutorial
    ColdFusion is a server-side programming/scripting environment used to build dynamic websites.
  • PHP Tutorial
    This PHP Tutorial demonstrates just how easy it is to create dynamic websites using PHP.
  • VBScript Tutorial
    This tutorial teaches you VBScript from the ground up – starting with the basics.

Database

  • Database Tutorial
    Learn the fundamentals of databases and database management systems.
  • SQL Tutorial
    Covers everything you need to know to get started in database programming using SQL.
  • SQL Server Tutorial
    Provides an overview of SQL Server – Microsoft’s enterprise database management system.
  • Microsoft Access Tutorial
    Use Microsoft Access to perform many typical database tasks such as creating databases, tables, queries, and more.
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The wibiya web toolbar

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Image representing Wibiya as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

The wibiya web toolbar should be showing at the bottom of this blog. You can add information to it, delete what you don’t want and use it to see your stats. Of course you need to alter the settings to suit your blog or web site. I think it’s great because you can use it and your visitors can use it to easily add a post to Facebook, Twitter or Digg, for example.

It also makes your site look pretty cool and professional. it is a growing application with more and more people using it. Features are added frequently.

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New features on Google Analytics

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Analytics 3scapism 1 png

Image via Wikipedia

If you go to the Google Analytics home page you will see an Application gallery where you can add various features to your analysis of your web site.

However, what I have noticed in my reports is a beta feature which you get to by clicking on Contents and then In Page Analysis. Here you will find that your site shows where visitors are clicking on your page, what percentage that is and what percentage click under the fold. Hover over the percentage bubbles and you will see how many visits that is.

Very useful! To see more than just your home page, leave the google analytics page open and click through other pages.

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Fireshot – a fabulous Firefox add-on

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If you want to take screenshots of webpages and save them in multiple sizes and maybe also add text on them then you can do this all right inside Firefox with FireShot extension for Firefox.

Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.

I’ve just installed this add-on and it really excites me for some reason. I took a screen shot of this blog. It’s useful for me because it takes the whole site in, not just what the Print screen key can take, which is whatever you can see, but not further.

I have made the image smaller so it fits on this blog.

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How to embed your facebook and twitter icons into a blog

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I’ve added a Follow me widget to my wordpress blog. First I saved an image of an F and a T. I then used this code to put into a text widget.

<a href=”http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=781704128″><img src=”images/facebook.png” border=”0″></a>
<a href=”http://twitter.com/#!/ozwebhub”><img src=”images/twitter.png” width=”60″ height=”60″ border=”0″></a>

You can see that I have not used WP media to add the image but this URL instead  www.ozwebhub.com/images

You will obviously have to change the code to suit you.

You can try uploading the image to your WP but I found that more difficult to do. You may be able to upload to the images folder of your themes images, but I haven’t tried that.

Fell free to Save the images I have on the right for your blog.

Next I’m going to try to add a Like button for Facebook for under the posts. Some of the related posts below may assist you in this too.

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Phone scam

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You are probably aware already that there is a phone scam going around in Australia and  don’t know what other countries. I have heard it on the radio and several have been taken in by it.

What happens is that someone rings and says they are a technical support person who is a representative on Microsoft or Windows and they say you have a problem on your computer which is ‘pinging’ back to them. They ask you to go into Command on your computer and give you a command to run and up pops various reds and blues. Or they ask you to go to your Event Viewer. The event viewer is accessed by going to your Control Panel > Administrative Tools and then Event Viewer. Then they offer to fix this (non-existent) problem for  a price. These calls appear to be coming from India but if people ask for a phone number they get an Australian phone with an Australian name.

If you accept you will lose money for nothing AND have more malicious code put onto your computer.

Microsoft will never ring you. Nor will any other software technical support.  If you ask them to give you your computer’s IP address (those numbers you often see), they don’t seem to know them.

DO NOT give these scammers your credit card details or access to your computer remotely.

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Contact forms on blogs or web sites

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I noticed that my Contact plugin was looking a bit odd on the ‘new’ blog so I decided to look at the page source. I found some malicious code there!!!! Usually it is an iframe like this <iframe…..www.somethingnasty.com……..iframe>

So I deactivated that contact form plugin and got another one. That code went away. If you see it on a web page, delete from web page, but in this blog it wasn’t with the theme but with the wordpress upload. I found it too difficult to find the malicious code.

The latest contact forms with Catcha and so on seemed to require too much configuration for my liking, so I have one which wordpress recommends. Much better.

I finally managed to create navigation across the top of the page, so I’m now happy.

I am going to use a photo here to check out this feature.

O………I have found a bug in this theme. The title is picking up my first category name, rather than my extra tagline.

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Modern word press themes

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You know, if you are prepared to pay a little money, word press layouts and themes are now so good they can be the platform for a web site. Content management systems like WP are so easy these days and global changes are easy too.

I’ve been searching for quite a while for a new template because I attempted to add my Twitter and Facebook logos so you could find me there. Well you seem to have to pay for these. There are really excellent themes out there but I recommend this one from Woo.

They come with the ability to change text and graphics, without having to go into the PHP pages to change them. That reminds me. There is a spot for Google analytics which I’ve forgotten to fill in yet.

These new and modern word press themes also come with SEO embedded and the ability to emded videos.

I haven’t finished this blog layout by any means but I thought I’d give you a little look. I got this one for free, but there is no support for it. So I’m having to work out how it works, because one has to add one’s own information in different places with this one. I cannot add menus to the top just yet, but I have added my flickr photos and altered the heading graphic which came with this theme.

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