Category Archives: tutorials

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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Prezi – a visual web based presentation tool

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Prezi is a web-based presentation tool with so much more to offer than Microsoft Power Point.
It has built-in design tools allowing the effects of time, space and movement.
It is free if you only use 100 megabytes of storage space. These become public and have a watermark on them.

You can pay to have the watermark removed and the presentations will be private and you get 500 megabytes of storage space.
The next level of payment allows you to download to your desktop and have 2 megabytes of storage space.

What are they useful for?
Continue reading →

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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The nightmare of the new hard disc drive

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Samsung HD400LD hard disk drive (400 GB storag...
Image via Wikipedia

Okay, so I found that I couldn’t reformat my old hard drive because it was corrupted.

I backed everything up on an external drive. Backing up emails is easy, but restoring them is less so.

I bought a new 1 TB Sata hard drive over the internet.  Sata HDDs are much more common now that IDE drives and much easier to connect. As I installed it, I took photos of the old one within the case so I would remember how the wires went. I can’t find them this minute, because these photos are untitled.

I inserted everything correctly finding where the cables went.   I started installing Windows XP and pressed F2 to see Set up or BIOS. I saw that the new Hard drive was there. I changed the boot up sequence so that the computer would boot up from the Windows disc.

At a certain point the Windows disk would stop and it would say “no hard disc detected”. Installation has failed. I tried every combination of BIOs settings and boot sequences. No luck.

Finally, I rang a tech company and when the guy came out, all was well, except that my version of Windows did not contain the drives necessary for the motherboard and new HDD. So off it went to the factory and 3 days later at came back all fixed.

I’m restoring everything now. Thank God for the password reminders on web sites, because of all the folders in my outlook email account guess which one didn’t restore. My passwords!!

It’s very nice to see updated software from the web though.

So, if your motherboard is old and that only means a few years, then your search on the internet for how to change a HDD (which is easy) won’t bear fruit. If it is newer, it is a synch really.

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My site was hacked

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Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
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I received an email from Google to notify me that I had malware on my site. When I went to the offending pages I saw, “Warning – visiting this web site may harm your computer” No-one could see the information.

What to do?

The email had a link to Webmaster tools (You must have a Google account).

Click on your site

Click on Diagnostics > malware

You will see down the bottom : Problematic URLs

Click on details

It shows suspected injected code. Mine was an iframe linking to an ad.

Now you might be able to find this and delete it, but I just deleted the subdirectory (it was on a second blog of mine)

I changed my password for my FTP program and my control panel where I host my site. I scanned my site: nothing. So someone had accessed my control panel on my server or my FTP program.

I have lost the posts for this blog because I hadn’t backed it up, but luckily I wasn’t using it much. I’m not sure if the bad code could have been easily removed.

So, keep your virus program up to date, change passwords on your FTP and control panel regularly and back up your blog. Web sites are easier to fix.

Get a good firewall.

Good luck!

Oh, once you have fixed the problem you need to get your site reviewed by Google. Webmaster tools tells you how.

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Why are my photos darker after I print them?

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computer screenIt depends what you have done or not done as to why your prints are darker.  If you have an LCD computer screen, they will be.  All LCD screens have brightness defaults which are too bright. So you can wind down the brightness by 50% to improve quality. Then you have to calibrate the colour. The old CRT screens can be calibrated by adjusting the brightness and contrast.

You can also fix this problem by editing in Photoshop.

To determine if your screen is too bright, hold a blank white sheet of printer paper next to a white document in Photoshop. It should match in brightness and colour. If not, increase room lighting or reduce brightness of screen.

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Some digital camera terms explained

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When I first bought a digital camera, there were only point and shoot types and the mega pixels were much fewer. Mine had only 3.1 and my son now has a mobile phone with 6 mega pixels. So, my camera (with fewer megapixels than the one below) is virtually useless and next I would definitely buy an SLR digital camera.

canon power shot camera

I used to upload some of my photos to the stock sites, like dreamstime, but the size of a photo taken with my camera is now quite small compared with the cameras with more mega pixels.  Dreamstime would specify that we should get rid of noise before uploading. I had no idea what noise was.

NOISE in a digital image has nothing to do with audio.  A digital camera emits photo receptors which are interpreted as black or randomly coloured dots. SLR digital cameras with a medium amount of mega pixels   have less noise than the smaller compact digital camera. But there is still noise. The makers therefore build in “noise reduction”. However noise reduction blurs fine detail. So the best digital camera is the SLR digital camera with a medium amount of mega pixels.

I’ve talked of mega pixels. A pixel is a tiny dot, thousands of which, make up an image. Now one would think that the more mega pixels the camera has , the better, but not so. My brother did research on this before he upgraded. The more mega pixels you have, the more NOISE.

ISO has always been a standard for cameras. In the old cameras before the digital, ISO settings were narrow, from about 50 to 400, 800.  With the new digital camera the ISO can be set to between 50 to 6500. But using a higher ISO can also mean more noise. The ISO determines the speed of the shot you can take: for moving objects you would have a higher ISO and still shots would have a much lower ISO.

More terms expained soon…

How to copy music files from a CD to your MP3 player or ipod

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I copy music files from my CDs to my MP3 player so my gym work is less boring.

But it’s quite confusing for an oldie like me to work out how to do that, so I thought I’d write a tutorial.

1. Insert CD into CD/DVD drive

2.  An audio CD dialogue box will appear. Select the music files you want to transfer.

3. Open Real Player. There are other music players, but I use Real Player.

4. Click on CD/DVD on the left panel of Real Player.

5. Go to Tools> CD and Save CD tracks. A dialogue box will appear, but just click OK to that.

6. Insert MP3 Player into USB port.

7. Select music files you want to transfer to portable device.

8. Click on Removable Disk on left panel of Real PLayer and select Add selected clips.

9. Eject CD after music is saved. Note where it is saved.

I’m sure I’ve made a mistake here because every time I check the process, something changes. But you get the idea at least.

Free ebook compiler

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I get heaps of traffic to one of my web site pages which is all about how to make an ebook from an exe file and how to make an PDF ebook without Adobe Acrobat.

I have just come across another great little free application which will convert your HTML files into an exe ebook.

Here is what the creator says about this product.

WebSiteZip Packer - free and easy-to-use application which will help you to turn a single HTML page or a group of pages into a solid executable file (.exe) with an integrated HTML browser. Ideal for e-books, product catalogs, site demos, manuals, and searchable information distribution.

After using our WebSiteZip Packer you can conveniently transport your HTML page or a complete web site as a single file embodying all necessary components (graphics, sounds, linked pages, etc.) and present it successfully independently of the type of HTML browser installed at the destination computer.

These are possible uses of WebSiteZip Packer:

*Use it to produce and distribute e-books;

*Let the visitors of your web site download the identical exe-version of the site for offline work;

* Create convenient offline presentations and catalogs;

*Create guides and manuals for your software products;

*Use it for any purpose where you need a solid executable file with an integrated HTML browser instead of piles of separate files and folders which are usual attributes of HTML pages.

Everything the web designer needs

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I came across a web site which performs a similar function to my own but lists so many more things. It’s a simple site design with links under categories such as web design, web site maintenance, tutorials, css generators, colours, affiliates, web site validation and much much more.

It’s called agency tool

Great site even though it is in competition to mine.