Nasty hosting renewal costs

On December 24, 2010 in #60SecondShout, Internet, Website Design.
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I have a lot of websites. None of them do really that much, apart from this one and a couple I’m working on with an associate this year. Anyway, I got an email a while ago now regarding one of the domains renewal process, I didn’t give it a second look, presuming that it would expire. Silly mistake.

The automatic renewal took place, and charged, on top of the usual hosting fee, a renewal fee of £13. It’s not a great amount, but if this automatic renewal happened to the long list of domains I own we could be talking some serious money! Bad times – Something to look out for! Put a note in your diary/phone/whatever to make sure your on top of this when it roll’s around!

Hosting providers WILL just renew, and make you pay for it. Mine even stated in their T&C’s that there will be further ‘admin’ charges if the amount isn’t paid within 28 days.

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AirDropper adds additional functionality to DropBox

On September 5, 2010 in #60SecondShout, New Technology.
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AirDropper. Not heard of it? Neither had I, before this evening. It’s a simple website (currently in BETA) which provides additional functionality to the wonderful application called ‘Dropbox’. (Read here about it here).

“But what could possibly make DropBox even better than it already is?”, I hear you cry. Well, DropBox has typically been used for one user to sign up, and share folders and files with himself on other computers (using an online server). Next came along shared folders; The ability to share folders with other DropBox users. This is great for collaborative work.

Now though, AirDropper aims to evolve DropBox one step further. What AirDropper does is generate a link which can be shared socially or privately for people who don’t have DropBox. The link gives non-users access to download files specifically or a folder to choose from. Pretty impressive, especially for distributing to lots of non-users at once, much like how P2P works.

What’s even better though, is that links can also be generated for users to upload files to a User’s DropBox without having to have an account or download any software. This creates an ‘AirDropper’ folder, which I think is probably a security feature in the DropBox API.

Let’s only hope there will be more developments like this from both DropBox and third party applications such as AirDropper!

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Virgin Media speed me up: 50Mbps!

On November 1, 2009 in Internet, New Technology.
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This past Friday Virgin Media came to increase my Internet speed from 20Mbps (£37.00 per month) to 50Mbps (£38.00 per month). For this slight price increase Virgin have thrown in a brand new shiny modem and also a lovely new D-Link router with built in ‘N Technology’, capable of supporting up to 270Mbps!

The bloke dropped off the equipment and left, as I wanted to do the install myself. I quickly unplugged the existing modem and attached the new one to the existing router. I tested my speed at www.speedtest.net. I was still getting just under 20Mbps – Understandable as the current router (despite it being of industrial standard) could only support up to 20Mbps.

The next test was to plug the modem directly into one of the computers, bypassing the router. After doing this and re-testing my speeds I was shocked to see 49.8Mbps! I’ve heard so many stories about how ISP’s sell a speed which you would only get if you live inside the little green boxes positioned down the road etc, so to see speeds this close to what they were claiming was a shock!

This is where it went a little pared shape. I unplugged the existing (slow) router and attached the Ethernet cables to access my other PCs (having to leave the Printer and X360 out as there is only 4 ports, unlike the 8 which were at the back of the now obsolete industrial router). I pushed in the power cable and nothing happened. I looked for a switch. Nothing. I tried the factory-reset button. Nothing.

After 20 minutes on hold to Virgin Media I managed to get through to someone who said they would send another one out shortly, and to expect it within 3-4 days (Thursday at the latest). Until then I have re-connected my current router.

I will update when I have installed the new ‘N’ router – Can’t wait to see what kind of wireless speeds I will be picking up. Just goes to show how quickly things are progressing from the days of 56Kbps!

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Get some style

On October 16, 2009 in General, Internet, Website Design.
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My WordPress is all styled up!

It began last night, messing around with different templates and eventually fell upon ‘Simplicity’ which is a nice and neat two column template with a similar layout to the rest of my site.

After ‘installing’ (I’m not convinced that’s the correct terminology) WordPress on my host Justhost I downloaded the header.php and style’s css files as well as the index.php page and started to play around.

My background knowledge of CSS and PHP helped a lot, but my main tool was the Web Development Toolbar (WDT) for Firefox. Using this I edited the CSS and could see the real-time changes to the various pages. I did find that some attributes of the CSS a little obscure but this was overcome by trial and error (a process that can be tedious and repetitive if constantly requiring uploads, but seamless and efficient when using WDT.

The header again was a simple procedure, simply deleting the entire current header and replacing it with my own. (NOTE: I also included the content wrapper code from my page to hold the blog and sidebar central).

The entire process took a few hours (about 7-8) to complete, but I’m positive that my next revamp will knock the blog style up in a quarter of this!

Well done WordPress, you continue to amaze me! Now all I need is some content worthy of the cyber-space!

WordPress is all styled up!
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