Web Hosting Blog | Lunarpages Lunartics » Geeky

Decorate your Twitter or Facebook Icon with Lunarpages

Mitch — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:06:56 +0000

Want to show your support for Lunarpages on Twitter or Facebook? You can add the ultra-cool Lunarpages globe to your profile picture right now, at Twibbon.com.

What is Twibbon.com all about? It is a free service that allows you to overlay small images or “Twibbons” on your profile image to show support for something you believe in. We all believe in Lunarpages for our web hosting needs, right? Then this is the perfect way to show it. Thanks goes out to those already supporting us (yes, I am not too good for a shameless plug) @teechabc, @aslnrox, @LarryMarshall, @twthosting, @djholstein, @denisealicea, @buzoganylaszlo, @DarsMoonGazer, @tartarux and more. If you do support us, be sure to leave your Twitter or Facebook handle in the comments!

Also remember you can always follow @lunarpages for more web hosting goodness.

Related Tips and Tricks:

60+ Links to Help You Learn CSS Web Design

Mitch — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:28:18 +0000

I have had many people ask me what resources do I learn from, when it comes to being a modern day webmaster. Now, there are many resources out there – but here are 60 of the best links (taken from my own bookmarks to your browser) to assist you in mastering the art of CSS in web design.

Know of another great CSS tutorial or resource that you would like to share? Don’t be shy! Leave a comment, and add it on the list as pick number 66, pick number 67, pick number 68, and so on.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Introduction to Mind Maps for Webmasters

Mitch — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:49:04 +0000

When it comes to planning out a brand new web site, organizing your thoughts can be rather difficult. You might know you want to design a web site about a specific topic, but can’t decide what else you might need in that web site to help it become successful. Mind maps are one great way to get your jumbled thoughts about your site organized.

What is a Mind Map? A mind map (or the process of mind mapping) is when you create a diagram using specific words, ideas or tasks and arrange them around a central theme or idea. By doing this, you can visualize, structure and classify ideas based around your central theme.

For an example, take a look at this mind map of my breakfast:

The centralized idea here is what I had for breakfast. You can see I had a slice of toast,a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. To take it a step further, we could branch out even further with the idea of toast, like so:

What made up the toast? Well, it was a toasted slice of bread, with butter on it. So off the idea of toast, I listed bread and butter. See how easy taking one idea like breakfast and coming up with ways to visualize how it came to be?

How to Mind Map Your Site! Now that you are familiar with what a mind map is and how to use it, it is time to look at web site organization. You just got a Basic hosting plan from Lunarpages, and you want to start up a web site about super heroes. So with the super heroes topic, how could you divide it up? How about you split it into two for now, DC Comics and Marvel Comics – the two biggest comic book brands.

Now you have at least two pages planned out. Under DC Comics, you could list heroes like the Green Lantern, Batman and Superman because they all come from the DC Comics brand. For Marvel Comics, you could list super heroes like Spiderman, Iron Man, and Wolverine.

So that should be a good start as far as content goes. So what other specific pages does a web site need? What about a page that tells about the web site? Maybe, you could add a page with your contact information too.

See how organizing ideas in a mind map is helpful when it comes to organizing your web site? Much like a tree, you start at the trunk, and then break your web site into branches, and then those branches have branches, and then those branches have leaves.

What Tools and Software Can You Use for Mind Maps? Ok, so you know what to do and how to do it, now you’re probably just needing a way to get it done. You really don’t need anything too fancy to get this accomplished. For years, I just used notebook paper and pencil to sketch out my ideas into a mind map. There are some online solutions as well as software solutions you might want to check out to bring mind mapping into the digital age.

Bubbl.us is what I have been using for my screenshots above. It is an online tool that lets you drag and drop your ideas around on the mind map a very simple task. It might be a little confusing at first, but hover over anything you have a question about and you can get more information about it in the help pane in the browser. Wikipedia also has a long list of mind mapping software solutions worth checking into.

Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know how this has helped you, or if you have any other mind mapping tips or tricks that could help.

Related Tips and Tricks:

KeepIt PC Backups – Favorite Web Development Freebies (Part 4 of 5)

Mitch — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Keeping a backup of your files is always important. You never know when a disaster might strike, and it is always better to be ready for the worst that might happen. Lunarpages realizes this, and this is why they provide 3 months free of KeepIt to their hosting customers. With this awesome backup service – you will never lose another file, document, or photo ever again.

How does it work? After signing up, you install the Keepit client to your personal computer. Once that has been done – the first time you start Keepit’s client up you will be asked to save your digital key. This is an assurance for you, to guarantee that you are the only one who will have access to your files that are encrypted on the server side. It is really easy to configure as well. You can easily set the client to watch or un-watch certain file or folders. Once you have selected the files you want to backup, your part in this is done. Keepit does the rest of it for you.

By default, Keepit will backup every single day. However, if you need to setup your scheduling a different way – they are flexible enough to meet your needs. You can configure yourself which days Keepit should backup.

Just as one more inside tip, this service is great when it comes to downloading a backup of your own hosting account, to have the backup remotely hosted somewhere else. That way you have the web site back both on your computer and on KeepIt.

This offer is exclusive to Lunarpages customers, you will not find it anywhere else!

Want more Freebies? Stay Tuned!
All this week I am going to be covering my favorite fee tools, applications services and more that we deliver to our Lunarpages web hosting customers. Want to check out what your missing – sign up, and join in on the fun.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Robots.txt FAQ

Mitch — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:37:22 +0000

How much do you know about the Robots.txt file? It can be a handy tool for any webmaster to know more about. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions I get about this special little file.

What is the robots.txt file used for?

In web site development, the robots.txt file is used as a special file that can talk back to the search engine spiders and crawlers to tell them what to do. Here is a little more about them from robotstxt.org:

Web Robots (also known as Web Wanderers, Crawlers, or Spiders), are programs that traverse the Web automatically. Search engines such as Google use them to index the web content, spammers use them to scan for email addresses, and they have many other uses.

How do you create a robots.txt file?

All you have to do is create a basic text file (with the name robots.txt) in your public_html folder inside of your hosting account. You can create that from within your control panel or you can create it on your desktop, and upload it via an FTP client.

Can a robot ignore my robots.txt file?

Yes, but this does not happen that often. Most good main-stream robots will not do this. So is there a way to block just the bad robots? Kind of. You can only control robots that obey the robots.txt file. If that doesn’t work, you might also be able to block the IP address the robot is coming from (if they are coming from a single IP address).

What should I put in my robots.txt file?

This would depend on what you want to do.

If you would like to make sure all crawlers and spiders make their way in, insert this into your robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

If you want to keep the spiders and bots away from your content in a particular folder, use this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /privatestuff

With "privatestuff" being the folder you wish to protect.

How can I check to see my robots.txt file has been created successfully?

It is easy to check if your have an account with Google Webmaster Tools. To analyze a site’s robots.txt file:

Sign into Google Webmaster Tools with your Google Account.
On the Dashboard, click the URL for the site you want.
Click Tools, and then click Analyze robots.txt.

How can I figure out where this robot or crawler came from?

You can find a good list of just about all the different robots out there here:

http://www.robotstxt.org/db.html

That would be a good list to check first, when you have a robot crawling your site, and you are unaware where it came from.

How do you know you are being visited by a robot?

He will mumble something about klatu verata nikto. No wait, that was my buddy Gort. Often the sign that your being visited by a robot is that in your server logs you see many documents have been retrieved in a very short period of time.

Hope that helps in your robot taming ways. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask away.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Bricks + Tetris = Fun Screensaver!

Mitch — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:48:53 +0000

For your free fun download of the day, check out briblo.

Now I haven’t had much reason to use a screensaver in a long time, however this great download almost makes it cool again. Once installed (will work on both Macs and Windows) you have your own fun mix of Tetris and Lego-like bricks to play with. Using the arrow buttons while it is going allows you to rotate the bricks around, or you can just let them fall where they may.

Perfect toy to play with while trying to kill some time. Just don’t let it take over too much of your free time, or you’ll have a missing weekend somewhere like I did. When did Monday start coming so fast, anyways?

Want to get back into using screen savers too? You can find this one, free to download, at 9031.com.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Looking for a GeoCities Alternative?

Mitch — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:27:48 +0000

With word coming out that Yahoo has decided to pull the plug on GeoCities, a lot of people are looking for a great alternative. Lunarpages provides a hosting plan I think would be perfect for any soon to be former GeoCities webmaster, our Quicksite plan.

Where does LPQuicksite outshine Yahoo’s GeoCities? Well, for one you can host with you very own domain name. You can instantly register that domain that is perfect for you or your business. You also have over 500 templates to choose from, customize and make your own.

The customization doesn’t in there though. Once you get into content creation, you will find you can easily:

Upload Photos, Videos, Documents, and More!
Build Your Own Store!
Create a Blog or Image Gallery!
Instant Email Creation & Management!

Here is a screenshot of the design interface:

Not convinced? Give the Quicksite Demo a Try! Also, be sure to check out all the tutorials and support we have for the LPQuicksite plan via our web hosting wiki, including the getting started guide.

Special Coupon Code: If you plan to switch from Yahoo! GeoCities to Lunarpages, use the coupon code Geo for $35 off the 12 or 24 month Quicksite hosting plan!

RIP GeoCities, we will miss you… however, there is a better alternative now to choose from. You can take your web site live in under two hours with the free design and development assistance from Lunarpages. So before you start looking elsewhere for a GeoCities alternative, remember Lunarpages and the LPQuicksite plan.

Related Tips and Tricks:

What is Your Bounce Rate?

Mitch — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:17:00 +0000

Why is your bounce rate an important thing to keep an eye on, and better yet what the heck is your web site bounce rate? I will answer those questions and let you know the best ways to lower your bounce rate and get people staying on your web site a little ‘bit longer.

What is the Bounce Rate?

Your bounce rate is a term used in web site traffic analysis to represent the percentage of initial visitors who move on to a new web site, leaving yours. In a perfect world, you want that number to be as low as possible. The reason for this is that the lower your bounce rate is, the longer people are staying on your web site and not going elsewhere.

Judging what the bounce rate is might be difficult. Some web analytic software will include it with your tracking information (for example, Google Analytics) however some might not.

How Can Should I Interpret the Bounce Rate Data?

For static web sites, a bounce rate of anything under 40% or so would be concerning. However, with blog or web sites where linking to other web sites is common place, anywhere from 50% to 60% should be considered normal.

Now, how can you lower your bounce rate?

Make sure your web site is loading as quickly as possible
Give people internal links that will lead them to other areas of interests
Provide an easy way to get back to the front page
Shorten your pages or using excerpts if needed

One more bit of advice to throw your way would be don’t grow disconcerted if you don’t see instant lowering of your bounce rate. Make some modifications if needed, and then give it a few weeks and see if you can see any difference in how people are interacting with your web site.

As long as you are providing good content, and you have pruned things design-wise down to the essentials, your bounce rate should lower, which means you will have visitors staying on your web site for longer periods of time.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Image Optimization

Mitch — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Did you know that you could save money by optimizing your images? You see not all images are created equal. Hosting an image that is a large file size could be costing you disk space, bandwidth and money.

Keep More of Your Online Visitors

Now not only is it a good idea to optimize your images to save on disk space, bandwidth and money. It is also a good idea to get your images to the smallest file size possible to save visitors too. Is somebody going to stick around your web site if it takes 45 seconds for that image on your web site to load? I think not.

How to Optimize Your Web Site Images

So what is the rule of thumb to follow when it comes to optimizing your images for the Web? Get your images to the lowest file size possible, with the best looking results.

Three of the most popular image formats are .gif, .jpg, and .png. The .jpg (or .jpeg) format should be used for photos of people, places and things. The .gif and .png formats should be used for graphics, logos, and everything else.

Now if you are using a graphics program like Paint Shop Pro or Paint.net, you might have to play with your settings some to get it to the right balance between quality and file size. There are also a number of online image optimizers you might want to try:

Dynamic Drive Image Optimizer – This free tool lets you easily optimize your gifs, animated gifs, jpgs, and pngs, so they load as fast as possible on your site. Furthermore, you can easily convert from one image type to another.
ImageOptimizer.net – Using this free online service, you can resize, compress and optimize your image files. Using the service is as easy as clicking of button!
Smush.it – Performance just got a little bit easier. Optimizing images by hand is time consuming and painful. Smush it does it for you.

So consider this your weekend project. Go check out your Lunarpages powered web hosting plans, and see what images on your web sites might need to be shrunk to save you bandwidth, disk space, money and visitors!

Related Tips and Tricks:

E-Mail Support Now Built into LPQuickSite

Mitch — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:47:18 +0000

After listening to user feedback, Lunarpages has rolled out a new e-mail feature for the LPQuicksite hosting plan I am sure you will all enjoy. Now, instead of going through your account’s control panel to access your e-mail settings, you can do so right from the LPQuicksite interface.

From there, you can:

Add/Remove E-mail Accounts
Access Webmail
Access Your Spam Filter Settings
Checkout Your Disk Space Usage and Quota
… and more!

For a more in-depth look at all the new features added to this new e-mail tab from within LPQuicksite be sure to check out our wiki tutorial on this newest feature.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Swiss Spaghetti Tree?

Mitch — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:07:23 +0000

Hope you have all had a happy April Fools’ Day thus far. Keeping with the theme of the day, I bring to you the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest of 1957.

According to the Museum of Hoaxes, “The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, ‘Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.’”

For more April Fools’ Day fun, be sure to check out our April Fools’ Day thread over on the Lunarforums.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Distraction Free Text Editing

Mitch — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:18:46 +0000

Need a way to simplify your desktop to get a little writing done?

DarkCopy.com provides a simple to use online text editor to help clear your mind and get you back to writing. The green on black is not just a throw back to the good old PC days either. It is done to reduce the stress on your eyeballs.

Here is a little more about the web site from the developers:

DarkCopy is for anyone who enjoys the simplicity of a typewriter, and wants to increase productivity by focusing only on writing. It was created as a free, web-based clone of WriteRoom.

Go give a shot, at DarkCopy.com. Your eyes and editor with both thank you.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Embed Your YouTube Playlist into Your Web Site

Mitch — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:09:06 +0000

Thanks to relist.tv, you can now deliver a nice flash playlist player for your YouTube videos. How does it work? Well, after visiting relist.tv, you just fill out the optoins and then grab the code to copy and paste into your site’s design.

You can embed videos from these types of sources:

Search
A User’s Favorites
or Related Videos

Here is how it will look when you are done:

Other options included are the ability to change the max results, the skin the player uses, the size of the player, the playlist location, add your own logo, autostart, shuffle, and stretching.

To grab your own, go check out relist.tv.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Top Twitter Tools?

Mitch — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:15:12 +0000

By Mitch “Tweet Me Too!” Keeler

There is no doubt that there are a lot of Twitter tools out there, however I would like to know which ones you might think are the best? Now I haven’t been a dedicated Twitter user for long, but here are my five favorite top twitter tools I have found thus far.

TwitterCounter – Keep track of how many people are following you with this useful addition. You can also get yourself a neat button to share the stats with the world via your own web site or blog.

TwitterFox – Get updates in your Firefox status bar anytime your friends post on Twitter. Might be my favorite of them all. TwitterFox also support copy, re-tweet, open this tweet in new tab, and delete tweet.

TweetLater.com – A great way to tweet your thoughts at a later date and time. Also has a useful following tool that will let you follow everybody that follows you.

Twitbin – Need an add-on for Firefox that will allow you to keep up with the latest news or posts from your Twitter friends? Twitbin is probably the best and most popular Twitter extension for Firefox.

Twitter Search – The search provided by Twitter is pretty handy. If anything else, you can just spend all day searching for yourself.

How about you?

Need more Twitter tools? Check out Twitdom or the Twitter category over on Feedmyapp.com. Also, don’t forget you can follow Lunarpages on Twitter now too!

Related Tips and Tricks:

Lunarpages is on Twitter

Mitch — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:12:12 +0000

By Mitch “The Twitterer” Keeler

To help get the word out about whatever is going on during the day, or to respond to some of the comments out there in the twitterverse, Lunarpages has gone all twitty! You can check us out here:

http://www.lunarpages.com/twitter

During the day, I’ll be posting responses to people’s questions, Lunarpages news, interesting links I have found and I am sure a few other things that will develop from this new project of ours.

Be sure to follow us, and share the word that Twitter has a new Lunartic in town.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Write in a Web 2.0 Language

Mitch — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 12:17:39 +0000

By Mitch “It is Monday Already?” Keeler

Here is a neat Online tool that will allow you to spell out any word, using famous Web 2.0 service logos. I am not exactly sure if this is all that helpful – but at least you can say is it fills a void.

For being such a simple service – it does include an API as well. Just use this link here:

http://web2.0write.com/api.php?t=something

Then replace “something” with the text you wish to have written out.

Here is an example:

To try it out for yourself, go visit: http://web2.0write.com

Related Tips and Tricks:

What to Do When Inspiration Strikes

Mitch — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:18:01 +0000

By Mitch “Like an Elephant” Keeler

Ever had one of those moments, where you had a great idea, but never got it going – cause you forgot about it? Well, if you forgot, then you wouldn’t know that you forgot.. let me start over. Ideas come to us all the time, are you ready to take them down?

Everybody should keep a pen (or pencil) and paper handy. You never know when the inspiration might strike for a great idea, and you might not remember it, by the time you make it back to your computer. Now this might be more handy for people who run blogs, because they are always looking for something to write about. On the other hand, the same thing could be said for your regular webmasters out there.

For example, let us say you are running an online store – then you come up with a great coupon deal, but you have no place to jot down a note to yourself so that you remember to put it in place next time you have the time to do so.

For an even geekier alternative, turn to PaperMod.com.

The PocketMod is a new way to keep yourself organized. Lets face it, PDAs are too expensive and cumbersome, and organizers are bulky and hard to carry around. Nothing beats a folded up piece of paper. That is until now. With the PocketMod, you can carry around the days notes, keep them organized in any way you wish, then easily transfer the notes to your PDA, spreadsheet, or planner.

Not only does the PaperMod give you a cheap way to keep yourself in order, it offers a place to write down your good ideas. Now as far as a desktop solution goes, I like having sticky notes on my desktop. So this way, I can write down a reminder or an idea – even if I don’t have time to put it in action right away.

Stickies is a PC program that will allow you to create desktop sticky notes without leaving that adhesive real sticky notes would make. Once created, they will stay on screen until you take them away. Just like a real sticky piece of paper.

So what do you do when inspiration hits, and you need to get an idea written down?

Related Tips and Tricks:

Lunar-view of President Obama’s Inauguration

Mitch — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:49:17 +0000

By Mitch “What Satellites Are Looking at Me?” Keeler

Might not have much to do with hosting, however we are Lunarpages, so anything space related is of big interest to us. No matter which side of the political fence you are on, you have to admit this satellite photos of President Obama’s inauguration are pretty impressive.

To check out more imagery from that day, be sure to check out GeoEye’s official web site:

http://geoeye.com/CorpSite/gallery/Default.aspx

This is really an amazing picture. I am amazed though, nobody has started to try to tag it and say, “I was here!” with a big arrow pointing down at one of the fuzzy heads in attendance. I know that would be the first thing I would do. :)

Related Tips and Tricks:

Enhance your Blog with Yahoo! Shortcuts

Mitch — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:41:41 +0000

By Mitch “Yahoooo!!!!” Keeler

We are all searching for ways to add more interactivity and tools to our own web sites, and Yahoo! has taken a step to making that a lot easier to do. With the new Yahoo! Shortcuts, you can enhance your posts with media, links and information from them.

You can embed maps, products, news, search Flickr photos, maps and more.

The way it works is that after you have written your blog post, this plugin for WordPress looks for Flickr photos, products, places and companies. If the plugin finds content relative to your post it will let you know and show you what it has found.

You also have the option to review each shortcut to see if it is right for you. For example, if it links to your new Samsung SyncMaster monitor you just reviewed, but you don’t want it to link to Yahoo’s search on it – just remove it. As far as photos go, here is a little more on how the Flickr embedding goes:

Shortcuts also searches the top terms in your post and provides a quick and easy way to add images from Flickr. You can resize and position the images anywhere on your post, and photos are automatically attributed to their respective authors per the Creative Commons license.

I would highly suggest at least giving this plugin a shot – if you are searching for ways to make your own blog a little more interactive.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Share Your Color Schemes

Mitch — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:38:36 +0000

By Mitch “Colorful” Keeler

I love finding web sites that are all about the sharing and inspiration. Maybe I have an inter-hippy in me somewhere that wants peace, love and happiness. Adobe, those wonderful people who brought you such things as Photoshop, have a new color scheme sharing site that is worth checking out.

Kuler is a site based around sharing various color schemes that look good together. You can browse by the newest, most popular, highest rated or randomly if you wish. This would be a great resource to keep in hand if you were designing a new page and didn’t have any idea which colors you wanted to use yet.

The only down side is they don’t make it very easy to find the HTML color equivalent. If you have Firefox though, you can use an add-on such as ColorZilla to handle that side of things.

It might not be a total replacement for other online color tools such as:

However, it never hurts to have a second or third colorful opinion.