Steve’s Blog

How Much Should I Pay for Web Services?

Like so much of like, getting started on the web is often a case of trial-and-error with people making plenty of mistakes in their first months and years online. In order to help our clients we’ve developed some guidelines to help people find their feet and we though we’d share them this month. This WebSavvy is a cut-out-and-keep guide to how much you should be looking to pay for important services. Domain Names Under no circumstances should you be paying more than $10 per year for a .com, .net or .org domain name. The companies that actually register the domains…

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Sponsored Review of College Website

It looks like online colleges are a hot niche in SEO for 2010. These for-profit colleges like Kaplan and the University of Phoenix need to keep churning out 1000s of new students each month and so happily pay fat referral fees. This can lead to some scandals as they push too hard. But as the mortgage business collapsed and left a lot of affiliates with less revenue, it looks as if education might step up to fill the gap. One such site is bestcollegesonline.net which covers online colleges and universities. Expect many more to follow.

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Joomla Extension of the Month – October 06

Sometimes the simplest things are the best and Jombackup Daily MySQL Backup Bot is one of those. Its just a little mambot, but what it emails you a complete backup of your database once a day. With many sites to look after this saves us hours of work and comes with a wide range of options for exporting the database. Thanks to Jomres.net for October's Extension of the Month.

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Joomla Trademark Discussion with Rob Schley

1) Hi Rob. Could you tell us about the trademark decision. What changes will this have for the Joomla project? Well, Steve …   2) What will the policy be regarding prior use? The Joomla! project has always taken a liberal approach to use of the Joomla! name and logo and we intend to continue to be as liberal as we can while fulfilling our responsibility to protect the integrity of the Joomla! brand.  As long as the usage complies with the terms set out in the brand manual and our trademark guide (no pornography, no warez, no trademarks, not…

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Protect Your Domain Research

Lots of people in the domain industry have suspected it but hard evidence is finally emerging that people are spying on your domain research. Basically, if you're searching for a domain but don't buy it immediately, there is a good chance that someone will get there ahead of you. Click here to read the relevant EWeek article. So how do you protect your privacy?. Simple – create your own WhoIs look-up. Save the following code as a file called whois.php and upload it to your server. Voila! You can see ours at www.alledia.com Thanks to members of NamePros.com for this…

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How to Reset a Lost SuperAdmin Password

If you do lose your SuperAdmin password for Joomla, don’t worry because theres an easy way to get it back. Just login to your MySQL database and run this query for Versions up to Joomla 1.0.12. UPDATE `jos_users` SET `name` = ‘admin’, `password` = ‘21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3’ WHERE `id` =62 LIMIT 1 ; Versions from Joomla 1.0.13 to 1.0.15 UPDATE `jos_users` SET `name` = ‘admin’, `password` = ‘af9083d4b82dbc0745b124db3b3cf15d:M0WuLowO4rtRTddG’ WHERE `id` =62 LIMIT 1 ; Your username will now be admin and your password will be admin also. If you’re running an older version of Joomla or Mambo, you might need to change…

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Why Use a Content Management System?

Is there anything more off-putting than a visiting website to buy something and seeing © 1998 at the bottom? Well, yes‚Ķ.trying to keep your site up-to-date and relevant can seem equally disheartening. A few years ago, if you‚Äôre company had some exciting news you‚Äôd call up your web-designer, hand over $200, wait in-line while they dealt with their other clients, finally get your small changes made, see they‚Äôd made a mistake, call them up, wait in line… Well, people have been working on software to simplify that whole frustrating process and put the power to update your websites into YOUR…

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E-Mail for Busy Professionals

This came about after talking to a client who runs a big company that advertises widely. He asked me why the vast majority of his leads came via his website or the phone when he took such good care to place his e-mail address at top of each advertisement. Why did no-one seem to use or remember it? Our subsequent conversation produced advice that I hope will be useful for everyone else out there who uses their e-mail as a business tool: Don’t Use a Free E-mail Address That includes Hotmail, Yahoo, Google, BellSouth, Alltell and others. There are given…

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Invision Power Board 2: A User Guide

Remember the days when software came in a big box with one small disc, lots of loose paper and a big, thick manual? Nowadays software is often downloaded with just a mouse click, which means no paper warranty to loose and no manual to flick through. This leaves an opening for companies that want to sell you that missing manual. Invision Power Board 2: A User Guide from Packt Publishing is just such a book. Read more >>

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Invision Power Board 2: A User Guide

Remember the days when software came in a big box with one small disc, lots of loose paper and a big, thick manual? Nowadays software is often downloaded with just a mouse click, which means no paper warranty to mislay and no manual to flick through. This leaves an opening for companies that want to sell you that missing manual. Invision Power Board 2: A User Guide from Packt Publishing is just such a book. Chapter 1 gives you and overview of IPB, its history and its benefits. Ideally I would be nice to seen a comparison of IPB to…

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