Category Archives: Web Design
Dreamhost.com
A developer friend, Isaac Bowen, recommended Dreamhost.com as a web host provider. Isaac was a teen in my youth ministry when I was a youth pastor in Wisconsin. He’s a genius and really likes Dreamhost over other providers he has seen.
Vimeo is down
Around 3:45pm on Tuesday, June 15 the giant video hosting website Vimeo.com went down. I edited a website that had embedded video from vimeo, uploaded some changes, and checked it for quality. A few minutes later, my client called me asking why the videos weren’t working. The problem was that Vimeo went down. Even my church hosts videos there. There are thousands of videos hosted on Vimeo so this is going to be fun to watch – or NOT watch as the case may be.
Update in the evening:
It’s back up again – don’t know when or how.
New Server
The new server is up with the domain pointed to HostMonster’s site. WordPress has been migrated and is working.
My new audio player plugin
Here’s an audio player designed for WordPress.
Sermon uploads
This sermon is 16.1 mb
CMS – content management system
There are many CMS software packages out there. The two new big ones are Drupal and Joomla. In my brief reading, it seems that Joomla would be my preference for ease of use and features. Perhaps this would be a nice platform for churches to build their sites.
Other notables are WordPress, Expression Engine, and Movable Type.
Captcha form spam
The predominant Captcha for eliminating form spam is “reCaptcha.” This works great on a blog but requires knowledge of Perl programming for simple HTML programmers such as myself. ReCaptcha is nice in that it helps to digitize books one word at a time whenever a person enters text. I was not able to implement it onto my site – even with the help of my programming tutor.
An easier to implement Captcha is “Snaphost.” This doesn’t digitize book but it does the same thing with a graphical key needed to submit a form. It’s free and no registration is required. Snaphost generates a new code each time using their servers. Plus, snaphost provides forms complete with javascript for varification. It doesn’t get any easier than snaphost. For the Captcha without ads a person can upgrade to the paid account.
Wikipedia cites the meaning of a captcha below:
The term “CAPTCHA” (based upon the word capture) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper, and John Langford (all of Carnegie Mellon University). It is a contrived acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”
Sitemap Generator
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) relies on many factors including having an up to date sitemap. XML-Sitmaps.com has a free generator that crawls up to 500 pages. It spits out a sitemap file that you can upload to your web server AND add to your Google webmaster account. Google and other search engines will read the site map. This aids in their crawling plus ranks your website higher in search results.
Lost a Netflix DVD
We lost Monsters Inc, a rented DVD from Netflix. The website has a spot where you can report a shipping or DVD problem. The choices are:
- I haven’t received the DVD yet
- I received a mailer without a DVD in it
- I received the wrong DVD
- The DVD is damaged, scratched or unplayable
- I don’t have the white sleeve or red envelope to return the DVD
- I returned this DVD, but Netflix hasn’t received it
- I have lost or damaged this DVD and would like to pay for it
So I called Netflix about the matter. By the way, they have an great feature on the website where a code is generated next to the telephone number. By entering the code, the customer service rep has my account information ready without a million questions to verify my identify. The lady said that a lost DVD would cost $14 charged to my account. I was hoping she would have mercy and waive the fee altogether. Here’s the good part, Netflix will refund the fee if the movie is found and returned at a later date. So, I charged the $14 and hoped for the best.
**Before I could finish this blog, Heather found the missing DVD buried under bills on our desk upstairs. We’re not paying the bills – just moving them.