Published: 02/27/2012
If you’re anything as close to as paranoid about online security as I am, every time you see a shortened URL, like http://bit.ly/AAGooR, the first thing you wonder is “Will the website on the other end of that shortened URL be safe?” If you’re not at all paranoid about online security, time to get wise.
URL shortening services usually provide you with a way to find out where a shortened URL points. For Bit.ly and Goo.Gl, you can add a “+” to the end of the URL, so the very ambiguous http://bit.ly/AAGooR turns into http://bit.ly/AAGooR+, which tells you that it points to 10twebdesign.com and not some malicious website.
The problem is that the way you find out where a shortened URL points varies from service to service, and with over 300 shortening services (and counting) out there, keeping them straight is impossible. So how do you stay safe?
I give you longurl.org, which takes any of those shortened URLs expands it back out again so you have a little better idea of what you’re getting yourself into. It will, at the very least, give you the site’s title, full URL, keywords and description.
If the URL it spits back is “google.com” you’re probably in pretty good shape. If it’s “thiswebsitegivesyouavirus.com” and you decide to click through anyway, I hope everything works out alright.
Published: 02/26/2012
Been having a pretty busy week, and hadn’t had a chance to post an update on this, so I thought that I would do so now. I’m just pleased as punch to announce the relaunch of the Rumer-Loudin, Inc. website. The website is a nice mix of a traditional ‘marketing’ and a lot of great information about heating and air conditioning, geothermal, energy efficiency, and more. The site also features the ability for customers to submit, and website administrators to moderate, testimonials for the business.
I’ve been working with Kellie, who I got to know through the Barnesville Area Chamber of Commerce, and it’s been a really great experience. Maybe the coolest part of the whole experience is that Kellie’s huge on marketing, and is really interested in being involved in producing content, news posts, and such for the site, which usually translates to really successful websites.
Published: 02/22/2012
So, I received a letter the other day from a company called Domain Registry of America, and it just about made me sick, to be honest with you.
It said that domains for two of my clients (both non-profits with .org domain names) were expiring over the summer, that not renewing them would result in them becoming available to the public, and that I could renew the domain registration with any registrar that I wanted, including them. All of these points are true.
What really got me upset was the price they were asking: $35 for a one year renewal. Now, for anyone that has never registered a domain name, 35 bucks for a year really doesn’t sound like all that much. It is, in fact, an outrageous price. To renew with the current registrar, all fees and taxes included, would only be $15.17 for a one year renewal.
Even worse was that it seemed aimed directly at non-profit organizations, as the .com and .net variations of the domain names, which are also registered by me, were not even mentioned.
The bottom line is that Domain Registry of America is looking to charge folks an inflated fee for re-registering their domain name that quite possibly don’t know any better.
What a bunch of creeps.
For those businesses, non-profits, or what have you, that have domain names registered, keep an eye out for this. Sadly, Domain Register of America is not the only company doing this, so if something seems odd, it just might be. If you are in the Barnesville area, feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email, and I’d be happy to look at it for you, free of charge.
Published: 02/20/2012
It’s been a while since I posted an update on the home brewing adventure, so I though I would take a few minutes now and do so.
The pale ale is completely finished, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. It’s much better than I thought that a first attempt at brewing my own beer would be. Unfortunately, it’s about half way gone, and the next beer, the blueberry bock, is still in the process of carbonating and still needs two weeks of lagering, so it won’t be ready for about three more weeks.
I’ve also ordered the fixings for the next two beers, which are going to be a witbier and a good-old, American lager. They should hopefully be shipped in the next day or two. Trying to get a little bit ahead of the seasons so that this summer, I can brew an Oktoberfest and a hard cider that can both be ready for the fall.
Published: 02/18/2012
So, I was way overdue for a new pair of running shoes. My previous pair was no longer comfortable when walking, let alone running. After thinking about it for a while, and deciding that I wasn’t quite ready to take a complete minimalist dive into Vibrams, I decided to buy a pair of Reebok Realflex.
I wore them around the house a bit this morning, and out of the box, they are more comfortable than walking around barefoot, and they are super light. So I took them for a 4 mile run, and am really satisfied so far. Hope I’m a happy with them on mile 500.
Miles down: 6.50
Miles to go: 493.50
Published: 02/14/2012
So, today I’m 35, which means that I’m closer to turning 40 than I am to turning 30. A fellow Valentine’s Day Baby and friend, Shaun Hough (Happy Birthday, Shaun), pointed out that it’s also the birthday of Columbus, Ohio (founded February 14, 1812). And that got me thinking, what else happened today in history.
Here is a list of ones that I found interesting on Wikipedia, and if there are any errors on this list, I blame them and not the pint and a half of pale ale I’m enjoying right now. Any typographical errors are due to the pale ale, or to the fact that I just can’t type.
- 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray. Elisha Gray is from Barnesville, Ohio, my hometown.
- 1894 – Jack Benny is born. “Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
- 1913 – Woody Hayes is born. Nice.
- 1913 – Jimmy Hoffa is born. Could any more drastically opposite people than Woody Hayes and Jimmy Hoffa share a birthday?
- 1918 – The Soviet Union adopts the Gregorian calendar (on 1 February according to the Julian calendar). The Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII on February 24th, 1582. Took them long enough.
- 1929 – Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre: Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s gang, are murdered in Chicago, Illinois. Another Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred many years later in Columbus, Ohio, with fewer deaths, but many more casualties.
- 1934 – Florence Henderson is born. That might explain a few things…
- 1946 – Gregory Hines is born. “I got a great corkscrew! (Whoooaaaa!) Damn, this is a hip crowd!”
- 1948 – Teller, of Penn and Teller, is born. I couldn’t find a good Teller quote.
- 1960 – Jim Kelly is born. Poor guy just couldn’t win in the Super Bowl.
- 1961 – Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at the University of California. I always felt a deep connection to Lawrencium. This is probably why.
- 1965 – Slick Rick is born. Word!
- 1970 – Simon Pegg is born. He went on to write the best zombie movie ever.
- 1972 – Drew Bledsoe is born. And…
- 1973 – Steve McNair is born. I guess it’s a good day for quarterbacks.
- 1977 – Brent Rogers tells his Dad that he doesn’t want a younger brother.
Hope everyone enjoyed this list as much as I enjoyed researching it. Thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes.
Published: 02/13/2012
I’m a WordPress guy. All of my current client sites are WordPress sites. All of my personal project sites are WordPress sites. I develop almost exclusively for WordPress, and I’ve never found anything yet that I can’t make it do. In short, if WordPress is wrong, it’s quite possible that I don’t want to be right. So why Drupal?
It’s all about mind expansion, really. Getting myself out of my comfort zone and making myself try something new. And, perhaps, I might find that I like Drupal more than WordPress. Well, that and I committed to that goofy Twelve for Twelve thing, and checking out Drupal isn’t going to be the one thing that keeps me from getting all 12 done this year.
Going in to The Great Drupal Experiment, I do know a few things. For instance, I know that the top three content management systems for websites are:
- WordPress (used by 15.7% of all websites)
- Joomla (2.7%)
- Drupal (2.0%)
WordPress is, by far, number one, with a CMS market share of 53.9% compared to Drupal at 6.7%. I understand bigger or more popular doesn’t always mean better. I mean, I run Linux (about a 1.5% or so market share) 99.9% of the time, and complain about Windows (about a 74% market share) the 0.1% when I’m forced to use it. Still, that’s a pretty big gap between WordPress and Drupal.
Actually, now that I think about it, that’s about all I know about Drupal. That, and I’m skeptical.
Installation
I’m so used to installing WordPress that I can do the “Famous 5-Minute Install” in about two and a half minutes. Not trying to brag on my elite WordPress installation skills, just saying that WordPress is crazy easy to install. But, thinking back to the first time I installed WordPress, it took about ten minutes to get in figured out, up and running.
First install time for Drupal: about ten minutes to install on my netbook. (And before you ask, yes I said netbook. If you want to talk about why my netbook runs a web server and how much of a geek that makes me, we’ll just have to do that some other time.) But, yea, no major difference, as far as I can tell, between the installation processes for someone that isn’t familiar with the process. Pretty much a push.
In order to really try this out, though, I decided to install Drupal on one of my side project sites, visitbarnesville.com. Second install: about four minutes. Again, verses a WordPress installation, no advantage either way. I’m pretty sure if I installed this 30 times or so, I’d get just as good at it as I am at WordPress.
Initial Configuration
One thing that I can say about the first time I installed WordPress is that it all felt very intuitive. I wouldn’t say the same so far about Drupal. Adding some initial content was simple enough, but it did take me a few minutes and some Google-ing to figure out how to make a page the main page. Adding an initial article was simple as well.
“Block” setup did not feel natural at all. Getting the blocks where I wanted them was no big whoop, but not as simple as how it is handled in WordPress. I still haven’t figured out how to have the Recent Content block only display articles and not pages, and, although I think it’s pretty neat that new pages can be included in the Recent Content block alongside articles, it’s quite possible that I don’t want pages to show up there, and so far see no way to keep it from happening.
I also as of yet haven’t been able to get Clean URL’s enabled, which the equivalent in WordPress is so simple (and flexible) that you can change it daily if you really like. Drupal error-ed out with a very uninformative “The clean URL test failed.” message, with no explanation as to why it did or how to fix it. A quick search returned no useful information as to how to fix this.
Day One Summary
The only things I have found inherently intuitive about Drupal are initial setup and content addition/management, items that, had they not been, I’d have already given up on this little project. Everything else seems a bit clunky.
Published: 02/11/2012
One month into my “Twelve for Twelve” (plus 11 days), so I guess it’s time for an update.
- Go Zip Lining – Not yet, but give me a break, it was January. I want to do this when it’s warm and I’ll actually enjoy it.
- Run 500 Miles – I’ve run 2.42. It was January, I was sick have the month, and the treadmill’s speed control is all screwed up, so I can’t use it. In fairness, I tried to run one other time, and the treadmill took off at full speed when it was off and threw me.
- Release 12 Premium WordPress Themes – Ok, none actually released yet, but I’ve been working on the first, so a little progress.
- Learn AJAX – The fact that I actually thought about starting to learn AJAX made me feel better about not starting to lean AJAX.
- Try out Drupal – See #4, Learn AJAX.
- Post to Blog Twice a Week – I owed you 9 blog posts in January, and you got three. Got to do better here.
- Take Julie and Shannon Camping – Ok, I’m starting to feel like I didn’t do anything in January. Then again, this is a summer goal.
- Complete 100 hours of Pro Bono Web Design – Ok, this one wasn’t actually my fault. I did approach two different non-profits, but neither were interested. Bah!
- Say “Thank You” to Anyone in Military Uniform – Ok, I hit a home run on this one. Not a single person left my area wearing a uniform that didn’t get a thank you. One guy I actually chased down.
- Brew Five Different Beers – Good stuff again! The West Coast Pale Ale is done, and I had the first two pints of it yesterday, which is why I didn’t write this post yesterday. Quite good. Also, the Blueberry Bock has been bottled as of yesterday as well.
- Hike a Total of 30 Miles – Again, it was January.
- Watch the Sun Rise over the Ocean – Yeah, January.
So, as best as I can tell, I’m about 4% complete at the end of January. Baby steps through Twelve for Twelve.
So, I was way overdue for a new pair of running shoes. My previous pair was no longer comfortable when walking, let alone running. After thinking about it for a while, and deciding that I wasn’t quite ready to take a complete minimalist dive into Vibrams, I decided to buy a pair of Reebok Realflex.