studiowhiz ramblings

It seems today that websites are in a battle to get more and more traffic. I wonder sometimes if people get the message wrong? I mean really is that all it’s about?

Of course traffic increases are fantastic and make a direct impact to any revenue a site, either through the online advertising, the increase in sales or the ability to promote the site through offline sales. A good thing about allowing a site to grow steadily is that you can see issues and resolve them. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just spent about 4 hours looking around Google trying to find some solutions that I need. I only have a few requirements:

• must be free (open source)
• must be php & mysql
• must be (x)HTML & CSS compliant
• must integrate with PayPal
• must have Credit Card integration (c2o etc)
• manage memberships (free & paid - 1 off fee, paypal)

As a bonus I’d love one solution that can do all of that and can manage online tests - nothing over the top just a few multi-choice questions in each test. Would like to track users answers, not so worried about them being able to see their history. This however is proving hard to find.

Got any thoughts? Why not post some links in the comments & I’ll check them out.

I’ve just set up a new plugin for tracking my outbound links with analytics.

To help me test it, why not visit www.webhelp.co.nz and find out “Does Google love you?“.

Thanks everyone

Isn’t it funny the things we think are going to go great, don’t always. The things we throw together with little forethought often pan out better than we expect.

Case in point, “Stop writing and increase your traffic“, a post I threw together in minutes while waiting for a mate to pick me up for a Dad’s night out. I really wasn’t thinking “This’ll be a great post” it was more, “Gosh I better put something on Studiowhiz” Read the rest of this entry »

how to make an icon, how to draw a car, how to create a flash website? These are all questions sitting in my traffic logs. Obviously Google thinks studiowhiz.com is a site that can help - and in the past that would have been true, back when Studiowhiz was well known in the Flash Community. I even wrote the book Build your first website with Flash MX a few years back.

Now however Studiowhiz is my personal blog - still why can’t it provide a resource for these things? So this post will answer these 3 questions:

• How to make an icon
• How to draw a car
• How to create a flash website

Read the rest of this entry »

My mate over at webhelp.co.nz has an interesting post about his favourite Google Search, a nice little trick that allows you to quickly and easily find mp3, mp4, pdf, avi, mpeg, audio, music, videos, movies and much more.

I thought I’d extend this a little by adding some new functionality to his search & introducing Firefox bookmarks as a quick and easy way to do your search.
Read the rest of this entry »

Update: Jan 25 2008: Well folks it’s all over, MacHeist is done and $488 003 was raised. However true to form the MacHeist guys thought that wasn’t the best number, so they’ve added $21 997 to the amount to bring the final total to $500 000 raised for charity.

UPDATED: more apps are now available. Purchase now using this link & help raise even more money for charity

Every year a bunch of guys get together to raise some funds for charity. They call themselves “MacHeist” and with the offer they have for us this year - well we might as well be robbing them blind.

MacHeist is fast becoming a regular event. Each time a bunch of Apple software companies are asked to provide software at massively reduced cost. This year there are 10 fantastic apps on offer for the low price of $49.00 - over $340 down to $49.

I have been looking for a personal finance app and was about to spend $39 for one I found, then I found MacHeist which happens to have Cha-Ching as part of the package. That and 25% of the $49 goes into the charity fund, and I walk away with a sweet bundle.

There are 3 apps (Snapz, CSSEdit & Pixelmator) still waiting to be unlocked. To unlock these MacHeist needs to hit certain targets. They need to sell 5000 bundles to unlock CSSEdit. Lets help them get there ey!

To find out about any of the apps, head over to MacHeist now.

» Get MacHeist now

Tags: mac, apps, ultimate OS X apps, apple, charity, raise, money

This is part 2 in my series explaining the jargon of the web. If you missed part 1, POP, SMTP & IMAP, you might want to read it first.

So now we are going to look at some jargon around these www things we use to visit websites & send email. For example, you typed (or clicked a link) www.studiowhiz.com into your address bar of your browser. Your browser bought you here. You just used a domain (web address) to get to this site.

So lets start with domains. A domain is a unique name that helps direct traffic around the internet, from computer to computer. Why do we need domains? Well computers identify each other with a series of numbers. Your computer knows itself at 127.0.0.1, one of Googles many computers is 72.14.207.104. These numbers are known as IP (internet protocol) numbers. It’s hard to remember these IP numbers, however words are easier to remember. So domains use words to point to these computers, making it easier for us to remember.

Domains are made up of a number of parts. Lets break a couple down. www.studiowhiz.com & www.nzherald.co.nz

TLD (top level domain) is the right most part, and is the first bit read by the browser. In the examples above this is the .com and .co.nz parts. This tells the browser where to look and what for.

Domain name is the next bit, and is the bit you can make up. In the example above this is the studiowhiz and nzherald parts.

Subdomain is the last bit, and generally is www, however can be anything. You are in control of these and they are free.

When you type www.nzherald.co.nz into the browser, your computer says “go to New Zealand (.nz), find all the companies (.co), then find nzherald” this will give your computer the IP number for the computer that has the NZ Herald website.

You have to purchase your domain name (name.tld - eg: studiowhiz.com) and you purchase them from a registrar. There are many, however for .com, .net or .org domains check www.godaddy.com these guys are widely respect as ‘the’ company to purchase your domain from. For regional domains eg .co.nz or .com.au you will probably have to purchase through a local registrar. Just do a Google search for your local registrar eg: Australian Domain registrar.

The last part to this domain puzzle is DNS (doman name server). This is a special computer that connects domains to IP numbers. When you type www.studiowhiz.com into your browser, your computer must talk to a domain name server to find the IP number. When you purchase your domain, chances are your registrar will have their own domain name servers that you can use. By default their domain name servers will point your domain to their own computers.

Your domain works for your website (eg: www.mysite.com) your email (me@mysite.com) and many other protocols used on the web. One of the great things about domains & DNS is that you can use one domain name, to point to different computers.

In my 5 reasons to use Google Apps post I talked about how I use Google for my email (me@studiowhiz.com) and I use MediaTemple for my website (www.studiowhiz.com), well I do that by setting the 2 parts of the domain to point to different IP numbers.

Summary:

• Domains are used so we don’t have to remember IP numbers
• Domains have 3 parts
  • top level domain (eg: co.nz & .com)
  • domain name (eg: studiowhiz)
  • subdomain (eg: www)
• Domains can point to different service providers (eg: Google for email, MediaTemple for web hosting)
• DNS (domain name servers) link domain names with the IP number of the server

Any web developer will tell you setting up email for a client can be the bane of their life. I know when I ran my own company and was providing all hosting services, 90% of the support queries we took were in regards to email.

In the last 2 years I’ve moved completely away from this aspect of business, however because I work in the online industry, everyone asks me for advice. Now I simply say “Google Apps” and point them at this fantastic solution. I’m going to guess that almost 60% of businesses could get away with using Google Apps for their entire online presence. Here in NZ almost 65% of businesses don’t even have a website - Google Apps could solve that.
Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to the internet there is a lot of jargon thrown around and many people don’t know what these words & terms mean. What I hope to do with this series is unwrap some of this jargon so anyone can understand. Often small business owners, or organisation leaders need to make technology decisions but get bamboozled by the terms.

I’m going to start with email jargon, in particular 3 terms often bandied around. SMTP, IMAP and POP.

POP: stands for Post Office Protocol. This is an older technology used for the retrieval of email from the mail server to your local computer. This is a simple fetch type technology, it does nothing else other than get your email from one place and put it in another.

SMTP: stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. This is the technology that mail servers use for sending mail from one to another. Your computer will use SMTP to take an email you have written and pass it to the mail server of your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Their server will then use SMTP to pass it to the mail server of the person you sent the email too.

Simple right, POP to fetch the mail, SMTP to deliver it. Think of POP as you going to your mail box to fetch the mail. SMTP is the postie who delivers the mail from the post office to your mail box.

Read the rest of this entry »