Happy Birthday, Roxy!
Everyone wish our Roxy a Happy Birthday!
Money Monday : Do What You Love
Do what you love and make money from it? It’s possible. We’re sharing this great article with you today which shares tips from the creators of Threadless.com to other start-ups that have radiated from great ideas and hard work. One comment from Gary Vaynerchuk, the founder of Wine Library TV, particularly stood out:
“Vaynerchuk offers himself as the perfect example, pointing to the years he spent working in the wine store and the 12 hours a day he used to dedicate to posting comments on every wine-related blog he could find in order to build a community of his own. “Don’t quit your job to become the queen of cheese,” he cautions. “But if you’re doing something that blows and you hate it, go work at 7-Eleven to pay your bills and spend every other hour building your personal plan. If you work 9 AM to 6 PM and get home at 7, whatever you put in between 7 and 3 AM is what you’re gonna get in return. You want to watch Lost? Knock yourself out. I don’t watch [anything]. I don’t read [anything]. I’m all about my community and putting out content. I don’t consume. I put out.”
Advice doesn’t get much more real than that and we can all learn from it. Click here to read the entire article.
Flickr Friday: The Good ole Days!
Just stop for a second with what your are doing, sit back, kick up your feet you have to and just ease your mind. Let’s go back to a time before iphones and ipods, before gas prices hit the $5 mark, even before the supposed Y2K bug. Think back to the time you were a kid, when playing hide n seek with your friends was the cool thing to do, or when girls and boys had cooties, and if you weren’t in your house by 5 or 6, you’re mom would come out looking for you and embarrass you in the process. Think back to those times when a $5 dollar bill was actually a lot of money to you and Saturday mornings were spent watching cartoons on the TV or riding bikes with your friends. Think back to those good old days, a time when all the troubles in the world didn’t matter to you. Gas, mortgage, car, school prices held no real meaning to you. Think of the good times shared between friends and family. Remember.
If by the end of this post you have a smile on your face, well, then it means I did my job. =)
(Photo by. Joaobambu)
Things We Love Thursday: CSS Galleries!
Web 2.0 was and still is all the rage on the internet with it’s aesthetically pleasing styles and easy clean coding, anyone who owned a website wanted to be apart of it. From left to right, website’s and their owners were slowly transgressing from outdated drag and drop WYSIWYG editors and the not-supposed-to-be table layouts to more fluid, clean, and beautiful art that the web 2.0 generation brought with it. And because of this, CSS galleries were born.
Not only do they showcase the many and wonderful web 2.0 looks out there, but its a way for your website to get honest critiques from all points of view, while also gaining extra traffic to your website. Can’t get a better deal then that! Another use they have; inspiration! Have you ever had “designer’s block” and sometimes go on a search to find amazing looking websites in order to feed your imagination? Well look no further, CSS galleries are here to help! Each day they probably get 20 or more website sign-ups, with so many to look at in one place, you’ll never have to go Googling for them again! Be sure to check out the many out there and don’t be afraid to submit your own website!
WordPress Wednesday: Time for your Lessons!
One of the many features I like about WordPress is their wide array of themes. There are so many out there its hard to not use all of them, but after a while you sort of lose the joy of looking up a theme that someone else made and fits your style. If you’re a designer you usually miss creating your own layouts and coding from scratch too. No worries! WordPress pretty much explains everything in regards to creating, designing, and publishing your own unique theme with how WordPress works! These easy to understand and read tutorials/articles (overall lessons) can all be found in the codex section on WordPress!
Not only will you find how to’s and coding help for themes, there are a few other well written articles for color schemes, CSS, plugin use, menu help and so much more! The WordPress Codex section is the place to find all useful tutorials, articles, and lessons to help with the development of your WP website!
Useful Tuesday : CodeFetch
“Codefetch‘s mission is to connect programmers and authors so that programmers get the information they need, and the work of authors is supported and encouraged. Today, Codefetch sells books, but watch for change—we envision an infrastructure where authors can get their content out more quickly and with less environmental impact than selling books printed on paper.”
This is self-explanatory: tasty code.
Money Monday : Paid for Posts
Today we would like to ask you, are you participating in any “pay to blog” programs and if so, are they working for you? We have noticed some of our customers advertise other sites through blog posts. We would like to know what you think overall about that type of service. Some may think it’s a form of spam while others may not have a problem with it. We would like to recommend services to everyone that are both ethical and well rewarding but need your help!
Flickr Friday : Treat Yourself
If there is one thing I notice so much on Surmunity, it’s our nature to help others and often place others first. But when is the last time we did something for ourselves? It’s time to get off of the computer and bake yourself some warm, chocolate chip cookies and watch movies for hours! That’s just one idea. What would be your perfect day off from the Internet? (Photo of the cookie from roboppy on Flickr)
Things We Love Thursday : Naps
We never get to have any naps here at the office, sadly. There’s just no time! But you can bet we love to get our nap on when we’re not working. Did you know there’s some scientific napalysis that defines perfect napping scenarios? Well we didn’t know that either until recently.
Check out this nap guide published in The Boston Globe “Ideas Section” to make sure you’re napping correctly. Naps are important and this guide will cover (cover! blankets! get it?) everything about nappage.
WordPress Wednesday: StatPress!
When it comes to our websites, we love to know who visits what, how many people visit and where they come from. There are tons of programs to help out with this, but only a few who are actually accurate and true in number. It also never hurts to have more then one source, well that extra helpful source for your website’s stats is StatPress!
With StatPress you are able to see how many visitors you get on a monthly and weekly basis. Not only that but you are able to view where they come from and what pages they look at while at your website! A very neat feature to help improve your websites content, see what people look at the most and make more of it! I’ve been using StatPress for a while now and couldn’t be happier to have it. So what are you waiting for? Download the plugin today!
Useful Tuesday: Firebug!
A great plus for having Mozilla FireFox as your preferred internet browser is their extensive collection of plugins. With them being created and developed everyday, its an almost “what do you have to lose” situation! One of my favorite and I feel very useful plugins for FF would be Firebug.
With Firebug you are able to edit HTML and CSS. See where a certain tag or style is located and also see where mistakes you have made within coding are also located! A great tool for anyone creating a website who always needs that “second look”. Be sure to download it today!
Money Monday : Wesabe
We found a website which is great for anyone from those sorting out their debt or just bargain hunters. This social finance community helps people connect to share experiences and opinions on different companies and services, all to improve spending and cut corners.
“Wesabe is an innovative new way to manage your money and make good financial decisions. Wesabe is unique because it combines easy-to-use budgeting tools with a thriving community of smart, supportive people, anonymously sharing ideas and advice with each other to help everyone get more value for their money. And, your information stays private and completely secure, so you can take advantage of Wesabe’s many benefits without worry. “
Give Wesabe a try, there seems to be nothing but benefit from signing up to this community.
Flickr Friday : Summer Is Here
What are your summer plans, anything exciting or just staying cool? Depending on your hemisphere you may be cool already! Just wanted to share these summer colors with you today, from moonjazz on Flickr. He describes it as, “a jamble of ranunculus flowers in Carlsbad, California. Most of the fields are a single color but sometimes you find a wonderful crossword of colors that makes you want to put on some music and dance though this field in the land of Oz.”
We’re thinking of some sales, promos or contests to have this summer. Stay subscribed to the blog to be the first to know. We hope we’re the first to wish you a great summer!
Things We Love Thursdays: Digsby!
I’m sure there are tons of applications like it, but none of them have the cool name like Digsby! Now you can have your favorite IM clients, Email, and even Social Networks logins, all in one place! What could be better? You can also add a widget to your website where people can chat with you from where ever! Not to mention the tons of customizations options available to you for total personalization! Download it today: Digsby!
Supported IM Clients:
- AIM
- MSN
- Yahoo!
- Jabber
- ICQ
- Google Talk
- Facebook Chat
Supported Email Clients:
- Yahoo!
- Hotmail
- Gmail
- POP3 & IMAP accounts
- AOL & AIM Mail
Supported Social Network Clients:
- Myspace
- Facebook
- Twitter
WordPress Wednesday : WordPress MU Supercharged!
You probably already know that we support (and love!) WordPress MU (Multi User) and support it on our servers. (Our tutorial from start to finish, plus tips and tricks, is in our forum here.) For today’s WordPress Wednesday, we found a very interesting package of plugins to turn your install of WPMU into a social networking powerhouse. And it’s fast and easy to get your new community started! Say hello to BuddyPress.
“Each member of a BuddyPress site can upload their own avatar. Avatars can be cropped to size within the browser. BuddyPress administrators can create completely customized profile templates for members. Create any number of groups and field types. Private messages are threaded like a conversation making them easy to follow. Messages can be sent using the built in TinyMCE editor. Members can send messages to other friends and groups.”
Now how fun does all of that sound? Just go to the BuddyPress website to become more familiar with it, download, and install! And don’t forget to follow BuddyPress on Twitter! (Hey now, don’t forget to follow us either!)
Useful Tuesday : RSS Feeds Anytime with Ponyfish
What happens when you want updates from a website that doesn’t have an RSS feed? If there is a certain site you go to and you’d like to know when the page is updated, Ponyfish can help. Here is how I’ve used it.
I like Digg but I never really log in, who has time to log into so many websites everyday? Not me, not you! But I do visit some sections of Digg regularly to browse the top stories. So as an example I went to PonyFish and plugged in http://digg.com/security and went through the next steps until the feed was created. Now maybe there is a feature in my Digg account that can send these notifcations, but I want to do this my way.
If you’ll remember back to our last Useful Tuesday, I introduced IMFeeds.com. So I sent the feed to the RSS bot.
Next Tuesday I’ll be discussing RSS again and will let you know how the Ponyfish service is working. It almost seems too good to be true! Visit Ponyfish to see all of the sites that other users are creating RSS feeds for; it’s amazing which popular sites do not have RSS yet on their homepages!
Money Monday : Cart of Carts
One of the first things that comes to my mind when I think of making money online is a shopping cart. All of our hosting plans come with the ability to install osCommerce in just a few clicks and a lot of our customers really like this program. Another program that can easily be installed on your Surpass account is Zen Cart. Have you used either of these programs before, and if so, which is your favorite? Or maybe you use a different application for your online store and can’t imagine using anything else. We are looking to offer an alternative web store program to all Surpass customers (with free licensing) and would like your help in deciding which one. Please leave a note in the comments for us so we can begin the search!
Flickr Friday: Amazing Photos!
Exploring Flickr is one of my favorite things to do and finding amazing looking photos, whether they are funny (see above image) or not, is just something I’m sure everyone enjoys. Being able to share them with you all is even better! Have any interesting images you’ve found while exploring Flickr, if so post them here! Let’s end this week on a happy note. 
Things We Love Thursday : Video Blogs
This could have been a post for WordPress Wednesday… but we just couldn’t wait! We love this WordPress Video Blog theme from ZoomStart. Its clean look is easy to modify into an existing site as an addition. Or you could use this theme to run an entire website based on video content from YouTube.
“Video on the internet is huge. And it’s only getting bigger. So I thought I’d put together a Wordpress theme to take advantage of that. It’s a great way to build content-rich niche sites, and use the power of YouTube at the same time.” - Shane from ZoomStart View the demo here.
What Powers Our Blog? Candy!
Over 14 different candies here. Now we’re ready to blog.
WordPress Wednesday: Comment Plugins!
One thing WordPress is famous for is their comment system! And who doesn’t love to receive comments, I know I sure do! The only downside anyone can think of when it comes to comments: SPAM! I know, hated everywhere, whether it be your email box, forum posts, and yes sadly blog comments. So how do you get rid of these little buggers? Simple, you install a very handy dandy comment plugin for your WordPress blog.
While there are tons out there, only a few are well known for actually working and keeping your comment queue free of spam. One of the three already comes default with your WordPress install, Akismet! All you need to do is activate it and make sure to enable your API code with it, which you can easily retrieve for free by creating a wordpress.com account.
The second best comment plugin is Bad Behavior. Sounds like a tough name, no? Well it is one tough plugin! Helps protect your comment box from spam bots by analizing their HTTP request.
Last, but not least in any way, we have Spam Karma! Don’t mess with karma or Spam Karma! This neat little plugin helps protect your comments from automated spam comments being generated. Handy and always being updated each day! What can be better then that?
So, now that I’ve guided, pointed, and practically pushed you into the right direction for fantastic anti-spam comment plugins, what are you waiting for? Go download them and upload them to your WordPress blog today! You’ll thank us in the end! 
Useful Tuesday : RSS Feeds to IM
Useful Tuesday is all about finding something to make your online life easier! Today we’re thinking about the many ways to receive updated RSS feeds. Many of us use instant messaging programs and have them connected all of the time. So it would likely be a good idea to send RSS feeds there, but how? The answer is IMFeeds.com! Signing up and using this free service could not be easier.
First just add their robot to your buddy list. We named him Easy Feedy.
Next you’ll go through the sign up process and Easy Feedy, or er, the robot will send you a message while you go about your usual routine. (Like organizing your Kermit the Frog photo collection.)
Now that you’re acquainted, you can send a message to the robot to add a feed, or use the website to add a feed. In this example I grabbed the feed for the Surpass Hosting Forums Announcements section.
The robot or the website will confirm the addition and then, for us, it took about 15 minutes for the update to come in. How convenient to receive an IM for a website update!
W3C valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Document validates as CSS3.
© Copyright 2002-2008 Surpass Hosting, LLC. All rights reserved.
Subscribe
Join other customers who learn about the best new gadgets or contests from Surpass first!
