Tag Archives: Internet

Domain Registration, Hosting, Internet

Register Your Domain Name – part of a series on setting up a new website

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Last time, we talked about some ideas you should mull over before setting up your new website. Since you need a domain name, that’s the first thing you should consider. As we mentioned, we’ve got this diary from WW1 that we’d like to share. Our considerations for a name involved the words diary, war, lion, navy, ww1 and so on. Here is how you search for a good domain name:

Photo of domain name search on GoDaddy
.com is the default name shown here but you can search and choose other letters.

As we mentioned, there are many types of domain. The TLD or Top Level Domains are the most popular and include: .com, .org, .net., .info, .gov and so on. The newest one, .xxx, is reserved for porn sites, in case you haven’t heard about that.

We searched and chose ‘ww1diary.com’. We felt that is was simple, effective and, because of the .com domain letters, it would be easy to remember. Everyone seems to know something something something.com as if that is the only domain out there and that’s the reason we like to stick to .com domains. In our case, it doesn’t really matter because we will depend on Google searches to develop an audience. If you want to develop a business, get a .com for sure unless you are willing and ready to work hard to develop an audience. Brand recognition and .com names go hand in hand.

Once you have selected a name and found that it’s available with the domain letters you want to use, you might want to think about the other variations of your name. If you’re trying to lock up your online identity, why not secure as many other domains that might piggyback on your fame. If you think that Microsoft or Apple doesn’t have every variation of their name locked up, you’re wrong. We still remember when ATI, the video card manufacturer that is now within AMD, didn’t lock up ati.com. They had atitech.com but who would search for that? If you searched for ati.com all you got was a photo of a pile of dog poop, believe it or not. This is a perfect example of why it’s important to lock up as many domains as you can afford if you’re worried about someone else benefiting from your site’s popularity. Here’s an example of a successful domain name search:

Photo of successful domain name search
The .com is available as well as other domain types.

Here you see that many other types of domains are available. GoDaddy offers the .info name for free with the .com name at this moment but don’t expect that all the time. GoDaddy has many revolving offers at any given moment.

After your successful search, continue on through the checkout process. GoDaddy will make offers all the way through, hoping to make a bigger sale than just the .com name but think about each choice carefully.  We just go for the domains, none of the extras. If you don’t want the hassle of renewing often, register your domain for more than one year.

TIP:  We don’t recommend hosting your domain from the same company that it is registered with. There isn’t much chance of GoDaddy going out of business any time soon but their hosting is expensive.  We’d rather spring for hosting with another company, knowing that our domains are safe with GoDaddy.

That’s it! You now own a domain. The next step is hosting your site and we’ll get to that next time.

Thanks for reading!

 

Computers, Free Software, Internet, Windows

Five Must-Have Pieces of Free Software

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Everyone loves free stuff, right? I’m writing this post just after Christmas and free software is about the only thing that I can afford! I’ve mentioned all of this software in other posts. In this one I will simply highlight the best of the best of the best.

1. VLC Media Player – VLC is amazing, really. Not only is it the fastest player out there, it’s a wizard when it comes to repairing video files. If you’ve got an AVI that is somewhat corrupted, VLC will repair it. Save the repaired version and you’re done. As far as playback is concerned, VLC lets you slow down the action or speed it up with a simple keystroke for each. I don’t use VLC for music playback but it does that, too.

2. Irfanview – Once you have tried Irfanview, I defy you to live without in the future. I’ve been using it for years, putting it on every computer in the house. Irfanview is quick, efficient and offers a feature list that boggles the mind. Screen capture, batch processing…it’s got it all. Make sure you download the plugins and make sure you download it from Tucows. CNET is reportedly putting malware in its downloads.

3. Google Chrome – Why is a browser on this list? Aren’t they all free? Sure, they’re all free but other browsers pale in comparison to Chrome. I can safely say that Chrome has opened up a whole new world for me, simply because it translates every website that I visit. The Internet is more than the boring English sites that you’re used to surfing. Check out what people around the world are doing on the web, visit and investigate your next international vacation spot, or just see what cool things are for sale in, say, China or Japan.

TIP: One of the best things about the Internet is that most sites are designed in English, even if they use another language for navigation. If you’re stuck on a site and can’t figure out what some of the buttons do, simply hover your cursor over a link and look down to the left of your window. Nine times out of ten you’ll find out what the button leads to, written in plain English.

4. Dropbox – Dropbox is both software and a service. With 1 gigabyte of free storage, Dropbox allows you to share documents from one computer to another around the world. Even if you are on someone’s computer in India, you can access your files via the Internet. There is no need to have the Dropbox application installed. Additionally, you can share files of any type with friends and relatives by giving them guest access to your online folder. Need more than a gig of storage? Open up a few free accounts. You can’t go wrong.

5. Burnaware Free – Burnware is a free, fast and dog-simple burning app. DVDs/CDs/ISOs, Burnaware takes care of it all. Roxio makes a fine product from what I hear but I have only used Burnaware for the past ten years or so. In my opinion, you don’t need any more than this for your daily burning chores. I back-up my computer religiously and you should too. DVDs are cheap and losing lifetime photo memories is expensive. Don’t let a crashed hard drive ruin your life. Get Burnaware and some DVDs for 20 bucks and relax. Your kids will thank you!

All of these applications have full sets of options and features that will make your computer experience much more fulfilling than any piece of retail software would. For that reason, if you’re a bit flush with cash, consider making a donation to the creators. Good karma will follow.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Internet, Security

WordPress Comment Scam

Update: This scammer is using different names. The names used that I know of are: Rayan Meyer, Killian Blanchard, Mathis Gaillard, among many others. Please read this post to understand the modus operandi and then go to the site mentioned below for even more details. Good luck!
Scams are everywhere, it seems. Yesterday I received a comment on one of my other websites. The commenter asked if I was interested in placing a banner ad (from a major company) on the site. The person apologized for making a comment instead of emailing. I realized that I didn’t have an email address on the site and this made his comment sound legitimate.

Now my site isn’t as popular as this one. It’s about kitchens, kitchenrenovation411.com , and probably isn’t a site that an advertiser would pick for a banner ad. This should have twigged me that this was a scam. However, the company that this person was supposedly going to link to the banner is a very reputable company. Maybe the clientèle from my site fit the demographics they were looking for. Hey, it’s money, right?

I emailed the person and quoted a figure then did some heavy research. It seems that this kind of thing has been going on for quite a while. Here is a site that describes the dilemma that many WordPress bloggers find themselves in and the tricks scammers use to gain access to websites: http://keepsafeonthenet.co.uk/2011/07/martin-dumont/comment-page-1/#comment-87842 .

Here are some tips to avoid losing your website to a scammer:

1. If it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Whenever money is involved, our eyes light up  and we start planning for the future. That’s human nature. Most WordPress sites don’t make any money at all. If someone contacts you about a site that isn’t very popular, you know it is a scam.

2. Do your research. Search Google using the complete email or comment on your blog. This will almost certainly lead to a forum or another site that the scammer has contacted. Read what has been posted and confirm that your contact is fake.

3. Advertisers don’t send their advertising code in a zip file. If you get a zip file from someone who has contacted you through your website, you know it’s got a trojan in it. The contact that I am writing about insists that they will not use any java code, simply a link to the website of the advertiser. Baloney! There will be a zip file coming, I can guarantee it.

4. Brand name companies don’t work through small advertising companies. The website of the person who contacted me looks very professional but it hasn’t been updated since 2007. The website is also exactly the same as another company listed in the link above. Both sites are identical, the only difference is the person who is sending out the emails.

5. If you’ve been taken in by this kind of scam, you should consider your website to be compromised. Links will likely take users to other sites or, worse, your site may be used to email spam. Work with your hosting company to rid your site of the malware on it.

Hopefully this post will help you avoid this type of unusual scam. This kind of thing is criminal activity and should be considered as a threat to your site as well as to your hosting company. Once this kind of thing is on a server, there are many ways for it to spread. Hopefully your host can stay on top of it.

Thanks for reading.

Hidden Windows Tricks, Internet, Router, Troubleshooting, Windows, Windows Secrets

Ipconfig

Ipconfig seems like a strange title for a post, right? Once you see how ipconfig can help you, it might lose it’s strangeness.

I’ve written about the command prompt in previous posts. Here is one:  https://brianmahoney.ca/?s=command+prompt  The command prompt takes you back to the days of DOS but it’s more like a window into the soul of your computer. Consider Windows/OS X the dining room of a restaurant while the command prompt is the kitchen, where the actual works gets done.

If you start a command prompt (start/programs/accessories/command prompt) then type ipconfig , you’ll see something like this:

The Command Prompt Showing Ipconfig Results
The result of typing 'ipconfig' at the command prompt.

What does all of this mean? Well, a lot of it means nothing, quite frankly, but some of it is valuable if you get stuck and have to access your router. The IPv4 number is the IP address of your current computer. The Default Gateway number is the IP address of your computer. Ignore the other numbers.

I’m assuming that almost everyone who reads this is using a router to access the Internet. If your Internet goes down or your computer seems sluggish, there are a couple of things that ipconfig can help you with. One of them is the IP address of your router. This isn’t the same as the IP address that connects  you to the Internet, it’s the one that you use to connect your computer to the router. Basically there are three IP addresses that you would encounter every day. One is the IP address that your router feeds to your computer. The other is the one that you use to access your router. The third one, which doesn’t really matter unless you want to hide it from someone, is the one that your Internet provider sends to your router to allow it to connect to the Internet. Lots of numbers!

If you have to access your router, you would type an address something like this: 192.168.0.1 into your browser.  This number is the IP address of a D-Link router. Your router probably has a different number but many are quite similar. Some use the 192.168.1.1 combination instead. Assuming that you are connected to the router, typing in the router’s IP address and a password (default is admin), you can gain access to the router’s menu. This would allow you to change different settings or simply reset your Internet connection (instead of getting up and walking over to it and powering off the powering on again).

If your computer seems to be running slowly on the Internet, typing ipconfig  /renew will refresh the IP address of your current computer. Typing ipconfig  /? displays the full menu of commands for ipconfig.

Most of us use ipconfig to renew the IP address but, as you can see, there are many more things that this command can do.

Thanks for reading!