28 Feb, 2008
My Comcast cable Internet access recently became really slow with occasional outages. The price had also jumped from the 6-month introductory price of $30/month to $53/month. So, we decided to give Digis a try.
So far, we’ve been really pleased with the service. The technician that came and installed the antenna gadget actually knew what he was doing. They called a couple of times in advance to confirm the appointment, the technician showed up on time, and was very friendly. The Internet connection is also very responsive. I’ve been very pleased with it so far.
When we first moved into our place, our primary means of communication was our pre-paid cellphones. We have Vonage phone service, so we needed an Internet connection to get our phone up and going. The Comcast guy came out, told us it was wired up, and left. We then tried to use our cable modem, and got no connection. I was on the phone with Comcast support for an hour (on my pre-paid phone) trying to debug it before they finally realized that it wasn’t my computer, it was their network. A half a week later, they sent another guy out who said, “Yeah, I don’t know what the last guy did, but it definitely isn’t hooked up right.” Finally, we had Internet access, but it took over a week to get set up.
Digis, on the other hand, did things right the first time and even showed us how we could get a rebate on the installation fees. Thank you Digis!
Tagged with: companies
16 Feb, 2008
Setting up pretty URLs is usually the first thing I do after installing a new WordPress blog. In this screencast, I will demonstrate how to turn your urls from looking like ?p=1 to /2008/2/16/post-name/. The process is pretty simple, but if file permissions aren’t set quite right, you may run into a little gotcha. This video shows how to correct this if you happen to run into that problem.
[Click here to download(.mov)] [Watch at Viddler (at full-screen or original size)]
Note About Pretty URLs
Pretty URLs, also known as Search Engine Friendly URLs, will help your blog’s content to be indexed better by Google and the other search engines. This is possible because the url itself describes the content of a page or post. Again, this isn’t the only factor that will affect your search engine rankings, but it will contribute to better rankings.
About My Sponsors
I am an affiliate of Hostmonster and Bluehost
. I receive a commission for any account sign-ups that are referred from this site. This allows me to put in the time necessary to deliver useful content. This blog is hosted on Hostmonster. I have been a customer of both Hostmonster and Bluehost for several years now and have been very satisfied by their customer service and reliability. Hostmonster and Bluehost are the same company.
Tagged with: beginner, screencasts, wordpress
13 Feb, 2008
Installing and maintaining a WordPress blog is really nice on Hostmonster and Bluehost because it uses Fantastico, a very nice application manager. In this screencast, I will walk you through the steps of setting up a new WordPress installation.
Click here to download
Note About WordPress
WordPress is a very nice piece of software that can be used for more than just blogs. In future screencasts, I will show how to use WordPress to create a corporate informational site. I will also show how you can actually use WordPress to sell products.
A Note About My Sponsor
Please note: I am an affiliate of Hostmonster and Bluehost. I receive a commission for any account sign-ups that are referred from this site. This allows me to put in the time necessary to deliver useful content. This blog is hosted on Hostmonster. I have been a customer of both Hostmonster and Bluehost for several years now and have been very satisfied by their customer service and reliability. Hostmonster and Bluehost are the same company.
Tagged with: beginner, bluehost, hostmonster, screencasts, wordpress
12 Feb, 2008
Setting up a subdomain on Hostmonster and Bluehost is pretty simple. This video will show how I set up the subdomain tutorials.jimmyzimmerman.com. The next screencast will show how I installed Wordpress on that domain.
Click Here to Play
Note About Subdomains
Many people prefer to use subdomains to organize the content of their site. For example, I might have used blog.jimmyzimmerman.com instead of jimmyzimmerman.com/blog/. Perhaps blog.jimmyzimmerman.com would have been an easier URL to remember.
One thing to consider is that subdomains are looked upon by Google and other search engines as separate sites. This is important when considering a site’s PageRank. By placing my blog under my main domain, I could share the PageRank of my overall site and my blog posts could get listed in search results better. Therefore, it’s a matter of weighing the benefit of a cleaner URL to the potential PageRank gains of having it all on one domain. In the end, having good content on your site will be the most important factor for search engine rankings.
A Note About My Sponsor
Please note: I am an affiliate of Hostmonster and Bluehost. I receive a commission for any account sign-ups that are referred from this site. This allows me to put in the time necessary to deliver useful content. This blog is hosted on Hostmonster. I have been a customer of both Hostmonster and Bluehost for several years now and have been very satisfied by their customer service and reliability. Hostmonster and Bluehost are the same company.
Tagged with: beginner, bluehost, hostmonster, screencasts
11 Feb, 2008
I have set up several Wordpress blogs for family and friends and have decided that I would create a series of screencasts showing how to accomplish several tasks created for users ranging from a beginner experience level to an advanced user.
These screencasts will be centered around a hosting provider such as Bluehost or Hostmonster or any other hosting provider that gives you access to Cpanel or Fantastico.
I plan to cover the following topics:
I will be linking to the new tutorials from this page as they are created. If there are any other topics you would like me to cover, please post a comment. I will gladly try to cover any topic of interest.
Please note: I am an affiliate of Hostmonster and Bluehost. I receive a commission for any account sign-ups that are referred from this site. This allows me to put in the time necessary to deliver useful content. This blog is hosted on Hostmonster. I have been a customer of both Hostmonster and Bluehost for several years now and have been very satisfied by their customer service and reliability. Hostmonster and Bluehost are the same company.
Tagged with: bluehost, hostmonster, screencasts, wordpress
