Don’t Restart Your Computer

I get why restarting your computer is the “go to” thing to try when something is not working on your computer. But if it has to do with your computer’s peripherals (i.e., keyboard, mouse, speakers, printer), restarting is not going to do anything. In some cases, it may actually hurt your computer (if something went wrong and it won’t reboot).

So before you reboot, I implore you to: GOOGLE IT.

Seriously. Google the problem and look for an answer. It will probably take you less time to fix than waiting for your computer to restart, which could take a looong time if your computer is more than a few years old.

In fairness, you could also “Bing it” if you want to…it just doesn’t sound as cool.

Why WordPress “just works”

Over the last year I have gone from a web designer to a “WordPress” designer. For a long time I was very hesitant to commit to a CMS, for fear of an extensive learning curve and loss of control over a web site. Then I starting blogging on WordPress. I found that I didn’t really need control over every little detail, and that most times I spent way too much time setting up a site before I really got to “the fun stuff”.

With WordPress, the installation process literally takes me less than 5 minutes. I can now take a Photoshop design and slice it into HTML, then plug it into WordPress in a matter of a few hours. I have been only too happy to adopt WordPress as my CMS of choice, and use it on every site I am currently working on.

Is WordPress the best CMS? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s the one I know and am comfortable with, and that means a lot going into any new project. I’m not against learning new things, and I think it’s great to have a bunch of tools in your tool belt, but for now I’ll take WordPress over any blogging software or other web site creation tool. In a nutshell, they take care of all the stuff you don’t want to worry about so you can focus on what matters: creating your web site.

The future of web sites

In the 90′s everyone was happy to be connected to this new thing called the Internet. Even though web sites took “forever” to load, people were willing to wait it out on the dial-up modems to get the latest news and information. Also, email started becoming the main way for people to communicate.

By the year 2000, after everyone stopped freaking out about Y2K, we saw the uprising of faster connections, known as broadband (DSL and cable). A few people hung on to their second phone line, but most upgraded and saw a pretty nice increase in speed. With that increase came an explosion of Flash web sites, where animation ruled and people were still willing to wait a few seconds for a site to load, especially if it had a spinning icon to keep them preoccupied. But, maybe ironically, Flash was truly a “flash in the pan” and has been demoted to serving up banner ads and sometimes even navigation.

As we head into the next decade, the accessing of information has reached breakneck speed. Thanks to free services like Twitter, you can post an update on your FREE web site and have it sent around the world instantly to anyone who is interested in what you have to say. So I ask, where do we go from here? It sure doesn’t seem like we can get information out to the world any faster. I have even had to cut back on the RSS feeds I read and the people I follow on Twitter, as it just became too unreasonable to digest all the content I was receiving. Will we ever see a decline in the amount of information, or will people continue to jump on the “next big thing” in technology to get their message out?

Check your web sites

Ever wonder if your web site is down? Now, you don’t have to worry whether it’s your own personal blog, or a client’s site. You can offer fast and easy checks as part of your web design services by using this free site, AreMySitesUp.com! I originally signed up for the free account, then recently moved up to the paid upgrade so I could monitor all my sites and get an iPhone app free!!

Sign up now, and let me know what you think. I love being able to instantly check all my sites without having to load them all separately. What will YOU use it for?

Some security for your form

Do you want a little security in your form? Well, there is a tag that you can use to turn off the autocomplete feature in browsers, which keeps users from being able to store private information such as passwords or credit card numbers. This is useful if you are a web developer trying to create a more secure eCommerce site, or a business trying to keep your users from saving their password on a public computer.

<input type=”text” name=”password” autocomplete=”off” />

Let me know what you think and if you try it out, as well other things you use to increase security in forms.