JoshBetz.com v3.0

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For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a new website layout and here it is. The logo at the top actually goes back few months when I started a new design to incorporate my portfolio into this website, but ended up ditching the design. After a recent design job, I decided to give it another go. This time I’m very pleased with the results. I took my time, for the most part, and tried not to rush anything. In the end, I couldn’t wait to push the site live though, and it currently is not completely finished. There are probably a handful of little things to go back and finish along with the only major part of the design to finish, the portfolio page. (more…)

My Workflow: WordPress QuickPress and Recent Drafts

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Until recently I never used the drafts feature in WordPress. When I first installed WordPress 2.7 and saw the QuickPress and Recent Drafts sections on the dashboard I put them at the bottom of the page because I didn’t see why anybody would want to use that tiny editor to write a post, or why anybody would start writing a post, but then save it as a draft to be finished later, or at least any non professional writer.

In the past few weeks, however, these features have combined to help me keep my consistency going a little bit stronger.

When I’m sitting at my desk, I almost always am logged into my blog, checking stats or comments on breaks from working on whatever project I happen to be working on at the time. The dashboard really is quite good for that sort of thing. When I think of a blog post, but don’t really feel like writing it at this moment, I’ll jump down to quickpress and throw some content and a title in there. Just enough so that I remember what the point of the article was. This way I can go back later and see the list of recent drafts and decide if I want to finish off that post and finally publish it to the blog, or let it wait for another day.

Now, instead of posting two or three articles at one time and then waiting a month or 2 (or 3) to write something else, I can publish one, and start another, but wait to finish it another day. I like to think the content gets better too, when I can save it and come back to it and kind of regather my thoughts on the issue.

Side Note: This post was actually started on August 10th.

Getting two domains on one IP

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I recently had a request from someone on how to setup multiple domains on a single IP address. This is something that I’ve thought about doing before, but haven’t taken the time to stop and set it up. After getting sub-domains working, this was a breeze, as it’s the same process. I’m working on an Ubuntu server, so this may be a little different for you.

DNS

First setup the DNS, since it will probably take about an hour for that to update anyway, depending on the TTY that you use. If you’re setting this up and you want to make sure it works, you can edit your /etc/hosts file on a mac or linux machine. I think there’s a way to do this in windows as well, but I’m not sure of what file you’d be looking for. Just remember to delete that entry after you know it works.

To setup the DNS you first need to find the DNS control for the domain registrar that you use. In GoDaddy the option would be called Total DNS. Change the A record to the IP address you want to use as a server and you’re done.

Configuration

Now you need to create a new file in /etc/apache2/sites-available/. Call it whatever you want. I will call it NEWSITE.TLD. In this file you will create a new file that looks similar to this, only substituting information specific to your server:

NameVirtualHost *:80


	ServerAdmin you@your-domain.tld
	ServerName your-domain.tld

	DocumentRoot /var/www/your-root/
	
	
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
		AllowOverride None
		Order allow,deny
		allow from all
	

	ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
	LogLevel warn
	CustomLog /var/log/apache/access.log combined
	ServerSignature On

Now we enable the site with:

sudo a2ensite /etc/apache2/sites-available/NEWSITE.TLD

Reload the apache configuration and you should be good to go.

From GoDaddy to iPower: Switching Webhosts

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I decided this week to switch over my web hosting from Godaddy to iPower. I was a little worried about the process at first, but it was pretty simple and now that it’s all over I’m definitely glad I did it.

I had been thinking about it for over 3 weeks, ever since I got the recommendation. Then a couple weeks ago my blog started being super slow. At first I was worried that it was my design, but even the back-end was going slow. After a little research I came to the conclusion that the GoDaddy MySQL database wasn’t really setup very good for WordPress. I was a little worried because I had just signed up for a two year hosting plan and I didn’t want to be stuck with that service for two more years.

Finally, one day I was just fed up with it and I called tech support to figure out how much money I could get back, if any. The guy I talked to told me that I would be refunded for any unused time, but that they had to manually refund my money. He asked some questions about why I wanted to switch, but I only talked to him for a few minutes.

I backed up my site, setup my my iPower account, and then, after iPower was all setup, I changed the DNS in my GoDaddy account to point to iPower. Then the next day I called GoDaddy and cancelled my hosting account and got 23 months refunded. It was really great. I wish I didn’t have to switch off of GoDaddy, since their customer service was so great, but everything about the experience was slow. Even navigating through their menus was slow with too many steps. When I login to iPower I’m already set to manage my hosting account, but with GoDaddy there were three or four mouse clicks just to get to that point. And with iPower all the options are right there, on one page, whereas with GoDaddy it just feels like everything is more complicated than it needs to be, with too many menus.

One last note: When I first setup my iPower account and I was trying to setup my new blog, it wasn’t working. I didn’t know why at first, but it turns out that CGI scripting wasn’t turned on, so PHP wasn’t working. I went to the support section to submit a ticket for support and within a half hour I had an email explaining what had happened and that the issue had been taken care of. So far the iPower support has also been very good.