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  • Cheapest High Available Web Server [closed]

    - by xyz
    I would like to create a high-available setup (e.g. a small cluster) for a webserver, i.e. it will run Apache, PHP and MySQL. There will be between 2-8 small websites running with only very little traffic and workload. High availability is however very important. I don't want to be dependent on 1 datacenter, so there must be a minimum of 2 servers placed in different datacenters, and if one server goes down, the user must experience no or only a minimum of downtime - and no data loss. I have considered Amazon AWS using their Elastic Load Balancing, since it is possible to buy 2 EC2 instances in 2 availability zones and set up load balancing and RDS (Multi-AZ). However this seems rather expensive. Using the AWS price calculator http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html it totals to 185$/month the first year (including the free tier). Are my calculations incorrect or is there a cheaper way to make this HA setup? Best regards

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  • How to Program AWS Spot Instances to Strategically Bid So the Auction is Never Lost Until a Competitor Beats the Maximum I'm Willing to Pay?

    - by Taal
    I believe I'm in the right section of stack exchange to ask this. If not, let me know. I only use Amazon Web Services for temporary type hosting services, so the spot instances are quite valuable to me. I would also just make an instance and start and stop it - but - that doesn't necessarily fit my bootstrapped budget sadly. Anyways, it really kills me when someone outbids me on a spot instance I have (I tend to go for the larger ones which there are fewer of available) and I get randomly kicked off. I know or at least I believe there is a way to program in something somehow to dynamically change your bidding price to beat a potential competitor's if their's is higher than yours. Now, I previously believed Amazon would just charge me for the highest price right above the next lowest competitor automatically (eliminating the need for this) - so if I bid too high, then I only pay what I would of needed to in order to win and keep the auction. Essentially, I thought my bid price was my max bid price. Apparently, according to my bills and several experiments I've done - this is not the case. They charge me for whatever I bid even when I know there is no one else around to counter bid me. I needed to clarify that, but let me get back to the main point: Let's say I'm bidding $0.50, competitor comes in and bids 0.55 cents. I get kicked off. I want to have it to where I'd set a maximum I'm willing to pay (let's say $1.00 here), and then when competitor comes in and tries to bid $.55, my bid is dynamically adjusted to beat his at $0.56 up until he breaks my $1.00 threshold. I've been reading the guides and although they are more or less straightforward, I feel like they leave a few holes in them that end up confusing me. Like, for instance, where do I input said command or when do I do it? Maybe I'm just tech illiterate and need help deciphering these guides. A good start for someone willing to answer/help me decipher this problem would be here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/spot-as-update-bid.html

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  • Professional WordPress Business Themes

    - by Matt
    Every now and then JustSkins.com receives quote requests for WordPress design for business websites. Most companies now keep up to date with a blog on their corporate website, that showcases their day to day activities & progresses.  Getting such professional wordpress driven website designed from the scratch costs you a lot. If you have decided to make WordPress the CMS for your business website, there are some Professional WordPress themes you can take a look at. We have created this list to help you save some time to do all the trying and the testing. Optimize by WooThemes Last year one of the most popular Business theme by WooThemes was the Coffee Break theme, Optimize is further adaptation of the same. It is simple, sleek design with great functionality. The customizable front page lets you showcase your work or product etc. Demo | Price: $70, Developer Price: $150 | DOWNLOAD WooThemes is also offering their whole Business theme pack for a very very reasonable fee, If you like multiple designs from them you can get this big deal for only $125 Onyx , Impacto by Simple Themes Simple Themes has been making very crisp & beautiful WordPress Themes & are also very reasonably priced. If their themes solve your purpose $39 membership for 3 months is a good deal.  If you are looking to create quick website, landing page or micro site their templates are best. Demo | Price: $39 for 3 Months Membership Rejuvenate by Templatic One of the most beautiful Premium WordPress Theme, Available in 4 elegant color schemes. This theme can be used for your Beauty, Spa and Studio Business. Demo | Price: $65  | DOWNLOAD Templatic has created great professional business templates, such as Gourmet, Real Estate, Job Board, Automobile & lots More. You can also get a Best Value Offer in $299 for all of Templatic Themes. TheProfessional by ElegantThemes Elegant Themes is known to provide very beautiful & straightforward designs. The professional wordpress theme is a simple, crisp & concise Theme you can use to create a business website. The 3 short blurbs on the homepage are simple, which can be used to point them to your major offerings and the prominent slider indicates a clear call to action. There are 52 themes to choose from & Elegant Themes is giving a great offer at such a small yearly fee. Demo | Price: $39 Yearly Membership  | DOWNLOAD Elegant Themes has a cluster of 52 magnificent themes, and all you have to do is pay $39 to win access to all of them. Join today! Some of the Professional designs that I like for a business website are SimplePress and Corporation. Extatic by Chimera Themes The theme includes plenty of great features including custom feature tour pages, portfolio sections, static feature areas, pricing table page, 20+ shortcodes, multiple page/post options, unlimited custom sidebars which can be assigned to posts/pages, advanced theme style editor and options page and much more. Its a must buy Demo | Price: $37 | DOWNLOAD Corporate by Clover Themes Simple Theme for a small business. Corporate is an clean, powerful and feature-rich corporate theme with dynamic and energy design. Demo | Price: $69.95 | DOWNLOAD Bizco by Themify Bizco is a very professional template for wordpress targeted at corporate and product based businesses. This theme is simple yet highly functional and is suitable for showcasing features of your service or product. With the custom page template you can change the display of your pages and posts easily with our visual custom panel. Demo | Price: $70  |DOWNLOAD Devision by Themetrust Devision is a small business wordpress theme that can be used to make a business website within a few minutes. It makes it very easy to showcase and highlight your services or product on the homepage. Demo | Price: Euro 39 | DOWNLOAD BizPress by WPZoom A professional business WordPress theme from WPZoom suitable for companies, organizations, product showcases or other business websites. The theme comes with 4 colour options, featured products / services slider on the homepage, drop down menus, theme options page etc. Demo | Price: $ 69 | DOWNLOAD Clean Classy Corporate by ThemeFuse A very impressive WordPress business theme, that can be used in multiple ways. It is suitable for many kinds, like web products, services, hosting etc etc. Clean Classy Corporate WordPress Theme has a clean crisp look and is professional in appeal. Demo | Price: $49  | DOWNLOAD Insdustry by ThemeJam A powerful Business WordPress Template along with lots of options, colors, and customizable features. This is one for almost any kind of blogger, corporate, or organization. Lots of features, gives it the kind of scalability you might need to create any kind of website. Demo | Price: $ 59 | DOWNLOAD AppPress by ChimeraThemes This professional business WordPress theme includes 5 different colour schemes, advanced theme options page, multiple homepage sliders, custom widgets and page templates. The theme also includes a range of other unique features such as custom title, live style editor to modify colours, font styles, sizes etc, and 20+ shortcodes for creating pricing tables, content columns, boxes, buttons and others. Demo | Price: $ 37 | DOWNLOAD Why WordPress Professional Template? You can modify them, these usually come with a lot of fancy features that enable you to create the website as per your usability & choice. In some cases the  Premium WordPress business themes can be accessed through a subscription service. Premium Vs Free WordPress Themes There are very good Free WordPress themes out there that you can use to modify and code further or create what you want, but this possible when you are technically able. On the contrary Premium WordPress business themes offers great features & can save you a lot of time and money. It varies from business to business, some like to keep their website simple while most want to keep cool nifty features and abilities to scale it differently for various sections, products or categories. All this & more is possible with a Professional Business theme that is suitable/close to your needs.

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  • How To Start Your Own Professional Blog with WordPress

    - by Matthew Guay
    Would you like to start your own blog or website?  With a free WordPress  account, it’s free and easy to get started creating your own professional quality blog site. This is the first part in a series on how to create your own professional quality blog site. No, we’re not talking about some cheapo looking blog from Blogger or something on Facebook, but creating a quality blog you can be proud of and present to millions of readers online. WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms, powering hundreds of high-profile websites and blogs around the world.  It’s both powerful and easy to use, which makes it great whether you’re just starting out or are a blogging pro.  To start out with your blogging project WordPress is completely free, and you can use the online interface or install the WordPress software on your own server and blog from there. Getting Started You can start a blog in just a few minutes.  Head over to WordPress.com and click Sign up now on the right-hand side of the main page. Enter a username and password, check that you agree with the legal terms, select the “Gimme a blog” bullet, and click Next. WordPress may inform you that your username is already taken, simply choose a new one and try again. Next, choose a domain for your blog.  This will be the address for your site, and cannot be changed, so be sure to choose exactly what you want.  If you’d prefer your address to be yourname.com instead of yourname.wordpress.com, you can add your own domain for a fee after your blog is setup…but we’ll cover that later. Once you click signup, you will be sent a confirmation email.  While you wait for the email to arrive you can go ahead and enter in your name and a short bio about yourself. When you receive your confirmation email, click the link.  Congratulations; you now have your own blog! You can view your new blog immediately, though the default theme isn’t very interesting without your content and pictures. Back on the page you opened from the email, click Login to access your blog’s administration page and to start adding stuff to your blog.  You can also access your blog’s admin page anytime by from yourname.wordpress.com/admin, substituting your own blog name for yourname. Enter your username and password, then click Log in to get started. Adding Content to your WordPress.com Blog When you sign in to your WordPress blog, you’ll first see the WordPress Admin page.  Here you can see recent posts and comments, and you can see stats of how many people have visited your site.  You can also access all of your blog tools and settings right from this page. To add a new post to your blog, click the Posts link on the left, then click “Add New” either on the left menu or on the top of the Edit Posts page.  Or, if you want to edit the default first post, hover over it and select Edit. Or click the New Posts button on the top of the page.  This menu bar is always visible whenever you’re logged in, so it’s an easy way to add a post. The editor lets you easily write anything you want in a Microsoft Word-style editor.  You can format your text, add lists, links, quotes, and more.  When you’re ready to share your content with the world, click Publish on the right side. To add pictures or other files, click the picture icon beside “Upload/Insert”.  Your free blog account can store up to 3Gb of pictures and documents which will definitely give you a good start. Click Select Files, and then choose the pictures or documents you want to add to your post. When the pictures have uploaded, you can add a caption and choose how to position the picture.  When you’re finished, select “Insert into Post”.   Or, if you want to add a video, click the video button.  You have to add a paid upgrade to upload videos directly, but you can add YouTube and other online videos for free. Click the “From URL” tab, and then paste the link to the YouTube video and click Insert into post. If you’re a code geek, click the HTML tab in the editor and edit the HTML of your blog post the geeky way. Once you’ve added all your content and edited it the way you want, click the Publish button on the right of the editor.  Or, you can click Preview to make sure it looks right, and then click Publish. Here’s our blog with the new blog post containing a picture and video.  While you’re getting to know you’re way around the controls in WordPress, the Preview feature will be your best friend while you try to organize the content to your liking.   Conclusion It only takes a couple minutes to get started blogging at WordPress.com. Whether you want to write about your daily life, share pictures of your children, or review the latest books and gadgets, WordPress.com is a great place to get started for free.  But we’ve only covered a small portion of the WordPress features…but this should get you started. Check back for more WordPress and blogging coverage coming up soon! Links Signup for a free WordPress.com account Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek SoftwareProtecting Your WordPress Admin Panel From Hackers With .htaccessMake a Backup Copy of your Production Wordpress Blog on UbuntuLinux QuickTip: Downloading and Un-tarring in One Step TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle !

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  • How to point DNS records to Amazon AWS Elastic Beanstalk

    - by Lance
    I just created a new environment with AWS and uploaded a .zip file into elastic beanstalk. I used to have a friend's server host my site instead of GoDaddy so I changed my custom DNS name servers from pointing to my friend's server to GoDaddy's. AWS told me that I need I need to add a CNAME record on GoDaddy and I did. The alias is lance and the host is lance-env.elasticbeanstalk.com. I know that this change can take 24-48 hours to take effect but it's been a day already and when I go to my site, a default page from GoDaddy appears. I'm very new to AWS and would just like to find a way for AWS to host my site other than using Route53.

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  • Windows 2008 R2 AWS CloudFormation Elastic beanstalk configuration

    - by Webmonger
    I'm looking for some configuration advice. I have a need for a load balanced windows environment with shared media across all instances that are hosting the app. The best explanation i can give is that there will be multiple Windows 2008 server with IIS hosting the app going through an ELB to load balance. Users must be able to upload content (images, video etc...) to the site that will be hosted. When a user uploads media it needs to be kept on a shared location so all windows IIS instances can access the files, I can't host the files on S3 because of the app architecture so they need to be in a place where all IIS server will have access. In addition I need to run an update each IIS server instance that updates a local memory cache when SQL data is updated. I was thinking of a configuration like this: [ELB] - [Win 2008 IIS (multiple servers)] - [Win 2008 File & SQL Server(possibly RDS?)] Does this configuration make sense? If not could you provide an idea of how I should configure it. Thanks in advance

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  • Why can't I create an Alias Resource Record Set for an EC2 instance

    - by praterade
    I have been working with AWS for over a year, setting up EC2 instances, domains, ELBs, etc. When I want to assign a subdomain to an EC2 instance, I have to create an elastic IP (that I pay for), then assign a CNAME record to that elastic IP. When I want to assign a subdomain to an ELB (load balancer) instance, I just create an alias resource record set to the ELB. I've read over the docs and don't understand why AWS doesn't support aliasing to instances. Am I missing a key concept here? Wouldn't it be simpler to just alias EC2 instances and skip the whole elastic IP bit?

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  • How can I create multiple identical AWS EC2 server instances with large amounts of persistent data?

    - by mojones
    I have a CPU-intensive data-processing application that I want to run across many (~100,000) input files. The application needs a large (~20GB) data file in order to run. What I would like to do is create an EC2 machine image that has my application and associated data files installed boot up a large number (e.g. 100) of instances of this image split my input files up into 100 batches and send one batch to be processed on each instance I am having trouble figuring out the best way to ensure that each instance has access to the large data file. The data file is too big to fit on the root filesystem of an AMI. I could use Block Storage, but a given Block Storage volume can only be attached to a single instance, so I would need 100 clones. Is there some way to create a custom image that has more space on the root filsystem so that I can include my large data file? Or is there a better way to tackle this problem?

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  • Which AMI to to use for Java/Tomcat/MySQL in Amazon EC2?

    - by Justin
    I originally posted this on stackoverflow.com and it was suggested serverfault.com might be a better place to ask this question. So here goes: I'm trying to determine which Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to use as my Virtual Server in Amazon's EC2. For now, I'll need to choose an AMI that complies with the AWS Free Usage Tier. I want to deploy a Java app that I've been developing using Eclipse on Windows XP, Tomcat 7 and MySQL 5.5. I'm aware that I can choose the Basic 32-bit Amazon Linux AMI. Then I'd manually install Tomcat and MySQL (does MySQL get installed on the image or separately on an Elastic Block Store (EBS)?). Here's the rub, I'm a bit of a Linux noob. I can start Tomcat and tail the logs and such on Linux but I'm not familiar with the install process for Tomcat and MySQL on Linux and commands like sudo and chmod. I'm happy to get more hands on with Linux but I'm short on time right now. Are there AMI's that already have Tomcat and MySQL bundled? The Request Instance Wizard shows 805 Community AMI's that are Free Tier Eligible. 51 of the Free Tier Eligible AMI's have "Tomcat" in their name. I'm willing to consider using Elastic Beanstalk but my research thus far hasn't found any discussion of using MySQL with Beanstalk. The discussions all seem to use Amazon's SimpleDB. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

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  • Wordpress does not create directories?

    - by Marcappuccino
    First I will just tell you how my wordpress hierarchy looks like: /var/www has all of the wordpress files, which is different from how it is normally set up as /var/www/wordpress (symlinked to /usr/share/wordpress). So var/www contains all of the files that /usr/share/wordpress would have, and /usr/share/wordpress is symlinked to /var/www, with an extra /var/www/wordpress symlinked to /var/www to prevent possible compatibility issues. When uploading a file like a favicon or a .zip-ped theme, everything works fine, and when checking if the theme/favicon is uploaded, wordpress shows that it is, and points to a directory that it thinks that it had created, like http:/localhost/wp-content/uploads/2012/..., which it had not, because the uploads folder is empty! And so there is a broken link on the internet and the theme is displayed but it has just plain text (because it had reverted to a plain theme I think) Please help! I am sorry for such a long post but this is really quite a troublesome problem. I have chowned /var/www and /usr/share/wordpress to www-data.

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  • Amazon EC2 - network issues

    - by Algorist
    Hi, We are launching hadoop cluster on amazon ec2 and recently we are having network issues like master unable to connect to slave. We thought the reason is due to amazon throttling the network connections over a limit. So, we tried to establish a connection after a random delay from each slave node. But, that didn't help. Are there any other suggestions? Thank you Bala

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  • Is it better to have AWS EC2 and RDS is the same Availability Zone?

    - by Dan
    I run a web app in an AWS EC2 instance and the database for the app in an RDS instance both in Amazon Web Services Region East-1. However, one of them is in Availability Zone 1a and the other is in 1d. Am I getting all the speed benefits of having both instances in the same "data center" (East-1) even if they are in different Availability Zones, or can I optimize by moving them to the same Availability Zone?

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  • Amazon AWS S3 to Force Download Mp3 File instead of Stream It

    - by Calua
    Hi everybody, I'm using Amazon AWS S3 to put the mp3 file then allow our site visitor to download the mp3 from Amazon AWS. I use S3Fox to manage the file, everything seems working fine until recently we got many complaints from visitor that the mp3 was streamed via the browser instead of displaying browser save dialog. I try for some mp3 and notice that for some mp3, the save dialog box is appear, and for some others they're streamed via browser. What can I do to force that the Mp3 file will be downloaded instead of streamed via web browser.... Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks

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  • 14+ WordPress Portfolio Themes

    - by Edward
    There are various portfolio themes for WordPress out there, with this collection we are trying to help you choose the best one. These themes can be used to create any type of personal, photography, art or corporate portfolio. Display 3 in 1 Display 3 in 1 – Business & Portfolio WordPress Theme. Features a fantastic 3D Image slideshow that can be controlled from your backend with a custom tool. The Theme has a huge wordpress custom backend (8 additional Admin Pages) that make customization of the Theme easy for those who dont know much about coding or wordpress. Price: $40 View Demo Download DeepFocus Tempting features such as automatic separation of blog and portfolio content by template, publishing of most important information on homepage, styles to choose from and many more such features. It also provides for page templates for blog, portfolio, blog archive, tags etc. It has the best feature that helps you to manage everything from one place. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download SimplePress Simple, yet awesome. One of the best portfolio theme. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download Graphix Graphix is one of best word press portfolio themes. It is most suited to aspiring designers, developers, artists and photographers who’d like a framework theme, which has a great-looking portfolio with a feature-rich blog. It has theme option page, 5-color style, SEO option, featured content blocks, drop down multi-level menu, social profile link custom widgets, custom post, custom page template etc. Price: $69 Single & $149 Developer Package View Demo Download Bizznizz It boasts of many features such as custom homepage, custom post types, custom widgets, portfolio templates, alternative styles and many more. View Demo Download Showtime Ultimate WordPress Theme for you to create your web portfolio, It has 3 different styles for you to choose from. Price: $40 View Demo Download Montana WP Horizontal Portfolio Theme Montana Theme – WP Horizontal Portfolio Theme, best suited for creative studios to showcase design, photography, illustration, paintings and art. Price: $30 View Demo Download OverALL OverALL Premium WordPress Blog & Portfolio Theme, is low priced & has amazing tons of features. Price: $17 View Demo Download Habitat Habitat – Blog and Portfolio Theme. Unique Portfolio Sorting/Filtering with a custom jQuery script (each entry supports multiple images or a video) Multiple Featured Images for each post to generate individual Slideshows per Post, or the option to directly embed video content from youtube, vimeo, hulu etc. Price: $35 View Demo Download Fresh Folio Fresh Folio from WooThemes, can be used as both portfolio and a premium WordPress theme. The theme is a remix of the Fresh News Theme and Proud Folio Theme which combines all the best elements of the respective blog and portfolio style themes. View Demo Download Fresh Folio Features: Can be used to create an impressive portfolio. 7 diverse theme styles to choose from (default, blue, red, grunge light, grunge floral, antique, blue creamer, nightlife) The template will automatically (visually) separate your blog & portfolio content, making this an amazing theme for aspiring designers, developers, artists, photographers etc. Unique page templates types for the portfolio, blog, blog archives, tags & search results. Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme Optional Automatic Image Resize, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images Includes Widget enabled Sidebars. eGallery eGallery is a theme made to transform your wordpress blog into a fully functional online portfolio. Theme is perfectly designed to emphasize the artwork you choose to showcase. The design has been greatly enhanced using javascript, and is easy to implement. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download ProudFolio ProudFolio is a portfolio premium WordPress theme from Woo Themes. The theme is for designers, developers, artists and photographers who would like a showcase theme which would depict as a portfolio and also serves a purpose of blog. ProudFolio puts a strong emphasis on the portfolio pieces, allowing for decent-sized thumbnails, huge fullscreen views via Lightbox, and full details on the single page. The theme file also contains a choice of three different background images and color schemes. Price: $70 Single $150 Developer License View Demo Download Features: The template will automatically (visually) separate your blog & portfolio content. An unique homepage layout, which publishes only the most important information; Unique page templates for the portfolio, blog, blog archives, tags & search results. Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme; Built-in video panel, which you can use to publish any web-based Flash videos; Automatic Image Resize, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images; Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery; Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments; Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide; Pretty drop down navigation everywhere; and Widget Enabled Sidebars. Porftolio WordPress Theme A FREE wordpress theme designed for web portfolios and (for now) just for web portfolios. It is coming with an Administrative Panel from where you can edit the head quote text, you can edit all theme colors, font families, font sizes and you can fill a curriculum vitae and display it into a special page. Theme demo and download can be found here Viz | Biz Viz | Biz is a premium WordPress photo gallery and portfolio theme designed specifically for photographers, graphic designers and web designers who want to display their creative work online, market their services, as well as have a typical text blog, using the power and flexibility of WordPress. It is priced for $79.95. Theme Features: Premium quality portfolio template Custom logo uploader to replace the standard graphic with your own unique look from the WP Dashboard Integrated blog component (front images are custom fields and thumbnails, but you can also have a typical blog) Four tabbed feature areas (About Me, Services, Recent Posts, and Tags) Two home page feature photos (You choose which photos to feature using a WP category) Manage your online portfolio through the WordPress CMS Crop two sizes of your work: One for the front page thumbnails and another full size version and upload to WP Search engine optimized. Related posts:14 WordPress Photo Blog & Portfolio Themes 6 PhotoBlog Portfolio WordPress Themes Professional WordPress Business Themes

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  • Customize Your WordPress Blog & Build an Audience

    - by Matthew Guay
    Want to quickly give your blog a fresh coat of paint and make it stand out from the pack?  Here’s how you can customize your WordPress blog and make it uniquely yours. WordPress offers many features that help you make your blog the best it can be.  Although it doesn’t offer as many customization features as full WordPress running on your own server, it still makes it easy to make your free blog as professional or cute as you like.  Here we’ll look at how you can customize features in your blog and build an audience. Personalize Your Blog WordPress make it easy to personalize your blog.  Most of the personalization options are available under the Appearance menu on the left.  Here we’ll look at how you can use most of these. Add New Theme WordPress is popular for the wide range of themes available for it.  While you cannot upload your own theme to your blog, you can choose from over 90 free themes currently available with more added all the time.  To change your theme, select the Themes page under Appearance. The Themes page will show random themes, but you can choose to view them in alphabetical order, by popularity, or how recently they were added.  Or, you can search for a theme by name or features. One neat way to find a theme that suites your needs is the Feature Filter.  Click the link on the right of the search button, and then select the options you want to make sure your theme has.  Click Apply Filters and WordPress will streamline your choices to themes that contain these features. Once you find a theme you like, click Preview under its name to see how your blog will look. This will open a popup that shows your blog with the new theme.  Click the Activate link in the top right corner of the popup if you want to keep this theme; otherwise, click the x in the top left corner to close the preview and continue your search for one you want.   Edit Current Theme Many of the themes on WordPress have customization options so you can make your blog stand out from others using the same theme.  The default theme Twenty Ten lets you customize both the header and background image, and many themes have similar options. To choose a new header image, select the Header page under Appearance.  Select one of the pre-installed images and click Save Changes, or upload your own image. If you upload an image larger than the size for the header, WordPress will let you crop it directly in the web interface.  Click Crop Header when you’ve selected the portion you want for the header of your blog. You can also customize your blog’s background from the Background page under Appearance.  You can upload an image for the background, or can enter a hex value of a color for a solid background.  If you’d rather visually choose a color, click Select a Color to open a color wheel that makes it easy to choose a nice color.  Click Save Changes when you’re done. Note: that all themes may not contain these customization options, but many are flexible.  You cannot edit the actual CSS of your theme on free WordPress blogs, but you you can purchase the Custom CSS Upgrade for $14.97/year to add this ability. Add Widgets With Extra Content Widgets are small addons for your blog, similar to Desktop Gadgets in Windows 7 or Dashboard widgets in Mac OS X.  You can add widgets to your blog to show recent Tweets, favorite Flickr pictures, popular articles, and more.  To add widgets to your blog, open the Widgets page under Appearance. You’ll see a variety of widgets available in the main white box.  Select one you want to add, and drag it to the widget area of your choice.  Different themes may offer different areas to place Widgets, such as the sidebar or footer. Most of the widgets offer configuration options.  Click the down arrow beside its name to edit it.  Set them up as you wish, and click Save on the bottom of the widget. Now we’ve got some nice dynamic content on our blog that’s automatically updated from the net. Choose Blog Extras By default, WordPress shows previews of websites when visitors hover over links on your blog, uses a special mobile theme when people visit from a mobile device, and shows related links to other blogs on the WordPress network at the end of your posts.  If you don’t like these features, you can disable them on the Extras page under Appearance. Build Your Audience Now that your blog is looking nice, we can make sure others will discover it.  WordPress makes it easy for you to make your site discoverable on search engines or social network, and even gives you the option to keep your site private if you’d prefer.  Open the Privacy page under Tools to change your site’s visibility.  By default, it will be indexed by search engines and be viewable to everyone.  You can also choose to leave your blog public but block search engines, or you can make it fully private. If you choose to make your blog private, you can enter up to 35 usernames of people you want to be able to see it.  Each private visitor must have a WordPress.com account so they can login.  If you need more than 35 private members, you can upgrade to allow unlimited private members for $29.97/year. Then, if you do want your site visible from search engines, one of the best ways to make sure your content is discovered by search engines is to register with their webmaster tools.  Once registered, you need to add your key to your site so the search engine will find and index it.  On the bottom of the Tools page, WordPress lets you enter your key from Google, Bing, and Yahoo! to make sure your site is discovered.  If you haven’t signed up with these tools yet, you can signup via the links on this page as well. Post Blog Updates to Social Networks Many people discover the sites they visit from friends and others via social networks.  WordPress makes it easy to automatically share links to your content on popular social networks.  To activate this feature, open the My Blogs page under Dashboard. Now, select the services you want to activate under the Publicize section.  This will automatically update Yahoo!, Twitter, and/or Facebook every time you publish a new post. You’ll have to authorize your connection with the social network.  With Twitter and Yahoo!, you can authorize them with only two clicks, but integrating with Facebook will take several steps.   If you’d rather share links yourself on social networks, you can get shortened URLs to your posts.  When you write a new post or edit an existing one, click the Get Shortlink button located underneath the post’s title. This will give you a small URL, usually 20 characters or less, that you can use to post on social networks such as Twitter.   This should help build your traffic, and if you want to see how many people are checking out your site, check out the stats on your Dashboard.  This shows a graph of how many people are visiting, and popular posts.  Click View All if you’d like more detailed stats including search engine terms that lead people to your blog. Conclusion Whether you’re looking to make a private blog for your group or publish a blog that’s read by millions around the world, WordPress is a great way to do it for free.  And with all of the personalization options, you can make your it memorable and exciting for your visitors. If you don’t have a blog, you can always signup for a free one from WordPress.com.  Also make sure to check out our article on how to Start Your Own Blog with WordPress. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Manage Your WordPress Blog Comments from Your Windows DesktopAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek SoftwareMake a Backup Copy of your Production Wordpress Blog on UbuntuOops! 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  • wordpress plugin for certain tweets

    - by darreee
    Hello I would need to get tweets from my twitter account on my wordpress site. Okey, the basics i could do, but there is one special need. I would need to get only certain tweets. Tweets that have some #hashstag for example only tweets with hashtag #myss would show up on my wordpress site. Is there ready made plugin for this? I have been googlein for hours but have found only basic/normal twitter plugins. Also i would need to able style the feed to look same as my current site. Cheers!

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  • How to set IP address of Amazon EC2 instance to its Elastic IP?

    - by TWord
    Hi, I have an Amazon EC2 instance running and I am installing a program on it that needs to know what the machine's IP address is. Can I set the Elastic IP address to the IP address within the EC2 instance? Its okay if it reroutes data packets somewhere 'outside' and then back to itself, but the software NEEDs me to specify an IP address of the machine its on. I proceeded with the software installation using the "local IP" (10.xx.xx.xx) within the software installation. I don't know if this is the reason why the application is not visible publicly (as I'm trying to determine in the question http://serverfault.com/questions/166946/allowing-web-access-to-an-amazon-ec2-windows-server-2008-instance-running-tomcat)

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  • 5 Useful Wordpress Plugins For Google Adsense

    - by Jyoti
    Google Adsense has become the most popular online contextual advertising program and proper custom integration with Wordpress can help to increase Adsense earnings. Now on this post we have describe 5 useful wordpress plugin for google adsense. Few weeks ago we did a "10 Wordpress Plugins For Google Adsense ". Wordpress allows bloggers to easily [...]

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  • Top YouTube Plugins for WordPress Blogs

    - by Matt
    Smart Youtube Smart Youtube allow you to insert video and playlists into your WordPress post and in your RSS feed. It is perfectly work son Works on iPhone, iPad and iPod etc and issues a sidebar widget for videos as well. WP YouTube WP YouTube act as a a profile editor, where you can set [...] Related posts:WordPress Plugins to Help Make Your Site Responsive 15 Useful SEO Plugins For WordPress The Top 10 WordPress RSS Plugins

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  • 5 Useful Wordpress Plugins For Google Adsense

    - by Jyoti
    Google Adsense has become the most popular online contextual advertising program and proper custom integration with Wordpress can help to increase Adsense earnings. Now on this post we have describe 5 useful wordpress plugin for google adsense. Few weeks ago we did a "10 Wordpress Plugins For Google Adsense ". Wordpress allows bloggers to easily integrate Google Adsense inside wordpress using plugins. Adsense Integrator : The Adsense Integrator plugin supports lot of programs other then adsense like AdBrite, AffiliateBOT, SHAREASALE, LinkShare, ClickBank, Oxado, Adpinion, AdGridWork, Adroll, Commission Junction, CrispAds, ShoppingAds, Yahoo!PN so this can be used when you are looking to have adsense as well as other alternatives. The rest of the features of the plugin are same where you give your adsense code into options field and it get inserted into blog posts. All In One Adsense And YPN : This is one of the most powerful adsense plugin for wordpress. Jut like other plugins, you can use this to insert your ads in the post but the plugin has some really good features like randomness which shows ad at random location in your blog which reduces ad blindness for viewers. You can also stop ads being shown on some pages using tags. Adsense Now : Other then the previous plugins , you can also give it a try to Adsense now. I haven’t used it (I have only used the first two) so its difficult to comment on it. It looks to be a lightweight plugin which insert adsense ads between posts and in posts body. Adsense Manager : Adsense Manager is one of the most popular and used plugin to manage adsense in wordpress blogs. Infact its newer version not only supports adsense, it also supports various other programs like adbrite, Commission Junction, YPN etc which makes it very powerful ad management plugin. You can inject adsense code anywhere in your blog posts as well as can put in different regions of your blog. Easy Adsense : Easy adsense is one of the new wordpress adsense plugin and that is why more feature rich. You can have different code for different themes using this plugin. It also support link units. To know all features, check out the plugin page.

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  • 10+ Useful and Free WordPress PDF Plugins

    - by Ravish
    WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for creating blog. Many bloggers often use PDFs to share their blogs on and offline. PDF (Portable Document Format) is a formal open standard for document exchange. PDF file encapsulate the complete description of document including text, graphics, fonts and more. there are many PDF plugins are [...] Related posts:10 useful SEO Plugins For WordPress 10 Essential WordPress Plugins To Kickstart WP Blog 5 Useful WordPress Plugins For Google Adsense

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  • 8 Free WordPress Instagram Plugins

    - by Ravish
    Instagram is a fast, funny and more beautiful free photo-sharing app. You can transfer a picture or snap as according you by giving a great look to picture. You can share the instagram photos to your friend via any social network site with all update which you have make. There are several WordPress Plugin are [...] Related posts:10 WordPress Plugins For Google Adsense Best & Free 4 Amazon Affiliate Plugins For WordPress Integrating Flickr with WordPress

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  • WordPress mod_rewrite redirect specific folders

    - by Ps Cjef
    As a new user, I'm not allowed to post more than two hyperlinks here. So I have added a space after every http (ignore them and read as full URLs). System: Debian Etch, Apache 2.2 I have a WordPress instance with multiple blogs. I would like to redirect some of the folders based on the year and month, while leaving other folders go to the actual locations. Example: I have archives for a few years, like 2010, 2011 and 2012: http ://mydomain.com/wordpress/myblog/2010/02 http ://mydomain.com/wordpress/myblog/2011/01 http ://mydomain.com/wordpress/myblog/2012/01 I would like to redirect all 2010 and 2011 posts to another blog with the same folder structure: http ://mydomain.com/wordpress/myotherblog/2010/02 http ://mydomain.com/wordpress/myotherblog/2011/01 and so on. I would like to have 2012 and beyond to go to the actual site (http ://mydomain.com/wordpress/myblog/2012/01). I tried mod_rewrite with the following, one rule at a time to test redirection for just one year (and to expand later for other years), and none of them worked! * RewriteEngine is already on since there are some default WordPress rewrites. * RewriteBase is set to http://mydomain.com/wordpress/ . * I put my rule before all the other default WordPress rules are processed. Didn't work solution #1 RedirectMatch 301 /myblog/2010/(.*) /myotherblog/2010/$1 Didn't work solution #2 RewriteRule /myblog/2010/(.*) http ://mydomain.com/myotherblog/2010/$1 [R=301] Didn't work solution #3 RedirectPermanent /myblog/2010/(.*) http ://mydomain.com/myotherblog/2010/$1 I've also tried the above rules with and without a fully qualified URL for the new location. The rewrite log, with log level set to 9, did not provide any useful information. It shows that it looks at the pattern specified against the URL (as mentioned in the rule), but finally what happens is a passthrough to http ://mydomain.com/myblog/ for all URLs or a 500 Internal Server Error. Any ideas on where I could be going wrong or any alternative solutions?

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