Remote Sharing Tool – What to use?

by Ricardo R. on July 17, 2010

Computer Networks, is hard to think about how things worked in the past, but a fact is that you ‘have to’ be connected! Remote sharing is real, just make sure your scenario is secure.

Arguments come across about benefit and drawbacks on so many available tools and you’ll end up hearing a lot about ‘Log me in’, Teamviewer and the legendary VNC.  All this tools are ‘free to try’ and some will let you run a non-commercial version at no charge.

I’ve tried them all and highly recommend Teamviewer.

- VNC (the whole family: RealVNC, TightVNC, UltraVNC, etc ) are good tools, that’s not an argument, but these ones specifically apply better to a more secure network scenario where you’ll be working on an internal network or accessing one through a secure VPN (Virtual Private Network).

Let’s go over the other two that are specifically design to work on the internet overcoming most firewalls.

- Log me in is not bad but be prepared to spend some time creating accounts for you and the people that you’ll be sharing with AND some configuration time.  Once everything is set up you’ll be helping others and sharing contents without mayor limitations.

Opposite to the VNC family, this tool relays on the internet so all the computers involved in your sharing scenario got to have http (port 80) enable so they can access the Internet.

- Teamviewer, AWESOME!  This wonderful tool has to be installed either from their site Teamviewer.com or downloaded it and installed from your local computer.  After that you’ll only need to exchange ‘Session ID’ and four digit password with your sharing partner and that’s it, you’ll be enjoying a share session at no time without going through any special configuration.

You should purchased the paid version for special setting as working with Windows servers, configure static password when you are accessing a remote system without a partner present on the other side, etc, but overall as for Internet sharing and online working this is definitely the way to go.

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Hostgator: web hosting for WordPress

by Ricardo R. on July 12, 2010

How many hosting companies have you tried? I’ve been a GoDaddy reseller and customer for many, many years until I started working with WordPress.  Is hard to say that is something wrong with GoDaddy but I can tell that when it comes down to WordPress there’s something very good about Hostgator.

Most of my WordPress customers are using Hostgator hosting service and a lot of people (including me) have reported WordPress to behave extremely slow sometimes on GoDaddy’s servers.  Not to mentioned the not so infrequently message “HTTP Error 500 Internal server error…”.

Hostgator is THE most recommended hosted service for WordPress so I guess they should have done some kind of optimization for this platform. Not to mentioned the very helpful 24/7 live chat support that will send you via email the chat transcript after filling a quick survey at the end of each chat session.

Altougth Bluehost and other hosting service seem to use a similar platform for WordPress they can’t compete with Hostgator’s great customer service.  Let’s admit it, Hostgator is not the cheapest hosting service but is only a few bucks more and is worth every penny.

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Have you ever wonder what tool to use for WordPress & Twitter integration?

by Ricardo R. on July 1, 2010

If you’ve done your homework you’ll find many applications to integrate your blog with your social sites.  I’ve tried a few and  learned that not all plugins work as they are supposed to, but I found one that does it: ‘Twitter tools” from Crowd Favorite

This plugin works as a charm, you just need to install it and configuration is as basic as providing the plugin with your twitter access information.  That’s it, hit the ‘update twitter tools options’ button and you are done.

You’ll start automatically (and literally in a matter of seconds) posting from your blog to your twitter and vice versa.  *Everything* (and I’ll get back to this word shortly) you published in your blog will be posted to your twitter account without any other action from your side.

They also offer a cool sidebar widget that ‘Post Tweet’ for you.  After pressing the button  your post will be  sent immediately to your tweeter account. This will obviously be published back to your site not long after showing on your tweeter page.

What if you just want to integrate selected post and not *everything*? (I told you I was coming back on this word).  Well CrowdFavorite though about that too.

Check your inactive plugin list and you’ll see a module called ‘Twitter Tools – Exclude Category“.  As you just guessed this will let you select categories that won’t be passed to your twitter page (just don’t forget to categorized your posts).

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Oversized Paypal button on Thesis theme

by Ricardo R. on June 30, 2010

If you’ve developed Thesis theme base sites integrating Paypal payment methods you may have run into a plugin called ‘”WP Easy Paypal Payment Accept”.

Let me tell you, the plug-in is great. It let you add Paypal icon to your sidebars with or without a drop down listing specific priced items as shown here.

You can also add data entry fields for visitors (buyers) to enter a not listed amount and to be filled with information relevant to the payment.

This plugin is not only for sidebars but can also be used on Page and Post just by copy-pasting this short code: <!– wp_paypal_payment –>. Here’s where you’ll find the issue: Paypal button is oversized and won’t look good!

If you are looking for the cure to this healing, is not really hard at all.  If you are developing with Thesis, chances are you are very familiar with ‘Customs File Editor’ under ‘Thesis’ in your Dashboard so I won’t bore you with details about how to get there but this solution is as simple as edit your ‘custom.css’ file by pasting the following lines of code at the end of the file:

input[type=image] {
width: auto;
border: 0;
background: transparent;
}

Cheers ;)

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