Working at Home on the Internet

WampServer-A Good Designer and Tweaker Tool

 As most of you already know, I do Computer Consulting for various Internet business applications as well as some problem solving for home business and individual use PC’s. A lot of what I do involves setting up Blogs, Websites, Forums, Shopping Carts and the like.

Going through my daily routine of reading feeds in my RSS feed reader, I came across something that grabbed my attention: Be Brave-Break Your Blog by Michael Martin who was guest posting on ProBlogger. The article itself was quite informative and gave different ways of testing Blogs before, during and after they are set up. If you have been around here for a little while, you know I know how to break a blog. I’m always tweaking and trying new things.

What intrigued me the most was the Last part of the post where he suggests installing WordPress on your computer using WampServer (Windows version). This is a program that allows installation of PHP, Apache and MySQL on your own computer. No need for using your Host to set up and test different templates, plugins and applications live on the web.

I have already downloaded and tested WampServer on my computer with WP and it seems to be working fine so far (just follow the instructions that Michael gives in his post, it’s easier than the “readme” that comes with the .zip file). I can see this being quite useful to developers and “tweakers” alike for such things as WordPress Blogs, Forums, or anything else that uses php, MySQl, or Apache to make things work.

I think this is a keeper. What do you think? Have you tried WampServer on Applications besides WordPress?

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November 27th, 2007 at 05:03pm | Posted by Joe | Management, Organization, Tools | 2 reader remarks | Print This Post

Poll: Do You Use Related Posts on Your Blog?

I have always liked using Related Posts at the end of an article as a reference to things I had written on a particular subject. I feel it adds a little more to the post and it can give the reader, especially new visitors, an idea of where I am coming from at various points on that subject.

I almost gave up. It got to be a little much going through two years worth of posts. Even when I had a good idea of what I wanted to reference, I still had to look through post after post. I just didn’t want to manually go through it all for every post.

I did find a plugin, Cross-references WordPress Plugin by Francesc Hervada-Sala that I am going to try out for a little while to see if it solves the problem of having to spend a lot of time manually looking up old posts.

This weeks poll will try to find out how many of us use related posts on our Blogs.
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

I’ll let you know how the plugin works.

Do you use a plugin for related posts? Do you just slog through all your old posts to find them?

November 19th, 2007 at 06:11pm | Posted by Joe | Plug-ins, Polls, Tools | 7 reader remarks | Print This Post

Six Reasons I’m Using Skype for Business

Ok, I did it!

The other day I asked you guys if Skype might be worth using as a Business Tool. I didn’t get too many replies (only one from Chris Cree who only uses the IM feature at the moment) so, I made a decision based on my gut instinct.

I downloaded Skype... My Skype: joe.hauckes

I think it could be useful because:

1. The basic service is free.
2. Many online business people use it.
3. For a small fee, I can add Skype to phone capability.
4. It gives another dimension to communicating with customers.
5. I can use Skype for conference calls.
6. Video (web) calls could prove useful.

These are a few of the reasons I opted to get the Skype basic service. I can always upgrade if I find that my instincts are correct, that this could be very useful in my Computer Consulting Business.

Are there any other benefits of Skpye I missed? Are there any reasons I shouldn’t use the service?

Call me, joe.hauckes, on Skype any reasonable time (est).

November 5th, 2007 at 02:23pm | Posted by Joe | Resources, Tools, Work at Home | 4 reader remarks | Print This Post