Yesterday we compared Squarespace and WordPress, and I indicated that as slick as Squarespace was, 40Tech was going to remain on a self-hosted WordPress installation. Bloggers using a self-hosted instance of WordPress, though, need to make sure that their blogs are secure. That includes making sure that your blog isn’t already compromised. How do you do that? The easiest way to do that is to use external tools to scan your site. There are two that we use here at 40Tech, and recommend.
I first started using WordPress in 2005, several years before the birth of 40Tech. For the uninitiated, when you say “WordPress,” you actually can be referring to two different products. You might be referring to the WordPress blogging platform, that you can download and install on your own web host. That’s what we do here at 40Tech. WordPress can also refer to WordPress.com, a site where you can set up a blog that runs on the WordPress platform. Recently, I wondered if there were a better choice than WordPress, so I gave Squarespace a spin.
If you’re a geek, you may have heard of Markdown. What is it? Markdown is a format that you use to write text that can then be converted to valid HTML. The hallmark of Markdown is that it is easy to read and to write.
If you run a website, you’ve probably run into issues trying to figure out what your site looks like on various devices. If you want a quick way to figure it out, check out Screenfly, a site that lets you see how your site appears on different devices, including desktop, tablet, mobile, and even television. Within each of those categories, you can choose from a variety of devices. For example, if you choose tablet, you can pick between the iPad and four other tablets, including the Motorolla Xoom. Even the desktop selection allows you to choose between several screen resolutions.
One piece of software that Microsoft got right was Windows Live Writer. If you’re a blogger, and don’t want to dig around in HTML (and arguably even if you do), Windows Live Writer is the software that we recommend for your drafting needs. One flaw with Live Writer, though, is that it doesn’t offer a setting to change where your blog posts get saved on your machine. By default, your drafts and recent posts get saved to your user folder, in the \Documents\My Weblog Posts\ directory. What if you want to save your posts elsewhere? You can do this, with a registry hack. Read more
