Web development , php , ajax , symfony, framework, zend
In: tutorial
14 Mar 2010
Blogging and blogs have been on the forefront for quite some time now. With millions of blogs out there, covering a variety of topics, you can most likely find one that appeals to your tastes. No wonder, weblogs are assets to the readers and owners alike.
That being said, this is the Internet we are talking about here. Hacking and cracking attempts on popular blogs is common. We have had our share of not so pleasant experiences as well. Imagine losing control of your site and/or its contents. So much hard work, so much time you put into it, all put at risk. No one would like to lose such an asset.
Surely there has to be something that can be done to safeguard one’s content and hard work against such attempts.
Well yes, indeed there are preventive measures that you can take like enhancing security. Choosing strong passwords, changing them often, adding additional security plugins, etc. However, as is so often the case, ironically, the only thing certain about security measures is that no security measure is foolproof! So while you should do your best to enhance your website’s security, you should always take regular backups so that in the event of any such attempt you don’t lose all the content that makes your site what it really is.
There are a number of plugins available to back up your Wordpress blog. One that is particularly interesting and feature rich is called “Online Backup for WordPress“. First lets see how you can install and configure it.
The installation is simple as is the case with most WordPress plugins. You can download the plugin here and then upload to your WordPress installation or you can search for the plugin from within the plugins area.

Once installed you should take some time to configure the various options that it has to offer and create a schedule for backups as well. To do so, click on “View Status” for Online Backup for WordPress, listed on the Manage Plugins page.

There you can choose which tables need to be backed up and specify credentials for your free online backup account that you can create to use with the plugin. The account gives you 50MB of storage, which doesn’t sound much at first. However, considering that the backup is highly compressed and the fact that the system is capable of deleting the oldest backup when you reach the 50MB limit, you can rest assured that you will have enough necessary backups in case you need them.

Next, go ahead and create a schedule for the backup. The plugin will backup the required tables automatically while adhering to the said schedule.
In addition to the usual features like compression and encryption, Online Backup for WordPress offers a number of other features as well.

Overall, Online Backup for WordPress is an excellent solution to back up your Wordpress blog. With loads of features and automated online backups you can easily restore your blog back in case things go wrong.
Do you back up your blog or website regularly? What software tools do you prefer?
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In: web resources
11 Mar 2010Roughly 3-4% of our readers view this site via a mobile device and that percentage is growing week-to-week. They aren’t very high percentages but it was certainly high enough to prompt me into action – I started considering a mobile version of this site.
Let me start by saying that I didn’t want it look like an entirely stripped down version of the full site. I did want to keep the overall layout of the hompage (thumbnails and excerpt), I wanted the internal post images to be re-sized per screen rather than cropped, and most importantly, I wanted the essence of the site, albeit in smaller mode, to reflect on the mobile version.
I experimented with a few Wordpress plugins, for some sites these plugins may be powerful enough, but not for me, I wanted more functionality. I also tried a few web services, I wasn’t too happy with them either.
Eventually I chanced upon the solution while browsing WebDesigner Depot on my HTC Hero (much better than the iPhone!), and there mobile site just looked amazing. It has the appearance of a mobile app while still maintaining the integrity and functionality of the full site. I went digging and found out that they were using Mobify, a web service were you can design a mobile layout for your website exactly how you want.
I since discovered that a lot of design blogs were also using Mobify (Smashing Magazine and Abduzeedo to name a couple), so I jumped in and tried it. You can see from the screenshot below what I have built, and it actually wasn’t that hard nor did it test the patience. Speckyboy-Lite looks not too bad:
In case you were wondering what Mobify is all about, have a look at this short video below.
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Google Buzz might have been pushed out too soon, but there are already at least a dozen apps for Google Buzz, most of them unoffical. That’s not a lot, but it’s enough to start BuzzAware, a Google Buzz app directory. BuzzAware is started by the same folks behind Twitdom, a Twitter app directory with more than 1,500 apps.
Some of the apps in BuzzAware include:
If Buzz grows, so will this list of apps.
This blog delivers stylish and dynamic news for designers and web-developers on all subjects of design, ranging from: CSS, Ajax, Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising & much more. Our goal is to help you communicate effectively on the web with an engaging website or functional interface.



