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WordPress Plugins

One of the great things about WordPress is the plethora of plugins available. This is a benefit of working with open source software that has a big following.

Here are some good places to get started looking for plugins.

Google Search for WordPress Plugins

There are some prettey cool plugins out there. Good luck and happy blogging.

The Weather in Space

By Chad Butler Leave a Comment

Didn’t know there was a weather forecast for space, did you? Check out spaceweather.com for the latest and most complete weather report for… you guessed it! Space.

Why would this matter, you ask? Sun spots, solar winds, solar flares, and other occurances in space have a profound effect on the earth and its own weather. Sun spot and flare activity have been known to knock satellites and other electronic devices out of commission. Also, in case you are a “chicken little”, there are reports for PHAs (or Potentially Hazardous Asteroids). If you or your friends are planning a trip to planet or celestial object in our solar system, it would probably be a good idea to be aware of solar winds and solar flares. The resulting radiation could be fatal to you without the protection of the Earth’s atmosphere. For skywatchers, we see solar activity in the form of Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). Spaceweather.com conveniently has an Aurora Report so you’ll know whether you should bother staying up past bedtime or not. There is a plethora of links to related news, space weather, and information that will teach you all you needed to know about the weather outside our atmosphere.

All in all, a very interesting site with useful information. A must have in your bookmarks (or favorites).

WordPress

By Chad Butler 2 Comments

Go figure I almost didn’t write about WordPress. I guess I thought because this blog is powered by WordPress, it wouldn’t really need any further notice. But then I thought some more and figured that I may actually have a series of WordPress posts. I’m working on a couple of themes (just mods of Kubrick, actually) and may try my hand at a couple of plugins.

I’ve been a fan of WordPress since it emerged from being called b2. If you are a blogger, consindering being a blogger, or just like nifty web tools, WordPress is worth a gander. I’ve tested a number of blog tools and found WordPress to be the best, IMO. Now I should say that I only tried free/open source tools so I didn’t consider Moveable Type, which I hear is very nice. And I have more than one place to host my blogs, so I didn’t have to consider the cost of web hosting. If you want totally and completely free, you probably should go to Blogger. It’s not a bad setup and has lots of support (hey, with Google standing behind you, how can you go wrong).

If reliability of your web host is not a factor, you can probably find a free web host. You’ll need one that has PHP and mySQL available to you. I feel like “you get what you pay for” and if it’s free, don’t expect 1. your site to be up 24/7 with 99.9999% uptime and 2. a lot of support. You should be able to find a web host for about a small blog setup for about $5 – $10 / month. If that’s the case, then I’d say definately consider WordPress. It has become evermore popular since its earlier incarnations. Due to its popularity and the fact that it is open source, there have been a great many improvements and there are a wide variety of plugins available. The ease and availability of themes means that you can make it look like whatever you want with ease.

The current version, 1.5, continues their tradition of the “5 minute” install. And I would say that if you are even technologically challenged, as long as you can read, you should have no trouble installing WordPress and be blogging in a matter of minutes. (Of course, for those with a weak stomach when it comes to software, you could always find webhost that offers to set it up for you.)

Version 1.5 available here.

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