Questions
How to Choose the Right Web Hosting Provider
Dec 6th
The following post was written by Melissa Schraiber of FatWallet.com. We were not paid to post this and apparently we share a love for HostGator!
Check it out below:
In today’s digital world, it is vital to have a web presence. The success of a website is directly related to its hosting, so finding the right host should always be the first step. The following list outlines the attributes of a good host.
Cost versus Value
There are many hosts who promise to deliver unlimited bandwidth and disk space along with 100 percent up-time, for a very low monthly fee. There is no such thing as unlimited in the hosting world and no host has perfect performance. There are often strings and hidden catches attached to such claims, as well.
A good host will have clearly defined limits on resources and will offer several levels of service for different needs. Those just starting out will benefit from GoDaddy promotional codes, which can be found online.
Technical Support
A proper host will offer support by phone, live chat and email. Support services should be available every day of the year, 24 hours per day.
A good way to test the level of a prospective host’s support is to contact them with pre-sales questions. How fast and well the company responds will reveal the quality of the service overall.
Uptime
Uptime is important to anyone hosting a site but especially so to businesses. Downtime equals lost revenue and reputation, so it needs to be avoided as much as possible. It should be noted that equipment and power failures happen and sometimes this is beyond the control of the host.
Quality hosts will offer 99.999 percent uptime over the course of one year, which would amount to roughly six minutes of downtime. This claim will be backed by a Service Level Agreement, which will provide a credit to the customer if uptime slips below the stated percentage.
Scalability
All websites need room to grow and this is where scalability comes in. A host should make make expanding and upgrading as painless an experience as possible.
A stable, established host offering services ranging from budget all the way up to dedicated servers is a good choice. Moving an account to a bigger hosting package or even a new server should take place with a few clicks and little to no downtime.
Along with the above guidelines, anyone considering hosting a site should first carefully consider the present and future needs of that site before embarking on the search for the right host.
What do you use for a web host? Do you have any questions? Hit us up in the comments below…
How do I mute a Windows Live Meeting Phone Conference via A Normal Phone.
Mar 23rd
Today I had to connect to a Windows Live Meeting without my headset. So I had no normal way of muting and unmuting my call. I went and searched. It took me some time but I finally found some codes that can help. Basically I needed to type *6 to mute my voice and *6 to unnmute when I wanted to speak.
When connecting to any type of Microsoft Conference call via a normal touch tone telephone you can make use of the following touch tone shortcut keys:
- Chairperson codes:
- #1 Participant roll call
- #2 Participant count
- *2 Stop audio playback
- *5 Mute/unmute participant lines
- *7 Lock/unlock conference
- *8 Record start/stop
- ## End conference
- Chairperson and participant codes
- *0 Operator assistance
- #0 Conference help menu
- *6 Mute/unmute own line
Recover your lost Windows 7, XP, Vista or 2000 Passwords.
Jul 7th
I orginally wrote about this way back when in 2006 when AskTheAdmin was just born. Now here I am 4 years later writing about the same tool! This is not just any tool though this is the Offline NT Password Recovery Boot CD. By downloading this ISO and burning it to a cd – you can then boot to this CD and change or blank out passwords by loading the SAM database offline hence the name offline password recovery.
It is as simple as booting to the CD, choosing the account and doing the deed. You write your changes back to the drive and reboot.
When you are back at the Windows login screen you will now be able to use the password you enetered or a blank password (just hit enter)
Here are the links to download the image:
- cd100627.zip (~4MB) – Bootable CD image. (md5sum: 6d80cdfbba97457e413f95a3554d9524 cd100627.zip)
- cd080802.zip (~3MB) – Previous version CD image. (md5sum: 33ecd38263f935b82e7b2e3e9f5de563)
and there is even a Floppy Disk release that is no longer updated:
Floppy release (not updated anymore), see below on how to use them
- bd080526.zip (~1.4M) – Bootdisk image (md5sum: 37889e4c540504e59132bdcdfe7f9bb7)
- drivers1-080526.zip (~310K) – Disk drivers (mostly PATA/SATA) (md5sum: 72ac1731c6ba735d0ac2746a30dbc3ee)
- drivers2-080526.zip (~1.2M) – Disk drivers (mostly SCSI) (md5sum: 30172bec657c85a5f1a0b43601452fb7)
This CD has saved my ass a number of times! Do you have another method of recovering lost passwords? We would love to hear about them in the comments! You can also check out their website for FAQ’s and other helpful hints here.
Have you seen this post on opening a command prompt during a windows install? Using this you can start a recovery install jump to a command prompt and run:
control userpasswords2
and bingo bango you can change your passwords!
Using AppLocker on Windows 7 to lock down what applications can run.
Jan 14th
This is a Windows 7 only feature don’t be jealous…
Do you want to lock down what applications the kids can run on your shinny new Windows 7 computer? Well they have a little known feature built into the latest and greatest version of Windows. It takes a little know how to get it going but that is what we are here for – right?
First set up the machine in question with the applications you want on it. Install the versions you want to run. Then we will need to open up the Group Policy editor or Local Security Policy Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in.
- Click Start, type secpol.msc in the Search programs and files box, and then press ENTER.
- In the console tree, double-click Application Control Policies, and then double-click AppLocker.
- Right-click Executable Rules, and then click Create Default Rules.
- AppLocker rules are automatically created .
To get into AppLocker and more advanced setups check out this page from Microsoft entitled AppLocker step by step scenarios http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee791835%28WS.10%29.aspx.
Find out who is unfollowing you on Twitter.
Jan 12th
You ever have a conversation with someone, or perhaps stood in front of a group of people and in the middle of whatever you are talking about, someone gets up and walks out. It hurts a little, and is rather rude. Well, unfollowing people is sort of like that.
Granted, sometimes it is warranted. I mean, I have posted about tools to do mass unfollows to keeps your Twitter stream nice and fresh, but you don’t want people unfollowing you right? I mean, you are not a spam bot, so people should stick around to hear what you have to say right? Double standard much? That is besides the point.
Well, here are two tools that will snitch when someone unfollows you so you know who the jerks are:
- Goodbyebuddy: Goodbyebuddy will DM you when someone unfollows you. So far they claim to have busted over 2759413 unfollowers. To use this service, all you have to do is follow @GoodByeBuddy.
- Twitterless.com: Twitterless tells you who stops following you and graphs your follower history over time, making this info available in a variety of useful views. Once again, all you have to do is follow them to get started. @tless.
Know of any other Twitter tools to give you the goods on those walking out on you? Let us know in the comments!
[Via Bauer-Power.net]
Open Windows Control panels from the command line.
Jan 12th
So Johnny command line needs to be cool and open his computer management console or maybe just his services how can he do it?
Here you go little Johnny Command Line:
- Computer Management – compmgmt.msc
- Component Services – comexp.msc
- Disk Managment – diskmgmt.msc
- Device Manager – devmgmt.msc
- Disk Defrag – dfrg.msc
- Event Viewer – eventvwr.msc
- Group Policies – gpedit.msc
- Local Security Settings – secpol.msc
- Local Users and Groups – lusrmgr.msc
- Performance Monitor – perfmon.msc
- Resultant Set of Policies – rsop.msc
- Shared Folders – fsmgmt.msc
- Services – services.msc
And for the n00bs hit Start—Run—type anyone of these commands (include the .msc extension) and viola… Console Magic
