PC tips and tricks» Personal http://www.pctipstricks.com Free, well explained, expert tips and tricks to make you more productive using your PC and have fun. Thu, 09 Sep 2010 07:40:23 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc http://www.pctipstricks.com http://www.pctipstricks.com/wp-content/mbp-favicon/computer.ico PC tips and tricks HostGator Hosting – Is It Really Worth? – My Honest Review http://www.pctipstricks.com/hostgator-hosting-is-it-really-worth-my-honest-review/ http://www.pctipstricks.com/hostgator-hosting-is-it-really-worth-my-honest-review/#comments Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:27:50 +0000 rajeshmago http://www.pctipstricks.com/?p=525 Post from: PC tips and tricks

HostGator Hosting – Is It Really Worth? – My Honest Review

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So, what am I going to tell you today? No, it’s not about PC’s or anything related to them! It’s a little bit of sales talk because I am recommending a product for my friends looking for a first class quality hosting for their would be websites/blogs.

Why I am writing this is because I love recommending products that I am using and finding good. Good if it makes some money too as I am sharing my true experience that would definitely help you in not burning your pcokets trying low qualtiy hosting here and there. I am advising something that can be probably tried risk free. The time that you save by reading this review is worth the money that I get in the form of some commission if you buy the recommended product from my affiliate link. I am sure that even if you research more about this hosting company you would find good reviews about them.

My experiences about HostGator Hosting are true and I am not doing it primarily for money sake. It’s really good and hence it is worth recommending.

My blog – http://www.pctipstricks.com is hosted with HostGator from more than one year and I never had any problems from their side.

I faced two problems and I found it really nice that HostGator gave me the support to understand and sort them out within few hours. The problems were not at their end. The issues that I face are explained:

1. When I took Baby Crocodile hosting costing at $9.95 per month, I somehow placed an extra dot while filling my domain name – http://www.pctipstricks.com in the form. The domain thus became www.pctipstricks..com (notice an extra dot) in HostGator records. This happened as I didn’t notice that there was no need of putting a dot in the domain name field in the form.

When I uploaded the files and could not access http://www.pctipstricks.com, I understood the problem from the screen shots that I had on my PC of filling the HostGator hosting form.

I contacted HostGator support via chat and the Support Executive got it sorted out from within minutes. Impressive!

2. The second problem was observed by me few months later and what was happening was that my site pctipstricks.com was not getting loaded properly – it was taking a lot of time and images were broken etc. All other sites were getting displayed properly on the same PC. Yes, I cleared my browser cache and deleted offline files and refreshed my browser and tried multiple browsers but pctipstricks.com was not getting displayed properly. I was worried as my blog visitors must be getting irritated and leaving my blog. When I pinged www.pctipstricks.com there were intermittent Request Timed Out (packet drops) and all other sites that I normally use – www.google.com, www.yahoo.com were getting pinged properly.

I thought it to be a problem at HostGator end and thus sent an email to HostGator support at support@HostGator.com with my primary domain and the details of problem. Sending an email with the details was advised by the Support Executive on chat and the backend support team responded well within 24 hours showing screen shots of my site being reachable from all over the world without any issues.

It finally turned out to be some problem with my ISP – SIFY.

I have never seen any downtime so far with my blog hosted with HostGator in a period of about 20 months till today.

According to my experience, the most important factor while taking hosting is the support and I have myself tested it and found it excellent.

One can probably spend countless hours troubleshooting a website/blog problem at his/her end without any support from the Hosting Company.

Remember a hosting company has thousands of customers and it is always advisable to contact them if you are not able to solve a site related issue despite your best efforts (two of the problems are explained above). HostGator offers all the features that are needed for running different types of websites, Content Management Systems (CMS) and scripts:

- Fast servers with Linux or Windows OS
- Adequate storage compared to other hosting providers
- Sufficient Bandwidth (Data transfer) at par with other competitors
- Apache
- PHP (website design language)
- MySQL (Needed for database building and storage of records)
- CPanel (Control panel to administrate your hosting pack)
- Fantastico (Scripts for installing applications)
- Easy CMS installation from the HostGator CPanel
- Sub domains (Example: xyz.abc.com or abc.com/xyz)
- Email accounts management and access etc.
- FTP (File Transfer Protocol) for uploading and downloading files
- Redirection
- File manager
- Comprehensive statistics (To track your site visitors)
- Error logs etc. (To troubleshoot a problem with your site/blog)
- Video tutorials (To help you understand everything important for your website hosting)

and above all quick and expert 24 hours support by chat or email depending on the problem. There are many other important hosting features that you will definitely find with HostGator hosting that will make your website and blog design and management easier.

HostGator has the best hosting facilities and offers top features for their hosting pack compared to other hosting companies. If you feel that I am boasting a lot, try searching it yourself. Even if some other new company is claiming to offer more features than HostGator at lower cost, I would not go with them as I also see the customer trust and market reputation of the hosting company. I will never go with a hosting company that is new and doesn’t have many customer reviews. I won’t go into the details of the HostGator hosting packs as you can find it out yourself by clicking the following link:

http://www.hostgator.com

One of their clickable banners as I love posts with pictures:

HostGator Hosting

Irrespective of the fact that you go for HostGator hosting or not, I wish your websites or blogs all the SUCCESS!

BTW – Do you know what gator stands for? It means amphibian reptile similar to crocodile. So, HostGator eats up all the hosting competition in the hosting market with best services for their customers.

If you buy HostGator hosting through my link, just let me know so that I can track it and also help you in best possible way from my hosting experiences. Drop me few details about your hosting and your contact at:

http://www.pctipstricks.com/contactme/

Let me know your experiences of hosting or drop me lines about this post.

Happy hosting!

Rajesh Mago

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]]> http://www.pctipstricks.com/hostgator-hosting-is-it-really-worth-my-honest-review/feed/ 5 Learn From My Experience And Save Your Time In Choosing The Right WordPress Theme! http://www.pctipstricks.com/learn-from-my-experience-and-save-your-time-in-choosing-the-right-wordpress-theme/ http://www.pctipstricks.com/learn-from-my-experience-and-save-your-time-in-choosing-the-right-wordpress-theme/#comments Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:00:06 +0000 rajeshmago http://www.pctipstricks.com/?p=414 Post from: PC tips and tricks

Learn From My Experience And Save Your Time In Choosing The Right WordPress Theme!

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Themes or templates are the group of files that gives look and overall structure to your site – the background, the top (header), the bottom (footer), sidebar (left and right), font type, font color, number of columns, RSS box, email subscription box, photo box etc. of your site or blog. A theme is the stem or base of the blog or site and gives a visual appearance and usability of various features to the site visitor.

I recently changed the theme of my WordPress blog to Firebug to make it more professional looking and addition of more features. I spent a lot of hours in choosing the right theme after blogging for months and managing somehow with Gangway theme.

Old Gangway theme used at my blog - pctipstricks.com

Present Firebug theme used at my blog - pctipstricks.com

If you are looking for a theme for your WordPress blog, then you can learn from my experience. So, here goes the tips for choosing the right one:

1. Choose A Professional Theme That Suits Your Blog Or Site Personality

Try choosing a theme that suits your blog type, example – choose a video type theme for video blog, news theme for news types of sites and so on.

I couldn’t find a good free theme as per my liking specifically with computers pictures and features for my blog – pctipstricks.com

While selecting the best theme for your blog, make sure that the background and font color and its size etc. is nice and the overall look of the theme is appealing. It should neither be too small nor too big not to properly fit the browser window in normal browser resolutions of 1024×768.

2. Try Finding A Free Theme And Make Sure It’s Bug Free!

I found a lot of good themes for free by using “Free WordPress themes”, “Free premium WordPress theme”, “Creative Common Licensed Theme” and “GPL WordPress themes” in search engine. You can use the same and some other matching keywords (no cost, best public domain etc.) to have a look at the ones that comes from the search results.

Personal and small company bloggers can definitely manage their blog with these free themes saving them money. The point one should not forget while choosing one of the free theme there mustn’t be any/too many bugs in it. The comments at the developer site will show you how stable and good the theme is. If the developer is not fixing the bugs reported by the people and people are cribbing about it, then there is no point in going for that theme. Or, if you like that theme the most, you can download and fix it – either yourself or from a programmer by posting the project at freelancing sites.

3. Go For A Three Column or May Be Four Column Widgetised Theme

Choosing a theme with more columns gives you more flexibility in making changes in the structure of your blog like putting more features in it such as ads, banners, translator, top posts, number of feed subscribers, email subscribers count, top commentators etc.

Don’t forget to choose a widgetised theme that lets you add these new features by drag and drop making the features addition process easier.

By having a widgetised theme, you can easily enhance the appearance of your blog by placing code of images and flash etc. and thus the customisation process is easier.

Making a non-widgetised theme widgetised is easy and can be done by placing 3 lines of code but yet I prefer to have a widgetised theme given by the designer. Who wants to fiddle with the php code and spend time in testing and confirming the execution of code if ready made widgetized templates are available? I made Gangway theme widgetised but had problems with addition of features and thus would  now always go for a theme that is already widgetised by its developer.

4. Make Sure That RSS Icon and Email Subscription Boxes Are Available

RSS and Email Subscription features in Firebug

If you don’t want to loose your valuable visitors at your blog/site, then choose a theme that has inbuilt RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and Email subscription boxes in it. I don’t see any point in searching and putting these features later on. Adding RSS icon, RSS box and Email subscription boxes from the very beginning increases your probability of getting more subscribers in your RSS and Email subscriptions database. Visitors and prospective customers are valuable and don’t let them go easily without giving them the option of getting updates of your blog/site through RSS or Email or both.

5. Don’t Forget Making Money By Ads and Banner Boxes

Does it hurt to loose money by not choosing a theme that has place for putting ads and banners (of size 125×125 and more) at your blog? Yes, if you are working hard to bring traffic to your blog by writing good content and making efforts in promoting it.

Don’t wait for the increase of visitors to reach 500 per day (just an example), put these Ads and banners or widgets etc. from the very start as there is no harm in putting them. They can only make you money and who doesn’t love the cash? I didn’t put the ads and banners (Oh! my theme wasn’t having the place to do so and I always felt that I will do it later and never did and I lost money). But I upgraded the theme lately in this process to have these features.

Personally, I like themes that already have the inbuilt slots/provision for About Me, Search bar, Picture, Archives and Recent Posts on the front page.

Some of the free themes in alphabetical order that I really found good and were in competition to the present Firebug theme at my blog are:

- BizFresh

- Blogging Experiment

- Iphone Theme

- True Elegance (has place for video and google ads)

- WordPress Vibrant

You will be able to find the download links of these free WordPress themes by searching with their names given above.

Let me now if these tips helped you anyway in selecting the right theme for your blog. If you have more suggestions for choosing the right theme or template – free one, don’t forget to share it over here.

Cheers!

Rajesh Mago

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]]> http://www.pctipstricks.com/learn-from-my-experience-and-save-your-time-in-choosing-the-right-wordpress-theme/feed/ 4 Wishes To All Of You For A Prosperous 2009! and My New Year Agenda http://www.pctipstricks.com/wishes-to-all-of-you-for-a-prosperous-2009-and-my-new-year-agenda/ http://www.pctipstricks.com/wishes-to-all-of-you-for-a-prosperous-2009-and-my-new-year-agenda/#comments Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:53:24 +0000 rajeshmago http://www.pctipstricks.com/wishes-to-all-of-you-for-a-prosperous-2009-and-my-new-year-agenda/ Post from: PC tips and tricks

Wishes To All Of You For A Prosperous 2009! and My New Year Agenda

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It’s the first day of a new year – 2009. I am excited and filled with new hopes and energy as other people. Oh! It’s the normal tendency of human beings to get excited on arrival of new things and it subsides with time. But when it comes to achieving goals, some of the people don’t let this energy and excitement die till they achieve their targets. Great! Isn’t it?

Coming back, kindly accept my heartiest wishes for a very happy and prosperous 2009!

Today is the great day for me to start fresh and analyze what I need to do differently so that 2009 really becomes special. So many years have passed and I have grown and personally improved myself but yet I am not perfect and need more personal growth. This will continue forever as I can never be 100% perfect and would always compete to be more efficient and a better person :)

I am writing this post pondering about what is the most crucial thing to begin from my side. I am not making new resolutions as I have not fulfilled all the old ones :)

However, I will definitely be concentrating and working on following:

- Personal Improvement

Anger control, channelization of energy in right direction, time management, handling information overload by taking more action rather than researching planning and reading.

- Posting More And Improving The Quality And Outlook Of The Blog

I made a total of 44 posts in 2008 and almost all of them were long (> 750 words) and their main target was to help the readers by detailed steps and relevant screenshots. These posts were not like 250-300 word posts commonly posted at most of the blogs to increase the number of posts rather than imparting complete information to the reader and keep them guessing what to do.

Leaving the self praise, I will definitely be improving the design and outlook of the blog to make it more attractive.

- Monetization

I will also be monetizing the blog as I haven’t earned anything from it till now. I have invested time( > 200 hours), energy and money and it doesn’t make business sense to run the blog for free.

I have almost not posted any ads as they distract the reader and can mislead to buy a wrong product. Well, it seems that I won’t have any other option as I can’t continue like this for always.

In case, I go for generating revenue through ads through publisher programs etc., I would advise readers to take care of the purchases that they made by clicking the ads, banners etc. at my blog, without any relevant details about them given by me. Please do the research yourself before investing any money. Till now, I have posted OnSpeed and RevResponse affiliate ads; these are:

http://portal.onspeed.com/?rf=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.onspeed.com%2Findex.php&A=CJ

http://pctipstricks.tradepub.com/?pt=cat&page=Comp

I will also continue posting affiliate and recommended offers that I have found ok and are more safer for you. Some of the offers will be free and others the paid ones. If you buy through my link, you are indirectly helping yourself as I also love being rewarded for my hard work and sharing of knowledge that I have been doing here for almost free. Getting paid through my blog raises my morale and encourages me to share more. Computer consultants charge a lot of money including me too in the offline world. Writing here to help people all over the world simply makes me feel good but I also need some money like others for my hard work, fair enough?

- Bringing More Readers To This Useful Blog!

I know that I am continuing praising myself, but the blog is really useful as I have always tried to share whatever I know of the topic being posted. People have given me positive comments and written to me for free help that I have heartily acknowledged and assisted them for solving PC related issues as and when my time has permitted (free till few days back).

Presently, I am receiving on average of 80 hits per day at my blog and I would like to make it reach more than 1000 hits per day by end of 2009. It’s possible and I will prove it. The present traffic statistics of my blog are posted:

My blog - pctipstricks.com traffic stats till 1st January 2009

I wish you all again a very happy and fun filled 365 days of 2009! May all your nice dreams come true through your luck, planning, hard work,

action and whatever else it takes to make them a true reality.

What are your plans and goals for 2009 and how are you going to achieve it? Do share them over here.

All the best!

Take care,

Your friend,

Rajesh Mago

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