Latest Flickr Photos
Stock Quotes
| DIG | 48.09 | ||
| XOM | 84.92 | ||
| PTR | 149.47 | ||
| INDU | 0.00 | ||
| NASDAQ | 2905.66 |
1and1.com
I’ve been using 1and1.com for a couple years now to register “lesser” domains where I didn’t need the extra DNS features or WHOIS protection. Since my previous e-mail provider recently died on me, I was looking around for a new one. It’s been incredibly difficult to find a provider that supports at least two e-mail boxes on a single domain of my choice and charges less than $40/year (most charge $25-$40 per address).
Although I had tried 1and1.com e-mail hosting in the past, I wasn’t impressed. Desparate for a bargain, I decided to give them another look. They only charge $0.99/month for a 2GB IMAP account with webmail. Pretty cheap. I tried it again and found the experience more pleasant than the last time. Although their control panel still sucks, it’s been improved since the last version and is at least bareable now. Although I prefer Horde, their webmail interface is adequate.
They do create a strange random username for your e-mail boxes, although you get to choose the password. Also, it took me a long time to figure out which MX records to use. I found it nowhere in their documentation, and their support never replied. Fortunately, Google came to my rescue.
In the end, it’s a sweet price with the features I need, and the server speed isn’t bad. Their support is non-impressive and their control panel sucks, but for the price, I think it will be swell.
In the process, I also noticed that 1and1.com now offers WHOIS protection for free with domain registration, which is only $5.99! It doesn’t have complete DNS control, but offers a single A record (for a web site) as well as up to four MX and backup MX records. So if that’s all you need, it’s not a bad deal with the free WHOIS protection. For my domains where I want more DNS features, I usually go with namecheap.com.
PHP 5 Released, New Tools from Microsoft
PHP 5 was released, and if that wasn’t good enough, Microsoft is planning to release some swank development tools for ASP.NET. Also, they have a lite version of SQL Server, called SQL Express, that is to compete with the likes of MySQL but with fewer license restrictions (supposedly) than MSDE. Finally, they are also developing a lite version of Visual Studio, called Visual Web Developer, that is a supported follow-up to ASP.NET Web Matrix.
July 13th, 2004 
Web - Development 
Tags: asp.net, microsoft, mysql, php, programming, Software, sql, www, more... Master Pages in ASP.NET
I found a most excellent article explaining how to create page templates (aka master pages) with ASP.NET. It’s pretty simple to use. Support for Master Pages is scheduled to be included with ASP.NET 2.0, but until then this server control works quite well.
Web Hosting Blues
If you hadn’t noticed, my web site has been down for the last several days. My previous web hosting provider decided to take down the server I was on without notice, losing much of my data (as you can see, I lost my blog entries since February). I have since found a new web host. I have made a dramatic change from past hosts – I’m now hosting on Windows 2003. Even thought I’m a Linux geek, most Windows hosts give you everying the Linux hosts do (minus IMAP), plus you get ASP, ASP.NET, and Microsoft SQL Server. My new host even supports ColdFusion and Java Servlets. It’s going to be a long road ahead…
Web Developer Plugin for Firefox
Wanda found a cool plugin for Firefox called Web Developer. It installs a toolbar in Firefox that allows you to alter all sorts of aspects of a web page, like dynamically modifying CSS, resizing, validation, and more. Very cool for the dedicated web developer.
New Site Design
Has it been a week already? 
Yeah, I wasn’t as pleased with my last design as I thought I would be, so I changed it. It’s not perfectly XHTML-compliant because I was having troubles with the menu script, but it works in most major browsers. The breadcrumb trail on the old design didn’t work as I expected, it made it more difficult to maintain and update, and I didn’t care for the menu system much. I like the drop-down menus I implemented on this one much better.
Domain Registrars Reviewed
Since I get asked by so many people, and since the answer depends on what your needs are, I created a Domain Registrar Comparison to help others decide on which registrar is right for them. Let me know if you see any errors and I will correct them post haste!
Edit: If you are familiar with registering domains through Network Solutions, I would appreciate it if you could send me a comparison. Thanks!
WebSphere Homepage Builder
I found a neat WYSIWYG HTML editor on IBM’s web site called WebSphere Homepage Builder. By default, it writes code using CSS-style layout instead of relying on tables. And the best part: it’s available for Linux too! Too bad they misspelled “home page”
Powered by WordPress.
