Categories
Product Review

Pair Networks Review

Recently I have moved all of my WordPress based domains to Pair.com – mostly because of the recent downtime and occasional low speeds at Dewahost. This includes this blog and my micro-sites –  Print Folders, Disk Usage and Directory Printer .

The reason I chose Pair is that I've been hearing about their reliability for years from colleagues in the ASP (Association of Software Professionals). I also asked a question before joining and while the answer wasn't particularly fast, it was very complete and friendly. They have a very nice 100 day money back guarantee , too.

I ended up going with the Webmaster plan. Basic is a bit too basic, and if you need SSL the Advanced plan has an extra charge. If you get their 1 year 25% promotion, Webmaster (US$22.50) ends up being cheaper than Advanced with SSL. It is not cheap by anyone's measure, but I'd rather get reliable service than get annoyed by constant outages and low speeds.

Moving

Moving was fairly easy. I used BackWPUp on the old site – which allows me to include databases for all sites (it is a WordPress multi-site install), and almost all site files (more on this later) in a ZIP file. Then you can just FTP this file to Pair, login using SSH and unzip it. This is obviously ridiculously fast.

Of course, I also needed to create the sites and the database (and change wp-config). Pair has their own interface, which isn't bad but is fairly different from CPanel. It is very simple to use, but lacks a bunch of CPanel options (thankfully, mostly the ones I never used). You also need to pay a monthly fee of US$2.95 for the Software Installation Manager (for WordPress, Joomla!, and other – see the full list). However, unless you really plan on installing a bunch of these programs, it seems like a silly expense – most of them are easy to install manually and Pair even has articles on how to manually install them.

I did have a couple of problems with the move – one of Pair's DNS servers took a LONG time to start responding to query about my domains (like 6-8 hours!), which made me worried about moving the sites.

After I moved the sites, I realized that none of the plugins worked. Turns out that for whatever reason, BackWPUp does not include the plugin files in the backup! I imagine that if you only have plugins from the repository (and a few), the list of plugin names is enough – but I have not only quite a few plugins installed, several were paid plugins. So I ended up having to upload all of those by hand. After doing that, everything just worked.

Speed

I am fairly pleased about the speed of my sites on Pair. I was getting 6 second average page loads with this site on the other host, but after minor tuning (gzip and expire changes) I am getting about 2 seconds here.

File speeds are also very good. On both my sites, I was getting sub 10 K/s speeds on both Crystaltech and Dewahost at peak times. No doubt that is partly because of my connection (20Mbit/s cable in Brazil), but even at those times I am getting 100K/s or more for downloads on my Pair site. Usually it hovers around 500-700K/s.

You can test the speed by downloading one of my programs, STG FolderPrint Plus . It is only about 8MB, so speed might still be climbing when you finish.

Another nice surprise was FTP speed. I usually get around 20K/s for Crystaltech, but I am getting my upload speed limit for Pair – about 120K/s. This really speeds up my software releases! I still have to upload to the other site for now, though 🙁 .

Support

I have contacted support a few times, to set up my SSL (it requires manual setup by them, but that is free) and for FTP problems. My problem was that extra FTP logins can't use secure FTP connections – that is quite weird and unexpected.

I have never made an urgent request yet (there is a category for that on their interface), so I have no idea how fast they are. For my regular questions, support speed was usually a few hours. I'll update this post if I ever need urgent support.

Conclusion

Overall, I am fairly satisfied with my sites at Pair Networks. They are pretty fast, the interface is OK,  and support is good. They are also eco-friendly. Recommended.

I'll update this post over time if needed.

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Categories
Product Review

Guest Blogging Blueprint – Course Review

Guest Blogging Blueprint, by Joel Widmer, is a course that covers pretty much all you'd need to know to start guest blogging.

It goes from why, through searching for adequate blogs, to writing and promoting your guest blog posts.

Why?

The reason most people have to want to guest blog is simple: links. Most blogs you'd want to post in are going to give you a link or two in your post, which can really improve your ranking on search engines and give you traffic.

The course also mentions some other reasons:

  • Increase your credibility, or that of your brand
  • Get targeted traffic from those blog readers – for sales, awareness or to build and e-mail list
  • Promoting a product
  • Getting job offers

There are many more on the course, but these are probably enough to get anyone interested in being a guest blogger.

Content

The course covers:

  • Goals
  • How to find Search keywords – that influences the blogs you will find
  • How to find blogs – some nice advice, and plenty of search engine tricks to help you find useful blogs
  • How to qualify the blogs you found – no point in getting a blog post on worthless blogs!
  • Choosing your topic – covers idea generation, how to see and match the tone of the blog, etc
  • How to Pitch your post to the blog – ideas on how to get the blog to accept your blog post, includes e-mail templates
  • Promoting your post – after you get your post in, it is useful to make it as visible as possible, and this include some techniques.

Conclusion

The course took me about 2.5 hours to conclude (I didn't actually do the exercises – but you probably should!), and it covers pretty much everything you'd want to know to start guest blogging.

There are also PDFs with e-mail templates, and the videos are downloadable – great if you want to watch on a tablet or cell phone.

Guest blogging Blueprint is money and time well spent if you are interested in the subject (which you probably should be, given the free traffic you can get!). Recommended.

I was able to get my readers a 50% discount coupon. At this price point (US$14!) the course is really a great deal.

Get Guest Blogging Blueprint – 50% off

Note: I got a free review copy of the course from the author. This didn't change this review in any way, however.

 

Categories
Product Review

Sleep Hacking: Course Review

Sleep Hacking 101: Have more Energy spend less time in bed is a course on Udemy on how to optimize your sleep.

The idea of the course is that there are practices you can take that can enable you to sleep less and still have more energy.

The course consists mostly of videos (with a few PDFs with mostly the same content and a Excel file for you to work on your habits), and took me about 2 hours to watch, while writing notes.

What it covers is the nature of sleep, and what you can do to improve yours, such as:

  • Get more light in the day, specially right after you wake up, and avoid it before sleep and if you wake up during sleep
  • Avoid too much coffee, and also food and drinks near your bed time
  • Minor advice on sleep monitors and smart wake alarm such as the Zeo (which I understand is no longer available); I would really like to have seen more on this area, specially reviews of products that are still available
  • Some suggestions on what to do before sleep
  • Suggestions on naps, which mostly is that they are useful and that they should be short enough that you don't enter deep sleep and wake up groggy

Overall, I'd say that the course does have some useful advice, although I already heard almost everything on the course before. I feel I wasn't taking enough natural light during the day, though, and following the course advice already helped a bit. It was good to be reminded of some of the other stuff, which I hadn't forgotten but started ignoring.

What remained was enough for the price I paid, but if I had paid full price (US$49 right now) I might have asked for a refund. If you get a nice discount, it is worth it.

Update (19/Nov/2013): I asked the course's author (Scott Britton) for a discount for my blog readers. And he offered a 100% discount! So you can get the course for free! Considering this I have changed my rating from 3 to 5 stars.

[button link=”http://stgsys.net/sleep” window=”yes”]Get the Course for Free[/button]

Categories
Articles

Using Animated GIFs on E-mail

Interesting article from MailChimp on using animated GIFs on e-mail .

They demonstrated some features on e-mails with animated GIFs. They look very nice, and more importantly, clearly show how these features work.

I do wonder how well these work for people with data plans. Even though they are very short, just these two add up to more than 200K. Just to compare, my lower resolution flash demos had more than a minute of content and had a few hundred Ks (Instant Demo is quite nice that way).

Even so, I still like the idea, and might use it when talking about new features on my products in the newsletter.

Categories
Book Review

Design Patterns – Book Review

I believe this is the third time I read Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software  – by Erich Gamma, Ralph Johnson, Richard Helm and John Vlissides. This is the first time I bother to review a book I have read before, but this is such a classic it is hard to avoid.

The Wikipedia definition of a design pattern is a “general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem within a given context in software design”. The point of the book is cataloging the most generic and useful patterns. Most patterns also have little analysis of details on ways you could implement them.

Every time I read this I appreciate it more, and come up with better ideas on how to improve the design of my classes.

Some people seem to think it is too heavy and technical. Personally I like it, but if you want something lighter, check out Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design (which I am stunned to realize I never got around to reviewing), which is a simpler review of design patterns.

 

 

Categories
Book Review

Code Complete 2 – Book Review

I first read Code Complete in 1997, a few years after I started coding professionally. I learned a lot about how to make my code more readable and reliable, and even re-read it a few years later, with the same effect.

Code Complete – A Practical Handbook of Software Constructions, 2nd edition (released in 2004) is even better. The coverage is quite expanded, with small (but useful) forays into gathering requirement, design and architecture, in addition to all the practical coding stuff. It is bound to be useful even to a seasoned professional coder.

While I am well aware of many of the practices, just by reading the book I found I was much less willing to cut corners when programming.

There are a couple of things that I didn't like, though

– Some sections seem to be unnecessary or too verbose (which also explains the 960 pages of the book)

– There are references everywhere to a special site, for updated resources. Every single time I checked, what it had was the exact same resources as the book version.

– In the ePub version, code formatting is sometime painful (hardly the book's fault, but something to be aware of if you get it as an eBook)

– When speaking of tools, there is mostly hand-waiving. There are no specific examples. Of course, the intent is that the book don't quickly get outdated.

Overall, strongly recommended for all coders, starting or old. In the same line, Clean Code has better coverage on how to design and refactor better classes. I do enjoy the fact that Code Complete often mentions actual research stats when recommending practices, however.

Categories
Software Release

STGThumb 3.40

I have just released version 3.40 of STGThumb.

STGThumb-new-340

Changes:
– Visual Changes: Toolbar icons, buttons.
– Form size and position is now saved.
– Starts with thumbnails instead of file list.
– Scaled forms – if you use the standard Windows font size, you shouldn't notice any difference. However, if you use Large font size or larger, the program will try to scale most forms for the new font size. Personally, I use large fonts and I think it looks a lot better now! If you have any problems, please contact me.
You can get it at http://www.stgsys.com/stgthumb.asp, or just run the program, and use Menu Help, item Check for updates now.

Categories
Software

Hide/Show Password

Lately I've been seeing a trend for showing passwords on forms. The logic here is – many users mistype because they can't see what they are typing (this is backed by data), and at the same time, on many conditions there is no security advantage. Sure, if there is someone looking at your monitor behind you it will be easier than seeing you type it (unless you are a very slow typer), but that is just one case.

So I think Hide/Show Password is a great idea. If you really want to, you can just hide the password, or show it. It is a JQuery/Zepto plugin and looks easy to use.

Categories
Articles

CSS Architecture

Very nice post on CSS Architecture.

I have just read Clean Code and many of the same principles from coding apply to CSS. A particular problem I know is everywhere on mine is splitting classes on attribute blocks to save typing – which of course spreads the definition all over the file!

I will keep an eye on this and the other problems next time I use CSS.

Categories
Book Review

Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship – Book Review

Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, by Robert C. Martin is a book about how to keep your code readable, flexible and naturally bug free.

It reminds me, of course, of Code Complete, which I really liked when I first read it (1997). Clean Code is much weaker on the research side (i.e.: there is a big difference between say “this is bad because I say so” and actually showing references to research that prove that a specific practice causes more bugs).

However, as far as I remember the coverage of OOP in Code Complete was much weaker, and this is where Clean Code shines. There are plenty of interesting and useful ideas on how to clean your classes, when and how to refactor them, and much more. There are also some practical refactorings of  real code, which I found somewhat useful – mostly because I read the book on an iPad, and switching around to keep track of what happened is somewhat painful in comparison to flipping a page.

Other than that, I strongly recommend the book for coders everywhere – just keep in mind that all the samples are in Java! I haven't used Java in years but I could still keep up with everything.