Some of the new features that I have found useful are:

1. The new “Press This” add-on for your Firefox or IE bookmarks bar that lets you post to your blog from any web page you happen to be on. For example, if you click “Press This” from a Youtube page it’ll magically extract the video embed code, and if you do it from a Flickr page it’ll make it easy for you to put the image in your post.
2. “Theme Preview” - When you select a theme it pops up a window that shows the theme live with all your content, instead of immediately making it active on your site. This is great for just test driving themes before making a switch over publicly.
3. And “drag and drop” reordering of images in yuor WordPress image gallery let’s you reorder how images are displayed regardless of the order you have uploaded them in.

The WordPress folks put together a video showing some of the new features of version 2.6. I found them pretty impressive and a definite plus in making your blogging easier. If you have 3:29 to make your life better, watch the video:

The Version 2.6 page at WordPress.org has a larger version of the video available.

What if your Internet broadband connection could be faster and more secure? That’s the promise of OpenDNS, and according to the New York Times and it’s Technology Guru David Pogue, OpenDNS delivers.

What brought my attention to OpenDNS was an article on security in the online edition of today’s NY Times. It seems there’s a flaw in the Internet Domain Name System that could cause you to be unknowingly routed to a phishing site. This could occur if the phishers hijack the domain of your bank or a trusted website to gain access to your personal information.

There are no reports of phishing crews exploiting this problem as yet and Internet service providers are rushing to plug the potential leaks. But it could take some of them months to correct the problem.

You can read the whole article here.

Later in the article, the author mentions that using OpenDNS as your domain name server can eliminate the problem. OpenDNS is free and there are easy instructions on how to install it on your computer or home/small office (SOHO) network.

I installed it on our network this morning and it took less than ten minutes. Not much of a time investment for peace of mind.

That OpenDNS logo at the top of the page is active. If you install OpenDNS and come back to this page, it will tell you that you are using OpenDNS. Same if your provider or workplace has OpenDNS installed. If the button says “Use OpenDNS - Get Started,” click the button and get started! (or just click here)

While researching OpenDNS, I discovered that it is also useful for speeding up your broadband connection. On my network, I have noticed no change in speed the first time I loaded a website after installing OpenDNS. But subsequent loadings seemed to complete 25% to 50% faster. Cool!

Read David Pogue’s New York Times article on speeding up your broadband connection with OpenDNS here.

Because OpenDNS requires a change in your local settings on your network, I cannot install it for you remotely. But it isn’t difficult. Increased security and a faster connection – now there’s a combo that’s hard to beat!

But just as valid links can help you, dead or broken links can hurt you. When a website has been around for a while, it be a plus in the eyes of the search engines if you have continually added fresh content. But if your site suffers from “link rot” - old links to pages that have been renamed, dropped or relocated and links to now defunct websites - your SE ranking can be hurt by them. Defunct or non-working links show Google et al that your site is not being maintained - and they may penalize you for it.

None of us is perfect. I’ve had dead links on my sites as well. Websites need to be checked regularly. Links to outside pages and sources can break. Even internal links to web pages and images can break over time. A regular link check is the only way to be sure that your website is functioning as you intended.

To help OrangeCat customers prevent “link rot,” we’ve set up a monthly program to check the links on your website and report the results to you. We use proven software to scan your website(s) on a monthly basis and report any problems so you can fix them - or have us or your webmaster do it.

This is really important. Your website is your lifeblood and it’s importance to your business will only increase over time - but only if you make site maintenance one of your cardinal principles.

And if you’re an OrangeCat Gold customer, the LinkChek service is FREE.

More information on OrangeCat’s LinkChek service can be found here.

The Federal Trade Commission has now issued four new rules that amend the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The amendments go into effect at the end of this month - June, 2008.

The amendments affect all senders of any commercial email with a list of any size from 2, on up.

Here are the rules:

#1 The receiver of the email cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her email address and opt-out preferences, and must be able to opt-out of the mailing list using a SINGLE ACTION.

This may be by replying to the email - or by clicking ONE link to go to a SINGLE web page.

#2 The use of the word “person” is defined in regard to whether the CAN-SPAM Act applies. “Person” is now defined to include non-companies. In other words, any and everyone can be liable for sending commercial email - breathing person, company, organization, etc.

#3 You may use a post office box or private mailbox (PMB) - rather than the address of an actual private building - as the physical address in your commercial mailings to satisfy the CAN-SPAM Act.

#4 For any mailing containing advertisements from 3rd party advertisers, either the party who the email is “from” must have an advertisement in the email - or - all of the advertisers with ads in the mailing are responsible for opt-out requests.

This is known as the “Designated Sender” rule. When the party listed in the “From” field has an ad in the mailing, that party becomes responsible for processing opt-out requests.

Source: http://www.i-cop.org/journal/06-23-08.htm
Author: jl scott
You can read jl scott’s take on this in the June 23rd i-Cop Newsletter.

In my opinion, these new amendments cover the places where people most often run afoul of the CAN-SPAM Act. The most common error is not having a “single option opt-out.” And since the term “persons” now includes non-companies (individuals, in other words), it is easy to be in non-compliance even if you are sending emails to a group from your AOL or Gmail accounts or even from your desktop if your email contains any type of commercial solicitation.

Please be aware that complying with the Act and the new amendments is YOUR responsibility as a mailer. If you’d like to read the entire 109 memorandum on these amendments, you can get it here.

Your OrangeCat server has a file backup system built into the Control Panel. It’s easy to use and could save you from having to rebuild your website from scratch in the event of a data loss. Complete data losses are very rare. In fact, we have never had one in the 12 years we’ve been in the hosting business. But as I am sure all of you are aware, hard drive crashes can happen. And you never see them coming.

We have put together the following tutorial to help you use the Orange Cat Control Panel to backup your web server files. There is also a video at the end of the article - click here to watch the video now.

Control Panel File Backup Tutorial

Here are the steps to backup your server files. The whole process should only take five minutes or so - it depends on how many files on your server need to be backed up. Point your web browser to your Control Panel. Your Control Panel is located at https:your domain.com (or .net, .org., etc.). Use of the “https” prefix will create a secure connection to your server. If you get a warning that the certificate doesn’t match the domain name, click “OK.” It’s your own domain and there is no danger of being redirected to another website.

You should see the following screen. Type in your username and password and login.

Scroll down to the 3rd row and click on the “Backups” link. You can also click “Utilities and Files” in the navigation on the left side of the page and then click “Backups.”

In the next screen, you will see a list of any backups you have already made - if this is your first backup, the list will be empty. You can delete any old backups by checking the box to the left of the old backups and clicking the “Delete” button. To make a new backup, click one of the “Create Backup” button at the right side of the backup list.

In the next screen, enter a name for your backup file. I usually use a date based naming system so I can track which are the newest backup files. In my naming system a file named “080509″ would have been created on May 9, 2008. This numbering system ensures that it is easy to sort the files by date. Use any file naming system you are comfortable with. Once you have entered a file name, click “Save.” The system will them create a backup file of your files. When it is finished, the new file will be added to the backup files list.

If you ever need to restore your files from a backup, just click the “Restore” link on the right side of the line that contains your latest backup. Backup files can be large. It may benefit you to delete older files from your server from time to time. You can delete backup files by clicking the “Delete” link next to the restore link. You can delete multiple backup files by clicking the boxes at the left and then clicking on of the “Delete” buttons on the left.

You can make your files even safer by downloading the backup file to your local hard drive on your computer. To do this, click on the “All Files” link under “Utilities and Files” in the left navigation on the Control Panel home page.

On the next screen, click on the link for the “Backups” directory.

On the next screen, locate the file you would like to download, right-click (PC) or control-click (Mac) and save the file to your computer. That’s all there is to it. Now, you have not only backed up your web server files. You have increased your security by saving the file in a second location.

We have also created a video that illustrates the steps to backup your server and download the files. You can watch to 400 pixel video here or watch a larger (640 pixel) version at OrangeCat.net.

So, if you go to pick up your email one day and get this error:

This error is often caused by an overstuffed INBOX or a corrupted file in the INBOX. Once you see this error, it is too late. You will need to use your WebMail client to pickup whatever messages you can, then all of the messages will have to be deleted.

…you will have take action as described in the caption. If that doesn’t work, your INBOX may have to be deleted. We can save it as a text file and you can go through it message by message, but that is an arduous task with a multi-megabyte file.

To give you an idea, most files that jam up a mail server are in the 50MB range. I just downloaded an INBOX file of 12.5 MB. Opened in a test editor, that comes to over 300,000 lines of messages. How would you like to deal with that?

OK, so let’s take some steps to avoid the problem before it happens.

By setting your email client (Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) to delete read, deleted and junk mail from the server in a reasonable amount of time, you can avoid the problems associated with an overstuffed mailbox.

I’ve put together a series of videos to walk you through the process of setting your Preferences in various email programs to automatically delete old emails. So have a look at the video for your email client and then check to see if you have your settings the way you want them… BEFORE you have the problem of your email not working correctly.

You will have to go to HowDoIDoThatVideos.com and register. But just register for the FREE membership, let me know that you did it, and I’ll upgrade you to a full membership.

New videos are being added all the time. Here is a list of the videos currently available at HowDoIDoThatVideos.com (today’s new videos are in red):

Article Marketing Training Videos

• Article Marketing Intro 
• Article Marketing Defined 
• The Anatomy of an Article 
• Example 1 of an Article 
• Example 2 of an Article 
• The Subject of the Article 
• The Title of the Article 
• The Body of the Article 
• The Bio-Box of the Article 
• Create Your Article From PLR Products 
• Paying Someone Else To Write Your Articles 
• How To Use Scriptlance To Get Your Articles
  Written 
• How To Submit Your Article 
• An Introduction To Article Directories

Camtasia Video Production Software Training

• How to Setup for Your Recording 
• How to Create Your Camproj 
• How to Split Your Video and Add a Title Clip 
• How to Add Zoom/Pan and Transitions 
• How to Create Callouts

ClickBank Video Series

• What is ClickBank? 
• How Do I Make Money from It? 
• Finding Good Products to Sell from the Marketplace 
• Preselling Secrets and Marketing the Product

FileZilla Open Source FTP Client for Windows, Mac and
Linux

• How to Set up a Connection 
• How to Manage Files 
• How to Transfer Files

the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)

• Installing the GIMP 2.4 
• Let’s Get Started 
• the GIMP Interface 
• the GIMP Rectangle Tool 
• the GIMP Freehand Tool 
• How To Use The Color & Fuzzy Select Tools 
• How To Use The Scissors Select Tool 
• How To Use The Foreground Select Tool 
• How To Use The Paths Tool 
• How To Use The Color Picker Tool 
• How To Use The Zoom Tool 
• How To Use The Measure Tool 
• How To Use The Move Tool 
• How To Use The Align Tool 
• How To Use The Transform Tools

Joomla Basic Administration

• How To Add A Section 
• How To Add A Category 
• How To Add Content 
• How To Edit and Approve User Submitted Content 
• How To Edit Your Sites Frontpage Layout 
• How To Install A Component 
• How To Install A Module 
• How To Install A Mambot 
• How To Install A Template 
• Installing the Joomla! Core 
• Introduction to the Archive Manager 
• Introduction to the User Manager 
• How to Update a User from the Backend 
• How to Update a User from the Frontend 
• How to Change the Access Level of Your Content 
• How to Control the Publishing Features of Your
  Content 
• How to Edit the Global Configuration 
• How to Enable SEF (Search Engine Friendly) 
• How to Use the Email Function 
• How to Use Media Manager 
• How to Use the Menu Manager 
• How to Use the Module Manager

Introduction to JavaScript

• Introduction to JavaScript 
• Using JavaScript Popups 
• External JavaScript File 
• Password Encryption 
• When user has JavaScript Disabled 
• Free JavaScripts

Setup a Blogger Account

• Setup a Google Account 
• Setup a Blogger Account 
• Set Your Blogger Settings 
• Set Your Blogger Layout and Theme 
• Add a Post to Your Blogger Blog 
• Schedule a Blogger Post

Introduction to WordPress.com

• Setting up a Blog on WordPress.com

Introduction to PHP

• Introduction to PHP 
• Introduction to PHP Web Page Templates 
• Creating a PHP Web Page Template 
• PHP Include Tags

PayPal and Encryption

• PayPal Buy Now Button 
• PayPal 1 Minute Buy Now Button 
• Intro to Encryption 
• HTML Guardian Software

WordPress Adminstration

• How to Manage The Comments 
• How to Post To Your Blog 
• How to Update A Profile 
• How to Post To A Page 
• How to Manage The Links 
• How to Add A Category 
• How to Install A Plugin 
• How to Install A Theme 
• How to Configure Your Blog

[See post to watch Flash video]

Click on the title of this post, then bookmark the permalink so you can refer to it in the future.

Today, we uploaded 5 new videos on the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). the GIMP is a full-featured Open Source alternative to Adobe Photoshop. If you need to resize or touch-up photos, or create graphics from scratch, the GIMP may be worth a try.

These 5 videos are part of a series of fifteen (15). We’ll be adding five more next week and the final five the week after that.

Installation on Windows is a piece of cake. If your are running Linux desktop, there are installation packages for specific Linux varieties, such as Ubuntu. There is more information and links to installation packages in a post on BobStovall.com.

If you are not aware of it as yet, there are a lot of videos on OrangeCat.com that are free for all OrangeCat clients to view and learn from. For a complete list of videos available, see the Orange Cat Videos List.

We currently have videos available on:

• Article Marketing
• Blogger Set-up and Administration
• Camtasia Video Production Software
• ClickBank Video Series
• FileZilla Open Source FTP Client for Windows, Mac and Linux
• the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)
• Joomla Administration (Getting Started)
• JavaScript Introduction
• PayPal and Encryption
• PHP Scripting and Templates
• WordPress.com Set-up and Administration
• WordPress Set-up and Administration

We add more videos all the time and we’ll keep you informed as new ones are posted.

But you’ll have to register at the website to view the videos.

By the way, if you are not an OrangeCat clients, you can still have access to these videos by becoming a member at the How Do I Do That? Videos website or the Bluegrass Internet Marketing Association (BIMA).