Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
September 24, 2006

Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter
http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newsletter for users of PC's.

Volume 2, Number 15 — Sunday, September 24, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   Creating A Personal Web site (Blog?)
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   CounterSpy SuperCoupon Sale
   4.   Comments from Readers and Subscribers
   5.   Second Hard Drive failure with Windows XP Pro SP2
   6.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   7.   More on Hard Drive Failures
   8.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

Welcome to the on-line edition of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter.

My emailed newsletter is sent weekly to individuals who have subscribed to the newsletter.
Click here to subscribe. It's free!

1. "Creating A Personal Web site (Blog?)

After last week's articles on blogging, I got a related question from Sprague Pugh. He wrote:

Have you published information aboutcreating a personal web site? I would like to create a site where various family members could communicate wit each other. I would like it to show number of hits and for family members to add info for others to review.

Thanks

Sprague Pugh

The easiest thing would be a blog. -- too bad you weren't at the web design SIG last Saturday, because that was the major topic and I showed a lot about two blog packages that I use.

You can set up a free one at several places. But, some of them have the files completely open to the public (that's one reason why I don't recommend Blogger).

Given that you want family to communicate, if you use www.wordpress.com for your free blog, you can prevent it from being listed in directories and in search engines and can also limit viewers and contributors to only the users you specify.

In order to keep it private, each person would probably have to register at wordpress.com (free) and then provide you with their username so you could enter them as a valid visitor or contributor.

You can see some of my blogs listed in the footer to this message.

I have two blogs running that use WordPress —
http://www.DrawingOnTheWeb.com , which is hosted on my web site at Powweb, and
http://webdrawing.wordpress.com , which is a free one at wordpress.com

They have 44 different layouts you can use on the free ones.

This is your easiest route. On the other hand, if you want to have much more customization possibilities, you could get a web hosting account at Powweb (my referral link) for $93.24/year and then use their software installation wizard to install either WordPress or Serendipity (the one I use on all my other blog sites).

My other Serendipity blog sites are:

Terry's Computer Tips blog
The Next Window, my general topics blog
, my PC security blog.

Sprague had a followup question:

Thanks. I'll view yours and then make an attempt to set up my own.

What would be main problem of having an "open" blog, that is not registering names of people who could post to it ?

Only registered people could originate blog entries, period.

If you don't register everyone and allow anyone to see the blog, you can still select the option to not have it picked up by the search engines.

You can allow anyone to post "comments" and can even choose to always "moderate" them (always review and approve before posting, or reject/delete the comments).

Blogging is an easy way for a family to maintain communications. It's one of the easiest ways to upload and show pictures with your family, too.

Comment About This Article Now

XP Privacy Pro 2.0
Clean traces stored in your Web Browser
or in your Windows System. Scan for free!
http://terryscomputertips.com/XPPrivacyPro

2. Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
None. Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday. The next scheduled Patch Tuesday is October 9.

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
Version 9.02 was released last week. According to the Opera web site, this is a recommended security upgrade. You can see the details of changes (for the Windows version) at http://www.opera.com/docs/changelogs/windows/902/ .

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
No update last week. Current version 8.1.

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): Version 1.0.5 was released on September 14th and includes bug fixes, functionality improvements, stability and several security fixes.

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com, options: paid, sponsored or free/lite):
No update last week. Current version 7.0.1.0, released 12/21/05.

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
Thunderbird version 1.5.0.7 was released September 14th.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free):
Version 2.03 was released during late June.

Comment About This Article Now