I’m planning to shut down EmergentNo.com. Any objections? I’m shutting down my servers (this site has already been migrated to MediaTemple) and don’t really feel like keeping E-No.

Any objections? Bob?

Radical Congruency is undergoing a domain transfer as well as a server move, so pardon the angle-bracketed dust.

I’m looking for authors for the WebbleYou Blog Network.

I just published the alpha edition of the LogoFriendly theme, which you can see in action at WebbleYou.com.

Major features:

• Widget support
• Easy custom banner insertion
• Options page
• Rounded corners

If you like what you see, I will install it free for my hosting customers, or you can install it on your WordPress-powered site. Enjoy!

If you don’t have a domain name, you probably will before too long. Once you purchase your domain name, you can’t change it, so it’s important to choose wisely.

Some tips for choosing a good domain name:

• Get yourname.com. You are likely to want it some day even if you can’t think of a use for it yet, and you wouldn’t want someone else with the same name to get it.
• Pick a good top-level domain (extension). I rank the popular TLDs in the following order:
  .com > .org > .net > Country Code > weird things like .biz, .tv, .pro, etc. > .info
  I don’t recommend the weird TLDs because they aren’t widely recognized as domain names. It’s become popular to use periods to separate words in print media, so weddingphotography.pro may not look like a URL to some people.
• Go for a normal TLD. The country-code TLDs tend to be four to ten times more expensive to register, and the weird TLDs (like .info and .biz) tend to be the province of spammers. The .info domains are the worst, because they were free for a while, so 90% of them are spam.
• The name should be clearly understood when spoken. If you have to explain the spelling, the placement of hyphens, or other weirdness, you’re not going to be happy with the domain.
• CamelCaps can be helpful for separating the words in multi-word domains, but make sure the domain looks OK without them. ExpertsExchange.com looked good, until people typed it without the caps: expertsexchange.com. Oops.
• Avoid possessive names, because you can’t use apostrophes, and novice internet users may not understand this. JoesCatering.com may sound good, but if someone types Joe’sCatering.com, they won’t get to your site.
• String together three or four relevant, easily understood words. CrankyPoliticalPundit.com is easy to remember and likely to be available.
• Coin a word. Neologisms are always available (e.g. WebbleYou, Zimbra, Orkut, etc.)
• Don’t get sued. Avoid using copyrighted names, even if it’s clear that you aren’t trying to infringe on a trademark. Ultimately, you’d probably win in court, but most people can’t afford the legal expenses and will end up capitulating to threats from company lawyers.

Feel free to add your tips in the comments.

Sorry the site was down all day today. I set up some firewall rules to block hacking attempts via SSH, and ended up blocking all ports on the server, taking down this site. I slept all day to fight off my cold, and didn’t get a chance to fix it due to an interview and an afternoon class.

Still working on the firewall issue, but the site is back up now.

You might have noticed that this site has been down a lot lately. I think my old server (which doesn’t host client sites, just mine) is having hardware problems, so I’ve contacted my server provider about it. The software is all fresh, as I just re-imaged it on Friday night.

Hopefully they’ll give me a replacement server or something. Sorry for the downtime. Again, client sites aren’t affected - in fact, I just commissioned a new, fast server to host additional clients. If you’re looking to get rid of Blogger or an expensive blogging service, I offer top-notch WordPress hosting for $4 at WebbleYou.com.

Yes, Radical Congruency is back up, after being down for about 18 hours (probably the longest ever). I re-imaged the server this site resides on, because it was being unreliable and not serving webpages like a good little LAMP server should.

I am also moving some of my other sites to this server, to make room for clients on a faster server. A new one is on its way, but will take a while to set up. A few of my other sites are down at the moment, but clients should remain unaffected - I’m only moving my sites.

It took so long to get RC back up because, after nearly three years, this site is huge. Thanks to some videos and podcasts, we’ve got about 300MB of files up here, even after they’re zipped. The database was also huge, thanks to SpamKarma logs and other stuff that builds up over time.

I tried to edit my database backup file using Dreamweaver, but it took forever to open or save it. Initially, the file was about 13MB, and took about 15 minutes to open. Editing was fine, but it took another 15 or 20 minutes to save. I got it down to about 6MB, and pasted the database into PHPMyAdmin in little chunks, since it won’t upload a 6MB file.

Anyone know why Dreamweaver is so slow on huge text files, and if there’s a better text editor that’ll handle code without munging the apostrophes and other crucial characters? It doesn’t make much sense to me, because Fireworks handles a 50MB image with no trouble, and my computer is plenty fast. Why should DW choke on text?

BTW, I hope the title of this post reminds everyone to back up your files and databases, in more than one way if possible. I used one method to back up this site, and the file turned out to be unreadable when I tried to use it to restore the site. If you’re relying on a backup, make sure you have a backup backup. It’s always a good idea.