One project that I recently completed was the relaunching of MovieComment. This is a website that I started in 2006 and which I let languish for over a year. The original intent was for me to provide the space for friends to write movie reviews, but for some reason, I could never persuade anyone to write anything down. Eventually I started to neglect the site as WebKeyDesign took most of my time and I also have a regular job that keeps me quite busy these days. Over the last couple of weeks, I took some time out and retrofitted the site with a new WordPress theme, added some content, made some minor improvements, and did a security audit to make sure the site was secure.

For the theme, I went with a theme called dsantuary. The theme had a nice layout and built-in advertisement placement, but I did not like the navigation bar at all. I ended up changing the navigation bar to something I came up myself. Other than this there were a few theme changes, here and there to make the site work. For example the graphic for the sidebar was not tall enough to accommodate a long enough sidebar. I had to create a new graphic for the sidebar. Once I got rid the navigation bar, I had to find a place for the Search form, since the original had it built into the navigation bar. Search was moved into the sidebar.

Plugins

While I will not list all the plugins that are setup on the site, the following plugins were added and configured for specific reasons and are worthy of consideration for most WordPress sites:

Since MovieComment was being relaunched, I needed to make sure that the content was going to be indexed properly and that it will show up correct on search engine sites. To start with good content needs meta tags. WordPress on its own does not really do a good job of providing this. For this you can try a plugin like All in One SEO Pack that tries to setup meta tags correctly for each page of your site. Once your content is meta tagged properly you will need to let search engines know your content is out there. The best way to do this is via a sitemap. The Google XML Sitemaps plugin does a good job of creating a sitemap automatically for you. Once you have Google XML Sitemaps setup go to Google Webmaster Tools to verify that Google has no problems reading your sitemap.

Security is important and I too have made the mistake of letting things slide and have paid the price for not keeping focused on security. Luckily now there are some good plugins to help with this. By installing Login LockDown and, WP Security Scan your WordPress site will be a little bit more secure and being more secure always helps webmasters sleep better.

It is pretty much agreed upon that in the Windows world of computing running a computer without anti-virus software is like jumping onto a busy highway and expecting to not get hit. No other platform has as many viruses and now spam infections as Windows. Given that, most Windows users will need to setup some sort of anti-virus application. In this review I will cover why ESET NOD32 should be considered one of your top choices as well as why buying anti-virus software in general can be difficult.

NOD32 Options

All software makers pretty much distinguish between two classes of software these days. You either buy personal software for home use or you spend more and purchase business (sometimes referred to as enterprise) software. It use to be that ESET offered one solution that you could install on Windows2000, WindowsXP workstations and Windows Servers, but they recently changed their software pricing model to make a clear distinction between personal home software and what they call the business edition. It is now no longer possible to buy just 1 license of NOD32 Business Edition so that you can run it on your server. You must instead purchase 5 business licenses and then you will be able to download the Business Edition. The Home Edition no longer installs on any type of Windows Server, it will only install on Windows Workstations! My biggest problem with this is that I run a home server and so I can no longer buy cheap anti-virus software. Almost every vendor now requires a 5 business license limit, so even if I just wanted one or two licenses, I no longer have that privilege.

However if you are not like me, and just have Windows XP or Vista workstations, then you can buy ESET NOD32 Home Edition pretty cheaply. The cheapest way to buy the Home Edition is to just purchase an OEM version. You should be able to find OEM versions for sale on Newegg.com and save yourself a few dollars in the process.

Other than the Home versus Business editions, you can purchase ESET Smart Security which is both an anti-virus and anti-spyware utility. The Smart Security suite is more expensive than NOD32 alone, but it will save you the expense of buying a separate commercial spyware utility.

NOD32 Interface

The software takes a few minutes to install and by all accounts is a relatively easy install. The installer will require the usual Windows restart. From this point on, any time you start Windows, you will get a NOD32 splash screen once Windows gets to the desktop, letting you know NOD32 loaded. The green logo will then appear in your systray and you can click on it to bring up NOD32. Version 3 of the software differs from version 2.7, in that version 3 gives you a nicer looking interface and hides the old style 2.7 setup screens. You can even configure NOD32 to show a simple interface if you think the Advanced Interface is still too cluttered.

NOD32 Protection

NOD32 offers real-time file system protection, email protection, and web access protection. You can turn off email and web access protection if you find those features too intrusive. The web access protection works quite well, it alerted me when I visited a site that had been compromised by a cross-domain JavaScript call. Overall I have been using NOD32 for over a year and in that time it has caught multiple virus problems and best of all, has not slowed my system down in the process.

Other than NOD32, I have tried Computer Associates Anti-Virus products which are very inexpensive compared to other vendors. However it is my opinion that NOD32 is the top anti-virus product in quality for Windows at this time. Business users though might want to look at Sophos who offers enterprise class anti-virus and spam solutions with a good reputation for quality. For home user though, NOD32 is still my best recommendation.

If you installed Firefox 3 and are using Windows, you might run into a problem where Firefox does not allow you to download exe files from the Internet due to a Windows setting. You will get the message: This download has been blocked by your Security Zone Policy and your download file will never download. To fix this problem you must modify Internet Explorer settings!

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Choose Tools menu – Internet Options.
3. Click the Security tab and click on the Internet icon.
4. Click the Default Level button if it is clickable
5. Then click Custom Level… and navigate to Miscellaneous.
6. Under this section find the option: Launching applications and unsafe files.
7. Change it from Disable to Prompt (Recommended).
8. Click OK, Apply, then OK.
9. Startup Firefox again and test it to see if it works now.

IE 8 Browsers

If you are using IE 8, you should probably look at modifying these settings as well:

1. Click on Tools – Internet Options.
2. Click on the Security tab.
3. Click on the Sites button and verify that the website URL is in the list of trusted sites.
4. Back on the Security tab, click Custom Level…
5. Locate the Automatic prompting for file downloads sub-category immediately under the Downloads category. Set the radial button to Enable.
6. Locate the File download sub-category immediately under the Downloads category and set the radial button to Enable.
7. Click OK to save the changes and Yes when prompted to confirm the changes.
8. Exit completely out of all IE windows and then try it again

Something which I rarely see being mentioned in the mainstream media is company ethics and consumers. The Internet news sites do cover some of the borderline unethical behaviors of major companies like Apple and Dell, but in reality these stories are aimed more at tarnishing the image of corporations, than really covering the actual situation and shady policies of the workplace. As a consumer of products and services, this bothers me somewhat because I try to only deal with ethical companies. After all would you really buy something from someone you personally knew was a thief? When it comes to corporations, we really should hold them to the same standards as our personal relationships. Although holding corporations accountable seems almost impossible nowadays, there are some things to look for.

Public traded companies do publish their financial records and occasionally their dirty laundry does come to light. Most of the time the bad news is published in obscure trade publications and so it is sometimes hard to find. Eventually if the dirty laundry is serious, it will eventually lead to an investigation or multiple lawsuits. At this point you can pretty much tell that the company acted contrary to ethical standards. Note that this is not something that you find with top corporations only, but with all companies in general. Just because Global Widgets did some illegal stock manipulation, does not mean that their competitor Small Scale Widgets is any less reputable. Sometimes an entire industry is guilty, like when all the memory makers made a group effort to artificially keep memory prices higher.

Perhaps the most direct way of finding out how ethical a company is to talk to them. When you walk into their store, call their customer service line, or email them, what type of response you get can reveal a lot about the type of training that the company gives their employees. Although this probably cannot tell you everything about a company, it does reveal enough to let you know if the company is worthy of your business. Talking may be a lost art, although we communicate every day, we do not do it effectively, and so remember the following points when you engage a company.

• Always ask for what you want directly, do not try to hide your intentions. If you want a cheaper price or think that the service or product is not up to your expectations, ask for an explanation.
• In turn, you should always be fair yourself: do not waste a company rep’s time if you truly are not interested in their services or products.
• Since companies can have multiple businesses, you cannot always hold accountable the bad ethical practices of one of their divisions to all of their other businesses.
• Lastly if you are treated rudely without justification, make the company aware of this, and if the response is lacking, never do business with them again.

In general, companies care about their shareholders more than their customers, it is this mentality that has led many companies to lie, steal, and cheat to make their profits ever larger, only to find out much like Starbucks, that you cannot make money without customers, even if you have thousands of locations.

With the plummeting cost of hard drives today, hard drive manufacturers have had to come up with new ways to increase revenues, because selling bare internal hard drives to consumers does not carry much profit these days. The most obvious trend in the industry has been to dress up hard drives with external cases of various color and design and make them more appealing to consumers looking to backup their growing media collections and their occasional backup. All though there are a variety of external hard drive enclosures that you can buy separately, many consumers choose to buy an external case and hard drive packaged. In some cases buyers may be unaware that they can buy ordinary internal hard drives and pair them with a case of their choosing. Then there is cost, quality external cases can cost significantly and cheaper cases may be lacking in quality and looks. Hence the obvious choice is an external hard drive from a major manufacturer, and in this case from the hard drive manufacturer itself. This review covers the Western Digital My Book Home Edition drive. Out of the multiple choices out on the market I actually chose this specific model for the following reasons:

My Book Home Edition Features

With at least three external drives already connected to my Powerbook and a Windows Server in the same room, I wanted to keep noise levels as low as possible. Western Digital’s My Book models are for the most part pretty quiet compared to most third party enclosures. They are designed to stand vertical and save space, without using some sort of snap-on attachment stand.

Most important after design is performance. I needed at least a 500GB hard drive that performed as close as possible to a regular internal hard drive. This pretty much means you need to use something better than USB 2. Performance wise you really need to go with Firewire or eSATA. Both of these technologies outperform USB 2 external drives. The My Book Home Edition is available as a triple interface enclosure, featuring Firewire 400 (preferred on Macintosh computers and servers), eSATA (preferred on newer PC machines), and USB 2 in case you have no other option. If your computer has only USB ports, you can save some money and purchase the My Book Essential Edition instead. Otherwise I believe the extra $40 is worth it for faster performance.

Other features to note include smart energy power down when not in use, a capacity gauge that displays how much space is in use, and some backup software for Windows. Other than the energy smart features I did not setup or use these features. The capacity gauge is dependent on software, so if you do not run the software the capacity gauge feature will not work.

Usage Notes

Western Digital does not include an eSATA cable, so if you plan on using this port, make sure you pick up a cable. Firewire and USB cables are included, as well as a nice AC adapter that takes less space than the usual brick AC adapters you usually get with external devices such as these.

The case is black plastic and it appears to be snapped together, meaning that if the internal drive ever dies, replacing the internal drive may be harder to do than just replacing the entire unit out right.

Since the drive will be used with a Macintosh exclusively I needed to reformat the drive to HFS+, but in case you ever want to use the drive with a PC, I recommend using Apple’s Disk Utility to create an image DMG file of the entire contents of the drive before you format it. You can then always have the DMG file in case you want to restore the original contents of the drive. For Windows, I still recommend formatting the drive. Might as well find out early if the drive has any problems than later.

I have not encountered any problems with the My Book Home Edition and it is my second WD My Book drive. I have an original 230GB Essentials Edition that is connected to my Windows Server. Neither drive has had any physical problems and both are relatively quiet, even when in use.

Western Digital My Book Home Edition Hard Drive

• 500GB
• USB 2 + Firewire 400 + eSATA
• Price: $149