Top Five Tools of 2009
January 19, 2010
It’s weird looking back over the year and reflecting on how you’ve progressed as an individual. 2009 for me was one of improved productivity, due mainly to the use of a number of online/offline/soft/hard tools. In this post I’ll highlight my top five:
- The iPhone. As a colleague of mine put it ‘life is so much better through an iPhone’, and it’s absolutely true. The connectivity allows you to keep up with so many different ongoing conversations and it empowers you to manage your online identity, accounts and presence in a way you’ve never before thought possible.
- Google Docs. I personally think Google Docs is an amazing product. I work in a team based across two different organisations with different IT infrastructure. Google Docs provides our team with a shared space where we can work collaboratively on one document. One of the best examples of it’s use is in the production of our team minutes. We don’t have a lot of admin support so, guaranteed we have a connection to the internet, we can write the minutes online as we go. Once the meeting is complete we simply archive that version as an issued document maintaining the online version as a constant Beta if you like. It also means we can update the minutes prior to the meeting allowing for more discussion time.
- WordPress. Although you won’t see many posts on this blog (after my re-invention) my team and the service I work for use WordPress to pass on information in an informal manner. It’s worth pointing out our service relies on providing tried and tested good practice models, tools etc. to our user base. Not everything is deemed ready to go on the main website and so wordpress is used to communicate any interesting information in a more informal manner via JISC Involve.
- Diigo. I’m still finding my feet with Diigo but for me it’s the best social bookmarking tool I’ve come across. It allows me to bookmark pages and add all the usual metadata, add comments to the pages I’ve bookmarked, share with a particular community, create lists, view lists as slideshows and much more. If you haven’t tried Diigo I’d seriously suggest giving it a look.
- Xmarks. Although I use Diigo to manage a range of bookmarks they tend to be research based. For more day to day functionality I tend to maintain a standard set of bookmarks using my chosen browser. Xmarks is a simple plugin that allows me to sync those bookmarks across any computer I’m using.
What’s your top five tools of 2009?
Create a Website in 4 Steps Using WordPress
January 10, 2010
For those that don’t know, creating a website can be quite a simple process. Take this website for example, the process itself:
- Took 3hrs to create, from which about 2hrs 30mins was spent playing FIFA10.
- Cost around £10.
- Required no coding.
In this post I propose 4 simple steps anyone could follow to produce their own website. I have to be honest from the outset and highlight your end product won’t be an all singing, all dancing e-commerce extravaganza but more a nice website to provide information, highlight services etc. If you’re ok with that then we’re good to go.
4 Steps to Create a Website
- Check the availability of your name. Before doing anything it’s always a good idea to check the name you have in mind for your website is available. To do this you need to check with a relevant service provider i.e. 123-reg, or Go Daddy. The name of your site is referred to as your Domain Name.
- Set up a WordPress blog. It literally takes a matter of seconds to set up a blog, all you need is an email address. To do so, use the following form http://en.wordpress.com/signup. The blog itself provides you with all of the functionality you’ll, probably, ever need in a nice friendly interface. You can change the appearence, write content, manage comments and users etc. all from a user friendly dashboard. At this point it’s probably a good idea to familiarise yourself with wordpress, it may seem a little daunting as there’s a lot of functionality available to you but it’s all very starightforward. At this point you may be satisfied with what you have however most people don’t like to have ‘.wordpress.com’ on the end of their web address.
- Applying your Domain Name. If you’re happy to go with a ‘.com’, ‘.org’ or ‘.net’ address then things couldn’t be more straightforward. Follow these instructions: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/register-domain/. If not you’ll have to purchase your domain name through one of the previously mentioned providers e.g. 123-reg, or Go Daddy. Once you’ve bought your domain name it could take anywhere from a few minutes to 48hrs before it can be registered. Once registered you need to follow these instructions http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/map-existing-domain/. The second set of instructions are a little more complicated I strongly suggest you read each instruction carefully. They do tell you everything you need to know.
- Set your home page. At the moment, technically speaking this is still just a blog. So you’ll probably want to change the front page which you can do using the following link http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/front-page/.
That’s pretty much all there is to it. The hard part comes in creating the content, deciding on your design and what widgets you should include. You can even customise your email using Google Apps for free once you’ve mapped your domain. Anyway at such a low cost it’s worth giving it a go and seeing whether or not it’s for you before paying way over the odds for a site you have little or no control over.
