Just added a recent personal project of mine to the portfolio. Fantasy Folder, a site that will hopefully become a respected source for fantasy book reviews, news and discussion.
I think the post thumbnails really add to the site overall. Their one of my favorite parts of the design, besides the overall folder theme (which didn’t turn out quite as imagined, but good enough).
A month or two ago I finished my latest WordPress plugin. (I just put-off writing a post here. 😀 ).
WP125 is a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to manage 125×125 format ads on your blog. Click on over to the plugin page for a full description of the plugin.
WP125 has gained a fair bit of popularity, and users of it seem to really like it. I don’t think you’ll find a better plugin to manage 125x125s. True, the plugin isn’t perfect, especially since I had to cut a couple of planned features out to make the deadline for the competition I entered it in, but I’m currently working on the next release, which will hopefully address a good number of requests.
If you’re starting a new website, one important thing to consider is which host you are going to use. No, GeoCities isn’t a viable option for a serious site. 😀
A quick Google search for “web host” comes up with a boatload of results, but of course, not all hosts are reputable. There are cheap hosts, expensive hosts, free hosts, and fake hosts that steal your money. Obviously you want to avoid the latter, and free hosts generally aren’t the best choice either. Also, you want to get the most bang for your buck…
There are plenty of guides to choosing a web host floating around online, so I’ll cut to the fun part, using socialboosting.com can also help to boost your content of your website on social media. Here are a few hosts that I, and/or others recommend. They’re safe options for hosting, and their reasonably priced too.
1&1 offers budget hosting plans that are great for beginning websites. They have shared hosting plans for as low as $3.99 per month, and their feature set is pretty good. Some people have had mixed experiences with their service, though my time with them has been relatively trouble-free. I also register my domain names with 1and1.
If your site has outgrown budget shared hosting, Media Temple is a good place to go. Their distributed server grid is great for high-traffic sites, reducing the effect of having your site hit the front page of Digg, or other issues that occur when your site gets smashed with a sudden influx of visitors. Their services isn’t cheap, costing $20/month for their Grid Service plan, but if you need more than shared hosting accounts can offer, Media Temple is a good option, costing far less than VPS hosting. Michael Martin hosts his site Pro Blog Design on Media Temple.
Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips highly recommends Doreo. Their hosting plans start at $6.99/month as of this writing, and though the numbers on their charts look small compared to others, they claim that you’ll get every megabyte, unlike with other hosts that oversell, promising terabytes of storage and not delivering. Their servers are very fast, as a visit to either their site or Daily Blog Tips will prove.
A Small Orange is another host that claims to not oversell. They have several hosting plans with attractively cheap prices, and they appear to have fairly decent performance.
If you have had pleasant experiences with a web host, and would like to recommend it to others, feel free to leave a comment.
Photo by johnniewalker.
May 29, 2008 – Today MVH Media is live.
I’m Matt V. Harzewski (hence the name M-V-H Media). I’m a web developer, blogger, and aspiring author. I have a lot of experience in the web arena, and have done some consulting work for a few people. I’ve finally found the time to put up a site advertising my services, and look forward to taking-on projects more actively. You can read a little bit more about me, or take a look at my blog Webmaster-Source.
My goal is to improve the web by reducing the number of websites that look like the ones you’d find on GeoCities in the ’90s, and to make the web even more interesting than it is already.
If you have some web work that needs to be done, shoot me an email. I can handle a wide range of projects, and the home page details the main ones.
Photo by jurvetson.
There is a problem with the SimplePie Plugin for WordPress. Check your