Michael Sunarlim

I decided to write this post to remember my early years as a web developer when I only wanted to offer the best price for the client, including to suggest the cheapest web hosting provider without having a slightest clue how to qualify it as a ‘good’ or ‘better’ service. It might be just me back then, but web server was probably the last thing I would decide or search in the whole development process. They are just servers that are contantly connected to the Internet and host your websites so they are all pretty much the same, right?

Wrong. If you have the principle that a web project does not end after you launch a website and get the final payment, you should realize the extra work you need to do if you chose or suggested wrong hosting provider. You want your client to be happy with the website you built, not to get frustrated because it goes down every now and then while you can do nothing about it.

So, what makes the differences between the right providers with the rest? To me it would be quality, support and transparency. Put prices in consideration after you are confident with those three first. Remember, web hosting is a very competitive business. It is rarely a company is trying to overcharge you unless it has much better quality than the rest.

Now to the most important question: what type of server that you need?

Shared Hosting

Most companies and developers usually put this as the first option for a very reasonable reason: price. Nowadays, you can get the good shared hosting plans from $5-20/month. Are there differences between one with another that costs 4-5 times more? Most of the time, yes. Usually providers that offer more economical plans gain the profit by trying to sell more with the same server resources, this might mean they put more restrictions for the account like outgoing email and databases limitations.

When you are researching for a shared hosting plan, be sure to check on the limits for those. The next thing you might also want to know is SSH support.

The good things

• Economical
• Best money for disk capacity offered
• Can be set with minimal web server knowledge
• Easy to upgrade, although mostly only for space and bandwidth

What you might miss

• Limited resources
• Limited access

Things to check

• Disk space capacity
• Email, database, etc limitations
• SSH access support

Ideal for…

• Websites with minimal or no plan of expansion
• Static websites
• Companies or clients that plan to host many email accounts so require a big disk space

Recommendation

• BlueHost
• MediaTemple*

*Note: recently MT has been having stability and security issues on their gs (shared) plans, but I cannot overlook the fact that it has the nicest interface. This is important because it encourages the clients to browse through their control panel and do not get overwhelmed by it.

Virtual Private Server

This is the next upgrade for regular hosting, above this then it means you are developing a website in a very huge scale. Virtual Private Server gives you much more flexibility when it comes to resources and access. You can practically install anything that you can do on your local computer/server. It can easily be an overkill you opt for this if you only plan to host a simple company profile without any server-side processes.

When do you need to upgrade to dedicated virtual? When your blog is listed as the top 10 blogs to follow by Smashing Magazine, kidding. You should start considering it if you are developing a web project or installing a web app that requires more than average resources, like a newsletter system with thousands of subscribers or e-commerce system with many customers.

The good things

• Better flexibility
• Installable with almost any type of web based applications
• Can be reselled
• Guaranteed resources

What you might miss

• Cost more than shared hosting, usually with less disk space
• Simple access, more knowledge is needed

Things to check

• Type of server: unmanaged/semi-managed/managed
• Control Panel system: CPanel/Plesk/etc
• Disk space, actual memory, server processor

Ideal for…

• Websites with few applications installed
• Dynamic websites and blogs with very high daily traffic
• Companies or clients who are planning to expand the website with new sections and features
• If you want to host the projects from your clients yourself

Recommendation

• Linode (unmanaged)
• WiredTree (managed)

At the end, when comes the time to choose one, look for direct references and do your research to find the most suitable plan for. It is worth to mention about WebHostingTalk as one of the best source to find web hosting reviews and coupon codes and promotion!

I am sure you have your own opinions and suggestions about this, please feel free to post your comments.

I am probably the ten billionth person who says this, but jQuery this just GREAT! By spending a few extra minutes you can add so much interaction to your website. It is so easy to understand and use, you do not even need to be able to create your own. So many plugins out there that can make life so much easier. Here are five plugins that are not only nice, but also easy to implement:

Fancybox

FancyBox is a tool for displaying images, html content and multi-media in a Mac-style “lightbox” that floats overtop of web page.

Jqtransform

This plugin is a jQuery styling plugin wich allows you to skin form elements.

Supersized

Supersized resizes images to fill browser while maintaining image dimension ratio, cycles Images/backgrounds via slideshow with transitions and preloading.

Scrollable

The purpose of this library is to make it extremely easy to add scrolling functionality to a website. Whenever you wish to scroll HTML elements in a visually-appealing manner, this is the only library you need. The main design goals of this library are to provide visual customization functionality and programmability.

TipTip

TipTip is a very lightweight and intelligent custom tooltip jQuery plugin. It uses ZERO images and is completely customizable via CSS. It’s also only 3.5kb minified!

Kudos for the programmers who developed these great plugins!

Yes, it has been that long since the last time I posted anything on my blog. What has happened between then? Well I changed my entire main website into SweetCron, a sweet lifestream software which sadly no longer actively being developed. I loved it because I only needed to tweet and bookmark interesting sites and it would automatically update my site. Nothing is more convenient than that, right?

Anyway, I have been wanting to blog again since the start of the year. After being postponed for many self-created reasons, I found the exact theme I need from Smashing Magazine. This website theme is called SimpleFolio and designed by Omar E. Corrales. So many thanks to Omar and SM for sharing this amazing theme for FREE.

The dream feature is of course the Portfolio functions, I have been wanting to be able to maintain my work portfolio in a better way. Please make sure to check out my portfolio page.

Time to take a break. Cheers!

What is Deskography? It is a simple little service where you upload photos of your desk.

Such a simple idea, but it is so nicely built and gaining more and more members every single day. Check out my desk there!

My work desk on Deskography

This has been one of the best Apple Mail tips that I found from the web.

All you need is some basic knowledge of (X)HTML and CSS and the rest is very well explained on the tutorial. Do not let that long and very detailed steps discourage you, it is actually very easy to do!

Create a fancy signature for your Apple Mail

Read the tutorial (by All Forces)

I really love Slideshow 2! JavaScript class for creating slideshows. It is super easy to use and customize. The only thing I wish it was based on jQuery instead of MooTools.

Well, I just found CrossSlide. I have not actually tested yet, but from the demo it has the basic functions of Slideshow 2! except the navigation bar. The better thing of course because it is based on jQuery, so I am happy to have this option. I am sure over time more feature will be added.

My full support for Tobia Conforto, the creator for this cool jQuery plugin.

Andrew Lister's home office desk

This is what I want my desk to be! Well, well maybe I need some extra space for my other stuff too like USB cables, which you will need sooner or later, blank CD/DVDs, etc. But it is always nice to see others’ well organized desks.

Picture is taken from Andrew Lister’s Flickr via Unplggd’s post.

This is it, the next big thing that really excites me since the announcement of iPhone a few years ago. I will not comment anything about it yet, as better articles are already all over the web. But this is definitely going to be exciting!

Website: remote.collect3.com.au

[rating: 3.5/5]

I love my modded Xbox with XBMC. I still believe it is the best and cheapest digital media system that you can get to this date. Until AppleTV can natively run movies in multi format of course.

When hear that XBMC Remote is available on Apple App Store I was so excited and tried to accept the $5 price tag that makes it a middle-priced for an iPhone/iPhone app. I bougth it anyway in the end and hoping it can really work like Apple’s Remote app to control iTunes/AppleTV.

Review Note
A little breakdown on my current system: I use the latest XBMC build by T3CH. I previously used a very old version of XBMC which could not work with this app. More on this below. My Xbox has just a little over 1,000 songs on its library. A IR-receiver is plugged on one of the controller jack and I regularly use my Logitech Harmony remote to control it.
Another thing, I understand this is a very early release so I am sure with a few more updates this app will be a lot better.

Installation
Like all iPhone app from App Store, installation was a breeze. Just click buy and the app will be downloaded and installed on your iPhone. You also need to turn on Web Server function on your XBMC, details provided here.

First Try
On my case after I set everything up, I was having a frustrating time because I could not make the remote work even though it could connect to my XBMC. The app FAQ page just did not give enough information of what to do to solve this. At the end I decided to upgrade my XBMC and it worked.

Interface
It is definitely inspired by Apple’s Remote app for iTunes. All the buttons are nicely done, album cover thumbnails are slow to load but this is something that will be updated on the next release.

Performance
I am going to be super honest here, the performance is not exactly the way that I had hoped for. Everything feels lagging, like when I choose a song it may take a few seconds before it starts playing. Worse, when I click on Songs tab and click Shuffle it will make the app and Xbox freeze and if I am lucky it will start playing a few minutes later. I understand this can be the limitations on my Xbox’s power as XBMC is not only limited for Xbox only but also available on Mac and Linux which may have better processor and memory. But then again this should be something that is mentioned on their product page, considering this is not a free nor a beta version.

Support
Apart from the lack of information on their website, support is something that the developer’s put attention to. They provided forums for people to ask questions and give suggestion. They are also quite responsive when I emailed them regarding my problems.

Price
For $5 I feel this app is a bit overpriced, considering similar app was already developed a year ago for jailbroken iPhone. Maybe I am being too subjective here, but $5 also feels hefty because everything else about XBMC are community-maintained and free.

Conclusion
If you have an Xbox with XBMC and use it a lot, it is nice to be able to browse through your libraries without needing to turn on your TV. If you have a huge music library and need to keep it organized and sync with your iTunes, maybe buying an AppleTV is a better option.

More than three years using Mac, I have always been frustrated when I need to type non-regular characters. On Windows I usually had this huge list of ASCII characters list then entered them by pressing ALT + (ASCII code number).

On Mac I think it cannot work that easy, but I maybe wrong. Anyway, just today I just find the better way to do this by accident. Turns out all you need to do is press alt+command+T and it will open the Characters window.

Not all the characters I use are there, but still need to check it more.