Nirlog.com

Some of my friends have been asking me why aren’t any updates here. I don’t feel good about leaving this blog unattended for so long, but frankly didn’t have time and energy to keep up with it. Now I have decided not to feel guilty because this was just meant for fun anyway. So, this blog will go with the flow of my life, without any stress… Things have changed slightly. Mainly the time. I’m pretty busy running a rat race, like most of the people, work, home, work…. Weekends are good time to get in touch with reality and re-charge your battery. I try to devote the weekends to my family.

On personal account, life is pretty good, trying to climb a property ladder, probably good (or bad) time for first-time buyers… On professional side, enjoying the challenges at ShipServ, grateful for the opportunity to serve and learn… My son is having a good time (very little homework and lot of play). My wife is quite worried about the teenage stabbing, drugs and alcohol abuse…

The weather was very good last week. It was warm and sunny for the whole week! That’s something to celebrate here, English weather is so unpredictable… you can truly see 4 seasons in one day.

Here are few moments I’ve captured from my life in UK…

April snow, my wife and son enjoying their first encounter…

Read the rest of this entry »

I love Firefox for the huge amount of extensions it offers. Lifehack has suggestion for bloggers — 17 Firefox Extensions That Make Blogging Easy.

Do you want to protect your pictures online? The short answer is: you cannot do it, but you can create technical roadblocks and aesthetic roadblocks. Of Zen and Computing has a nice article on How to Protect Your Pictures and Photos on the Internet.

I have tried most of the RSS Readers available including Google Reader but I’ve come back NetNewsWire for the features and ease of use. After seeing the ProBlogger’s poll result on Which Feed Reader is Best? I’m going to seriously give Google Reader another try. Actually, I’m already using it with Google Gears. Check How Google Gears Will Change Your Life.

Every blogger wants the new visitor to come back to their blog again. Wordpress offers many plugins to help you make your blog sticky, and Aaron Brazell at Technosailor suggests some excellent plugins for Intelligent Design and Stickiness

Many smart people have figured out the importance of domain name quite early, and are now multi-millionaires. They came up with many different (smart and weird) business models with the domain name. Check this fascinating story about The man who owns the Internet. Ok that was for business, but how about the domain name for individuals? There’s no doubt that now it’s becoming critical for individuals too. A recent study showed that one in five employer searches the information about the cantidate in internet and 59 percent of those said it influences recruitment decisions. Fortunately you can have your say in what Google says about you. So, individual’s online presence is more important than ever before.

I remember having a hard time finding an appropriate domain name for this site when I started blogging. Today, I decided to check if there were any leftover domain names for me to nab. All the .com, .net and .org domains with my name were already taken. So, I tried my family name, and was lucky to find kunwar.org free. I’ve registered it and forwarded the domains niranjan.kunwar.org and kunwar.org to this site. Maybe in the future I can provide a sub-domain to each and every member of my family . Also found niranjankunwar.com free, and nabbed that too.

If you’re lucky enough to still get a domain with your first name or family name you should just grab it. I register my domains at Netfirms, it’s pretty cheap — $4.95 for first year and $9.95 per year thereafter.

What do you think about online presence and owning your own domain name?

WordPress 2.2 is available for download and as always Technosailor has an article on 10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.2 . I’m not going to upgrade my blog to 2.2 mainly because my web server is still using MySQL 3.x, but I’ve seen several users downgrading after hasty upgrade due to the widget problem (apparently affecting only IE users). So, if you’re using the widgets and planning to upgrade your blog to Wordpress 2.2, you might consider waiting until the bug is fixed.

WordPress is reporting that a cracker gained user-level access to one of the servers and modified the 2.1.1 download file. The hacker managed to modify two files in WP 2.1.1 to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution. The 2.1.1 package does not seem to have been compromised when it was initially released, WordPress encourages all users to upgrade to 2.1.2 to patch the security hole.

Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

If you’re reading this in your RSS reader, just wanted to let you know that I’ve changed the look at Nirlog.com. Now I’m using a new theme WP-Multiflex-3, by Ainslie Johnson. My previous theme called WP-Andreas09 was also by Ainslie. I like the new theme, and I think many blogs will be using it, but I’m one of the first to have it, so I don’t mind . It supports Widgets, the cool thing is that the header too is widgetized in 3 sections, top, middle and bottom, which can be placed where you want or left out if you don’t want them. The theme is also SEO friendly, where space is left for your “keywords” and “descriptions” in header.php, and title appears before the the blog’s name. I love the RSS Subscription button at the header too.

When I recently launched my new blog, it all started with a concept, domain search, domain registrration, wordpress installation, themes, plugins, some php hacks and so on… I just did everything following my previous experience but later realized having a checklist would have been much more helpful. I think it would have saved me a lot of time. There’re some excellent checklists about blogging in the blogosphere, and I’ve collected some of the best I could find. If you know of other good checklists related to blog and blogging please let me know, I’ll expand the list. So, here it is… enjoy the list of the checklists…

1. Blogging Starter Checklist - I learnt it the hard way but you don’t have to. I have put together a starter checklist for new bloggers. - By Rajesh Setty

2. WordPress: The Complete Post-Install Checklist - After setting up WordPress for several of my friends, I found that having a ‘checklist’ makes things go even faster - so I decided to write it all up and share with you. - By Ross McKillop

3. 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch - The 21 points included in this checklist will cover the basics of what you need to do during those all-important first two weeks of your blog’s life. - By Aviva

4. Top Wordpress Plugins - Some of the most useful and most popular Wordpress plugins. - By Vlad Akilov

5. 7 More Sure-Fire Headline Templates That Work - So here are 7 more sure-fire headline templates that will work when you’re aiming to score more readers. - By Brian Clark

6. 10 Most Misspelled Words in Blogs - Technically the following words aren’t misspelled. They’re misused. The reason you should review this list is because a spell checker won’t correct these for you. - By Johan Holmberg

7. 8 Steps to Growing Your Blog Community One Person At a Time - The real value in blogging comes from 1. How can you get 1 more person to visit your blog, engage and build a relationship with you? - By Ben Yoskovitz

8. WordPress and SEO - Bunch of SEO tips for your blog. These tips won’t flood your blog with visitors - no SEO tips will. Use these tips to improve your site. - By Thomas Silkjær

9. How to get traffic for your blog - List of 56 advices to get more traffic for your blog. - By Seth Godin

10. Free! Icons for your website or application - List of some amazing icons by various artists who have made their work available to the general public for a variety of uses. These icons are all free. - By Kirk Montgomery

11. My 50 favorite blogging resources - List of 50 blogging resources that can be helpful to any individual and corporation looking to get into blogging. - By Neil Patel

12. Fifty Writing Tools - At times, it helps to think of writing as carpentry. That way, writers and editors can work from a plan and use tools stored on their workbench. - By Roy Peter Clark

13. 10 Things You should Know About WordPress 2.1 - If you’re planning to upgrade your blog to Wordpress to 2.1 here’re 10 things you should know. - By Aaron Brazell

14. List of Popular Blogs - The biggest blogs in the blogosphere, as measured by unique links in the last six months. - By Technorati

“The only thing that matters finally is superior content. If you forget everything else in this list and focus on just providing great content, you can still win BIG in the blogging world!” - Rajesh Setty

Technosailor has an useful article about 10 Things You should Know About WordPress 2.1. This is a timely and useful post for those who’re planning to upgrade their Wordpress to 2.1. The new version will be released tomorrow and it is the major release since 2.0 branch was launched. This new version will have new features. Some of the notable features are:

• Auto-save of Drafts
• Better Image Upload Handling
• Deprecation of $tableposts, $tablecomments, etc
• Plugin Compatibility
• Native WordPress Migration Functionality
• MySQL Version
• New Visual Editor Interface
• Merging of Links and Categories
• Privacy Features
• Nonces

As for myself, I’ll test the Wordpress 2.1 on a testing site before upgrading my blogs. The main task would be to check the plugin compatibility and also I’ll need to upgrade the MySQL to 4.0+ before upgrading, since Wordpress 2.1 doesn’t support MySQl 3.xx

Update: Wordpress 2.1 is released

After a marathon of php hacks, trial of different themes, plugins, research of online security sites and security tools… I’m delighted to announce my new blog Security Tools News & Tips to my readers here. As the name mentions, this blog is exclusively focused on Security Tools, News and Tips. The site will be a repository of best security tools both hardwares and softwares (freewares and commercials). I’ve already posted 30+ security tools in the site and will be updating the repository regularly with some of the best in the industry. I’ll also post latest news and tips on security issues. The site is at it’s beginning stage so, I’ll be making some adjustments and changes over time. I’ll of-course maintain this blog (Nirlog.com) too, this is kind of personal where I’ll continue to write about different topics without any constraint. Please visit my new blog and let me know what you think.

The year 2006 was a great one for me. I’ve had good time blogging and learned a lot too. 2007 has arrived, and I’ve started working on the concept of a new blog. Most of the things are finalized and if everything goes as planned, I’ll be launching it within a few weeks.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of my readers a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2007!