Technically Easy

Blog

  • Blog Traffic Stats – Two Years Later

    I was debating about writing another yearly update post, mostly because I didn’t think it would add any value for someone to read it. As I thought about it some more, I decided to write it because I figured it may add some value.

    One of the hardest parts about starting a web site or blog, at least for me, was generating traffic. It is always hard to put your hard work into something and not receive much traffic. I decided to publish my yearly traffic statistics and other information to show what is possible after two years.
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  • 4 WordPress Plugins to Help Protect Your Blog

    4 WordPress Plugins to Help Protect Your Blog

    If you have a WordPress blog, then you have probably thought about securing and protecting your blog. I have read about many instances where someone has lost their blog because it was hacked. In some of the cases, the owner of the blog had to start over because they didn’t have a backup. Protecting your blog is just as important as protecting your computer.

    For the past few months I have been learning about securing a WordPress blog, and have implemented many changes into Technically Easy to help keep it secure. At the same time I have also began using plugins that will help protect it from potential deadly visitors, as well as ensure that if something does happen, I won’t lose everything. In this post I will look at a few plugins that I use to protect my WordPress blog.

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  • Security Tips for Online Shopping

    I do a lot of shopping online. I enjoy the convenience, and the lack of crowds, but mostly I can find almost anything I want online. Many are wary of shopping online because of the security risk. Security is a huge issue when purchasing online, but there are many things you can do to ensure your security.

    I have been order online for about 10 years now, and have had no identity theft or financial issues. Others have not been so lucky, which is why it is important to know what you can do to keep yourself protected. In this post I outline many steps you can take to ensure your personal information stays safe when you shop online.

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  • Microsoft Outlook: How to Recover Hard Deleted Items

    Microsoft Outlook: How to Recover Hard Deleted Items

    For many that use Outlook at work, you are probably connected to an Exchange server that manages your e-mails. In many instances, the administrator of the Exchange servers has probably configured the server to retain deleted items for a specified period of time. By default, Outlook sends any deleted e-mails to the “Deleted Items” folder, where you can restore the item or permanently delete the item. But what if you hard delete an item that doesn’t goto the “Deleted Items”?

    There is a simple change that you can make in the Windows registry to make use of the Exchange Server’s retention period. This will allow you to recover any items that you have hard deleted. Let’s see how to do this.

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  • Microsoft Word: You Are Working Without a Word Work File and Memory is Nearly Full

    Microsoft Word: You Are Working Without a Word Work File and Memory is Nearly Full

    I have been struggling with a Microsoft Word problem for a few weeks now. Whenever I opened a document and then began changing it, I occasionally received an error message. Once the error message appeared,all the buttons and options within Word became grayed out. This prevented me from saving my work that I had done up to that point. It became frustrating to say the least.

    To find a solution to the problem I turned to the Internet. It appears that this error is quite popular as a search in Google produced many results. I tried many of the solutions, but none seemed to have worked for me. It wasn’t until I decided to look further into the error that I found the solution that appears to have fixed the problem.

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  • How to Find Disk Space Hogs

    During my regular computer maintenance I tend to delete unnecessary files to conserve and recover hard disk space. Files such as temporary Internet files, regular temporary files, and old shortcuts are usually files that I like to remove. There have been times in the past when I have removed the unnecessary files but still have little disk space. Unless you go through each directory, it could be difficult to find which files are hogging all the disk space.

    A few months ago I stumbled on a small application (less than 2MB) that has helped find files and directories that use up the most disk space. I use this application on all computers that I have used since then and have been easily able to recover disk space by finding other unnecessary files that have been using up a lot of disk space.

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  • How to Display Web Code Examples in Your Web Site

    I had been struggling with an issues in some of my blog posts. In posts that explain how to change HTML or PHP code for a web page, I like to display the actual code in my blog post. The problem is that when a visitor copies the code, it isn’t formatted properly. While the actual alphanumeric characters are copied properly, the single and double-quotes aren’t valid.

    When I simply typed the single or double-quote character from my keyboard, the characters would be rendered in the browser differently than if I had typed them in the code. The characters would be formatted and looked different on the web page and when they were copied, it would cause coding problems, such as when the code was pasted in the Blogger editor. I think that I have fixed the problem, and I’ll explain how in this post.

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  • Fix: Removing WindowsClick From Your Computer

    I recently had the opportunity to fix a computer that was having issues with a virus/trojan/rootkit. I included all three in the list because I had no idea what I was looking at when I first heard of the issues. I was told that when the owner of the machine would perform a search in Google, every link that they clicked on would be redirected to a URL that included “windowsclick”.

    While doing some research, I found a solution to the issue, but it was a complicated solution. I instructed the owner to install both anti-virus and anti-spyware tools and then run them to see what was found. Upon trying to run an anti-spyware tool, a new problem presented itself: the tools would load but wouldn’t run. Not wanting to give up, I asked the owner to drop off the computer and I’ll have a look. After some research I managed to clean the computer, and here is how I did it.

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