30 April 2014

4 Rules For Working With Tech Support When Your Site Goes Down



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How do you host your website? You might choose to host it on the bare-metal of a dedicated server, or on a cost-effective VPS. If you’re anything like me, you probably choose to host your site on a managed, shared-hosting package, mostly out of pure laziness. After all, who wants to do server management in their spare time? The other day, my website was automatically upgraded to the latest and greatest WordPress; version 3.9. Not long after, everything broke. Suddenly, I was unable to create new blog posts. I couldn’t log in. I couldn’t see my Jetpack statistics. Nothing worked....


Read the full article: 4 Rules For Working With Tech Support When Your Site Goes Down



What You Can Do With Gists on Github?



Github is the popular website among software developers for sharing code. The site hosts over 12 million open-source projects — including games, books and even fonts — making Github the largest code repository on the Internet.


Github offers another useful service called Gist that developers often use to dump their code snippets but Gists aren’t just for geeks and coders — they offer something for everybody. If you have ever heard of web apps like Pastebin or Pastie, Gist are similar but more polished, they are free of advertising and loaded with more features.


Gist – They aren’t just for Geeks!


Here are some areas where you can utilize the Gist service. And you don’t have to be a geek for this.


1. Write Text Anonymously


You don’t have to create an account at Github to use Gists. Just go to gist.github.com, write any block of text in the space provided and create a Gist. You can choose to have a secret Gist that will not be visible to search engines but only to those who know the URL of that secret Gist.


2. Track Changes like a Wiki


When you edit the content of a Gist that has already been published, the previous versions of the Gist are also preserved. You can hit the Revisions tab to track edits made over time and there’s a built-in diff engine that will visually highlight the changes between any two versions of a gist. This can also be used for comparing text files.


Compare File Difference


3. Publish Gists in Rich Text


While gists only accept plain text, you can use the Markdown format to publish your text in rich HTML format. You can add lists, images (hosted externally) and even Tables that are not supported in the original Markdown specification. When you are done writing the text in Markdown, remember to save the file with a .md extension.


markdown gist


4. Gist as a Writing Platform


While there exist plenty of writing engines — from Blogger to Medium to Tumblr — you can also Github’s Gist service to quickly publish your writings on the web. Create a Gist either in plain text or markdown format and then use roughdraft.io to publish that Gist as a standalone web page. It’s like integrating Readability with your Gists. And you can use emoji (smileys) too!


5. Host Single Page Websites on Gist


Bl.ocks is one of the most interesting applications built for Gists. You can write your HTML, CSS and JavaScript code in plain text, save the Gist as index.html and then use bl.ocks.org to serve the rendered version of that HTML web page as it should appear in the browser. For instance, here’s a live version of an HTML file that is hosted on gist.github.com.


There are bandwidth constraints obviously but bl.ock.org is still an excellent tool for hosting your HTML through Gists. The other alternative is Google Drive.


6. Maintain a Task List


You can use Gists to keep track of pending tasks (see example). The tasks are written in a special syntax in plain text but they are rendered as a list of check boxes.



- [x] Pick the flowers
- [ ] Call John 9303032332
- [x] Cancel cable subscription
- [ ] Book the flight tickets

You can check or uncheck the items and the source text will update automatically. If your Gist is public, anyone can see your to-do lists but only the gist owner can change the status of individual tasks.


7. Gist as a Web Clipper


The GistBox add-on for Google Chrome lets you save text snippets from web pages as public or private gists. You can even add labels, or #hashtags, to your gists making discovery easier.


8. Embed Gists in Web Pages


You can embed any Gist in your web pages with a line of JavaScript code. The embedded Gists maintain all the formatting and syntax highlighting and visitors to your website can easily clone (or fork) your Gist into their own Github accounts. There’s also a plugin and shortcode for embedding Gists in WordPress blogs.



<script src="http://ift.tt/1o3bYDJ;

9. Measure the Traffic


You can use Google Analytics to measure the traffic to your Gists. Since Github does not allow JavaScript code to run inside plain text Gists, we can use the GA Beacon to log visits in real-time to Gists.


Add this line to your Gists, save in Markdown format and it will add a transparent tracking image to your Gists.



![Analytics](http://ift.tt/1pOi6Ew)

10. Manage Gists from the Desktop


Gisto is free desktop application that lets you manage your Gists outside the browser. You can search Gists, edit the content of gists, view revisions over time and also share Gists. The app is available for Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. The other alternative is GistBox which is a web app.




This story, What You Can Do With Gists on Github?, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 30/04/2014 under Internet

Twitter Is Flatlining, Firefox 29 Is Radical, MacBook Air Is Cheaper [Tech News Digest]



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Today in Tech News Digest, Twitter flatlines, Firefox updates, MacBook Air cheapens, Xbox One lands, Udacity expands, and Vsauce measures. Twitter Is Flatlining It sucks that twitter has ruined every experience that one could possibly ever have huh — matt (@mattbuchanan) April 23, 2014 Twitter has reported its financial results for Q1 2014. The figures can be spun a number of ways depending on your point of view, but the ultimate truth lurking behind them all is that Twitter is flatlining to an alarming degree. The financials aren’t too bad. Twitter brought in revenues of $250 million during the last...


Read the full article: Twitter Is Flatlining, Firefox 29 Is Radical, MacBook Air Is Cheaper [Tech News Digest]



Watching TV: Anytime, Anywhere, On Every Device [We Ask You Results]



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Watching TV is a completely different experience now than it was in the last golden age of television. The days when families would huddle around a square box spitting out a handful of channels full of scheduled content are long gone. Sadly. The range of options available for couch potatoes keen on watching television is vast. As we found out when we centered our We Ask You discussion on all things related to the television viewing habits of the MakeUseOf readership. TV Here, TV There, TV Everywhere We asked you, How Do You Watch TV? There was a healthy debate...


Read the full article: Watching TV: Anytime, Anywhere, On Every Device [We Ask You Results]