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Links for April 6

April 6th, 2007 · 0 comments

How Branding Scores Traffic from Social Media. Interesting idea on how using a consistent username, avatar, etc. across sites helps you to develop a “personal brand”.

Gmail, PGP, and the End to End Solution. I was looking for a way to use PGP again, however since I’m using Gmail’s online interface it is not built-in. It looks like the best solution is to go back to using Thunderbird with Enigmail.

New ideas for web hosting control panels

March 26th, 2007 · 2 comments

My web host, Steelpixel, wrote that they are looking to develop a new control panel package that is:

based on more current technologies (read: apache 2.2) and something with a much nicer UI.

They asked for feedback on what works and what doesn’t with the current setup, so I thought I would think about what advice I could give in the development of the new control panel.

If I was designing a control panel, the first thing I would do would be to think about which features to include. I looked at the current control panel, which is based on Psoft’s H-Sphere, and compared it to other control panels I have used (cPanel and Media Temple’s). Below is a list of common functions:

Account settings

  • Users: Manage profiles of users with access to the account
  • Billing: view billing statements, upgrade/change the hosting plan used by the account, view/pay account’s current balance
  • Support: file a new support ticket, manage existing support tickets

Server settings

  • Domain management: View the IP address/nameservers of domains; manage DNS zones, subdomains, and aliases; view HTML directory
  • FTP/SSH: Manage FTP/SSH users
  • Mail: Manage email users, email aliases, and anti-virus/anti-spam settings
  • Databases: Add/manage MySQL/PostgreSQL databases
  • PHP Settings: manage the way the server interacts with PHP, change the version of PHP used by each domain
  • Statistics: View reports on bandwidth and disk usage, view reports on webpage statistics
  • SSL Certificates: Add/manage SSL certificates

I think that the next step is examining the current control panel and deciding which features need improvement, and if functions from the old control panel can be incorporated into the new one.

CSS value: min-height at 100%

March 25th, 2007 · 2 comments

In the process of developing this site, I ran into a problem with page heights. On several pages, such as the archives and the 404 pages, there is not much content, and because of this, #page (the wrapper div) does not reach the bottom of the window.

Using a few lines of CSS from a discussion on css-discuss, I solved the problem for Firefox. When #page is shorter than the available window height, #page stretches vertically to fill the window.

  1. html, body { height : 100%; }
  2. body { height : 100%; }
  3. html > body { height : 100%; min-height : 100%; }
  4. #page { min-height : 100%; }

I think I could have also used min-height="650px", but I wanted the browser to calculate if #page filled the window and only adjust it the amount needed.

For example, what if the browser window was resized to 500×500px, but min-height was set to 650px? Then, it would be unnecessary for #page to be resized.

Now, I am trying to figure out what is the best way to get this to work in IE. Any ideas?

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