AppMan

Ap2man has been quiet for a while, I’ve been mainly focusing on my other blog - 52Lives. But there have been couple of events that made me get back to ap2man.

• I need a bookie web application for 52Lives.
• I have a distant dream of getting my workouts, diets and calendar to work in sync. They need to be available both on the net and on my mobile phone.
• I fell in love with Ruby on Rails.
• There’s not much documentation yet for Rails version 2.0.

This equation made think: what if I create the applications I need with Rails 2.0 and create tutorials as I go on?

That sounded interesting enough, so now on ap2man is not about great apps and software anymore. Now it’s focused on Ruby on Rails 2.0 and creating magic with it.

My friend send me an email with an EML file attached. I use Gmail, so I couldn’t open the attachment straight away. I would’ve put the message to trash bin, but the subject of the message made me curious, so I couldn’t just let it be :)
(Read on …)

Last week I read from Problogger.net that there’s a severe security issue with the WordPress 2.1.1 installation. A hacker had altered the WP source code, so it was important to make this upgrade. Thanks to the WP crew, there’s a really good guide for upgrading to WP 2.1.2. I thought about writing the instructions here, but the guide is so good and rich in detail, so there was no sense writing it all over again. But I wanted to share my thoughts on this upgrade and also add info about the tools that helped me.
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I know a cool design when I see one, but I couldn’t design a cool theme by myself with my current skills. I’m not much of an artist either, so choosing colors for a theme is already a tedious task! Even with these limitations I’ve named this post ‘Cool Design In 10 Minutes!’. You don’t need to spend any money and it will only take 10 minutes of your time. Fare enough? OK, lets go!

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The beauty of CSS is the fact it makes webmaster’s life much more easier. You can change the style of your whole site in a matter of seconds. In this series of posts I will show you the process of my blog’s makeover. Currently I’m using the Anaconda theme for WordPress and I want to change the style to give my blog a unique look. So if you’re interested in personalizing your blog you can start by reading this series!
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Lately I’ve been thinking about the focus of my blog. In the beginning I wanted to blog about developing cool applications and funky gadgets. Once I started blogging I realised there’s much to write about customizing WordPress, so I went on that way. Then I got caught up with moneytizing issues. But how cool would it be to write about small-business strategies? And making money online??? The beginning of blogging is a struggle… It’s a struggle since I think too much about making money with the blog. But that’s not the way to go. It’s about delivering value to the readers and giving help to their problems. The money will follow if its ought to follow. So now I have learned my lesson and will continue on delivering value to my readers :) What I’ve decided is to start 5 series of posts, that will work as a complete guide to do something. That something will mostly relate to cool applications, so the circle is closed… (Read on …)

Starting a small Internet business is not hard. You join to different affiliate programs, advertise their products and collect the commissions. Or you start a web site, create content, generate traffic and enjoy AdSense payments every month. Right? Well, when you’re still waiting for the first payment you realize how hard it is just to get noticed. I mean there are millions of other Internet entrepreneurs out there who are also trying to make their living. In the early days of Internet you could get people’s attention more easily, but with the Web 2.0 boom there’s a blog born every half of a second. Now how to stand out from the crowd?

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In the beginning of 2006 I was searching for web hosting for my sites. I had been using local (= Finnish) hosting services, but IMHO the services hadn’t been fulfilling my needs. Next thing may sound trivial and obvious, but to me it was a great discovery: why not host my sites outside Finland??? I searched around and quickly I realised there were many players on the field and they were practically offering the moon from the sky… (Read on …)

Kontera. The name is quite like Pantera, so it sounds promising :) Kontera is a provider of in-text advertising solutions and their flagship product is called ContextLink™. I got an email from the Kontera team that my site was approved to their ad system. I was quite surprised, since my blog does not meet their requirements. I don’t have 500,000 page impression per month (well, at least not now :D ). My blog is also just about over 1 months old and has merely 2 page impressions a day. Do you want to know how I got approved? (Read on …)

I’m using Google Analytics to keep track of the traffic on my sites. I was having an annoying problem, though. Whenever I was changing the template on my WordPress, I had to manually add the GA code to the template. After a while I also noticed that the code had to be added to multiple files (I was adding it to index.php or footer.php, depending on the template). So I hadn’t been gotting all the traffic information to GA. Luckily there was a handy solution available. (Read on …)