This is the third post on the series, “My List of recommended WordPress Plugins”. In this post I wish to introduce the the four plugins that won the Wordpress Plugin Competition hosted by Weblog Tools.

• The Grand Prize was won by the OneClick plugin by Anirudh Sanjeev. OneClick is a Wordpress Plugin+Firefox Extension combo which allows you to install Wordpress themes and plugins with one click. You can install plugins and themes directly from your browser by selecting the appropriate option from the right click context menu of Firefox.  You can also install plugins and themes from your Admin Interface by directly uploading the plugin package or by providing the url of the plugin. PlugInstaller(which I have already introduced) by Henning Schaefer also allows you do the same for plugins, but not for themes. Personally, I likePlugInstaller over OneClick, because it integrates with your default plugin manager and allows you to Install, Activate, Deactivate and Uninstall plugins, wheras OneClick only allows you to Install and remove plugins. PlugInstaller can be installed on Windows and Unix servers, but PlugInstaller works only on Unix servers.
• The second prize was won by the MyDashboard plugin by Barry. This is an excellent plugin that allows you to customize your WordPress Admin Dashboard with cool gadgets and feeds. The plugin is basically based on the idea of Personalized homepages provided by iGoogle, PageFlakes, Netvibes etc. It provides a number of standard gadgets that provides you all the data provided by your default wordpress dashboard. I strongly recommend this plugin.
• Keith Dsouza won the third prize with his WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. I used this plugin to upgrade my blog from v2.2.1 to v2.2.3 and to the latest version (v2.3), yesterday. The plugin worked smooth and fast and saved me a lot of headaches. It creates a backup of your existing installation and database, and thus allow you to revert to the previous version, if something goes wrong. You can upgrade your blog to the latest version of wordpress, which will be automatically downloaded from the wordpress repository, in less than 5 minutes. I strongly recommend this plugin too.
• The consolation prize was awarded to  Ozh, creator of Who Sees Ads. This is an Ad Management plugin that allows you to specify who sees ads on your site. The plugin is similar to the Shylock Adsense plugin (which I have posted earlier) in some respects, but is more advanced and provides better configurability. While Shylock Adsense allowed you to specify the pages and ad position directly from the plugin’s options page, in Who Sees Ads, you have to manually insert the generated code by editing the required template files. If you are comfortable with HTML and PHP, then Who Sees Ads will be a much better option, else stick on to Shylock Adsense.
• Login LockDown by Michael VanDeMar is another plugin that I found interesting. This plugin was not a contestant at the Wordpress Plugin Competition. Login LockDown is a security plugin for Wordpress, that records the IP address and timestamp of every failed WordPress login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range.

If you have read my previous posts in this series, then you would have tried the SpotMilk admin theme by Ceprix. It is one of the wordpress addons that I like the most. The theme was updated recently to include wordpress v2.3 compatibility and few other changes. I recommend you to upgrade to the latest version. Also don’t forget to upgrade to the latest version of Admin Drop Down Menu too.

NB: Before you try any of these, please backup your WordPress database. If you are not sure how to do that, then it is better not to try these. Do it at your own risk.

A few days back, while browsing the net, I came across an ZNet article on StartForce, an online operating system. Though I have heard of such online desktops before, this time I decided to make a post on it. A quick search on Google led me to several such venture including Open Source versions too. Below are some of the services that I liked the most. I also posting the demo login details so that you can also checkout these online desktops. I recommend you to view these services in full screen (Press F11).

Demo account details are provided with each  service. Since the details are public, please do not upload sensitive files and details. Also, since the accounts are accessed and customized by many people, I recommend you to create your own account and try out these program.

StartForce
This is the first online desktop that I visited. The service provides each user 1 GB space for storing your documents and files. The desktop and OS looked very much similar to Windows XP. There are web browser, web messenger, image viewer,  audio and video players, feed reader, text editor, office document editors, PDF viewer and games like chess available within your account. StartForce uses Zoho Office Suite for viewing and editing Office documents. There are many desktop themes and screensavers available in the desktop settings section. The interface, especially opening and dragging windows, was a little slow.
Read a more detailed review of StartForce at Arun’s blog.

Demo Login :
Username - demo
Password - demo

YouOS
YouOS is another online desktop which won the seventh position in PC Magazine’s 20 most innovative products of 2007 award. The GUI of YouOS was very fast but was not as advanced or attractive as StartForce. YouOS is more or less similar to Linux. There is also a terminal shell application called YouShell. The number of applications available by default is also limited, compared to StartForce. But unlike StartForce, YouOS contains an Add / Remove apps option to install / uninstall programs. The client JavaScript code of YouOS is OpenSource and is available under a modified BSD license. YouOS is still is alpha stage.
Read a more detailed YouOS review at Pete’s blog.
Demo Login

Glide OS
Glide OS is a fully Adobe Flash based operating system and requires Flash 9 support, while YouOS and StartForce are Ajax based. Glide provides both free accounts (2 GB space & up to 4 Users) and premium accounts (10 GB space & up to 24 Users). The premium account costs $4.95 per month ($49.5 annually). In addition to the Desktop version, Glide also provides a mobile version of the account. Actually, GlideOs is very much different from a Desktop Operating System in look and feel. Glide allows opening and editing your Microsoft Office Word documents from your iPhone. GlideOS is Windows, Mac and Linux compatible.
Read more about Glide Os at TMCnet.

Demo Login :
Username - demouser
Password - demopass

Online Operating System
Online Operating System is also a Windows based operating system. Infact, when the Window XP theme was loaded, it was exactly similar to the Desktop OS. The number of applications available is less compared to Startforce. Some of the available programs are Web Browser, text editor, PDF Viewer, The first time loading of the different applications are very slow. But from the second time onwards, they load very quickly. OOS provides 10 MB space which is increased to 1 GB on verification of email address used. OOS also provides web publishing for your personal homepage and photo album at http://<username>.oos.cc. OOS made my browser crash twice.
Demo Login :
Username - demo
Password - demo

There are several others too. I will post about them later. Now document editing has also gone online with programs like Google Docs and Spreadsheets that allows online collaborative editing of documents. Recently Adobe created an application called Adobe Premiere Express for YouTube Remixer, an online application for editing and adding transitions and other effects to videos. The program is nearly identical to Photobucket’s Remix tool.  There are also several online PDF editors, image editors(1, 2, 3) and audio / video players available.

For developers, moving from desktop edition to online edition has an extra advantage that software piracy and illegal distribution of their products will be no longer possible. For end users, the advantage is that they no longer need systems with very large processing power since the actual processing will be done at the server.

Now the big question is, are we moving to a new era where computers require more RAM and less hard disk space and the only program required is a web browser for accessing the service? A new world where software licensing is replaced by subscription services?

I am releasing a minor update of the TorPlus proxy solution. This update changes the way in which file paths are referenced within the Opera Settings files. Previous released used relative path names. This created minor problems with user stylesheets. Hence the built-in IRC chat and feed reader lost their CSS formatting. Now absolute path is used within the files. This path is updated everytime TorPlus is run, thus the program is still portable. It is highly recommended that you don’t run the Opera browser directly.

Felix and Ray requested Kestrel support for TorPlus. Hence I am releasing TorKestrel+ also with this version. For those who are unaware of Kestrel, it is the official alpha release of the upcoming Opera v9.5. Opera v9.5 is promised to be much faster than all previous versions. Since Kestrel is still is alpha stage, TorKestrel+ is provided as a separate zip file, without Tor and Privoxy. To use TorKestrel+, download and extract the zip files of TorOpera+ and TorKestrel+ to the same directory.

Read more and download TorPlus

I started blogging because I wanted to make money online. But once I started blogging, I understood that making money online is not that easy. Wait a minute, did I say that online money making isn’t easy? Sorry, my mistake. If you are lucky, then earning 500 bucks is very simple. Yes, you read it right. JohnCow is giving away $500 in a contest sponsored by their web hosting provider, Micfo. Entering the contest is extremely simple. You have to post on your blog, how you would have spend the money, if it was awarded to you. The rules for joining the contest can be found in the post announcing the $500 contest at JohnCow.Com. I too decided to give the contest a shot. So, if I win the 500 bucks, this is how I would divide and spend it.

• I have plans for two new sites, which requires a large amount of bandwidth. I have found a hosting plan which suits my needs. The new hosting costs me $10 / month or $100 annually. Hence, first of all, I would subscribe for the annual payment plan so that I can save another $20 ( Mr. Cow, you have earned me a total of $520). The new sites will increase my revenue further.
• I am planning to buy a Mac Book by mid October. I will spend an extra $200 and get the 13″ Black one instead of the 13″ White Mac Book (Still I don’t have enough money for a MacBook Pro ).
• If I get an interesting and creative idea, then I will run a contest here. Since I am not very rich or lucky as JohnCow, to get a sponsor like Micfo, the price money will be limited to $50 (or $100 in multiple competitions). The contests will bring more visitors to my blog and thus further increase my revenue .
• Finally, I will cash 100 bucks (which is about INR 4000/-) and buy myself a nice outfit and celebrate with my family(Afterall, it is free money hence I can be a little lavish ).
• OMG, I still have $50 in my account. Well, the balance amount can stay in my Paypal account for any unforeseen needs that may arise. (Wow! $500 is quite a large amount and it took me one hour to decide and post how to spend it).

   Oh No! It was just a dream? I haven’t won the money ?
Still, thanks a lot Mr. Cow. It was really interesting to even imagine.

So what are you waiting for? Grab your laptop and start planning. And if you win, don’t forget to thank JohnCow for the contest and Micfo for prize money.

Netfirms is offering the Netfirms Advantage Website Hosting for $10 for one whole year. The plan includes

• $10 for one full year of Netfirms Advantage Hosting!
• 2 FREE domain names
• 20GB 250GB of disk space
• 750GB 2,000GB data transfer per month
• Host unlimited websites with a single account!
• Support for PHP, Perl, and MySQL
• 24-hour technical support

But before anyone joins the I just thought of warning against their bad history. I have never hosted any of my site with Netfirms, hence I don’t have any direct experience. But I thought this offer was great and made a small search about their history and other webmaster reviews. It looks like Netfirms has a very bad history of providing inqualified, incompetent and slow technical support for their customers. I chatted with their sales support team and it was indeed too slow. They also have frequent database downtimes and some people have even complained about their files getting deleted. Infact Netfirms is said to work fine, if not great, for static file serving. If your site doesn’t use any server side language and doesn’t need any database connectivity, then they are not that bad. So if you have any file download site or a high traffic website, then it will be ok to host your media and static files in your Netfirms hosting account. But for that you will need another domain or a dedicated ip.

Their domain service is not said to have any problem. Hence the offer is not that bad because you get two domains for one year with the offer. But you should read the terms of use well before joining because, they may charge you for moving the domain to another registrar after the one year period.

I recommend you to read the experience of someone who hosted their website with Netfirms. He recommends 1 and 1 against netfirms, but I personally had run into trouble with 1&1 support when a client of mine hosted his website with them.

Before you change your hosting to a new webhost, I strongly recommend searching Google with the search phrase <Your webhost name> sucks. Even if you don’t know the advantages of the new webhost, it is extremely important to know the disadvantage of hosting your site with them. Infact I do this before joining any online programme or service. But this is most important when changing your webhost, because an inappropriate decision not only causes monetary losses, but can make you lose your valuable visitors too.

Ever since I blogged on the topic “Protect your privacy, Hide your identity“, I have been thinking about creating a package similar to OperaTor. My search for a simple programming solution lead me to AutoIt. According to AutoIt Script homepage,

AutoIt is a freeware Windows automation language. It can be used to script most simple Windows-based tasks (great for PC rollouts or home automation).

I too found AutoIt a helpful tool and was really amazed by its simplicity. It also supports GUI for your program. It cannot be used to create resource intensive programs. But for small programs like the one I intended to create, it is excellent.

I have created TorOpera +, which is a bundle of Opera, Tor and Privoxy. The program is fully configurable and contains many features that OperaTor lacked. The program can be configured to copy Opera to the Hard Disk from your pen drive which will speed up Opera. Also I have included several features like Ad Blocker, Flash Blocker, Image Blocker and several more.

I plan to create a similar bundle for Firefox too. Please download TorOpera+ and let me know your valuable suggestions and opinions.