2014 Archives - Adam Yamada

3rd NameCheap Move Your Domain Day

NameCheap is hosting another “Move Your Domain Day” tomorrow, February 5th 2014. This is the 3rd time NameCheap, a domain name registrar and hosting company, has held such an event where they offer domain transfers at a discounted rate and donate proceeds to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

On the Move Your Domain Day page here is what it says.

Just as in '11 and '13, with MYDD 2014, we're raising funds for online freedom fighters the Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF is a donor-supported membership organization that works to protect fundamental rights regardless of technology and to educate the public about digital rights.

The EFF has spearheaded and support a number of different internet causes. This includes the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) which would have allowed intellectual property owners to shutdown websites which they ‘feel' infringes on their copyright even if it didn't. EFF also supports and organized the Stop Watching US coaltion along with Mozilla. As well they helped organized a Stop Watching Us protest in Washington DC.

So tomorrow you can transfer any .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO and .BIZ domains to Namecheap for $3.98 which is well below their regular domain transfer pricing. Use the coupon code – NCMYDD – at checkout to get the transfer deal. In addition Shared, Business and Reseller hosting plans will be 75% off. Again you will need to use a coupon code – HOSTWITHNC – to get the discount.

For each domain transferred or hosting plan purchased by a customer Namecheap will donate $0.50 cents to EFF. The donation amount goes up the more hosting plans and domains are bought by customers. NameCheap will donate $1.00 per domain/hosting plan if they exceed 10,000 purchases and if they exceed 20,000 transferred domains or hosting plans purchased, Namecheap will donate $1.50 for each transaction to the EFF. Some restrictions to be aware of;

The deal is limited to 50 domains per household or busines
1 hosting plan can be purchased at 75% off.
You must add the ICANN 18 cents fee on .COM and .NET domain transfers
These “Move Your Domain Day” deals are valid 1 day only – February 5th, 2014.

Unsure if they are limiting the Move Your Domain Day deal to a set number. I imagine they willl if too many people are taking advantage of the deals.

Over the last 2 years NameCheap has raised more $200,00 dollars for the EFF and the “Move Your Domain Day” events have earned the domain registrar a lot of future business. Keep in mind the upfront costs for the domain registrar are great since they loose money on this deal since are offering domain transfers, which are basically renewals, below wholesale pricing.

In addition to these “Move Your Domain Day” NameCheap held 0thers in the past to benefit the Save the Elephants foundation. This was back when it was revealed that GoDaddy CEO Bob Parson’s went on safari specifically kill elephants.

If you haven't used NameCheap before, please read my NameCheap Review to see if they are good domain registrar for you. Another registrars that people seem to like nowadays is NameSilo since they have straightforward pricing and free Whois privacy without coupons.

Leave a comment if you are going to be taking advantage of NameCheap's “Move Your Domain Day” to support the EFF.

Happy New Year! Singing Dogs “Auld Lang Syne” versions

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2013 was a great year and you accomplished a lot and that you are looking forward to a fruitful 2014.

Since we celebrated Christmas on this blog by saying Merry Christmas from the Singing Dogs we are going to wish everyone a Happy New Year by bringing in 2014 with a great rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” with Cody and Sierra otherwise known as the Singing Dogs.

Auld Lang Syne

As you can see Cody and Sierra love celebrating the New Year just as much as anyone else and all while singing to the classic New Year's tune “Auld Lang Syne.” While we think their singing is great many people think the best part of our video is when they both decide it is time to leave and go party. At least that is what I think they are going to do when they left in the end.

Sierra sometimes likes to sing Auld Lang Syne by herself lying down without Cody though. She is a bit of a dog diva and needs things to be comfortable for her to perform properly.

Sierra's Lazy Auld Lang Syne Version

If you like the Singing Dogs videos and want to wish a friend, family member, neighbor, etc. a Happy New Year please share Cody and Sierra's Auld Lang Syne videos. That would make their New Year's a whole lot more special.

If you have a New Year's Resolution please let us know what it is below.

WordPress 3.8 Parker features an Updated WordPress Dashboard

WordPress 3.8 Parker was released only a few days ago on December 12th, 2013 and the latest iteration of the world's most popular blogging and content management system has just gotten a major backend design update. Checkout the refresh below when I updated one of my other websites, CarNewsCafe.

WordPress 3.8 Oscar

The new WordPress dashboard and backend is much cleaner and seems to be more inline with how a lot of WordPress themes look nowadays. I imagine this is not a coincidence on the part of Automattic, the company that handles WordPress development.

The new backend uses Open Sans font, which most people probably didn't know about but it works well in the WordPress dashboard. The idea is to make things less cluttered and easier to read and manage. In addition icons have been updated and they are now vector based which means they can scale to your screen. That means they load faster and work better.

Dashboard Color Schemes

In addition to the udpated look you now have options in terms of what colors you want the WordPress dashboard to look like. There are currently 8 options to choose from which includes Default, Light, Blue, Coffee, Ectoplasm, Midnight, Ocean, and Sunrise. The idea is to provide more options and better contrast to be easier on the eyes for WordPress users and admins.

If you have a WordPress website that a lot of different people access, a user can individually choose what WordPress dashboard color scheme they prefer. A pretty cool update to the backend.

WordPress Twenty Fourteen ‘Magazine' Theme

For WordPress 3.8 Parker there is also a new theme called Twenty Fourteen (2014). It has the layout of a magazine which seems to be what a lot of people use WordPress for. The new theme is by far the cleanest default WordPress theme Automattic has come out with.

Other WordPress 3.8 Improvements

In addition to all these cool updates to WordPress 3.8 Parker there are several other nice updates. This includes better theme management which allows you to see more advanced previews of themes you might want to switch to. Also the widget menu is easier to handle.

It seems that the WordPress team also has improved the functionality of WordPress for mobile phones and tablets. Creating and managing posts should be easy no matter what device you are using now.

There are other WordPress tweaks you might notice too. For instance if you check your plugins page eeactivted plugins are highlighted in white while active plugins are in blue. (I personally find this confusing.) Also there is no “Quickpress” in the WordPress dashboard anymore and in it's place you will find a “Quick Draft” box.

At first I was apprehensive about the WordPress 3.8 update since I've been using WordPress for awhile. Automattic didn't change too much and they make ease-of-use a top priority unlike a lot of other open source software. After a few days I really like the updated WordPress dashboard and backend. It is definitely faster and snappy and I imagine that Automattic developers worked hard on improving the WordPress core code to achieve this in addition to reworking the design. Kudos to everyone that contributed to WordPress 3.8 Parker.

By the way WordPress 3.8 was codenamed “Parker ” after the great Alto saxophone player, Charlie Parker. Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, likes to use Jazz musicians to codename WordPress releases since he is Alto saxophone player. WordPress 3.6 Oscar was named for Oscar Peterson and WordPress 3.7 Basie was named after Count Basie. Matt Mullenweg and these these other Jazz giants might be great musicians but they don't have singing dogs. 🙂

If you haven't updated you WordPress website(s) or blog(s) to WordPress 3.8 I would recommend you do it to enjoy the new features. I would encourage you to make a backup of your WordPress installations before you pupated though. You never know what might happen in an update and it is always a smart precaution.

If you are used WordPress 3.8 Parker are you thoughts about the updated and new dashboard? Do you love it or hate it?