Personal Blog of Ricky Mills; Web Developer, PHP Programmer and Mobile Application Developer
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Creating my new presence

June 12th, 2008 | Posted by Rick in Personal | Programming | Project Updates | Web Development - (2 Comments)

I’ve been wanting to get my own unique site up here in a while. At the moment I use a free WordPress layout which is great (minus the bug in IE, but I’ve come to expect those!). I started working on a custom wordpress theme for this site yesterday. I didn’t get very far however as I realized that after my upgrade to OS X Leopard I had forgotten to reinstall Photoshop (which I will do today).

Once the new layouts completed I will post it up for download should anyone wish to use it! I did think about moving away from WordPress. A guy I met on the VPSLink forums, Kelvin recently did the same and taught himself Python. His site is now running a totally custom system, and looks fantastic. I was thinking about doing the same, however I really don’t want to learn another language until I’ve sorted some more important things out (I.E WSDReg, Sites, etc). I may still do it, however not until at least next year.

I also was talking to my friend Mike about something I wanted to do. I am planning on creating myself my own management area. Basically with all the sites I have, if I want to check the emails I end up having to jump around all over the place to get to the accounts. So I decided I would make my own mail client (in php) which would allow me to add additional accounts to it from multiple sites, thus providing me with a single interface to manage the accounts with!

At the same time I also want to make myself a code library with reusable code, so I thought why not make it a complete “localhost” system to manage all my web related projects! I’ve not started the mail part, but the code library is getting there.I *may* give the system out when its completed, however I’m not 100% sure if I wish to do that yet.

I will also be moving RickyMills.com to a better host soon. I’ve been with VPSLink for a long time, however my VPS has stated rebooting, and the LXAdmin control panel is god awful to use…the amount of times I’ve had to reboot the server because it ends up hanging on a command or tells me the “back-end is being rebooted” is unbelievable!

VPSLink are really great, but LXAdmin sucks something terrible! So I’ll be getting a decent shared host that I can get a good deal with. Not sure who yet however it wont be until I finish college (about 3 weeks time).

I think that’s it for now!

Getting back into the swing of things!

June 12th, 2008 | Posted by Rick in Personal | Project Updates - (0 Comments)

I’ve recently had the urge to get back into development. I’ve been pretty slow when it comes to buying/selling sites since about October, most likely because of college work, and the events that happened a year ago.

I am now however finally starting to get back into it, in the last week or so especially. I have a development server, which was replaced by my fantastic insurance company when my last one was ruined in a flood (the server was running in our garage because it was hot and noisy). So the insurance company said I had XXX to spend on the parts, and I would be putting it together…this is about 6-8 months ago.

The server has been working fine, however its big, heavy, noisy and gets very warm (the RAM more than anything!).

So I decided I would try getting something a little smaller, cooler and quieter…then it hit me….a Mac Mini! These little things are tiny, silent and can run headless (I.E without a screen, keyboard and mouse).I looked around the web and found some really great articles on setting up a Mac Mini as a server. One guy has even taken 2 mac minis and put them into a single 1u server…giving him 2 top speed servers!

Anyway, my Mac Mini is due to arrive today, so I’m currently waiting patiently :p I got a pretty great deal, Intel C2D 1.68Ghz with 1GB RAM and a 100GB HDD for £250 (the current cheapest Mac Mini is £399, or £350 with astudent discount). I also happened to sell my old iPod Touch at the same time so ended up paying £150! Very good deal!!

Once its all setup, I’m going to start setting up and selling sites once more, and will also do a bit of flipping (buy, fix, sell). I’ve not done it in a few months (well, I did do FotoRazor however that was a bit of a failure in the end!).

I also hope to get myself a large library of small sites that will generate a small Adsense income to keep my account ticking over. Plus I will be making a page with sites for sale to go on my site.

I’m making another post after this one with more info as I don’t want to overwhelm you all in a single post!

WSDReg is almost there!

May 14th, 2008 | Posted by Rick in Education | general | Personal | Project Updates - (0 Comments)

I’ve been working at getting the new WSDReg site finished over the last few weeks, its mainly sticking it all together, and finishing off left to complete. I’m getting quite excited about it now as once its done, I can expand the company greatly. I’ve already been in contact with several UK based magazines to take out some full-page adverts.

So far I’ve spoken with .NET, Web Designer and Linux User however will be speaking with several others soon. I want WSDReg to expand into the UK market, mainly because most current UK registrars really do rip people off, they have stupidly high prices (2-400% higher than the rrp!) and people buy at these prices!

I also (finally) updated my “About Me” page. Its basically the same as the one on the old site, but just slightly updated to reflect recent events.

I decided not to post a “Look back at April” as I’ve not had time to work on much recently due to college work (and GTA IV coming out!) however I am going to revise my goals for 2008 once I’ve finished college, and will start expanding my portfolio of websites. I’m still confident that by the end of the year, I will own websites taking in $500+ a month.

Anyway….thats it for now. Cya later!

A look back at: March 08

April 6th, 2008 | Posted by Rick in Personal | Project Updates - (0 Comments)

Well this posts a little later than planned. I’ve been wanting to update the site, however wanted to get the new release of wordpress up and running first. Well, its now up and I’m loving it.

I thought there would be some big compatibility problems what with all the changes made in 2.5 however it worked flawlessly! Why the new skin you ask? Why Not! I answer :)

Ok, so last month. I had a lot going on with college, meaning I didn’t have much time to work on anything. Despite this I managed to get the front-end of the webhostbutler.com script completed, and as for the backend I’ve decided to keep it simple and have a very basic backend.

I’ve also started work on the other project (home server). I’ve got big plans for this one.

Finally, I finished building/configuring my home server, its now running Fedora Linux ( core 8 ) and has a bunch of SATA drives slotted in everywhere I could fit them :p The only thing I’m disappointed about is the RAM. Its the hottest part of the entire system, and actually hurts to touch. Because of this its causing the entire room to become a sauna!

Theres not much I can do to fix this other than buy RAM fans (Which are very noisy due to their small form factor). I may try taking 2 of the 4 1gb sticks out to see if that helps. The CPU (Intel c2d 2.66Ghz) is pretty cold and is running on a stock Intel fan (I found this to be quieter and more effective than an Alaska fan purchased from eBuyer). The hard drives are warm to touch, but don’t give off huge amounts of heat like the RAM. The only other warm(ish) component is what looks to be a northbridge with a bronze heatsink built into the motherboard.

So far I’ve got Apache, PHP, MySQL setup for web development, plus SAMBA so I can access the server as if it was a folder on my own computer, I’m using this to have my itunes library stored on the server, which will free up a good 10GB of space on both my laptop and desktop computers. Its also acting as a media storage for any films / tv programs I’ve got.

I also purchased a usb freeview card and it can record TV directly to the server, which can then be watched from any computer/device connected to our home network! I think an upgrade to a 802.11n router will be needed soon. Our netgear 54g is on its way out at the moment. We get through routers like a fat man gets through mars bars! This time I may spend a bit extra and get a faster router and gradually upgrade the network. Especially if Virgin is going to be getting their customers broadband speeds upto 100mbps by years end! No point paying for 100mbps if your internal network is 54mbps :P

Anyway, this month I hope to get webhostbutler online, and continue work on the home server site. I dont expect to have this ready to launch for a good 2-3 months yet as I want this to be a well thought out project.

Thats about it for now I think!

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