Amazon Glacier is a Dirt Cheap Backup Solution

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Lifehacker.com has a great article on Amazon’s new backup solution called “Amazon Glacier”. This new storage/backup solution starts at just a penny per GB per month. Depending on your storage needs, Amazon Glacier  could be the most cost-efficient backup solution you can find. There are some caveats, however. This is really designed as the backup of backups – a place to archive things that you don’t access regularly and would only really need if all of your other backup systems failed. This is because though your data is secure, it is both slow and expensive to access.

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How to Update Links When You Change Website Hosts

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There’s nothing like being prepared and having the right tool for a specific job. Sometimes you have to update links across a site and all you know is that to do so manually would take hours. One of the post-move (from one host to another) things a webmaster needs to do is make sure all images and links direct properly.

During the move phase the site URL is adjusted to change the location of the website and allow access to the WordPress dashboard, but internal links are not changed which means they may be broken after the move.

To fix internal links and image paths, users can run the Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin after the WordPress move is complete. The plugin makes the process very easy and painless. Here’s how to use the plugin successfully.

Warning: Link structure must be maintained in order for this process to function properly. Example: If during your WordPress move your URL was changed to yourdomain.com (without the www), then the new URL in Velvet Blues Update URLs must be entered without the www as well.

Troubleshooting

It should be noted that changing links on a wide scale like this can be unpredictable. Here are some things to check if your link changes don’t work as expected.

  • You’ve just changed your entire link structure and if none of them seem to be working, empty your cache and reload the page. Then test them again.
  • Updating urls has to be precise. Make sure you entered the urls accurately.
  • If Velvet Blues doesn’t work, try the Search and Replace plugin.
  • If all else fails and plugins won’t work, you can manually edit the database file to reflect the changes. Open the .sql file in a text editor and replace references to the old URL with the new URL. Save and restore the database. Note: Again, you must be precise. Replace the entire URL to ensure it is done properly.

How To Make an Animated Gif

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I received a call today from a colleague who needs an animated gif. That sent me down the research road and I discovered that the world of animated gifs is really not very complicated.

If you don’t have Photoshop CS3 or later, you can use the following free sites:

  • www.picasion.com
  • www.gifninja.com

Picasion lets you create an animated GIF by uploading individual photos. First you will need to resize them all to be the same dimensions.

Gifninja will create an animated GIF from videos (smaller than 20 MB).

If you want to use Photoshop, follow these instructions:

  1. Using Adobe’s image editor, versions CS3 and up, to create an animated GIF is as simple as opening a new image file. A 72 pixel-per-inch resolution is all you need for display on the Web. Drag all your individual image files into Photoshop and they should stack up as layers in the same image. You may need to rearrange the order.
  2. Photoshop will also open videos in MPEG, MP4, AVI, and MOV formats. When you open it, select Range to Import to get only a few select frames—the fewer the frames, the faster the animated GIF. It will import the frames as layers, which you’ll convert back to frames for the animated GIF file. You can even resize and crop the layers to produce a smaller the animation.
  3. Go to Window menu, select Animation, and you’ll get a new palette menu to Make Frames from Layers. Set the duration for each frame and how many times it will loop. Then go to the File menu and Save for Web & Devices for the final animated file.