Monthly Archives: December 2006

Private Registration at 1and1.com not Activated by Default

Posted on December 30, 2006 | Leave a comment

I had written previously that new domains at 1&1 are currently going for $5.99 and include private registration. I think that’s a great deal, and the ordering process went very smoothly.

Domain owners should be aware, though, that the private registration is not turned on by default. When the domain first becomes active, the registration is public, with the owner’s contact information available via a WHOIS search. It’s a simple enough procedure to activate the private registration feature through the 1&1 control panel, but I don’t think that 1&1 makes it clear enough to owners that they need to take this step. I would like to see 1&1 either make the registration private by default (if it’s included in the price, does anyone not want to have it?), or include a statement in the order confirmation email that owners need to activate the private registration themselves.

Leave a comment

Posted in blogging, domains

Displaying my Creative Commons License in the WordPress.com Sidebar

Posted on December 27, 2006 | Leave a comment

Having chosen my Creative Commons license, I then needed to display it on my blog. I felt that the WordPress sidebar would be the most appropriate place.

The Creative Commons people give authors a nice little graphic to link to that is customized for each particular type of license. Here’s the logo for my license:

Creative Commons License

I thought that it should be straightforward to put the logo in my blog’s sidebar, but that proved to be a little optimistic.

The Creative Commons website generates some code for authors to copy and paste into their own site in order to display the logo. The website also has some instructions for pasting the code into a few popular blogging packages, but WordPress is not one of them. Unfortunately, it’s not a simple cut-and-paste job to use this in the WordPress.com sidebar.

The raw code has a lot of data that can’t be used on WordPress.

In order to work in a WordPress sidebar widget, the code between, and including, all instances of <!- and -> should be deleted. This action simplifies the original code to:


<a rel="license"
href="http://…snip…">
<img alt="Creative Commons License"
style="border-width: 0"
src="http://…snip…"/></a><br/>
This work is licensed under a
<a rel="license" href="…snip…">
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License</a>.

Still, though, this code would not display the logo in my sidebar.

I am by no means proficient with HTML. Still, I noticed that the alt and style modifiers for the img tag were before the src call. I thought that was backwards, so I reversed them. I also thought the style modifier was unnecessary, so I deleted it.

My final code was:

<a rel="license"
href="http://…snip…">
<img src="http://…snip…"
alt="Creative Commons License" /></a><br>
This work is licensed under a
<a rel="license" href="http://…snip…">
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License</a>.

This worked!

Leave a comment

Posted in blogging, copyright, Creative Commons, WordPress

PracticeBlogging.com is Active

Posted on December 25, 2006 | Leave a comment

The blog’s domain mapping is now in effect. PracticeBlogging.com now links directly here.

I was mildly surprised that WordPress.com charges a $10 yearly fee to implement the domain mapping. The fee is not mentioned in the FAQ article, or in the support forum post that announced the mapping feature.

I’m not upset that there is a fee, mind you. I just feel as though WordPress.com should disclose it somewhere where blog authors can see it prior to actually starting the mapping process.

Leave a comment

Posted in blogging, domains, WordPress

Adding a Creative Commons License

Posted on December 24, 2006 | Leave a comment

I decided to add a Creative Commons license to my blog in order to be specific about what types of reuse of the content I would permit. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that has created different types of copyrights that authors are free to apply to their creative works.

I chose an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. This type of license allows people to copy, distribute, and display the original work, as long as the reuse is not used for commercial purposes. People are also allowed to make derivative works of the original content, as long as the derivative work is issued under an identical license. Finally, any reuse must attribute the original content to the author.

I chose this license because I didn’t want people reusing the content for this blog for commercial purposes, especially since this blog is non-commercial. I liked the concept that people could take the content and remix it, add to it, etc., as long as that resulting work was also non-commercial.

I didn’t spend a great deal of time researching the implications of this license, and I’m still not sure what type of content will actually be on this blog, so I’m reserving the right to change my mind (and the licensing) in the future.

I feel a little presumptuous. At this time, no one besides myself has even seen this blog yet, much less find anything they’d want to reuse.

Leave a comment

Posted in blogging, copyright, Creative Commons

Domain Registration at 1and1.com

Posted on December 23, 2006 | 4 comments

I decided to register a domain name and point it to my blog. WordPress.com recently implemented domain mapping, and I figured that domain names are so inexpensive now that I might as well try it out.

I used PCNames to check if practiceblogging.com was available. Lo and behold, it was. PCNames is merely a lookup tool for seeing if a domain is available. The site direct links to one of several registrars for performing the actual registration. Current registrar options include Yahoo, GoDaddy, 1&1, and several others.

I would have liked to have registered directly with WordPress.com, as they do offer that service. They don’t, however, offer a private registration feature at this time. Private registration allows someone to register a domain without their name and address being publicly listed. Private registration is sort of the internet’s equivalent of having an unlisted phone number.

I first tried registering with GoDaddy. I’m not sure why. Their advertising, I guess. It turned out to be a bad experience. The link from PCNames worked well enough, but I couldn’t find a way to add private registration to my order. I backed out to their home page and tried starting from scratch. I was finally able to add it to my order, although it wasn’t exactly a smooth process. I don’t like their site design. It’s very cluttered, and they go with the information overload approach. I think it’s probably to try to get people to sign up for as many extras as possible. I got as far as the account registration page, but I couldn’t go any further. I entered all my information, but every time I pressed the Continue button to advance to the next step an alert would pop up stating that I needed to fill out all the fields marked as required. I tried repeatedly to continue, but couldn’t. I finally gave up.

I registered with 1&1 instead. That went much more smoothly. It also turned out to be less expensive. Domains at 1&1 are only $5.99 per year, and include private registration. Compared to GoDaddy’s prices of $8.95 per year plus $4.99 for private registration.

Practiceblogging.com isn’t working at the moment. Getting the domain activated and then mapped to WordPress.com appears to take up to a few days. That’s a little frustrating, but it’s not critical.

4 Comments

Posted in blogging, domains, WordPress

First Post

Posted on December 23, 2006 | Leave a comment

Here it is: Post #1.

Before I posted, I filled in some info on the blog’s About page. I think it’s important for a blog to have an About page where the author can enter a mission statement. It can help visitors to understand why the writer is blogging, and what they can expect in upcoming posts. That can simplify the decision as to whether they would like to become a regular reader.

Leave a comment

Posted in blogging