Blog - Page 3 of 4

Don’t want to pay for MS Office? Check out LibreOffice the free alternative.

One of my favorite Open Source applications is LibreOffice, which is a full office suite of applications. I use it almost everyday as a replacement for MS Office and have not encountered anything that it can't do. Don't know what Open Source is? Check out my overview here. In my experience, unless you are the most advanced user of MS application and performing extremely complex tasks you will find that LibreOffice can do everything you need. Applications - MS Office Compared to LibreOffice The alternative applications are: MS Office LibreOffice Word Writer Excel Calc PowerPoint…

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June 19, 2017

Explanations / Open Source

Should I Be Using Open Source Software in My Small Business?

I won't hide it - I'm a huge fan of Open Source Software (abbreviated to OSS). One of the reasons I started my own business is to help small businesses save money on IT. One way I explore this is to take advantage of the plethora of OSS options available. So what exactly is Open Source Software and can you use it in your small business? Let's explore! What is Open Source Software? You've probably heard about it before and may even know what it is. Open Source Software are computer programs where the…

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June 5, 2017

Howto / Strategy

Are you following these 4 steps to select software for your small business?

Every small business owner faces this problem at more than one point in their life. You know you need new software but you aren't sure how to make the decision. Often we think we know what we want OR a trusted person has recommended something to you. You have to live with some software choices for years so you need to do your best to get it right. The 4 step process. So to help you figure out what software you select I have outlined my easy 4 step process. The 4 steps are actually…

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May 26, 2017

Operations

Do You Know When Your Website is Up?

In my previous article about High Availability I talked about uptime, which is basically a measure of how long your site is up. So how do you know when your site is up or not? System Monitoring No one wants to hear from their customers to tell them that their website is down, do they? So rather than waiting until you or someone else notices there is a problem, you should get a computer to do the job for you! System Monitoring is how we do this. Quite simply system monitoring software is an entire category…

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February 21, 2017

Open Source

Part 4 – WordPress Setup. My Favourite Plugins and a Few Hints and Tips

This is part 4 in a series of detailed articles about setting up a brand new domain on Australian hosting provider Zuver. See here for an overview of the whole series. If you've worked through the previous articles then you should now have a basic WordPress site installed on your own domain. Congratulations! But now what? How do I configure this WordPress Thing? Well there are hundreds of guides and tutorials online on how to get started with WordPress. So instead of adding to the vast number of howto's out there I thought that I would…

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February 14, 2017

Howto / Open Source / Operations

Part 3 – Setting up SSL and Installing WordPress on Zuver

This is part 3 in a series of detailed articles about setting up a brand new domain on Australian hosting provider Zuver. See here for an overview of the whole series. If you've been following along at home then you have now registered your new domain and configured your email address. Next we will set up your website for secure communications using SSL, which you can read more about in one of my previous posts. Zuver include as part of their hosting SSL certificates provided by Lets Encrypt. Step 1 Zuver make this nice and easy. All you…

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February 7, 2017

Open Source

Part 2 – Setting up your New Email Address in cPanel

This is part 2 in a detailed series of articles about setting up a brand new domain on Australian hosting provider Zuver. See here for an overview of the whole series. If you followed along with Part 1 you should now have registered you new domain and setup hosting at Zuver. Most of the following steps will be valid for any hosting provider that uses cPanel, which is one of the most widely used web based configuration tools for managing your web hosting account! Step 1 Head over to my.zuver.net.au and log in to your…

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February 7, 2017

Howto / Operations

Part 1 – Registering a Domain and Purchasing Hosting with Zuver

This is part 1 in a series of detailed articles about setting up a brand new domain on Australian hosting provider Zuver. See here for an overview of the whole series. When registering a domain name you need to consider whether you want a .com, .com.au or other type of address. My recommendation is for an Australian business operation in Australia then you want to register the business name with a .com.au address. If you are setting up a domain for a business doing global work or for your own personal name brand (sometimes called…

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February 7, 2017

Open Source

Don’t Have $1000s to Spend on your New Website? Read this!

I have been asked by a some very new business owners what's the easiest way to set up a new domain name with a WordPress website and email for their businesses. This series of posts provides the Kuter Solution to this question! By the end of the series, if you follow along, you will have your own domain name setup with 1 email address and a secure WordPress website installed. I'll also provide some hints and tips on the WordPress plugins I would recommend you use. Here's an outline of the steps we'll be taking: Part 1: Registering the…

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February 7, 2017

Explanations

High Availability explained in plain English

Following on from my previous article about backups I thought I'd do a plain English explanation of High Availability (HA). Picture this scenario - You are about to launch a new product, you've sent out the marketing email to your email list and are expecting 1,000's of people to be flocking to your website to buy. Suddenly there's a problem with the server that your website runs on and the site is now offline! If your system is not setup for High Availability then this problem may have your site offline for hours of even days.…

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January 31, 2017