How to Make Your WordPress Site Private

For users who like to have a private (or restricted) WordPress site, there are several plugins that can restrict access to only registered users. However, I’ve had to search extensively for a solution that worked well with the current version of WordPress (v2.9.2).

In the end, after doing all the searching and finding information all over the place, the closest i got was to take an existing plugin that used to work with earlier versions and change a couple of things in it.

Because I did not wish to step on anyone’s toes, I’ve detailed two ways of achieving this:

1. By taking the original plugin and making changes to it via the WordPress Dashboard
2. By downloading a modified version of the original plugin and following the original authors instructions using this new script instead of his original one.

Both methods are detailed below.

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New Version of Bing iPhone App released

Bing just announced a new version of the free Bing Application for the iPhone that fixes a number of stability and usability issues.

The new version is only available currently on the US version of iTunes and over a million downloads have already been racked up.

I’ve had the fortune of using Bing on my iPhone and its actually quite a cool looking application and does what it promises. Its interesting to see where this goes especially given the fact that Google and Apple are going head to head with their respective phones. Bing just may become the default search engine on the iPhone.

For me as a consumer, this in combination with Google Apps meets most if not all my needs on my iPhone.

In addition, they have added additional features such as:

• Ability to bookmark maps, sites, businesses and weather.
• Sharing of results via email
• Copy and Paste is now supported within the application
• Search settings and Search history
• Support for all versions of iPod Touch

You can get Bing for the iPhone via the following iTunes Link

How to Increase Performance in WoW and other Online Games

Because I’m located in New Zealand, I got used to playing World of Warcraft with a ping of around 350-450ms. This means that there is usually around a half a second lag between when I hit a key and when the server acknowledges the key press. The performance tends to deteriorate when I’m in larger encounters such as raids.

As I’ve now got to a point where I need to raid to get better equipment, this has caused me a lot of pain. Even though I’m on ADSL2, I used to get frequent disconnects when the WoW servers thought I was not responding.

This post is to help people who:

• Frequently disconnect on every large encounter.
• Suffer from significant frame loss on large encounters.
• Suffer from random disconnects even when doing nothing

There are various things that one can do to improve system performance. I’ll detail out the five main things I did to ensure that I remain connected and can respond in a timely fashion during my play sessions.

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Changes in Newbtech

As part of coming back, there are a few additional changes we need to make to the site. This includes incorporation of a new theme and look & feel.

We have now put in a placeholder theme until we work through all the kinks. On the whole, it doesn’t look that bad actually. Am working on a suitable logo that will replace the horrible over-size Impact font in the header.

Old Site Theme:

New Site Theme (work in progress):

With more changes on the way :)

Return of Newbtech

I’ve got to admit that over the last few months I haven’t been giving this blog much attention. This is due to a variety of reasons including work, personal life and World of Warcraft to which I’ve returned to spend more time in the virtual world.

In saying that, I’ll be making an effort to return to blogging albeit with a slight difference in terms of topics for the blog. I’ll be broadening it a bit to cater for my current interests which includes everything so far on the blog and extending it to online gaming, coding and UI design.

If there is anything in particular that you wish me to write about, please let me know.

Some of these articles have already been drafted and expect to see them released in the coming weeks.

Dee.