Everyone who lives in a service area for Charter Communications is luckier than I am, because on black friday you can sign up for the Charter Communications Ultimate Service Bundle. I have not found a better online and telecommunications package bundle anywhere out there from any of Charter’s competitors.

This one bundle package includes:

• 10mb internet connection for your computer
• Digital Home, Charter HD, Sports View, Digital View, HBO/Cinemax, Starz/Encore and Showtime/The Movie Channel for your Television
• And Unlimited Calling for your Phone:

This for $165.97 per month and if you sign up, you will get a $250 gift card just for purchasing the ultimate bundle, which basically gives you some extra holiday shopping money or you can go out and buy something nice.

In addition to the $250 gift card, you will be entered in a sweepstakes to win an Xbox 360, if you are lucky you could be a winner, I know I don’t have one yet.

If I lived in a Charter Service area I would be on this deal like a bee drawn to honey because I pay almost $150 in Satellite TV and Internet right now, and I don’t have 1/3 of the features that this bundle deal offers. Plus I really could use the $250 gift card right now.

I encourage anyone to visit Charter Communications and see if you live in their service area, add up your phone bill, internet bill and satellite or cable bill. If your three bills add up to more than $165.97 per month then you need to sign up for this service, this deal includes premium movie packages, so you really can’t beat that price. We are talking about HD package as well. Compare wisely and you will see there is no better offer out there, and you can get the $250 gift card just in time for the holidays.

I feel there is no better deal out there and I have 3 different providers each for my phone, television and broadband right now, and they almost add up to more than this deal, I don’t even get HD Television or Premium Movie Channels either.

-Dragon Blogger

So my blog was finally accepted to several sites so I can start making some opportunities to make some money with my blog to help keep the blog afloat and fund future blog projects. Socialspark, PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews, BuyBlogReviews are just some of the ones accepted, I have submissions into several more. This blog is not going to be turned into a strictly paid posting blog, or advertisement blog, but I would like to have 10-20% paid content to help keep my web hosting costs and DNS names paid for and such.

So far my initial impression is it seems very hard to get an opportunity on Socialspark, there are no open slots on any opportunities and you can only request 1 slot per week to try and have an advertiser make an exception. I really am learning the system, I don’t know if you are supposed to write the posts first and submit them for approval, or get the contract first then write the post? IE, does an advertiser have to see your post first before they approve it, or do you just get the contract, write the post then get the approval?

As I learn through this system, I appreciate any and all advice from my fellow bloggers, particularly if you are successful at leveraging advertisements such as adsense, adgridwork…etc

Once I start figuring out how to make money from blogging I will share all that I have learned with my readers so that others may benefit from my experience. One other note, I have added some new buttons to my blog. A PayPerPost Direct Hire Me Button, the code directly from PayPerPost website doesn’t work so I had to tweak it to get it to work properly, if others have that issue, let me know and I can help you out.

I also added a Hire Me page, and some custom advertisement buttons which I did draw myself for simplicity sake.

-Dragon Blogger

I just am pulling my hair out, one of my friends visited my blog today and told me they can’t see any side columns with Internet Explorer.  I only use Firefox, so when I opened my Internet Explorer 7 I was shocked to see that all of my side widgets don’t show up at all in IE6 or IE7.  Literally my RSS Feed Subscription, my Google Adsense, my Entrecard button, nothing shows up in Internet Explorer.  70% of users still use Internet Explorer, so does this mean 70% of the people visiting my site can’t see these widgets and subscribe, or email, or drop me on entrecard?

This is what people are getting when they try to hit my site with Internet Explorer:

But Firefox renders the site just fine, even the new Google Chrome browser has no problems with my side widgets and ajaxified Wordpress Blog.

• So the troubleshooting begins as follows:

I logged into the Wordpress Site and disabled 80% of my widgets, saved and tested Internet Explorer again.  No luck, I can’t get any side widgets to work.  This makes me think that one of my plug-ins is the cause of my woes.  So I logged back into wordpress and decided to systematically disable 1 plug-in after another.

After disabling and testing something like 25 plug-ins I still can’t get my site to render properly in internet explorerer.  I am at my wits end here.

Does anybody know of specific plug-ins or widgets that break your wordpress theme or blog for Internet Explorer?  Does the “Diary” Theme for wordpress not work for Internet Explorer from the start?

This made me start to think, I am sure other bloggers starting their first wordpress or blogger accounts had similar issues.  I remember when I had a blogspot account that my google adsense widget wouldn’t show the google ad in firefox, but only showed it in Internet Explorer.

Man, I wish all browsers would render stuff the same way.

Please share your blog setup and configuration horror stories and problems and how you resolved them.  If someone can give me the correct suggestion to fix my Wordpress Theme in Internet Explorer, I will gift you 50 EC’s from Entrecard.

-Thanks Fellow Bloggers

This article is for anyone who runs a web site professionally or as a hobby.  It doesn’t matter if you use IIS, Apache or SunOne/Iplanet as your web server software, using these basics will help protect your web site from exploit.

I have experience working with many different types of web server software and I work with configuring and securing web server software to some extent.
Tip #1 – Shut Off Directory Indexing
Unless you are running a web site for the sole purpose of serving out files for download, shut off directory indexing.  You do not want someone hitting an empty directory on your site, or a folder without a default index file and seeing a full list of files in that folder.  Directory Indexing can exploit files you did not want publicly available or easily discovered on a web site.

Tip #2 – Run HTTPS if your website has content of any type that has sensitive information

I can’t believe I still run across websites that ask for username and password and are still http instead of https.  Most people use the same usernames and passwords frequently, so if you run a site that collects usernames and passwords and you are not running https, you can compromise that user’s name/password not only for your site but their other sites as well.  I won’t even use a site for login, credit card info, or any type of home address, personal info unless it is secured by SSL certificate.

Tip #3 – If you run SSL Certificate, don’t let it expire.

Keep track of your SSL certificate, nothing is more annoying than when a major company lets its SSL certificate expire.  It looks so unprofessional and makes you wonder what other information they aren’t properly keeping track of?

Tip #4 – Keep your Directory-Root or Context Root somewhere isolated with no vulnerable sub folders.

A web server generally allows access to anything from Document Root and below, so make sure you isolate your document root to an isolated folder or drive with nothing of value in any sub folders below it unless you don’t mind those resources exposed to the web server.

Tip #5 – Shut off all non-essential listen ports on your web site

Shut down telnet, ftp, finger, and any ports you are running that aren’t absolutely essential.  Do a netstat -an | grep -i “listen” on unix, or netstat -an | find “LISTEN” on windows to find what ports your web server is listening on and try to shut it down.

Those are some beginner tips that I have for this post.  I will follow up with future posts with some additional techniques and basic tips.