Yesterday we had upgraded to the latest version of WordPress MU (1.3.3). I also sat down and said “Alright, our main blog page is ugly.” We started the CEVO blogs as an experiment that has been quite successful. We have thousands of readers each month reading and commenting on our posts. Hopefully we can keep up the good work.

If you are interested in writing for the CEVO blogs, even if you are not a member of the CEVO staff, let me know at jcarmony (AT) cevo (DOT) com and I’ll be happy to see what we can do.

One aspect that is very vague and not known very well throughout the gaming community is… how to make a clan website. Most players are very unfamiliar with websites and how they work. Many teams don’t have anyone on their roster to "make them a website", let along make it functional and good looking. So we the CEVO developers thought it might be useful to show how to install some common Content Management Systems (CMS) for video game teams or clans.

We rate different solutions off ease of installment, configuration, admin and user use, and clan specific functions. While some people would say use PHP-Nuke, e107, or others which have thousands of reviews, we’re looking at some more gaming specific solutions that have things built in for rosters, matches played, server information, etc. Like always, if you have a tip or solution please let us know at devzone (AT) cevo (DOT) com.

webSPELL

This week we’ll be reviewing webSPELL, a CMS designed for clans/teams and gaming communities. It appears to be from germany, but everything anyone needs to know can be found in english.

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However, deep down inside me I knew for a fact that there was a lot of junk files I no longer needed. Before when I had a Hard Drive get too full I had to browse my folders, right click on properties and try to find files that I didn’t need. I’d spend 30 mins clearing old small files saving 100 MB, only to find later a 6 GB file that wasn’t needed either.

So, this time around I had a quest to find a way to scan my hard drive and have it show me exact what is where taking up how much space. I found WinDirStat.

WinDirStat is an open-source program (meaning free to use) that scans a hard drive and shows stats on the percentage of folders and what space they are taking up. It also displays graphically how your hard drive space is being used in “chunks.”

Here is a picture of my hard drive. This is after I had deleted some huge backup files that were useless and not needed. As you see it will take a color and assign it to a type of file. Now, I notice I have these large green chunks in the corner. Now I remember when I was doing some Linux Desktop testing, I made around 4-5 virtual PCs with VMWare. In total they are taking up 25+ GB. I now can delete these files and now I have freed up 25 GB on my external HD.

A Word of Warning - Make sure you know what the heck you’re deleting. Don’t just start going “delete” crazy, especially if you are running this on your main hard drive (for most of you this is your C Drive). You can easily delete important files for programs you use if you are not careful. I don’t delete programs through this, I uninstall them. This is good for finding files like game demos, movies, etc. that you have on your machine that are large files and you don’t need them. If you fubar your machine using this program, its your own fault. When in doubt, don’t delete.

Hopefully this little program will help you like it helped me. Until next time, and feel free to leave comments if you have questions.

Download WinDirStat

I’ll leave out what school I’m attending, and what class number it is (I’d hate to have my professor stumble on this blog entry.) But the class is about basic computer skills. The only time I could fit this class in was 7:00 AM early morning. What a joy, because there is nothing better than sitting in a class still tired from waking up early learning how to make “folders.”

But, no, I can’t skip this class, even though I am a website designer and a programmer. Oh no, I am required to be taught what the start button is. There is a test I can take to test out of the class, but I only get the requirement and not the 3 credit hours that I need to stay on track for graduation. Also, I wasn’t able to take the test before this semester, and I have a class that requires me to either pass this class or be enrolled in it.

So now I have the joy of 1 hour of idiot-proof computer lessons. I’ll save you the details on how I learned how to make a folder on my desktop, and then another folder inside my first folder. Whew, I didn’t know it could be so complicated!

But today what really irked me was their explination about viruses, worms, trojans, and spyware. Not only were my teacher’s semi-inaccurate and so watered down that it really didn’t explain how you get viruses (the power point slide used examples with floppy disks, even though new computers, including my campus’s, don’t have floppy drives). We watched a nice little video from Microsoft on how to protect ourselves, and they listed a few ways to protect yourselves from viruses:

1. Use a Firewall
2. Use Microsoft Updates
3. Install an Anti-Virus program like Norton or McAffe

First of all, these are not the top 3 best ways to prevent viruses in my opinion! Second of all there are better programs than Norton or McAffe (especially Norton). So, I’d like to revise and release a new list of a more effective ways of keeping your computer safe, because if you do these things then you’ll be much less likely to get a virus.

1) Don’t use Peer 2 Peer Networks if you’re an idiot and don’t know what you’re doing. - 90% of all viruses I’ve seen on computers come from people trying to download songs, videos, games, etc. and download a 13.6kb movie (Wow! Such Great Compression!) that ends with .exe and for some reason when you click on it, nothing happens. For crying out loud people, the #1 way for people to spread viruses is through illegal content from the internet! I haven’t received an email attachment that was infected for years, but tons of Torrents, Kazaa, and LimeWire downloads.

2) Don’t download / watch porn - This is probably the second most common way people get spyware and viruses is trying to find free pornography online. Next thing you know your computer is trying to make a long distance call to some weird number thats $5.00 a minute to download “stuff” at 2 kb/s a second. Or worse, you can’t do homework for more than 5 minutes without pop-ups all over showing way more than your group project members want to see.

3) Don’t use downloaded cheats! - Even if you’re just pubbing, tons of cheat coders have slipped viruses and torjans/backdoors into their cheats. So many times when people submit “cheats” to us so we can check them against CMN3, my AVG Anti-Virus will alert me that some backdoor program is installed.

4) Use AVG (not McAffe/Norton) - While McAffe is alright (I still like AVG a lot better), Norton in my experience has done a terrible job at detecting viruses and so forth. Not only that, but its very intrusive. AVG has a free version that you can download. Its what we recommend here at CEVO.

5) Don’t download cool little “free” stuff off the internet, especially if you clicked an Ad to download it. - #1 way to get spyware is to download “Free Smilies!” or “Free Wallpapers!” or “Free Screensavers!” Especially if you saw an ad and clicked on it. It costs people money to put up those ads, and if you think they are just giving you those smilies for free, think again. They’re going to install spyware and bombard you with ads and turn you into a marketing statistic by watching what you do so quickly it isn’t funny.

6) If steps 1-5 fail, turn in your PC and get a bloody Mac.

Meet Meebo.

About - Meebo Website:
Meebo.com is a website for instant messaging from absolutely anywhere. Whether you’re at home, on campus, at work, or traveling foreign lands, hop over to meebo.com on any computer to access all of your buddies (on AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber) and chat with them, no downloads or installs required, for free!

Alright, it has been a very, very long time since I’ve looked at a website, and my mouth just dropped in awe. I was looking around on-line for some Web 2.0ish layout ideas and color schemes, and I came upon Meebo. When I read what it did, I wanted to try it out immediately. When I logged into my MSN and AIM account, my mouth seriously dropped. The interface was extremely smooth, it really felt like I was using an application within a website. This website rocks.

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We highly recommend it to any gamer who likes light weight applications that aren’t a pain to open, or constantly nag to say “I’m an evaluation, buy me, buy me!” We’ve thrown together a little video showing off 7-zip, how to install it, how to use it, etc. We hope you enjoy and try out 7-zip!
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Topics Covered

1. Brief Introduction
2. Basic Syntax
3. Fixing Errors
4. Variables
5. Strings (a type of variables)
6. Operators (how to add, multiply, and compare variables)
7. Challenges (Things to try out on your own)

Watch the Videos
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So you want to be a web developer? Professional or as a hobby, PHP can be a fun experience. However, if you don’t know where to start off, it can be a total pain in the butt and a huge headache. We hope to help give people a good shove off into PHP programming world. However, we want to avoid technical jargon (words) and keep it easy for gamers to understand.

In this tutorial we will accomplish the following:

1. Get a basic understanding of what PHP does.
2. Install software (XAMPP) to run a personal web server on your own machine.
3. Learn how to make simple script files and where to save them.
4. How to view your website.

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