Web Hosting Box

FatCow was established in 1998 and has been offering shared web hosting solutions to small and medium enterprises as well as individuals at affordable rates. FatCow believes in old and simple values evident from its friendly customer services and easy to use hosting plans. Additionally, the web hosting provider takes pride in offering green hosting and has 100% wind-powered data centers.

Hosting Plans

FatCow offers two basic hosting plans. The Original FatCow Plan comprises of all the services of a hosting plan and is priced at $56/year or $4.67/month. It comes with unlimited disk space, unlimited monthly bandwidth, unlimited email accounts and a free site builder. Some of the hosting features included in this plan are integrated Google webmaster tools, online selling and store tools, free advertising and application installation wizards.

The MiniMoo plan, on the other hand comes with limited hosting features suitable for those who have just started their business and are not looking for a complete hosting plan. Using this plan, the clients may add a ‘coming soon’ or ‘under construction ‘page until the business is ready for the hosting plan. Although limited, this plan also offers some very useful hosting features such as spam filtering and newsletter management and is priced at $5 for the first year.

Reliability

With 99.9% uptime and guaranteed reliability, FatCow operates two data centers equipped with 800 servers and both A/C and D/C power supply. The servers are also equipped with identical severs making it easy to deal with the failure with the primary server. The data center also comes with a storage unit which backs up data so as to restore the websites in the event of a disk failure. Its data centers also ensure round the clock monitoring so as to assure maximum performance of servers at all times of the day. Such reliability is generally not seen with budget hosting providers.

Customer Support

FatCow also offers round the clock customer support through a toll free number as well as live chat and email support. The organization also has a ‘HeiferCratic’ Oath which pledges outstanding customer support and after sales services. The customer support department promises to answer phone calls within 2 minutes and resolve problems as soon as possible.

Pricing

With its reliable services and outstanding customer support, FatCow also comes with extremely affordable and competitive hosting prices making it the right choice for all types of customers.

Generally, FatCow is believed to satisfy customer demands and needs to the fullest and receives excellent reviews, however, customers complain about its inflexible plans lacking upgrading possibility and support for Linux only.

Duster is another great free WordPress theme by Automattic. Like all Automattic themes, you’re given lots of options to customize your blog and some cool features to really make it stand out.

When you initially enable Duster, it looks pretty ordinary. It’s a clean and elegant template with not much clutter and has a smooth interface for easy navigation. The sidebar’s on the right, three-column footer at the bottom, custom background, custom menu, and a custom header which you can easily remove for even more of a minimalistic feel.

This all might seem pretty normal and you’re probably wondering, “So, what’s so special about this theme?” Well, with a few tweaks and adjustments, you can turn this layout into something like this:

So, how do we do it? Well, it’s not as straightforward to customize as some of the other WordPress themes. However, if you have 15 minutes to spare and can closely follow instructions, then it’s pretty easy.

What you’re seeing below the menu bar is the Showcase Page Template. To active it, you would need to go Pages in the backend.

Add a new page and put in some introductory text. Under Page Attributes, click on the Template drop down box and select Showcase Template. Once that’s done, hit Publish.

To display Showcase Page, you would then need to go into Settings > Reading.

Where it says Front page displays click on A static page, select the showcase post as your Front Page. This has ultimately changed the layout of your post from the normal template to the showcase template.

To make a post appear as featured, you would need to mark it as a sticky and also include a featured image with it too. This is done via Edit Post.

Now, if you wanted the featured image to be displayed in full, it needs to be quite big, at least as big as the header image, which is 1000 x 300 px. If you’ve uploaded a large picture and it’s still not displaying properly at the front, you would need to head to Settings > Media and ensure that you have set a size for Large Image.

As for the sidebar, it’s now on the right-hand-side. To display it, you would need to have your widgets placed in the Showcase Sidebar as the Main Sidebar won’t be displayed anymore.

You might also the new widget called Duster Ephemera, which can display links to additional posts. To utilize this, when you’re making a new post, you would need to specify the format of the post as Aside or Link. When a post is marked as aside or link, they won’t actually be displayed in the main post area when you’re in the Showcase layout theme.

As you can see, in Showcase layout, the theme is even lighter and neater. Your most recent post is displayed in full while older posts are condensed into a link displaying the title and comments.

When you click into a post, the featured image will be displayed in the header. Again, make sure the featured image is at least 1000 x 300 px or it would look blurry and pixilated. If your featured image is too small, simply remove it from the post, or disable the header altogether.

The comment box is very organized and the large format makes it more inviting for readers.

Another great thing about Duster is that the layout can automatically adjust its size according to the window. If you resize your browser, the layout will also change in real time.

Duster is like two themes rolled into one. You have the option for the usual layout, or something different and condensed. Although to fully utilize the custom layout, it does take a bit of effort and fiddling around with, but it’s nothing complicated. Nevertheless, the out-of-the-box version is still great for any blog that needs a modern, minimal layout.

Try it out for yourself on the Duster demo page.

Duster is another great free WordPress theme by Automattic. Like all Automattic themes, you’re given lots of options to customize your blog and some cool features to really make it stand out.

When you initially enable Duster, it looks pretty ordinary. It’s a clean and elegant template with not much clutter and has a smooth interface for easy navigation. The sidebar’s on the right, three-column footer at the bottom, custom background, custom menu, and a custom header which you can easily remove for even more of a minimalistic feel.

This all might seem pretty normal and you’re probably wondering, “So, what’s so special about this theme?” Well, with a few tweaks and adjustments, you can turn this layout into something like this:

So, how do we do it? Well, it’s not as straightforward to customize as some of the other WordPress themes. However, if you have 15 minutes to spare and can closely follow instructions, then it’s pretty easy.

What you’re seeing below the menu bar is the Showcase Page Template. To active it, you would need to go Pages in the backend.

Add a new page and put in some introductory text. Under Page Attributes, click on the Template drop down box and select Showcase Template. Once that’s done, hit Publish.

To display Showcase Page, you would then need to go into Settings > Reading.

Where it says Front page displays click on A static page,  select the showcase post as your Front Page. This has ultimately changed the layout of your post from the normal template to the showcase template.

To make a post appear as featured, you would need to mark it as a sticky and also include a featured image with it too. This is done via Edit Post.

Now, if you wanted the featured image to be displayed in full, it needs to be quite big, at least as big as the header image, which is 1000 x 300 px. If you’ve uploaded a large picture and it’s still not displaying properly at the front, you would need to head to Settings > Media and ensure that you have set a size for Large Image.

As for the sidebar, it’s now on the right-hand-side. To display it, you would need to have your widgets placed in the Showcase Sidebar as the Main Sidebar won’t be displayed anymore.

You might also the new widget called Duster Ephemera, which can display links to additional posts. To utilize this, when you’re making a new post, you would need to specify the format of the post as Aside or Link. When a post is marked as aside or link, they won’t actually be displayed in the main post area when you’re in the Showcase layout theme.

As you can see, in Showcase layout, the theme is even lighter and neater. Your most recent post is displayed in full while older posts are condensed into a link displaying the title and comments.

When you click into a post, the featured image will be displayed in the header. Again, make sure the featured image is at least 1000 x 300 px or it would look blurry and pixilated. If your featured image is too small, simply remove it from the post, or disable the header altogether.

The comment box is very organized and the large format makes it more inviting for readers.

Another great thing about Duster is that the layout can automatically adjust its size according to the window. If you resize your browser, the layout will also change in real time.

Duster is like two themes rolled into one. You have the option for the usual layout, or something different and condensed. Although to fully utilize the custom layout, it does take a bit of effort and fiddling around with, but it’s nothing complicated. Nevertheless, the out-of-the-box version is still great for any blog that needs a modern, minimal layout.

Try it out for yourself on the Duster demo page.

We get a lot of questions from budding artists and photographers regarding a WordPress theme that could also work as a good online portfolio. So today, I’m going to review Modularity Lite, which claims to be a great free theme to display photos.

Modularity is a dark theme with a hint of grunge texture in the background that’s barely detectable. I’m a fan of the dark background as it really brings out the vibrant colors of your images. There’s also the option to change the background color or image if you wish to lighten it up a bit. Same goes for the header where you can upload a custom image.

Modularity can be a two-column theme or a one-column one if you wish to display larger images. The layout can be changed quickly and easily through the backend under theme options.

If you like your widgets but want to get rid of the sidebar, you can still display them in the generous four-column footer area. As usual, all your widgets are managed under Widgets in your Dashboard.

Currently, you’re probably thinking that Modularity is more of a blog than a standout portfolio theme. Well, this is where the built-in slideshow feature comes in. If you enable this in the backend under Theme Options, a rotating slideshow widget will be embedded on your homepage.

The widget will display all the featured images in your posts. You will have to be mindful that images will be presented quite large, 950 x 425 pixels to be exact. You can’t change this setting so if you have smaller images, they will be stretched to this size and might look a bit pixilated.

Setting a featured image is quite easy and it’s done through each post. Let’s take Food in Tokyo for example. Once you’ve uploaded all your images, simply click on ‘use as feature image’ next to the ‘insert into Post’ button. Unfortunately, you can only include one featured image per post.

Along with enabling the sidebar and slideshow, you can also include a Welcome Message that sits above your posts and slideshow. You can have a short message about anything really, and if you’re lost for words, then simply leave the text box areas blank.

Unlike other WordPress portfolio themes where you can only display images, Modularity provides you space for text as well. The text might be a bit smaller and harder to read, but you’d have to keep in mind the nature of this theme. It’s a portfolio so the focus is on the photos, rather than words.

The only down-side would be that the article post information is rather compact and small. The comment area is very tidy and neat, but the cascading effect isn’t prominent so it’s harder to see replies and conversations.

I find that the best way to utilize this theme and make your blog look good, is to adopt a similar layout found on the Modularity Lite Demo page.

Recreating this look is easy and you would just need to tweak your individual posts a bit. Take a look at the YouTube video above to see how.

Modularity is a good portfolio theme if you wish to include a mixture of images and text. The rotating slideshow is definitely a real kicker for this theme, especially if you have larger photos to display. Test out the theme for yourself and let us know what you think.

Vigilance is a simple and clean WordPress theme by The Theme Foundry. Its minimal appearance keeps the reader focused on the posts without any distractions like overwhelming colors or floating widgets. Everything is kept in their place and it’s very easy to navigate around.

The layout is your usual main post on the left and sidebar on the right. Oddly though, there’s no footer area. You can split the sidebar into three widget areas: wide, left and right.

This is all done through the backend under widgets. Unlike other themes where you would need to change the layout first in order to use the split sidebars, with Vigilance, all you need to do is place your widgets in the left and right sidebar to make it appear in the frontend. Yup, it’s that simple. You can change the look of the sidebar by adding or removing widgets under the Appearance > Widgets menu.

Unfortunately, you can’t change the order of the sidebar, so it’s always the wide sidebar at the top and the split one below it. I find that there isn’t much space between the sidebar and the main post, so it can sometimes look a bit cluttered, especially when you’re using the split sidebar. There are plenty of white space on the right-hand-side of the sidebar, which seems wasted. You would also have to keep the images in your posts below 600 megapixels or they will start running into the sidebar.

If you’re looking to add a splash of color to this otherwise very minimalistic and bland theme, then head to the Theme Options in the backend. This is where Vigilance sets itself apart from other themes. Although you can’t customise the background image, you can choose from a spectrum of colors for your background, border and links. You can also customize the header image and text under Appearance.

In Theme Options, there’s you have the ability to switch on the Alert Box. The Alert Box acts like a sticky note that appears at the front of your blog. You can feature announcements, notices and any other short important messages.

Vigilance supports a custom drop down menu bar. What’s cool about it is that when you click on a post, the categories in the menu bar get highlighted. For example, the Food in Tokyo post was posted under the categories Travel and Food. And thus, those two categories are highlighted and marked.

A downside to Vigilance is that the theme doesn’t have expandable sub-menus in the sidebar. Often you would have to click into it and before you’re taken to a page with the sub-menus. It makes browsing around the blog a bit more inconvenient.

All in all, Vigilance is a nice WordPress theme that ticks all the right places if you’re looking for a simple template with the flexibility to make minor adjustments. It’s a neat layout where you’re not bombarded by different colors or typefaces. You can try out the template yourself on the Vigilance demo page.