2008 is now 48 days old, yet there are a number of sites which still think its 2007.

To name but a few:

• Hollywood Reporter
• Klutz
• Palo Alto Unified School District

Rather than include the year in the site’s footer as text, which has to be manually updated, why not use the date on your server to do the work for you.

If you use PHP on your server, like every WordPress blog does, you can replace “2007″, or even “2008″ so you are ready for next year, with the following snippet:

<?php echo date(’Y'); ?>

Although this does rely on server’s date and time being correct. You can ensure that your server has the correct date and time by synchronizing your server with an Internet Time Server. The National Institute of Standards and Technology provides a number of time servers through the United States. Be sure to check the status of the time servers to help you make the best choice.

Love or hate them, Microsoft provides a list of time servers available throughout the world.

For Windows users you configure the use of an Internet Time Server within the “Internet Time” tab of the “Date and Time Properties” section of the Control Panel - just make sure that you have set the correct time zone.

Rather than exclusively copyrighting the content of your Web site or blog, wouldn’t it be better to allow people to re-use the content and give a credit in return? For businesses who wants everyone to know about their products this would be the sensible approach.

BlogWell uses a Creative Commons licensing, which allows anyone to share and remix our work, provided we receive an attribution and that any such work is licensed in a similar manner (i.e. it too can be shared and remixed by others). You can see the specific license we use in the footer - check it out.

We suggest that you should review the reason why your site contains a copyright - most times this is simply due it being present in the site template or WordPress theme.

Image: AODdesign

Yes it can be done.

Forget what you have read in the forums ( Why can’t I redirect my blog? and Can I redirect my blog?) and don’t bother trying to get your head around the too technical product announcement ( New Feature: Domains).

We have written a step by step guide on how to redirect your established WordPress.com blog to your own self-hosted blog on your own domain - Redirecting a WordPress.com Blog (PDF 739 KB).

Why do this?

We just like WordPress - that’s all.

Update: Based on the excellent comments, we have updated the original document to include a section on setting the permalink style to that used by WordPress.com - thank you everyone for helping us make this better.

Looking for undo & redo in the new Office 2007 ribbon?

It ain’t in the ribbon, it is in the quick access toolbar. But hey didn’t the ribbon replace toolbars!

Ctrl-Z works fine - thankfully they didn’t change this.

The new ribbon user interface in Office 2007 takes a little getting used to.  Sometimes you just want to do something immediately, but can’t find the command in the ribbon.  “So much for the ribbon making my life easier” you mutter.

Microsoft have a number of interactive guides which let you select the command from the old 2003 Office menu and it will show you where it is located within the ribbon. 

Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

Word 2003 to Word 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

Why oh why didn’t they put this in the product itself!

Turns out some people think the run command has disappeared from Vista – it hasn’t. 

The new search bar (in the start panel) will not only search your computer, it will also run any command you type.

However, if you miss seeing the old Run command in your start panel, try this:

Right click on your taskbar; select Properties

Click on the start menu; select customize

Scroll through to the Run Command check box; check it!

Voila