If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Hello, Taprootians!
In our thinking about how to celebrate Earth Day this year, we knew we wanted to offer incentives to folks who aren’t on green web hosts to move over and further green their projects/organizations. So we made an offer of a 30% discount for new clients today (enter: earthday2010 at sign-up if you’re interested.)
That didn’t feel balanced, however, as it didn’t honor the folks who have already taken action. In reward and thanks …

Here in the Pacific Northwest where rain falls from the sky with a near-comic regularity, nothing outs you as a n00b faster than using an umbrella. That opening whoosh of nylon inspires a smug Pavlovian eye-roll response from most of us in the great wet North. Here, a ‘light sprinkle’ is shorts weather, soldier — and don’t you forget it!
In a place of such liquid plenty it’s hard to fathom how precious a resource water is, and yet, according to the FAO, by 2025, 1 800 million people will …

If you’re anything like me, the last time you actually cracked open a phonebook, “social networking” required leaving your home and the “Blogosphere” was just a twinkle in the eye of the Intarweb. Yet, with the irritating faithfulness reserved only for those things in life you really wished would go away, the Phone Book appears, year after year, plastic-sheathed and anxious to be useless. To illustrate my point, I reference the picture that accompanies this article. This photo is of one of FOUR bins at Chad’s condo today. …

When we say we’re always working, we kinda mean it. ;) Hosting emergencies wait for no sandwich!

If you’re like me and you get a little bit of macabre pleasure from things like picking at scabs or biting at hangnails, you are probably similarly amorous of those little cans of compressed air.  There’s something supremely satisfying about using them to clean your keyboards –waking sleeping dustbunnies with a surprise burst, sending bits of cracker and lint flying at incalculable speeds.  Good times, good times.
BUT, it’s not so much with the eco-friendly. Nor are many of the commercially-available computer cleaning supplies commonly available.  So how can you clean …

There are so many wonderful, free WordPress templates out there that it can actually be overwhelming when you know precisely what you’re looking for. Sure, hours of mind-numbing google surfing can be fun, but we figured that you might appreciate a heads up on some eco-specific themes available out there on the web. We gathered up a few that we like to get you started.
Remember, templates are customizable. If you like the bones of a template, but not the graphics, we can always help you adjust it to …

Here’s a simple tutorial on how to quickly and easily backup and download your website’s files for safe keeping. We do our own daily backups of all of our servers, but it’s never a bad idea to have your own copy on file. :) Any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

[ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ]

Facebook has recently instituted a policy that essentially allows them to use your photos in advertisements for 3rd party products. Kinda sketchy if you ask us! So here’s a quick video on how to opt out of Facebook Ads.

[ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ]

Photo editing software can be ridiculously expensive and oftentimes intimidating for folks who are new to the web. However, as the web is a visual medium, the true key to capturing and engaging your audience is an aesthetically appealing website. So, if you’re not a graphic designer, an illustrator or a photographer — what do you do to make a visually appealing website? And how do you make the images you do find look good?
Luckily, you’re not alone in this — and as demand begets supply, there are …

So, you’re ethical – you bike to work a few days a week, compost your leftovers, contribute regularly to your local foodbank. Your business has a great recycling program, you turn your monitors off at night and use all-natural cleaning products. All-in-all, you feel pretty good about your footprint — as well you should! But there’s one more thing you may not have thought about; your web hosting!

A great many folks aren’t actually aware that such a thing as green web hosting is possible. And for those that are, the benefits of green hosting might be a bit of a mystery. This article aims to answer the question of why green web hosting is relevant to you, your website and the planet.