The lite version of this plugin allows you to sell products via PayPal only. Whilst it’s called ‘lite’ it’s not that simple as such. You can have your products in categories, there’s a shopping basket and it uses the PayPal IPN for instant notification. I’ve not gone through the whole process but I would assume that if you’re selling a digital product it will also then provide a download link to the buyer to download the product, as I’ve had the option to set how many times the product can be downloaded by the buyer.

This sounds like a really interesting method for selling stuff from your website. Sarah gives several interesting details (click over) and then the developer comes along in the comments to say they’re adding even more awesome stuff.

For instance, someone with a deals forum was paying people .15 per forum post if they made unique post with a deal or coupon.

This is an interesting concept. Sure, a lot of people will use it to game Digg and so on, but you could also use it for having someone submit articles for you or post your WordPress posts, etc. Definitely something to keep in mind.

So I did a complete wipe of the site – I’m thinking it’s in the tables of the database, I’ve done fix and restore with no success.  I had to bite the bullet and wipe everything and start again.

If you’re a self-taught webmaster, you are so totally going to go through stuff like this. It just happens. When it’s not something you screwed up, it’s the host who turns out to be less adept than you thought. When it’s not the host, it’s your software, and so on. Empress lists some good lessons you can learn from her experience.

• Right-click the taskbar, choose Properties.
• Under the Taskbar tab, click “Auto-hide the Task Bar”

You can also do something about icons you don’t really need showing down there, too.

Gmail’s ability to let you email with a different reply-to address turned out to be irreplaceable (update: Inbox.com has this feature, too). But by the time I’d spent a while hunting, I also asked myself whether it was such a great idea to be sending emails like that through a third-party service – not to mention the confusion of having them come both to an online mailbox and offline to my email client. In the end, I went with Inbox.com, which has a pretty decent privacy policy compared to Google and works very similarly, except it has the ability for me to set up different folders as well as labels. Can’t tell you how much I still miss folders, even after working with labels in Gmail. It was just never the same for me.

For feedreading, I like a service that lets me read a bunch of feeds at once instead of going feed by feed. I also want to be able to clip or pin articles for future reference. I thought Rojo was going to do the trick, but I had trouble signing up with them, got no response to my email asking for help, and then voila – today the domain is on sale. Not sure what the deal is there, but in the end I found News Alloy. It has the features I mentioned and it works quickly. I think it’s got some more features I might start using, once I work out what they do.

At first I thought this might detract from the value of the blog. Then I considered the fact that I’m not an expert, and on my best days around here, I’m usually just pointing toward experts who have helped me out. The link posts add to that agenda, and so I hope they add value to the site for you.

Seriously, though. I know to make serious revenue, I need to learn how to create php tools or… something. Right now, my offline life is beyond overwhelming and I’m looking at the possibility of a very big hosting move. But one of these days.

ETA: his next bookmark post on programming.

I love Alt-Tab, but when you have several Word or Firefox windows open, it’s hopeless trying to guess which one is the one you’re after. Fortunately, Microsoft offers a solution with the Alt-Tab power toy (download link here).

Tweak lets you change systems settings you didn’t know you could. Remember when it was your choice whether or not to let applications jump up overtop of the ones you’re working in whenever they deemed appropriate? It can be your choice again.

And Magnifier adds the ability to use a little slice of your task bar as a magnification pane. Hover your mouse over whatever you want to magnify, and look at the pane to see it. (To activate after installation, right click the taskbar, select Toolbars, and select Taskbar Magnifier. For me, it didn’t show up as an option the first few times I tried. You may need to reboot.)

[Found via LifeHacker.]

I’ve now been using it for three days, and I do notice a measurable improvement, especially at launch. Everything seems to load a bit more quickly. I think this one is definitely worth downloading and trying out.