Diary of a Startup: I’ve Just Applied to Seedcamp

Date: 2012-01-13
Seedcamp is basically the UK answer to Y Combinator or TechStars. In a nutshell these programs can provide seed funding, monitoring and network events for tech startups, an awesome idea! I’ve known about Seedcamp for a while however never felt the need to apply as when setting up my last company Welford Media Ltd (2006 prior to Seedcamp) there was no need to go after funding, I bootstrapped the whole thing and it worked out ok.

This is different. Recensus is a web app that requires as much help as it can get, that includes mentoring from people who’ve done it before, very experienced developers who can build something scaleable and cutting edge, and as much press as possible. I’ve been following Seedcamp for a while and from what I’ve seen, out of any program in the UK, they will help us the most and give us the best chance of success.

Anyway, I’ve submitted my application (with 4 hours to spare) and can only cross my fingers and hope for the best. Last time I spoke to my key developer and soon to be co-founder was before Christmas so I emailed over the applications to him and this was his response “Looks good, I read it through and am excited about the product again! I want to build it now ”. Hopefully that’s what the judges at Seedcamp will think too.

Diary of a Startup: Create a startup for £14

Date: 2012-01-07
This post is the first in a series discussing my new startup, proudly named recensus.com (latin for review). So after spending about 24 hours trying to find a .com domain name I was happy with here were my steps.

1. Domain Registration
Registered the domain name with 123-reg.co.uk. I choose them because they are reasonably priced and you get control over the DNS records which they don’t charge you extra for and they haven’t gone down in. (Cost: £12)

2. Setup Cloudflare
Cloudflare.com is an amazing service that give you a DNS server which blocks spam, protects against security attacks, caches content using a CDN and a lot of other features. Well worth the free price tag, takes about 10 minutes to setup, I only wish they gave you the nameservers at the beginning of the setup and they had Google App’s DNS settings as a one click button. (Cost: free)

3. Setup Google Apps
Just in case you don’t know Google App’s give you Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites and Google Docs all under your own domain (free for up to 10 users). Again well worth the free price tag (although you have to look hire for the free version), just don’t forget to setup the subdomains. (Cost: free)

4. Setup Webspace and Upload Holding Page
I’ve got my own server (well Welford Media Ltd has) and I’ve just created a new domain and uploaded my holding page. If you haven’t got hosting you could go to Hostpapa.co.uk and click install wordpress, then download a coming soon template (see http://www.net-kit.com/12-free-attractive-themes-templates-for-coming-soon-pages/ or http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/coming-soon-templates-tutorials/). (Cost: £2 per month)

5. Signup to MailChimp
Mailchimp enables you to send out tracked email newsletters to subscribers and they have a free account which give you 2000 subscribers! After signing up put the signup form on your website. (Cost: free)

That’s the easy bit done, now i’ve just got build the app, do the sales and marketing, convert leads and make money. Also if possible get funding, find mentors and hire staff.

Sendmail on Ubuntu

Install Sendmail on Ubuntu

I also need my php applications to be able to send our email using the mail function. Therefore I need to install sendmail and enable it in my php.ini file.
Install Sendmail

apt-get install sendmail

Check its working

ps -aux | grep sendmail

Change php.ini

replace
;sendmail_path =
with
sendmail_path =  /usr/sbin/sendmail

Config Sendmail

sudo sendmailconfig

Change your host files

homename
/etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost myhostname

Adobe Air with Netbeans

I love Netbeans, it’s by far my favourite IDE for developing PHP applications. Recently, I’ve needed to create an Adobe Air application and from what I remember the best free IDE on windows for this was Aptana, which is ok however I found it a little slow (and I already know all the Netbeans shortcuts). So what I really wanted to do was developed Adobe Air with Netbeans, and you can…

The video below shows you step by step however it’s 5 minutes long and I can explain in 5 lines.

1. Download the Adobe Air SDK, unzip.
2. Open Netbenas, Create a new PHP Project
3. On the 3rd page of creating a new project (Run Configuration) choose Run As: Script (run in command line)
4. Then choose AdobeAIRSDK\bin\adle.exe as the PHP Interpreter
5. The final step which isn’t in the video, (after creating the index.html file and application.xml file) click the Run Project button and it will ask you for Run Configuration, makes sure you choose application.xml as the Index File NOT index.html.

Hopefully this will work for you as well!

Best Firefox Plugins for SEO aka Addons

Probably the best browser for SEO and Web Development (although prefer Chrome for surfing the net). This is mainly because of the wide variety of addons/plugins available.

Recommended Addons for SEO:

• Firebug
• Page Speed
• SEOQuake
• SEO For Firefox
• Google Toolbar (for page rank – doesn’t work on FF7+)
• Search Status
• SEOMoz Toolbar
• User Agent Switcher