A few days ago I mentioned that I would be starting a video series on how to set up your Mac to act as a server. These will all be done using the Mac OS X client (not Mac OS X Server) so it won’t cost any more than an inexpensive Mac mini to be up and going.

Here is the first video in that series. It is titled “Initial Setup Of Your Mac Server.” A few of the points will be obvious to some, but it is important that we start out simple so that we are all on the same page for the future settings. Plus, missing any of these changes may cause some problems with your server later on. This is based on the experience I have setting up hundreds of minis at Macminicolo.net.

You can watch the video tutorial here.(I didn’t anticipate such high demand. Please be patient as they load.)

(Don’t forget to grab the FreeMacBlog RSS feed so you will be aware of the future videos. Upcoming videos will show you how to set up your Mac as a web server, a FTP server, and a mail server.)

Today Freemacware reader Fred wrote to ask if there was a free alternative to Amnesty Widget Browser, a $20 application for running Dashboard widgets outside of Dashboard. I don’t know of any free application like Amnesty, but there are two free methods for running widgets “outside” of Dashboard, both from Macosxhints.com:

1. Detach widgets from the Dashboard. You can run Widgets directly on the Desktop, instead of having to push F12 (or whatever your Dashboard activation key is) to see them. You can bookmark them like any web page for quick access.

2. View Dashboard widgets in Safari. Since Dashboard widgets are built of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, you can view them in a web browser. Actually, it probably needs to be Safari since many widgets have Safari-specific features.

A while back I showed all of you the Great Wall Of Apple Boxes that was growing in my upstairs loft. I got a lot of emails and comments asking what it was I did that would require so many Mac minis.

I work for a company called Macminicolo.net. As the name would imply, it is a colocation service for Mac minis (and XServes). People send in their Mac minis, and we colocate them so they can run websites, databases, podcasts, etc. The service is comparably inexpensive (compare it to the prices that are advertised in the Google ads at the top of this post) and offers very high speeds and security for the mini. To give you a few examples, we have one customer that runs 500 GB worth of podcasts off of his mini each month. Another customer has a site that gets 800k hits a month and his Intel mini never hiccups. We use minis for our own sites and emails. I’d say that half of the customers run Mac OS X Server, and the other half can do all of their work using regular Mac OS X. Both installs are incredibly powerful and stable.

We have a cage in a data center here is Las Vegas that is full of minis. Here are a couple photos of one of the racks in the cage. (For the privacy of our customers, I blurred out their names and ip addresses.)

Overall, the cage can be quite an impressive site. Often, the data center employees will give tours of the data center to possible customers. Our cage is always one of the crowning stops. I get the same comments every time.

“Are those mini computers?”
“Do those work well as servers?”
“Apple sure is coming along nicely as a company.”

Usually, I’ll be in the cage working while they are talking amongst themselves. Often, I’ll crack a joke like, “Here you see a real Mac IT man working in his natural environment.” That usually gets a laugh. Geek jokes.

Well, I bring all this up to announce that, in cooperation with macminicolo.net, FreeMacBlog will be starting a new video series on how to use your Mac as a server. I’ve learned a lot of the little tricks while working with the company and I think that there are others that may like to know as well. The first video will be posted on Monday and it will deal with the “Initial Setup” of the Mac running Mac OS X. We’re also hoping to give you a couple chances to win a year of free Mac mini hosting from Macminicolo.

I’m hoping that the videos will help accomplish a couple things. For those of you wishing to run a server in your house or business, these videos should help you get it started fast and free. For those of you considering a change in your hosting, or in need hosting for the first time, you might consider a Mac mini. The new Intel machines are incredibly capable right out of the box.

So stay tuned. Grab the FreeMacBlog RSS Feed or be sure to bookmark us for later. I think you’ll enjoy the tips.

Tonight I updated our Google Map mashup of all the Apple Retail stores around the world. Apple has opened several new retail stores since we first launched the map, so it had fallen behind. If I’ve missed any, let me know. (And if you could be so kind, send me the latitude/longitude of any stores I’ve missed. You can do that by finding the store on Google Maps, then clicking “Link to this Page”.)

Digg.com is known for it’s powerful digg effect. When your website hits the homepage of digg, thousands of visitors will come to your site and check it out. It’s always fun to see the traffic come pouring in and you feel good that your stuff is being seen. For the next few days, the traffic will continue but will be less and less each day. Before you know it, your 15,000 hits of fame are done and you are back to your normal traffic numbers.

What can you do to keep some of that traffic?

The secret is to treat these diggers different than you treat your regular readers. You need to present yourself differently to all of these first time visitors. Be sure they get a little note explaining what your site is about and point them toward some of your best work.

In a post on Seth Godin’s blog, he offered a good suggestion on how to do this:

One opportunity that’s underused is the idea of using cookies to treat returning visitors differently than newbies. It’s more work at first, but it can offer two experiences to two different sorts of people.

Does this work?

We thought we’d test this out on FreeMacBlog. Richard K Miller (another writer on FreeMacBlog) wrote a wordpress plugin called What Would Seth Godin Do. Once installed, “new visitors to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words ‘If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!’ After 3 visits the message disappears. You can customize this message, its lifespan, and its location.” We installed this plugin.

In the last little bit, this blog has been on the homepage three different times. If you look at the traffic graph above, it isn’t hard to see where the digg traffic happened. After the first two times, the traffic came right back down to normal. The third time is different though. Just before the third digg traffic, we installed the plugin so new visitors would get a little message about the site. Notice what happened to the traffic after the rush. Rather than dropping back down to normal, the traffic only dropped a bit and has been holding steady ever since.

Conclusion

As Richard wrote on his plugin page, “New visitors will appreciate some context and background information about your site.” If you tell them why they should stick around…they just might.