Connect with us

Featured

8 Hidden Features Of Windows 8 We Bet You Don’t Know!

windows 8 hidden features

Advertisement

Windows 8 brings to us the best of both worlds- the ‘Desktop’ mode, which looks and feels a lot like gold old Windows 7. And there’s the all-new Start Menu, which is a radical change from the previous Windows OS versions.

If you’ve just upgraded to Windows 8 or are looking forward to upgrading to Windows 8, it may take you time to unearth all the useful and handy features and secrets Windows 8 has. So here are some awesome features and shortcuts you might want to know.

Hidden Features Of Windows 8

1. The ‘hidden’ Start Menu

You would already be knowing that moving your cursor to the bottom-left and clicking left makes you switch to the tiled Start Page. But clicking right-click will provide you with a menu linking to useful tools, including Control Panel, the command prompt and the Task Manager.

2. Sync your setting across Windows 8 machines

A Microsoft Account can help you sync personalized settings across Windows 8 machines, useful if you use different PCs for home and work.

To configure this hidden feature, just launch the ‘Settings’ Charm, click on ‘Change PC Settings’ and open the ‘Sync your settings’ tab.

3. Take Screenshots easily and quickly

For taking screenshots earlier, you had to press Print Screen, then open up an app like Paint or the GIMP and paste in your screenshot from the clipboard. Nothing absurd like that in Windows 8. To take a screenshot in Windows 8, just press Win+Print Screen and the screenshot is saved in the ‘Pictures’ folder by itself. A very simple shortcut for taking screenshots.

4. Enable Start Screen Animation

When you first sign onto Windows 8, you get a very cool flow-y animation of all your tiles filling up the screen. After that, though, the Start screen has a much more toned-down animation. Not to worry, a simple registry tweak is what it takes to fix this. Open the Windows Registry editor by pressing Win+R and typing “Regedit”.

Tree to find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell\Grid, and with the entry opened, right-click in the right-hand pane and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value, which you should name Launcher_SessionLoginAnimation_OnShow. Open this, and change the value to 1, then click OK and close Registry Editor. When you hit the Start button, the tiles will be animated.

 5. Adjust the number of Rows on the Start Screen

The tiles in Windows 8 are as a grid, four rows deep. However, you can easily tweak this too. Open the Windows Registry Editor, Expand the tree to reach the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell\Grid and look for the entry Layout_MaximumRowCount. If it’s not there (it probably won’t be) create it by right-clicking in the right-hand pane and selecting New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.

Once created, double click the entry, set the Base to Decimal and alter the value – you can have as many as five rows. After making the change, click OK, close the registry editor and logout of Windows 8. When you log back in, the Start screen layout will have been altered. Simple, new rows will be added ready to be customised.

6. Schedule Maintenance of your machine

Yes, Windows 8 can now be scheduled to perform tasks like software updates, security scanning, and other important ones daily. Just go to the Action Centre and you can setup the time for scheduled maintanence and also perform it manually, if desired.

7. Enable Aero Lite

Yes, many people have missing Aero in Windows 8. To activate the Aero Light theme in Windows 8, press Win + R and enter Resources. Open Themes > Aero and copy aerolite.msstyles to the parent folder, Themes, agreeing to the instruction to make the change as an administrator.

Next, you will have to create a configuration file. To do so, copy the aero.theme and paste it to the desktop. Using Open with to view the file in Notepad, go to File > Save as… and save the document as aerolite.theme. You can then make the following changes:

Change line 5 to DisplayName= Aero Lite

Find the [VisualStyles] section (either by scrolling or using CTRL+F) and change the path entry to Path=%ResourceDir%\Themes\Aero\Aerolite.msstyles

Save the file again and open Control Panel > Change the Theme or right-click the Desktop and select Personalization

That’s it! The Aero Lite theme will now be enabled.

8. Categorize Apps by groups

To neatly categorize the apps into particular groups or sections, just drag an app’s tile to an empty space on the Start Screen. It then creates its own group. If you want to name your groups—say, for “Work,” “Games,” and so on—you can do so by clicking the small button in the bottom-right corner of the screen and right-clicking on the groups.

These were the 8 best hidden Windows 8 features and functions we could come up with. Do share with us your experience if you’ve learnt your own hidden features as well. 🙂

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Development

How To Fix 502 Bad Gateway Error in WordPress

How To Fix 502 Bad Gateway Error in WordPress

We all have encountered the very frustrating 502 bad gateway error on our WordPress website many times. As speaking about WordPress, the platform often clusters with many irritating errors which all of us hates for many reasons. In which database connection issues, white screen of infinite pause are the most prominent one. But even more annoying is of the 502 bad gateway error which causes many headaches for developers on many occasions. And though finding various ways to fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress, the developers not only waste serious time but also gets distracted with the other major issues during the website development.

So below we will be discussing few points on how to fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress starting with the details about this error, and how it often emerges with the mishandling of the wrong code between the browser and the web server. While elaborating those, we will be then looking towards various ways about how to fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress, as of how quickly the problem could be rectified just with the intrinsic knowledge of web Browser and sometimes DNS checkups.

How To Fix 502 Bad Gateway Error in WordPress

What is the 502 Bad Gateway Error?

Renowned by many, the 502 bad gateway error is an HTTP status code, which is then generated on browser screen when something goes wrong between the browser and web server. In other words, HTTP status codes come back with the response of web servers but are not visible on screen unless some problem arouses, and 502 bad gateway error is one of those.

The error has the specific meaning that one server while imitating as gateway or proxy, got an invalid reply-back from the inbound server. That is why the HTTP status code quickly shows the “Bad Gateway” message on the screen to notify the relevant authorities.

bad gateway error

How To Fix 502 Bad Gateway Error in WordPress

There are many ways to fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress, in which some of the most popular and exact are given below. Trying out these can solve your problem within minutes, and you can gain back the control of your web work perfectly again.

1. Reloading the website URL from which you received the error sometimes solves the problem quickly. As this issue sometimes gets generated randomly and is temporary on the norms. Hence refreshing back the web page with the URL sometimes comes very handy in fixing the bad gateway error.

2. If the above problem persists, then closing all your active sessions of the browser and reopening it freshly could be another way to fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress. This issue is sometimes associated with the network as well as with the internal browser metrics. Hence closing all the browser windows/tabs and reopening a new window could give you the desired results, and can luckily fix the temporary aroused lousy gateway issue.

3. Clearing your browser as a whole with all cookies and caches inside it could also fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress. Because once your browser has crawled the bad gateway message, then it somehow gets stored in your cookies and thus can return even if there is no significant blockages are there. So making sure, that your browser is cleared with all cookies and caches is also essential in rectifying this annoying bad gateway message and can literally work for you cheaply.

4. If the bad gateway message has aroused due to some network problem, then restarting your WiFi or switch could be the next step you should follow. As it is mostly stated that the 502 bad gateway error is mainly associated with the network problem, therefore checking up your network devices and restarting them could also do wonders for you in eradicating this problem.

5. If you are using a third-party CDN, then it might also be the reason for bad gateway problem. So disabling the CDN on the temporary basis could also resolve the issue sometimes, especially when you up on the work with a free CDN. Trying out this simple step is also very cheap and gives smart solution sometimes.

6. Checking up your DNS and local DNS is also very important if you are facing this bad gateway irritation. Make sure that both your DNS and local DNS are correctly configured and the problem doesn’t lie in between those. Because it is widely stated that network issue is the main reason enlarging this problem. And DNS configuration is one of the critical aspects of your network metrics. Hence rechecking them is the right thing to do for eliminating this temporary carnage.

DNS configuration

So there are also many other ways of eradicating this problem out. In which checking your plugins configurations, themes internal metrics and other website dynamics sometimes become very prominent. But the above-defined points are termed as the most common and easy in discarding the issue cheaply and smartly. That is why all six of them have been elaborated with complete detail to give you ease finding the right solution.

Continue Reading

Featured

How To Get Free US Phone Number For Incoming Calls

free US phone number for incoming calls

A lot of people do search for international numbers especially of US, to make and attend cheap call using that number. However, it is not an easy task to get free US phone number for incoming calls sitting in a different country. That is why people does start flooding internet about how to acquire an authenticated looking US number despite not living there.

So to answer those queries, we have summed up below different smart applications which are exclusively made for the same operation. As using one of these, it is easier for you to get yourself a US number which could be rightly used with your WiFi or mobile data. Hence whether your looking for outbound calls or inbound receiving, these smart applications will help you out in either way.

5 Best Applications To Get Free US Phone Number For Incoming Calls

TextPlus App

Available for both Android and iOS smartphones, TextPlus app is the first choice for many people for getting a free US phone number for incoming calls. The application is very easy to use and allows a unified US phone number within some finger-clicks.

Just downloading the app and registering yourself with the email address, lets you access to the dashboard of the app. From where you can go into the settings and scroll down towards the bottom to find “Get A Free TextPlus Number.”. Clicking that, the app allows you a unique US phone number which you can use for all your calling/texting operations. While some of the cool features of the app including of “Call Back Text” also makes this application very handy to use even when you are out of your balance.

textplus free number app

 

TextNow App

The TextNow application uses a popular VoIP service to generate free text messages/calls to USA and Canada. The most important part of getting a free US phone number for incoming calls with this app is just to take a little care of your virtual residence during the signup process. You are asked to enter your area code based on which unique virtual number will be given to you. Hence you have to enter that code very skilfully to get a free US phone number to enjoy unlimited calls and SMS.

The application gives you the ease to do outbound calls as well attain incoming calls for different verification and authentication purposes totally for free. However, if you want to make calls outside of the US, then some minimal charges do apply varying with different countries.

free US phone number for incoming calls

 

Talkatone

Talkatone could be regarded as that smart application which has been in the circuit of exclusive virtual numbers for many years. The app is rightly built for both Android and iPhone users and is very easy to download on both the platforms. Whether you are a United States citizen or not, you can firmly have a free US phone number for incoming calls using this application, as you just have to signup with proper virtual area code.

Talkatone allows you to use WiFi or cellular data to make unlimited free calls to any US or Canada number. It is regarded as the best app to have a virtual number for authentication and verification purposes. Whereas unique features like custom voicemail greeting, passcode setting for security purposes also make the application very smart to use.

talkatone calling app

 

TextFree App

TextFree is another smart application programmed in the same way as the TextNow app using the same VoIP technology to make you communicate with the original US number. The app could be ideally used for the online verification purposes as well as could also be used to get Google Voice Number.

Because Google requires original US number before allotting its number, and this virtual app fits perfect for that use. You can rightly use its artificially generated US number for authentication in Google’s procedure and can procure a new number with it.

textfree application

 

GoHeyWire App

GoHeyWire App also gives you free US phone number, but just for Texting purposes. The application doesn’t allow calls with the number; however, you can text totally free to any person anywhere in the world using that given US virtual number.

Other than it, the application has a very cool feature of integrating with Twitter, which allows it to send text as tweets to the second most prominent social media platform in the world – that is Twitter.

US number texting app

So comprising the above article short, there are many other smart software applications built for giving a uniquely original virtual number, especially of the US. These applications offer people ease to manage their day to day outbound as well as incoming calls/text. That is why during the last few years, many virtual number apps have hit the market with creative features and smart offers to make customers feel great ease while communicating freely in other regions.

Continue Reading

Featured

Facebook Advertisement vs Email Marketing – Which one to choose for your business?

Facebook Advertisement vs Email Marketing

The new growing trend of social media marketing can improve your business like Facebook became pocket television, thus people are getting it very hard to choose among the two most common ways of marketing i.e Facebook advertisement vs email marketing. After reading this article you will able to choose the best way to advertise your business, you will know that which kind of people you have to target via email marketing and Facebook advertisement.

Facebook Advertisement vs Email Marketing

Facebook Advertisement vs Email Marketing are the two leading ways used by businesses to promote their products and to increase their sales. below are the benefits of both Facebook advertisement and email marketing, which will help you to select the best way to advertise.

Facebook Advertisement vs Email Marketing

Benefits of advertising on Facebook

Facebook is one of the best social media websites on the internet. Facebook is the second most visited website on the Internet behind Google.

Almost 1.4 billion individuals use Facebook to connect with what matters to them and more than 900 million visits every day. When you run a Facebook Advert, you can choose the audiences that can see it by location, age, interests and more.

With Facebook Adverts, you can choose the type of audiences you want to reach and Facebook delivers your adverts to them. Facebook makes your adverts more important for the people who see them, and it brings you real results.

You can grow customer loyalty through a Facebook fan page. Many kinds of businesses have created Facebook fan pages that users can join easily. These fan pages allow your business to interact directly with your customers so that you can shape loyalty and brand image.

You can offer special promotions through your Facebook fan page. You can use your Facebook Fan page as a platform for your new products promotion or advertisement campaign. Updates on new product launches keep your customers more knowledgeable that what products or services you offer.

Facebook facilitates multiple advertisement views. Your advertisement needs many views by an individual. A large number of Facebook users visit the site several times a day.

Choose between Cost per click (CPC) and Cost-per-Thousand Impression (CPM) pay structures. Facebook allows you to purchase advertisement space based on clicks or impression fee structure. This allows you to tailor your ad campaign based on budget and other preferences.

A great benefit of Facebook advertisement to your business is an ability to reach smartphone users. Facebook is used via smartphones worldwide every single day. This means your target is not only the people who use computers, your advertisement will reach to every individual who is using the smartphone.

Smartphones are now part of our lives, people use Smartphones and tablets to discover, communicate and shop.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is applied by thousands of businesses across the globe. Those who are unaware of this method of advertising cannot immediately understand why it is so popular amongst organizations in a variety of industries but here are some reasons why email marketing is seen by many as a vital marketing tool.

  1. Email marketing allows you to reach millions of customers with a click of a button. Compared to other forms of marketing or advertising, the cost of an email marketing campaign is low. You do not have to pay printing or mailing costs. Most likely, you will have to pay for a company to send your Emails, which protects your business against spam complaints, but this is a small monthly charge.
  2. Email marketing increases your sales because you are able to contact so many former customers at a time via email, you will be able to increase interest in your products which often results in increased sales. While there is no way to tell exactly how much you will be able to increase profits, it is safe to say that your mailing will generate at least some more sales.
  3. Email marketing is one of the only networks that consumers ask to receive. The majority of businesses using the platform only send messages to those people who have signed up to receive them. By email marketing business is only targeting those who already interested in their brand. It is, of course, possible to send unsolicited email marketing messages, but this is only likely to irritate consumers and result in a damaged brand image.

Conclusion

After comparisons of both Facebook advertisement vs Email marketing, we can conclude that it depends on your business, if your business is not limited to a group of specific audience or organizations, you should advertise on Facebook because your advertisement can reach to everyone while the email marketing is used when you have a list of interested audience.

Continue Reading

Trending