September 2, 2010

Make your Videos playback faster with S3/CloudFront

In our class today for members (sorry this is not for Day Pass users), I am going to walk you through the key steps in using S3 and CloudFront to deliver your rich media files in RapidWeaver (in my example today we are using video)

Now , I have been using S3 ever since it was first launched a couple of years ago in addition to the more recent CloudFront service. The initial videos we delivered when starting SupportCasts were delivered over S3. However, we now use a commercial CDN offering too but our image storage is handled by S3 for all those who want to know.

Whilst I will not go into the boring details of signing up , if you have an Amazon.com account you are almost there as these are extra add-on services. What I will show you is the following:

  • S3 setup with the AWS management console
  • bucket creation
  • File permissions
  • configuring CloudFront
  • using the media file in RapidWeaver.

After going through the initial setup,  using S3 is a breeze and you will find it is a useful addition to compliment your web hosting which may not be so hot in delivering rich media in other words not great bandwidth throughput and general scalability which is always a problem with shared hosting. Not unless you running your own VPS ;)

Brace yourself for a nice 18 minutes of geeky fun, mistakes and all, and let us know what you think about delivering your videos over CloudFront/S3 (c’mon folks it was a rainy Sunday afternoon here).

Have fun and remember this lesson is only available for 6 and 12 month memberships.

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Slide Out Navigation with jQuery

This is a beautiful navigation script from Codrops that sits nicely on the left, or top, of you RapidWeaver project.

In this video tutorial you will learn how to get all the elements in place. I’ll also show you that you can use both styles on one Rapidweaver page.

Grab the downloads and lets get started…

Don’t forget to grab the icon sets from DryIcons.

Those links are on the Codrop tutorial page below.
Codrops Website

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Working with Assets Part2

Here it is part 2 of a 3 part series about the different ways that you can add your assets to your RapidWeaver Project file.

In this screencast I cover how to use a “warehouse” as opposed to the Page Inspector’s Assets panel. And we compare the overall file sizes from Assets Part1 with this method.
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Payloom 2 – Free show and chance to Win

payloom2-100pxFree show: We have a short overview today on PayLoom 2 which has recently just gone out of Beta.

You ever wanted to have an easy PayPal shopping cart  , ship your tangible goods (or even digital downloads ones – more on that in a later show)  and with RapidWeaver goodness then check this out.

But……..  We also have a few licences of PayLoom (worth $19.95) to give away too – Yipee!

Option 1 -Win one of 2 license keys

Post a fun comment in this post about how you will use PayLoom in your RapidWeaver project . We will close the competition on Friday 20th Nov (Pacific Time ) and pick the best two out of the comments submitted.*

Option 2 - Join SupportCasts

We have 5 copies of PayLoom 2 awesomeness to give away if you join Supportcasts, this only applies for 12 Month plans and strictly on a first come – first served basis.

So What’s stopping you?  Enjoy the show

* supportcasts.com decisions are final.

RW063 – LetterPress CSS3

Letterpress Technique in RapidWeaver

Letterpress is an industrial print that made its way into web design using images to accomplish the same effect.

Now with CSS3 we no longer need the images…Yay. Enjoy the show.
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RW062 – Working with Assets Part1

This is part 1 of a 3 part series about the different ways that you can add assets to your RapidWeaver Project file.

In this screencast I cover the “basics” of adding those assets using the Assets Panel in the Page Inspector. I also cover the pro’s and con’s to adding all your assets in this way.

Enjoy the Show

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