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By default, your free WordPress address is yourblog’sname.wordpress.com. But whether this is a personal or a company blog, it can be nice to have your own domain to really brand your site and make it your own. Or, if you already have another website and want to use WordPress as a blog for it, you could even add blog.yoursite.com or any other subdomain. Adding a domain to your WordPress.com is a paid upgrade; registering and mapping a new domain to your account costs $14....

We’re going to assume that the virtual machine is using NAT, and has been assigned an IP address of 192.168.23.128. First open the Manage Virtual Networks start menu item: Click on the NAT tab, and then click on Edit. You will see the NAT Settings dialog: Click the Port Forwarding button, and you will see this dialog: Now we are finally on a screen we can actually use. We’re going to use port 8080 on the host machine....

Brute-force attacks are fairly simple to understand, but difficult to protect against. Encryption is math, and as computers become faster at math, they become faster at trying all the solutions and seeing which one fits. These attacks can be used against any type of encryption, with varying degrees of success. Brute-force attacks become faster and more effective with each passing day as newer, faster computer hardware is released. Brute-Force Basics Brute-force attacks are simple to understand....

Motherboards include integrated graphics, sound, and network hardware — but is it good enough, or do you need to buy discrete components when building your own PC? This hardware was originally designed to be “good enough.” The basics were integrated into the motherboard to save on power and cost, but they’ve improved and are now better than ever. Graphics RELATED: Don’t Be Intimidated: Building Your Own Computer is Easier Than You’d Think...

It’s Okay to Start Small While your ultimate goal may be speakers in every room of your house, from the living room to the kitchen, it’s worth keeping in mind that you don’t need to get there right away. Not only is creating a huge multi-room setup from scratch a daunting process, but it can be costly as well. Instead, try focusing on just one or two rooms. If you only ever listen to music in one room, start with that room and another room you’d like to be able to listen in....

It’s a scary time to be a Windows user. Lenovo was bundling HTTPS-hijacking Superfish adware, Comodo ships with an even worse security hole called PrivDog, and dozens of other apps like LavaSoft are doing the same. It’s really bad, but if you want your encrypted web sessions to be hijacked just head to CNET Downloads or any freeware site, because they are all bundling HTTPS-breaking adware now. RELATED: Here’s What Happens When You Install the Top 10 Download....

If you have used ipconfig or ping through the command prompt, you’re halfway to becoming a PowerShell ninja. So come on and join us as we discover cmdlets in this installation of Geek School. Be sure to check out our first article introducing PowerShell, and stay tuned for the rest of our series all week long. The Anatomy of a Cmdlet In the first part of the Series we saw a cmdlet that looked something like this:...

YouTube has an integrated remote-control feature. Pair the YouTube app on your phone or the website on your computer with YouTube on any streaming box, smart TV, or game console for easy, Chromecast-style browsing and playback controls. This even allows you to control YouTube playback in your computer’s web browser, which is very useful if you’re watching YouTube on a computer connected to your TV — or if you’re using your laptop as a makeshift television screen....

There is nothing quite as frustrating as having an important e-mail someone sent you never arrive, and all without either party knowing what happened to it. Today’s SuperUser Q&A post looks at the problems that might stop an e-mail from ever arriving at its intended destination. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Photo courtesy of HKmPUA (Flickr)....

Have you ever wondered how much time is added to the boot process by your anti-virus solution? This handy chart shows you the answer, with some surprising results. According to Soluto, which was a cloud-based solution that allows you to manage multiple computers, servers, and even mobile devices over the web, the average boot time of a PC is 3 minutes. You can use the Event Viewer to figure out how long your PC takes during the boot process....

RELATED: ‘Animal Crossing’ July 30th Update Adds Cloud Saves, Dream Addresses, Fireworks Since launch, save files for Animal Crossing: New Horizons have been tied to your Nintendo Switch, which meant if your console was lost or stolen, all of your progress would be unrecoverable. Cloud saves make it possible for you to recover your game as long as you pay for a Nintendo Switch Online membership. Here’s how to enable the island backup feature in Animal Crossing: New Horizons....

New Windows PCs come with UEFI firmware and Secure Boot enabled. Secure Boot prevents operating systems from booting unless they’re signed by a key loaded into UEFI — out of the box, only Microsoft-signed software can boot. Microsoft mandates that PC vendors allow users to disable Secure Boot, so you can disable Secure Boot or add your own custom key to get around this limitation. Secure Boot can’t be disabled on ARM devices running Windows RT....

If you’re trying to fix loading or formatting issues to improve your browsing experience in Mozilla Firefox, clearing your cache and cookies is an excellent place to start. Here’s how, and what happens when you delete them. What Happens When Cache and Cookies Are Deleted? When you visit a website, it will sometimes save (or remember) certain information. Cookies save a user’s browsing data (with their consent), and cache helps webpages load more quickly by remembering images, videos, and other parts of the webpage from the last visit instead of needing to rerender everything with each visit....

If you love abstract luminescent line wallpaper (and we certainly do), read on to see how you can make your own custom wallpaper with exactly the kind of lines, colors, and perfect level of luminosity you crave. Why Do I Want to Do This? While our (and likely your) primary motivation is to make a cool custom wallpaper for our desktop computer–and that’s reason enough in itself–following along with the tutorial has a secondary benefit....

Just because the manufacturer decided your gadget needed a blinking LED as bright as a car headlamp doesn’t mean you have to tolerate it. Let’s take a look at how you can those brilliant LEDs so your bedroom doesn’t look like a night club. For every device we have that features a very subtle indicator light, we have easily a half dozen that feature LEDs so bright you can read by them....

Transferring photos and other files between nearby smartphones should be simple, but it’s not. There are a variety of different ways you can do this, and which is best depends on which types of smartphones you’re transferring files between. This is particularly complicated because so many of these methods aren’t interoperable. Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone all have their own ways to send files and they don’t like talking to each other....

Some companies think they’re increasing security by disabling your ability to paste into form fields, such as the password field. But in reality, all they’re doing is frustrating users–and probably decreasing security by blocking password managers. Here’s how to solve this annoyance in Chrome and Firefox. In Chrome: Use the “Don’t F*ck with Paste” Extension If Chrome is your browser of choice, the easiest solution to your pasting problems is Don’t F*ck with Paste....

Over the years, we’ve created many Registry hacks to customize and tweak your Windows computer. Today we’re going to give you the keys to making your own registry hack files that you can use on any computer. Before we go further, it’s worth noting that even reading this article and thinking about the registry will make your computer melt, and we’re not responsible if you break stuff, which… you will....

If you have upgraded to Office 2013, or Office 365, you may have run into problems opening files that have been emailed to you. Try to open a Word file you have received as an email attachment and you are likely to find that Word not only refuses to open the files, but fails to provide much in the way of help. The reason the file cannot be opened is that it originated from a different computer, and for this very reason it is seen as a potential threat by Office....

Google Photos is well-known for being a great cloud storage solution, but you may not know it’s also a photo printing service. We’ll show you how to use to get photo books and prints sent to your door. What You Need to Know There are a wide variety of options for photo printing with Google Photos. You can order prints to pick up at a local CVS, Walgreens, or Walmart....