Every week, we feature a website that is hosted on BlueFur and this really helps to demonstrate the sheer variety of customers who choose to call BlueFur their online home. We are very proud of our web hosting services and we strive to be the very best at what we do. This week, we take a look at Pro Football Workout.

Whether you’re a fan of the CFL, NFL, or NCAA, you may be interested in throwing the pigskin around yourself. Maybe you’re trying to break into the pro ranks yourself. Whatever the case, this website provides all kinds of useful information on how to “improve your play with football workouts and conditioning.”

For example, you might be interested in the treatment of dehydration, which happens to be a very common occurrence on the field. Even outside of the physical workouts themselves, you can learn about buying the right gloves and all kinds of other football-related tutorials and tips.

Do you use BlueFur to host your websites? Let us know and we can feature you in a future blog post. Send an email message to blogfeature@bluefur.com with your name, website URL, and a brief description of what you’d like to see highlighted.

I know what you’re thinking. Christmas isn’t near anymore. It’s here. We’re already eating gingerbread cookies and we may have already carved into the holiday turducken. Even so, it’s definitely worth taking a moment to check out the Christmas Is Near WordPress theme by Nicki Faulk.

Even though it was originally released as a Christmas-centered WordPress theme, the design is actually a little closer to being a winter holiday theme. Yes, there is a silhouette of Santa and his reindeer in the header image, but what’s to say that you can’t use that imagery into the new year? People keep their Christmas lights on during that time too, you know.

Among the main features on this theme are a left-aligned sidebar, a simple blue-and-white color scheme, and an animated site design that has virtual snowflakes cascading down the entire length of the blog. For a more creative take at the winter season, this theme is worth a look.

Go to the WordPress Free Themes Directory, as usual, to find the thumbnail, live preview, and free download link.

Happy holidays, everyone! While many people might be out there carving turkeys tonight, it’s business as usual here at BlueFur. So, seeing how it’s Friday, it’s time for another quick tour of the blogosphere. These posts go well with cranberry sauce.

Lesley Chang decided to highlight a rather unique website for all of us to consider. It’s called Ikea Hackers and the idea is that they take the “out of a box” Ikea furniture, tweaking them for different purposes and configurations. Cheap custom furniture awaits you.

Raul Pacheco keeps quite busy with his consulting, academic, and social media work. He deserves a break and that’s why he’s setting up an auto-responder for the holidays. He’s trying to be witty without being snarky. Do you think he succeeds? By the time you read this post, Raul will be out of reach.

Darren Barefoot has always been hesitant to jump on the bandwagon, but he has the stats to back it up. The Vancouver Canucks have, historically, not exactly been the most successful team in the league, falling under the .500 mark for many seasons before the current decade. This year is looking good, though.

Darren Rowse is well known around the Internet as a professional blogger. In a recent post, he shares some wacky things that people bought through his Amazon affiliate links. From lobster costumes to Christmas-themed lumps of coal, online purchases can be quite quirky, to say the least.

Free Money Finance gives you a quick start to your New Year’s resolutions, reminding you of five easy ways to ruin your retirement. As you put your savings plans into action, make sure that you actually run the numbers. You’ll also want to make sure you have more than one plan.

As with so many other marketing efforts, Google Books can be seen as a double-edged sword. For those of you who are not as familiar, Google Books contains a gigantic library of books, both new and old, that is completely searchable by just about anyone with a web browser.

For books that are in the public domain, the entire book can sometimes be read from within the web browser free of charge. Even for current books that are still under copyright, Google Books will preview the first 30 pages or so of the book by default, unless Google is instructed otherwise by the publisher or copyright holder. So, where does this leave publishers, authors, and bookstores?

On the one hand, it means that Internet users are able to read a sizable portion of the book for free and, thus, may not be as inclined to buy the book. If this is the case, the author, publisher, and bookstore lose out on a sale. On the other hand, the preview might convince someone sitting on the fence that the book is worth buying. After all, this is akin to someone browsing through a physical book when he or she is in a physical bookstore.

What’s your take on Google Books and other services like it for other products (like music previews for albums, for example)? Looking at the big picture, is it in the best interest of the copyright holder to allow for such previews or is it better to completely block the content from people who have not bought it?

Sure, there are plenty of WordPress plugins out there that can help connect your blog with your social media channels. There are also plugins that help to jazz up your blog’s appearance. However, one of the most overlooked areas on any blog is security.

Helping to keep your blog as safe as possible from hackers and other malicious attacks, you might want to install the WordPress Exploit Scanner. This plugin does exactly what its name says that it does: it scans for exploits in your WordPress installation.

Using this plugin, you can search through all the files and databases of your website. It will look for signs of suspicious activity and tell you if it finds anything worth noting. The plugin won’t necessarily stop someone from hacking into your site, but it will help you find any uploaded or compromised files left by the hacker.

You can download WordPress Exploit Scanner for free from ocaoimh.ie. The newest version was just updated recently to support WordPress 3.0.3.

One of the bigger stories to emerge earlier this month involved two of the biggest companies in the world: Apple and Costco. For years, Apple products have been available for sale through Costco locations, but that relationship is coming to an end. Apple products are getting phased out.

Why? This comes from a clash of business philosophies. On the one hand, Apple wants to maintain strict control over its retail channels, ensuring that its products are always sold at the same price, no matter where the consumer chooses to buy them. This helps to maintain the “exclusive” or “premium” appeal of items like the MacBook and iPod. On the other hand, Costco prides itself in delivering good value to its customers and this usually comes in the form of significant discounts.

The clash came to a boiling point when Apple refused to include Costco as part of its initial launch partners for the Apple iPad tablet device. After much back-and-forth and negotiation, it has been concluded that Apple products will no longer be sold at Costco. This could represent a huge loss for both companies, both in terms of potential and opportunities.

So, what lessons can smaller businesses learn from the Costco-Apple situation? If you can’t come up with a mutually beneficial arrangement, sometimes it’s better for all parties involved just to walk away. It may not be ideal, but it could be better than setting yourself up for all sorts of future conflicts and resentment.