NSpeaks

Wordpress 2.9 – Features, Tips and Screenshots (Updated)

Navjot Singh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:08:00 +0000

[tweetmeme]Wordpress 2.9 Release is now nearing day by day. Wordpress Development Team has stated as October end as the release for its first beta version and few release candidates will be released in November. Final 2.9 version can be expected by End of November or December start. And since 2.9 is so near, let me show you some of the new features and enhancements which will be a part of 2.9 version: (Screenshots are included at the bottom)

Easy Embedding of Media – This is the biggest feature in terms of media management in Wordpress 2.9. Now you won’t need plugins to add photos, videos and audio in your posts. Just paste the url of the video, audio or photo and Wordpress will embed it automatically provided the source of your video, audio and photos understands and supports oEmbed API. Writing about Easy Embeds here is long. Check out Viper’s Detailed Post on this.
Trash Status for Posts, Pages, Images and Comments – Now you will not have to repent that you deleted any post or comment by mistake. All posts, pages, images and comments will be put in a trash bin at start and you can restore them anytime. Trash bin will hold the data for 30 days only. After 30 days, trash will be emptied automatically. You can ofcourse change this value by adding this line into your wp-config.php:
```
define( 'EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS', 30 );
```
For some more developer related information on Trash Status, check WPEngineer’s Post.
Image Editor – Wordpress 2.9 Sports a cool Image Editor which will allow you to rotate, flip, scale and crop images.
Post Thumbnails – Now you can specify a specific thumbnail to be associated with each post. No more custom fields or messing with Timthumbs. Just upload a image, edit it and then select it as a thumbnail from write/edit post page. To display the thumbnail, include the following code in your theme’s php files:
```
 the_post_image(); ?>
```
Post Thumbnails can be styled using wp-post-image class using CSS. You can even check whether a post has thumbnail and show thumbnails only if present. Here is the sample code to demonstrate this:
```
 if (has_post_image() ) : the_post_image( array( '150', '150') ); endif; ?>
```
For a advanced usage of Post Thumbnails check Matt Rude’s Guide and to see more discussions on it check WPEnginner’s Post.

There are few problems I find in implementation of Post Thumbnails though. When you upload image, it only shows Insert into post at bottom which should also show Use for Thumbnail. So you will have to first upload image, browse to ~~gallery~~ Media Library and then select Use for Thumbnails. Few clicks can be saved here. ~~Moreover, you can change thumbnail by selecting a new one but no way to delete post thumbnail? I don’t see any button to remove post thumbnails.~~ Maybe when it reaches final version, this will get fixed.

BTW soon after this post got published, Wordpress 2.9 rare got updated and now Pages can also have Thumbnails.

Note: Post Thumbnails is still in development and lots more fixes and improvements may appear in due course of time.
Include and exclude specific images from Gallery – Earlier Gallery could include images only which were attached to a particular post/page but now you can include/exclude image from gallery by providing the image id. For example to include images with id 5 and 8 and to exclude images with id 20 and 45 just use this shortcode:
```
[gallery include=5,8 exclude=20,45]
```
in your post content.
Change Excerpt Length and More Text – Wordpress 2.9 Introduces two new filters which will enable you to change excerpt’s length and the default [...] text. For more information, check WPEngineer’s post about it. Check on implementation details at Bavotasan
User can be created via XMLRPC – Now blog editors apart from creating posts and pages will be able to add users.
Category and Tag Templates can now be created as category-catname.php and tag-tagname.php – Previously it could only be created as category-id.php or tag-id.php. where catname and tagname means category and tag slug names and id refers to respective category or tag ids. So no more need to lookup ids and creating templates on them. Templates can be more meaningful now.
No More Threading comments level upto 1 which is uneccessary and confusing.
Add custom contact fields for users – You can now have Twitter link in user profile instead of Jabber ID which you can use to display in custom author boxes! See a small example at Yoast.
Batch Plugin and Theme Updates – Now wordpress allows you to upgrade all your themes and plugins from one place. Check WPEngineer’s post about it.
Custom Theme Directory – Plugins can now register custom theme directories by using ‘register_theme_directory()’ function.
Custom Post Types – Currently there are only 3 types of posts – post/page and attachment. But now one can define additional post types which will unlock more of Wordpress CMS Features.
Comment Metadata – Just as posts and pages carry metadata, comments also now will carry metadata.

For Complete List of Features coming in 2.9, check Codex Page.

Now check the Screenshots here:

Google Sitelinks for NSpeaks

Navjot Singh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:04:03 +0000

Though I have lost interest on how much NSpeaks is ranking at various places but yesterday I was answering somebody about Sitelinks and then I checked Google Webmasters Tools. I was surprised to see that NSpeaks has now 8 sitelinks. Here’s the screenshot:

Sitelinks is a feature where Google discovers some helpful links about the site and links to them directly under the site’s name in search results. Sitelinks are generated automatically and only for sites which are considered popular and authority sites by Google.

Kudos, so Google thinks finally NSpeaks is a Authority Site. Now need to write even better content.

[NOTE: Pagerank is also 4 now instead of 3…just a small update – nice addition.]

Free Domain and Webhosting for your Blogs

Navjot Singh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:38:22 +0000

If you are a newbie to blogging and want to try out getting your blog, here is the best deal at the moment. And this deal is none other than by Hostgator – the host Nspeaks has been using ever since it was launched. Here is the deal:

Visit Hostgator Web hosting Site
Choose Baby Package
Enter your choice of domain
Now select your payment options
Now enter coupon code: houston
Now you will see that you don’t have to pay anything to continue This coupon is only for webhosting and not domains. You will need to pay for domains eventually.

Note:

This coupon code can be used for any plan including Reseller and Dedicated options. (This coupon takes off $25 off first month – we selected domain and plan such so that total cost came as 0 ).
Price is off only for 1 month of hosting. From next month, you need to pay for your hosting.
You need to have a verified Paypal account or Credit card to be eligible for the offer.
Hurry up till the offer lasts.

Update: It seems this coupon code is only for Webhosting plans. Hostgator is sending support tickets after signing saying that coupon is not valid for domains. Its their error…should not accept and say $0 at first.

Get Google Wave Invites

Navjot Singh — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:30:36 +0000

Most of you have heard of Google Wave. It is a realtime collaboration tool to network and share with your friends and colleagues. If you ask me, its pure and real use is mostly to business users since they will find its concept highly useful. Now I have about 10 invites to share with you. Will share more if response is good. Here’s what you have to do in order to get Wave Invites:

Follow @nspeaks at Twitter and Tweet this(without quotes): “RT @nspeaks Get Free Google Wave Invite by entering a simple giveaway: http://bit.ly/41WGvD“
Comment here with your Twitter link and comment why you want a Google wave invite.

You need to do both to be eligible for getting a invite. Doing any one of the above won’t make you eligible for the invite.

10 Commenters will be chosen randomly on 1 November, 2009 and will be send Google Wave invites.

Things to remember before entering:

Wave invite will take atleast 2-10 days after I nominate you. They don’t come immediately.
When commenting, write your name in name field and not your business name. Otherwise, comment will be marked as spam and be barred from contest.

Proof that I have Wave Invites: I will not give all invites here. Some I have reserved for my friends and family.

UPDATE: – Contest closed, winners will be announced soon.

Ok, here are the winners:

You will receive your invites in next 4-6 days. Here is the confirmation that your invites are on your way:

All winners will also be notified by Twitter.

Thanks to everybody for entering the contest. A similar giveaway may be out soon – bigger and better.

Wordpress 2.8.5 Released

Navjot Singh — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:07:05 +0000

Wordpress 2.8.5 has been released. Termed as Hardening Release, this version fixes a critical exploit related to Trackback type Attacks which happened on several blogs recently. Hackers tried to overload the server by sending multiple requests via Trackbacks. So its recommended that you upgrade your blogs immediately. There are several other bug fixes apart from the Trackback DOS Attack Fix. (Yes for some strange reason, attack has been named DOS Attack). Read the original Post from Wordpress.org Blog about the release.

Top 5 Reasons not to use Fantastico for Installing Wordpress

Navjot Singh — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:01:22 +0000

I see lot of friends and bloggers using and recommending Fantastico for installing Wordpress or any other script as its easy and takes only few clicks without even the need to upload any file or make databases. Well I always am against the idea of using Fantastico for installing Wordpress or other scripts. There are several reasons I can quote as to why not use it. First please look at them:

Updated versions of Wordpress or any script are not immediately released on Fantastico and it can have a delay of several days when the latest version of a script arrives on Fantastico and if you remember the release of 2.8.4 Wordpress, delay of a few days can be fatal for your blog given the kind of security loophole that was found in 2.8.3 and versions below it.
Fantastico bypasses almost all settings used for installing and directly takes to you to the installed script and you can lose quite a few setting options which you could have chosen had you done manuall install. Now in case of Wordpress, you can’t choose the custom setting while install to keep your blog private. You need to do it manually via Settings panel from Wp-Dashboard afterwards and keeping in mind that it was turned off in last few versions of Wordpress, many users found their blog not being indexed in search engines and lost quite a lot of traffic.
You will never learn to configure or install script if needed in emergency – Choosing Fantasctio every time will make you think installing php scripts is a breeze and you may never try to bother learning to install it manually. Doing manual install can make you aware of lot of common problems and tweaks you can use to improve script performance or even troubleshoot yourself in case of a problem later.
You can not customise database options while installing. For example, you can’t choose a descriptive name for your database, database prefix or even tell fantastico to use a existing database user.
Fantastico does not know how to do upgrades – Well this is one thing Fantastico does worse. It does not know how to perform perfect upgrades since they never created those scripts. It can work sometimes or break the install completely on next time. In case you have modified any core file or done some hack, Fantastico won’t upgrade the script in such case.

Here are my top 5 reasons to not to use Fantastico to install Wordpress or any other script. Though you may find it very easy on first use, in the long run it can do damage to your sites and your knowledge of scripts. Does Fantastico works for you or even you are against it? Please share your comments.

10 Unusual Wordpress Widget Plugins

Navjot Singh — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:11:03 +0000

[tweetmeme]There are thousands of useful plugins for Wordpress which you may come across but there are some unusual plugins for Wordpress. I am listing 10 such unusual wordpress plugins especially which work as sidebar widgets.

FaceThumb – This plugin allows visitors to take a snapshot of themselves with their webcams and upload it to the blog and blog stores all uploaded thumbnails on a page.
FreeLance Status – This plugin can show your freelance status in sidebar to show whether you are available or not. This plugin is unusual since one can use a simple text widget for it.
Men Quotes on Women – This plugin will show random quotes from men about women.
Women Quotes – And if you think that women are left behind, you are wrong. Here is women version of Men Quotes plugin.
Mood Personalizer – This plugin lets you show your mood in your blog’s sidebar.
Dave’s Whizmatronic Widgulating Calibrational Scribometer – This plugin lets you post your progress towards a goal and show it up in sidebar.
Tagnetic Poetry – You must have seen lot of Tag Cloud plugins but this one takes the cake. This shows Tags in a cool visual poetic format. You can even drag the tags to connect words to make a sentence. It uses Flash to display both tags and categories.
My Worst Posts – You may have come across plugins to show popular posts or top posts. But what about your worst posts? This plugin lets you share your worst posts or least commented posts. Maybe someone’s interested. Don’t worry if it says compatible upto 2.1, it works on latest wordpress too.
Wordics: Page Summary – This plugin generates a tag cloud from some specific words on a page. This plugin can particulary help you if you want to visualise how search engines see your blog and what words are being considered important on a page.
TwitterFountain – Generates a visual cool flash show containing tweets about a certain topic with background photos from Flickr about a specified category. Just specifiy category for Tweets and Flickr and see its cool effects. It can also be used on any site apart from Wordpress – visit TwitterFountain for details.

My Notes

Navjot Singh — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:14:03 +0000

I have launched a new blog which more or less acts like a twitter stream but sans the communication but with more emotions. Its called N Notes or My Notes as I should call it. It contains random thoughts from my mind. I will share interesting quotes, links, photos and videos on a daily basis. Its more like a diary which will be updated regularly.

Enjoy!

My Notes

No related posts.

Get a Free Job Board for your website

Navjot Singh — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:04:59 +0000

Jobberbase Logo

Last time I talked about having a job board on your website was about a theme. Now I see whole web complaining that that theme is outdated and has lots of bugs and moreover the developers of the theme have no support. Infact the for the customers whom I referred that theme, I haven’t received any payment till now. I have now removed all links to that theme on that post.

This time I want to suggest you a new Job Board titled Jobberbase. It has lots of cutting edge features and is in active development. Let’s take a look at its features:

Employers can post Jobs without registering
Employers can get Job Applications directly to their email id
Powerful Ajax based Job search
RSS feeds for jobs and categories
Jobs can be of any custom type or predefined (FullTime, Part-time and Freelance)
Widget support to show jobs from the job board on any html page
Sitemap and Contact Pages Included
Powerful Admin Panel
Beautiful SEO permalinks for each url
Recaptcha Spam Support
Jobs can take a online application or specify offline application methods
Featured/Spotlight Jobs
Default url structure of job board is editable
All settings and page navigation is handled from Admin Area
Lots of custom hacks available to extend its features
Active development – ensures that this board will never be dead

You can check out a demo at Jobberbase Demo Site.

Though currently it does not have any payment system, you can hire any developer to code it for you. Lot of developers are available on the forums which can extend your board and even setup custom themes for you. Support is handled at their forums actively.

The best part is that Jobberbase is completely free to use. So go ahead and setup your own job board.

Get a money making wordpress blog with free support

Navjot Singh — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:58:18 +0000

Wordpress Coaching via Videos

As you can see, I hardly review products or websites unless I find them useful. Recently Pawan of Maxblogpress ( who created Ninja Affiliate Plugin ) contacted me regarding their new product launch. Its called Wordpress Wizard 2.0. At first I was apprehensive whether people would find it really useful or not or whether I should review it or not. But when I tried it myself, it was really useful and I can definitely recommend it to my readers.

What’s Wordpress Wizard 2.0?

Well, its a product which coaches you about how to create your own blog, maintain it, write articles and make money of it. This is not a ebook where you have to read it and learn. This is a video based coaching where you watch everything by seeing it for yourself. And you can not only watch videos but download and watch them at your will in your free time. Now this program is divided into 6 different modules where you learn different aspects of making your own blog and promoting it and making money off it too! Following are the modules and and what will you learn in them:

Module 1 – Internet Marketing Basics – Well this is probably not correctly named. It should have been something like Domain and Webhosting Basics. In this module comprising of 6 videos, you will learn about how to create your domain name, get a webhosting, configuring the domain and setting your ftp program to upload the site to the webhosting and an introduction to the world’s most popular webhosting panel – Cpanel.
Module 2 – Basic Wordpress Tutorials – In this module of 16 videos you will learn the core basics of wordpress – installing wordpress, configuring it for basic SEO, customise your wordpress control panel, create posts/pages, upload images, install plugins/themes, upgrade plugins, controlling spam on your blog and configuring sidebar widgets (you can add almost anything in your blog’s sidebars with widgets without touching any core theme file) and getting a cool avatar to show in your comments area which gives you a identity in blogging community because whereever you comment and post, avatars are your id to the world!
Module 3 – Advanced Wordpress Tutorials – Time to get your hands a bit dirty now. In this module of 10 videos, you learn advanced aspects like upgrading your wordpress blog when required, write blog posts using a desktop client (Windows Live Writer), create blog backups, customise your theme and tracking your feed subscribers.
Module 4 – Make Money from Blogs – Time for some moolah earning. Here you will learn about the basics of money making which include guide to using adsense properly, article writing and guide to earn money using affiliate marketing.
Module 5 – SEO and Link Building – Well I would suggest you to skip module 4 and learn and watch module 5 first and then module 4. Because you can make more money if your blog is well linked and is optimised using SEO techniques. Here you will learn about how to build links to your blog which will obviously improve your search rankings.
Module 6 – RSS to Email Marketing – In this module of 8 videos, you will learn how to reach to your loyal blog audience through email marketing. I would say email marketing is highly effective these days since you reach only those people who opted in with your service and hence are highly targetted audience for any of your product and you are bound to get good response and profits if you use email marketing to full extent.

Quality of tutorials – Well videos are very detailed with each video averaging 6-9 minutes which cover all aspects of a given topic.

Is there all to it? No, apart from the video tutorials, Maxblogpress also offers 5 great tools for free bundled with Wordpress Wizard 2.0. Here are they:

Keyword Warrior – Handy Keyword Research Tool
Forum Warrior – Forum Marketing Tool
Affiliate Warrior – Link Cloaking Tool
Blog Warrior – Blog Commenting Tool
Directory Warrior – Directory Submission Tool

Not only this but they will keep adding 6-8 videos every month so in a year you will get 72-96 videos in a year on average. And that too for one time membership fee!

Look at their coming videos:
September 09 to October 09 – The Autoblogging Series, which reveals:

How to automatically submit your blog posts to social bookmarking sites
How to use 3-way links to get massive backlinks
How to use 1-way links to get links from other blogs
Much more..

October 09 to November 09

How to Import Content from One WordPress Blog to Another
How to Import Content from Blogspot to WordPress
How to Install and Use WP Cache
How to Install and Use “All-in-One SEO Pack”
How to Install and Use “Google Sitemap Generator”

Is it for everybody? Well yes I would suggest everyone use it since even when we are blogging since so long, we fail at the core basics sometimes or not realise where we have gone wrong. This video program is good for both newbies and for those who have some experience of blogging but never got successful.

Pricing? Well its priced at $97. You can pay via credit card or paypal. But hey, don’t get worried about the price now. Continue reading.

Is there any other offer waiting for me? Well yes, but only for exclusive NSpeaks.com readers. As some of you may know, I am giving Wordpress Install and Support Service. Now if you buy Wordpress Wizard 2.0 through my link, then I will provide 20 day support to your blog for free of cost.

What does it mean? – Well it means if you face any problems regarding your blog or want a simple task done or not understanding how to proceed, I am there to help. I will try my best to help you in getting your blog right or customise it to your needs. I will also suggest you themes, plugins and will also optimise it for seo, adsense and will offer valuable suggestions in these 20 days.

To avail the offer, purchase Wordpress Wizard 2.0. Use only link mentioned in this post otherwise you will not be able to get 20 days support. And after you make the purchase, contact me with your details – first name, last name, email id and date of purchase. As soon as I verify the data, I will contact you with further details.

Conclusion – I would recommend it definitely especially if you are getting a free support service too on top of it!

So Buy Wordpress Wizard 2.0 Coaching Program with Support Service

Kill IE6 Now

Navjot Singh — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:51:23 +0000

Yes, finally I have decided to Kill Internet Explorer 6 on my blog. If you are using IE 6 or a lower browser, you will now be asked to upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer. It’s not that my site does breaks in IE 6 but because IE6 time is up. I am not asking you to upgrade to browsers other than IE but to a newer IE which is easy to upgrade to, works better and displays lots of sites and is easier to work for me as a webmaster.

Here is the screenshot of what will you see when you open site in IE6:

If you are using IE 6, probably you would have noticed many sites asking you to upgrade including YouTube, Orkut and Facebook. Recently the movement to kill IE 6 has speeded with the launch of IE6nomore – an initiative by Weebly. It is providing with a code which will ask users to upgrade to Firefox, IE 8, Chrome or Safari( left Opera – too bad). There are many other sites who are pushing hard to kill IE 6 which include:

IE6nomore – is the latest initiative asking users to upgrade to IE6 though makes no mention of Opera as suggested upgrades.
IE Death March – is a blog which tells you a lot about shortcomings of IE 6 and advantages of upgrading.
Bring Down IE6 – is another site mentioning about evils of IE6.
Pushup – this one is not IE6 specific but is a site which asks users to upgrade their browsers. Supports IE6, Firefox 2, Safari 2 and Opera 9.5.
Browser-Update – is a site same as Pushup but instead of providing links to users to browser download sites, points towards its own customised page which something I don’t like.
Browser Upgrade – is another site which asks users to upgrade to Firefox 3 preferably and provides tools too. It also mentions about Opera, Safari and Google Chrome.
Vincent’s Blog post – His blog post provides a tool and a WordPress plugin to upgrade IE 6 to IE8 or other browsers.
IE6 Update – Is a specific IE6 site asking users to upgrade to IE8 only. They don’t support options for other browsers since according to them a user on IE would like to upgrade to IE only. I use this tool on NSpeaks
IE6 Upgrade Warning – is a Google Code project providing with a script which asks users to upgrade from IE6. It supports all major browsers as options for upgrade.
Sevenup – is the most unusual site which provides tool to upgrade both IE6 and IE7. Not only it provides upgrade options but lists the reasons to upgrade via a Light box effect window.

Above are some of the sites. I may have missed few too. So when are you planning to kill IE6 on your website?

And by the way if you have already killed IE6 on your website, do add your site’s name at I dropped IE6. And finally Microsoft is not going to drop support for IE6 anytime soon.

Wordpress 2.8.4 Released

Navjot Singh — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:48:58 +0000

Wordpress pushed a new version 2.8.4 just few hours back and has recommended that everybody must upgrade to it as it fixes a serious vulnerability with which the password of admin user can be resetted which can create annoyance and can lead to a security breach. So I recommend everybody to upgrade to 2.8.4 immediately. It takes only few minutes and can save a lot of trouble later.

Get Wordpress 2.8.4

Indian Sociable Wordpress Plugin released

Navjot Singh — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:07:21 +0000

Earlier, I had a mention of list of Indian Social Bookmarking Sites. That list was complimented by many and received much appreciation. However, that was merely a list and that too disorganised. How to add all those sites on to your blog? Going to individual sites and fectching their codes is cumbersome. So here, I have done the needful. I am releasing Indian Sociable Wordpress Plugin by using which you can instantly add the most popular Indian Sociable Bookmarking Sites on to your blog.

This plugin is based on Joost’s Sociable Plugin(3.4 version and above) and requires it to be installed first to work.

Included Sites

Installation

Get Sociable Plugin and install it first.
Download Indian Sociable Plugin and Unzip the indian-sociable.zip file.
Upload the the indian-sociable folder (not just the files in it!) to your wp-contents/plugins folder.
In your WordPress administration, go to the Plugins page.
Activate the Sociable and Indian Sociable plugin and visit Sociable in Options Menu.
You will see the above included sites in Options. Checkmark and save them and they will appear on your blog.

Want your site listed?

If you have a active Indian Social Bookmarking Site and want to get it included into the plugin, please contact me. Don’t use comments below for it.

Download

Download Latest version from Wordpress.org

(Currently 0.4 – Released 18 November, 2009)

Support

You can post your query here by commenting or by creating a new thread at Wordpress.org.

Changelog

0.4 – 18 November, 2009

Added BollyScoops to List.
Updated for Wordpress 2.9

0.3 – 3 August, 2009

Fixed a Stupid Typo Bug which was not activating the upgraded plugin.

0.2 – 2 August, 2009

Added IndiaSphere, oneview, PagalPundit, Yeawo to the Plugin
Removed Xoomly’s extra image as the site is down currently

0.1 – July 20, 2009

Intial Release

Credits

Thanks to Joost for making the wonderful Sociable Plugin and offering its extension with which this plugin was released. Also thanks to BlogPlay for taking over the development of the plugin.

Get your Wordpress Blog with Support for $20

Navjot Singh — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:25:56 +0000

Does that sound to you a little tempting? Though everybody says working on WordPress is a breeze, but for a person who has never blogged before or for first time WordPress user, getting through the WordPress and its jargon can get a bit overwhelming sometimes. And support for WordPress out there is mostly community based and searching for the right answers can be time consuming and tedious at times.

Well I am now providing you with a unique WordPress Install and Support Service which will help you with setting up of your first WordPress blog, getting a cool theme for it and a set of essential plugins/addons for it. I will also submit your blog to major search engines. I will also optimise it for SEO, Adsense and setup feed subscriptions on your blog and even email notification for new posts. Also I will coach you about WordPress so that you become comfortable in using it. On top of it, I will offer a 20 day Support and Maintenance service.

A Recap of the services I offer:

Brand New Installation or Migration of Wordpress’s latest version (Currently at 2.8).
15 Plugins installation and configuration.
5 Theme Installation of your choice.
Setting up of Feed Subscription and email notification
Full WordPress Coaching and Support via Messenger (Yahoo|Hotmail|Gmail|AIM)
Submission of Blog to Google, MSN and Yahoo! Search Engines
SEO Optimisation of Blog with Suggestions for Optimisation
Google Analytics and Adsense Code Suggestions and Optimisation
Blog Consultation with Various Suggestions for Improvement worth $79
Unlimited Support and Maintenance for your Blog for 20 days worth $129

All this for only $70 if you have hosting already.

And if you don’t have hosting, then you can buy hosting using Hostgator. I will give you a coupon which will give you first month for just $0.01! If you buy hosting from us, this service only costs $20!

Buy without hosting for $70

Buy with hosting for $20

After payment, you receive with further details about the service.

FAQ

Q. Do you provide design services for the theme or logo?

A. Sorry, we are not into design at the moment. But we will guide you to getting the right theme and to the right designer.

Q. What are the modes of payment?

A. We accept payments via PayPal. You don’t even need PayPal account to pay, just use an International Credit Card (Visa, MasterCard or Diners Club) for payment.

Force File Downloads instead of opening

Navjot Singh — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:19:39 +0000

There are times when you want to host some files but want people to download them instead of getting them opened by the default browser defined action. This situation arises in cases when you are hosting pdf, image or music files. If you are using Wordpress, you may use Download manager plugins for this effect but what happens when you are on a static website. There are .htaccess file hacks or apache tricks to achieve this. But not all webhosting companies allow such mods or hacks. The one hack I am going to tell you will work no matter which webhost you are using and will work on both blogs and static websites as well.

Step 1

First make a empty file and name it as download.php. Paste the following code into it:


//$fileName = 'myfile';
//$fileExtension = 'pdf';
 
//$sourceFile = $fileName . ' . ' . $fileExtension;
$sourceFile = $_GET['file'];
$outputFile = $sourceFile; // the name they save as can be different to the existing file
 
// required for IE, otherwise Content-disposition is ignored
if(ini_get('zlib.output_compression')) ini_set('zlib.output_compression', 'Off');
 
 switch( $fileExtension)
 {
    case "pdf": $ctype="application/pdf"; break;
    case "exe": $ctype="application/octet-stream"; break;
    case "zip": $ctype="application/zip"; break;
    case "doc": $ctype="application/msword"; break;
    case "xls": $ctype="application/vnd.ms-excel"; break;
    case "ppt": $ctype="application/vnd.ms-powerpoint"; break;
    case "gif": $ctype="image/gif"; break;
    case "png": $ctype="image/png"; break;
    case "jpeg":
    case "jpg": $ctype="image/jpg"; break;
    default: $ctype="application/force-download";
}
 
session_cache_limiter("");
 
header("Pragma: public"); // required
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Cache-Control: private",false); // required for certain browsers
header("Content-Type: $ctype");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=".basename($outputFile).";" );
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Content-Length: ".filesize($sourceFile));
 
 
@readfile("$sourceFile") ;  // This is the bit that prompts for the download, supress errors for niceness
exit();
?>

Step 2

Now upload the file to your website … for example I am considering the location as http://www.domain.com/download.php

Step 3

Now for linking to the file you want people to download forcibly, just point their links as http://www.domain.com/download.php?file=Filepath

Now, all files you link to like this will be forced to download from the visitor irrespective of the browser the user uses and of the webhosting you use.

Post Theme Install Checklist for Wordpress

Navjot Singh — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:29:19 +0000

If you have got your blog a new design recently, then this Checklist is for you. Just making sure its working properly won’t complete your task of installing a new theme on your blog. You should take care of few points which will help improve the performance of your theme which I am listing below:

FeedBurner Links Across the Theme: 99.9% Chance is that you are using Feedburner for your site. Though many themes have an option page nowdays asking for your feedburner id but even sometimes their implementation is incomplete. Incomplete Implementation refers to that these themes update feed link on the frontend of the blog but don’t touch the autodiscovery feed links. Even if a theme have such an option or not, you should manually check the feed link across the blog. For making your feedburner link uniform across your site, check my post on proper implementation of Feedburner url.
Analytics and Other Service Codes: If you are using services like Analytics, Infolinks, Kontera or any other service which requires you to add a code into your site’s header/footer, you need to place these codes manually in either header.php or footer.php wherever required. There are few themes who ask for analytics id which will update only analytics code but there are themes which ask for full analytics code. Here in such case along with your analytics code, you can also embed all such codes in same option box.
Test All Pages of Site: Make sure that all pages on your site are working. Start by visiting all pages like Index, Single Post, Pages, Category archive, date/month archives, Search, 404, Sitemap, Contact Page or any other explicit page which you are using.
Website Speed and Optimisation Test: You should also test your website for speed and loading times. Some themes include a lot of javascript and css which can add to the loading time. I would recommend two of the following services:
- PingDom
- Web Page Analyzer from WebsiteOptimisation.com

Though the second service provides all features plus even more than the first, still I would recommend using Pingdom too as it allows you to save reports of your website and you can know about the progress you are making in your site better. Web Page Analyzer gives lot of recommendations and details about your website’s loading time and size details. If your theme starts becoming heavier, I would also recommend using Script Compressor Plugin which compresses the CSS and Javascripts loaded with your blog.

Plugin Compatibility: And last but not the least, don’t forget to add the respective plugin codes into your theme. Some themes require certain plugins to be preinstalled for working. Check for such plugins. If you don’t require such plugins, remove their codes from your theme files. Also check for plugins that need a bit of modification of css of your theme.

Posts to be avoided by a Blogger

Navjot Singh — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:26:08 +0000

From my own 2 Years of Blogging experience and of reading hundreds of such articles, I can say that there are certain category of posts which no reader would like to read. Here is a list of such post types so that you can avoid writing such type of posts which will make readers go away or be put off.

Personal Posts – Unless its your personal blog, posts about yourself, your life or your joys or sorrows will put off a reader instantly. Readers want content and information for which they come to your blog not to know what’s happening in your life currently. So avoid talking about yourself.
Excuse Posts – Readers don’t want to read why you are not posting regularly or why you are posting too much. I have made few such posts and belive me, they are useless. Just maintain a flow of posts and keep writing without such excuse posts. They may work for very big bloggers but not for everyday blogger like us.
Prewritten Review Posts – Many bloggers inorder to make a quick buck just copy paste prewritten review posts available on forums like DP or even review sites. Such posts only fetch you $5-10 per post and are too general, biased and look automated to praise a service. Such posts don’t have any images and contain only 2-3 links with heavy keywords. They may fetch you money but you loose respect from readers bigtime.
Sponsors Thanks or Commentators Thanks Post – Just to please people so that your site remains popular, such posts are made regularly by many bloggers. I find them pretty useless. Sponsors already get too much adspace around the blog’s real-estate, I don’t think a thank you post on top of it is necessary at all.
Essay Type Posts – Avoid posts which exceed 750 or 1000 words. Beyond a point, reader loses interest and if you give away too much of information. Mind you that you are not writing a encyclopaedia’s article but a blog post. Such long posts also reduce the chances of discussion since you have covered almost everything about the subject.
Unformatted Posts – Posts which are unformatted or poorly written with a single long paragraph or without any image, bullet or lists put off a reader. Readers like to scan and read and it is easier to understand if the post is properly formatted.

If you have any other type of posts to share which should be avoided, please comment about them. These posts types are those which I observed in last few years of blogging.

Wordpress 2.8 Tips and Tricks

Navjot Singh — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:46:19 +0000

Well it seems Wordpress 2.8 is coming out with a lot new features which cannot be explained in 1 lines or a codex page. Many bloggers have started posting new feature details and tips and tricks which would make blogging easier with the upcoming Wordpress 2.8. So here I am making is a detail Wordpress 2.8 Tricks and Tips Page where I will list some cool tips and tricks which others have posted about. The following list will also contains reviews of Wordpress 2.8 from different perspectives.

This post will keep getting updated as more and more posts keep coming with new things about upcoming Wordpress version.

Integrating Coppermine Gallery with your Wordpress

Navjot Singh — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:17:14 +0000

Well, I have setup a new blog which required putting up a lot of photos (to start with 100+ pics in 2 days), so the obvious and the easiest choice was to go with Coppermine Photo Gallery. But then I realized, it does not go down well with Wordpress and there is no official Wordpress plugin or Coppermine bridge available on their respective sites. Though this had been tried a lot of times, but never anybody was successfully able to integrate Coppermine into Wordpress or vice-versa.

Well for this, fortunately there exists a plugin which you won’t find on Wordpress Plugins Directory. Find the plugin at MesSouvenirs.com Blog. Installing the Plugin is simple. Extract the zip file and upload the \coppermine-4.6.2.7\wp-content\plugins\ directory to your wordpress blog. I am using CopperMine Gallery version 1.4.x so upload the two files from \coppermine-4.6.2.7\cpg\1.4x\ to your gallery root directory. In my case, gallery was installed on the same domain as the blog. Example if the blog’s url is www.blogurl.com then gallery was installed at www.blogurl.com/gallery/

Activate the plugins: Coppermine, Coppermine Widget and Coppermine – Lightbox2 plugins. Well widget and Lightbox plugins are optional. Widget plugin is required if you want to display the images uploaded in gallery in your wordpress sidebar and Lightbox plugin is to show the images on your blog with lightbox effect.

After activating the plugin go to Settings>>Coppermine Integration and insert the Coppermine gallery details manually. For me the automatic search somehow didn’t work even after it detected the gallery’s configuration file at /gallery/includes/config.inc.php – You will also find the details to insert at the page at the above file only.

Now after inserting details and saving, just test the connection. And if its ok, just reload the same settings page and you will see a long page with plethora of options.

If you want to insert the images in your post, just enable the integrate editor option and now you can upload and insert images from your Add New Post Page inside your wordpress.

Hope you will find the plugin useful as much as I found it.

It would have been great if somehow we could show complete gallery in a wordpress page without compromising on any of the features of Coppermine. I know, there have been many wordpress themes ported to Wordpress but that still does look good. It would be wonderful if Coppermine developers could come out with something like this.

Overall this plugin is pretty useful for your basic needs on integrating Wordpress with Coppermine. One more thing, this plugin can also share Wordpress and Coppermine users. I didn’t need this functionality hence I have not mentioned about it here.

Blog Blazers Review

Navjot Singh — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:02:03 +0000

I don’t usually buy books because I don’t think they are highly necessary. And the book which I am going to review is not an exception either. This was a book which I won in a giveaway held by Chetan Bhawani on his blog. The book I am referring to is Blog Blazers by Stephane Grenier.

This book contains 40 Interviews by Top Bloggers Around the World which include: Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ ), Aaron Wall (http://www.seobook.com/blog/ ), Neil Patel (http://www.quicksprout.com ), Jeff Atwood( http://www.codinghorror.com/ ), Dharmesh Shaw(http://www.onstartups.com/ ), Anita Campbell (http://www.smallbiztrends.com/ ), Alex Papadimoulis (http://www.thedailywtf.com/ ) etc.

Well after going through this book, you will really get inspired to take a new look at your blogs and instill the died passion among you. And after reading the book, one also realizes that there are a lot of things common amongs them. None of them gained success overnight which most of we bloggers don’t realize. If we were to calculate the average time of the big blogs to become successful it comes to 1-1.5 years. Most of their blogs were not started as a tool to make money but to share something useful with the world.

I am sure that everybody will benefit by reading this book. You can get this book easily from Amazon. I hope you like the book as much as I liked it.

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