JaypeeOnline

Weekend Roundup #60

Jaypee Habaradas — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:28:36 +0000

Wassup guys? How’s everyone doing? Hope you’re all doing fine. My apologies for the very late roundup. I was kinda busy last weekend and was too tired to finish the draft and publish this edition of the Weekend Roundup. Played a couple of basketball games last Saturday night and went home past 11 PM. I was dead tired and spent the following day resting and sleeping. Btw, don’t worry coz I’ll be updating the blog with some new posts by today and will be replying to all your comments and contest entries.

For this edition of the Weekend Roundup, I’ve decided to add a new topic under WordPress. I did this because I didn’t want to put WordPress related news under Blogging because not all bloggers use WordPress and there are times when I already have filled up the Blogging topic and I still have some WordPress related news to share with you guys. Anyways, I hope that you guys like it and if you do, I’ll make it a permanent part of the Weekend Roundup.

Blogging

WordPress

Technology

Gadgets

Pinoy Blogs

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

Btw, today – November 10th is my wife’s birthday so I’d like to send a special greeting to my beautiful wife, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or want your article or find an interesting story that you want to be featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

Thank you for your time and hope you guys are having a great week!

Copyright © 2009 JaypeeOnline.net. This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me so I can take legal action immediately.

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WordPress Warriors Worldwide

Jaypee Habaradas — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:34:37 +0000

Wouldn’t it be cool to find out how many WordPress fans, users, bloggers, developers or core developers come from your area or country? With WordPress World Map, you can do just that. WordPress World Map is a Google Maps powered map with a draggable window that lets WordPress users pin their location. To sign up, you can either use the site’s own registration form or you can choose to sign in using Twitter (you’ll need to allow the site/app access to Twitter). If you sign up/in with Twitter you can follow other users using a Twitter follow icon.

Aside from displaying the location of different WordPress users around the world, WordPress World Map also displays upcoming WordCamps (represented by a WordPress icon on the map). Hovering your mouse over the WordPress icon would display the WordCamp name, date and location. You can change the map view according to your location, region or the different continents – Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. You can also use filters to view registered users according to roles – fan, user/blogger, developer, core developer or company.

Here’s a screenshot of WordPress World Map with my profile.

Based on the screenshot above, you can see that the Profile displays the user’s name, WordPress role, date of registration, website or blog URL, Twitter name with follow link/icon and other WordPress users that are located within a 200 mile radius of the user. So far, I only know one person who’s located near me and that’s Frosty – Austin Passy, the organizer of WordCamp LA.

WordPress World Map totally depends on the cooperation and participation of WordPress users, so if you’re a WordPress fan, user/blogger, developer, core developer or company that uses WordPress, I strongly encourage you to join and sign up. I’m thinking that WP World Map would be most useful for people who plan to organize WordCamps or regular meetups in their area.

What do you think of WordPress World Map? Have you signed up already? Have you checked how many WordPress users are located in your area? In what other ways do you think WordPress World Maps can be used for aside from organizing WordCamps and meetups? Please share your thoughts.

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HowTo: Fix Vicrypt Error

Jaypee Habaradas — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:04:27 +0000

Symantec, the largest maker of security software is reporting about a new type of trojan horse named Trojan.Ramvicrype. This trojan uses the RC4 algorithm to encrypt files on infected computers and renders them unusable. The Trojan.Ramvicrype, like most other trojans are usually transmitted from porn and warez sites. A sure sign that your computer is infected by this trojan is the presence of files that have .vicrypt extensions.

Once your computer is infected, Trojan.Ramvicrype will search for files under My Documents, Desktop and Application Data\Identities and renames them with a .vicrypt extension. It also looks for links in the Recent folder and renames all the files in the folders that are pointed to by those links and encrypts each file’s head section. If you try to run any of those files, you’ll get a Vicrypt Error message. A worst case scenario would be a file from the Windows system folder has been recently opened, leading to the Trojan.Ramvicrype encrypting all files in the Windows System folder and critically damaging those files.

Here’s a screenshot of a computer infected by the Trojan.Ramvicrype displaying a “Vicrypt error! Please Restart Windows” message.

Previously, victims of this trojan who were looking for a fix were directed to a site that offered a paid software called AntiVicrypt. Because of this, Symantec and other security companies believe that the Trojan.Ramvicrype is some sort of ransomware and that the company offering AntiVicrypt was also responsible for spreading the trojan. Later, AntiVicrypt was offered as shareware and the trial version was limited to repairing 7 files. As of this time, AntiVicrypt is now offered FREE. I don’t know about you but based on the initial outcome/results, I won’t be trusting this company or any of its products.

To address this issue and help users, Symantec Security Response has developed a free tool to decrypt the encrypted files. The link below not only contains the link to download the free tool but it also includes step-by-step guide on how to use the Trojan.Ramvicrype Removal Tool.

Download Symantec’s Trojan.Ramvicrype Removal Tool.

[image source: Symantec]

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Weekend Roundup #59

Jaypee Habaradas — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:01:35 +0000

How’s everyone doing today? How was your weekend and how did you celebrate Halloween? Did you guys go out trick or treating? Hehe My weekend was pretty good and I got to spend time with my family and friends. I also got to play several games of basketball early this morning so I feel good. I was also busy checking and validating entries for my Thanksgiving Giveaway. If you haven’t joined or haven’t read about it yet, I encourage you to do so. There are so many cool prizes at stake and who knows, you just might be one of the winners.

Anyways, here’s this weeks edition of the Weekend Roundup and I hope you guys enjoy it.

Blogging

Technology

Gadgets

Pinoy Blogs

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

Thank you for your time and hope you guys have a great week!

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$1,500 Thanksgiving Giveaway

Jaypee Habaradas — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:40:24 +0000

A couple more days and its gonna be November and here in the US, we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving (every 3rd Thursday of November). Thanksgiving is one of my most favorite holidays and I always look forward to it because its one of the times in the year where I get to spend time with family and friends and at the same time eat good food. Thanksgiving is the time to give thanks and express gratitude so in celebration of this special occassion, I’m giving away $1,500 worth of cash, premium WordPress themes and web hosting. This is my way of expressing my gratitude for all the blessings I’ve received this year including the recent achievements and success of JaypeeOnline.

PRIZES AT STAKE:
1st Prize
Pro Plus All-Theme Package from StudioPress ($199.95)
Single Theme License from Pro Theme Design ($79)
Single Theme License from Press75 ($75)
Single Theme License from WP Zoom ($49)
1 Year Theme Club Membership from Elegant Themes ($19.95)
1 Year Hosting w/ Free Domain from DreamHost courtesy of Jehzeel Laurente
$50 Cash via PayPal from Jehzeel Laurente

2nd Prize
Single Theme License from Pro Theme Design ($79)
Single Theme License from Press75 ($75)
Single Theme Package from StudioPress ($59.95)
Single Theme License from WP Zoom ($49)
1 Year Freedom Plan Hosting from WP Web Host ($80)
$25 Cash via PayPal from JaypeeOnline

3rd Prize
Single Theme License from Pro Theme Design ($79)
Single Theme Package from StudioPress ($59.95)
Single Theme License from WP Zoom ($49)
Single Theme Licenses from WP Now ($29)
1 Year Freedom Plan Hosting from WP Web Host ($80)
$10 Cash via PayPal from JaypeeOnline

Consolation Prizes
Single Theme Package from StudioPress ($59.95)
Single Theme Licenses from WP Now ($29)

UPDATE:
I’m giving away 5 Pinoy Blogger Tshirts (worth $10 each) courtesy of Batang Yagit to all contestants coming from the Philippines.

This contest is bigger and better than last year’s Christmas Giveaway and I’m sure the list of prizes got you all excited. In order to take part in this contest and get a chance of winning one of these prizes, please read the contest mechanics and rules below.

CONTEST MECHANICS:
1. Subscribe to JaypeeOnline’s RSS feed via email. (required)

Don’t forget to validate your email subscription (After submitting your email address, FeedBurner will send you an email with a link on it to verify your subscription). If you’re already an email subscriber, please proceed to step #2.

2. Blog about this contest. (required)

Make a blog post about this contest in not less than 100 words. (Please don’t copy & paste this post). Don’t forget to include a link/trackback to this contest, prizes at stake and the list of sponsors. If you want, you can use the Thanksgiving Giveaway graphic in your blog post, do that by saving the image and uploading it to your own web server. (No hotlinking please)

3. Leave a comment. (required)

After you have subscribed to the RSS feed via email and published your blog post, please leave a comment on this post using the same email address you used to subscribe and include the URL to your blog post. In case you decide to avail of the bonus points, make sure to include your Twitter username, Facebook account name and/or link to your Alexa review.

*I require this step so it would be easier for me to validate and keep track of each contestant’s entries.

Total = 7 pts

BONUS POINTS:
You can avail of these bonus points to get more chances of winning.

1. Follow me on Twitter and Retweet this post – 2 pts (If you’re already following me, all you need to do is retweet this post)
2. Write a review for JaypeeOnline on Alexa – 2 pts
3. Join JaypeeOnline’s Facebook Fan Page – 1 pt

Total = 5 pts

Total maximum entry points = 12 pts

CONTEST RULES:
1. Contestants are required to do all three steps under CONTEST MECHANICS.
2. No multiple entries. 1 person = 1 entry (1 person can get as much as 20 points)
3. Prizes not claimed within 30 days will be forfeited and be given to a new winner.

SPONSORS:
1. StudioPress
2. Pro Theme Design
3. Press75
4. WP Zoom
5. WP Now
6. Elegant Themes
7. WP WebHost
8. Jehzeel Laurente
9. Batang Yagit

Contest starts as soon as this post is published and ends on November 30, 2009. All entries should be in by midnight (US Pacific Time). Each point is equivalent to one entry that will be put into the list of entries (more points, more entries). Winners will be chosen using Random.org’s List Randomizer and will be announced the following day, December 1st.

What are you waiting for? Join now! You could be the winner of one of these awesome prizes. Remember, the more points you have, the more your chances of winning! If you have any questions regarding the contest, feel free to contact me.

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WordPress 2.9 Batch Plugin Upgrade

Jaypee Habaradas — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:39:59 +0000

Last week, I blogged about the coming WordPress 2.9 features that included post thumbnails, trash status, basic image editing, comment metadata, etc. I found out yesterday from WP Engineer that there’s another feature that will be added to WordPress 2.9 which is batch plugin upgrades.

The next version of WordPress will give the users the option and ability to upgrade/update all of your plugins that have available updates at all the same time. Here’s a screenshot of the batch plugin upgrade.

Batch Plugin Update Beta

This new feature will make it easier for blog owners to maintain their blogs, especially for multiple WordPress installations. Same goes for those who manage WordPress blogs for their clients.

One thing though, based on the screenshot above the batch plugin upgrade feature doesn’t have the option to view plugin details to check for any plugin changelogs. This is still in beta so we might see that change but I sure hope they add that option to batch plugin upgrade because there are times when its important to view the plugin changelogs before proceeding with the upgrade.

So what do you think about this new feature that will be added to WordPress 2.9? Is it something that you’ve been wanting to have on WordPress? Please share your thoughts.

[image source: WP Engineer]

WordPress 2.9 Features

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WooThemes 4-for-1 Special Offer

Jaypee Habaradas — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:19:23 +0000

Yesterday was a special day for WooThemes, one of the most popular sites for premium WordPress themes as they released their 50th theme. In celebration of this special event, WooThemes is doubling their regular 2-for-1 promo and having a special 4-for-1 promo. This means, if you buy any premium theme from them, you’d get 3 other themes for FREE!

Here’s an excerpt from their official post regarding the special event and the theme promo:

Today is a very special day for us. The great thing about it (for you), is that we’re totally into sharing that special feeling.

Our very first theme was released on 2 November 2007. Now almost 2 years down the line, we’re extremely proud to announce that we’re releasing our 50th theme today. This is a significant milestone for us and one that we will definitely enjoy with a celebratory drink (or two) later.

A quick count of our themes collection would tell you that there were only 48 themes prior to today, which means that the two beauties (literally) we’re unleashing onto the world today will be theme numbers 49 & 50 respectively. To make these two themes even more significant, we need to mention that this is the first time ever that we’re releasing two themes on one day, AND both of these themes also celebrate the end of our Breast Cancer campaign for the month of October.

Here are some of WooTheme’s recently released premium themes.

Royalle Theme

Therapy Theme

Exposure Theme

With this special 4-for-1 promo you’ll get 4 premium quality WordPress themes for only $70, making that $17.50 per theme! Aside from that you also get very good theme support from the WooThemes ninjas. For those who don’t know, the current theme I’m using is also from WooThemes called FreshNews. I love my theme and the help that I get from the support forum and I never regret purchasing this theme. My only regret is that I didn’t purchase it earlier.

NOTE: To take advantage of this offer simply pick 1 of the themes you would like and go through the purchase process with it, you’ll then be prompted to specify which 3 bonus themes you want to receive.

If you’re looking to purchase a premium theme for your WordPress blog, this is the best time to do so. But you better hurry and act fast because this offer is only for a limited time. Promo expires on October 31st, 2009.

DISCLOSURE: JaypeeOnline is an affiliate of WooThemes

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WP Theme Review: Cleanr

Jaypee Habaradas — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:36:11 +0000

Personally, I like themes that use a lot graphics, icons and stuff but many of my loyal readers like and request me to review simple and minimalistic themes so from time to time, I also feature/review those kinds of themes here. Today, I’ve got a treat for those of you who like simple and minimalistic WordPress themes.

Cleanr is a simple, 2 columned free WordPress theme created by the folks from WPshoppe that focuses on typography and space. This type of theme is ideal for bloggers or blogs that want content to be the main focus of the site. Good typography and well spaced content makes it easy for readers to read the content, find stuff and improves the overall user experience.

Most of us bloggers sure want our content to be the main focus on the site. And when content becomes the main focus, its hard to stare at your content when there is a bad typography and not well spaced. To get all of us a good solution, I present you a brand new theme Cleanr!

Basic Features:

2 columns
Drop down Menu for Categories and Pages
Widget-ready
Threaded Comments
jQuery and 960 CSS frameworks
compatible with other javascript frameworks
WordPress 2.8 compatible

Screenshots
Homepage

Post page

My Take:
The Cleanr WordPress theme doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that other freemium or premium WordPress themes have but it does have all the basic features you need to run a blog and its the perfect theme if you want a simple and minimalistic theme for your blog. Very good typography and well spaced content are elements that your readers would love.

Cleanr is compatible to the latest version of WordPress (2.8) and supports threaded comments, something that many bloggers look for in themes these days. It’s also widget-ready and from what I’ve seen from the theme files, this theme is easy to install and highly customizable. Since it doesn’t use much graphics and icons, this theme will load faster than most themes. The only setting that you need to configure are the Media Settings used for displaying inline images.

Media Settings
To upload pictures, you get best results when you set your image sizes as follows. Go to Settings > Media and set your sizes to:

Thumbnail – 200 x 200
Medium – 580 x 580
Large – 940 x 940

The Cleanr theme is released under GPL so it means that you can use and modify it in any way you please. However, it would be nice if you keep the footer intact or leave a backlink back to the author just as a way of thanking them for their effort in creating this theme.

Kudos to the folks of WPshoppe for this cool simple and minimalistic free WordPress theme!

Preview or Download the Cleanr WordPress theme.

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WordPress Plugin Compatibility Beta

Jaypee Habaradas — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:46:31 +0000

Most WordPress users are afraid to upgrade their WordPress install to the latest version because of plugin compatibility issues. To address that issue and in an effort to make WordPress core, plugin and theme upgrades less stressful and painful, the WordPress dev team has released a new “Compatibility” feature in the WordPress plugin directory. Developed and launched by Automattic’s Quantum Bug Creator – Michael Adams, this new is user driven and will be powered by user votes.

How does it work?

When viewing a plugin in the directory, select a WordPress version and a plugin version from the drop-downs. If there has been feedback about this WordPress / plugin version combination, we’ll show you what percentage of responses marked that combination as compatible vs how many marked it as incompatible.

If you log in, you’ll be able to help us gather this information! Just select a WordPress version / plugin version combination and click the “Works” or the “Broken” button. Please note that this shouldn’t be used to report minor issues with a plugin. You should mark a plugin as “Broken” only if its core functionality is truly broken when run on the specified WordPress version.

As of the moment, the WordPress team is still gathering information so there isn’t much information for most plugins. Everyone (all WordPress users, developers, theme/plugin authors) are encouraged to help out by casting votes on all the plugins. Don’t just limit your votes on “broken” plugins, also cast a vote for a plugin if it works on the version of WordPress you’re running on your blog. That way, there will be more information for each plugin in the directory.

For the developers out there, the WordPress dev team has included this data in the API. The plugin_information action returns a “compatibility” member with a multidimensional array format:

array( {WP version} => array( {plugin version} => array( {% of reporters who say it works}, {# responses} ) ) )

If the API determines the WordPress version you’re running, the API will return the compatibility information for the specific version of WordPress.

I like this new feature and I’m sure its gonna be very helpful and useful for a lot of WordPress users including myself. Kudos to Michael Adams for developing this new cool feature!

Migrated To My New Web Host

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Migrated To My New Web Host

Jaypee Habaradas — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:31:13 +0000

If you noticed that this blog was inaccessible in the past 24 hours, its because I’ve migrated it to my new web host. DNS propagation usually takes about 24 hours to take effect, depending on your location. Just wanted to update you guys about that so you know what happened and I’m also sharing with you my recent experience with web hosting issues.

This month of October has been the worst month for me and my blog in terms of web hosting. Would you believe that I’ve migrated my blog at least 6 times just this month? In my effort to find a new webhost, I opened an account with 2 other web hosts but for some certain reasons, it didn’t work out so I had to migrate back to my previous host. Anyways, what prompted me to go and find a different web host was the “issues” I had with my previous hosting provider.

Most of you guys know that my blog’s hosting account got suspended several times due to “high cpu usage”. I tried installing WP Super Cache and other plugins that will help minimize the load on my server, decreased the search engine crawl rate on my blog and tweaked my robots.txt file all in the effort of avoiding using up my server’s cpu resources. Unfortunately all of those efforts were in vain because I still got my account suspended not once, twice but three times! When I asked my web host for the reason why they suspended my account, they gave the same answer – “high cpu usage“. This time, I asked them what could be causing the high cpu usage and the Level 2 Tech Support people gave me these lame answers/excuses.

This is because the site is open for anyone to search for whatever they want, and this can cause malicious users to abuse this, which in this case it appears they have. The easiest fix for this is to make a log in and for anyone to search, perform a GET search, they must be logged in.

It looks like you have your website setup with a forum script or members site that is publicly accessable. youll need to adjust your website so that only members who are logged in can view pages / posts / profiles / images. This should resolve the issue. I am unsuspending the account. Please make the changes.

A blog is a forum, its a specific form of forum, however it is based on the same software. One page, that holds several posts. i do not know if the site has profiles or not. I got the information because i work at a hosting company and do this work every day all day and happen to know that when ever a site is suspended and in the abuse report it contains several hundred apache get requests to random files and directories, such as 3fb5c0424e085100d6b88904b308d6b0.css?t=1027215365 the problem is that the site / profiles/ forum/ blog/ community/ what ever it is, is configured to be openly accessible to the internet and because of this someone or some group of people are access the site in an abusive way, often times looking for exploits. These requests overload the server. The fix is to disable the site so it is not open accessible to anyone who is not logged in with a correct username and password.

Btw, my blog was hosted on a reseller account and because of these “high cpu usage” issues, they were trying to get me to upgrade to a VPS account. With that and these lame answers, I knew that they were just trying to make money and get me to upgrade my account. It was at this time that I decided to move out and find a new web host.

After checking out my options, I finally decided to go with ServInt who I found via BloggingTips.com and purchased a VPS account. My blog has only been with them for a day but I’ve opened my account about 2 days ago and since then I’ve been dealing with their customer support. Based on my experience with their support, all I can say that their customer support and service is AWESOME! They have 24/7 support and free phone support. Not only did they help me with the setup and answered my questions but support was replying to my tickets even at 1 AM! Their sales and tech support aren’t only friendly and helpful but also very knowledgeable.

I tried migrating the other day but had some issues because of an old version of MySQL so I had to wait until support upgraded it before I was able to restore my WordPress database backup. Now that I’ve successfully migrated my blog to its new home on the web, I can now get back to blogging and focus on more important stuff like my upcoming blog contest.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that I won’t have any major web hosting issues again and that everything would work out with my new web host – ServInt.

NOTE: Just to be clear, my previous web host/hosting provider was NOT TechHive. TechHive was just using a reseller account from another hosting company. All of the problems/issues I had was with the other hosting company, not TechHive.

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