Posts Tagged ‘wordpress blog’
Monday, March 14th, 2011 
I'm experimenting this days with Elgg – An Open Source Free Software GPLed Social Network which enables users to quickly create Communities.
Elgg is really easy to install and all it requires is a Linux/BSD or Windows system with PHP, MySQL and Apache installed.
Elgg is provided with dozens of nice plugins which for a short time enables individual to create fully operational Social Network like facebook.
Many people nowdays use facebook without realizing how bad facebook is how it breaks their privacy.
Facebook is actually a spy network, it stores data and pictures, likings and user behaviour of million of users around the world.
This needs to be stopped somehow, maybe if people start using the free software networks like elgg to build a mini-community which has profound interests in a certain spheres of work, life and amusement.
The evil empire of facebook will slowly start to loose it's position and the small projects networks based on Elgg and the other Free Software Social Networks which are currently available will start to rise up.
I'm currently really a novice into Elgg but I'm more convinced that the guys who develop it and contribute to it in terms of handy plugins have done really a great job.
It's ultra easy even for non professional middle level user to setup himself an Elgg install.
The installation procedure is not much harder than a simple wordpress blog or joomla based website install.
The installation of elgg takes no more than 10 to 20 minutes, the plugin installation and setup time further could take few days but in the end you have a full featured Social Network! This is really amazing.
The installation of new plugins in elgg is also fool proof / easy all you have to do to equip a newly installed elgg with plugins is to go to it's root directory and look for the mod directory. The new plugins which needs to be installed, could be directly downloaded and saved via links, elinks, lynx or even wget to the elgg installation directory.
Most of the elgg plugins comes in a form of zip files so after being installed simply executing:
server:/home/elgg/mysocialnetwork/mod# unzip walltowall.zip
....
The above cmd will for example unzip the WallToWall elgg plugin and the plugin will be further ready to be enabled via the administrator user set upped during your elgg installation.
The configurations of elgg are being accomplished via:
Administration -> Tool Administration
I should I'm still experimenting with Elgg social, until this very moment I've installed the following elgg plugins:
aaudio
akismet
artfolio
blog
bookmarks
buddytalk
captcha
categories
chat
crontrigger
custom_index
custom_profile_fields
default_widgets
diagnostics
elgg-ebuddy
embed
embedvideo
emoticons
externalpages
family
fbconnect
file
file_tree
flyers
forum
friend_request
friends
garbagecollector
groups
htmlawed
invitations
invitefriends
izap_videos
kaltura_video
lastfm
likes
logbrowser
logrotate
lucygames
members
messageboard
messages
milockergames_frameme
noscript_message
notifications
pages
polls
profile
reportedcontent
resume
river_comments
riverdashboard
riverfaces
search
siteaccess
tagcloud
theme_simpleneutral
thewire
tidypics
tidypicsExt
tinymce
twitter
twitterservice
user_contact_list
uservalidationbyemail
walltowall
weather
wp1
zaudio
One very handy feature I truly enjoy about Elgg is that it gives every user an own blog which or in other words when somebody registers in Elgg, he automatically gets a personal blog! How cool this is Yeash 😉
The Elgg photo upload plugin is also another interesting story. The photo plugin is a way better from my first impressions than facebook's buggy upload client.
Elgg also uses heavily jquery for it's various operations and the user experience feels very interactive.
Of course as with all free software things are not perfect some of the elgg plugins or (mods) as they are called are not working.
For example I couldn't make by so far the weather plugin which is supposed to report the weather.
Maybe some tweakening of the not working plugins will easily make them working. What is really important is that the Elgg basis system looks and seems to work really good and enpowers the user with a social network alternatives to the ugly facebook.
In order to experiment with Elgg and I've established a small social network targetting at University College and School Students called MockATeacher – mockateacher.com>/i>. The idea behind is to help students in their report writting by providing them with a place where they can meet other students and share files.
Some other aspects I've planned for MockATeacher is to build a small community of people who would like to share about idiot teachers, teacher stupid sayings as well as to mock the idiotic type of education that we and our children are up to in this age.
Just to close up, if you're looking for some time to spend in experimenting in an enjoyable way you definitely need to install elgg and play with it 😉
Tags: BSD, bsd system, custom, dozens, elgg, evil empire, facebook, fool, fool proof, Free, free software networks, GPLed, installation, level, likings, Lynx, mod, novice, Open, php mysql, plugin, plugin installation, Privacy, root, root directory, setup time, short time, social networks, software, spheres, spy, spy network, time, unzip, weather, which enables users, windows system, wordpress blog, work, working
Posted in Entertainment, Everyday Life, Joomla, Linux, Various, Web and CMS | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 
I'm planning to bring up a website for remote system administration for quite some time 'till now.A couple of days before I've installed wordpress and used the monochrome theme in combination with a couple of plugins.I've used the WordPress, "Contact Form 7" plugin. I struggled around for a day before I realize the way it's beeingembeded into the Page post. Amri (Marto) a friend of mine helped me up with the whole deal, it came to be as simple assimply adding [contact-form 1 "My feedback" to one of the pages I've created in wordpress. There were a bunch of things on my newlycreated wordpress blog that looked more like a blog than a page which was not my initial goal and therefore I had to remove some chunksof code from some of the php files that came with the monochrome theme. I've partially used a guide called
"How to create Websites using WordPress" which probably would be of an interest to you if you're trying to make wordpress look more like a website than a blog, check it out here . Amri suggested few plugins that would add up to my current wordpress installation.
This are:
Cyr2Lat Slugs
Google XML Sitemaps Generates sitemap.xml. Gives an option to setup Google WebMaster Tools and in that manner of thoughts ads up for faster indexing of the blog
All In One SEO pack – SEO instrument that optimizes your wordpress
Belavir – Tracks the changes in files in wordpress.
In my case I couldn't make the Google XML Sitemap work correctly. Probably because I've removed bits of php code from some main php pages.Anyways I was able to make my wordpress look like a normal website and in general it might be said that it looks quite decent now if I have to compare it with my previous websites I've built like let's say my home page www.pc-freak.net . I've plans to deliver remote system administration services to the masses via my Yet Another Cheap System Administration Services.
I've also installed awstats on the pcfreak box currently running on a nice foxy IBM machine. To properly install and run the Awstats I've used fractions from the article Install Awstats on FreeBSD . What was different in my case was:
1. I had to cd /usr/ports/www/awstats/work/awstats-6.9/tools/; run ./awstats_configure.pl. Answer a couple of questions. I've initially installed awstats configurations to /etc/awstats after which I've moved it to /usr/local/etc/awstats .
2. I had to create /var/lib/awstats where awstats stores it's database files: mkdir /var/lib/awstats
3. I had to link awstats to the location where my cgi-bin dir was set up by httpd.conf: ln -sf /usr/local/www/awstats/cgi-bin/ /usr/local/www/cgi-bin/awstats
4. I had to create a link to make the awstats icons visualize: ln -sf /usr/local/www/awstats/icons /usr/local/www/data/awstatsicons
5. I had to edit my conf file and align it with my desires, most important to note is the requirement to change the location to my Apache log file in my case that was /var/log/httpd-access.log: Change LogFile value in /usr/local/etc/awstats/awstats.www.pc-freak.net.conf I've changed it to LogFile="/var/log/httpd-access.log"
6. Next I had to execute the following to generate statistics for my domain www.pc-freak.net: /usr/local/www/awstats/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -update -config=www.pc-freak.net
7. Edit the root user crontab (crontab -u root -e) and paste the following : 01 0 * * * /usr/local/www/awstats/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -update -config=www.pc-freak.net 2>&1 >/dev/null8. Change the default Directory settings for /usr/local/www/cgi-bin. Had to changed them to the following AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit Indexes Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI Order allow,deny Allow from all
9. After that I've protected my awstats with a pass putting /usr/local/awstats/cgi-bin/.htaccess file containing the followingAuthType BasicAuthName "Restricted Access"AuthUserFile /usr/local/etc/apache2/myawstats.passwdRequire user admin
10. And last but not least, had to create the myawstats.passwd with the following command: htpasswd -c /usr/local/etc/apache2/myawstats.passwd admin
Right after I happily accessed my newly installed awstats via my domain https://www.pc-freak.net//cgi-bin/awstats/awstats.pl END—–
Tags: htaccess file, Install Awstats, make, net usr, php code, system administration, var, website, wordpress blog, www data
Posted in System Administration, Various, Web and CMS | No Comments »
Saturday, May 15th, 2010 
I received a comment today from one of my blog readers. That he likes my blog content but he looks for a way to subscribe to my blog.
Though I had a subscription button configured in my wordpress template of choice. The button is located on place in the template that is absolutely unnoticable (at the bottom of the page). This is by the way I believe a default behaviour in case if the default wordpress plugin is used.
Thus I decided to set a clear RSS Subscription button on my blog.
Though at a first glimpse the task looked quite trivial it happened to be a way more complex!
I’ve tried a number of things before I can succeed in adding an RSS button.
The most simple though not really flexible way was through:
WordPress’s Widgets (Using the RSS Widget) .
This approach however has one major inconvenience.
Using the default wordpress RSS Widget you cannot configure the Widget to keep displaying 0 items of the feed.
In other words you cannot configure from the the sliding menu reading:
How many items would you like to display? 0 in order to prevent completely showing up of any of the feed on the page.
If you leave it with one. The RSS icon of RSS widget would point directly to your blog instead to the RSS feed configured.
So in practice configuring it especially in my case rendered completely useless.
The appearing link from the default RSS widget for some weird reason doesn’t includes a link to where my feed is located https://www.pc-freak.net/blog/feed/
In the meantime I looked online to look for something that will facilitate me in completing the simple task to add an RSS Subscribe Feed to my Blog.
I asked for help in freenode’s irc network #wordpress channel. And a guy from there suggested that I go with wp-o-matic wordpress plugin
Anyways It took me a few minutes to realize this plugin is suitabile if you want to show other blogs feed to your blog instead of adding a RSS feed link to your own blog, this wasn’t my goal so I skipped next in looking for something to help me on.
In the meantime I found the interesting feedburner google feed service that is able to help in creating, publishing and distributing RSS & Atom feeds.
I recommend you check it if you still haven’t. It takes only a few clicks to register in order to use feedburner as a feed service.
Once you are set-up with Feedburner, you can activate all the cool functions, such as allowing your readers to subscribe via email, and also the Feedburner Flares.
Another nice thing about using feedburner is that it formats your fed content in a really pretty layout. By the way since the 2004 feedburner is owned by Google. So in a certain terms using feedburner instead of the default wordpress blog feed will probably attract more google visitors to your blog and is generally good for your blog placement in search engines.
For more of the advantages check feedburner’s google service website .
However there is one major disadvantage in using the feedburner’s feed service. Using the service rob you out of control of your feed, since all the feeds will be properly generated and formatted from feedburner.
The newly created service for feedburner by me is located on www.feeds.feedburner.com/WalkingInLightWithChrist-FaithComputingDiary
Now to be able to use the newly installed feedburner service with my blog I had to test a couple of plugins before I came to the ones that really worked.
I played with feedburner_feedsmith_plugin , feedburner-widget , feedlist.2.61 , wp-keiths-easy-rss , rss-atom-avatar but I couldn’t make any of them work properly with feedburner. Some of the up mentioned plugins were a real hell to configure so I completely abandondoned them seeing their inflexibility. Others were completely abondonede for more than 2 years from now, etc. etc. Fundamentally none of them worked for me.
I finally was able to bring up the feedburner service on my worpdress using The FD Feedburner plugin
All necessery to enable the plugin after you download into wordpress’s wp-content/plugins directory is to configure the plugin from:
Plugins -> FeedBurner Configuration Here is the screenshot on the FD Feedburner plugin configuration screen:
As you can see in the screenshot the plugin is really simple to configure. All you need to provide it with is the url provided to you by feedburner right after you register your blog for the service.
Now as you will have your http://www.yourwebsite.com/blog/feed/ be redirected to the feedburner’s website generated feed for your website by the FD FeedBurner WordPress Plugin all left to be done is to provide a link on your blog to your blog feed.
To accomplish this you will have to download the add-to-any-subscribe wordpress plugin.
Again installation of add-to-any-subscribe is a piece of cake, to install follow The install instructions here
Now hopefully your feedburner feed will be able to be distrubuted to your visitors via the AddtoAny subscription button on your blog.
Tags: Adding RSS Feed to Wordpress in conjunction with FeedBurner / Wordpress add-to-any-subscribe plugin, configured, conjunction, default behaviour, google, help, irc network, link, piece of cake, RSS, simple, wordpress blog, wordpress plugin, www
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Various, Web and CMS, Wordpress | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 
Since I’m using wordpress as a blogging platform for about two years now and I’m constantly experimenting with valueable wordpress plugins.
I’ve decided to publish a compilation of wordpress plugins that empowers my blog
The plugins included in the compilation are quite various, some of the plugins aims at easy post sharing via the general social networks and main websites used by users today, others significantly helps in increasing the blog ranking in major search engines, there are some that adds like button to the blog.
These plugins also strenghthen the easy blog RSS file sharing, some post straight to twitter all your blog posts, generate tags automatically, puts a better features to the default wordpress commenting mechanism, prevent from spam comments, add features for easily adding Google adsense to the wordpress installation to help you advertise on your blog.
There are also plugins which delete duplicate posts (if you have such), puts better wordpress blog search bar, generates a sitemap to the blog, add an option to include php codes straight into your posts, adds wordpress an option to easily put mod rewrite rules straight from the wordpress interface, boost wordpress speed by adding static html generation cache, boost performance etc. etc.
Here is the complete list of wordpress plugins which I have currently installed on my wordpress blog:
ad-squares-widget
add-to-any-subscribe
advertising-manager
ajax-comments
akismet
all-in-one-adsense-and-ypn
all-in-one-seo-pack
askapache-google-404
auto-tag
bm-custom-login
commentluv
comments-statistics
cyr2lat-slugs
delete-duplicate-posts
easy-adsenser
extended-search-plugin
facebook-share-new
favourite-bible-verse
feedburner-plugin
feedburner-widget
feedburner_feedsmith_plugin_2.3
feedlist
force-publish-schedule
google-analytics-for-wordpress
google-sitemap-generator
headspace2
my-link-order
php-code-widget
platinum-seo-pack
post-plugin-library
post-to-twitter
profile-pic
profile-pics
redirection
rss-atom-avatar
seo-automatic-links
seo-slugs
share-on-facebook
share-this
similar-posts
simple-tags
subscribe-to-comments-reloaded
subscribe-to-comments
subscribe2
text-control
tidy-up
tinymce-advanced
what-would-seth-godin-do
wordbook
wordpress-23-related-posts-plugin
wordpress-mobile-edition
wordpress-thread-comment
wp-codebox
wp-keiths-easy-rss
wp-likes
wp-o-matic
wp-postviews
wp-super-cache
wp-syntax
yourls-wordpress-to-twitter
I do have enabled most of the plugins, though some are disabled but still might be helpful somewhere in the close-future thus I still keep them installed.
I would skip the time to describe one by one what each of the above list of plugins will do for your wordpress, since the list is quite long.
However I defnitely think this is a list of plugins you might want to have installed in a newly established wordpress blog for sure.
Note that the versions of the plugins which are included in this must have wordpress plugins collection might not be the latest as the included ones are the ones I do have installed at the time of writting of this article.
Also be aware that some of the plugins might create some issues with newer versions of wordpress (your blog might beak up!), however most of the plugins should work out of the box by just enabling each one of them from the wordpress interface via the menus:
Settings -> Plugins -> Inactive
To straight install my bundled package of plugins you have to issue the commands:
linux:~# cd /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins
linux:/var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/a_must_have_wordpress_plugins_collection.tar.gz
linux:/var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins# tar -zxvf a_must_have_wordpress_plugins_collection.tar.gz
...
linux:/var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins# unzip *.zip
Now as they should be installed under the plugins directory go and enable the plugins.
Further on many of the plugins will require configuration from the menus:
Settings
or in the menu
Tools
After being setup up your new wordpress installation will look significantly better, you will notice a tons of useful features which you might have previously missing and desperately needed 😉
Most of the bundled package of wordpress plugins works fine with wordpress version 3.1, if you’re trying to install enable and configure the plugins on some other versions of wordpress, there might be problems!
If you experience problems by trying out my bunch of wordpress plugins please drop me a comment.
I hope you enjoyed this improvised article, if these bunch of plugins are useful to you please give me a thanks 🙂
Thanks!
Tags: adsense, advertising manager, aims, ajax, analytics, auto tag, bible, bible verse, blog, boost, Button, collection, commentluv, compilation, complete list, configure, custom login, cyr, drop, extended search, generation, google, google sitemap generator, html generation, Inactive, installation, interface, major search engines, mechanism, mod, option, package, php, platform, plugin, post, Search, search bar, search plugin, SEO, Settingsor, Slugs, social networks, squares, time, twitter, wget, widget, wordbook, Wordpress, wordpress blog, wordpress plugins, ypn
Posted in SEO, Web and CMS, Wordpress | 8 Comments »
Sunday, July 24th, 2011 
My sister has forgotten the administrator account for her wordpress blog as she did not blogged for a while.
I decided to help her and reset the WORDPRESS blog password to another one.
The easiest way of course in normal circumstances is to use wordpress's Lost your password password reset via email.
However with this blog it seems I used an email address which I forgot so I couldn't really use this as a mean to reset the blog password.
Therefore as I'm addicted to command line 😉 I decided to do it straight via connecting to mysql server with mysql cli and change the encrypted password value directly there. Here is how I did it:
1. First I logged in to the mysql server with my root user/pass
pcfreak# mysql -u root -p
Enter password: Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 39263
Server version: 5.0.83-log FreeBSD port: mysql-server-5.0.83
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
2. Then I checked current set user and password for the wp-admin admin user
mysql> use wordpress1;
mysql> select * from wp_users where user_login like '%admin%';
+----+------------+--------------+---------------------+-------------+--------------+
| ID | user_login | user_pass | user_nicename | user_email | user_url | user_registered | user_activation_key | user_status | display_name |
+----+------------+------------------------------------+---------------+----------------+----------+---------------------+----
| 1 | admin | $P$BG9eMoysG8ztywLp25AOpJSkWlRZMu. | admin | invoke@emailaddress.com | | 2011-03-10 13:44:26 |
| 0 | admin | +----+------------+------------------------------------+---------------+----------------+----------+---------------------+---
1 row in set (0.25 sec)
3. Used a query to reset the current encrypted password you see below shown under the user_pass column
mysql> UPDATE wp_users SET user_pass= MD5('my_new_wordpress_password_to_reset') where ID = '1';
4. I've changed the email set for user_email to which mail is sent, in case of forgotten password again
I've done this to prevent my sister to bother me again, if she forgets her password once again 😉
mysql> UPDATE wp_users SET user_email='invoke_@abv.bg' where ID = '1';
One important note here is that in step 3
I've used the MD5(); mysql embedded function to generate the MD5 crypted password which is inserted in above's sql query, however the MD5 function is only available in MySQL servers version 5.x, therefore in older releases of MySQL e.g. ver 4.x, one will have to first generate the md5 password with let's say md5sum linux command or bsd's md5 cmd like so:
a. On Linux
hipo@noah:~$ echo 'my_new_wordpress_password_to_reset' | md5sum
f0ed1489e6d9e7eae8b363b1b5e4a864 -
b. On FreeBSD
pcfreak# echo 'my_new_wordpress_password_to_reset' | md5
f0ed1489e6d9e7eae8b363b1b5e4a864
Afterwards the SQL query that can be used with the above generated string to issue on the MySQL 4.x server or earlier versions would be:
mysql> UPDATE wp_users SET user_pass='f0ed1489e6d9e7eae8b363b1b5e4a864' where ID = '1';
That's all now the password is set to the newly generated my_new_wordpress_password_to_reset pass string.
Cheers 😉
Tags: administrator account, circumstances, cli, com, Commands, connection, connection id, course, Display, eae, email address, encrypted password, function, help, input statement, login, monitor, mysql connection, password, pcfreak, reset, root, root user, row, server version, status, update, url, value, wordpress blog, wp, ztywLp
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, MySQL, System Administration, Wordpress | 7 Comments »
Friday, April 6th, 2012 I'm running WordPress for already 3 years or so now. Since some very long time. The first wordpress install, I can hardly remember but it something like wordpress 2.5 or wordpress 2.4
Since quite a long time my wordpress blog is powered by a number of plugins, which I regularly update, whenever new plugins pops up …
I haven't noticed most of the time problems during major WordPress platform updates or the update of the installed extensions. However, today while I tried to reply back to one of my blog comments, I've been shocked that, I couldn't.
Pointing at the the Comment Reply box and typing inside was impossible and a null message was stayed filled in the form:
To catch what was causing this weird misbehaving with the reply comments functionality, I grepped through my /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins/* for the movecfm(null,0,1,null):
# cd /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins
# grep -rli 'movecfm(null,0,1,null)' */*.php
wordpress-thread-comment/wp-thread-comment.php
I've taken the string movecfm(null,0,1,null) from the browser page source in in my Firefox by pressing – Ctrl+U).
Once I knew of the problem, I first tried commenting the occurances of the null fields in wp-thread-comment.php, but as there, were other troubles in commenting this and I was lazy to read the whole code, checked online if some other fellows experienced the same shitty null void javascript error and already someone pointed at a solution. In the few minutes search I was unable to find anyone who reported for this bug, but what I found is some user threads on wordpress.org mentioning since WordPress 2.7+ the wordpress-threaded-comments is obsolete and the functionality provided by the plugin is already provided by default in newer WPinstalls.
Hence in order to enable the threaded comments WordPress (embedded) reply functionality from within the wp-admin panel used:
Settings -> Discussions -> Enable Threaded (nested) comments (Tick)
You see there is also an option to define how many nested comments subcomments, can be placed per comment, the default was 5, but I thought 5 is a bit low so increased it to 10 comments reply possible per comment.
Finally, to prevent the default threaded comments to interfere with the WordPress Threaded Comments plugin, disabled the plugin through menus:
Plugins -> Active -> WordPress Thread Comments (Deactivate)
This solved the weird javascript null "bug" caused by wordpress-threaded-comments once and for all.
Hopefully onwards, my blog readers will not have issues with threaded Reply Comments.
Tags: admin panel, Auto, code, Comment, Ctrl, Draft, fellows, few minutes, Firefox, form, grep, long time, misbehaving, movecfm, null fields, null message, number, occurances, option, page, page source, php, phpI, platform, plugin, Plugins, quot, reply comments, rli, someone, something, thread, threads, tick, time, time problems, Wordpress, wordpress blog, wp
Posted in Web and CMS, Wordpress | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 
Nowdays WordPress is ran by million of blogs and websites all around the net. I myself run wordpress for this blog in general wordpress behaves quite well in terms of performance. However as with time the visitors tend to increase, on frequently updated websites or blogs. As a consequence, the blog / website performance slowly starts to decrease as result of the MySQL server read / write operations creating I/O and CPU load overheads. Buying a new hardware and migrating the wordpress database is a possible solution, however for many small or middle size wordpress blogs en sites like mine this is not easy task. Getting a dedicated server or simply upgrading your home server hardware is expensive and time consuming process… In my efforts to maximize my hardware utilization and increase my blog decaying performance I've stumbled on the article Optimize WordPress performance with wp-config.php
According to the article there are 4 simple wp-config.php config directvies useful in decreasing a lot of queries to the MySQL server issued with each blog visitor.
define('WP_HOME','http://www.yourblog-or-siteurl.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','http://www.yourblog-or-siteurl.com');
define('TEMPLATEPATH', '/var/www/blog/wp-content/themes/default');
define('STYLESHEETPATH', '/var/www/blog/wp-content/themes/default');
1. WP_HOME and WP_SITEURL wp-config.php directvies
The WP_HOME and WP_SITEURL variables are used to hard-code the address of the wordpress blog or site url, so wordpress doesn't have to check everytime in the database on every user request to know it is own URL address.
2. TEMPLATEPATH and TEMPLATEPATH wp variables
This variables will surely improve performance to Wodpress blogs which doesn't implement caching. On wp install with enabled caching plugins like WordPress Super Cache, Hyper Cache or WordPress Db Cache is used, I don't know if this variables will have performance impact …
So far I have tested the vars on a couple of wordpress based installs with caching enabled and even on them it seems the pages load faster than before, but I cannot say this for sure as I did not check the site loading time in advance before hardcoding the vars.
Anyways even if the suggested variables couldn't make positive impact on performance, having the four variables in wp-config.php is a good practice for blogs or websites which are looking for extra clarity.
For multiple wordpress installations living on the same server, having defined the 4 vars in different wordpress seems like a good idea too.
Tags: Auto, blogs, Cache, config, config variables, consequence, consuming, content themes, cpu load, dedicated server, default, doesn, Draft, everytime, home server, Hyper, impact, Load, loading, lot, mysql server, new hardware, Optimize, performance impact, php, possible solution, queries, request, server hardware, site url, siteurl, size, time, url, Wordpress, wordpress blog, wp, yourblog
Posted in SEO, Various, Web and CMS | 3 Comments »
Thursday, April 7th, 2011 I’ve recently realized that the Easy Adsenser plugin which I used to place google adsense advertisements on my blog, is probably stealing some portion of my clicks.
There were some fraud reports on wordpress.org by people who have found out the author of Easy Adsenser rips clicks, by showing sometimes his own ad code even if the plugin is configured to not grant any clicks as a donation to the plugin author.
I don’t know how true this story is and I don’t have the time to observe the whole plugin code to say for sure if the rumors about clicks stealing are true.
However as I’m paying my internet access (that guarantees) by blog to stay online with some adsense advertisements and the adsense revenues are either equal to my internet tax or a bit higher (depending on the month), it’s quite unpleasent to hear someone is stealing from the ads clicks which still generate very low revenue.
Thus I took the time to read some blog posts online which gave me some hints on how can I directly place the google adsense advertisement code into the theme template files
My goal was to place one google adsense ad to appear right after the title of each article and one to appear as a vertical bar in the end of my sidebar.
In this article in short I’ll explain how I achieved this banner placement via the default wordpress template which obviously I use on my blog.
Let’s start:
1. Add adsense to the index page of the blog
Edit your blog/wp-content/themes/default/index.php file
Therein find the code:
<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn" role="main">
and right after this line put the following php code:
<?php
$postnum = 1;
$showadsense1 = 1;
?>
This code is necessery to assure the adsense code only appears on the first blog post from the blog index page
2. Find the code:
<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by
Immediately after the code place the php code:
<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense1) {
echo '<div class="adsense" style="float:right;margin:12px;">;paste here your adsense code ...</div>';
} ?>
<?php $postnum++; ?>
Now with this changes, 1 adsense advertisements should start appearing right after your first and only on your blog post, next step is to place manually one more vertical adsense banner.
2. Place adsense vertical bannre in wordpress blog sidebar
Login with admin user to wordpress and navigate to:
Appearance -> Widgets
Among the available widgets you will notice the widget called Text click over: Add to add this widget to the list of widgets to appear on your blog sidebar.
Afterwards look up over the Sidebar list of widgets find the newly added Text widget and click over Edit to modify it’s content.
Further on put a Title for the widget or choose to leave the title field as blank if you don’t want a name to appear.
On the next textbox just paste your adsense code and you’re done. A simple refresh of your wordpress blog index page should show you a vertical banner with your adsense code.
! Note that if you have recently issued the adsense code it will take about 10-20 minutes until the banner starts showing up.
Until now wordpress is configured to show adsense adverts on the blog main page, as a next step we need to place the same adsense adverts to appear whether a single blog post is reviewed (opened).
Place an adsense advertisements to single posts opened
For that purpose it’s necessery to edit the file single.php it’s again located in blog/wp-content/themes/default
Once again you will first need to find the code:
if (have_posts())
Put the code after the end of the line on a new line:
<?php
// below code is for adsense
$postnum = 1;
$showadsense1 = 1;
?>
Next lookup in the file for the code:
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
On a new line after it place:
<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense1) { echo '<div class="adsense" style="float:right;margin:12px;"><script type="text/javascript"> place here your adsense code </div>';
} ?>
<?php $postnum++; ?>
That’s all now the adsense advertisements will be also showing on the single blog posts reviews found via some search engine (google, yahoo etc.).
Hope this article will be helpful to somebody, if so drop me a thanks line in comments 😉
Tags: adsense, advertisement, advertisements, banner placement, blog, class, code, code lt, content themes, div id, file, filesMy, fraud, fraud reports, goal, google, google adsense, index, index page, internet access, internet tax, js, margin, necessery, page, page posts, php, place, plugin, plugin code, quot, right, role, sidebar, someone, start 1, story, template, time, unpleasent, vertical bar, wordpress blog
Posted in SEO, System Administration, Web and CMS, Wordpress | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 Until recently, I have used a default wordpress theme which historically is a bit old and used to be a default theme to the older versions of wordpress.
Since however, I’ve went to many updates and on the other hand I do like and enjoy the template I have decided to continue use it for my blog until this very day.
However this nice theme’s default behaviour is a bit weird, since by default the Single opened posts are configured in a way that the usual index page sidebar is missing.
As in the sidebar there are plenty of navigation buttons and search in the blog button, at a certain moment I have realized it’s probably not a good idea that the single.php (single blog posts) open up with the right sidebar missing.
Thus I’ve decided to put back the missing sidebar in the single posts, with a hope that this will be helpful to my readers and hence have positive impact on the overall blog user experience.
Doing so prooved to be rather easy, here is how I added back the right sidebar to my wordpress single posts :
1. Edit blog/wp-content/themes/default/single.php
debian:~# vim /var/www/blog/wp-content/themes/default/single.php
2. In the single.php look up for the code:
<div id="content" class="widecolumn">
Substitute this html code with:
<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
3. Next find the code:
<?php get_footer(); ?>
Right before the get_footer(); php function add in the function;
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
Tadam! Refresh a single post in Firefox and you should see your blog index.php sidebar to show up.
Tags: behaviour, blog, Button, code lt, content themes, default behaviour, default theme, div, div id, Firefox, footer, function, gt 3, hand, idea, impact, index page, moment, navigation buttons, older versions, page, php, Search, Single, substitute, Tadam, use, user experience, var, vim, way, wordpress blog, www
Posted in Web and CMS, Wordpress | 2 Comments »
Thursday, July 14th, 2011 
My WordPress blog had an odd problem, all on the blog, worked just fine except the Widgets add new widget drag and drop functionality.
As there was new version of wordpress available I tried updating but this fixed the missing drag and drop widget functionality neither, so finally after a bit of googling and experimentation to follow suggested fixes like using the enable Accessiblity Mode button on top Widgets.Thus the common suggested fix that worked for most of the people who stumbled upon this annoying wordpress bug was to simply nagivate to:
Appearance -> Widgets -> Screen Options -> Enable Accessibility Mode
As for me pressing over the Screen Options was impossible (nothing happened when I pressed over it), finally I’ve found a hack 😉
The hack is quite simple, all I had to do is just pass a variable ?widgets-access=on to the widget.php php script
Therefore the fix to the problem was as follows http://blog.mysite.com/wp-admin/widgets.php?widgets-access=on
And done, FIXED! 😉
Tags: Appearance, blog, Button, common, drag, drop functionality, fine, fix, FIXED, functionality, googling, hack, Mode, mode button, ModeAs, mysite com, nagivate, odd problem, php, problem, screen, screen options, script, scriptTherefore, version, widget, Widgets, Wordpress, wordpress blog
Posted in Web and CMS, Wordpress | 3 Comments »
A must have collection of WordPress plugins that enpowers your blog and improves SEO
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011Since I’m using wordpress as a blogging platform for about two years now and I’m constantly experimenting with valueable wordpress plugins.
I’ve decided to publish a compilation of wordpress plugins that empowers my blog
The plugins included in the compilation are quite various, some of the plugins aims at easy post sharing via the general social networks and main websites used by users today, others significantly helps in increasing the blog ranking in major search engines, there are some that adds like button to the blog.
These plugins also strenghthen the easy blog RSS file sharing, some post straight to twitter all your blog posts, generate tags automatically, puts a better features to the default wordpress commenting mechanism, prevent from spam comments, add features for easily adding Google adsense to the wordpress installation to help you advertise on your blog.
There are also plugins which delete duplicate posts (if you have such), puts better wordpress blog search bar, generates a sitemap to the blog, add an option to include php codes straight into your posts, adds wordpress an option to easily put mod rewrite rules straight from the wordpress interface, boost wordpress speed by adding static html generation cache, boost performance etc. etc.
Here is the complete list of wordpress plugins which I have currently installed on my wordpress blog:
ad-squares-widgetadd-to-any-subscribe
advertising-manager
ajax-comments
akismet
all-in-one-adsense-and-ypn
all-in-one-seo-pack
askapache-google-404
auto-tag
bm-custom-login
commentluv
comments-statistics
cyr2lat-slugs
delete-duplicate-posts
easy-adsenser
extended-search-plugin
facebook-share-new
favourite-bible-verse
feedburner-plugin
feedburner-widget
feedburner_feedsmith_plugin_2.3
feedlist
force-publish-schedule
google-analytics-for-wordpress
google-sitemap-generator
headspace2
my-link-order
php-code-widget
platinum-seo-pack
post-plugin-library
post-to-twitter
profile-pic
profile-pics
redirection
rss-atom-avatar
seo-automatic-links
seo-slugs
share-on-facebook
share-this
similar-posts
simple-tags
subscribe-to-comments-reloaded
subscribe-to-comments
subscribe2
text-control
tidy-up
tinymce-advanced
what-would-seth-godin-do
wordbook
wordpress-23-related-posts-plugin
wordpress-mobile-edition
wordpress-thread-comment
wp-codebox
wp-keiths-easy-rss
wp-likes
wp-o-matic
wp-postviews
wp-super-cache
wp-syntax
yourls-wordpress-to-twitter
I do have enabled most of the plugins, though some are disabled but still might be helpful somewhere in the close-future thus I still keep them installed.
I would skip the time to describe one by one what each of the above list of plugins will do for your wordpress, since the list is quite long.
However I defnitely think this is a list of plugins you might want to have installed in a newly established wordpress blog for sure.
Note that the versions of the plugins which are included in this must have wordpress plugins collection might not be the latest as the included ones are the ones I do have installed at the time of writting of this article.
Also be aware that some of the plugins might create some issues with newer versions of wordpress (your blog might beak up!), however most of the plugins should work out of the box by just enabling each one of them from the wordpress interface via the menus:
Settings -> Plugins -> InactiveTo straight install my bundled package of plugins you have to issue the commands:
linux:~# cd /var/www/blog/wp-content/pluginslinux:/var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/a_must_have_wordpress_plugins_collection.tar.gz
linux:/var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins# tar -zxvf a_must_have_wordpress_plugins_collection.tar.gz
...
linux:/var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins# unzip *.zip
Now as they should be installed under the plugins directory go and enable the plugins.
Further on many of the plugins will require configuration from the menus:
Settingsor in the menu
Tools
After being setup up your new wordpress installation will look significantly better, you will notice a tons of useful features which you might have previously missing and desperately needed 😉
Most of the bundled package of wordpress plugins works fine with wordpress version 3.1, if you’re trying to install enable and configure the plugins on some other versions of wordpress, there might be problems!
If you experience problems by trying out my bunch of wordpress plugins please drop me a comment.
I hope you enjoyed this improvised article, if these bunch of plugins are useful to you please give me a thanks 🙂
Thanks!
Tags: adsense, advertising manager, aims, ajax, analytics, auto tag, bible, bible verse, blog, boost, Button, collection, commentluv, compilation, complete list, configure, custom login, cyr, drop, extended search, generation, google, google sitemap generator, html generation, Inactive, installation, interface, major search engines, mechanism, mod, option, package, php, platform, plugin, post, Search, search bar, search plugin, SEO, Settingsor, Slugs, social networks, squares, time, twitter, wget, widget, wordbook, Wordpress, wordpress blog, wordpress plugins, ypn
Posted in SEO, Web and CMS, Wordpress | 8 Comments »