Posts Tagged ‘How-To’

WordPress Tweaks: Pagination

February 29th, 2008 Blogging 2 Comments
In case you are wondering what is pagination? It’s mechanism to break large quantity of data/text into pages for better usability and accessibility. For instance think you are searching for “Free blog tools” on Google, which will return around 35,500,000 results and if Goggle show you all the results in one single page-just guess how you will react? But they don’t, instead they break the results into several pages and you notice a numbered navigation link (ref: Fig. 1a) bellow each page for better navigation. Not only Google or other search engines but as well many top class web sites like New York Times, BBC so many others. Pagination is all about increasing usability where certain article turns into epic J After all when your user can navigate easily, your article/stories get more attention/affection or whatever you are after. Fig 1.1 Now our issue is how can we bring that pagination to our WordPress blogs? There are several plug-in available on WordPress plug-in directory who do paginations together with other tasks. But for the sake of just pagination why add another plug-in, and total freedom of customization cannot be achieved if you use a plug-in. WordPress got very simple and…
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Hosting choices made for you or made by you

February 4th, 2008 Web 1 Comment
Web hosting service isn’t something you can randomly pick, especially when your business hanging on the balance. There is free hosting as well as commercial hosting. What are some of the things you should look for when choosing a web host (I am sure dozens of factors available)? The factors for choosing a free web host and a commercial web hosting solution are slightly different although they do overlap. Choosing a host is an important decision. It’s wise to have a long relationship with whatever host you choose, in terms of money as well as hectic moving process. To make the decision you need to first decide what you need. In general most of we then visit the sites of several hosting providers (referred by a friend or colleague mostly) and evaluate what they have to offer in the light of requirements. But problem starts when your needs and satisfaction no way near to your friend/colleague’s one. In that case you have to search through the web for finding the right one for you. Or you can just simply go to web hosting choice, a great place to go to help with your decision making. These guys provide you a…
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Few simple yet useful WordPress Tweaks

January 18th, 2008 Blogging 3 Comments
These are very easy to do stuffs, nothing complex yet in time you will find it useful. Most no-tech blogger intend to do everything through plug-ins, but why install dozens of plug-in while you can get away with just adding few tweaks? So here are five simple tweaks that will make your WP life a lot comfortable. Denying access to non-referrer request/Spam-bot request via .htaccess This is simple and straight forward way to deal your referrer spam. Well off course considering your server is Apache with mod_rewrite module installed. Since all the games played in the wp-comments-post.php file and spam-bots usually does not leave a referrer, we can detect and deny their access to wp-comments-post.php file by just using these few lines on .htaccess file (located on the root WordPress installation directory). If you don’t have any .htaccess there but your server does support one you can just create one on notepad (save as->file name- .htaccess, save as type-all files) and upload it via FTP. Don’t forget to replace *myblog.xxx.*(on line 3) with your own domain name,remember no www or http:// 12345RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*myblog.xxx.* [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$ RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L]…
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Thursday byte: ASP.NET Server Control, Part One

October 18th, 2007 Software, Web No Comments
ASP.NET powered a significant portion of web, especially high-end corporate and industrial sites. Just to jiggle your memory-ASP.NET is a web application framework developed by Microsoft that programmers can use to build dynamic web sites, web applications and XML web services. It is part of Microsoft’s .NET platform and is the heir to Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. ASP.NET is built on the Common Language Runtime, meaning programmers can write ASP.NET code using any Microsoft .NET language (C#, Visual Basic .NET, J#, F#, IronPhython, IronRuby, windows power shell and C++/CLI). To understand ASP.NET first and most of all you have to get to know its Server Control. ASP.NET server controls are a fundamental part of the ASP.NET architecture. Essentially, server controls are classes in the .NET Framework that represent visual elements on a web form. Some of these classes are relatively straightforward and map closely to a specific HTML tag. Other controls are much more ambitious abstractions that render a more complex representation from multiple HTML elements. ASP.NET 2.0 keeps the .NET 1.0 controls almost unchanged and adds a shift of new controls. However I won’t get into all that in this article, rather focus on ASP.NET 2.0. Let’s…
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Making your WordPress site/blog faster

August 17th, 2007 Web 1 Comment
Most of the time we all talk about increasing readership, this time why not we will go for performance enhancement. Few days ago one of my subscriber expressed that, he experienced sluggishness on the back end while using WordPress as a CMS with high number of pages. He isn’t the only person who came across this problem, a lot of WP users experience related problem generally. Question is whether these problems resides in the core of WP or occasionally forced by some other issues? Actually there is no simple answer for that, any CMS whether Drupal or WordPress can experience same issues caused by numerous reasons without anything to do with the core itself. I will keep the focus of the discussion on the WordPress (self hosted) related issues to narrow it down. Why not we turn the spotlight on the fundamental reasons first, so that it would be easier to eliminate them? Your WP (WordPress) powered site may experience sluggishness for- MySQL server or connection issues. PHP Memory Limit. Apache log rotator problem (for Apache server). Broken/Degraded PHP code in template/theme files. Excessive plugin uses/ use of plugin(s) with broken codes. Some particular third party widgets/ JavaScript codes. WordPress Dashboard’s display of RSS…
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Must-have Firefox add-ons, series 3

August 3rd, 2007 Web No Comments
In this series of Firefox add-on we will concentrate on the add-ons that give your browser extended capabilities and save you from installing third party software to perform the same task. This type of not only save your disk space but bring extra features right at your finger tip. Needless to mention, this increase your multitasking capability, so equally valuable to9 s6tudents and professionals. BetterGmail Yep it’s true not everyone use Gmail, but this also true that it’s a growing email service on the planet. So if you are using Gmail this Add-on will get your attention without a doubt. This light weight Firefox extension features several Greasemonkey scripts that enhance Gmail, such as adding saved searches, attachment icons, label colors, keyboard macros, a filter assistant, and right-click conversation previews in one handy Firefox extension. For Gmail aficionados, one must-have Firefox add-on is the Better Gmail extension from Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani. Current Version, at the time of this writing: – 1.0. Pros: Actually the magic is for those who don’t want to install half a dozen of Greasemonkey scripts, just to get those features. BetterGmail got a huge list of parks, so I will just point out the major…
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Flex 103: ActionScript basics

July 31st, 2007 Software 1 Comment
ActionScript is a scripting language (Developed by Macromedia,now owned by Adobe ) based on ECMAScript (Also referred as JavaScript or Jscript), used primarily for the development of websites and software using the Adobe Flash Player platform. The latest ActionScript 3.0 introduced last June (2006) with Adobe Flex 2.0 and Flash player 9.0. This ActionScript is completely different than any of its predecessor since it uses an entirely different virtual machine. ActionScript 3.0 provides significant enhancement in performance, as well as more robust programming model that lends itself to complex Rich Internet Application development. You can say that’s the reason Flex is so kick ass RIA builder. How ActionScript work? The way ActionScript work is very simple like any other scripting you have known. Generally ActionScript is executed by the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM), which is part of Flash Player. ActionScript code is typically compiled into bytecode format by a compiler, such Flex Builder, or that is available in the Flex SDK and the Flex Data Services. The bytecode is embedded in SWF files, which are executed by the Flash Player, the run-time environment. Pretty simple and straight forward isn’t it? Why ActionScript 3.0? As you already know since Flex 2,…
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Must-have Firefox add-ons, series 2

June 27th, 2007 Web No Comments
In previous -Must have Firefox add-on series, we talked about three finest add-ons that make browsing a lot easier. This time our focus will be the add-ons that can extend your browser’s capability beyond usual. This add-ons or extensions are equally valuable to students as well as business users. DownThemAll! Not every Internet surfer in the world has high speed connection, and mostly they use some kind of download manager or accelerator to boost their downloading speed and manage. Well if you are a Firefox 1.5+ user why installing extra application for downloading, when DownthemAll extension for Firefox can give you the same features? This cool add-on features an advanced accelerator that boost speed up to a very reasonable level and it allows you to pause and resume downloads at any time. Current Version:- 0.9.9.10. Pros: Easy to use, user friendly configuration option. Ability to filter your downloads by fully customizable criteria. You can download almost anything from an image to smashing video, with serious speed. In my experience I found it a lot faster than Google’s download accelerator, iGetter download manager. Very handy for Linux users as there are very few Linux compatible download manager that can be as…
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Why Safari 3 for windows?

June 15th, 2007 Web 2 Comments
Apple’s Safari may be the rocking browser for Mac users, but only 4.04 percent Internet surfer use Safari while Firefox 2.x takes the third spot with 10.02 percent and IE7 occupy spot two followed by its predecessor IE6 at the top with a blistering 46.76 percent share (Statistics provided by Net Applications ). Even the web developers using Mac doesn’t hassle to check if their pages work with Safari unless their target market is particularly Mac oriented. So as you can see Safari remains as an underdog in browser war. Only Mac users were in love with it, deducting those who are addicted to Firefox. So why is it the new Safari 3 Public beta released for Windows as well, it’s not that windows needed another browser, since I don’t see any exceptional features that isn’t available in other windows browsers. What’s the catch? The catch is gaining “browser share”. Though Microsoft IE6 and IE7 is way out of grasp for Safari, but Mozilla Firefox is well within the range. Let me explain why? First of all Macbooks and Macbook Pros are gaining quite a popularities among corporate users as well as hobbyist web surfer and bloggers, and you don’t need a…
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