Life$trikes.Com

How to Create Tabbed Conents in Wordpress Sidebar

Raghu — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:30:53 +0000

There are many scripts available to create Tabbed Contents in wordpress. Some of them are DomTab, Tabifier and idTabs,

Usually, tabbed contents are used in the sidebar to display popular posts, recent comments, tags, categories or archives. I recently came across another tool to create tabbed contents in Wordpress using Yahoo Developers Network Tabview.

After reviewing the API and examples, it looks promising and powerful way to to create tabbed contents. I will post an update after giving it a shot.

How to Insert Adsense in bbPress Forum

Raghu — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:55:41 +0000

BBpress is light weight forum created by makers of Wordpress. It’s easy to install and has the same interface as Wordpress. Displaying Adsense ad within bbpress takes about 2 minutes.

Follow the steps to display adsense ad just above and below the Page Navigation

Sample Adsense in bbPress

Steps to Insert Adsense Code in bbPress

Instructions below is for the default theme kakumei.

FTP into directory where bbpress forum is installed.
Navigate to /example.com/bb-templates/kakumei
Open the File topic.php
Find the following line of code that contains php_topic_pages (array…… )
Insert the Adsense code just below that line
This will display the ad above the forum topic, before posts starts
To insert the ad after the posts (before navigation page)
Insert the adsense coede below the line that contains “class=rss line…..php topic_rss_link”
Refresh the Topic in the fourm and you should see the ads.

There are 2 plugins that will allow to insert adsense code in bbpress. If you want to insert the code between posts then use adsense for bbpress plugin.

How to Change Wordpress Theme Editing MySql Tables

Raghu — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:27:22 +0000

Follow the simple steps to change the Wordpress Theme ny editing MySql Tables(Wordpress database). You might run into situations when you have access to only backend.

Change Wordpress Theme

Logn into MySQL Database for your site (Example : msql.example.com)
Open the Database for your site ( DB_example)
Open the Table wp_options
Open Browse Tab
Find the option’s template and stylesheet
Edit the value to theme name you want to change (Example : default)
Save the table

If some plugin have corrupted the theme files, using above change, you can set the default theme.

How to Change Default Wordpress Excerpt Length

Raghu — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:16:36 +0000

Default wordpress excerpt length is 55 words. It’s easy to change the default excerpt length in wordpress in less than 2 minutes to desired length. I made changes to wordpress 2.9.2 code.

Login into Directory where wordpress is installed
Open the file Directory > wp-includes > formatting,php
Search for 55 or $excerpt_length = apply_filters(‘excerpt_length’, 55);
Change the value 55 to desired number of words and save the file.
Refresh the page and see the results ( you may have to clear the cache)

How to Get Organic Google Traffic using Google Buzz

Raghu — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:33:29 +0000

How to use Google Buzz to get Organic Google Search Traffic? Just follow the steps below.

Organic Traffic from Google Buzz

Combining Google’s 3 powerful features

Results from people in your social circle for “search phrase”
Cookies that remembers your search preferences
Google Buzz Network (Followers)

So, you have a blog and you want to drive more traffic to your blog.

Building Buzz Followers Network
Link Buzz status updates to blogs post updates through Twitter ( Blog to Twitter to Buzz).
Post Buzz to as Public.
Status updates will be will be indexed by Google.
If your followers searches for similar phrase, it will be displayed in organic search results under “Results from people in your social circle”
Results will be displayed in Twitter Real Time Search (very likely)

If you already have huge list of contacts, it’s easy to get followers, else start building your followers.

Send Tweets via Email Using TweetyMail

Raghu — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:30:59 +0000

Anil Chawla – friend of mine has created this cool Twitter App called TweetyMail, eMail to Twitter Posting App. It allows you to tweet straight from your email inbox, without switching to new window or Twitter App.

How it Works

To get started, click the “Sign in with Twitter” button below. After signing in, tweetymail simply needs to know your email address. You can then tweet and use Twitter by sending emails to tweetymail. You can also set up tweetymail to automatically forward tweets, mentions, and Twitter search results to your email.

Features

Very fast and easy to tweet from a mobile phone. You can attach pictures and include links, and it will automatically shorten URLs.
Automatically receive email alerts when someone mentions you on Twitter. You can create email alerts for other tweets and searches too.
Send and reply to direct messages on Twitter using email.
Follow/unfollow users by sending or forwarding emails.
Full support for all languages (as long as emails are sent using UTF-8 character encoding)
It’s really like a full-featured Twitter client that works through email.

So, what do you think of TweetyMail? Ready to give it a try?

Configure Gmail to Use Google Apps SMTP Server

Raghu — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:52:39 +0000

Alright, you have multiple Gmail accounts and using Google Apps for your domain, then sending email your perosnal gmail account using Domain SMTP server just got easier. To send email from your Gmail account using Google Apps SMTP server, Google will provide 2 options

Send using Gmail Server
Send using your domain’s SMTP server.

Configure Domain SMTP Server

In order to send email using Google Apps SMTP server, first check the following settings

Login into Google Apps and verify following option is Checked ( under Email Settings)
1. Allow users to send mail through an external SMTP when configuring a “from” address hosted outside your domain.
Under Domain Settings > General > Enable SSL
It can take upto 24 hours for changes to be updated.

Configure in Gmail

Login into your Gmail account > Settings > Accounts and Imports > Send Email from another address
Enter Name and Email Address
Send Verification.
After address is verified, configure the SMTP servers.
Select “Send through your-domain.com SMTP servers (recommended for professional domains”
SMTP Server : smtp.gmail.com
Port: 465
Check Use SSL
Enter User Name and Password
Click Save Changes

Thats it, you will be able to send email form your personal account through your domain’s SMTP server. So, “on Behalf of” tag will be removed from any email that is send form your personal id”.

If you select Send through Gmail (easier to set up) then On Behalf Of tag will be added to all outgoing emails from your personal account.

9 Things To Do Before Ugrading Wordpress

Raghu — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:57:38 +0000

If you are planning to upgrade wordpress to latest release, do the following

Read Worpdress Support forums to see any upgrade problems
Backup Entire Database
Check for Minimum Requirements ( MySQL, PHP)
Check if all installed plugins supports the latest version of wordpress.
Deactivate all the plugins
Know how to revert to previous wordpress version, if upgrade were to fail.
Test the upgrade in local wordpress installation ( if downtime of site might be major issue)
Perform Wordpress Upgrade
Upgrade Wordpress Database if required
Check if Site is up and running.
Click on few links to to check if URL structure is maintained.
Activate the supported plugins one at a time.

Wordpress 2.8.6 to 2.9 upgrade created couple of problems. It was because

Some of the plug-in’s didn’t support 2.9
db_version in Table WP_Options had incorrect value.

After I fixed the db_verison, site was up and running, but all the url was broken. It was due to unsupported some plug-in in 2.9

[Fixed] 2.8.6 to 2.9 Worpress Database Upgrade Required – Failed

Raghu — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:43:37 +0000

Looks like 2.8.6 to 2.9 Wordpress upgrade is is failing for many folks. Just after the upgrade the screen of death (blank screen) is displayed with just wordpress logo

This is what happened

Upgraded Wordpress from 2.8.6 to 2.9 from within wordpress
Refreshed the wp-admin page
Following screen was displayed

Database Upgrade Required

WordPress has been updated! Before we send you on your way, we have to upgrade your database to the newest version.

The upgrade process may take a little while, so please be patient.

Upgrade WordPress Database

When I click on the button, after few seconds empty WordPress logo was diaplayed. Lookig at the url, there seems to be problem with url redirect. I can now not log into my domain b/c it brings me back to same Database Upgrade Required Page.

I searched online to see that many are having same issue. I came across the following solution that had the fix.Changing wp_db_verison to same value displayed in the databse for Wordpress 2.9 fixed the problem.

Value in Database for 2.9 was 11548.

Next time I’m not going to do an automatic upgrade within few days of new wordpress release.

How to Get Triple Listing in Google Search Results

Raghu — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:00:50 +0000

Having your site listed twice in Google Serch reults will definetly have higher click through rate compared to single listing. What if you site has Triple Indented listing in Google ?

With competition heating up between Google and Bing search, Google is coming out with many search options. I guess, as part of that, google decided to go from Double Intended to Triple Indented listing in search results for a site.

Google Triple Indented Listing

How to get Triple Indented Listing in Google

Site has to have atleast 3 pages optimized for the same keywords
If site has double listing, then create a new page ( unique contents) optimized for same keyword.
Create Reciprocal links with same keywords as anchor text from previous 2 pages.
Get back links (external and internal) to the new page.
Wait for Google to the page indexed and display in search results.