Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category:
How to Make Random Header Images?
Written by Jai on May 2, 2008 – 12:14 pm - 1,235 views
You are using a neat WordPress theme with an image header but want to have multiple images that you can randomize on your blog? Here is how to go about it…
STEP 1 - Editing Images
Make all your header images that you want to randomize of the same size (dimensions) and format. For example, if you have GIF images then all should be of the same extension. I hope you get the point.
STEP 2 - Naming Images
All the names of your header images should follow a similar pattern. Here is an example we will use :-
blogtop-1.gif
blogtop-2.gif
blogtop-3.gif
blogtop-4.gif
We do this because when writing the code, we will try to randomize the number part (logically, randomization is done by numbers in any programming language) and keep the text part similar for all.
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Written by Jai on April 24, 2008 – 10:19 am - 1,055 views
Every blogger has got two basic choices when building his own blog— Either he can sign up for a hosted solution, or he can install a serve-it-yourself solution and take care of it on your own. Signing up for a hosted solution is generally easier (especially if you don’t already have your own website and you’re not terribly interested in jumping through a hoop or two to get one), while installing a serve-it-yourself solution can be more powerful.
Popular hosted blogging CMS (Content Management Systems) include Blogger.com, Typepad.com, Vox.com, Squarespace.com, and others. With these services, you simply access the site, go through a registration process and, in some cases, enter your payment information to cover the monthly fee. (Some are free, some require payment.) These are hosted services - somebody else worries about the Internet server, setting up the Web addresses and all that sort of stuff. You’re given a URL for your site (mostly a sub-domain), some online tools for editing your blog (and, perhaps, for editing the template and making some minor changes to the functionality), and you’re ready to go. With a serve-it-yourself CMS (like WordPress) you’ll need to do a little legwork. First, you’ll need some sort of web hosting account from an Internet Service Provider. You might already have something along those lines from the Internet Service Provider that you use for Internet access, or you may need to shop for a web hosting account that will support the specifications of your blogging software.
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Written by Jai on April 5, 2008 – 11:32 am - 1,910 views
There are many ways in which you can maximize your RSS subscribers. I have tried to compile some of the best ones here:
1. Making the most out of your blog posts
- Write descriptive headings for your blog posts – They should purely point to the content in your post and describe optimally about what is written and it is relevant to whom and what.
- Write articles for your post with a minimum of 150-200 words because too less content will dissatisfy your readers who are trying to find information on a topic (that’s why they subscribe to the blog).
- Put internal and external links related to your articles and it would also be better if the keywords in your title match the links you have posted with the article. It adds more relevance and usefulness to what you are informing your readers about.
- Make the post user friendly and your blog easy to subscribe. The new readers of your post, who liked your article, are willing to subscribe, should be easily able to find the ‘subscribe now’ option on your site.
- When possible, try eliminating the pronouns and putting more descriptive nouns. The sparking idea behind this is that when the search engines start searching for the key words, they identify the semantics in your article and thus the searcher can approach your blog site or article. It helps your post reach its highest potential.
2. Comments should be encouraged on every post of your blog. A well written blog entry invites more readers and comments from them. Make it known to them that you value their distinct comments and they herald an improving ladder for you.
3. Give people different options on how they want to subscribe as readers like e-mail and different RSS feed readers (e.g. Google Feed Reader). Some may even prefer feed readers depending on their Internet browsers.
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Written by Jai on April 2, 2008 – 4:32 pm - 1,973 views
A lot of people wanted to know the technique for adding a Drop Down Menu to their WordPress themes. So, here is a quick way to do this. This tweak will let you create menus, sub-menus and sub-sub-menus and it applies to your pages, categories and archives.
Step 1
Download the Suckerfish Dropdown Menu for WordPress. Even if you have installed WordPress 2.5 recently, this plugin works perfectly. Extract the plugin and put the files in your wp-content/plugins folder. Activate the plugin from your wp-admin section.
Step 2
Now, open your existing theme folder which you have applied to your WordPress installation. Most probably, you already have a navigation menu in the theme (most themes have it in the header.php file). So, just replace your existing menu code with this command :-
<?php suckerfish(); ?>
Save and close the file.
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Written by Jai on April 1, 2008 – 6:23 am - 1,260 views
Today, I am going to talk about that part of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) process, which an ordinary blogger does not know of, or tends to forget while building his blog. Normally, if you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, a bit of SEO is already done for you, thanks to the WordPress development team. But here are some very important key points that you should remember while running your blog. Let us start from the basics and move on to some advanced techniques.
Title Tag
You should never ignore the importance of your <title> tag. The keywords for your blog/website should be included in the title tag and the length of the title tag should fall between 60-90 characters. The search engine spiders always look through your titles while looking for relevant content. In WordPress, the title tag is usually formed by the name of your blog which can be found in Options menu of the wp-admin section.
URL Keywords
Make sure that your keywords are also prominent in your blog links. WordPress saves you from the hard work by providing custom permalink feature, which allows you to choose the suitable link structure as per your requirements.
Keywords in Heading Tags
This is another place where your keywords play a major role. When using WordPress, these tags are commonly used in the post titles (<h2> tags). Remember that your post content should also have those particular keywords that you used in these titles.
Keywords in Image Tags
When using images in your documents or posts, always specify the alt text for the same. Search Engine spiders cannot see the images but they can index their textual descriptions specified in the <alt> tags. This process is also used for validation purposes.
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Written by Jai on March 19, 2008 – 12:58 pm - 1,757 views
How many times have you wished that there was an online tool where you could test run your newly designed WordPress theme or the latest website that you have designed for cross browser compatibility?
How many times have you found yourself frowning upon IE or any other browser for not being standards compliant and showing messy designs?
I am sure that every designer or developer must have searched online for such a thing at some time or the other. So, after much searching I finally found a website that definitely comes to your rescue. Browser Shots, which is a free open-source service, lets you make screenshots of your website in different browsers that are available on the Internet. When you submit your URL, it will be added to the standard job queue. A number of different computers will open your website in their browser and then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server. Not only does this tool run your website on different browsers but also on different operating systems including Linux, Windows and Mac OS. The browsers included are MSIE (Versions 4.0 - 8.0), Firefox (Versions 1.0 - 3.0), Opera (Versions 9.23 - 9.26), Safari (Versions 1.3 - 3.1), Netscape Navigator and others.
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Written by Jai on March 6, 2008 – 3:50 pm - 1,725 views
Let’s say that you have built a great website and you have a good amount of traffic coming on your website generating ample business for you. Now, it’s time to do an analysis of your website traffic and the incoming links. In today’s world, it is very important to be aware of linking related data of your site and for this you can use third-party analytics tools such as Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Microsoft’s Webmaster Portal etc. You can get most fascinating and useful information through these tools which are absolutely free of charge.
You can also go for fee-based software programs, where you can get some more information about your links. There are advanced and powerful web based tools useful for knowing about the number of visitors of your website, they can also tell you the age of a link to the IP block of the site on which the link exists. You can download scripts and extensions to intense your search results. If you are only concerned with the broken links of your site, then you can use Xenu’s Link Sleuth which is freely available.
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Written by Jai on February 20, 2008 – 11:56 am - 1,599 views
Here comes a new way to make money online! Now you can place YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) ads in Adobe PDF files which will help you meet your PPC targets. The service is known as “Ads for Adobe PDF” and you earn money whenever your readers click on an ad.
This service lets you place upto five ads to the right of your document which does not obscure the content of your PDF files. Unfortunately, this service is only available for U.S. based PDF publishers just like the YPN restriction. When applying for the program, you will have to give details about the number of PDF files that will contain the ads. In order to make your PDF files ad-enabled, you have to login to Adobe’s website and upload your PDF files. After a few minutes you will receive the PDF file back as an e-mail attachment ready to display Yahoo ads.
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Written by Jai on February 17, 2008 – 2:15 pm - 3,585 views
1. Create a stunning 3D push button…
Nowadays, we can see 3d push buttons nearly everywhere. Most of them are achieved via JavaScript. The main problem of using these scripts is that there are greater chances that they might get blocked by the browser. And with the advent of many ad blockers it has become a serious drawback. In this situation, the CSS comes to rescue. Thought we can’t create 3d push buttons as professional as created by using JavaScript, we can create a basic 3d push button with the help of CSS.
The main CSS commands you’ll need are:
<font color="#0000ff"><code>a.pushbut {</code></font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">color:#26a;</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">display:block; </font><font color="#0000ff">border:1px solid; </font><font color="#0000ff">border-color:#aaa #000 #000 #aaa; </font><font color="#0000ff">text-decoration:none;</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">width:8em; text-align:center;</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">height:2em; line-height:2em;</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">background:#fc0; font-weight:bold</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">}</font><font color="#0000ff">a.pushbut:hover</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">{</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">color:#26a;</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">background:#ffd633;</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">position:relative;</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">top:1px;</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">left:1px;</font><font color="#0000ff"> </font><font color="#0000ff">border-color:#000 #aaa #aaa #000 </font><font color="#0000ff">}</font>
^^These must be within <style> tag.
Off course, you can change any settings you want like back color, alignment etc.
Now to create a button, we must specify the class object as push but within the <BODY> tag…that’s all
Ex:
<p><a href=”http://www.blogohblog.com/” onclick=”return false” onkeypress=”return false” title=”visit my blog” class=”pushbut”>Visit blogohblog</a></p>
In order to view how the above example looks, click here
To view the complete source of the above example, click here
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