Entries categorized as ‘WordPress’
Why do you need ping services? There are many answers for that question. First, it may be that you want everybody know about your newly posted article(s). Second, by using ping services your blog/website might be indexing right away from search engines. Thus it may in term increase your web traffic. If you use self-hosted WordPress blog, then you may follow the steps below to implement ping services.
For the WordPress.com bloggers, your blog has already built in with ping service Ping-O-Matic as your default ping service. If you want to manually ping your blog using ping services other than those offered in Ping-O-Matic, then you may find pingmyblog.com useful. It allows you to selectively choose your choices of ping services to submit.
The above list of ping services is working as of this post is being written. However, if you find any of them is no longer working, please inform me. I’ll appreciate that.
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Categories: Blogging Tools · WordPress · WordPress Tips · WordPress.com · WordPress.com Tips
Tagged: ping, ping blogs
Why do we need a contact form on our blog/website? The main reason is to cut down the email spammings. You’ll be glad if you set up one for your blog/website since it hides your email in it. So do you want to find out which contact form is good for your blog/website? I searched the web and provided a list below. Check them out; find out which one is good for your blog/website. If a blog/website have multiple blogging authors, then some of the contact forms will allow you to set up to only send an email to a specific author.
- Contact Form ][ - a WordPress Plugin - Contact Form ][ is Ryan Duff's original contact form. It is a WordPress plugin, that offers a simple drop-in contact form in any new/existing post/page.
- PXS Mail Form WordPress Plugin - This plugin has updated email contact from plugin built off of Ryan Duff’s excellent wp-contact form plugin. PXS includes additional checks over the original ...
- Enhanced WordPress contact form plugin - Another improved comtact form based on Ryan Duff's Contact Form ][. Now it adds: referring page on your site; if the original referer is a search engine, the keywords used in the query; the original referrer; spam protection ...
- cformsII - contact form - cforms is a highly customizable, flexible and powerful form builder plugin, covering a variety of use cases and features from attachments to multi form management, you can even have multiple forms on the same page!
- contact form 7 - Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible. Supports multiple contact forms. You can customize form and mail contents with simple markup. AJAX submitting with jQuery Form Plugin. Spam filtering with Akismet. Bot prevention with CAPTCHA.
- Secure Form Mailer Plugin For WordPress - This is the WordPress plugin version of the secure PHP form mailer script. This plugin has a wide range of features including: support for multiple instances, an easy to use dynamic form generation system (any number of fields, in any order), multiple...
- SCF2 Contact Form - WordPress contact form plugin that lets you read and reply to emails while logged in WordPress and sends emails to multiple users.
- Enquiry/Contact Form - This plugin is designed to be an easily customisable and extendable method of creating an enquiry form for a rental property website (or any website that allows users to enquire about date periods), or even just a standard contact form.
Which one do you use? If it is not listing above, let me know in the comment section.
Update: For a WordPress.com blog, you have options to put a contact form in your post or page. For details of how to implement it, just check out this post: Contact Forms. See my contact form in Contact page that I've just created. Enjoy blogging!
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Categories: WordPress · WordPress.com · WordPressPlugins
Tagged: Contact Form, Contact Forms
There are two types of sitemaps in general; namely HTML (Hyper Text Makeup Language) sitemap and XML (EXtensible Makeup Language) sitemap. Do you want to know the difference between them? If you do, then read on…
What is HTML Sitemap?
HTML sitemap is used to list all hyperlinks of different sections and pages of your blog/website. These hyperlinks are normally listed hierarchically and they may provide description for each link. It is no doubt that adding a HTML sitemap to your blog/website will help your visitors navigate and find information easily. So HTML sitemap is primarily created for humans. Although a HTML sitemap is created for your visitors, indexing bot such as Googlebot might have a better chance to crawl your first-time-missed links again since all the files are well put together in your sitemap page. Check this blog’s sitemap to get a general idea of how a HTML sitemap looks like. You can create your own HTML sitemap from HTML Sitemap Generator here.
What is XML Sitemap?
XML sitemap lists URLs (world wide web addresses) for your blog/website in a special format. See the table below for a XML Sitemap with one single URL:
|
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″>
<url>
<loc>http://www.yoursite.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2007-12-29</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
</url>
</urlset> |
It allows webmasters to inform search engines about URLs in your blog/website for easy indexing. XML sitemap is created for search engines but not for humans. Submitting a XML sitemap to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN will not only help your blog/website being indexing quickly and efficiently but also increase your blog/website’s visibilities in search engines as well. For a full version WordPress blog, you can use Google XML Sitemaps plugin to do the trick for you.
Do you have anything to say about this topic? Or any questions?
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Why Do We Need Sitemaps?
Sitemap? What is it? How to add it to our website?
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Categories: Google Service · WordPress · WordPressPlugins
Tagged: HTML Sitemap, HTML Sitemap vs. XML Sitemap, XML Sitemap
Have you ever thought about to add a signature to you blog post? Adding a signature to each post of you blog will no doubt bring your personal touch to your readers. It is an identity of representing you online. Moreover it brings an uniqueness to your blog as well. I was inspired by Lorelle VanFossen’s signature on her blog.
For WordPress.com Blog
I think it is fun to have your own signature for your blog just like you sign your signature in each email. It also serves a purpose: that is something uniquely reflects your personality. I like to do things differently because we are all unique in many ways. So if you are like me, then go ahead to create your unique signature using your desired program. Make sure you save your signature and copy and paste it at the bottom of each post. I use My Live Signature program to create mine here. What do you think?
For WordPress Blog (WordPress.org Blog)
If you have a WordPress blog, you can just download LiveSig v0.4 plugin here to your PC (personal computer). LiveSig: WordPress Plug provides step-by-step instructions of how to install it. Basically you just need to unzip LiveSigv0.4 file that you’ve just downloaded, then upload it to the folder public_html/wordpress-content/plugins/ using any FTP. Then login to your WordPress Dashboard, and click on Plugins/LiveSig v0.4 to activate it. Finally click on Settings/LiveSig/LiveSig Options. Make sure you select an appropriate user, enter the corresponding MyLiveSignature code and hit Save button to save it. It is Free to obtain MyLiveSignature code, but you need to register in that site to get it. For a small amount of money, you can get animated signature code there too. Have fun bloggging!
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Adding a Signature To Personalize Your Blog Post
Categories: WordPress · WordPress Tips · WordPress.com · WordPressPlugins
Tagged: Signature
Adding a favicon to your blog/website is one way to express yourself. It tells people a little bit about your blog/website too. Professional blogs/websites will never leave it out. If you don’t know what a favicon is, it is a 16×16 pixels or 32×32 pixels image (icon) that is displaced in your browser’s address bar. Check the screenshot below:
I just added a favicon to my WordPress blog. Now it is your turn to add yours. If you don’t know how, the following steps could be useful:
- First you need to have your image ready in your PC (personal computer).
- Second visit FavIcon from Pics and follow its instructions there to create a favicon.ico image file.
- Third download favicon.ico image file to your PC and unzip the file.
- Next upload the unzipped favicon.ico image to public_html/wp-content/themes/your-theme-name/. Make sure you change your-theme-name to be your real theme name.
- Next login to your WordPress Admin Dashboard; click on Design/Theme Editor/Header (header.php).
- Then insert <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_directory’); ?>/favicon.ico” /> in your header.php file; more specifically between <head></head>.
- Finally save your header.php file.
If you use Internet Explorer as your browser, then holding Ctrl and hit R at the same time to reload your blog/website. If you use Mozilla Firefox as your browser, then holding Ctrl and hit F5 at the same time to refresh your blog/website. You should be able to see a favicon which is next to your URL now. However, some people’s favicon may not be shown immediately.
Update: This is for full version WordPress blog only. If you have a WordPress.com blog, this will not apply to you since you don’t have access to all the files.
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How to Add a Favicon to Your New Blogger?
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Categories: Blogging Tools · How To · WordPress · WordPress Tips
Tagged: Favicon, WordPress Blog, WordPress Tips
I searched around the Internet and found some very useful Plugins most WordPress bloggers like to use. These Plugins are for full version WordPress (WordPress.org) blogs. That means if you have WordPress.com blog, then you can’t use them. As you know Plugins extend WordPress to do almost everything for your blog/website. Check out the following articles to see what Plugins other bloggers have suggested:
- The Top Ten WordPress Plugins – The author has picked the top ten WordPress Plugins out of hundreds. Those WordPress Plugins will make your blogging life easier.
- 10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins – One of the biggest advantages to use WordPress software is that it provides bloggers countless of Plugins that you can use to extend your blog software.
- Top 10 WordPress Plugins – The wonderful thing about WordPress Plugins is that it allows you to add so much functionalities to your blog/website. Leap to the site to see what WordPress Plugins the author has rounded up for you.
After I’ve read the above articles, I am amazed WordPress Plugins can do so much for our blog/website. Maybe you have already had installed some of them. So what are your favorite Plugins you are using now? or what Plugins do you want to recommend to your readers?
Categories: WordPress · WordPressPlugins
Tagged: Plugins, WordPressPlugins
Yesterday I wrote a post, What Can You Do With Your API Key?. After I published it, I saw this smiley 
showing up on my blog. I was wondering how I got that. I knew I am pretty new to WordPress.com. Moreover, I did not learn how to use smilies yet. Besides I am not a big fan for using smilies. So I was really puzzled. I checked my editor but didn’t see anything on its toolbar showing us how to use any smilies. I searched the Internet for an answer. From What smilies can I use?, I found out that ‘8)’ was the main reason for displaying this smiley (meaning cool) on my blog.
In my post, What Can You Do With Your API Key? I had a date written as (4/28/2008), but it was truncated to be (4/28/200 and turned ‘8)’ to be . It was all messed up. If you don’t want to use any smilies, then you can turn it off from your admin interface. Login to your WordPress Dashboard, click on Settings/Writings, find Formatting, uncheck Convert emoticons like 
and 
to graphics on display. After you’ve done that, make sure you click on Save Changes button to save it. See the screenshot below:
Update: I know many people love to use smilies. I become to like it a little bit better. Occasionally I will use some of them. I guess if you know how to control them, then they will not mess up your blog. You may bookmark this post for future reference. I even come back to check how each similey is represented here whenever I need to use them.
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Categories: Blogging Tools · WordPress · WordPress.com
Tagged: Smiley, Smileys, Smilies
I own both WordPress.com and WordPress.org blogs. The difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is that
WordPress.com is different. It’s a web site that provides blogs hosted free of charge. The software on WordPress.com is very similar but not exactly the same software you can download from WordPress.org. It is a multi-user version of WordPress that allows many thousands of blogs to be hosted on a single web server. The free blog hosting does not come with the ability to upload plugins or themes. Because any change in the software affects every blog on the system, some of the things you can do on your own hosted WordPress blog are disabled here. Some of these features may become available in the future as paid upgrades, comparable with traditional hosting fees.
Click on the picture to enlarge – WordPress.com Dashboard
WordPress.org is open source blogging software that is freely available to anyone to download. The software must be downloaded and installed onto a computer. WordPress, being Internet software, must be installed on a web server–that’s a computer that is set up to serve web pages over the internet–and your personal computer probably isn’t a web server. So, to make the free WordPress software work, you have to own a web server or rent some space on one. That’s called hosting and it’s not usually free. There are plenty of good hosts out there who will let you install WordPress on their web servers for a reasonable fee. You can then do anything you like with your own copy of WordPress: install plugins and themes, etc.
Click on the picture to enlarge – WordPress.org Dashboard
So it is your decision to decide using self-hosting blog or a Free blog. For me I’ll eventually move my WordPress.com blog to WordPress.org blog because it will give you freedom of what you want to do with your own blog. I have already had one that is a self-hosting WordPress blog.
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Categories: WordPress · WordPress.com
Tagged: WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org
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