How to Ping Your Blog?

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.

• Log in to your admin and click on Settings/Writing.
• Scroll all the way down, copy and paste the following list into the box under Update Services, and save it.

  http://1470.net/api/ping

  http://api.moreover.com/ping

  http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

  http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

  http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

  http://bblog.com/ping.php

  http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

  http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

  https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast

  http://ping.blo.gs/

  http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

  http://ping.feedburner.com

  http://ping.myblog.jp

  http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

  http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

  http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/

  http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

  http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

  http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

  http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

  http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

  http://rpc.wpkeys.com

  http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx

  http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

  http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

  http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

  http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

  http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

• After that WordPress will automatically ping your blog whenever you publish your new post.

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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How to Implement Google’s Translation on WordPress.com Blog?

While checking the summary statistics in StatCounter about my website, I discovered that many of my visitors are from foreign countries other than United States. I also have seen many blogs/websites embedded Google translation service with icons of their corresponding country flags. So I think it is very important that you can provide this kind of service for your visitors. Although the translation service provided from Google is not perfect, hopefully Google will improve it further in the future. If you are interested and want to implement the codes on your blog just like mine here. Follow the steps below:

• Download the widget codes here. It provides 22 languages with its corresponding flags.
• Login to your WordPress Dashboard; click on Design/Widgets.
• Click on Add next to text; you should see text widget is added to the right sidebar.
• Click on Edit to open up its text area; put the above codes there; give a title if you wish.
• Click on Change to save it.
• Move this text widget wherever you like it to be.
• Finally click on Save Change to save it.

If you use Google Blogger as blog platform, check out these articles: Translate Your Blog/Website in Different Languages – Part 1 and Translate Your Blog/Website in Different Languages – Part 2.
Enjoy!

A Contact Form For Your WordPress Blog

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.

• ^{editor's pick} Secure and accessible PHP contact form for WordPress - This plugin lets you add a contact form to a WordPress page or a template. It is secure & accesible contact form for WordPress + multi-user version.

• 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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A Signature For Your Blog Post?

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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How to Get Your WordPress.com Blog Verified By Google?

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post, How to Add Google Sitemap to WordPress.com Blog?, which showed you how you can submit your blog’s feed to Google Webmaster Tools account. Now you might wonder how you can get your WordPress.com blog verified by Google too. It seems it is impossible to do that because we don’t have controls of our files; but hope is always there. The article, Get your WordPress.com Blog Google Verified, will guide you the way of how to do that. Still I want to show you the way I got my WordPress.com blog verified here:

• Go to Google Webmaster Tools account. If you don’t have one, get a Free one here.

• Once you got one; sign in with it.

• If this is the first time you sign in, then type your blog’s/website’s URL (the address for your blog/website) in the text field and click on Add Site.

• Under Verified? click on Verify button

• A new window is shown; saying Verification Status: NOT VERIFIED.

• In the drop-down list; choose Upload a HTML File.

• More information will be shown here. Here you have two choices to submit your blog/website:

1. I’ve created a file named google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html.

(google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html is given by Google. You’ll get your own)

2. I’ve uploaded the file to http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/ and can view http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html in my browser.

(Make sure you replace yoursitename with your own domain name.)

• Since you know we don’t have controls of our files; so we’ll go for the choice 1.

• Go to your WordPress.com Dashboard, click on Write/Page to create a new page named http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html. This page can be empty. Make sure you change yoursitename to be your own domain name. (Keep it private once Google has verified your blog/website)

• Go back to your Google Webmaster Tools account and click on Verify button.

Now wait for Google to update your status. Google Webmaster Tools will inform you once your blog/website are being verified. After you’ve succeeded, you will enjoy reports about your pages’ visibility on Google.

Comparison of Google Blogger and WordPress.com Blog

As a new blogger, you probably like to choose a Free blog service to get started. Both Google blogger and WordPress.com provide this kind of Free service you can get. However, you may want to find out the similarities and differences between them before you decide to pick one. Since I own both Google Blogger and WordPress.com blog, I can tell you what the similarities and differences between them:

Google Blogger	WordPress.com
Requires minimal HTML knowledge	No need to know anything about HTML
Allows CSS edit	Don’t allow CSS edit unless you upgrade it
Allows Google AdSense	Don’t allow any third party codes
Allows you to edit HTML code	Can’t access any files
Allows you to add your own footer	Can’t do anything about the footer
Can’t create any pages	Allows you to create pages
Can’t import other blogs	Allows you to import other blogs
Layout is narrow but can be modified	Has more variety wider themes
newNo trackback service instead has backlink service	Has trackback service
No comment spam protection	Offers anti-spam protection (Akismet)
Can add images & videos	Can add images, videos, audios, and media
Labels (can be Categories/Tags) is available	Tags and Categories are available
Can add your own widgets	Some themes came with certain widgets. newAllows you to add text widgets
Hard to redirect to your paid-hosting server	Can easy redirect to your paid- hosting server
Allows you to schedule future-dated posts (just added by Blogger)	Allows you to schedule future-dated posts
newHas OpenID Service	newHas OpenID Service
newNo undo/redo function in its editor	newHas undo/redo function in its editor
newNo table function in its editor	newNo table function in its editor
newComment editor is in-line (just added by Blogger)	newComment editor is in-line
newAllows you to moderate comments	newAllows you to moderate comments
newOffers feed service	newOffers feed service
newNo Blog Stats, no Blog Suffer, and no Tag Suffer services	newOffers Blog Stats, Blog Suffer, and Tag Suffer services
newNo sign up service	newAllows your readers to sign up

These are all I can recall so far. Make a wise decision before you choose one. For me I prefer Google Blogger since it allows me to hack the codes the way I like. I also like my self-hosting WordPress blog too for it also allows me to study those PHP files there. However, if you are thinking to temporarily use a Free blog service and eventually transition it to a paid-hosting service. Then I suggest you to get WordPress.com blog since it will make your life easier when one day you are ready to pay for your own hosting. WordPress.org blog doesn’t give those limitations listed above from WordPress.com. See The Difference Between WordPress.com and WordPress.org here. WordPress.org gives all the freedoms you need; no limitations such as posting third party codes. Moreover you can have full access to all the files.

Update: I’ll add updates to this post whenever I recall some features about Google Blogger vs. ordPress.com. More updates have been added. See the items marked new.

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Using or Not Using Smilies on Your Blog

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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Where Did ‘Possible related posts’ Come From?

Today I found out that something I didn’t write but showed up as Possible related posts in one of my posts. I checked my original post I’d written; but did not see anything showing up like those links there. I was wondering where did they come from. I searched WordPress.com Forum and I found an answer to this mystery: How do I remove something I didn’t write from a post? Actually WordPress.com provides extra features. See the screenshot below:

You can find them by clicking on Design/Extras/ from your WordPress.com Dashboard. If you leave the second one as default, which is unchecked, then Possible related posts will show up in your post. I don’t mind to use it as long as the links to my posts are relevant. However I don’t like the fact that once you chose to use this feature you can’t control what links to be shown or what links not to be shown.

OpenID? What Is It?

I own both WordPress.org and WordPress.com blogs. OpenID only appears on my WordPress.com Dashboard (click Settings to see it). The question is what can we do about it? I searched around for an answer. Here is the information I got so far. Actually OpenID is just the URL (website address) of your blog. If you registered a Free blog with WordPress.com, the OpenID just came with your WordPress.com blog automatically. It permits you to login to other people’s websites as an ID (if those websites support OpenID logins). It eliminates multiple usernames and passwords that you normally have to remember for logins. With one OpenID, it’ll no doubt make it easy for you to login. OpenID is still in the transition of being adopted by the publics but becomes more and more popular nowadays. Big companies such as AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, and etc. already use OpenID as a mean to allow their customers to login to their websites.

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Can You Add a StatCounter on Your Blog? How?

The question is “Are you allowed to have a stat counter on your WordPress.com blog?” The answer is “Yes”. You can confirm it from WordPress.com Forum here. Now you find out you can add a stat counter on your WordPress.com blog. The next question is how can you implement it? These are the steps I set up mine on this blog:

• First register your preferred Free stat counter. I heard StatCounter is pretty good. So this is the one I’ve got.

• Second login to your StatCounter account; create My Project for you blog/website and get the code; here you can decide whether you like your stat counter being visible/invisible.

• Third login to your WordPress.com Dashboard; click on Design/Widgets.

• A new window will open; click Add on Text button on the left side; Text button will be added to the right sidebar.

• Now open the Text button on the right sidebar; copy and paste the code you’ve got from your StatCounter account; click Change to close it.

• Arrange the Text button to wherever you prefer; make sure you click on Save Changes button to save it

It is that easy. See mine on the right upper side corner.

Update: The image showed up when I first published this article. However it disappeared when I reloaded the blog. I wonder what the cause is. Although the image didn’t show up, the tracker is working.
Update: The image showed up again after I’d changed my Security Program from my PC.

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