There was a time when web pages had to be written specially for mobile devices and most devices available in the market just couldn’t display regular web sites designed using HTML.

The Safari browser on the iPhone and iPod touch devices is responsible for more than half of the world’s mobile Internet usage and it doesn’t look like that uptrend is going to change soon. The reason behind this popularity is that, unlike other smart phone browsers, mobile Safari can display regular webpages as well as desktop based web browsers.

But, while the iPhone and iPod touch browsers display almost all websites perfectly, using a mobile specific theme you can offer a lot of advantages to your visitors.

For one, the mobile optimized pages will load a lot faster. The fonts will be optimized for reading on a device with a small screen and last but not the least, the user won’t have to scroll and zoom just to read the content.

But, if you’re worried that you’ll have to do a complete rewrite of your blog’s theme to make a mobile optimized version, don’t worry, WPtouch is here to your rescue.

WPtouch is a wordpress plugin that completely changes the way your blog looks on a mobile device like the iPhone, iPod touch or the Android. In that sense, it acts more like a theme for your blog rather than a plugin.

If you’re using wordpress version 2.8 or above, the easiest method to install WPtouch is to login to the admin panel and click on the “Add New” link under Plugins.

Search for the term WPtouch and when the WPtouch plugin shows up in the search results, click on the Install link to install it automatically.

Once the installation is completed, you can activate the plugin by clicking on the Activate link on the same page.

The plugin will now be installed and activated, ready to start serving a mobile version of your blog to your iPhone totting visitors.

If you want, you can just leave it at that and WPtouch will happily keep serving your visitors as long as you want, but if you’re like me and like to customize each and every part of your blog, I’d suggest that you give the Settings pane a look and customize certain aspects of WPtouch to better match your blog.

Click on the WPtouch link under Settings.

This is where you can change the theme’s style, colors and the icons used. When you’re happy with your custom changes, click the Save Options button.

If you use the WP Super Cache plugin on your blog, like I do, then you need to make some more changes to the your setup.

Click on the WP Super Cache link under Settings and check the tick box that says “Mobile Device Support” and click the Update Status button.

Scroll a little further down the page and you’ll find the Rejected User Agents text box. You need to add the following user agents to the list that is already there.

• phone
• ipod
• android
• dream
• cupcake
• webos
• incognito
• webmate
• opera mini
• blackberry9530
• blackberry9500

Save the list.

That’s it. You can now happily declare your blog as the most mobile friendly blog in the neighborhood.

Make Your WordPress Blog iPhone Compatible Using WPtouch originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Related posts:

1. 11 Ways To Secure Your WordPress Blog
2. [Hacking WordPress]: How To Clone And Migrate Your WordPress Blog To New Server
3. How to Create a Multi-national Blog Without Being a Language Expert
4. How To Create A ‘Maintenance’ Holding Page When Upgrading Your WordPress Blog
5. 10 Great WordPress Plugins That Turn Your Blog Into A CMS

1. Database settings

define('DB_NAME', 'putyourdbnamehere');
define('DB_USER', 'usernamehere');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourpasswordhere');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

This is the first thing that you need to configure in order for WordPress to work. In most cases, you only need to change the database name, username and password. For the DB_HOST, ‘localhost’ should work most of the times. If not, ask your server administrator for details.

2. Changing the database charset value

define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

You won’t have to change this value 99% of the time. Change this only if you are very sure that your database is using a different charset.

3. Changing the database character set sort order

define('DB_COLLATE', '');

Once again, change this only if you know what you are doing. If not, leaving it blank is the best option.

4. Authentication keys

define('AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');

The authentication keys are used to insure better encryption of information stored in the user’s cookies. Go to https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/ to generate a new set of keys and copy/paste them into your wp-config.php file.

If you are using WPMU, you will see three extra sets of authentication keys:

define('AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');

5. Table prefix

$table_prefix = 'wp_';

This $table_prefix settings allow you to change the default wp_ prefix before your WordPress installation.

Note: If your existing database is already using the default wp_ prefix, changing this value will not change the database value, and it will also cause your site to break. To change your existing table prefix, refer to this tutorial.

6. Language and Language Directory

define('WPLANG', 'de_DE');
define('LANGDIR', 'mylanguagedirectory');

If you are using a language translation file for your blog, this is where you define the language that you are using and the location of the translation (.mo) files.

Defining of LANGDIR is optional. If it is not specified, WordPress will first look up the wp-content/languages folder, follow by wp-includes/languages for the .mo file.

7. Defining the Home and site url

define('WP_SITEURL','http://your-site-url.com');
define('WP_HOME','http://your-site-url.com');

The SITEURL refers to the actual installation path of WordPress (the file path where the wordpress files are located) while the HOME refers to the URL that you want your visitor to access. There are several uses for this

1. For security measure. Install your wordpress in subfolder and have your visitors access them from the root directory
2. Migrating to new URl. When you are moving to a new URL, you can easily restore your database by pointing the WP_SITEURL and WP_HOME to the new URL. No editing of the database is required.

8. Revision count

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', FALSE);
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 3);

Change the number of post revisions for WordPress to record. Giving it a value of FALSE (without the quote) will turn post revisions off.

9. Modify AutoSave Interval

define('AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 160 );

When editing a post, WordPress uses Ajax to auto-save revisions to the post as you edit. You may want to increase this setting for longer delays in between auto-saves, or decrease the setting to make sure you never lose changes. The default is 60 seconds.

10. Define new wp-content location

define( 'WP_CONTENT_DIR', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/blog/wp-content' );
define( 'WP_CONTENT_URL', 'http://example/blog/wp-content');
define( 'WP_PLUGIN_DIR', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/blog/wp-content/plugins' );
define( 'WP_PLUGIN_URL', 'http://example/blog/wp-content/plugins');

Since WP2.6, you are allowed to move the wp-content folder to other destination and still get it working. You just need to specify the filepath of the new location in the wp-config file.

11. Access external configuration files

require_once(‘FilePathToConfigurationFiles’);

For developer, if you need to access external configuration file from within WordPress, the place to define it will be within the wp-config.php. This is useful when integrating another software with WordPress. For example, to integrate bbpress with WordPress, add the following

require_once(‘filepathtoforums/bb-load.php');

to access to the bbpress functions in WordPress.

12. Managing your cookies

define('COOKIE_DOMAIN', '.yoursite.com');
define('COOKIEPATH', preg_replace('|https?://[^/]+|i', '', get_option('home') . '/' ) );
define('SITECOOKIEPATH', preg_replace('|https?://[^/]+|i', '', get_option('siteurl') . '/' ) );
define( 'ADMIN_COOKIE_PATH', SITECOOKIEPATH . 'wp-admin' );
define( 'PLUGINS_COOKIE_PATH', preg_replace('|https?://[^/]+|i', '', WP_PLUGIN_URL)  );

The cookie definition is meant for sites with unusual domain setup. If you are using sub-domains to serve static content, you won’t want WordPress to track the cookies for the static sites. Simply define the COOKIE_DOMAIN option to limit the domain tracked by the cookie.

13. Debug

define('WP_DEBUG', true);

The WP_DEBUG option is especially useful when you are developing a WP site. It allows you to see what went wrong in the code. In actual production site, this option should be turned off (FALSE) as it can affect the performance of the site.

Additionally, if you are planning on modifying some of WordPress’ built-in JavaScript, you can enable the following option:

define('SCRIPT_DEBUG', true);

This will allow you to edit the scriptname.dev.js files in the wp-includes/js and wp-admin/js directories.

14. Configure Error Log

@ini_set('log_errors','On');
@ini_set('display_errors','Off');
@ini_set('error_log','/home/example.com/logs/php_error.log');

This option allows you to turn on php error_logging and logs them to a specific file. This is especially useful for those who have no access to the php.ini file.

15. Increasing memory allocated to PHP

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

Specify the maximum amount of memory that can be consumed by PHP. This setting may be necessary in the event you receive a message such as “Allowed memory size of xxxxxx bytes exhausted”.

16. Cache

define('WP_CACHE', true);

Activate the WP_CACHE for better site performance.

17. Custom User and Usermeta Tables

define('CUSTOM_USER_TABLE', $table_prefix.'my_users');
define('CUSTOM_USER_META_TABLE', $table_prefix.'my_usermeta');

Save the user data to other table instead of the default wp_users.

18. Save queries for analysis

define('SAVEQUERIES', true);

The SAVEQUERIES option allows you to see all the queries made to the database. You can then analyze those queries and see the function that called it, and how long that query took to execute.

NOTE: This will have a performance impact on your site, so make sure to turn this off when you aren’t debugging.

To view the queries, place the following code in the footer of your theme:

<?php
if (current_user_can(’level_10′)){
global $wpdb;
echo “<pre>”;
print_r($wpdb->queries);
echo “</pre>”;
}
?>

The code above uses the level_10 capability so only the administrator will see the query results.

19. Override of default file permissions

define('FS_CHMOD_DIR', (0755 & ~ umask()));
define('FS_CHMOD_FILE', (0644 & ~ umask()));

The above two options allow you to override the default file permissions. You won’t have to define this in most cases. However if your webhost uses restrictive permissions for all user files, then this is the way to go around it.

20. FTP/SSH Constants

define('FS_METHOD', 'ftpext');
define('FTP_BASE', '/path/to/wordpress/');
define('FTP_CONTENT_DIR', '/path/to/wordpress/wp-content/');
define('FTP_PLUGIN_DIR ', '/path/to/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/');
define('FTP_PUBKEY', '/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub');
define('FTP_PRIKEY', '/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa');
define('FTP_USER', 'username');
define('FTP_PASS', 'password');
define('FTP_HOST', 'ftp.example.org:21');

WordPress allows you to upgrade the core version and plugins from within the backend. However, some of you might not be able to enjoy the benefits due to the FTP connection issue. Simply update your wp-config file with the necessary FTP credential and your WP upgrade function should work fine.

21. Control Proxy Access

define('WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL', false);
define('WP_ACCESSIBLE_HOSTS', 'api.wordpress.org');

The above options allow you to access external hosts from your domain. This is useful if you are in a restrictive environment (such as your comapny’s intranet) and you need to access an external host.

Protecting wp-config file

With so many information in the wp-config.php file, the last thing that you want is for hacker to see your wp-config file and gain access to your database.

Add the following code to your .htaccess file to prevent hackers from accessing your wp-config file.

# protect wpconfig.php
<files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

Did I miss out any tricks? Leave it in the comments

Useful WordPress wp-config Tricks That You May Not Know originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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1. 4 Hidden WordPress Features That Are unknown to Many
2. [Hacking WordPress]: How To Clone And Migrate Your WordPress Blog To New Server
3. 8 Useful Tricks To Clean Up & Streamline Your Wordpress Database
4. The Safe Way to Change your WordPress Database Table Prefix
5. 7 Simple WordPress Tricks That You Thought You Know

For all it’s simplicity, a lot of people still shy away from using Wordpress because installing and maintaining it requires a certain level of technical knowhow. Specifically, the knowledge of installing and managing a PHP/MySQL stack and dealing with all the problems that can happen with a botched Wordpress installation.

So, without further ado, we’ve written this post that’ll not only teach you how to install a complete PHP/MySQL stack on your Mac but also teach you to install and configure a fully functional Wordpress install, all without leaving the comforts of your own computer.

MAMP, which stands for Mac-Apache-MySQL-PHP and is an all-in-one solution for people who do not want the hasle of installing and configuring the individual components on their system.

Follow the download link on the MAMP site to get hold of the latest DMG image and double click the image to mount it in the Finder. The download is a bit heavy at about 170 MB but it will be totally worth it … trust me.

One of the best things about OS X is the ease with which software can be installed. To install MAMP in your system just drag the MAMP icon to the Applications folder.

Double click the MAMP icon to launch control panel.

MAMP will automatically start the Apache web server and the MySQL database server and also launch an instance of your default browser to tell you that everything is working fine.

Keep this window open – We’ll need it in a while.

MAMP also bundles a version of phpMyAdmin along with the complete PHP/MySQL stack.

phpMyAdmin is a web based software to manage MySQL databases and we’ll use that to create a database for our Wordpress install.

Click on the phpMyAdmin link in the browser, and when it loads up in your browser, give a name for the new database and press the Create button.

That was probably the easiest MySQL install I’ve ever done.

Now that we have all the infrastructure in place for Wordpress, head over to the Wordpress website and download the latest version of the software.

Unzip the file that you just downloaded into the htdocs folder inside the MAMP folder – /Applications/MAMP/htdocs.

You should now see a wordpress folder inside htdocs. Browse to this folder and open the file named wp-config-sample.php using a text editor.

In this file, find the lines which say:

‘DB_NAME’ – replace ‘putyourdbnamehere’ with ‘the name of the database that you created’
‘DB_USER’ – replace ‘usernamehere’ with ‘root’
‘DB_PASSWORD’ – replace ‘yourpasswordhere’ with ‘root’

Save the file and rename it to ‘wp-config.php’ from ‘wp-config-sample.php’.

Now, open this address in your browser – http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php.

Follow the wizard and at the end of it, use the temporary password that the wizard created for you to login to your shiny new Wordpress Install. That’s it ! You now have a fully functional Wordpress install on your computer to play with all the themes and plugins that you want.

How to Install and Test Wordpress on Your Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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3. The Safe Way to Change your WordPress Database Table Prefix
4. 11 Ways To Secure Your WordPress Blog
5. Understanding WordPress (Self Hosted WordPress vs WordPress.com)

If you are new to blogging and are looking to install your first WordPress blog, then it is easy. Simply change the $table_prefix entry in wp-config.php file, upload the file to the server, then proceed on with the famous 5-mins installation.

For those who have already been blogging for sometime, follow the method below to change your table prefix.

Preparation

Download the following two plugins, install and activate them in your WordPress blog.

WP-DBManager (plugin download page)

Wordpress Table Rename (modified version,  original download page)

Note: I have make a slight modification to the WordPress Table Rename plugin to include changes in the later version of WordPress, but credit must be given to SEO Egghead for creating such an useful plugin.

Get started

Before you do anything to your database, first perform a db backup.

On the left pane, go to Database –> Backup DB. Do a backup of your database.

Next, go to Settings –> Table Rename

Enter a new term for the table prefix.

Click the Create New Tables button to generate new tables with the new prefix. If you have a big database, this process will take a long time.

When it is done, you will see the success message.

If you have a big database, the page might issue a timeout and show a blank page.

Verify your new database tables

Now go to Database->database. You should see the new tables in place.

Migrating your blog

While the plugin provides a way to change the table_prefix value in wp-config.php file, it won’t work in most cases unless you have set the wp-config.php file readable/writable (which I strongly advised against). The best way is to change the value manually.

With your favorite FTP program, download your wp-config.php from the root server.

Open it up with any text editor and scroll down to the section where you see

$table_prefix = 'wp_'

Change it to

$table_prefix = 'YourNewPrefix_'

Save it and re-upload this file back to the server.

Almost there

You have just completed the migration from the old table prefix to new table prefix, there are still several things that you need to do

1. Browse through your site and make sure all the pages, images and content are loading correctly. If you see errors, or that the site is not loading, change the $table_prefix back to ‘wp_‘ and re-upload back to the server.

2. Browse through the settings for each individual plugin and make sure that all the configurations are intact. Some of the plugins use the table prefix for their storage and these values were not changed by the plugin. For such plugins, you will see the settings fall back to their default values. What you have to do is to reconfigure it and re-save it. It will now store in the database with the new table prefix.

3. (Optional) Go to the Database –> Empty/Drop Tables, check the Drop button for all the table with the old prefix. Click the Empty/Drop button to remove them from your database.

Important: Do this only if you are sure that the new tables (with the new prefix) are working correctly.

Note that this is purely optional. Leaving your old table in the database will not hurt your blog and it can serve as a backup and allow you to switch back to them quickly in the event your blog got hacked into. However, if you have a big database, the extra tables could add plenty of overhead to your server. So, make your own judgement.

Last part

Once you are happy with everything, backup the new database. If you have previously schedule a daily backup, you have to reschedule it again to include the new tables.

You can also deactivate and uninstall the WordPress Table Rename plugin. There is no use for it now.

That’s it. You have successfully changed your WordPress database table prefix.

Image credit: naokomc

The Safe Way to Change your WordPress Database Table Prefix originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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1. [Hacking WordPress]: How To Clone And Migrate Your WordPress Blog To New Server
2. 8 Useful Tricks To Clean Up & Streamline Your Wordpress Database
3. Useful WordPress wp-config Tricks That You May Not Know
4. 11 Ways To Secure Your WordPress Blog
5. How To Easily Reset Your WordPress Password via phpMyAdmin

1. Front-end Editor

The Front-end Editor plugin allows you to make changes without having to go to the WordPress built-in editor. It’s a great tool if you have already created and published your blog and just want to make quick edits. It’s great for making edits that do not require any significant changes. However, it’s not really a standalone-type of editor. It’s more to use alongside another one. It doesn’t have any additional features to add to the WordPress built-in editor, but it is nice to have something that doesn’t require you to go to the WordPress administrative area.

2. TinyMCE Advanced

The TinyMCE Advanced plugin adds 16 buttons to the WordPress built-in editor. One of the great things about it is that it’s easy to drag-and-drag the buttons in and out of the window. Therefore, you are able to choose what buttons to have accessible to you when creating or editing a post. You are also able to add your current theme’s CSS stylesheet, so you are able to visualize how the post will look like when you are done.

3.  Dean’s FCKEditor For Wordpress

Dean’s FCKEditor For Wordpress plugin enhances your WordPress built-in editor by providing desktop-word-processing-type of editor. Out of all the editors, this one has the most functionality. Other than the basic word processing features: formatting, styles, find/replace, printing, etc, it comes with a built-in file and upload manager. In addition, it integrates well with the WordPress default media manager and also allows you to insert flash movie and smiley icons into your post.

The plugin also provides you three templates that help in creating your blog posts. It’s definitely worth looking at, if you don’t want to download a desktop blog editor.

4.  WP Super Edit

Just like the above-mentioned plugins, the WP Super Edit plugin allows you to add plenty of additional functionality to your default text editor. Like TinyMCE Advacned, it allows you to add extra buttons (and hence more functionality) to your toolbar. What is more important is that it provides a way for you to arrange your toolbar according to the user role. Now, you can restrict your subscriber or contributor to only a limited set of toolbar while the author or users with higher level of permission to access to the full range of functionality.

In addition, there are also a whole lot of useful HTML tags (like DIV, STYLE, TABLE etc) that you can use in your post. This is particularly useful for coders/developers.

WP Super Edit allows bloggers to control the editor better than the other two. Additionally, it has more features than the other two. However, it can be tedious adding buttons and arranging them in a way that makes sense. It would be easier if they start with all the buttons, and allow users to remove the ones they do not need.

5. Custom TinyMCE

The Custom TinyMCE plugin provides the same type of functionality as the WP Super Edit and TinyMCE Advanced plugins.  However, it lacks the flexibility that the latter provides bloggers. You are able to go into the administrative panel and check the check boxes of the buttons you would like to appear in the your editor. It’s much easier to navigate in that aspect.

However, if you choose the majority or all of the buttons, instead of going to two or more lines, they are just kept in one line. This causes a visual problem because you will have to search for the functionality you are seeking. Furthermore, it also disappears behind the sidebar. It’s a good plugin if you want to add a couple of more buttons to your editor. If you want to add more than that, then this plugin is not for you.

What other WordPress plugins do you use to enhance your text-editor?

Five WYSIWYG Plugins to Enhance the WordPress Built-In Editor originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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2. Understanding WordPress (Self Hosted WordPress vs WordPress.com)
3. [Hacking WordPress]: How To Clone And Migrate Your WordPress Blog To New Server
4. WordPress 2.6 Theme Changing Issue
5. 11 Ways To Secure Your WordPress Blog

1. Co-Authors Plus

Co-Authors Plus allows a blogging team to assign a blog post (or even a page) to more than one author. It has a search-as-you-type input box that makes it easier to find the authors. This is a great tool because you do not have to know how to write their full name. After installing the plugin, you use template tags to allow the listing of the multiple authors. These are the allowed template tags:

• coauthors()
• coauthors_posts_links()
• coauthors_firstnames()
• coauthors_lastnames()
• coauthors_nicknames()
• coauthors_links()
• coauthors_IDs()

These posts will appear on the authors’ posts and feeds. It’s great because it provides blogging teams with many authors to have an easier way to find the desired authors. However, it’s a little difficult for people who do not know how to code.

To find out more information or download the Co-Authors Plus plugin, please visit: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/co-authors-plus/

2. WT Co-Authors

WT Co-Authors allows multiple authors in a different way than the previous plugin. It uses WordPress custom fields to show more than one authors. The custom name field to use is “coauthor.” The value will be the user’s name. There is no maximum in the amount of authors used. You have to ensure that the WordPress theme that you are using has “the_author()” function. If it doesn’t, you will have to manually add

if(function_exists(wt_the_coauthors_link)):
wt_the_coauthors_link();
endif;

It’s an easier way to show collaboration; however, it does not fully use the WordPress role functionality, so Administrators and/or Editors can assign Authors to one blog post.

To find out more information or download the WT Co-Authors plugin, please visit: http://anime2.kokidokom.net/all-team-blogs-attention-the-ultimate-mega-super-awesome-co-authors-plugin-is-here/

3. SP Authors

SP Authors provides a simple way of allowing multiple authors to be assigned to a blog post (or a page). After installing the plugin, you will se a new area that provides a way to manually enter the author’s name. It also has a drop-down menu of all the authors, if you are not sure how to spell their names. Another great feature is if you place the short code [sp-authors], you are able to show a list of the particular’s authors links of other blog posts that he/she has written.

SP Authors is the simplest plugin to use to collaborate among multiple authors in a single blog post. However, the drop-down menu might be overwhelming if you have many authors.

To find out more information or download the SP Authors plugin, please visit: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sp-authors/

If you have a blogging team, one of these plugins will really give you the flexibility of allowing multiple authors to colloborate on a single blog posts. This is especially useful in a complex post that allows you to assign different sections to various authors.

3 Useful Plugins For Multiple Authors Collaboration originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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3. Qumana: An Easy-to-Use Alternative to Desktop Blogging
4. Understanding WordPress (Self Hosted WordPress vs WordPress.com)
5. 8 Useful Tricks To Clean Up & Streamline Your Wordpress Database

What is Global Translator?

Global Translator is a WordPress plugin that gives you the ability to make your blog accessible to your readers in 41 different languages (Please see the next section for the 41 languages). It uses four different translation language – Google Translation Services, Promt Online Translator, Altavista Babel Fish and FreeTranslator – that will be the deciding factor as to which languages your blog can be displayed in.

What are the 41 languages?

The 41 languages are Italian, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese, English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Dutch, Bulgarian, Czech, Croatian, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Norwegian, Catalan, Filipino, Hebrew, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Albanian, Estonian, Galician, Maltese, Thai, Turkish, Hungarian

Note: Remember that the number of languages you are able to access depends on which translation engine you choose

How do I install it?

• If you are using WordPress 2.7 or higher, you are able to search for the Global Translator plugin on the plugin search page and automatically install it.
• If you don’t, then you can click this link: Download Global Translator here

- Extract the zip file and upload global-translator folder folder into the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
- Login to your WordPress admin page, click Plugins. Look for “global-translator,” and click the Activate link.

How do I customize it?

After installing the Global Translator plugin, on your Dashboard, go to Settings->Global Translator.

1. Choose your translation engine (i.e. Google Translation Services, Promt Online Translator, Altavista Babel Fish, or FreeTransalator)

2. Select your default language in the My Blog is written in drop-down menu

3. Choose which languages to make available to your visitors

4. Select how you want the language flags displayed

5. Press the Update Options button

6. Go to the Appearance->Widget section, drag the Global Translator widget to your blog’s sidebar

What if my blog is not widgetized or I want to show the language flags on the actual blog post?

Go into your Editor to the location you want the language flags to appear and type the following php code:

<?php
if(function_exists(”gltr_build_flags_bar”)) {
gltr_build_flags_bar();
}
?>

What do my users have do to translate it to their desired language?

I recommend placing the Global Translator widget as the first widget on your blog’s sidebar. Users will select their desired language’s flag, and the page will be translated. Below is a an example where the blog was translated from English to Spanish:

What other software do you use to translate your site?

How to Create a Multi-national Blog Without Being a Language Expert originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Related posts:

1. How To Create A ‘Maintenance’ Holding Page When Upgrading Your WordPress Blog
2. 10 Great WordPress Plugins That Turn Your Blog Into A CMS
3. 11 Ways To Secure Your WordPress Blog
4. [Hacking WordPress]: How To Clone And Migrate Your WordPress Blog To New Server
5. WordPress 2.6 Theme Changing Issue

Desktop blog editors provide bloggers additional functionalities that are missing in your blog’s default editor (e.g. WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, etc.). Additionally, you are able to write and edit your blog posts offline, which provides a way to save your work on your computer’s hard drive while also not having to be connected to the Internet. One of the best desktop-based blog editors is Qumana.

What is Qumana?

Qumana is a desktop-based blog editor that allows you to create and modify blog posts for more than one blog. Additionally, it provides you access to blog posts offline and without a need of a browser. It eases editing and insertion of various types of media that is usually a headache in your default blog editor. One unique function is the integration with its own keyword-drive ad system, which is very much like Google AdSense. It also allows you to add basic Technorati tag that is usually only able to work with other blog editors if you install a plugin. Furthermore, it rivals fee-based blog editors that have the same or less functions that Qumana has to offer. It can be installed on Mac, Windows, or Linux.

What Blog Platforms does Qumana Work With?

Qumana works with a variety of blog platforms. They are the following:

• Angelfire
• Blogger/Blogspot
• BlogHarbor
• Blogware
• Bryght
• DiaryLand
• Drupal
• LiveJournal
• MovableType
• MSN Spaces
• Tripod
• TypePad
• Roller
• SquareSpace
• Wordpress.com
• Wordpress.org
• Plus most platforms that support the Blogger, MovableType or MetaWeblog API’s

Can I edit blog entries that I didn’t create using Qumana?

Yes, you are able to import your blog entries you created outside of Qumana. You can also import your blog categories. Tags are the only items that you are unable to reuse. You have to continue retyping them for each new blog post.

Can I ping services to know that I updated my blog?

Yes, Qumana provides you the ability of adding different ping services, so you can alert them after you publish a new blog post.

Does it support plugins?

At this moment, they do not support plugins.

Can I reuse what I write?

Yes, with Qumana’s DropPad. You are able to drag and drop images, texts, and links to your posts. The DropPad allows you to copy+paste information you find while browsing without having to open another program to contain what you collect.

Can I insert ads in my blog posts?

Q Ads is an advertising network that works within Qumana to insert keyword-driven ads into your blog posts. It provides an easy way to make money on your blogs without having to create an affiliate or Google Adsense account. Q Ads is easy to sign up for and use within Qumana.

Qumana provides a blog editor for all systems.  It still lacks some functions that other blog editors have.  However, it makes up with it by being user friendly and low maintenance.

What blog editor do you use to write your posts?

Qumana: An Easy-to-Use Alternative to Desktop Blogging originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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This tutorial is applicable only if your Web host is using phpMyAdmin to manage your database.

Log into your Web host account and go into the phpMyAdmin admin page.

Search for the database that you have configured for the WordPress account.

If you have no idea what is the name of your WordPress database (probably because you used the auto installation script in cPanel) or forgotten the database name, download the wp-config.php file from the WordPress server (using SFTP). You should find your database information there.

On the left side of the phpMyAdmin screen, you should see a list of the table used in WordPress. Scroll down until you see the entry “wp_users“. If you are using a different table prefix other than “wp_“, you should see something like “yourprefix_users”

On the right, click on the Browse button. This will get it to display all the user information. The userpass column is the password field. Note that it is of an unrecognizable format, definitely not the same as the one that you have set for your WordPress. Don’t worry, this is the exact same password that you have set, except that it is encrypted with MD5 Hash.

Now, open a new tab in your browser and head on to MD5 hasher. Enter your password and and click OK to create a md5 hash of that password. Copy the hashed string to your clipboard.

Back to your phpMyAdmin, check the box beside your username and click on the pencil icon to edit the entry.

Replace the password with your newly generated md5hash password.

Click on Go to save the changes.

That’s it. You should be able to log in with the new password now.

Image credit: Tomás Rotger

How To Easily Reset Your WordPress Password via phpMyAdmin originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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5. How To Connect To Your WordPress Account Via Secure FTP

If you are really concerned about the security of your site, this is something that you really need to avoid.

In place of FTP, you can use SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) to create a secure network connection instead. When you are connected via SFTP, all your data are encrypted. Even if they are intercepted, they will only show up as garbage text on the hacker’s computer.

This tutorial teaches you how to connect to your WordPress account (or any other Web server) via a SFTP connection.

A point to note: Not all web host supports SFTP. Do check with your Web host before carrying out the steps below. If your web host does not support SFTP, maybe it’s time to consider another web host that does. Hostgator does the hosting for MTE and they support SFTP.

While there are many FTP clients that support SFTP, the one that I find it the easiest to use and is available for all platforms is Filezilla.

Download and install Filezilla client for your platform. (skip this step if you are already using Filezilla)

Open up Filezilla. Click on the first icon on the Toolbar to access the Site Manager. Alternatively, you can find the Site Manager at the menubar File->Site Manager.

Click the New Site button on the left bottom pane to create a new account.

On the right pane, enter your host name (this is usually the IP address assigned to you by your Web host). In the Port input field, enter 22 (Different web hosts have different ports for their SFTP connection, Hostgator uses port 2222. If you can’t connect with port 22, you may want to ask your web host for the port number).

Under the Servertype dropdown field, select SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol.

Enter your login username and password. Click Connect at the bottom to connect to your account. If everything is fine, you should see a popup window prompting you to accept the server’s public key. Click Ok to continue (You may want to save the key in your cache so that it won’t prompt you all the time). You should be connected to your account via SFTP now.

Bringing it a step further

If you are really paranoid about your security, you can use a public/private key authentication to connect to your SFTP network instead. A public/private key authentication allows you to login to your account without any password and also eliminates any chance of a brute force SSH attack.

Once again, not all web hosts allow you to generate public/private key certificate. The following example is based on Hostgator cPanel.

Log into your cPanel. Scroll down until you see the SSH/Shell Access icon.

Click on the Manage SSH keys button.

Click on the Generate a new key link.

Enter your key name and give it a password. Make sure that your password is a strong one. Click on the Generate key button.

You should now see information about your public key.

Back to the main screen, you should see that your public key is listed as not authorized. Click on the Manage Authorization link to toggle it.

Back to the SSH key management screen, download the private key to a secure folder in your computer.

In your Filezilla, go to Edit->Settings. On the left, click SFTP. On the right, click the Add KeyFile button. Navigate to where you store your private key and select it.

Once you have added the private key, click Ok to close the window.

Back to the Site manager screen, remove the password that you have saved previously. Click the Connect button. Filezilla will now authenticate the session with your private key and allow you to login to your account without any password.

That’s it.

Image credit: beefranck

How To Connect To Your WordPress Account Via Secure FTP originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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5. How To Create A ‘Maintenance’ Holding Page When Upgrading Your WordPress Blog

If you have not been doing regular housekeeping and database maintenance, either because you don’t know how to do or you are just plain lazy, here are 8 useful tricks that you can use to clean up your WordPress database easily and quickly.

1) Turn off/delete post revision

While the post revision is a good way to make sure that any changes to a post is documented, it can be a waste of database and server resources if you are the only user of the blog and does not collaborate with other authors for article writing.

To prevent the post revision from cluttering your database, it is best to turn it off once and for all.

You can easily turn off post-revision by adding the following line to the wp_config.php file

define(’WP_POST_REVISIONS’, false);

If you want to keep the post revision for record purpose, you can limit the number of revisions saved per post. In your wp_config.php file, add the following line instead:

define(’WP_POST_REVISIONS’, no_of_revision);

and replace the no_of_revision by the number of revision copy you want to keep.

Removing existing post revisions

Turning off the post revision feature only restrict WordPress not to keep any revision for future posts. It does not delete the existing post revisions in your database. To delete all instances of post revision and all its related entries), we will make use of the delete-revision plugin with some simple modification (the plugin only delete the post revision. It does not delete all other unused entries that are related to the post revision).

Download the plugin delete-revision to your desktop.

Extract the zip file. Open up the delete-revision folder and load the delete-revision.php file in a text editor. Scroll down to the line 140 where you see

$sql = “DELETE FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_type = ‘revision’”;

replace it with

$sql = “DELETE a,b,c FROM $wpdb->posts a LEFT JOIN $wpdb->term_relationships b ON (a.ID = b.object_id) LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta c ON (a.ID = c.post_id) WHERE a.post_type = ‘revision’”;

(Code adapted from Lester Chan)

Save the file. Upload the whole delete-revision folder to your blog plugins folder.

Activate the plugin. Go to the Delete-Revision page under the Setting section. Run the application to scan your database for all instances of post revisions and delete them from your database.

If you are keeping copies of post revision in your database, you should run the Delete-Revision manager once every few months to clean up your database.

2) Delete unused images

Everytime you upload an image, WordPress automatically create duplicate copies of that image and resize them to thumbnail and medium size. Most of the time, these images are not used. In addition, there could also be some images that you have uploaded, but did not use them in the post. These unused images could easily add up to a massive size and cause unnecessarily burden to the server and database.

The DUI (Delete Unused Images) plugin scans your WordPress blog and find those images that are not used or referenced to by any of the posts/pages. It then proceeds to delete them from the database/server.

To use the plugin, you have use a FTP program to chmod the Uploads folder (the folder where images are stored) to 777. Once you have deleted the unused images, chmod the folder back to 755 again to prevent access from other people.

Similarly, you should run this plugin every few months to clear up your database.

3) Optimize database

As you add or remove entries into the database, pocket of spaces are created. These are useless space and could cause your database to swell quickly. You can easily free up these spaces by running a SQL optimize table query in myphpadmin.

If you are not technically inclined or find it troublesome to log into your myphpadmin, the best way is to use the plugin WP-DBManager to manage your database.

Install and activate the plugin. Under the Database -> Optimize Database options, select the table that you want to optimize and click the Optimize buttonto start the optimization. It should take less than a minute.

You can also schedule it to optimize the database every few days/weeks/months

Go to Database -> Database option. Scroll down till you see the Automatic Optimizing of DB. Set the frequency for it to auto-optimize your database.

4) Delete unwanted plugin

If you have decided that you have no use for a particular plugin, deactivated them and delete them from your server. The more (unused) plugins you keep in your server, the longer it takes for WordPress to generate the plugin list and the higher tendency that it will slow down the loading time of your blog.

5) Uninstall plugin completely

When you deactivated/uninstall a plugin, the options or the tables that the plugin created are not removed. As you install and uninstall a lot of plugin, there will be more and more orphaned options and tables that are taking up precious space in your database.

For plugins that have created table entries in the database, you can use the abovementioned WP-DBManager to drop the respective table from your database.

For those plugins that have created options, you have to use the Clean Option plugin to hunt down the orphaned options and delete them from the database.

6) Remove unused themes

Similarly, if you have plenty of unused themes in the server, delete those that you don’t use.

7) Check your site for deadlinks

While it is an usual practise to link to other posts/blogs/domains in your articles, you should check frequently that the linked post/domain still exist and you are not left with a dead link. It can be very frustrating for your reader to follow your link only to find that the destination page is no longer around. In addition, too many dead links can also affect your search engine ranking. I am sure this is not something that you want to see.

The broken link checker plugin checks your new article for broken links as soon as it is published. It also scans your old posts when you are logged into the Admin page. Any broken links found are reported to you and you can choose to edit or unlink them from the posts.

8) Delete spam comment

It is common to receive tons of spam comments, sometime as soon as you post the article. Even though these spam comments are not shown in your blog, they are still gathered in your database to educate “intelligent” anti-spam plugins. If you received plenty of spam every day (or every hour), this could be taking up a lot of valuable database space. To erase the spam, either go to the Comment -> Spam page, check all the spam comments and select Delete from the dropdown box.

Alternatively, you can use the WP-Optimize plugin to clean up all spam and unapprove comments

The WP-Optimize plugin also comes with other features such as delete revision, optimize database table and change your username. Personally I would prefer to use the WP-DBManager to optimize my database table as it allows me to schedule the optimization task on a regular basis. In addition, the WP-Optimize is only tested for WP2.7, so if you are still using a WP version less than 2.7, you have to use it at your own risk.

What other ways do you use to clean up your WordPress database?

8 Useful Tricks To Clean Up & Streamline Your Wordpress Database originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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Here are 8 ways that you can use to improve your site loading time.

1. Reduce the number of images and image size in your site

Images take up a lot of bandwidth and can slow down the page’s loading time to a great extent. One of the best way to reduce loading time is to reduce the number of images in your site.

There are main two types of images that most WordPress blogs contain: theme images and post images. Theme images are those images that are used in the theme. These can be the header images, the small bullet images you use for any list, the small icon beside the comment link and many more. If you are not the designer of your theme and you know nuts about coding, there is really nothing much that you can do. You can either live with it or change your current theme to one that uses lesser images. For those with some coding knowledge, you can use CSS Sprite to combine several images into one big image and use CSS background-position to shift the image around (more detail here).

Post images are images that you inserted into your posts to illustrate your points or to beautify the post. If possible, reduce the number of images used in the post (not more than 5). If your site is a tutorial blog that uses plenty of screenshots to get your points across (just like Make Tech Easier), the best way out is to optimize and compress the images before posting them in your site. Adobe Photoshop has this “Save for Web” function that you can use to optimize/compress your images easily. Most free image editors (such as GIMP) also provide you with the option to compress your images. Online tools such as online image optimizer and JPEGWizard are also great tools you can use to reduce the filesize of your images.

2. Split up long post into multiple short pages

If you are in the habit of writing long posts (more than 1500 words), it is best to split the post into several small pages. Not only does it leads to a faster loading page, it is also easier for your visitors to read and digest. In WordPress, you can easily split your post with the  <!--nextpage--> tag. Read here for more detail.

3. Upgrade to the latest version of WordPress and plugins

It is important that you update your WordPress and all your plugins to the latest version. The WordPress team is working hard to make sure that every release of WordPress has a better performance than the previous version. The only way for you to make use of their effort is to follow the development cycle closely and update whenever a newer version is available.

4. Deactivate unused plugins

Most of the plugins introduce extra javascript and css file to your site and choke up your bandwidth. If you have no use for any of the plugins, make sure you deactivate them and get rid of those miscellaneous javascript and css. You’ll be surprised how much faster your site will load when these unused plugins are not around.

In addition, check out your existing list of active plugins and see if any of those have overlapping features with the latest version of WordPress. For example, prior to WP2.7, I used the Admin Management Xtended plugin to better manage all the administrative tasks. With the release of WP2.7, most of the features in the plugin are integrated into the software itself, which means I can now retire the plugin and free up the valuable resources.

You may also want to check out the WordPress plugin repository regularly for any other plugins that can do the same function as your existing plugins, but have better performance.

5.  Install WP-SuperCache

If there is one plugin that you must keep, it have to be WP-SuperCache. The SuperCache plugin caches your page as a static html file. When your visitors arrive at your site, they will be served the static page instead of the actual page.

If your Web host can support compressed file, you can further improve your site loading time simply by checking the Enable Compression feature within the SuperCache option page. When this option is turned on, the static html will be compressed as a gzip file, making the filesize even smaller.

(Note that the compression feature might not work for everyone. Some have reported problems with different browsers. Please test it thoroughly before using it live)

6. Streamlining your theme

Your theme (especially header.php and footer.php) contains a lot of redundant dynamic content that can easily take up valuable server resources. You can easily streamline it to reduce the number of php and database queries.

Here is an example of how you can streamline your code. Log in to your Admin dashboard. Go to the theme editor section and load up the Header file. You should see something like this (without the color coding):

(Screenshot taken from classic theme header.php in a html editor. Depending on the theme that you are using, result may vary.)

Here is how I change some of the dynamic content (<?php …. ?> tag) into strings of text. Also, look how I have reduce the number of items in the header file.

By streamlining your theme, the site won’t have to keep going back to the server to query the database, thus the time taken to load will also be faster.

7. Add Expires header to static resources

One of the great way to improve your site loading time is to add an Expires header to all your static resources (such as css file, javascript, images etc).  An Expires header is a way to specify a time far enough in the future so that the clients (browsers) don’t have to re-fetch any static content. Here is an example of how you can add Expires header to all your images.

Download your .htaccess file from your server.

Add the following lines to the file:

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
ExpiresByType image/png AA2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpg AA2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpeg AA2592000

The A2592000 means that the cache file will expire one month (in seconds) from the time the visitor first visits your site.

8. Install php_speedy

From the above, you can see that I did not mention anything about compressing and minify your CSS and javascript files. That is because php_speedy has all of them covered.

PHP Speedy is a WordPress plugin that optimizes your site and reduces the loading time of all your pages greatly. What it does is to compress and minify all your CSS and javascript files, set expiration-header for CSS and JS file, streamline the html tag and cache it in the server for quick loading.

What other ways do you use to improve your site’s loading time?

Image credit: Purplemattfish

8 Ways To Improve Your WordPress’s Loading Time originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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Before you start to upgrade your existing blog to the latest version of WP, you might want to create a maintenance holding page so that your readers know that your site is temporary down and will resume service in a short time. The last thing that you want to see during upgrading is your site showing a ‘404 error page‘ and all your readers start emailing you to ask what happen.

For basic maintenance/troubleshooting, the Maintenance mode WP plugin works fine to create a Maintenance splash page. But if you are upgrading your WordPress version, the plugin will not work. Here’s a easy way to create a Maintenance holding page that you can use while upgrading to WP2.7.

Creating a Maintenance holding page

Open a text editor. Copy the following code to it and save the file as maintenance.php

<?php
header(”HTTP/1.1 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable”);
header(”Status: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable”);
header(”Retry-After: 3600″);
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>Site upgrade in progress</title>
<meta name=”robots” content=”none” />
</head>
<body>
<h1>Maintenance Mode</h1>
<p><a title=”Your site” href=”your-site-url”>Your Site name</a> is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance.<br />
Please try back <strong>in 60 minutes</strong>.</p>
<p>Sorry for the inconvenience.</p>
</body>
</html>

If you want to style up your Maintenance page, feel free to do so. The above is only a template that you can use quickly.

Upload it to the parent directory of your site. You’ll need to use a FTP program to upload it. Make sure that the page can be accessed on http://yoursite.com/maintenance.php

Redirecting your readers to the Maintenance page

Next, download your .htaccess file. It is found in the parent directory of your site.

Open it with a text editor. Add the following code to the starting of the page

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.php$
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^127\.0\.0\.1
RewriteRule $ /maintenance.php [R=302,L]

Go to http://www.whatismyip.com and find out the IP address of your network connection.

Replace the 127\.0\.0\.1 with your IP. This will ensure that you still have access to your site while other people are directed to the Maintenance holding page.

Save the .htaccess file. Upload it to your site.  When it prompts you if you want to overwrite, select Yes.

That’s it. When your readers visit your site, they should see something like

Note: When you visit your own site, you won’t be able to see the above maintenance page because you have configured your network to allow your IP address.

You can now perform your WordPress upgrade.

Remove the Maintenance holding page

When you are done upgrading your site, you need to remove the redirect so that your readers can access your blog again.

In the .htaccess file, put a # in front of the code that you inserted just now. It should look like

#Options +FollowSymlinks
#RewriteEngine on
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.php$
#RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^127\.0\.0\.1
#RewriteRule $ /maintenance.php [R=302,L]

Upload it to your site (if prompted whether you want to replace the file, select Yes).

That’s it.

Note:

1) In the future version of WordPress, you may no longer need the Maintenance holding page as there is a feature in WP2.7 that allows you to upgrade your WP right within your dashboard.

2) Although this tutorial is meant for WordPress blog, it will work for any sites and platforms

How To Create A ‘Maintenance’ Holding Page When Upgrading Your WordPress Blog originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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While WordPress is a powerful and easy to use blogging software, there are several useful features that are hidden or not visible to many and one have to dig deeper to uncover the gems. Many times, I have people asking me how to do this and how to do that in WordPress. I realize that what seems like a simple and easy task to me appears to be a complete alien to some others.

Here is a list of the most commonly asked ‘how-to’ that I have received.

1) Split a post and replace with a ‘Continue Reading…’ link

In the home page of Make Tech Easier, you will find that only the first paragraph of each post is shown and you have to click on the ‘Continue Reading …‘ link to read the full post. This can be easily achieved with the ‘more‘ tag.

If you are using the rich-text editor, along the row of iconbar, you should be able to find an icon that shows two white rectangles with a dotted line in-between. That is the more tag icon.

Whenever you want to break the post with the ‘Continue Reading…’ link, just place the cursor at the end of the first paragraph and click on the icon to insert the more tag. You should see something like this:

If you are using the HTML mode, simple insert

<!--more-->

at the appropriate paragraph to achieve the same effect.

If the splitting link shows ‘Read more…’ instead of ‘Continue Reading…‘ or you want to change to other phrase, you will have to change your theme template.

In your WordPress Admin area, go to Design -> Theme Editor. On the right hand side where you see a list of template files, select Main Index Template (index.php). On the left text area, search for the line

<?php the_content(’Read more …’); ?>

and replace the ‘Read more …’ with anything you want it to display.

If you find the above too troublesome for you, you can simply use the plugin Wp Limit Posts Automatically to automate the whole process.

2) Split a long post into several pages

Sometime your post might get too long and you wanted to split it to several pages. In WordPress, this can be done using the nextpage tag.

Unlike the more tag, there is no icon for the nextpage tag. You will have to manually insert the nextpage tag in the HTML mode.

3) Cancel out content in the post

In some incidents where you have posted some out of date (or wrong) content, you might want to do an update by inserting a strikethrough line through the old content and update with the new one. This is done by pressing the strikethrough icon (the third icon from the left) on the icon bar.

• Highlight the word, phrase, lines or paragraph that you wanted to cancel out
• Click on the strikethrough icon to insert the strikethrough line.

4) Disable the image caption

The image caption feature is made available since WordPress 2.5. Some of you like it and some of you don’t. I am one of those that don’t like it and find it annoying. If you are like me, here is a simple hack to disable the image caption altogether.

Go to Design -> Theme Editor. On the right side, click on the Theme Function (function.php). On the left, insert this line to appear at the end

add_filter(’disable_captions’, create_function(’$a’,'return true;’));

Save it. (Code adopted from Katz Web Design)

5) Change the maximum Image width

While WordPress allows you to define your thumbnail and medium image size, you are not able to set the max size. When you insert an image as Full Size and expect it to show Full size, it doesn’t. Instead, WordPress automatically resize it to a width of 500 pixels (if the image is more than 500 pixels wide). While you can go into HTML mode and change it manually, it can become a very tedious and troublesome task if you have a lot of screenshots.

The solution to this is to hack into the internal WordPress code and change the default maximum width of the image.

Go to Design -> Theme Editor. On the right side, click on the Theme Function (function.php). On the left, insert this line to appear at the end

$GLOBALS['content_width'] = 800;

Change the 800 to the maximum width that you want to use.

Save it.

6) Insert a double dash in the post

If you are using two consecutive dashes (--) in your post, WordPress will automatically convert it to one single line (–). It might not matter for most of you, but for blogs that use a lot of command line code (especially for Linux command line), a single dash and a double dash can make a lot of differences.

In order for WordPress to show double dash instead of a single line, you have to:

• go to the HTML mode
• highlight the --
• on the icon bar, click on the code button

This will force WordPress to read the double dash as a code and display it as it is.

7) Insert YouTube videos without plugin

Occasionally, you might want to insert a video from Youtube into your post. There is no need to install a plugin just to do that. WordPress has a built in function that allows you to embed videos (and other flash content) into your post.

• On the icon bar, click to show the second row of icons
• Click on the icon
• Go to Youtube and search for the video that you want to insert. On the right where you see the Embed input field, scroll along the line until you see the <embed src=”http://www.youtube... Highlight and copy the source of the flash video.

• Paste the code to the embedded media page and set the video dimension. Click Insert to embed the video into the post.

That’s all for now. Hopefully the above mentioned tricks are sufficient to help you to overcome some of the issues you face when using WordPress. If I have left out anything or there is some part that you want me to cover in more detail, feel free to contact me.

(The above mentioned tricks are meant for WordPress 2.5 and 2.6. It has not been tested to work in WP2.7 yet.)

7 Simple WordPress Tricks That You Thought You Know originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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WordPress 2.7 is the next major release after WordPress 2.5. There is no changes to the famous ‘5 mins installation‘ and you should have no problem getting it to run in your server. The first surprise for you is the brand new Dashboard interface. Gone is the new WordPress 2.5 dashboard that you have just got use to. Well, the color scheme is still the same, but the layout is completely different.

The most noticeable difference is the replacement of the top navigation bar to a side iconbar. (see image below, click to enlarge)

There are two views that you can get the sidebar to show: the icon view or the expanded view. The icon view shows only the icon and is good if you are a minimalist who like to keep your dashboard as clean as possible. The expanded view displays the textual representation of the icon and is able to give you a faster access to the various section. From the sidebar menu, it can be seen that what used to be clustered under the ‘Manage’ section (Posts, Media, Links, Pages) in WP 2.5 are now given a place in the top menu. It seems that the priority in this WordPress version is to allow you to access to your content easier and faster.

At the top of the dashboard is a button labeled ‘Screen Options’ and you can use it to personalize your dashboard and get it to display only the items that you want to see.

Every option in the dashboard is presented in rows and you can click to hide/unhide the options. There is also a new ‘QuickPress’ that allows you to post content quickly and easily.

The ‘Write’ Section

There have been great changes in the ‘Write’ section as well.

(Click to enlarge)

The Publish button now comes with a sub-menu where you can choose whether to make the post a sticky post on your front page. The Tags and Categories are now shifted to the side. In the Tags column, you can get to show all the tags that you have entered previously and the Categories column allows you to show the Most Used categories.

Similarly, you can also configure what you want to see in the Write section via the screen options at the top of the page.

The Plugins Section

One newly add feature in WP 2.7 is the abiilty to install plugins from the WordPress Plugins Directory directly from your Admin area. There is no need to do any FTP-ing and uploading of the plugins anymore.

(Click to enlarge)

There is a search box for you to search the plugins. If you have downloaded the plugins from some other sites, you can also import it by the ‘Browse’ and ‘Install Now’ function. Alternatively, the popular tags are also displayed in the plugin page so you can find out what plugins (tags) that others are using.

Conclusion

I have only covered a small part of WP2.7 and I have already grown to like it. There are plenty of refreshing changes that would definitely make blogging on WordPress a lot more easier and fun. I am also pleased with some of the features (like install plugins automatically) that tackle the technical issue faced by many newbies all the while. I do not have the chance to test drive the plugins yet and I am not sure how compatible are the existing plugins with WP 2.7. If you have tested it, do help out in the community by filling up the WP 2.7 Plugins Compatibility list.

As I mentioned earlier, WP2.7 is still under heavy development and is not suitable for production use. It is also not available to the public for downloading and testing yet. If you wish to try out the version, or want to contribute to the project, you have to sign up at the WP-testers list before you can download a copy of the nightly build version.

A Quick Peek Into Wordpress 2.7 originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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You might already have used WordPress for a long time and get the hang of it. Well, here are 4 hidden WordPress features for you to maximize your WordPress blog and get the most out of it.

1) Turn off post revision

One of the new feature in WordPress 2.6 is the post revision. This is a great feature that does a version control for all your posts. At any point of time, you can see what was changed in the post, by whom and when and revert back to the previous post if necessary. For a multi-authors blog, this is a splendid feature, but for single user, this could possibly lead to many duplicate of the same post that junk up your database.

By default, the post revisioning feature is turned ON by default and there is no options to turn it off in the Admin menu. To disable it, you have to download your wp-config.php file from the server (using any FTP program), add the following line:

define(’WP_POST_REVISIONS’, false);

after the line define (’WPLANG’, ”);

Now if you want to keep the post revisioning feature, but limit the number of revision copy, you can paste this line instead

define(’WP_POST_REVISIONS’, no_of_revision);

and replace the no_of_revision by the no of revision copy you want to keep.

Now, don’t forget to save the file and upload it back to your server.

2) Configuring secret keys

WordPress 2.6 includes three secret keys AUTH_KEY, SECURE_AUTH_KEY, and LOGGED_IN_KEY to make your login session more secure and more difficult for hacker to crack.

Similarly, there is no way to add this in the Admin menu. You have to configure it via the wp-config.php file.

Open up your wp-config.php (Assuming you are using WordPress 2.6 and have downloaded the file from your server), you should see the following three lines:

define(’AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’); // Change this to a unique phrase.
define(’SECURE_AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’); // Change this to a unique phrase.
define(’LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’); // Change this to a unique phrase.

Now, go to http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/. You should see the same three lines of code with a random weird string in the place of ‘put your unique phrase here‘.

Copy the three lines from the site and replace the same three lines of code on the wp-config.php.

Save and upload the wp-config.php to your server.

(If you are using WP2.5, you will only see one line define(’SECRET_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);. You can get the unique SECRET_KEY from http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.0/)

3) Split long post into two or more pages

Sometimes you have written a long post and it become very lengthy and uncomfortable for your reader to read. What you can do is to split it into several short posts. To do it, simply add a

<!--nextpage-->

to the part of the post that you want to split.

To show the pagination at the bottom of the post, insert the line

<?php wp_link_pages();?>

to your theme single.php after the line  <?php the_content(’read more …’); ? >

4) Add a thumbnail for each post

Have you ever wondered how others manage to embed a thumbnail for every single post? Well, you can simply do it by adding a custom field into your post.

In your WordPress Write section, scroll down to find ‘Custom Fields‘. Click on it to reveal the input fields. Under the Key, type ‘thumbnail‘. Under the value, type the URL of the thumbnail image that you want to embed. Click ‘Add Custom Field‘.

To display the thumbnail on your blog, you can query it by inserting the following line to your wp theme.

<img src=”<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘thumbnail’, true); ?>” alt=”" width=”80″ height=”80″ />

4 Hidden WordPress Features That Are unknown to Many originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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1) Encrypt your login

Whenever you try to login to your website, your password is sent unencrypted. If you are on a public network, hacker can easily ‘sniff’ out your login credential using network sniffer. The best way is to encrypt your login with the Chap Secure Login plugin. This plugin adds a random hash to your password and authenticate your login with the CHAP protocol.

2) Stop brute force attack

Hackers can easily crack your login password and credential using brute force attack. To prevent that from happening, you can install the login lockdown plugin. This plugin records the IP address and timestamp of every failed WordPress login attempt. Once a certain number of failed attempts are detected, it will disable the login function for all requests from that range.

3) Use a strong password

Make sure you use a strong password that is difficult for others to guess. Use a combination of digits, special characters and upper/lower case to form your password. You can also use the password checker on WordPress 2.5 and above to check the strength of your password.

4) Protect your wp-admin folder

Your wp-admin folder contains all the important information and it is the last place that you want to give access to others. Use AskApache Password Protect to password protect the directory and give access right only to authorized personnel.

5) Remove WordPress version info

A large number of WordPress theme include the WordPress version info in the meta tag. Hackers can easily get hold of this information and plan specific attack targeting the security vulnerability for that version.

To remove the WordPress version info, log in to your WordPress dashboard. Go to Design->Theme Editor. On the right, click on the Header file. On the left where you see a lot of codes, look for a line that looks like

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>” />

Delete it and press Update File.

Update: In WP2.6 and above, WordPress automatically includes the version in the Wp_head section. To fix this, you can simply install the WP-Security Scan plugin.

6) Hide your plugins folder

If you go to your http://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins, you can see a list of plugins that you are using for your blog. You can easily hide this page by uploading an empty index.html to the plugin directory.

Open your text editor. Save the blank document as index.html.

Using a ftp program, upload the index.html to the /wp-content/plugins folder.

7) Change your login name

The default username is admin. You can make it more difficult for the hacker to crack your login credential by changing the login name.

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Users and set up a new user account. Give this new user administrator role. Log out and log in again with the new user account.

Go to Users again. This time, check the box beside admin and press Delete. When it asks for deletion confirmation, select the “Attribute all posts and links to:” and select your new username from the dropdown bar. This will transfer all the posts to your new user account. Press Confirm Deletion.

8) upgrade to the latest version of WordPress and plugins

The latest version of WordPress always contains bugs fixes for any security vulnerabilities, therefore it is important to keep yourself updated at all times. The latest version is WP 2.6 (as of this post). You can download it here.

9) Do a regular security scan

Install the wp-security-scan plugin and perform a regular scan of your blog setting for any security loopholes. This plugin can also help you to change your database prefix from wp_ to a custom prefix.

10) Backup your wordpress database

No matter how secure your site is, you still want to prepare for the worst. Install the wp-database-backup plugin and schedule it to backup your database daily.

11) Define user privilege

If there is more than one author for your blog, you can install the role-manager plugin to define the capabilities for each user group. This will give you, the blog owner, the ability to control what users can and cannot do in the blog.

11 Ways To Secure Your WordPress Blog originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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It seems that there is some conflicts between the plugins and the theme preview page. As of now, there is no detail as to which particular plugin is causing the conflict. If you are having the blank page issue, you might want to deactivate your plugins one by one and check the theme preview page.

Some known plugins that are causing the conflicts are Bowob chat and Stray Random Quotes plugin

WordPress 2.6 Theme Changing Issue originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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Post Revisioning

It can be a great frustration (or even financial loss) to save a post and find that you accidentally edited/removed some important paragraphs. This is especially true when a blog has multiple authors. This post revisioning feature keeps a log of all your post amendment detail and in any case that you have removed some important stuffs accidentally, you can simply restore the post to an earlier version.

Click to enlarge

Bulk activate/deactivate plugins, plus option to delete

This is a feature that I have been praying for since day 1 of using WordPress. It is a tired chore to activate the plugins one by one, especially when you are using plenty of them. Now you can put a check beside the plugins that you want to activate and click the button to do a bulk activation. In addition, there is also an extra button where you can click to delete the selected plugins.

Using of Google Gear for faster loading

Initially, I thought that the WordPress team is utilizing the Google gear to enable offline editing, but apparently it is not. Instead, it makes use of Google gear to store the WordPress images, scripts and CSS files on your local machine so as to speed up the page loading time. Not too bad, though I prefer an offline posting feature.

Theme previewing

Often you might change a theme only to find that you don’t like it. Now, you can preview your theme before you confirm the changes. (At the time of testing, this feature only works for certain themes. Some themes will just show a white blank preview page).

Remote publishing disabled by default

Due to security reason, the remote publishing by atom publishing protocol and XML-RPC is disabled by default. You have to activate it at Settings->Writing.

New custom avatar

For users without a custom avatar of their own, you can either display a generic logo or a generated one based on their e-mail address.

Word Count

You can now see the number of words in your post after you have saved/publish it.

WordPress 2.6 will be released between 7-14 July 2008. You can download the WordPress 2.6 Beta 2 here.

WordPress 2.6 Beta 2 Review originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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After some research, it seems that the issue lies with the mod_security. To fix it, simply paste the following code

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

to you .htaccess file. The flash image uploader should now work.

If you have tried all method and the image uploader still don’t work, then grab the plugin Flexible upload. This should work the trick.

Having Problem Uploading Images In WordPress 2.5? originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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