plugin

Are You Using Adsense Mobile Content Ad Unit ?

Many people overlook the possibility of earning via Adsense Mobile Content Ad. My blogs and websites are not directly related to mobile contents – like mobile games, application software, mobile wallpaper, ring tones etc, so I felt like monetizing for mobile/tablet devices will not be fruitful.

After a long time, to give it a try – I added one Adsense Mobile Content Ad Unit on my blog. And to my surprise, there are so many people visiting our blogs via cell phones and tablet pc’s.

Here is how I inserted Adsense Mobile Content Ad Unit into my WordPress blog.
Log into your adsense account.
Goto My Ads tab – Mobile Content – Create New Ad Unit – Get the ad code
Log into your WordPress blog. Install plugin called PHP Text Widget.
Under Appearance – Widgets, drag a new text widget and paste the adsense mobile content ad code and save it.

No Ads?
1. As usual, new adsense ad unit won’t show on your pages. Wait for 10 min and then test your pages by visiting from a smart phone or a tablet PC.
2. Adsense Mobile Ad Unit doesn’t show on implemented pages every single time. It only show ads on relevant pages and to relevant users.

Report
To check if your Mobile Content Ad Unit is actually working: visit your adsense account dashboard and look at the reports after some time.

Note: Only 1 ad unit per page is allowed. And the ad unit needs to be placed at the end of the page.

How To Migrate From Stand-alone bbPress to bbPress plugin

Hope you know about the latest buzz in the WordPress world!! They have released the stable version of bbpress WordPress plugin to the general public and it is called bbpress 2.0

The main advantage is, you do not have to worry about the WordPress integration anymore, because it’s now an extension of WordPress and it integrates with WordPress seamlessly.

What if you were using stand-alone versions of bbpress so far and now want to switch to the latest bbpress plugin without losing your valuable content.

There is a easy way to do this.

Goto WordPress Plugin Directory, download bbpress plugin and install it, as you install any other normal plugin.

Now inside your WordPress dashboard, under Tools, click on Import.
Now click on bbPress Standalone(Import your bbPress standalone board.)

Make sure to backup everything before proceeding further.

Now give the path to bb-config.php file of your old installation. and hit proceed.

Once the process is completed, you can check it by renaming the old forum installation folder to something else and check working of new forum by visiting yourdomainname.com/forums/

NYTimes Style Slider: Next Post WordPress Plugin

You might have seen NYTimes and even some blogs have incorporated a cool animated Fadin/Fadout or Flyout style of showing next post, once user scrolls down the article. Its light-weight and looks cool.
There is a WordPress plugin called upPrev: NYTimes Style “Next Post” Animated Button, which lets us add this cool little feature to our blog, within 2 or 3 clicks of the button. Just drop the plugin into plugins folder and activate it from the WordPress dashboard.

There is little to no configuration needed. You can set the style of animation: Fadin/Fadout or Flyout style. We are using Flyout style on this blog. Scroll till the end of the article and you will see a small window popping with a Flyout effect.

You can set the appearance of this window depending on the user scroll action, by mentioning the class name or the id name within your WordPress theme.

For example, in our theme we have a class by name otherstuff at the end of each article. So when user scrolls till this class element, this window will Fadin. When user scrolls up above otherstuff class element, the window automatically fadsout.

Just like the NYTimes button, upPrev allows WordPress site admins to provide the same functionality for their readers. When a reader scrolls to the bottom of a single post, a button animates in the page’s bottom right corner, allowing the reader to select the next available post in the single post’s category (the category is also clickable to access an archive page). If no next post exists, no button is displayed.

Right click and see your blog/website source code and get the class name or id name and use it to set this plugin. Make sure to put # “hash” before the ID name, or . “dot” before a class name.

Usually comment section will have id name as #comment or class name as .comment

Top 7 Technical Mistakes Bloggers Make

This is a guest post by Ishan Sharma. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

It’s easy to get lost when you are new. After all, there’s too much to manage! You have design, content and what not. In all this mess, it is easy to make small mistakes.

Recently, I had a very bad experience when a friend’s blog got messed up because of some configuration problems and we had to setup WP and design from scratch! So I thought about writing a post that would save bloggers from making common mistakes and here they are:

Using A Free Service
Using a free host like Blogspot and WordPress.com seems good from far. But there’s a big problem with this option! You don’t own your content, the host does! Recently, blogger blocked and even deleted a lot of blogs. Among the victims was a customer who had 60,000 subscribers! Now, blogspot team is either nuts or using bots(which is likely high, considering it’s a property of big G) for blocking blogs.
In any case, the point is that you can loose a lot if you use a free platform. Consider getting a self hosted WordPress blog and while doing that, avoid the following mistakes:

Using “Cheap” Hosting
Many bloggers would move to a hosting company but would look for cheapest or worst – a free host. And the features they get are:

Regular outages.
Awful support.
Slow loading times.

Remember, you get what you pay for. Do not fall for the “unlimited bandwidth” and other tall claims! Before buying hosting, research well and shortlist 2-3 hosting companies and then compare them. It is also advisable to contact friends using different hosting companies.

Using Your Host As Domain Registrar And Vice Versa
Keeping both hosting and domain with same company is a really bad idea. Yes, there may be some discounts involved but it’s a bit dangerous.
Imagine something bad happens with your hosting company and there servers crash! Now, if you have both domain and hosting with them, your site will be completely down.

If you have domain with a different registrar, you can at least redirect it to a new page explaining something bad has happened. It won’t retain all the visitors but hey, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush!

Wrong Permalink Structure
No explanations for this one, just a quick question: Which one is better and easy to remember out of the next two URLs?

http://myblog.com/?p=123
http: //myblog.com/my-post

Of course it is the second one unless you have got a super photographic memory! Not to mention that it is also better for search engine bots(and they don’t have photographic memory even if you have! 😉 ).

You should always use a informative permalink structure for post. In WordPress, this can be easily changed by going to Settings → Permalinks. Set the structure to custom and in the text box, enter /%post-name%/ for structure like the second example. For more permalink structures, see WordPress Codex.

Using Too Many Plugins
Plugins add lot of functionality to WordPress. But the main problem with them is that it is easy to get carried away with them.
This was a mistake I made when I was new to WordPress. I fell in love with lot plugins and in first month, I had some 60 plugins active at one time. Now, you can imagine how slow the blog would have been. Thankfully, I realized it soon and uninstalled several useless ones. Now, I have around 30 plugins and performance is better.
As a rule of thumb, you should not install more than 25 plugins unless absolutely necessary and delete the inactive ones.

Not Tracking Stats
If you don’t know your stats, you are missing a lot. Using stats you can know where your visitors are spending more time on your blog, from which page they are leaving the blog, bounce rate etc. With all these data in hand, you can tweak the blog and significantly improve your blog and your readers experience.
And another thing is tracking feed subscribers. For this, you can use FeedBurner. You can use your platform’s default feed without any problems but FeedBurner has lots of advantages. First of all, you can track number of readers(although inconsistently). You can offer free e-mail subscriptions and also add AdSense to monetize your feeds.

Not Taking Backups
Taking backup is something you should start doing today.
Anything can go wrong at anytime and having a backup locally(i.e. on your hard disk) may be the only security measure. You should setup a automatic backup for your blog using a plugin like WP DBManager. For detailed tutorial, take a look at this tutorial: How To Backup A WordPress Blog.

These were top 7 mistakes that new bloggers tend to make. Do you have any tips for new bloggers? Do share with us in comments.

About Author: Hi, My name is Ishan Sharma. I am a teen entrepreneur and I love blogging and WordPress. I blog at Blogging
With Success about Blogging Tips and WordPress. If you need any type of help with your WordPress blog/website, I can be found at WordPress Blog Experts.

TweetMeMe or Tweet Me Not!

First thing first: “TweetMeme is a service that aggregates the most re-tweeted stories on twitter and makes them accessible to people in one central location. The service also includes it’s re-tweet button which helps users quickly engage their readers in re-tweeting interesting and relevant content to their twitter followers. Other offerings around TweetMeme include the Widget and API.” – Sarah, Community Manager, TweetMeme.com.

You probably have see TweetMeme buttons used by many bloggers and even mainstream media websites. It helps in reaching more audience.

There are two options to use the TweetMeme button:
1. On selective posts.
2. On every posts published on the blog.

If you want to insert TweetMeme button to a particular post, then here is the code:
Put this code wherever you want the TweetMeme button to appear:


<script type="text/javascript">
tweetmeme_style = 'compact';
tweetmeme_url = 'http://yoururl.com';  
 tweetmeme_source = 'yourTwitterID';  
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js">
</script>

I personally like the compact TweetMeme icon, which shows the number of re-tweets and gives the option to re-tweet. But the large one my help get user attention. To get the compact button, I have used tweetmeme_style = 'compact'; and note that all these

tweetmeme_style = 'compact';
tweetmeme_url = 'http://yoururl.com';  
 tweetmeme_source = 'yourTwitterID';

fields are optional, if not used, default values will be taken. Its a walk in the breeze experience, to install things on a blog/website using WordPress, but not so in many other blogging platforms. So, you can make use of the above code to implement it manually on your blog.
Code Source: TweetMeme Help

You can also know the number of re-tweets a story has got, using this code:


http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=<url>

replace the <url> with the URL of the article.

If you want to show TweetMeme re-tweet button at the end/ beginning of every article on your blog, then its a good idea to make use of tweetmeme plugin.

Another fantastic plugin that I personally like is: Tweetable.
Here is its features:
* Automatically tweet your blog posts when they are published. Optionally add Google Analytics campaign tags to the shortened URLs. You also have your pick of URL shorteners.
* Tweet from within WordPress. The plugin adds a dedicated Twitter page where you can browse your friends timeline and post updates. An optional quick-tweet Dashboard widget is available as well.
* Display your latest tweets in your blog sidebar with a customizable widget. Includes support to display follower count.
* Set the minimum user level to access the Twitter page in the WordPress backend.
* Automatically add a full-size or compact Tweetmeme widget to your posts.
* Track tweets based on keywords of your choice via the Twitter API.

Over all, I think it’s good to use this button at the end of the article, as it will be a good call for action. As per my observation, a story with TweetMeme button get more re-tweets. People can see how many people have already tweeted about the particular article, and it can arise their feeling, to re-tweet.
It is also interesting to see TweetMeme using bit.ly as the default URL shortener. So we can get those extra stats- the number of clicks we got to the re-tweeted article link and the location of the people, who clicked the link etc. You need not even have an account with bit.ly, just append a + sign at the end of the shortned URL and hit the enter key.
Ex:- One of my article URL, shortened using bit.ly is http://bit.ly/mOtWR To see the stats I just need to append a + sign i.e., http://bit.ly/mOtWR+ and hit the enter. So simple.

How often have you tweeted a story that has a re-tweet button and how often have you tweeted about a story that does not have one. Always remember, many people using internet are lazy enough, so you can’t expect many people to phrase the tweet. Only a small percentage of people will take the initiative to form the original tweets, to share the stories that they like and all others re-tweet it. So it would be a good idea to have such links where people can just tweet or re-tweet about it, with 1 or 2 clicks.

Have you used TweetMeme buttons on your website/blog. How is it performing? Do you have it at the bottom or top of the article? Do you prefer using a plugin or manual coding for individual posts.

How To Show A WordPress Post As Featured Article

This is a guest post by Amit Banerjee. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Do you want to highlight something on your blog homepage as “Featured Article” ?
It may be some of your best content that is popular and you wish to highlight it. In some case you can show your blog contests or Your email Newsletter Service just above your latest articles(above the Fold).

A featured Section is basically an area where you want your readers to focus and “Call to Action”. Technotip.org uses a “Featured Article” section on the Homepage that showcases some of the best content published recently.
Featured-section

If you want to design a similar feature in your Theme then read on. I have described two Methods to Create the featured section for your theme.

Procedure A : This Method Is Simpler. It shows a particular(selected) article in your Featured section of the Homepage. But In future if you want to change and show another article, you have to manually edit your index.php file and change the ID of the post being called. This technique can be used, if you are planning to have an article permanently or for a long time in the featured section.

Procedure B : This Method is a Bit Geeky. But its actually worthwhile. This procedure is used, if you want to show a latest post from a Particular category (or tag) in your Featured section automatically. You just need to Tag your post and the postlist plugin does rest of the job for you!

Procedure A
Step 1: Create a Back Up Copy of your Template : Always create a back up copy of your original theme. If things go wrong, you can restore your Theme using the backup. Use any FTP client ( I recommend using FileZilla ) and download the current theme of your Blog to your computer. Create a copy of that Theme and work on the customizations that we are going to discuss in this article.

Step 2: Upload the WordPress plugin and activate it Download the get-a-post WordPress plugin and upload it to your wp-content/plugins directory. Activate the plugin. No customizations are required.

Step 3 : Write a new post that you want to show in Featured Section If you want to show something static in your featured section, then you need to create a new post and publish it in a back date. This will prevent your article from appearing in the homepage as a repetition[duplicate copy]. Note down the ID of the post. You will need it later on.

Hover your mouse pointer on the published post(in the wp-dashboard) and see at the bottom(status bar) for the article ID.

For example : You may wish to show a Newsletter Service or Some Freebies In your Featured section. In that case create your new article and publish it in a back date.

Step 4: Customize your index.php The index.php file is responsible for showing your Homepage. Open Index.php file in any HTML editor or Notepad and find the following code

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

Add The following code just Before it..

<!-- The Intro section.Start editing -->
<div class="intro">
<?php get_a_post(ID); ?> 
<!-- Replace with the Post ID that you want to show -->
<h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
<?php the_content(); ?>
</div>
<!--The Intro section ENDS.STOP editing here -->

See this Screenshot for Better Understanding :
Featured-section-coding
Remember to replace ID, with the ID of the post that you wish to see in your featured section.

What we are doing here : We are creating a separate class called intro, that would contain your Featured section’s styling(CSS). And we are using the get_a_post plugin to call a particular post in that section. This Section will be called just before the array of posts that appear in your homepage. Its placed ahead of the Loop.

Note:
A word of caution: Here we are using the class as “intro”. Check Your template, if you are using the same class name already, then it may mess things Up. In that case Simply use a different class name.

5. Style Your Featured Section: Ok All Set. Now you Need to Style your featured section and add Width and Height parameters.
Open your Style.css file and add the following code:

.intro{
margin:0px 0px 30px 20px;
padding:10px;
border:1px solid #CCCCCC;
width:570px; /* EDIT THIS WIDTH */
height:200px; /* EDIT THIS HEIGHT */
background:#F4F7FC; /* background color of the box */
}

You have to customize the CSS of your Featured Section according to your template. It involves modifying the width and background colors, padding borders etc. Make sure to adjust the width and height of the box or else your featured section may break up.

6. Upload the New theme In Your Themes Directory and Activate it You are ready to shoot. Upload your theme and See the Difference.Your Homepage will show your featured section. Test your featured section. Change the heights, width or other parameters and make sure your featured section looks clean and neat. You may want to use Firebug(addon), its Brilliant for testing Designs.

Procedure B
Back up your Template: Please create a back up copy of your original theme, so if things go wrong you can restore your theme to its previous state.

Step 1: Download the postlists WordPress plugin and activate it.
Step 2: Log in to your WordPress admin panel and Create a unique Tag (say “Feature”). You will be Using this particular tag to show a post in the featured section. So use them only on those posts that you want it to appear in the “Featured Section”.
Step 3: Select Postlists Under The Posts Menu and Create a New List.Name It “Feature”.
Step 4: Start Editing Your List. At First Define a placeholder for your list. You will call this placeholder from your Index.php file.

Step 5: After that, you will see two boxes each for html codes before and after the list. Keep both of them blank.

Step 6: Next you will See “HTML code for each entry”. Paste the following code in the Box Provided. A typical HTML entry that shows one of your article:

<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<p><h2><a href="%posturl%">%posttitle%</a></h2></p>
<?php the_content(''); ?>%content%
</div>

Step 7: Select the minimum and maximum number of posts to show in your Featured section. If you want to show only 1 post then select one in both the cases.
number-of-article
Step 8: Select The rule “Show Only Posts of this Category”. Keep it Blank.

Step 9: Select The rule ” Show Only Posts of this Tag”. Select the Tag that you created in step 2.( In this example its Feature.)

Step 10: Select the Rule “Show only Posts With this status”. Use “published” as the option.

Step 11: Select the rule “Show only Posts With this type”. Use “Posts” as the option.

Step 12: Leave All other rules as Blank. See the screenshot below and study it carefully.
plugin-settings
Save your list. You are done Configuring your list. Whenever your list is called, it will show a latest post of the tag that you have specified in step 2.
Step 13: Now you need to call your list in the desired area from the Homepage. Open your Index.php file and look for the Following code:

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

Add the following code just before it:

<div class="intro"><?php if( function_exists("pl_postlist") ) pl_postlist("Feature");?></div>

Please note that, we are calling the placeholder that we had created in Step 2. (In this example its “Feature”)

Step 14: You have to Style your Featured Section. Note that we have Kept the Featured section under a Unique Class “Intro”. Add The following code in your Style.css

.intro{
margin:0px 0px 30px 20px; 
padding:10px;
border:1px solid #CCCCCC;
width:570px; /* EDIT THIS WIDTH */
height:200px; /* EDIT THIS HEIGHT */
background:#F4F7FC; /* background color of the box */
}

Modify the Intro Style as per your need so that it blends with your theme. Please be careful: If your Template already Uses the Class “Intro” then this would override the already described class. In that case simply replace the name Intro in step 13 and 14 with some other Unique name.
Step 15: All done. Upload the new theme and activate It. Select a post from your archives and Tag it with “Feature” tag. Now browse your new theme. You will have your new featured Section ready.

Some rapid questions[FAQ]:

Q : I want some of my Best Content In the featured Intro section. How do I change the Posts ?
A : If you are Using method A Open index.php and Find < ?php get_a_post(ID); ?>.Change the ID of the post as per your need.

If you are Using Method B Tag The Post as “Feature” (or your own Customized tag).

Q : How do I show My latest post or a list of post automatically in the featured section ?
A : If you want to show your latest Post or a list of posts in the Featured section automatically, then follow procedure B.

Q : Can I Use the “Read More” excerpt in that Section ? Can I Use images or Videos ?
A : Of course you can. Treat the article just as you treat any other article of your blog.

Q: Can i show any of my pages in that section ?
A: Yes you can . But it needs Some customizations. If you are Using Method A Visit the plugin page for more Information. If you are Using Method B then Select the rule : “Show posts of this Type ” and Select “pages”

Q: My Theme has broken since i installed your code. What should I do now ?
A: You can restore your theme if you had already backed it in step 1. If not leave a comment in this article. I will help you in sorting it out.

Q: I Know very little about Coding WordPress themes. Can You help me out ?
A: Why Not. I can help you code the featured section (provided I get fewer requests). Please feel free to leave your comments in this article if you need any kind of support. I love to help fellow Bloggers and I have learnt this from the Host : Technotip.org

Guest article written by Amit Banerjee from Ampercent.com, a popular technology website with tech articles, tutorials and how-to guides related to software, computers, and internet.

Plugin to show “tags” and “edit comments”

came across these two nice plugins somedays before, and thought of sharing it with you people….
1. wp-cumulus:- This is an attractive plugin, which displays “tags” clouds using flash.
We can customize it according to the look and feel of our blog.

We came across these two nice plugins somedays before, and thought of sharing it with you people….

1. wp-cumulus:- This is an attractive plugin, which displays “tags” clouds using flash.

We can customize it according to the look and feel of our blog.

Here’s what you should know about “WP Cumulus”:(From the authors blog)

Installation

1. Make sure you’re running WordPress version 2.3 or better. It really won’t work with older versions. Really.
2. Download the zip file and extract the contents.
3. Upload the “wp-cumulus” folder to your plugins directory (wp-content/plugins/)
4. Activate the plugin through the ‘plugins’ page in WP.
5. See “Options->WP Cumulus” to adjust things like display size, etc…

Using WP Cumulus

In order to actually display the tag cloud, you have three options.

1. Create a page or post and type [WP-CUMULUS ] anywhere in the content, but without the space before the last bracket. This ‘tag’ will be replaced by the flash movie when viewing the page.
2. Add the following code anywhere in your theme to display the cloud <?php wp_cumulus_insert(); ?>. This can be used to add WP Cumulus to your sidebar, although it may not actually be wide enough in many cases to keep the tags readable.
3. The plugin adds a widget, so you can place it on your sidebar through ‘Design’->’Widgets’. The widget uses a separate set of settings, so it’s possible to have different background colors, sizes, etc.

2. WP Ajax Edit Comments plugin: This plugin allows your commentators, to edit their comments for a period of time after they leave them.This helps the blog comment moderation easy, as comments left are far sure, what your commentators actually wanted to say. You can see that, this blog does not use this plugin, as it used to make the blog slow while editing. I am very much serious about the speed of this blog.

There are yet many useful and very good plugins, like the above two. We will be sharing all those things as and when we come across and test it a bit. Till then, please share your knowledge and your favourite plugin, in the comment section.