What Simply Works!

When I delved into the world of self-hosting four years ago, I must admit that I was clueless. All I wanted then was to have my own domain and use wordpress. Not to say that I am very knowledgeable about it now but at least I know the basic things needed to keep all my blogs up and running.

Thankfully, I have known blogger friends, who shared their technical skills with me as I migrated to a new web host. Also, there is a whole gamut of free web hosting articles on the Internet. It’s just a matter of being patient and knowing what to search for using Google.

For non-techie bloggers like me, it is important to decide on a cheap and reliable web host. Asking around for first-hand experience on web hosts is also good. It is also important that the company has a very good technical support.

I have only move web hosts once and while I can say that I am a lot happier with my current, what I wish they have that my first web host offers is Cpanel (control panel). Nothing beats its GUI (graphical user interface) that is great for non-techie users.

There is no perfect web host for sure but so far I can vouch for the performance of the web hosting company I chose.

One of my favorite sites that help with my blogging needs is Dynamic Drive. It has a lot of free scripts for enhancing navigation and adding forms or effects on your sites. I have always referenced Dynamic Drive whenever I need to disable right-click on my blogsites. If you don’t fancy using watermarks, you can always use this script. That should discourage image downloads not permitted.

Here’s the link of the script that I use here and my personal blog:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex9/noright.htm

More blogging goodies, here.

One of the plugins I find really useful is wordpress’ comment thread plugin. It allows the blog owner to “nest” his/her reply to readers’ comments with ease. I used to log in to my WP account and edit the comments to add in my reply but that can be troublesome if you have a lot of comments coming from three blogs to manage.

So, this is the answer. This is proven and tested to be working on my three blogs. Here’s the source:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-thread-comment/

More blogging goodies, here.

Since my webhost move to Dreamhost a few months ago, I contemplated to blog about my hosting experience to help out non-techie users like me. So now, this will be the first of a series of reviews, which I hope I can complete within a few weeks.

Although my first blog set-up was a bit tricky, I have begun to appreciate the features offered – like the quick installs. I don’t need to upload wordpress files through ftp anymore. I just need to log in to my control panel and click on the One-Click installs menu. The best thing is that I can do my version upgrades there, too. Isn’t that grand?

Like what it says on the Dreamhost website, it’s Fantastico, shmantastico!

More blogging tips here.

Some hate it, some don’t. Some think that removing the Blogger navbar violates the terms and conditions for Blogger’s free hosting. Others say that there’s no clear statement from Blogger to keep the navbar permanently.

Well, whatever your feelings are about this topic, the code to remove the navbar is there for the taking. Here’s the link to the blog that shows the piece of html code that you just need to copy-paste on your blog’s template.

Easy-peasy, I should say.

http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2005/01/remove-navbar.html

More blogging tips here.

I may have been blogging for over four years but it’s only recently that I’ve started to gain interest in knowing a bit of the technical side of setting up blogs and the importance of SEO. There is so much available information out there that spending a few minutes or hours a day is definitely not enough.

So to share bits and pieces of my blog finds, let me start by sharing this tool called Website Grader. I stumbled upon this site a few months ago but never got around to writing about it until today. This tool lists the important aspects of SEO and you’ll see how you can improve on them.

There is still so much to be done to improve all my blogs’ grades but I’ll get there eventually. So why not give it a whirl now, here’s the link:

http://www.websitegrader.com/

More blogging tips here.

Since I started doing sponsored posts, I find it challenging to maintain a 2:1 ratio between personal and sponsored posts. That is why I wanted to have a widget that will list my featured posts. That way, the few people who drop by this blog (and my other working blog) will not be totally put off with purely paid posts or fillers.

Thanks to James Lao, author of the Category Posts widget. He wonderfully coded that piece of beauty that you now see on my sidebar.

http://jameslao.com/2008/04/18/category-posts-widget-13/

More blogging tips here.

I personally don’t like to use watermarks on my photos. I find that it sorts of ruins the whole image as it steals the viewer’s focus away from the subject/s. But lately, I’ve been uploading tons of photos on my blogs and now I’m concerned about other people possibly downloading them for personal or worse, commercial use without my permission. I have no choice but to use watermarks.

I once shared my photos to a magazine contributor and was sad that the copies went out without proper credit. I don’t want to encourage people to do that to me again. I am not a professional photographer or a hobbyist thinking that my photos are ‘worth stealing’. But stealing is stealing and it is wrong, no matter how you look at it.

As I surfed the net last night, I eventually landed to this WordPress plugin page by Marekki. I immediately downloaded it and used it on my two blogs. I still have a lot of re-uploading to do because the auto-watermarking (sorry, I couldn’t think of a better term) will only kick-in once you upload the photo. Imagine not editing your photos to add your watermark or logo? Cool, huh.

Marekki did a great job in putting up a site solely for his WordPress plugin complete with detailed instructions and a screenshot. Here is his site.

http://www.wp-watermark.com/

My sample photo using the watermark plugin:

You can change the font, its position, opacity and you can even upload your own logo through the WordPress Admin panel.

More blogging tips here.

Not the kind of spam I want for breakfast. (This is a screen cap of my sql database when Akismet was deactivated.)

If my memory serves me right, it was just a year ago when my former blog hostees raised an issue about Akismet “eating up” many of their valid comments. They had to fish each of them out, which of course is time consuming to do.

So, the solution we came up with is to replace it with a different anti-spam plugin. A plugin that allows the commenter to fill-in a key word in the hopes of driving away the spam robots that automatically inserts nasty comments and trackbacks.

Unfortunately, I recently discovered that the new plugin is not completely eradicating the spam from our blogs. When I moved web hosts, I was surprised to see my sql file with tons of spam comments! I was in the middle of migrating the last of the 6 blogs I am hosting when I opened up the file and saw a lot of spam keywords that refer to gambling or drugs! I had to change the DNS midway and clean the sql file from my old host before importing them to the new host.

It was then that I decided to put back Akismet on my plugin list and let it do its work and that is to protect my database from further mess caused by these spammers!

More blogging tips here.

Maintaining three active blogs is no joke. Aside from filling them up with new ideas for contents, I need to be conscious of SEO and readership. It doesn’t help that a simple thing such as ‘dressing’ up a blog can be a tedious thing to do (this blog is a good example in itself– i still haven’t found the ‘right’ template!). There are hundreds upon hundreds of wordpress templates that are both free and premium but the question is often, which design fits my overall theme?

In my attempt to help fellow bloggers in this long and winding search for free wordpress themes, I have listed some links that I have come across in my own hunt for a suitable theme.

Compilations:

1. 21 Fresh, Usable and Elegant WordPress Themes
2. 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes
3. WP Theme Spot
4. BG Themes
5. Best WP Themes
6. CSS Juice
7. WP Theme Viewer (of course!)
8. New WordPress Themes
9. WordPress Start
10. WP Snap

Straight from the Author

1. Fahlstad Design
2. Poxline
3. Shattered Pixie
4. Ericulous
5. Brian Gardner
6. Solo Stream – mostly premium
7. Magnus Jepson

If you have other links in mind and would like to share them here, please leave me a note and I will add them on the list. Thanks!

More blogging tips here.