Apr 14, 200966

WordPress Blog Vitals Plugin – Show Your Blog’s Vital Statistics to Your Visitors

Categories: Wordpress Plugin
WordPress Blog Vitals Plugin – Show Your Blog’s Vital Statistics to Your Visitors
Simple WordPress Stats Plugin to show Google Page Rank, Alexa rank, Technorati rank, Feedburner Feed Count, Number of Posts, Comments, Trackbacks etc anywhere on your wordpress blog to show off to your visitors. If you don't want the hassle of updating your "Advertise Here" page of your blog every few days with the important statistics then this plugin will come in handy. Plugin Screenshot [caption id="attachment_1324" align="alignnone" width="104" caption="Wordpress Blog Vitals Screenshot"][/caption] Demo You can see a working demo of this plugin on the sidebar of this blog. Installation Unzip and Upload the folder ‘wordpress-blog-vitals’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress. Go to Settings and configure the options eg. which stats you want to show off, caching time etc. Use the widget, trigger text or call the php function to show the stats. Usage There are three ways you can use this plugin: 1. Add the following shortcode to a post or page to show the stats wp_blog_vitals] 2. Use the following function from a template (.php) file 3. Use the 'WP Blog Vitals' widget from the widgets menu Additional Documentation The following php functions can be used to display/retrieve specific stats: <?php echo vitals_getpagerank(URL); ?> - Displays the Google page rank of the URL specified. <?php echo vitals_get_cached_alexa_rank(URL); ?> - Displays ...
Apr 8, 20095

Shoot better Quality Pictures by Adjusting the Exposure of your Digital Camera

Categories: Tech Tips
Shoot better Quality Pictures by Adjusting the Exposure of your Digital Camera
In this guest post Lee Otsubo from The Digital Photo Guy writes about how you can take professional quality pictures by adjusting the exposure of your digital camera using Histogram. Lee is an engineer turned professional photographer who has spent over 35 years in high technology and finally decided to do what he enjoys. First, a caveat, there are minor differences in the way different digital SLRs meter the scene so you’ll have to “fine tune” your camera depending on how it reacts. Exposure is the balance of Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO. This sounds good in theory but seems to baffle quite a few people in practice. Fortunately, there are several controls that make it much easier to “tweak” the exposure. First and foremost, one of the major advantages of digital cameras is the histogram. Simply put, the histogram graphically shows you how the dark to light pixels are distributed in your image. A quick glance at the histogram will immediately tell you if your photo is overexposed, underexposed or perfectly exposed. To do this, you must learn to correctly read and interpret your histogram. [caption id="attachment_1285" align="alignnone" width="282" caption="Histogram before Adjusting"][/caption] The histogram is of the photo above. In 8-bit files, there are ...
Mar 30, 20093

How to Create Strong Passwords that are Easy to Remember but Hard to Break

Categories: Tech Tips
How to Create Strong Passwords that are Easy to Remember but Hard to Break
I don't need to tell you the importance of using strong passwords when creating user accounts online. Passwords are keys to accessing your online accounts or your computer. Using strong passwords are vital in protecting your identity and stopping others from hijacking your account. In this Post I have shared a trick to create strong but memorable passwords that I learned a few days ago. What is password strength? According to WikiPedia: Password strength is a measurement of the effectiveness of a password as an authentication credential. Specifically, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to correctly guess it. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and randomness. How to create a Strong Password? We all know the common guidelines for choosing a strong password: Include numbers, symbols, upper and lowercase letters Password should be more than 8 characters long. Avoid any password based on repetition, dictionary words, letter or number sequences, usernames, relative or pet names, or biographical information (birth day). Now the problem with creating random strong passwords are that they are very hard to remember. So once you start having to memorize a number of them it ...
Mar 30, 2009104

WordPress eStore and NextGen Gallery Integration to Create Digital Photo Store

Categories: Blog Setup, Wordpress Plugin
WordPress eStore and NextGen Gallery Integration to Create Digital Photo Store
WordPress eStore and WordPress Paypal Shopping Cart Plugins can now be integrated with the NextGen Gallery Plugin to create a Digital photo store similar to the demo given below: [nggallery id=10 template=wp-eStore] The Shopping cart will appear below this line when you add an item to the cart. The shopping cart can also be found on the sidebar. The images have been resized to 800x600 resolution using the NextGen Gallery resize utility. An watermark has also been applied to the image using the NextGen Gallery 'Effect' option to prevent stealing. Once the purchase is complete the encrypted download link for the original image (1920x1200 resolution and no watermark) is emailed to the buyer. Just to clarify... You don't necessarily have to sell digital photos to use the gallery. You could be selling anything and still use the Gallery as a means of displaying the products where each thumbnail is the icon of the product you are selling. How to Integrate NextGen Gallery and WordPress eStore Plugins There are two ways to integrate NextGen Gallery with the WP eStore plugin: Create/Configure every product separately Configure one product then use that as a template On this page I have explained the first integration method. Please see the following page for the ...
Mar 24, 20098

How to Open/View Excel 2007 files without Excel 2007 Software

Categories: Tech Tips
How to Open/View Excel 2007 files without Excel 2007 Software
If you ever get into a situation whereby you need to open/view an Excel 2007 file (.xlsx) but the computer you are using does not have Excel 2007 installed then these tricks could come in handy. This was particularly very helpful to me when I was checking my email from my friends computer and I received an Excel 2007 file as attachment that I wanted to view immediately but my friend's computer didn't have Office 2007 installed. Option 1 If the computer you are using has Excel 2003 installed then you are in luck. You can just download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack which automatically converts the excel 2007 file and let you open, edit and save workbooks using Excel 2003. Option 2 What if you don't have Excel 2003 installed on the computer? Well you can download and install the Excel viewer from Microsoft which lets you open, view, and print Excel workbooks, even if you don't have Excel installed Option 3 You can use Open Office to view the excel files. OpenOffice.org is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. The same trick can be applied to Microsoft Word 2007 files too. Do you know ...
Mar 22, 20094

How to Make Amazing Wallpapers Just using Photoshop Paint Brushes Quickly

Categories: Tech Tips
How to Make Amazing Wallpapers Just using Photoshop Paint Brushes Quickly
In this guest post Korin Iverson from Antique-hq.com writes about how anyone can easily make nice, shiny and eye catchy high resolution wallpapers by just using Photoshop paint brushes. Photoshop paint brushes are a cool thing if you know how to use them. In this photoshop tutorial I have provided a step by step guide on how to make amazing wallpapers by just using Photoshop paint brushes. I have included the paint brushes and the photoshop file (psd) that I used in this Photoshop tutorial in the download section below if you wish to download them. You can look at some examples of wallpapers that you can make by just using photoshop brushes on the Wallpapers page of this blog. In this tutorial we are going to look at creating the following wallpaper: So open your Photoshop application and let's get started. Step One: Creating a New Canvas First Create a new canvas. There are two ways you can do this 1. Go to File -> New and a window will pop up. Enter in the dimensions that you want to use. 2. You can use the Photoshop shortcut “ctrl + N” this will also bring up the window to select your dimensions.  I use 1920 x ...
Mar 19, 2009154

WordPress eStore Startup Guide for Dummies

Categories: Blog Setup, Wordpress Plugin
WordPress eStore Startup Guide for Dummies
I have had a few requests from some of the users of the WordPress eStore plugin (to Sell digital content from your blog securely) to write up a step by step startup guide so they can be up and running and selling their products in less than five minutes... So here it is. If you prefer a video tutorial then take a look at the WP eStore quick installation and usage video tutorial Before you dive into playing around with all the various settings of the WP eStore plugin I recommend getting up and running first by following the simple startup steps outlined below. 1. Once you get the product download link in your email go ahead and download the zip file. 2. Extract the zip file and upload the 'wp-cart-for-digital-products' directory to your '/wp-content/plugins/' directory. 3. Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress. 4. After you activate the WordPress eStore Plugin, the settings/options menu can be found on the left hand side menu similar to the following screenshot (on WordPress version 2.7 or above) 5. First go to the 'Settings' menu and configure the general, email and digital product delivery options. Most of the default settings should be enough to get you going but ...
Mar 18, 2009554

WordPress eStore Plugin – Complete Solution to Sell Digital Products from Your WordPress Blog Securely

Categories: Wordpress Plugin
WordPress eStore Plugin – Complete Solution to Sell Digital Products from Your WordPress Blog Securely
1. Do you sell, or want to sell, digital content from your WordPress site while maintaining the security of your digital assets? 2. Are you frustrated with the e-commerce WordPress plugins you've looked at? Do you want a plugin with reliable customer service (where your questions get answered and issues get addressed)? 3. Do you hate the thought of paying ongoing fees and commissions to sell via a third party web site? If you are still reading, then the WordPress eStore plugin may be just what you need! Plugin Summary In a Nutshell... this sleek WordPress shopping cart plugin allows you to sell any form of digital products and services from your wordpress blog securely with complete automation. What I mean by complete automation is that once you set it up the whole process (The buying and the delivering of the product without revealing the real URL of the product) works on its own. An overview of the WP eStore plugin operations can be found here. Yes, you can sell physical products with this plugin too as long as you don't need complex shipping options. Plugin Features Below are just some of the notable features of the WP eStore Plugin (you can find a full list of features ...
Mar 10, 200946

How to Add Widgets to WordPress Theme’s Footer

Categories: Wordpress
How to Add Widgets to WordPress Theme’s Footer
I wanted to use widgets in the footer of my WordPress theme but my wordpress theme didn't come with a footer-sidebar by default. I didn't really wanted to change the theme just because of that. So I hacked the wordpress theme to introduce footer-sidebars. If you are looking for a tutorial that explains how you can add sidebars/widgets to the footer of your WordPress theme then keep reading. There are really three main parts to introducing a footer-sidebar 1. Registering the Sidebars in the WordPress Theme 2. Inserting the Sidebars In the WordPress Theme 3. Putting some style into the sidebars 1. Register the Sidebars in the WordPress Theme Go to the WordPress theme editor and open the Theme Functions (functions.php) file. Now Search for the following line in your Theme Functions (functions.php) if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) Once you find the above line then take a look at the the next line which should look similar to one of the followings depending on how many sidebars you have: register_sidebar(array( or register_sidebars(2,array( Say for example you have one sidebar in your theme and you want to add three rows of sidebars in the footer area so you can put widgets then overwrite the code with the following: register_sidebars(4,array( The above will register 4 sidebars (one ...
Mar 10, 20092

Handy YouTube Tips and Tricks for Bloggers

Categories: Tech Tips
Handy YouTube Tips and Tricks for Bloggers
If you use YouTube videos in your blog then you might find some of the following tips and tricks pretty handy if you don't know them already. Link to a Chosen Start Time of a YouTube Video Say for example, you want to link to a nice video that you found on YouTube but it has some crap at the start which you don't really want your visitors to watch. In a situation like that you can just link to a specific time of that video so when the video starts it will start from that specific time and skip everytime before that. So if I wanted to link a YouTube video and wanted it to start playing from 1 minute and 17 seconds when someone follows the link then all I have to do is append #t=1m17s to the video URL. Original video URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFoe6oS0Np0 Vidoe URL linked to a specific time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFoe6oS0Np0#t=1m17s Below is a link for a demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFoe6oS0Np0#t=1m17s Add a Video to Quick List for Future Viewing This is particularly useful when you are trying to find some videos on a specific topic but along the way you discover something interesting that you want to watch too but if you don't want to get distracted at that ...
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