Working & WordPress-ing: Tutorials for WordPress Bloggers

How to force WordPress to display your server’s character set

April 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If after upgrading your MySql server or after upgrading your self-hosted WordPress install to a later version, your WP posts show gibberish characters (see image below), chances are the character set in your MySql install is ‘latin1′ which is causing incompatibility with the ‘utf8′ WordPress default charset.

According to MySql resources, you can convert your default server charset from ‘latin1′ to ‘utf8′ by modifying the server’s initialization file. This is fine if you have the time and technical skills, and of course access to your server’s root files.

The easiest workaround I found out, and without touching your server’s root files at that, on how get rid of those “funny characters” is to edit one of the lines in your wp-config.php file.

To do this, open the wp-config.php in a text editor after downloading the file via FTP to your local drive, or opening the wp-config.php using the file manager of your server’s control panel.

Once opened, look for that line (about line number 30) commented out with /** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */

Next to that line is: define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);

Simply change ‘utf8′ to ‘latin1′ and save the file, and then upload the file to your server if you edited the file in your local drive. Otherwise, just close the editing window of your Control Panel’s file manager.

That’s it.

Did you find this useful? Please leave me a message.

Filed Under: Themes, Tutorial Tagged With: , ,

Choosing keywords for Search Engine Optimization

September 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The whole idea of On-page SEO is based on keywords and keyphrases. “Keywords” is the name usually given to the words or phrases that best describe your page content/purpose and best match the words people use when searching for your content. Keeping this idea in mind, what you need to do to get your website optimized for search engines is to pick one of the most searched words or phrases which best match the content of your page.

For example, if you have a web design company, a good keyphrase would be “Web design”, because hey! it’s the most searched keyphrase all over the Internet related to your content (5.000.000 searches a month). So anyone would think that this is the best idea, but actually it isn’t. A very often searched keyword is more likely to have a very large amount of competitors (everybody wants the jackpot), which means that you will need to work harder and spend more money in the rest of the optimization (which is sometimes virtually impossible).

Now, you may be wondering, how can I know how many searches a month does a keyword get? This kind of information is provided freely by some ad systems like Google Adwords and Yahoo Overture (among others). In this article I’ll use Google Adwords keywords tool which I believe is the best to work with.

The URL for Google’s tool is https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. There’s no need for registration, once you enter the page you can start searching for keywords. The tool usage is very simple, you just need to enter a term, for example “web design”, and fill the security code field. Once you submit the form, a list with searches related to your keywords shows up.

The resulting list will not only tell you how many searches a keyword gets on a monthly basis, but will also give you an idea of how many people may be targeting their optimization to that keyword (the more searches a keyword gets, the more optimized pages you will find). This is why you may not want to look at the top of the list. My advice is to pick up something with 1.000.000 searches a month or less (for the previous example, it could be “web design company”).

Besides, you can also use this list as a suggestion tool to pick up a more accurate keyword. For example, if you were looking for something like “web design” you may find that a more accurate keyword for your company would be “web design services”, just because “web design” is a very extensive topic that could go from tutorials to templates.

Lastly, take into account that search engines get cleverer everyday, so keywords shouldn’t look artificial anymore. This means that you shouldn’t repeat your keywords constantly all over the page. Instead you should make slight changes to the keywords so they keep saying the same thing but with different words. In the previous example, the variations could be: “website design”, “designing a website”, “design of websites”, etc.

Source: TextCafe.net

Filed Under: Tutorial Tagged With: , ,

Creating an email signature in your Blackberry

August 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

For those who want to add a multiple-line email signature in their device, here’s how:

1, Open the MemoPad app

2. Type in your contact information like name, phone, etc using the enter key to create separate lines

3. Press the menu key and press “Select” which allows you to highlight the text. Use your device pointer to highlight all the text

4. Press the menu key again and select “Copy”

5. Escape from the MemoPad app by using the red disconnect button to go back to your main icons or wherever the “Email settings” icon is located

6. Select the email address you want to append the email signature to (that is, if you have more than one email address created in your device), select “Edit” and scroll down to the “Signature” box. Press the menu key and then select “Paste”.

Use the “Save” button to save your email signature.

That’s it.

Send yourself an email and see if your email signature works. Please note that when you compose an email in your Blackberry, your email signature is not displayed but when the email is sent out, the email signature is appended to your message.

Know of similar techniques? Why not share them with us?

Filed Under: Tutorial Tagged With: ,

How to encourage readers to leave comments

April 8, 2010 By 4 Comments

In the past few months, we posted two articles on how to encourage audience response.

One article suggested a comment rating system to promote interaction with readers. The other article is about online polls to measure readers’ reaction.

But aside from these two, what else can a blogger do to encourage audience or readers response like leaving comments?

Let me share with you what others have written and which I have also found effective:

1. Ask your readers to leave a comment. I guess, this is the easiest part. You can end your post with statements like: “Please, leave your comment on this post before you go,” or “Feel free to share your thoughts on this topic” or “I would love to hear what you think. Why not leave your comment.” Most readers would be just too happy to comment if there is a direct statement them to do so.

Here is an example: “What do you think? Should we abandon the use of apostrophes when writing in Tagalog?”

2. Write about hot topics. An interesting article can capture your readers’ attention, and stir them to share their views about your post. What is a hot topic? Depends on your interest or rather your area of expertise. I’m sure you know the danger of blogging on topics that the writer does not know anything about.

3. Do not let your readers feel that they are alone. Respond to your readers’ comments appropriately. Thank them and make them feel that you appreciate their efforts in sharing their views.

Other techniques to encourage response and repeat visits include adding an auto-notifier link which allows your readers to subscribe to your comment page. An auto-notifier will alert subscribed readers when there is a response to their comment. This means when you or another reader has replied to their comment, they would know right away.

You can find an example of an auto-notifier in the comments box below. Why not demo it to see it in action?

So, which techniques have you found most effective in your blog? I am certain there are other ways that you know to encourage your readers to leave their comments? Why not share them with us. // Thanks.

Filed Under: Tutorial Tagged With: ,

Use the Text widget to promote your posts inside your WP blog

November 11, 2009 By 7 Comments

text-widgetAfter seven weeks, I have written more than 20 articles including How to customize your blog with widgets. When I had only 15 or less articles, I did not have any problem listing all my articles on the sidebar using the Recent Posts widget since the widget allows 15 for linking.

But what if you have articles much older than post number 15 which you want to promote and get the most out of those posts? How do you promote them?

I am not sure about others, but I have looked at widgets like Top Rated or Top Posts, and they may not be the answer to my quest. After all, if the posts we want to promote are already top rated or most visited, there is really no point highlighting them for our visitors to notice, is there?

The other approach is to configure your blog Settings > Reading to whatever number of posts you want displayed on your main page. The default is 10 posts. The downside of this method (aside from it being an indirect method) is that your visitors would have to scroll all the way down and may not even notice the article you want them to see. And worst, what if the post you want to show is, for example, post number 75?

Activate the Tag Cloud widget? Again, this is very indirect, and does not immediately display the results you want.

Why not simply be straightforward? As they say, be bold. Stake your claim.

Use the Text widget.

All you really need is insert your promotion text and a little knowledge of HTML coding to direct your visitors straight to your target posts. The top sidebar of this blog is created using the Text widget. See also Personal and more… in my personal website for another demo.

In the hands of an HTML writer, the Text widget is the easiest and most effective method. With the Text widget, you also have better control on how to display your promotion messages.

To me, the Text widget is a powerful tool. Are you going to leave it idle?

Filed Under: Tutorial, Widgets Tagged With: , , , ,

A simple solution to tweet and retweet your WP posts

November 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Our post two weeks ago on Publicize: Twitter is about automating the process of sending an update to a Twitter account each time a new post is published in your blog.

tweet itBut what if others want to tweet and retweet your posts?

One simple solution: Place a Twitter sharing code at the bottom, or anywhere else, on your post.

A sharing code comprises the Twitter grabber, a teaser which normally is the title of the post, and optionally, the permalink of the post or its equivalent shortlink. A shortlink is the “tiny URL” version of your post’s permalink generated by and stored in WP ~ very useful to get around the 140-character limit of a Twitter update.

Here is a sample structure of a Twitter sharer:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home/?status=This+is+the+post+title+OR+Create+another+teaser+http://wp.me/Get-Shortlink”>Tweet it</a>

End Note: I acknowledge currently there are social bookmark applications which automate this process taking into account the scripting limitations imposed by WP. At this time though, I don’t think I am ready to use them, particularly if these are run in a local drive. I will just wait until their scripts are taken on board by WP.

Feel like designing your own “tweet me” icon? Why not create your own special Twitter graphics and store it in your Media library. Try googling out “Twitter icons” or similar search terms to pick up Twitter icons for use as-is or for customization.

Here is a sample Twitter icon customized for this blog:

tweet-this-wp

Filed Under: Tutorial, Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,

How to encourage audience response

October 16, 2009 By 2 Comments

Every blog owner loves discussion and interaction with, and among, the blog audience. Interactions by way of audience responses show the blog is alive, and the blogger is not alone.

With a WordPress.com-hosted blogs, I found that you can (or at least WordPress.com has provided the tools) generate audience or readers’ responses with the Ratings plugin pre-installed in a WordPress.com blog and Polls using an interface with PollDaddy.

Let me share with you in this post my observations on the Ratings plugin. PollDaddy is my next post.

The Ratings plugin is located on the left control panel after the Comments section. When opened, the plugin has two sub-sections, the Settings and Reports. To enable the plugin, open Settings and choose where you want to display the ratings.

You can enable it for blog posts, pages or comments by selecting the corresponding tab and ticking the check box. You can also easily position the ratings either below or above each post, page or comment using a drop-down box. For purposes of testing, I have enabled the plugin for my other experimental site, When on the Road. The illustrations are sourced from that site.

The result of your selection is instantly available. When you view your posts, posts or comments, you will notice the ratings image (defaulted to 5 stars for the post or page) and the thumbs up or down for the comment if you also enabled the plugin for comments.

If you are using widgets to customize your blog’s sidebar, the ratings plugin also has a Top Rated widget. As usual, just drag and drop the Top Rated widget to where you want it to show. You can customize the Top Rated widget too by selecting the options you want.

That’s all there is.

*** Note: If you noticed the first screenshot above, there is that 1 Votes displayed. 1 Votes? Sorry, we don’t have access to the plugin file to edit it. But not to worry. With 1 more vote, that should be right. :-(

Filed Under: Experiments, Plugins, Tutorial Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to customize your blog with widgets

October 5, 2009 By 9 Comments

Screenshot of some WP widgets

Screenshot of some WP widgets

I am surprised to see a number of my friends’ blogs using the ready-to-use sectional links on the sidebar of their blogs like calendar, archives, etc. when they have so much to display.

Either they don’t have time to explore the functionalities offered by WordPress.com to change the looks of their theme (at least on the sidebars) or they are not into experimenting.

As we wrote in an earlier post, unless you want to pay a few dollars to have access to a CSS editor, there is not much you could do with the appearance of a selected theme other than to customize the custom header, that is, if that is an option in your selected theme.

But the widgets feature can change the appearance of your theme in terms of content and layout. The widgets can make your blog a little different from blogs using the same theme. This blog is using the Mistylook theme, but with the use of widgets, it now looks different from others blogs using the same theme. (Not the best-looking blog, I admit, but it demonstrates what widgets can do.)

In terms of content, there are so many things one can do with sidebar widgets. Here are some of them and what you can do with them:

  • Image: This is one of the latest features of WordPress.com which easily displays an image in your sidebar
  • RSS: Fetches the latest entries of your favorite site with RSS feeder
  • Top Posts: Excellent for showcasing to your visitors which of your posts receive the most number of views
  • Twitter: To display your latest tweets if you have a Twitter account or the latest tweets of your favorite Twitter-er
  • Text: This allows you to enter any message like announcements, greetings, etc. on your sidebar

Screenshot of the widget page used on this site

Screenshot of the widget page used on this site

To activate a widget in your sidebar, all you need to do is “drag and drop” it on where you want it to appear. For most linking widgets, for example, RSS or Twitter, like the Recent Posts or Recent Comments widget, you can specify the number of entries you want to display.

Layouting or re-ordering the sequence of your widgets is very easy as well. Simply “drag and drop” your active widgets to where you want them to appear.

Want to remove the widgets? Easy. Open the widget by clicking on its down-arrow button, and press the Remove text link.

Why not try the widgets and give your blog a lift?

Filed Under: Experiments, Tutorial Tagged With: , , ,

How to post by email (an experiment)

October 5, 2009 By 4 Comments

If you have a WordPress.com-hosted blog, you are on the road most of the time and you have a smartphone, then you should try your blog’s Post by Email feature. I have been experimenting with it for a couple of days now on my mobile blog, and the feature works great.

To activate or enable the feature is very easy. All you need is to click on “Enable Post by Email” on your blog’s control panel to output a randomly generated email address. If you think the email address is not to your liking, you can keep on re-generating an email address.

Send your post to that email address just like sending a normal email message, and voila!, your entry is automatically posted to your blog. You can see a demo of this feature on my moblog.

Warning: You need to keep that email address secret. Otherwise, anyone who knows that email address can post to your blog.

Digression: I acknowledge that WordPress.com has some applications which you can run in your mobile phone to enable you to post, edit, etc. like what you normally do in your WP dashboard. I tried that using the WordPress for Blackberry, but it does not work for me. It may work fine in your case.

Filed Under: Experiments, Tutorial Tagged With: , , ,

How to upgrade your WordPress theme

September 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

After selecting your WordPress theme and you are still not happy with some of its elements like theme’s font sizes, column sizes and other similar styles, you can customize the theme’s CSS through custom CSS.

Unlike with self-hosted blogs however, in WordPress.com blogs, you need to buy credits from WordPress.com via PayPal. (I have not tried buying credits for this purpose, but I imagine that with the purchased credits, you will be given an extra command in your dashboard control panel which would allow you to “edit” the stylesheet.) Based on the WPMU version I am using, to upgrade a WordPress theme, you need to pay something like $14.97 which is good for one year.

Did I hear you asking “What is a custom CSS?” If you did, then the Upgrade is not for you. The upgrade is for advanced users only. As the “Upgrades” page on my WordPress.com dashboard page states:

“This upgrade allows you to add custom CSS to customize any theme on this current blog. This is recommended mostly for advanced users who understand CSS.”

With that upgrade requirement, how then do you customize your site?

Yes, the operative word is “site” and not “theme” since customizing a theme would mean adding custom CSS which may be outside the current knowledge of a beginner or outside his/her budget.

But don’t fret. Even if you cannot add custom CSS to a theme under the current WordPress.com free blogs environment, still you can change the looks of your site and make it a little bit different from other sites using the same theme.

We will tackle that in our next posts.

Filed Under: Side Comments, Themes, Tutorial Tagged With: , , , ,
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