Computer Chit Chat

Archive for the ‘How to’ Category

Ever searched for something on a blog and didn’t find it? It’s awful to see that 404 message and not have anywhere to go from there. Have you tested your blog’s 404 page? Try testing it out by trying to go to yourblog.com/testpage or some other page you know isn’t there. If you only see Not found go into your dashboard now and get to work. It only takes a few minutes to customize a 404 page and it might keep someone on your sight longer. You can include a number of things on your 404 page including categories and monthly archives, a listing of all your pages and an offer to subscribe to your feed. So rather than seeing “page not found” a visitor could now see something like ” the page you requested wasn’t found but feel free to browse the pages listed below for what you’re looking for”.

To customize your Wordpress 404 page, log in to your dashboard and click on presentation. Click on Theme Editor and then click on the 404 Template link on your right. Find the message you just saw when you tested your 404 page and replace it with a customized message. You can even include the php code to show your categories, pages and archives. Click update and you’re finished. As always, go one step at a time and test, that way if there’s a problem you can undo your last step. And always backup your files.

• How to turn off the Wordpress visual editor
• How to update Firefox automatically.
• How to change the author name in Wordpress

Have you ever been writing something or working on a website and wondered what the finished results would look like complete with text? If you use Microsoft Office you don’t have to wonder. There’s a way you can enter “dummy text” effortlessly. It’s great if you’re working on a newsletter. Depending on which version of Word you’re using you can type one of a couple of things into your document.

Word 2003, Word 2002, Word 2000, or in Word 97 for Windows.
Type =rand() and press enter in your Word document and you’ll get a paragraph of five sentences. Each sentence will read The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. You can put numbers inside the parentheses to obtain the output you desire. P is for number of paragraphs and l is for the number of lines per paragraph.

Word 2007 actually has three options.
Option one. Type rand() and then enter and you will get three paragraphs containing three sentences each. The text will come from Microsoft help files. Again, placing p and l inside the parentheses directs how many paragraphs and/or lines you want output.
Option two. Type rand.old and then enter and you will get three paragraphs containing three sentences each. Each sentence will read The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Again, placing p and l inside the parentheses directs how many paragraphs and/or lines you want output.
Option three. Type =lorem() and then enter and you will get three paragraphs of Latin text beginning with the words Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Once again, placing p and l inside the parentheses directs how many paragraphs and/or lines you want output.

That’s it. Let me know if you find it useful!

• Looking for a free alternative to Office?
• How to add your Home page to your sidebar
• The cost of software

Did you ever see a widget within a post that had a + and said bookmark this, add this or share this? And when you rolled over it a bunch of different social bookmarking sites were listed? You probably have. If you’ve seen the one I’m referring to it’s a free Wordpress widget called Add This. There’s a regular version and a dropdown version of the widget.  To use it first download and unzip the folder. Then upload it to your Wordpress plugins directory. Activate it from within your Wordpress dashboard and you’re all set. There’s nothing to configure, although the ability to make a minor change is available if you want your stats included in the widget. I’ve included a screenshot of the dropdown in action on valmg.com. Do you have a  social bookmarking widget on your blog? I’d love to hear which one, feel free to leave me a comment.

• Blogatiser social bookmarking
• Why Socialspark is great for Mommy bloggers
• How to adjust what appears in the content of your rss feed

Have you ever wanted or needed to know how many words you’re written in a post on your blog? It’s easy to check at any time if you use the Wordpress plugin Leprakhaun’s Word Count. To use it, just unzip and upload it into your plugins directory. Then activate the plugin in your Wordpress dashboard. After that, whenever you write a post you’ll see a box that has a button that says calculate words a little bit below your post. Click it and it tells you how many words you’ve written. There’s a screenshot below of what the Word Count button and box look like within a new post. I really like it and recommend it highly. It’s a really helpful little plugin worth checking out. If you try it, let me know how you like it.

• How to insert random text in Office documents
• How to embed a video in a Wordpress post
• How to clean up your blog archives

A couple of weeks ago I came across a plugin that organizes your archives on a page of their own. This easy to use plugin is called SRG Clean Archives and can be downloaded for free. The plugin will lists the years, months and days that you’ve posted in. The listings include the post permalink and the date the post was published. They can be configured to include post and comment count. The months can be set up to collapse and expand, which is nice because it saves room.

To install it just download it from the author. Unzip the package and upload it to your plugins directory of your blog. Next, activate and configure the plugin. Then all that’s left is to create an Archives page and install the piece of code to make the plugin work. What you see above is a screenshot of the admin panel with the Wordpress dashboard. If you want to see the plugin in action, visit A Contest Blog and click on the Archives page. I’m really pleased with it. If you try it let me know what you think.

• Want to better manage your Wordpress comments?
• Who sez your comments
• How to let your readers subscribe to comments of a post

Do you have sell advertising on your blog? Wouldn’t you like an easy and efficient way to manage the ads? If you would, then you need to get OIO Publisher. OIO Publisher is a Wordpress plugin designed for managing blog monetization and sales. If you’re like me you might have kept track of things in a spreadsheet, or in your email. OIO Publisher makes it a whole lot easier to manage advertisers right from your blog’s dashboard.

Once installed you can sell and manage different types of advertising including banner ads, links, rss feed ads, inline posts and reviews. You can even set up custom advertising options. All ads can be either do follow or no follow, and you can adjust your price depending on which one you choose if you like. After configuring the ads you want to sell just install the code for the ad spots, either in the code or by widget, and you’re ready to go. When a potential advertiser clicks on one of your open spots they’re presented with an advertising page. (This is mine if you’d like to see what one looks like.) This awesome plugin even lets you create your own built in affiliate program.

After making your purchase, not only do you get this great plugin, but you get support from the creator Simon, who’s already helped me twice. You also get to list your blog in the marketplace where advertisers look for places to buy ads. Your advertisers will like it because if set up they can geo target their ads, and they will be sent a report summarizing their ad performance. OIO Publisher sells for $37 and is worth every cent. The time you will save using it will make it pay for itself in no time. Let me know if you’re using it or if you start using it, and how you like it.

• Wordpress as a CMS
• Want to better manage your Wordpress comments?
• How to change nameservers for Yahoo domains

Unfortunately, the pages widget does not permit the home page of a blog to be included in it’s output. A poor decision in my opinion. Not all people actually realize to click on the header to get back to the home page. Others don’t know how to alter their code to make the header a clickable link. This how to is for those people who want their pages widget to show their blog’s home page and aren’t very comfortable playing with code. Here’s one way to do this. Drop the pages widget into your sidebar. In another tab, view the home page of your blog and view the source code. Look for the code for the sidebar widget, copy that and paste it into a text widget on your blog. Manually add in the home page link and you’re all set. Go back to the other tab and refresh your home page and you should see your list of pages there including your home page. Now go back to the other tab and remove the pages widget from the sidebar. That’s it. As always, backup everything before you do something, and only do one thing at a time if you’re comfortable with it. It’s pretty easy, just be careful. So. Who else thinks it’s a poor decision not to include the home page in the Wordpress pages widget? Speak up.

• How to customize your Wordpress 404 page
• How to show the top commentators on your blog
• Add This - How to add social bookmarking options to your post

I didn’t want to leave comments open on my Wordpress blog indefinitely, nor did I want to turn them off. I figured someone must have come up with a way to have comments turn off after a certain period of time so I went surfing on the internet. I found what I was looking for in Comment Timeout.

Comment Timeout allows bloggers to set a time limit on how long comments remain open. It can be set blog wide, as well as changed within write/edit individual posts. You decide how many days you want comments to remain open. There is also a feature that will permit comments to continue for an extended period of time on very popular posts, on that one you decide not only how many days to leave it open but also how many comments constitutes a popular post. To install just download the plugin, extract and install the file into the plugins directory of your blog. Then activate from your dashboard. Comment Timeout works on Wordpress 2.0 or later. I’ve included a screenshot of the admin panel.

• How to thank first time commenters
• How to show someone’s last post (and some love) on your blog
• Want to better manage your Wordpress comments?

You’re probably familiar with rss feeds if you’re a blogger or read blogs. On the off chance you’re not familiar, rss stands for really simple syndication and it’s a way of getting your new content out to readers that want to see it. A footer, as many people know, goes at the bottom of your content. It is possible to place footers on your rss feed. Some of the things you could place at the bottom of your feed include banners, links to your other sites, links promoting things like contests, advertisements, messages and copyright notices.

I found a plugin called Feed Footer over at Blog Clout that’s easy to use and allows you to include a footer with your rss feeds. To use it, download the plugin, extract and upload the file to your plugins directory of your blog, activate the plugin and configure it. Feed Footer permits inclusion of up to 10 different ads which rotate. If you only want to include one message than you need to put that message in all ten of the boxes. If you want to alternate two messages, put each message in five of the boxes. I’m including a screenshot of the boxes so you understand what I’m referring to. It’s easy to use and I recommend it. Check it out, and let me know what you use it for.

• How to adjust what appears in the content of your rss feed
• The difference between an announcement and a sticky post
• How to show someone’s last post (and some love) on your blog

If you use Wordpress and want to add the ability to view similar posts at the end of a post then this plugin is for you. I have recently done this on this blog, as you might have noticed if you’re a regular reader. Implementing it isn’t too bad but will require a little fidgeting with your code. Here’s what you’ll need to do. Download the Similar Posts plugin. Install the plugin into your Wordpress plugins directory, and activate it through your Wordpress dashboard. Now it’s time to place the specified code into your theme where you want the similar posts to appear. The plugin page contains easy to understand install instructions, as well as a link to an article on modifying themes from Lorelle on Wordpress. I suggest you make sure you’re backed up before installing the code, just to be safe. Then read the instructions (and the Lorelle piece on modifying themes if you need it). Then try it. Make sure this is the only thing you’re altering at the time, so if something happens you know exactly where you were and what you did and how to reverse it. I had to move mine three times before I got it where I wanted it. Once it’s installed and appearing where you want it you can administer its behavior from within the Wordpress dashboard. Here’s a screenshot of the control panel.

Some of the aspects you can control with the output of the plugin include how many similar posts are shown, if you want the current post included or left out of the results, if you want the results to be from the same category as the current post, categories that should be included or excluded and authors that should be included or excluded. Let me know if you implement it on your blog and how you like it.

• The difference between an announcement and a sticky post
• How to adjust what appears in the content of your rss feed
• How to close comments on your blog