Saturday 29 June 2013

Adding Arrow Key Navigation To Blogger

First of all, all credits to this amazing tutorial and script goes to our friends at Blogger Plugins. Don't forget to check their website for more great blogging tutorials.Also, I took above picture from their website. It's not copyrighted by them, but still they saved my time by creating this image. So thanks a lot guys!

Tons of big sites are using arrow key navigation to make their site more better, and it's a very useful plugin for readers. It saves a lot of time, as they don't have to look for those next or older post/page links. The code is very light, and would not effect your blog's loading at all.

Let's just get started with this easy plugin. You don't need to manually put any code into your Blog, you can install this plugin by clicking on above Add To Blogger button and that's it!!

Tuesday 25 June 2013

How To Add Polls To WordPress



Polls are a great way to find out what your readers thinks about a specific thing or topic. Because your reader's opinion really matters, or maybe we just say that, but polls are a must have feature for all topic based sites.

By using polls, you can know your reader's interest, opinion, and many things. It all depends on how you use them. It's WordPress and you can also use polls in your posts, sidebars, or on an poll archive page.

So there are lots of plugins to add free polls on your WordPress site, but which one is best for us? It's not a really hard question - you can use WP Polls, which is free and fantastic. Official description of WP Polls reads:

Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can also easily add a poll into your WordPress's blog post/page.

It's very great plugin to use, and you can also add a poll into your blog's posts, pages, or on sidebar widgets. It's extremely customizable via templates and css styles. It also gives you an option to set a Polls Archive page for your site to display all our current and old polls. Let's just get started with this plugin:

Installing WP Polls to WordPress:

  • Click here and download this plugin. Visit your WordPress' plugin page and install this plugin.
  • You can also install this plugin from your WP's plugin directory.
  • After installing, activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' admin menu in WordPress.

That's with this simple part. Now let's move on to second part.

How To Add A Poll:

After installing this plugin, WP Poll menu will appear in your WordPress's right menu section. You can add a new poll by simply clicking on that menu. You can also choose poll's expiring time, starting time, more. Just add your poll and click on Add Poll button.

Now visit Widget section of your WP, and add a WP Poll widget to your blog's sidebar, or wherever you want your poll to appear. You can also add your poll into a post or page by clicking on Poll icon in post/page editor.

You can also display WP Poll into your template by adding following php code into your template:

<?php if (function_exists('vote_poll') && !in_pollarchive()): ?>
    <li>
        <h2>Polls</h2>
        <ul>
            <li><?php get_poll();?></li>
        </ul>
        <?php display_polls_archive_link(); ?>
    </li>
<?php endif; ?>

You can get more details at this link.

Creating Poll Archive:

Creating a Poll Archive page for your blog is a great idea, and I really recommend this step. It's just too easy, you just need to enter a simple code into your page.

  • Create a new page and name it Polls or Poll Archive
  • Change page's permalink to: http://www.yourblog.com/pollsarchive/
  • Just put following code into your page and publish it:

[page_polls]

That's it! Don't forget to leave a comment!

Friday 14 June 2013

How To Delete Unconfirmed WordPress Users



In past, I shared several articles to manage your WordPress users, such as changing usernames, and restricting usernames. It's time for another article related to WordPress users. It's really important to manage all users, even more if you're using BuddyPress.
Some registered users of your site may not really confirm their id by clicking on activation links, which really sucks, as they're just wasting your database's little space. Activation emails may be caught by spam filters, deleted unwillingly, or simply not understood.

Boone Gorges and CUNY Academic Commons created a very useful plugin called, Unconfirmed, which creates a Dashboard panel under the Users menu (Network Admin > Users on Multisite) that shows a list of unactivated user registrations.

For each registration, you can resend the original activation email, manually activating the user, or delete them. It's a really great and must use plugin for all. If you got some extra money, you can also donate some to keep this plugin up in development at this link.

How To Install And Use Unconfirmed:

  • Click here and download this plugin. Visit your WordPress' plugin page and install this plugin.
  • You can also install this plugin from your WP's plugin directory.
  • After installing, activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' admin menu in WordPress.
  • Now visit Dashboard > Users to manage unconfirmed users.

Hope this will keep your community up and clean. Don't forget to leave your responses, and I'll try to help and reach you all.

Wednesday 12 June 2013

How To Activate New Facebook News Feed



Facebook has launched a new news feed design. It was introduced in March 2012, and right now is in BETA testing version. It's inspired by a "newspaper" and looks bit like Facebook's smart phone application. It has a very sleek UI, with a very nice off-canvas menu.

It's very user-friendly, and has lot of option to customize in your own style,You can choose from separate sections for friends, photos, music and other activity and updates. I used it, and it was pretty cool. To be honest, it's not very user-friendly at all, and is very confusing for new users.

How To Activate It:

  • Now click on "Join Waiting List", which is located on the bottom.

Now you're on news feed's waiting list. As it's a beta version, once the waiting list completes you will get a notification on the Facebook Home page to use it. That's it guys!

Tuesday 11 June 2013

How To Use PHP On Blogger

We love Blogger, probably because it's free and is a Google Product. In April, I posted an article about some reasons why we should choose Blogger as our blogging platform, as I never miss a chance to promote my old articles.

As I noted in that article, Blogger is not a really good choice for a php developer, as it only supports html, css and javascript. However, there is a possible way to use your php files on Blogger, which is quite easy.

First we need a php hosting to host our php files. There are tons of free sites for php hosting, here are some:
awardspace.com
zymic.com
000webhost.com
Click here for more...

So just create an account on one of these free php hosting sites, and upload your php files in it. Now it's type to put your php files into your blog by iframing it or by using this code:

<object data="http://your-file.php" height="500" type="text/html" width="600"></object>

Now just replace red text in above code with your php file's link and publish it or post it on your blog.

That's the only possible way to do this... :)

Monday 10 June 2013

How To Restrict Usernames In WordPress


It's really hard to run a WordPress blog, with BuddyPress and public registration. I'll post several article about managing your WordPress and BuddyPress users on BWidgets. Today, we'll kick off this series with a very basic tutorial.

In this tutorial, we'll learn about how to restrict usernames from your WordPress, so people may not use when registering for your site. By default, WordPress allow users to pick any username they choose as long as it isn't an already existing account and it doesn't include invalid characters.

Scott Reilly created a great plugin to restrict some usernames so they may not pick it. It's very important to restrict several usernames, including contact, admin, feedback, user, moderator, and more.

When attempting to register with a restricted username, vistors will see an error notice that says: ERROR: This username is invalid. Please enter a valid username.

How To Install And Use Restrict Usernames:

  • Click here and download this plugin. Visit your WordPress' plugin page and install this plugin.
  • You can also install this plugin from your WP's plugin directory.
  • After installing, activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' admin menu in WordPress.
  • Go to the Users -> Name Restrictions admin settings page (which you can also get to via the Settings link next to the plugin on the Manage Plugins page) and specify username restrictions.

That's IT! You can put your responses, problems and requests in the comment section below... :)

Wednesday 5 June 2013

Adding reCAPTCHA To BuddyPress Registration

We all hate spam and spammer way too much. They always annoy us everywhere on internet, our blogs, comments, Facebook, Twitter, forums, and everywhere. It's a great idea to prevent some of these spammers by using a CAPTCHA. It's impossible for them to pass a CAPTCHA, since they're just a spam bot without any brain.

Google's reCAPTCHA is a great way to knock these spammers out. Over 200,000 sites use reCAPTCHA, including household names like Facebook, Ticketmaster, Twitter and Craigslist. I have added a reCAPTCHA on my BuddyPress' registration at this link. It also looks good and professional. It's easy to add reCAPTCHA to your BuddyPress' registration page, you just need to read this tutorial carefully. Here we go:

Installing BuddyPress reCAPTCHA:

First we must install BuddyPress reCAPTCHA on our WordPress. You can download this by clicking here.

  • Click here and download this plugin. Visit your WordPress' plugin page and install this plugin.
  • You can also install this plugin from your WP's plugin directory.
  • After installing, just click on active.

Finish with this part. Now, first we'll create our reCAPTCHA keys then we'll add our key to this plugin. This doesn't have a user panel, so we have to do it manually. Let's start our second step:

Getting Our reCAPTCHA Keys:

Now we need two reCAPTCHA keys from their website - first is public key, and second is a private key. Here is how to get both of these:

  • Visit this link and login with your Google Account.
  • Following form will appear, fill this form with your website url and click on Create Key:


  • Now after clicking on Create Key,  you'll get both keys - public key, and the private key. Now copy these codes into a notepad document, and check next step:

Adding reCAPTCHA Keys To BuddyPress:

It's final step, and it's not that hard.You must edit the 'bp-recaptcha.php' file to make your settings.

  • Visit your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Edit Plugins
  • Choose BuddyPress reCAPTCHA plugin
  • Now choose bp-recaptcha.php file
  • In bp-recaptcha.php add your your public key and private key in following spaces:


  • Click on Update/Save and That's IT!
Don't forget to leave your responses. Also guys, you can check full personal blog at this link.

Monday 3 June 2013

How To File A DMCA Complaint Against WordPress.com Blog


It's really sucks when someone is copying your content without giving you credits of your work, even more if he copied full article, even your images.

A WordPress.com blog, http://www.rnhckr.wordpress.com , was coping our article, without giving me credits for my original work. So I went to his website and comment on copied post to give me credits of my work. That kiddo edited my comment to:

Thanks! I'm copying this article.

I was really mad when I saw that he edited my comment. So, I filed a DMCA complain against his WordPress.com blog. As you can see, his blog is no more.

You can also file DMCA complain against a WordPress.com blog if he's violating your copyrights. It's easy and very effective.

If you believe that someone is infringes one or more of WordPress' TOS, then you can file a DMCA complain against them to get it removed of the web. First, you should to contact that person to remove your content, but if he's still not removing, then filing a DMCA is a great idea.

How To File A DMCA Against WordPress.com Blog:

Before starting it, here is a quote from WordPress.com about DMCA complains:

If an Infringement Notice is valid, we are required by law to respond to it by disabling access to the allegedly infringing content. If you are a WordPress.com user and access to portions of your blog have been disabled for this reason, we will notify you. You then have the option to send us a written counter-notice (a Counter-Notice) stating why your content does not infringe copyrights and asking for access to be reinstated. 

To file a DMCA against WordPress.com blog, you must fill WordPress' online DMCA form, which is available at this link. It's pretty simple. Below are some info about form's filed, and what to fill.

  • First Name(required): Fill your first name.
  • Last Name(required): Fill your last/second name.
  • Company Name: Name of your company or simply put your blog's name.
  • Address Line 1(required): Just put your address in this filed.
  • Address Line 2: Put your second address, if there is any.
  • City(required): Simply put your city's name. I'm from Kanpur :p
  • State/Region/Province(required): Put your state/region/province's name in this field.
  • Zip/Postal Code(required): Put your Zip or Postal address. You must know your Zip code.
  • Country(required): Enter your country's name.
  • Telephone Number(required): Put your telephone number in this field. Don't worry girls, they won't call you.
  • Email Address(required): Put your primary email in this field.
  • Copyright holder you represent (if other than yourself): Name of the copyright holder you represent, if it's not your own content.
  • Location of copyrighted work (where your original material is located)(required): Put links to your own original article of your blog, where the original articles are located.
  • Please describe the copyrighted work so that it may be easily identified(required): Give a brief description of your copyrighted work and the copied content. Like you can write, "this article is written and copyrighted by me, and this or that blog copied it without my permissions." Don't forget to be nice.
  • Location (URL) of the unauthorized material on a WordPress.com site (NOT simply the primary URL of the site - example.wordpress.com; you must provide the full and exact permalink of the post, page, or image where the content appears, one per line) (required): Put links of the copied work. Don't forget to enter the direct link of that copied content and describe it. Don't forget to mention, if that blog is copying from other blogs or is violating other TOS.
  • If the infringement described above is represented by a third-party link to a downloadable file (e.g. http://rapidshare.com/files/...), please provide the URL of the file (one per line): Only if that link is represented by a third-party link to a downloadable file. It's not required.
  • Two Check Boxes: Now check both of these checkboxes.
  • Signed on this date of (today's date, MM/DD/YYYY)(required): Today's date in MM/DD/YYYY format.
  • Signature (your digital signature is legally binding)(required): Your digital signature, which is your full name.

After filling above fields, just click on Submit button!!

You'll soon receive an email from WordPress team about this complain. I just received following emails in about 12 hours:

Hi,

Thank you for your report. The website in question has been suspended for violating our Terms of Service.

Thanks,

Phil
WordPress.com | Automattic Inc.

Hope this information will help you. If you're going to copy this or any other articles, then don't forget to credit us for our content, If you believe that we're violating your copyrights, then don't forget to contact us :)

Sunday 2 June 2013

Adding Google Custom Search Engine To Blogger


Every website and blog must have a search bar to make it easy for visitors to search something. Even our site has a small, but stylish search bar in top. It's a must have stuff for all bloggers and webmasters. You can try it, and you'll find out that our search bar is linked with Google's custom search engine.

Replacing your boring search engine with a custom Google search engine is an awesome idea. You can also turn your old search to Google CSE, but we'll discuss that stuff later. Plus, you can also earn money with your Google CSE, but we'll also discuss it later.

It's time for you to learn how to create your own custom Google search engine, which is 100% embeddable and customization. As I noted before, you can check a live demo in our blog's right top bar, or by clicking here.

Creating A Google CSE:

Creating your own Google custom search engine is quite easy, you just need to type some basic information about your search preference and that's it. Here we go:

  • Click on Add button and a form will appear


Now it's time to fill a simple form, with one on text field, and other options. As you can see in below picture, steps are just too easy.

  • In first field, enter your blog/site's URL, you can enter more than one URLs (one URL per field)
  • In second option, choose your preferred language (English if you're using Adsense)
  • In third field, you can edit your search engine's name, which is optional and is only visible to you
  • Finally, click on that Create button to finish your setup


Yea!! We're almost done with this section of this post. After clicking on Create button, following page will appear:

  • Just click on Get code to get your CSE's code. Also that Google Bot looks freakin' awesome!!

As you can see in above image, just copy that highlighted code, cuz we'll add that code in your blog. You can try different types of Google CSE forms and style by customizing it. Time for next step!

Adding Google CSE To Blogger:

Now you can add that Google CSE code to wherever you wanna display your search engine. You can also try it on a html document. But we'll add it to our blog. Here you go:

  • Go To Blogger> Layout > Add A Gadget > HTML/JavaScript
  • Paste your Google CSE form and save your widget.
That's IT

Customizing:

Now you can also customize this widget. There are two ways to customize it, first one is by Google CSE's option, and second way is with some CSS and HTML. In this post, we'll only discuss about first method.

Visit Google CSE > Select your custom search engine > Click on Look and feel option in right sidebar
Now in look and feel tab, you'll see lots of option to customize your search engine, like Layout, themes, customize, and thumbnails, as you see in below images.


You can try to customize your search with every option, without using any CSS. It's pretty simple. Also, don't forget to experiment with layout option, as it's a very great way to customize your search's layout. More tutorials and article about Google CSE are coming soon :)

Popular Posts

 
Powered by Blogger.