Jammed: Full into Capacity

The new WordPress 2.6 “Tyner,” named for jazz pianist McCoy Tyner has been released with several enhanced features and addons.

1. Easily revise your photos or restore your previous editions for a certain post. This benefits multi-author blogs where you can see every change tracked by person.

2. Easily blog about a newly found stuff (a video, an audio file, an image, an interesting article, etc.) from the web with its enhanced Press This! button. Easily grab the text, images, quote or embed a video with this feature.

3. Catch more attention by adding captions for your images.

4. Preview your chosen theme first before using it to your blog.

5. Speed up your blogging by using Gears.
Read more…

Blogging, Internet, Webmasters Tools, WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes Blogging, Blogging Software, New WordPress Features, Plugin Incompatibility, WordPress 2.6, WordPress Tyner

Entrecard has been one of the good sources of traffic for most Entrecarders [users].  Some good tools are available to enhance the functionality of Entrecard and help the users boost their traffic through Entrecard.

WordPress Plugins:

1. Entrecard Popper.  “It’s a WordPress Plugin that pops your Entrecard up to the top middle of the page when a user comes from an Entrecard surfing site, otherwise it stays where you put it.” 

2. EntreDroppers. This plugin creates a list of the Entrecard droppers to your blog. This plugin uses the RSS feed of your Entrecard inbox. 

Other Widgets:

1. You Drop, I Link.  This widget works like a blogroll and displays 50 blogs that dropped on your Entrecard widget.

2.  CreateElf also has recent drops widget which works similarly with the EntreDroppers plugins.

You can also easily list your latest Entrecard droppers by using your widgetized theme.  AskOwen has a detailed steps on how to easily add this widget on your WordPress blog.

Browsers:

1. CreateElf’s Entrecard Browser lets you easily browse other users’ site.

2. SiteHoppin lets you browse the Entrecard network.

Read more…

Entrecard, Internet, Online Tools, Social-Networking, Webmasters Tools, WordPress, WordPress Plugins Blog Traffic, Entrecard, Entrecard Popper, EntreDroppers Plugin, Free Services, Google, Online Tools, WordPress Plugins

My upcoming graduation and recent site suspension have kept me out-of-loop from the latests in blogosphere. It was only now that I learned about the latest huge hacking exploits on WordPress 2.3.3. The script (a Trojan horse) has infected over 6 thousand WordPress 2.3.3 bloggers (as of today). It creates a directory in your wp-contents folder named “1″ and creates a directory of list of “search engine-friendly” gambling, porn, and other illegal sites. Currently, solutions are yet to be formulated.

To know if you have been infected with this malware, you can check your wp-content and look if there is a directory named “1″. You can do it through FTP or through your file manager or simply check your website at http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/1/. If you are infected, you will see a list of those illegal sites.

How does the virus affect your website?

Google has flagged some of the infected sites as harmful. Unfortunately, if you were affected, it may cause significant drop to your traffic because a “this website may harm your PC” message will appear below your link warning visitors not to come to your site (take the case of BonTB who were one of the firsts to discover this exploit).

It may also affect your SERPs and PR since you are “hosting” illegal sites. You may also be suspended from your host since you will be violating their terms and conditions.
Read more…

Tips, WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes Trojan Horse, WordPress Exploits, WordPress Hacking, WordPress Virus

The number of digital mobile phones worldwide, enabled with full internet access, outnumbers televisions and PCs combined. Hence, website owners are finding ways to target the mobile users to expand their readership. Recently, .mobi domains have made it possible for website owners to create a user-friendlier mobile content because they have been optimized to work with internet phones.

How to create a mobile version of your blog?

You can either purchase your own .mobi domain (now available on several registrars) or you can take advantage of free services offered online:

1. FeedM8: Mobilizing Your Blog

Features:
- You can customize your mobile page, change the link colors, background, etc.
- You can set how many entries should appear on your homepage.
- A description about the articles is shown and you can set the length of the description.
- You can monetize your website. The Feedm8 team will find advertisers for you, optimize the ads, and handle payments.
- Your mobile URL will look like: http://feedm8.com/yourpreferredname.

Take your blog mobile and earn more

2. WireNode: The Mobile Websites Creator

Features:

- Your mobile portal has a unique URL on their wirenode.mobi domain.
- You can create a free mobile website using their mobile page editor.
- You can upload pictures for your mobile sites.
- They have a rating section for mobile portals in their directory. Portals with best score appears in the Top Three section on the main page.
- You can customize your mobile page with components like a header, a text message, or a widget (message of the day).
- The latest 5 entries from your blog are displayed on your mobile home page with a link to your previous articles.
- They have promotional banners and widgets to promote your website.
Read more…

Blogging, Internet, Online Tools, Webmasters Tools, WordPress Plugins Free Online Mobile Tools, Mobile Blogging, Mobilize Blog, MoBlogging, WordPress Mobile Plugin

A trackback feature of many publishing software/programs like WordPress, Moveable Type, TextPattern, etc. or even free hosts like Blogger, enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and referring to their posts. It has been considered as “communication” among blogs. Linking to other websites, which will automatically be called trackback, means several things:

1. It shows appreciation and acknowledgment.

2. It indicates worthiness of the article linked.

3. It’s one way of expressing your reaction to another blogger’s articles.

4. It’s one way of getting comments. If you send trackbacks to other blogs, there’s a great possibility that the blogger will compliment you through commenting to your post.

5. It’s one way of building inbound links. Inbound links are used by search engines to rank web pages.

Just as much as it’s a great help to bloggers, it also gives headaches to some. This feature has been a spam vector with some individuals abusing it. Websites giving trackback spam are usually Adsense-generating websites, which are mainly using bots to track posts containing certain post tags.
Read more…

Blogging, Tips, Webmasters Tools, WordPress, WordPress Plugins Anti Spam Plugin, Block Blog Spam, Comment Spam, Spam Blocking, Trackback Spam, WordPress Spam

For months now, this blog has been freed from comment spam I used to experience before because I found out the most effective ways to avoid WordPress spam.

1. Deactivating Akismet. Previously, I was getting at least 200 spam comments per day. I had to scan them one-by-one because some comments were filtered as spam by Akismet. Out of frustration, I deactivated the plugin with thoughts of completely avoiding these spam messages. True enough, I have not received spam comments since then.

Note: Do not delete Akismet from the plugins directory because you’re blog may experience another spam flood.

2. Install a spam blocking plugin. Currently I am using Matriphe Keycode, one of the best anti spam plugins I’ve ever used.
Read more…

Blogging, Tips, WordPress, WordPress Plugins Anti-Spam, Blogging, Online-Tips, Spam, Tips, WordPress, WordPress Plugins