Clazh » Tutorial

Uninstall Google Gears From Mac OS X, Windows, Linux

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:23:44 +0000

I been playing around with Fluid for Mac, its similar to the Prism. If you don’t know what I am talking about, basically PRISM and FLUID let you run any web applications like Gmail, Facebook, Google Reader etc in a separate instance of a browser, so that you can launch them like desktop Icons.

Fluid Apps

I installed google gears to enable offline browsing while using gmail, and google reader. After a while I decided to get rid of it since Little Snitch (a firewall application) told me that Google kept trying to connect every 30 minutes to the internet to check for an update, I found this extremely annoying and completely unnecessary. What was more annoying was that I couldn’t find a way to uninstall it. On a mac uninstalling is pretty straight forward just drag and drop the application on to the trash can. In google gears case it wasn’t installed as an application, and after hunting around I found that the only way to uninstall it is to run a command in terminal. below are the instructions.

First Quit any fluid application including Safari.
In Finder, open your Applications folder.
Open the folder named Utilities.
Open Terminal. alternative is to type Terminal directly in Spotlight
In Terminal, enter the following command (including the quotes): ‘/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Gears.plugin/Contents/Resources/uninstall.command’
Press Enter.
Enter your password when prompted.

For instructions on how to uninstall Google Gears for various other Operating systems.

Windows XP or Vista

Click the Start menu on your computer taskbar.
Select Control Panel.
Double-click Add or Remove Programs (on XP) or Programs and Features (on Vista).
Select Google Gears in the list of programs.
Click the Remove button.

If you’ve installed Google Chrome, Gears is installed by default. To uninstall Gears for Google Chrome, you’ll need to uninstall Google Chrome.

Linux

Open Firefox.
Click the Tools menu.
Select Extensions (Firefox 1) or Add-ons (Firefox 2 or later).
Select Google Gears in the list of programs.
Click Uninstall.
Restart Firefox.

Mac OS X

Open Firefox.
Click the Tools menu.
Select Extensions (Firefox 1) or Add-ons (Firefox 2 or later).
Select Google Gears in the list of programs.
Click Uninstall.
Restart Firefox.

Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6.0

Select Settings.
If present, select the System tab.
Select Remove Programs.
Select Google Gears from the list.
Click Remove.
Restart your device.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Google, Tutorial Tags: How To, Uninstall

Facebook Hack : Switch Or Turn Off Facebook Lite To Default

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:40:00 +0000

I was using Facebook when I saw the ad on the side recommending me to switch to Facebook lite for a faster and better user experience. So I clicked on it hoping to change back to the regular Facebook interface once I was done with exploring Facebook Lite. Facebook lite is an simplified version of Facebook, that lets you use facebook without the clutter of various Facebook Applications spamming your Wall and Feed. But the funny thing is there was no link anywhere which I could use to switch back to the regular interface. I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to Switch off the Facebook Lite Interdface change back to the default Facebook interface. I could see that the URL of the the Facebook Lite page was http://lite.facebook.com/ and when I tried entering http://facebook.com/ it would redirect me back to http://lite.facebook.com/. After a lot of hunting around I found a couple of solutions.

Official way to Switch off Facebook Lite

On the top right hand corner before the search box you’ll see two small icons, the first on looks like a spanner click this, this will take you to the facebook lite settings page.

Facebook Lite Settings

Now click on default site

Facebook Lite Default Site

Select. When I go to Facebook.com, show me, Regular Facebook. and click save you should be done. You also have the option of checking Let me switch between regular Facebook and Facebook Lite If you select this option, a blue bar will appear at the top of Facebook that enables you to switch back and forth between the two versions i.e Facebook Lite and the default Facebook Interface.

Facebook Lite Change To Default Facebook

Use The Facebook Feeback Form

Scroll way down to the bottom of the facebook lite interface at the bottom you’ll see a small link called feedback click this., You’ll see a new page at the top it will say Looking to get back to the regular Facebook? Just click here. Just click the given link it should turn off the Facebook Lite interface and send you back to the regular Facebook interface.

Other Methods are listed below but not Guaranteed to work.

Change Facebook URL Link

You’ll notice that the Url has changed to http://lite.facebook.com/ just change this back to http://facebook.com/. This doesn’t work all the time you can try to use http://lite.facebook.com/home.php

Clear Your browser Cookies and Cache

Clear your browser cookies and cache and try logging into facebook again, the facebook lite interface should be gone now.
For Internet Explorer users go to your menu bar and click Tools –> Internet Options –> Delete Cookies and Delete Files
For Firefox Users go to your menu bar and click Tools –> Clear recent History –> Select all the options and click Clear all

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: General, Internet, Tutorial Tags: FaceBook, Hacking, How To, Social-Networks, Tutorial

Post Wordpress To Twitter Automatically, With Short URLs, No Plugin Required

Arpit Jacob — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:09:45 +0000

Updated: Got rid of the Custom Metadata, used the modified date and the created date of the post to check if its a new post or an old one. Now you don’t have to worry about updating your old posts.
Updated: To Make the title text more Twitter friendly.

I been trying to cut down on the number of Plugins used. Firstly to make maintained easier, secondly to simplify and reduce to the bare minimum without using Plugins, thirdly to hone up my WordPress skills. The latest plugin I got rid of was the WP to Twitter Plugin. Initially I started off trying to modify how I wanted it to work. Basically I wanted to cut off Bit.ly as a URL shortner and use my own blog as a URL shortner to send people directly to my site and keep the traffic on my site without the need for a middle man. I figured this out after I saw how Amit Aggarwal was tweeting his links to his site.

Short URLs in WordPress without Bit.ly or URL Shortners

We all know that WordPress generates long Permalinks for your site, it automatically converts your titles into those long URLs called permalinks that you see. Example http://www.clazh.com/this_is_some_random_post, If you switch off Permalinks in WordPress you’ll see that links to your posts will be of the form http://www.clazh.com/?p=401 if you look at it you’ll notice the last bit has a number attached to it, each post has a unique ID associated to it. The trick is to make use of this ID to and create a URL for our posts, so when people click on this shortned link they’ll be automatically taken to the Permalink associated with that post its as simple as that.

A Simple WordPress To Twitter Function.

First we’ll write a really simple function that uses CURL to post to the Twitter API. Just copy paste it into your functions.php file in your WordPress theme directory. In case you don’t see the file in yours themes folder just create one and paste the code inside it. To check if CURL is enabled on your server you can paste this function into a blank PHP file and call the function like this twitterUpdate("some random post", "http://clazh.com", true); with some random inputs. Make sure you uncomment the last few lines where it says to uncomment to test for CURL support.

Note: In the rare case your host does not support CURL you can always make use of fsockopen for PHP 4 or the much easier stream_context_creat for PHP5

function twitterUpdate($postTitle, $postLink, $isNew)
{
	// Enter Your Twitter ID Here
	$username = 'Twitter_ID';
	// Enter Your Twitter Password Here
	$password = 'Password';

        # text into a twitter friendly text
	$code_entities_match = array('--','"','!','@','#','$','%','^','&','*','(',')','_','+','{','}','|',':','"','<','>','?','[',']','\\',';',"'",',','.','/','*','+','~','`','=');
	$code_entities_replace = array('-','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','');
	$postTitle = str_replace($code_entities_match, $code_entities_replace, $postTitle);

	// Check if New or Updated Post
	if($isNew)
		$postTitle = 'New Post: ' . $postTitle;
	else
		$postTitle = 'Updated Post: ' . $postTitle;

	// Calculate Twitter Msg and keep it under 140 Chars
        if(strlen ($postTitle) > (140 - strlen ($postLink)))
		$postTitle 		= substr_replace($postTitle, '...', (140 - 3 - strlen ($postLink)));

	$message = $postTitle . $postLink;

	// The twitter API address
	$url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml';
	$curl_handle = curl_init();
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, "$url");
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=$message");
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password");
	$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
	curl_close($curl_handle);

	// Uncomment the lines below to check if
	// CURL is enabled on your Web Server
	// check for success or failure
	/*
	if (empty($buffer))
		echo 'message';
	else
		echo 'success';
	*/
}

WordPress Function that Triggers Post To Twitter

Next we’ll write a simple wordpress function that triggers whenever you update or publish a post, we will also added a custom metadata to the post check if its a new or old post. Copy paste this code below the twitterUpdate function in your functions.php themes file.

function postToTwitter($post_ID)
{
	// Create your Short URL replace with your blog url
	$postLink = ' http://clazh.com/?p=' . $post_ID;
	// Get the Post Object
	$get_post_info 	= get_post( $post_ID );
	// Get the Post Title
	$postTitle = $get_post_info->post_title;
        // Get the Post date
	$postDate 		= date('U', strtotime($get_post_info->post_date));
	// Get the post Modified date
	$postModified 	= date('U', strtotime($get_post_info->post_modified));

	// Check if the post is new or modified
	if($postModified == $postDate)
	{
		twitterUpdate($postTitle, $postLink, true);
	}
	/*  If You want to fire everytime You update
	      a post remove these comments around the else.
	else
	{
		twitterUpdate($postTitle, $postLink, false);
	}
	*/
}

// Post to twitter when you publish or update a post
add_action('publish_post', 'postToTwitter');

So thats about it, just paste these two blocks of code into your functions.php and change the required parameter, you can play around with the code and modify it to change the message being posted to twitter.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Tutorial, Web-Design, Wordpress Tags:

How To Remove SpyWare, AdWare Clean and Fix Windows

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:08:56 +0000

Recently my company gave me a laptop to use for work. It was riddled with SpyWare and AdWare. The instant I fired up IE the Virus and SpyWare would trigger up and redirect me to some random ad laden web page requesting me to download even more SpyWare. Since reinstalling the OS was not an option I had to clean up the system on my own somehow. I am listing a bunch of software that you’ll need before we proceed.

Update Window

The first step is to make sure your windows is updated with the latest security patches and fixes. If you are running Windows XP make sure you have installed Service Pack 2. Once you are done installing service pack 2 you should run Windows update and get the latest patches. Another alternative is to use AutoPatcher this is a utility which will download all the required patches and security fixes from Microsoft and store it in a folder on your system which you can later reuse to apply to other computers that you need to update.

Run A Full Scan Using AntiVirus and AntiSpyware Softwares.

There are a number of free AntiVirus software I have for now listed two of them. Virus can do all sorts of weird things to your computer. For example on my laptop the virus disabled the “View Hidden Files” option, even though I checked the option it would reset it back, it also set a number of scheduled tasks in my Task Scheduler to call a number of different copies of the Virus. Run a full scan of the system. Next run a Anti-SpyWare software I highly recommend AdAware.

A Virus Infected Tasks list

AVG Virus Scan With Detected Viruses

Clean Up Your Start Up Items.

Most SpyWare and Virus configure your start up items to run the Virus when you boot up or log into your system. Use the MsConfig tool in windows to check which items are being loaded at start up. If you see any suspicious looking entries uncheck them also identify which file is being called and manually delete it. Sometime this might not work like in my case I had to log into widows using safe mode (When Windows is booting up press F8 you will see an option to load windows under safe mode) and delete the offending file. Use the process explorer tool to see if the processing running on your system are all legitimate. Also use AutoRuns to delete any entries that look suspicious especially DLL that are unsigned and have random looking names.

Clean Up And Optimise Your System.

There are a number of tools that can clean your system of unwanted and unused temporary files and registry entries. One of the best tools that I have found so far is CCleaner which provides a number of advanced options to clean up your system. Try to keep the number of items that start up when you boot the system to a minimum.

Prevention Is Better Than Cure.

Better safe than sorry. Ditch IE period and get FireFox. Run an Anti-Virus software and do a full scan periodically. Also do a full Anti-SpyWare scan periodically. Also scan external drives like thumb drives and external hard disk when you connect it to the computer.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2008. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Technology, Tutorial Tags: Anti-Virus, How To, Repair, SpyWare

How To Access Experts Exchange and Bypass Without Registering

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:25:54 +0000

Have you ever been annoyed when you search on Google and click on a link that you find relevant only to find that you need to register to have access to the content. You might be wondering how the content in these sites are indexed when they are not actually viewable this is because these sites allow only the search bots to access the restricted content. I wonder why Google does not penalise site like Experts Exchange for showing different content to users and the Google search bot.

There are two ways you can access content on Experts Exchange without the need to register and and pay for membership to view the content. The first two methods are the the easiest way.

Just Scroll Down.

You might be wondering how scrolling down can help. Experts Exchange were smart enough to figure out that internet surfers have very short attention spans and rarely scroll down beyond a given point. They in fact convince the users they need to register to view the content by showing a large number of dummy comments with text that says

All comments and solutions are available to Premium Service Members only. Sign-up to view the solution to this question.

So the user assumes that the content is only viewable if he/she registers when in fact all the comments and solutions are viewable if you scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Use Google Cache.

This is a no brainer. When you search on Google if you see a link to Experts Exchange instead of clicking on the link directly click on the link below where it says Cache.

User Agent Switcher FireFox Extension.

If you constantly land up on experts exchange or you are tired of scrolling down so much. Use the User Agent Switcher FireFox Extension to spoof your User Agent and make Experts Exchange believe that you are a Google Search Bot. Download a list of User Agents from here and import it using the user agent switcher extension.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Tutorial Tags: FireFox, Free, Unblock

Advanced Guide On How To Choose A Good Web Host

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:18:14 +0000

After my recent frustrating experience with various web hosts I decided to write an article after some of my readers requested me to. My focus is on web hosts that provide shared hosting since and does not cover buying or using Dedicated hosting, since Shared Hosting is the most commonly used web hosting.

There are three Major factors you need to look at when you are about to buy Web Hosting. We’ll explore each point one by one and various tools to asses and collect data.

Uptime
Response Time
Tech Support
Ease of Use

Uptime

100% uptime is a myth when it comes to shared hosting no shared web host can guarantee you 100% uptime. Why because, servers need maintenance to keep them running in top notch condition maintenance means downtime and In the case of Shared hosting this is very much true. In a month calculate the total time that your site goes down and if it is more than 5-6 hours then your Web host in very unreliable (DreamHost). Its is common for a shared hosting site to go down a few minutes(not more than 5 minutes) once a week.

I used tools like PingDom, mon.itor.us and Site24X7 to monitor my site uptime. Out of the three tools I highly recommend Pingdom (they have a 30 day trial which should be enough for you to do your research) since they have more servers around the world and you can configure it to check your site every minute.

Response Time

Response time is the time that your web site takes to respond to a HTTP request(When a Web Page is loaded a number of HTTP Calls are made depending on how many pictures, CSS and JavaScript files are being loaded). The Ideal response time for a site should not cross 1 sec. Most Shared Hosts cram a lot of websites on to the same server this can cause the web sites to become slow. In case there are a lot of high traffic blogs/Web Sites on the same servers as the one you are hosted on your site is likely to be slow. Use this tool http://www.myipneighbors.com/ to check how many other sites are hosted along with you. It is common for web hosts to put 150-200 low traffic sites on the same server, if you notice more than 2-3 High traffic sites on the same server then your site is likely to be slow.

Again PingDom is a great tool to monitor site response time, they have more than 15 different servers located around the world that tell you response time around various parts of the world. Or you could use this completely free tool to check your site response time from 5 different locations around the world. http://internetsupervision.com/scripts/urlcheck/check.aspx

Tech Support

You might face hiccups along the way when hosting a site. How fast do they reply to your emails. In my case BlueHost provides Instant live chat support. Most Web Hosts have some kind of ticketing system based on priority and complexity of the problem and you would be required to for 2-3 hours before you receive any reply. After being with BlueHost for a while I fail to understand why other Web Hosts also cannot provide live chat support, my previous experience with Media Temple was horrible with replies taking more than 24 hours. On DreamHost when I posted a support ticket I could mark the ticket as HIGH, Medium, Low etc and depending on the priority I found the response varied but on Media Temple they don’t have any such priority marking system which I think sucks big time like in my case my site was down for more than 3 days.

Ease of Use

How easy and intuitive is the Web Hosting Control panel. I have used DreamHost, Media Temple and BlueHost. And I found Media Temple User Interface a pleasure to use and understand. But both DreamHost and Media Temple Control Panels are rather slow in loading. BlueHost has a blazing fast Control Panel they use CPanel with their own enhancements and Addons.

While There are other factors that can slow down your site like having lots of images, widget, scripts. etc which can effect your site. I think I’ll cover them in another post since I myself am guilty of making some of these mistakes. Hopefully when I have finished redesigning my site I can tackle this topic.

If you want to learn more about on site optimisation here are a bunch of links that you find useful.

Tools and Extensions

http://www.pingdom.com/tools/fpt/
http://internetsupervision.com/scripts/urlcheck/check.aspx
http://www.webwait.com/
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1433
FireBugÂ

Articles

http://www.glazkov.com/blog/client-side-performance-tip/
http://www.vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/designing-pages-to-load-quickly/
http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/07/25/how-to-optimize-your-site-with-image-sprites/
http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/dev/enhance-your-page-performance
http://learningtheworld.eu/2007/performance/
http://meiert.com/en/blog/20070621/load-time-the-ux-factor-facts-and-measures/
http://immike.net/blog/2007/07/24/css-redundancy-checker/

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Technology, Tutorial Tags: How To, Web-Hosting

How To Upgrade and Update WordPress A Simple Guide

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:04:03 +0000

So we have another WordPress Release 2.2.2 in such a short time, I’ve helped a few of my friends to set up WordPress blogs. They still aren’t very confident when upgrading or updating WordPress. I usually update as soon as the WordPress developers release a security fix. While there are Plugins that you can use to automatically download and update WordPress, but I prefer the manual route.

A list of Plugins that you can use to upgrade automatically.

Here’s the simplest and safest manual route.

Backup your Database

The First rule, backup your WordPress Database even if you are using Automatic Update Plugins I recommend you to make a backup. If you find backing up the databases using phpMyAdmin too complicated a simpler solution is to install the excellent WordPress Database Plugin, not only can you download a copy of you database with a click you can also schedule it to send you a copy of the database by mail depending on the time frame you specify i.e. daily, weekly or monthly.

Download WordPress from WordPress.org

Always download the latest WordPress from the WordPress.org site. After you’ve download the zip file extract it to a folder (by default it extracts to a folder called WordPress). Login to your website using FTP and upload this folder to the root directory of your Website where your blog is installed (I assume that there is no other folder with the same name). Create a new folder called backup.

Important Note: Before we begin there are some files and folders you shouldn’t touch these are the wp-content folder and wp-config.php and .htaccess files in your root directory. Additionally you may have some non-WordPress related files like robots.txt, Sitemap.xml etc.

If you followed my instructions carefully You’ll see the following directory structure given in the screenshot below.

Move the folders called wp-admin and wp-includes from the root folder to the backup folder. Don’t do anything to the wp-content folder since this contains your themes and plugins and uploaded files. Also move all the WordPress related files from the root directory except wp-config.php and .htaccess (don’t move Non-WordPress related files that you may have example robots.txt, Sitemap.xml etc) Now the directory structure looks like this.

Next move all the folders wp-admin and wp-includes and files except the wp-content folder from your WordPress to the root folder.

Now go to your browser and type in www.your-blog-url.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php thats it your done.

Check if everything is running fine. You can delete the WordPress and backup folder if all is well.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Tutorial, Wordpress Tags: How To

How To: Conjure Your Own Site Design

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 06:29:08 +0000

I would guess that if you are reading this blog, you are somewhat interested in some form of graphics design. If that is the case, than you’ve probably wanted to design a website for yourself, or maybe you already have. But are you completely happy with the originality of your design? Or maybe you just feel like your site needs a refresher. Well, than you have found the right place to help kick-start your attempt to create your own, stylish, and original web site layout.

Part 1: Choosing Your Colors

A good choice of colors can make-or-break your design. That is why the first step is to pick your colors, and pick them wisely.

The first part of picking colors is to decide between light or dark. While you’re subject matter could way in on your decision (like choosing light colors for a site about flowers), it should also be about what you are looking to accomplish with your. If your site is a blog with tons of text (like Clazh), light colors for your layout, with dark text, is a good idea because it improves the readability of your site. If your site is all about showing off your graphical expertise, than dipping into the darker end of the spectrum may help to accentuate the graphical aspects of your design.

Light Color Scheme

Dark Color Scheme

Do you have your scheme chosen? Good. Now moving on to the actual color selection. I am just going to assume that you are older than 10, and can tell what colors go together, and what colors do not. For example, Pink and Light Blue go together, while Bright Green and Bright Yellow could potentially make your eyes bleed. So now, it’s really up to you to choose your colors, based on what you think visitors will find attractive. I would recommend choosing about 5 colors, even if they are only variations of each other. If you just can’t seem to pinpoint a color set, than use Adobe Kuler to help you choose an attractive set.
Part 2: Finding Inspiration

Pablo Picasso once said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” As a designer, you are obviously an artist. Being such, you should definitely take his advice, but not in a literal sense. You don’t want to peruse the web, find a shnazzy looking website, and then just rip-off their design. But what you do want to do is to take inspiration from the work (in this case the designs of websites) of others. There isn’t really much to elaborate on, except for the fact that you should just look at the layout of the site, the navigation, the way ads are handled, and the way the content is handled. But don’t think that you’ll be doing everything the same as the sites you use as base material. That would be stealing. ;)

For some sites you can visit to see galleries of other sites to then take inspiration from (what a confusing sentence), you can try these links:

Part 3: Deciding on Your Own Layout

Leah Culver’s Stupid Blog

Notice the way that all of the site content has the same background color, and is aligned in the middle of the page, taking up the same width.

Glenn Wolsey

In this example, you can see how all of the content is spread across the width of the screen, with the header being the dominant element.

Ordered List

Here you can see (vaguely in the screen shot) that each category of content is given it’s own “space, where nothing is attached.

One last thing to think about when dreaming up the basic layout is the number of columns you will need. For a blog, you may need 2 or three, where as with a portfolio site, you could get away with one.

Part 4: Making a Mockup

You’re almost there! Just stick with me and you’ll be ready to whip out your HTML editor of choice and start hammering away. But before you do that, you should have a full idea of what the site should look like when the (X)HTML and CSS is complete.

For this step, you will need to have a graphical editor. Now, you COULD skip this step entirely, but it helps tenfold to be able to see what you’re trying to achieve. It’s also much easier to make tweaks this way.

If you do not have a graphical editor (like Photoshop), than you have some expensive, and free options. The two I would recommend would be Adobe Photoshop, or the GIMP. The GIMP being a little less user-friendly but free.

Note: Save repeatedly. I prefer to save every 5-10 minutes or so. Laugh now, but if something ever goes wrong, I never have too much to make up.

Alrighty. The first step in making your mockup is to make a basic layout of content. In other words, you make a bunch of squares based on where you want your content to go. No color, no nothing. Just rectangles with black outlines. Don’t forget to label them, for future reference.
The next thing you should do is start to add colors, rounded corners, and the basics of the design. The boxes are no longer necessary, although you may want to still have labels of what area is for what content.
Next, you add basic text, like menus, the header/logo, the footer, and maybe some Lorem Ipsum for your post areas if you’re designing a blog.
Finally, you should now add the small graphics, and as much detail as you can. When you are finished with this step, what you should have on your screen should be exactly what you want the site to look like when you are done with your markup. If not, now would be a great time to tweak everything until it’s perfect. Another good idea would be to save the layout as an image, and send it to a few friends to get their take on it.

Now that you know exactly how everything should look and function, it will be much easier to code the design. If you can’t do that, than that’s your problem.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Design, Tutorial Tags: How To, Photoshop, Tutorial, Web-Development

5 Blogging Secrets For A Successful Blog

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 02:50:52 +0000

Update: added, what are pillar posts.

Here are a few tips that I have learnt over the past few months that I been blogging. I think these steps are important for maintaining and keeping the momentum going new blogs.

1. Drafts.

Make drafts of your future posts, collect data and information related to the post and keep working on them. One of the reasons most blogs fail or lose an audience is that they fail to to post consistently. Having a bunch drafts helps you when you run out of ideas and keeps you organized.

2. Become A Feed Ninja.

Read more post less. While you might not be Scoble and have the ability to read 600+ RSS feeds in a few hours, try to keep track of news around your niche and interests, blogs catch up on news faster than news sites. Reading will also help to give you more ideas for your next post. Practice makes you perfect.

3. Engage Users And Build Relationships

I have subscribed to every reader who has left a meaningful comment on my blog this helps me get to know my readers better and what they expect from my blog. Use Services like cocomments etc to keep track of comments.

4. Be Available And Accessible.

One of the key things of building relationships is to be easily accessible. I have added most of my regular reader on Gtalk and chat with some of the frequently (you can add me ajacob[at]clazh.com). I’ve helped some of them out when they ask me for help or advice.

5. Break News, Write Pillar Posts.

If you follow point 1 and 2 you’ll realize there are two types of post you can do. Break news or write Pillar post. Breaking news is hard you’ll need to watch your Rss feeds like a hawk, it has a few advantages, if its important news it will get picked up easily by other blogger. Writing Pillar post will make your article sticky, most of the traffic that I get are from my pillar posts.

What Are Pillar Posts? Source DailyBlogTips

Characteristics of pillar articles:

they are longer posts
usually above 750 words
they offer a clear value to the reader
their content is timeless
their content is original and unique
they outline the expertise of the writer around a specific topic
they attract links from other bloggers

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Featured, Internet, Tutorial Tags: How To, Tips

Move From Blogger To Wordpress and Maintain Permalinks And Traffic

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:26:41 +0000

While moving from blogger to Wordpress is dead easy using the inbuilt blogger importer tool in Wordpress, there is one dilemma/problem that a lot of people face, after importing from blogger, Wordpress does not maintain the Permalinks(post slugs) i.e. the URL of the blog posts. I did a bit of hunting around and I found a solution it a really simple hack thanks to David Pascoe who provided the solution to this problem. I have tested this out and it works perfectly, you can move from blogger to Wordpress and maintain your post URL or Permalinks (Post Slugs), hence maintaining your Google Search Traffic and Page rank without losing out on any Traffic. It took me less than 15 minutes to go through the whole process. (But It might take you longer if your new to WordPress)

Reasons to move from Blogger.

Cutting edge and the very best blogging Software. Comparing Blogger and WordPress, Wordpress beats Blogger hands down.
Huge Community Which means Thousands of free cool Themes and Templates and Plugins.
Easier blogging, better commenting system, spam fighting etc etc.

Draw Backs of Moving from Blogger to Wordpress.

Importing from Blogger to Wordpress doesn’t import your blogger hosted pictures, they’ll still remain on Blogger, they’ll be visible for sometime but since Blogger doesn’t allow hot-linking you won’t seen them after sometime (Read about it here from the official Google FAQ), so you’ll need to move them maually to your webhost or to some photo hosting service. Luckily for most people this is not a big problem since most bloggers host their images on Flickr or Photobucket. For the more Geeky you can check out this Plugin or this shell command to move your pictures to your own domain.

I thought I would write a step-by-step tutorial since a lot of other people/bloggers will find this extremely useful. I am using kiruba.com as an example.

I am assuming a few things here.

You know how to run and install Wordpress. (Here are some Step-by-Step Guides to install Wordpress on your Local computer Or To Install it on your Webhost Look at the Installation Section)
You are using Blogger Beta (I guess by now everyone has been forced to migrate to the new blogger Beta by Google)
You are hosted on your own domain like kiruba.com (for people trying to move from http://yourblog.blogspot.com I have posted extra steps you need to follow at the end)

How To move from Blogger To Wordpress and Maintain your URL/Permalinks/post-slugs and Traffic

1. Install a Temporary Wordpress Installation.

The first step is to Install a temporary Wordpress installation either on your local Computer on in a temporary directory on your web host. The reason why we are installing WordPress on a temporary location is that, since we need to get all the posts from kiruba.com to WordPress then, delete the blogger installation, then Install a fresh Wordpress Installation on kiruba.com and then put back all the Posts. We will use this temporary Wordpress installation to import all your blog posts and comments and to test and see if all your blog posts and original Permalinks or URL’s are being maintained. After Installing WordPress Go To Manage Posts and Pages and Delete the dummy Hello world Post and the About us page these get created automatically when you first install WordPress. Learning how to install and enableing Permalinks is the only difficult part here, the rest is extremely easy.

Important Note: If you are installing Wordpress on your local machine make sure you can use Permalinks. The step-by-step tutorial to install WordPress that I provided above shows you how to enable Permalinks it is given at the very last under the notes section.

2. Modify the Blogger Importer.

Don’t worry there is nothing much to do just download this file [download#4#nohits] and replace it with the original file located at wordpress/wp-admin/import/blogger.php

For the more technically inclined here are the changes that I made to the Blogger.php File thanks to David Pascoe

Open the file WordPress/wp-admin/import/blogger.php and look for the line containing the string wp_insert_post – at around line 520. Insert these 2 lines after the call to wp_insert_post; Note: The second and third line need to be in one single Line I had to break into two lines to fit it in.


preg_match("/([^/]+).html$/", $entry->old_permalink ,$matches);
$wpdb->query("UPDATE $wpdb->posts SET post_name =
'" . $matches[1] . "' WHERE ID = '$post_id'");

3. Import All the Post and Comments From Blogger to Wordpress Using the Importer.

Go to Mange > Import > Blogger

You’ll be presented with a option to Authorize the Importing process Click Authorize

You’ll be asked to Enter your Google User Name and Password.

After which you need to Click the Grant Access Button.

You’ll be shown a list of all the blogs you own on blogger and the number of posts and comments. Click the blog that you want to import.

Once you click the import button you’ll see a progress Bar as the comments and Posts get imported. Once its Done the Text in the Button gets changed to Set Authors Click this.

You will See your blogger username (if you have multiple authors you see them too) select Admin(This is the default Wordpress user) from the drop down list and click save changes.

That’s it your done your done with importing your blog Posts. yay

4. Changing Your URL (Permalinks or Post slugs) to Maintain Your Google Juice and Page Rank

Ok here’s the part you’ve been waiting for its pretty easy go to Options > Permalinks

Change the selection from Default to Custom

Enter the Following text in the Custom Structure Textbox to


/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

Note: If you’ve installed Wordpress on your local system computer using Xampp like I mentioned above you’ll need to enable Permalinks. The step-by-step tutorial to install WordPress that I provided above shows you how to enable Permalinks under Xampp it is given at the very last under the notes section. After you’ve enabled it you’ll need enter


/index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

instead of the text I have provided above.

Your done.

5. Checking Your URLs and Permalinks

Once your done just check your URLs to see if they are the same. The parts Highlighted in Bold are the ones you need to check

Original URL:


http://clazh.blogspot.com/2006/10/microsoft-and-apple-together.html

URL after Importing:


http://localhost/kirbs/index.php/2006/10/microsoft-and-apple-together.html

Move Everything To Fresh WordPress Installation

Once you are satisfied with everything, go to your temporary WordPress Installation Manage > Export Click the Download Export File. Download and save the XML file.

Delete your Blogger Installation and files Except your Image Directory i.e. if you have one.

Install a Fresh Copy Of Wordpress in your Original Blog Location Example if your Blog was at kiruba.com then you need to install WordPress in the root if it was at kiruba/blog then you need to install WordPress in a directory called blog.

Import The XML file which you saved before Mange > Import > WordPress Browse and upload the file.

Select Admin from the Drop Down Box and press submit.

Repeat Step 4 to Switch on Permalinks that’s it your done do a Google search for any of your posts if your posts turns up that means you migrated to WordPress successfully while maintaining your Permalinks or URLs.

Extra Steps for Redirecting Your Traffic For Bloggers Moving From A BlogSpot Subdomain.

There are two ways to go about this. One is the quick and dirty way which is also a bit difficult the other is the long way which is the easiest.

The slow and easy way to move from a blogspot Subdomain.

I would recommend you to follow this rather than the quick and dirty way.

Here’s what you need to do.

Buy your own domain.
Use that Custom Domain Option. See this Step-by-Step Guide on configuring Custom Domains.
Your original Blog*Spot address will automatically forward to your new domain. That way, any existing links or bookmarks and search traffic to your site will still work.
Wait for 5-6 months for all search engines to update their data and links to your new site.
Follow the Steps I have outlined above.

The Quick and Dirty way to move from a blogspot Subdomain.

I do not recommend this. Do this only if you are really eager and want to move quickly. See this guide here

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Google, Internet, Tutorial, Wordpress Tags: How To, Wordpress