Posted on the December 14th, 2008 under WordPress by admin
Just the other day I was deleting a few Wordpress comments due to their spammy nature. Unfortunately I marked a very genuine comment as spam and didn’t immediately see a way to recover it. A quick Google search suggested installing myPHPadmin and seeing if I could edit a value in the comment tables, or something similar. However I have found such an easier method…
Firstly, go to your Comments page and then click on the ‘Approved’ link highlighted in the image below.
This will show all of the comments you’ve approved to be shown on your site. What you need to do is go to the address bar in the browser you’re using. It should look something like the image below.
Change the end of the URL so it reads comment_status=spam – see the image below.
Changing the URL and hitting Enter will show you all of the comments that have been marked as spam. Simply select the comment that was accidentally marked as spam and click Approve. The comment will be removed from spam and approved to be shown as one of the comments on your site. Easy as that.
I’ve wondered how to do this a few times. Having been watching a great film or TV programme through Windows Media Player I’ve wanted a single screenshot of one particular frame. Using the Print Screen button has never worked by default but there is a fix. Read on….
In Windows Media Player click on Tools and then Options.
This will bring up the Options dialogue box and you’ll need to choose the Performance tab as shown in RED in the image below.
In the Performance tab click on the Advanced button towards the bottom.
In the dialogue box that appears uncheck the Use Overlays tick box again shown in RED below and click OK.
You can now capture a screenshot of any file you’re playing in Media Player with the Print Screen button.
There shouldn’t be any loss of quality or noticeable differences so capture screenshots using Print Screen at will!
Posted on the November 12th, 2008 under MS Office by admin
I’ve been using Microsoft Office 2007 for a few months now and I’ve come to hate the default font used among the different products. They use Calibri size 11 (so bad I won’t show you what it looks like) which wasn’t even a default font in Office 2003. So let’s change it quick.
Change the default Office 2007 font for Word
In Microsoft Word make sure you you have the Home tab selected at the top of Word
In the Styles section of the menu right click in left most text box and then click Modify. See the image below.
You’ll get the Modify Style dialogue box appear. See the image below.
Scroll through Font stypes and various styling.
At the bottom of the image below you’ll see two radio buttons. If you want to permanently change the default font in Word then choose the “New documents based on this template” button.
Click OK to confirm.
Now you no longer have to format your Word 2007 font document each time.
Change the default Office 2007 font for Outlook
It’s easy in Word 2007… but in Outlook 2007 it is a little more long winded. Here’s how…
In Outlook 2007 click Tools then Options.
Select the Mail Format tab highlighted in RED at the top of the image below.
Click the Stationery and Fonts button again highlighted in RED in the image below.
A dialogue box will appear that will let you change your default font in Office Outlook
Select your favourite font, style, size, colour, and effects… and then click OK to confirm.
Posted on the November 3rd, 2008 under Google by admin
By looking at my Google Analytics account I am able to see the search terms people have put into Google to get to my site. These are what are known as organic searches as they come straight from what a user types into the Google search box, rather than a link to the site. It’s an incredibly useful tool as it shows you what your visitors are looking for even if your site has the information they want or not.
The search term “add my blog to google blog search” has come up a few times and upon further investigation I read up on Google Blog Search. It’s where you can use Google search technology to look specifically at blogs (user generated content) for the topic you’ve searched for. So then, how do you as a blog owner get your content listed on Google Blog Search?
The Short Answer…
All you need is a site feed! That is to say you need something like an RSS feed coming from your website. If you’re on Wordpress your theme has a 99.99% chance of having an RSS feed built into it. When Google comes along and spiders/crawls your site it will think “hey, here’s a feed…add this to Google Blog Search”. It’s all done for you! So my RSS feed(http://how-to-solutions.com/feed) was added the first time Google crawled this site and now I’m added to Google Blog Search.
How To Solutions on Google Blog Search
Just to prove that it really is that simple, let’s have a look at this site on Google Blog Search. Firstly let me say that I never “added” myself to Blog Search, it was done for me automatically by Google. Yet I’m still listed in Blog Search, sometimes in the number one spot depending on the keywords. Let’s have a look.
So we can see that for the keywords I used in my post covering a HTML Signature in Outlook 2007 the actual blog post has made it into the #1 position in Google Blog Search. Similarly the same has happened for my SEO for Wordpress Beginners Guide, also reaching #1 for certain keywords.
I hope this has helped answer a question a few people seem to have been asking recently. To find out more look at Google Blog Search Help. The help page does state “…we will soon be providing a form that you can use to manually add your blog to our index, in case we haven’t picked it up automatically. Stay tuned for more information..”. So people, get an RSS feed active on your Wordpress blog and get that site indexed.
Posted on the October 29th, 2008 under Software by admin
If you’re like me you’ll format your PC a couple of times a year to have a good clean up and remove any unnecessary items. A format does sound a bit drastic but it’s a sure fire way to remove software you don’t need any more. But what about all that software you do need and where did you put their CD keys or serials. The answer is to get some audit software that will show you all of your serials and software you’ve got installed for you to save.
There’s plenty of software out there that can do the job but I recommend Belarc Advisor by Belarc. It does a full audit of your machine showing you the software and the hardware that make up the whole system.
The first great thing that this PC audit software gives you is the list of serials that are used for the software on your computer. This means you can keep them in a safe place ready to re-install the protected software once the format is complete. Below is the free audit software running on my own machine but with all of the important CD keys unreadable
The second list of useful things this computer audit application gives you is a complete list of software installed on the machine. This means you can restore your computer back to it’s original self once a format has taken place.
Lastly, Belarc advisor is able to audit your computer hardware. It will give you as much, if not more, detail as Device Manager under Windows but without having to expand all of the separate hardware components.
This free computer audit software is available to both home and business users. It will help you complete internal auditing and make sure your computer can be easily restored after a format or critical fault.
Seeing as part 1 and part 2 of my SEO beginners guide has covered the domain and Wordpress, this article will focus on writing your first post. This will act as a template for writing further posts on any subject but still getting all the SEO goodness from it.
Keywords for SEO
With any page that wants to get attention there has to be a certain amount of keywords. Keywords are those that have significance and relevance that could be used as search terms. For example this blog post is titled ‘How I SEO my WordPress Blog – A Beginners Guide Part 3′. Obvious keywords are SEO, Wordpress, blog, and beginners. The other words have little or no relevance to the content of this post. The URL has the same four words in the page name. Using my All In One SEO Pack (see my first SEO post here) I can again use the same keywords in this page’s META description and keywords – more on the use of META tags below.
So keywords must be used in the above mentioned place but also in the body of your post. Plan to have your keywords be 6-8% of the total words on the page. This will allow search engines to calculate what your content is about and rank it accordingly.
Semantics for SEO
A very useful part of the Wordpress kit is what is called the ‘Kitchen Sink‘. It allows you to format the text you write in a post into H1, H2 and other headings. This is part of the semantic web. Semantics is giving words meaning and in this case the search engines will interpret that as having extra meaning. So the text ‘Semantics for SEO’ above this paragraph is in H2 tags just as the title at the top of the page is in H1 tags.
The image below shows the kitchen sink formatting options on the second row of button down from the top. To toggle it on/off press the far right button the top row.
You can also use semantics for making certain words bold and others emphasised. Remember not to use <b> tags but <strong> and <em> for emphasis rather than <i> when writing in HTML. There are many more semantic elements you can use in Wordpress and on basic webpages. See Semantic XHTML for more of them. So remember not only to pack your body text with your chosen keywords but to make them semantic!
Meta Tags for SEO
As mentioned earlier Meta tags help search engines find out the basics of your page. The big three meta tags you want to always define are Title, Meta Description and Meta Title (technically Title isn’t Meta but I’ll list it here for now).
Any keywords you choose to use in your title should also be used in your URL. The same applies for using those same keywords in your meta keywords and meta description fields. The All In One SEO Packas shown below lets you define your own keywords and description so you can have any keyword of your choice appear in those META tags.
Here are some rules of thumb when writing these fields.
Keep your Title to a maximum of 64 characters
Keep your description to maximum of 160 characters (as noted by the plugin)
Keep your keywords down to less than 15 words but more than 10
This is kind of an SEO industry buzz-phrase and you’ll likely hear that from a lot of SEO’ers (is that even a word?). It’s used as a reminder that despite someones best efforts to optimise their site, Wordpress or not, the one thing that will guarantee high rankings and good traffic is quality content. If you’re writing something that is useful and informative search engines should pick it up nice and easily. Anything in plain text such as this sentence is still analysed by web crawlers and will be ranked. The more people who see your page and link back to it generates traffic and traffic will generate more interest and more back links.
So remember when writing your blog posts that your content really does have to be of some use to people. The bigger the use to the greater amount of people is what you’re ideally looking for. Consider using paragraphs and headings; breaking text down into more manageable pieces. Use a spell checker and use correct grammar – write in Word and spell check then re-read over and over. Update previous posts with new information if you wish and update your Wordpress blog regularly.
The material on this post and the two previous ones covering SEO in Wordpress should help you get started with your Wordpress website. Remember that SEO is something that is always changing and the methods you employ will have to change with the times. In my next post I’ll show you the stats and figures I get from my own Wordpress installation. They’re not anything to write home about but I feel they’ll give you a good insight into the kind of stats you might expect to see from an early website trying to get some attention on the Internet.
I think, and I’m sure a lot of people will agree, that a Wordpress theme is hugely important to a blog. The theme governs how the visitors will interact and find content. Here is what I believe should be factors to consider when choosing a theme…
First impression: If you are a visitor what conclusion would you come to if you had a few seconds to see the site? If you don’t like it then there’s little chance of others liking it.
As Maddox once said, “Nobody cares about your stupid rotating icons and fading links…when I go to a website, I WANT TO READ THE CONTENT”. Some of the best sites are very very simple; think Google!
Try different themes. They’re so easy to install that you can easily try theme after theme until you find one to suit you. It’s even better if you can find specifically created SEO ones. Try these SEO Wordpress Themes.
Your theme can often be an extension of your chosen discussion area so make sure that the theme can represent what you are talking about. Think of colour schemes, fonts and page layout.
How customisable is the theme? Do you have an area to play with on the front page (as I do with mine). Is it 2,3 or columned? Does this help or hinder your site structure?
Most themes are distributed under the GPL License. This means you are free to modify any of the themes until you’re happy with it. By all means find a nice theme that you can work with & then edit the code to suit your own needs and wants. You can even ensure more SEO friendly pages.
The theme I use here is similar to Facebook in terms of colours and general layout as you’ve already noticed. I didn’t choose my theme because of SEO purposes. I wanted usability and ease of use to take precedence. I knew if I had a good theme as a base I could build SEO factors around it.
Static Pages
Static pages are those that do not have their contents regularly updated. You should use them to help show how your site operates or put across information more specific to you the author or the actual site itself.
I have to say, I’m a huge fan of About pages. I think they’re really useful in terms of finding out why a website is online and how much authority the author has. They’re not great for SEO purposes, they don’t change and they’re usually short but from a visitors perspective they’re great. If you want to know a bit more about the impact an about us page might have read Your About Us Page Is Not Just A Placeholder by Terri Wells over on SEO Chat.
A static page I feel should always be included is a contact page. Ideally you’d want a simple web form that sends an email to your own inbox as well as having an email address visible. Unfortunately a web form usually results in a horrendous amount of spam but there are Wordpress themes out there that are very customisable. I’d recommend cforms – lots of nice features and very flexible. If you can use an email address separate to your normal account then that’s better. You can use this separate email for all aspects of your website.
Other static pages are largely down to you and the specific content or area you intend to cover. Try and make sure that they are clearly indistinguishable from actual blog posts. The theme I use puts my static pages at the very top and my blog archive and subjects on the right.
Social Networking & Social Bookmarking
Much like SEO itself I was very far behind when coming to realise what social bookmarking was. However they can be used by a website author to generate a healthy amount of inbound traffic. They can also be proof of success when it comes to your content. The higher the quality of your posts the more people that will bookmark them across Digg, Technorati, Stumble Upon, Delicious etc etc.
I recommend that you get a plugin that allows readers to add an individual post to the most popular social bookmarking sites. Some plugins you may want to experiment with are the Addthis, Add to Any or Bookmark Me. Make sure to find a plugin that will suit the style of your page.
That concludes part 2 of my beginners guide to SEO. In the next installment I’ll cover writing the first post which will serve as a template for all future posts across your blog. It will cover the importance of keywords, URL’s and making sure each of your written blog posts is SEO friendly.
Posted on the October 12th, 2008 under Windows by admin
One of the things that is always present in an IT admin’s mind is the need for security across computer systems. Hardly a week goes by that a household name either loses their customer’s credit card details or have their systems compromised. What’s more worrying is the many more companies that no doubt choose not to report their own security shortcomings.
Many systems administrators would argue that Linux provides a real alternative to Windows based networks and gives you better security and protection. This may be true, but the fact most home users and enterprises use Windows based network then those users need to be as secure as possible. So with this in mind I thought I’d share with you what I think to be the best peices of free software out there that will help you boost your security.
Antivirus
Antivirus should be the very very least you have installed on any personal computer. Most anti virus packages now run in real time so they can detect viruses as soon as the virus tries to run. They can also be incorporated into popular email clients to scan incoming and outgoing messages. Best of all they are often updated daily with new virus definitions meaning they’re giving you up to the minute protection.
A firewall sits between your computer and the Internet analyzing the traffic to decide whether it poses a risk or not. While using routers and switches are examples of physical firewalls that offer some protection, software ones are more easily configured and managed. I would recommend Zonelab’s ZoneAlarm software. It has varying levels of protection but even the most basic is better than nothing!
Perhaps the most common problems Internet users face is having software on their PC that isn’t a virus but at the same time is harmful. Spyware is software that is usually installed without the users consent and records information about the users computer and transmits it over the Internet. Adware is linked to adverts, usually pop ups that appear on your PC without your consent. The most common form I’ve found these to be in are toolbars in Internet Explorer that appear at random. Malware is the more malicious software out there including viruses as well as rootkits, worms and trojans.
So for peace of mind that your PC is secure from damaging software that could compromise your safe use of the Internet I recommend Spybots, Adaware and HijackThis. They overlap somewhat on what they do but having all three free pieces of software will give you total protection.
This is a subject which I’ve only recently touched on but if you’re running a network then this software is for you. The thing about networks is that the devices on them are rarely the same meaning differences in hardware, software, operating systems and importance. Software like MS Baseline Analyzer and Nessus will scan all devices on a given network or IP range for security flaws that could be exploited. They will list the vulnerabilities by importance and provide solutions allowing fixes and the the security you need to have important systems running on the Internet.
If you want to go a step further then a logical approach may be to use a proxy server such as Squid. As a proxy each user on the network goes though Squid to access the Internet. This means that certain websites can be blocked, files can be stopped from downloading and as this software runs as a cache it can speed up web access.
I hope you find these free peices of software suitable for your Windows security needs. If you want to suggest any more then please feel free to comment.
How I SEO my WordPress Blog – A Beginners Guide: Setting Up The Domain
Background
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is something that was completely foreign to me since about 1 year ago. It was only when I got my first job since graduating that I became aware of what it was and how it can help anyone who has a website. Here I hope to explain to you how I go about making How To Solutions more SEO friendly. As I’m writing material that I think will be useful to people I want that material to be found, read and used. This is where SEO comes in, the techniques I employ here on my site will help it to be listed in Google, Yahoo, Live Search and hopefully provide my site with visitors. I’m a complete SEO amateur and as I’ve only had this site running for a month or so I can’t say how successful I’ve been. It’s early days but I’m aiming high!
Google Webmasters
We all know that search is Google and Google is search. So once I had installed Wordpress on my hosting I made an account at Google Webmasters. I can use their Webmasters software to handle the more technical aspects of the domain I’m using and help Google to find my site and get it to appear in search results. Webmasters is essential for any domain admin regardless of whether he or she will employ SEO techniques.
If you have a Gmail account, which every respectable person should as to avoid spam, then you can use this for your Webmasters account. Once you’ve created your account you’ll be presented with your dashboard. This is where you can add your site, so for this site I entered ‘how-to-solutions.com‘.
Importantly you need to verify the site. I found the easiest way to do this is to ‘upload an HTML file’. It simply involves creating an empty HTML file resembling something like google552f837f4815e541.html and upload it to your root directory, htdocs. Verifying your site is the only way for you to get access to data Google collects from your website when it is crawled. This is the beginning of your SEO journey.
Sitemap
A sitemap is an essential part of your site. Put basically it will use an XML file to keep a directory listing of all your pages. This will allow search engines like Google and Yahoo to find all of your pages and make sure they are indexed.
To get my sitemap generated I used a very handy Wordpress plugin called Google XML Sitemaps. This simple extension will automatically generate sitemap.xml in your root directory. Once this is done you don’t need to do anything more. The plugin will add in new posts and pages once they’re published. The plugin will also tell you how long ago the major search engines checked your sitemap for new additions.
Google Analytics
Analytics is client side tracking where a website logs visitors and their behaviour within that site. This provides a vital insight into how visitors interact with a website and can help webmasters improve features such as design, layout and features. There are many free packages out there and possibly the best known one is Google Analytics as it’s free and offers an array of data to help the webmaster.
For WordPress users I recommend using Ultimate Google Analytics by Wilfred van der Deijl. It’s very simple to use; create your Analytics account with Google, install the plugin and then copy your Analytics Account ID to the plugin settings and it’s working from the time the settings are updated.
Google this, Google that? What about other search engines?
A fair point! Yahoo!, Live Search (MSN) and Ask.com are all widely used engines and compete with Google on the search front. However, Hitwise illustrates the need to cater for Google more than the average search engine as shown here – market share for search.
Not only that but for pure SEO convenience Google also provides the best tools. They provide comprehensive information on SEO best practices and how SEO techniques can help your site in search queries. But to further help you the reader here are the link to Yahoo’s Site Explorer and MSN’s Webmaster Center. I must admit that I haven’t yet signed up to either of these but it is definitely something I will explore.
SEO & Wordpress
For most people, WordPress out of the box isn’t actually a finished product. SEO is yet to be factored into the finished WordPress release so webmasters use SEO plugins to optimise their sites further. I highly recommend using All In One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert. When usually writing a single webpage you can define the META tags that search engines use to calculate the subject of the document. WordPress is dynamic and can’t do this so the SEO Pack allows the admin to declare the title, description and keywords. This is indespensable in terms of a webmaster wanting to get full SEO use from his/her blog.
Final Thoughts
Doing the five simple basics that I listed above will give you a good solid base from which to build your website. Your priority should be Webmasters and then knocking up a sitemap whether you want to go down the SEO path or not. Analytics however will help you measure the success of your SEO techniques and though you wont have any/much data coming through to begin with, it will be indispensable once you get regular traffic.
I hope you found this beginners guide to SEO useful and please feel free to leave comments – they will be read.
One of the developers I work with came up with a handy bit of JavaScript that uses a wildcard to look for a div that has “div-comment-” in its ID. It then does a display none on them. The handy thing about this basic bit of script is that it can be used across a website to edit the css.
Remember for this to work you will need jquery to be called in within the head of your page. This can be done be done by downloading jquery from here and using code like this in your page head…
Imagine you have a series of div’s that are displayed on a page such as comment boxes. Those div’s have ID’s of div-comment-1, div-comment-2, div-comment-3 and so on. You want to click
So here’s the JavaScript you put in the head of the page.
<script>
function MyFunction() {
$(”div[id*='div-comment-']“).css(’display’, ‘none’);
}
</script>
And the link will look like this..
<a href=”javascript: MyFunction();”>
That link could be in a text format or in the form of a button/image.
Essentially this handy bit of JavaScript can be used endlessly across a website to give the user more control over the look and appearance of the page.
Welcome to How To Solutions! Please use the material on this site to help you find solutions to common IT problems. If you find anything useful then please comment on it.
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