Archive for the ‘How To’ Category

How to change group settings in Facebook. Facebook has made lot of changes to its working in the recent past. Some of the major rollouts include the timeline feature to profiles. Even the fan pages are going to get a new look. One thing that is underutilized in facebook is the groups. Earlier to fanpages groups were used to connect people. After the new changes groups had some change to the way they work including introducing document sharing and emailing options.

You can share documents and email other group members and chat with them real time in Facebook. I would say this facility has been overused by network marketers and facebook is very strict in group settings and email options now. you can easily leave and report such groups to facebook.

1. How to navigate to your subscribed groups: In the right hand side of your home page you can identify your groups.

2.  To leave or report group select option on right hand side corner of each of your groups.

3. To turn ON or OFF group notifications select the notifications option.

 

 

This is an awesome tip from an awesome SEO guru and marketer. To know more about Internet marketing, SEO, social media listen to the  SEO expert.

“Known is a drop, unknown is an Ocean.” ~ Tamil proverb

How to enable Secure Browsing in Facebook:

How to enable secured browsing of Facebook or accessing Facebook securely? Go to account settings in your facebook account. In the home page there will be a dropdown in top right side next to Home button. In the settings page select security settings and then select Secure Browsing, enable and save. You are done, so from next time you see https in facebook address bar.

 

How to get Facebook Session Info:

Facebook session info. You can see who has logged in Facebook using your accounts (userid/password). If you feel someone might be using your Facebook account, its how you can verify. It shows the current active login detail. Go to Facebook Security settings and select Active Sessions.

 

This is a Guest post by Jay who blogs about free printable grocery coupons and also in free printable coupons

Check out other posts that insists on online personal security while using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

I have put off getting a favicon for ProWebWriter since I launched the site. Those tiny pictures fall to the back burner rather easily, but I came across a favicon generator on StumbleUpon today and decided to throw one together real quick.

That’s Nice, But What is a Favicon?

favicon (fav-uh-con)
noun
– a 16×16-pixel icon associated with a particular website, usually displayed before the URL in a browser.

“Favicon” is a combo of the words “favorite” and “icon”. They first became popular in older browsers so that users could easily recognize their favorite bookmarks.

The red squares in this image indicate the favicons.

Why Do I Need One?

You don’t need one. Like I said, I ignored the fact that PWW didn’t have one for well over a year. The favicon is simply an attention-getter. When someone adds your site to their bookmarks, your favicon will appear in the listing with your URL. Also, since most browsers have all those convenient tabs, favicons help users identify your site quickly while they are browsing or working. Having a favicon surely won’t make you or break you, but it can’t hurt. Not to mention the implication toward your site being a place for professionals.

Tell Me How To Get One Already!

Alrighty!

You need a source image. I’m going to assume that you have some basic graphics skills and a graphics editor like Photoshop or an online one like SplashUp. If not, skip this part and Contact Me instead. I can help.

Here’s the specs I used for my source image:

• 50×50 pixels — It needs to be square
• 72 dpi — Standard web quality
• Colors directly from my color scheme

I saved the final as a JPEG and was able to use that with no problems in the next step.

Step 1. Upload your source file to Favigen.

• Navigate to your source image on your computer by clicking the Browse button.
• Select your size using the drop-down menu. Most favicons are 16×16 pixels.
• Click the Create Favicon button.

Favigen will generate your favicon file and you can download it to your computer. The file will be automatically named Favicon.ico

• Rename the file with a lower-case “f” like so: favicon.ico

The next part of this tutorial will assume you know how to upload files to the domain you have WordPress installed on using an FTP Client. Again, if you need help with this part, Contact Me.

Step 2. Remove any old favicon.ico files from the main folder of your current WordPress theme.

Step 3. Click Appearance in the left navigation of your WordPress Dashboard. A menu will drop down beneath Appearance.

Step 4. Click Editor underneath the Appearance menu. This will open the WordPress Theme Editor.

Step 5. Click Header under Templates to the right of the Editor window.

Step 6. Find the following line of code between the <head> tags and remove it:

<link rel="shortcut icon" and ends with /favicon.ico" />

This code may not exist, so don’t fret if you can’t find it. Just move on to the next step.

Step 7. Paste the following code between the <head> tags:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/favicon.ico" />

 

 

*TIP* The <head> tags probably won’t be close to each other. You really only need to find one. Make sure you’re not posting your code inside other scripts or code. Find the </head> tag and create a line above it by pressing the Enter key. Paste your code there.

Step 8. Click the Update File button under the Editor window to save your changes.

Step 9. Clear your browser’s Cache and restart it to view your new favicon.

That’s it! Now when users load your site or save it as a bookmark, your favicon will come to represent your site as a quick visual reference.

Sources:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_a_Favicon
http://www.upvery.com/5103-why-is-it-important-that-your-website-have-favicon.html

I’d nearly forgotten about Kindle…well, except when I visit Amazon.com and the first thing you see at the top of the homepage is Kindle. With all of the hype about smart phones and iPads, it had kind of gotten lost in the shuffle of my mind. When it was first released, I wrote a review about it at one of my earlier websites HERE. I’ve long since sold this website to a new owner, but luckily they have maintained it online for the last couple years. The first Kindle cost about $399 and it quickly sold out.

Amazon now touts the Kindle as the #1 best-selling, most asked for, and most wished for item on their website. When a little bird told me that I might be getting a Kindle for Christmas, I had to research the Kindle again. As you might expect, several positive changes have occurred since that article I wrote back in March of 2008. Let’s take a look:

• There are three different models to choose from ranging in price from $139 to $379 (as of this writing)
• New sleek design
• One month battery life with wifi turned off, 3 weeks with it on
• 3500-book capacity
• Built-in Facebook and Twitter integration
• 750,000 bestsellers, newspapers, blogs and more in the Kindle Store
• 1.8 million free pre-1923 books
• Text-to-speech technology; Kindle can read to you!
• Built-in dictionary
• Full QWERTY keyboard for easy annotation

And this isn’t all. Read more about Kindle at Amazon HERE.

Get to the Point! How Do I Get My Blog On Kindle?

What you’ll need:

• The URL to your blog’s RSS feed
• A screen shot or two of your blog
• A bank account
• Some keywords

Step 1. Grab the URL to your blog’s RSS feed. You can find this by clicking the RSS symbol on your blog. It looks like this:

Your feed URL should be in the following format: http://yourdomain.com/feed

Step 2. Visit Kindle Publishing for Blogs.

Step 3. Sign in or create a new account. Your Amazon.com details will not work with Kindle Publishing. You’ll need a new password.

Step 4. Fill out the one-page form about your blog. It helps if you have a screen shot of your blog to upload as well. I grabbed one with a simple free screen cap tool. Download one here.

Step 5. Click the Publish Blog to Amazon button, and you’re done.

Your blog will go into a pending mode to wait for approval from Amazon. It took them less than an hour to approve this site during the day on a weekday. You won’t have the option to set the price for subscriptions to your blog. Amazon does that and it will either be $.99 or $1.99. I have no idea what criteria they use to set the price.

A quick rundown of the math will tell you that you won’t get rich quick that way, but hey, it’s exposure, and it’s Amazon! Here’s the Kindle Edition of ProWebWriter.

If you’ve ever run a blog or website, heck, if you’ve ever had an email account, you have gotten spam. I’ve been using the Internet for more than a decade, and I’m still not sure why spam exists. Somehow, these people are benefiting from aggravating the rest of us. I can’t imagine such aggravation generating sales or money, but apparently a large percentage of non-web savvy people ( I hope) click through and maybe even buy into this crap. That’s what whoever coined the term, “spam” should have called it…crap.

When I launched this site, a friend of mine said, “You’re going to want to use a CAPTCHA plug-in or the spam will kill you.” I said, “Bah, I’ll install one when it becomes a problem.” For those of you asking, “What in the world is a CAPTCHA?” You’ve seen them. A CAPTCHA is an image used on the Internet usually for site registrations, logins, and comments where you type the numbers or letters in the image into the field below it to prove you’re human. I began receiving 1 to 2 spam comments per day almost right off the bat. I can deal with 1 to 2, but it has continued to increase over the last several weeks until one day I logged in and I had 39 comments to sift through. It was time to find that plug-in.

As I’ve written before, WordPress comes packaged with Akismet. Akismet is a spam catcher plug-in that roots out the crap. Akismet is a powerful plug-in and it does its jobs by sorting your comments into the good and bad piles for you. However, Akismet isn’t enough by itself when the spam increases in volume. A CAPTCHA plug-in will catch the rest. I installed Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress. Conditional CAPTCHA was designed to work hand in hand with Akismet to deal with spam. I must say it nipped my small spam problem in the bud.  It sends any comments that do not input the CAPTCHA correctly straight to the trash.

Now you don’t have to use Conditional CAPTCHA. You can use one of the many different CAPTCHA plug-ins that have been developed for WordPress. Pretty much any one will do in combination with Akismet. This will eliminate your spam problem. Now I just need to figure out which IP address belongs to the Sexaprize bot that keeps crawling my site. No doubt that was the one leaving the rather tasteless comments on totally irrelevant posts…as I don’t have posts relevant to sex or prizes as of right now.

WordPress is known for its ability to be customized in a number of ways. There is a WordPress plug-in for nearly anything you can imagine. I have done a few reviews of plug-ins on this site and will be doing more in the future. Before I punch out too many reviews though, I want to outline how to find and install plug-ins for WordPress. Recent versions of WordPress have made this a user-friendly experience. You can search for and install all kinds of plug-ins right from your Dashboard.

Let’s get to it. There are two ways to install plug-ins to WordPress: using the plug-in tools in your Dashboard or via FTP. I’ll cover them both.

Installing Plugins from Your Dashboard

Step 1. From your Dashboard, left-click Plugins. This will open the Manage Plugins page where you can view the plug-ins currently installed. WordPress comes packaged with two plugins: Akismet and Hello Dolly. Akismet blocks spam comments from your blog. You can read a little about it HERE. Hello Dolly is a basically useless plug-in for entertainment. When activated, it displays different quotes from the musical, Hello Dolly, in the top right corner of your WordPress admin pages.

Step 2. Left-click Add New under Plugins in your Dashboard. The Install Plugins page opens.

You can search for different key terms for plug-ins, or you can click a word in the tag cloud to view relevant plug-ins. If you’re not sure what kind of plug-ins you should use or what their functionality is, read THIS POST for an overview of some plug-ins that I can’t live without. I’m going to find and install an Adsense plug-in. This will allow me to insert Google ads into my posts and pages. I clicked the ads tag in the cloud and found Adsense Optimizer.

Step 3. Left-click Install to the far right to begin the process. The Install screen opens in a lightbox format over your Dashboard. Left-click the Install Now button in the top right. WordPress installs the plug-in.

The Installing Plugin screen appears. When WordPress has completed the install, you have the option via two links to activate the plug-in or return to the installer and look for more plug-ins. That’s it! Your selected plug-in is installed and ready to configure and use.

Installing Plugins Using FTP

I need a captcha plug-in to help reduce spam comments on my site, so I’m going to use that as my example. There’s no captcha tag in the cloud, so I’ll search it.

The search brings up relevant results. I’ll search through my results for a plug-in that has a decent rating (as indicated by the yellow stars) and describes what I need for my site. I selected Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress. I’m going to install this one using an FTP client (FileZilla).

Step 1. Left-click the name of the plug-in you would like to install. This will either open up the install screen seen in the previous how-to, or it will take you to a website that hosts information about the plug-in and the plug-in files. This one is in the WordPress directory, but you still have to download it.

Step 2. Left-click the Download button to download the plug-in files. WordPress plug-ins are always packaged in zip files for easy and quick downloads.

Step 3. Left-click the radio button next to Save File and then click OK. The zip file containing the plug-in will be downloaded to your computer.

Step 4. Unzip the file to prepare it for upload to your blog. This step requires a zip utility like 7Zip. Once your file is unzipped, it should be packaged in its own folder and ready to upload to your blog.

Step 5. Open your FTP client. I always use FileZilla because it’s easy and frequently updated.

Step 6. Navigate to the folder containing your plug-in, but don’t open the directory. In FileZilla, your computer files are on the left side and your hosting account is on the right once you connect to the server. I’m not going to go in depth here as this is whole new post altogether.

Step 7. Navigate to the Plug-Ins folder inside WordPress. The path will be something like this: /public_html/wp-content/plugins

Step 8. Right-click the plug-in folder and select Upload from the menu. FileZilla will upload the plug-in into your plug-ins folder.

You should see your new plug-in inside the folder when you double-click the plugins folder directory. You can see my wp-conditional-captcha in the list. You are done with FileZilla.

Step 9. Go back to your Dashboard. Left-click Plugins. The Manage Plugins screen will open and you can view and activate your newly installed plug-in.

That’s all there is to it. Once you activate your plug-in, you can configure it either under Settings or Tools in your Dashboard. Be sure to the check out the plug-in documentation to learn how to use it.

If you are not taking the minimal measures to back up your blog, you are gambling all of your work in a losing game. I’ve lost no less than 2 sites because I failed to back them up. That was upwards of 40 posts of original content down the drain. I’m just over that with this site now, and I’d be sick if I lost it all. Losing the content of your website can be catastrophic to your business. The size of your loss depends upon how much time and work you have invested. I don’t know about you, but that’s not something I’m willing to gamble or lose ever again. Content takes time and time is money.

There are a several ways to back up your blog, and WordPress plug-ins can make it a simple, passive job. I practice three systems of backup. Two are automatic via email and the third is manual. My “if all else fails” approach to back up is subscribing to my own RSS feed and then archiving the emails. This has two benefits…if all else fails, I have versions that I can copy and paste and I can see what my subscribers see.

The manual method is something that I do periodically when I think about it. I use the Export tools in WordPress to download an XML copy of the content on my blog. You can actually restore your posts by importing the XML file back into WordPress should you lose your content. To Export your content:

Step 1. Left-click Tools in your Dashboard.

Step 2. Select Export from the list. The Export screen appears.

Step 3. Left-click the Download Export File button. The Save dialog box appears.

Step 4. Left-click the radio button next to Save File. Left-click OK to save the file to your computer.

In the event that your blog crashes, simply upload this file back to WordPress using Import in the Tools menu.

The easiest way to back up your WordPress site, is to use a plug-in. More specifically, WordPress Database Backup. Download the plug-in and install it. WordPress Database Backup allows you to back up your site manually, or you can schedule backups and have them emailed to you automatically. Here’s how it works:

Step 1. Left-click Tools in your Dashboard and select Backup from the list. The Backup screen appears.

WordPress Database Backup always includes a set list of WordPress tables in the backup. You can choose from a list of other tables to include.

Step 2. Left-click the check boxes next to any additional tables you want included in your database backup.

Step 3. Back up your database manually to your server, computer or email. Left-click the radio button next to the backup option of your choice. Left-click the BackUp now! button.

WordPress Database Backup proceeds with the backup:

Step 4. Left-click the radio button next to Save File and then left-click OK to download and save a copy of your database backup.

A copy of your databse backup is saved to your computer.

With WordPress Database backup, you can also set up the scheduler to back up your database automatically and send it to you via email. Here’s how:

Step 1. Select the frequency at which you want to run backups by left-click the radio button next to the timeframe that works best for you.

Step 2. Left-click the check boxes next to the additional tables you want included in your backups.

Step 3. Type the email address where you want to receive the backups.

Step 4. Left-click the Schedule backup button.

That’s it. WordPress Database Backup will automatically back up your site and send you the backup file to your email address. By using these methods, you can rest assured that you can restore your site should a catastrophe occur. It’s easier than I thought, how about you?

cPanel hosting comes packaged with a nifty tool called Fantastico. Fantastico will install a number of scripts on your domain or subdomain with one click of your mouse. It makes installing blogs, forums, website templates, and shopping carts a much easier process. In order to install such software manually, you must have some working knowledge of MySQL and databases or have the extra cash to hire someone who does.

I use Fantastico mainly to install WordPress. Prior to WordPress 2.7, using Fantastico to install WordPress posed a problem. That problem was that WordPress was evolving so quickly that Fantastico couldn’t keep up. It seemed that Fantastico always installed an outdated version and then you had to upgrade. You might as well install WordPress manually. Then WordPress finally got a one-click upgrade and that problem was solved.

Installing WordPress is fairly simple. I mean how hard can one click be? There are still forms to fill in and it can be a little confusing if you don’t know what you’re doing. Let’s take a look.

Step 1. Log into your cPanel hosting acount.
Step 2. Click the Fantastico icon under Software/Services.

Step 3. Click the radio button next to WordPress under Blogs. The WordPress into appears.

Step 4. Click the “New Installation” link in the preview to the right. The Install form appears.

Step 5. Fill out the form as follows:

• Install on domain – Click the black arrow and select the appropriate domain from the drop down menu.
• Install in directory – Type the name of a directory only if you are NOT installing WordPress in the main directory of your domain
• Administrator -username – Type the user name you want to use with WordPress when you log in
• Password – Type the password you want to use with WordPress
• Admin nickname – Nickname of the blog administrator — I usually leave this blank or just type “Admin”
• Admin e-mail – Type the email where you want emails about WordPress to be sent
• Site name – Your domain name should appear here by default
• Description – Type a brief description of your blog for SEO purposes — I normally leave this blank as well

Step 6. Click the “Install WordPress” button. (That’s the one-click part. ) Fantastico installs WordPress automatically.

Open your browser and type in the domain name where you installed WordPress and view your new blog. One of the first things you’ll probably want to do with your new blog is find a theme and install it. Here’s how to do it.

There’s a lot of documentation on the Internet about installing WordPress themes, and most of them will tell you how to do the same thing that I’m about to say here. WordPress is a little bumpy to get used to at first, but once you get the hang of using it, I’m confident that you will find it’s the ONLY blogging platform for you. Since its initial release, it has only gotten better, and with good reason. There are literally thousands of developers who are working on and with WordPress. Whether it’s working on WordPress itself, or developing plug-ins to enhance our WordPress experiences and functionality, all of this helps make WordPress the best out there. As if that weren’t enough, it’s FREE.

Finding a Suitable WordPress Theme

Finding a WordPress theme that suits your needs isn’t always an easy search. There are a couple ways to go about it: a Google search or hiring someone to build a custom theme. Depending upon what you’re looking for, here are a few keyword search suggestions:

• free wordpress themes
• professional wordpress themes
• business wordpress themes
• 1-column wordpress themes
• 2-column wordpress themes
• 3-column wordpress themes
• custom wordpress themes
• premium wordpress themes

Mix and match these terms to narrow your search.

Downloading WordPress Themes

Once you’ve chosen the perfect WordPress Theme, it’s time to download it. Most, if not all, of the time, WordPress themes are packaged in a .zip folder. Windows XP and above have a built-in utility for extracting .zip files. Otherwise, you will need a utility like 7Zip to open the archive. 7Zip is free and easy to use.

1. Click the download link.
2. Click the radio button next to “Save File” in the pop-up window.
3. You computer saves the file to your Downloads folder or desktop usually by default.
4. Navigate to the file on your computer and right-click it.
5. Select “Extract here” from the list.
6. Windows will extract the theme files to a named folder usually bearing the same name as the theme. The theme is now ready to be uploaded to your hosting account.

Uploading Your New Theme to WordPress

1. Open your preferred FTP client. I suggest and endorse FileZilla. FileZilla is free, updated often and easy to use.
2. Connect to your hosting account where your WordPress site/blog is installed.
3. Navigate to the “Themes” folder. The path normally goes something like this: /public_html/yourdomain.com/wp-content/themes
4. Navigate to the theme folder on your computer.
5. Right-click and select “Upload”.
6. Your FTP client uploads the theme files to your WordPress site/blog.

Activating a New Theme in WordPress

If you’ve uploaded your theme correctly, it will appear in your Dashboard when you click “Appearance” and select “Themes”.

If you theme doesn’t appear under Themes, check your FTP to ensure the files went inside the “Themes” folder.

From the “Manage Themes” page, left-click the new theme to preview it.

WordPress shows you a lightbox preview of how the theme will look on your site.

If you satisfied with the preview, then click “Activate” in the top right corner of the preview. The theme is now installed and activated on your WordPress site/blog.

Akismet is a standard plug-in that is packaged with all WordPress blogs. Akismet helps you manage spam comments that may pop up on your blog from time to time. No one likes spam, and Akismet will catch it for you which saves you time, and let’s face it, time is money. While Aksimet is packaged with WordPress, you still have to activate it in your Dashboard. From your Dashboard, click “Plugins” in the left navigation. You’ll see Akismet in the list. Click “Activate” to activate the plugin. Once you have activated Akismet, you get the following message:

When you click the link in the message, you are taken to a page where you can enter your API key. You must have a WordPress.com account to retrieve your API key. Create your account. You don’t have to create a blog at WordPress.com to get your key. Simply create a profile account. You will notice that WordPress.com has a Dashboard not unlike that of your self-hosted WordPress; however, it isn’t apparent where you can find your API key. From your WordPress.com Dashboard, click “My Account” in the top left corner.

Select “Edit Profile” from the drop-down menu. At the very top of the page, you will see your API key.

Press Ctrl+C to copy the key to your clipboard. On your self-hosted WordPress blog from the Manage Plugins page, click the “enter your WordPress API key” link. This will open the Akismet Configuration page. Paste your API key in the “WordPress API Key” field.

Click the “Update Options” button. That is all there is to it. Akismet is now configured to catch your spam comments.

I wrote about Statpress in this post. If you missed it, StatPress is a powerful analytics plug-in for use with WordPress. It doesn’t require a lot of set-up, but one thing you’re going to want to do is ban your own IP address from being logged. This will give you a more accurate idea of how many visitors are coming to your site without the data being skewed by your own visits as your update and maintain your site.

I highly suggest you use a couple of free applications for this:

FileZilla
Notepad++

These are both FREE open source programs. Both powerful, but simple enough for those of us who are a bit technically challenged. These two programs streamline the process of banning your IP in StatPress.

Step 1
Open up FileZilla and put in your log in information for your hosting account.

Step 2
Navigate to the Plug-Ins folder. The path is something like this: /public_html/yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins .

Step 3
Open up the StatPress folder. You will see a list of files like this:

Step 4
Double-click the “def” folder to open it and view the contents.

Step 5
Right-click “banips.dat” and select “View/Edit” from the drop down menu. FileZilla opens the file in your selected text editor. In this case, mine is Notepad ++.  You will see that banips.dat is a simple file that is only a list of IP addresses. There is only one address by default. Here, I have already added mine. You can add as many as you need. If you access your website from more than one computer or location, you can put all of your IP addresses in this file to exclude them from your StatPress stats.

Step 6
Type or copy and paste your IP addresses into the file, one IP address per line. Save the file and exit. FileZilla automatically detects that you have changed the file with a pop-up window.

Step 7
Left-click “Yes” to upload the updated banips.dat file back to your server. You IP address is now excluded from your StatPress stats.

You’re done!

I did an article on how to use OpenOffice Impress, and while I was writing the articles and preparing screen shots, I actually made a presentation with the software. OpenOffice Impress is part of a free open source office suite that is comparable to and compatible with Microsoft Office. Read more about it at OpenOffice.org.

I decided to upload the presentation using the popular social media outlet for sharing PowerPoint, slide shows and multimedia presentations: SlideShare.net. Yes, there really is a social network for almost everything!

Without further ado, my OpenOffice Impress presentation:

I’ve been writing for DemandStudios.com for right at a month now and I enjoy it. I write a lot of “how to” and “about” articles on various topics. This has given me the opportunity to share some of my artwork as well by writing articles having to do with the thing that interest me graphically. The majority of my writing ends up on eHow.com. Below, I am including some links to a few of my eHow articles.

Adobe ImageReady Tutorial

Digital Inking Tutorial

The Effects of Cocaine and Alcohol

Knee Arthroscopy Procedures

Critical Thinking Skills Necessary in Writing

See all of my articles for eHow here:

Ava Fails – eHow.com Contributing Writer