OMNINOGGIN

Buy Sell Ads WordPress plugin version 0.2 is here!

What’s new this release?

This version of Buy Sell Ads WordPress plugin has two minor enhancements.

1. Previously the nonce key is automatically generated every time you visit the Buy Sell Ads plugin options page. Now the nonce key automatically regenerates every half hour by default and this interval is configurable. This enhancement helps combat people who visit your blog, comment “It took all of 2 seconds to block all ads from this site”, and run off. When they return more than half an hour later, they will see the advertisement again because the nonce key has changed.
2. Previously advertisement URLs were redirected through the plugin’s proxy but most of the URL was still unshielded. Now the entire advertisement URL is encrypted into a random string. This enhancement combined with one above officially makes this plugin too smart for AdBlock Plus to figure out.

Read on…

photo credit: duplamox

Ajay D’Souza who regularly writes on Weblog Tools Collection had recently updated a plugin called ‘Where did they go from here?‘.  Originally developed by Mark Ghosh, this plugin keeps track of where your readers go after reading a post and displays this list at the end of your post.  This works just like Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” feature on their product page.

I never noticed this plugin before and I’m quite surprised that I have missed it considering how useful it is.
Read on…

You might ask “Why would I want to do that?” Here is why:

1. AdBlock lowers your ad impression statistics tracked by Buy Sell Ads, which makes your advertisement spot lose value.
2. Buy Sell Ads advertisers will have an extra incentive to advertise on your site because AdBlock will not be able to block their ads.

Again, feel free to use the comments section for bug reports and feature requests/suggestions.

Read on…

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In this post I will show you how to quickly migrate a WordPress blog to a different host. Certainly not everybody’s configurations are the same, so this should be used as a general guideline only.

photo credit: zio Paolino

Put your site in maintenance mode

• Download and activate the ever useful Maintenance Mode plugin.

Move files and data

1. Login to your current host via SSH and cd to the directory above your blog root
2. Run the following command to archive your WordPress code:

   tar -zcvf blog.tar.gz path/to/your/blog/

Read on…

photo credit: id-iom

This post is one of my WP Greet Box Troubleshooting Guides series (more to come).

Symptom

You have installed WP Greet Box and found that your greeting messages do not show up.

Note that this troubleshooting guide should only be used for WP Greet Box with cache compatibility mode enabled.

Step 1: Check code embed

1. Visit one of your post pages.
2. Make sure there are no javascript error messages when you visit a post page.
3. On your post page, do a browser View > Source on the page, then check if the following text are there:
   • wp-greet-box/css/wp-greet-box.css
   • id=”greet_block”
   • wp-greet-box/js/functions.js
   • wp-greet-box/js/onload.js

If all is there, then proceed to next step.

If wp-greet-box/css/wp-greet-box.css does not exists, it could mean that your theme does not make a call to the standard wp_head() function. You can fix this issue by manually inserting the follow between your <head> and </head> tags:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/css/wp-greet-box.css" type="text/css" />

If wp-greet-box/js/functions.js & wp-greet-box/js/onload.js does not exists, it could be that your theme does not make a call to the standard wp_footer() function. You can fix this issue by adding <?php wp_footer(); ?> into your theme’s footer.php or manually inserting the following towards the bottom of your HTML (near the </body> tag):

<script type="text/javascript" src="/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/js/functions.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/js/onload.js"></script>

If any of these are not there, you might have not installed the plugin properly. Please read the readme.txt file and then retry the installation.
Read on…

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A few days ago I read a post on Webmaster Source about Minify, ‘a PHP5 app that can combine multiple CSS or Javascript files, compress their contents (i.e. removal of unnecessary whitespace/comments), and serve the results with HTTP encoding (gzip/deflate) and headers that allow optimal client-side caching.’

Being the enthusiast that I am, I decided to implement it on my blog. This post will report my experiences integrating Minify with my WordPress blog.
Read on…

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One of my favorite WordPress plugins that I use is Fun With Sidebar Tabs, coded by the awesome Andrew Rickmann. This plugin lets you easily tab your sidebar widgets so you can solve your sidebar cluttering issue.

The only addition I would want from such a wonderful plugin is the ability to cycle (or rotate) through the tabs automatically, so here it is. My implementation is just a simple jQuery javascript that should just plug-and-play[pray] with Fun With Sidebar Tabs.

I will also be submitting this to Andrew for possibly patching Fun With Sidebar Tabs. Stay tuned by subscribing to the RSS feed and I will let you know when the changes become official. For now, installation is easy as pie.
Read on…