Posts Tagged ‘tutorial’
July 8th, 2010
Contact Form 7 is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. Is it very simple to create forms with this plugin however many people battle to get the forms to fit into narrow columns such as widgets. This brief tutorial shows just how simple it is to reduce the width of forms created with Contact Form 7:
- Whilst logged in as an Admin user, click ‘Contact’ then ‘Edit’ then ‘Generate Tag’.
- In the ‘size’ field enter a value (for my WordPress theme 30 is a good fit to include the form as a Widget).
- Follow the rest of the instructions given by Contact Form 7 i.e. when it says ‘Copy this code and paste it into the form left’ then do just that.
Note that some tags don’t have the ‘size’ field so it is necessary to make similar adjustments. The ‘Text area’ tag for example requires that the ‘cols’ field be populated to reduce it’s size.
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February 20th, 2010
I have mentioned previously that I have been doing some work with the Constructor Theme for WordPress. Unfortunately there is little helpful documentation out there in the form of ‘how to’ tutorials in relation to the Constructor Theme.
A common question appears to be how to get the slideshow option in the Constructor Theme to work. Here is a quick guide using the NextGen-Gallery Plugin.
- Install and activate the Constructor Theme (i.e. Constructor must be your WordPress ‘Current’ theme).
- Install and activate the NextGEN-Gallery WordPress plugin.
- Download ‘JW Image Rotator‘ to your computer and unzip.
- Copy imagerotator.swf from the unzipped ‘JW Image Rotator’ to the nextgen-gallery folder on your WordPress install/server (this will be under the ‘plugins’ folder).
Go to Options in the Gallery menu of WordPress.
Click the Slideshow tab.- Click Search now >> to the right of the ‘Path to the Imagerotator (URL):’ field.
- Wait until the path is filled for you in the ‘Path to the Imagerotator (URL):’ field. and click Save Changes at the bottom of the Window.
- Create/Add a Gallery with some images/photos (David Potter has a handy guide).
- Go to Appearance – Customize then the Slideshow tab
- Ensure the following:
- Enable Slideshow is checked
- At least one of the Options is checked (i.e. either/both and/or Show on single post).
- You click/select the Gallery you created in NextGen at the end of the Window to the right of Slideshow
- You ‘Save Changes’
Your slideshow will now appear on pages and/or posts (depending which you selected in the Constructor Theme Slideshow options.
Click the image below to enlarge and see an example of the Options used to enable a NextGen-Gallery to be used as the Constructor Theme Slideshow:
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September 23rd, 2009
Google is by far the most popular Internet Search Engine. Google’s closest competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft Bing, have a far smaller market share of the Web Search market. The reason for Google’s popularity is that the search results returned in its Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are more accurate and delivered faster than other Search Engines. Google is constantly improving how it determines the most relevant results to show in the SERPs however there are a few things that can be done to help Google in returning the best match for your search.
Search Scenario and Default Search
For this tutorial here is the example scenario we’ll be using: A student is renting an apartment in New South Wales (Australia) and the landlord has given a one month written notice that the rental is to be increased. The student wants to know if the landlord is within his rights to do this.
Typically, when using Google, a person will type something like consumer rights into the Search field to learn about their rights in regards to the scenario.
Sure, this is a valid search term however this returns 69,000,000 results of which many won’t relate to the students needs. Below are three simple ways which will vastly improve the search results which appear on the SERPs:
Select the Best Search Term
A term like consumer rights is very broad and doesn’t specifically describe what the student wants to know. The first thing to do therefore is to phrase the Search term specifically enough; a search term such as landlord increase rent consumer rights nsw is far more descriptive. The results on the SERPs for the better defined term is now 22,800 which is far better than the original 69 million however is still too high.
Search Operators
Operators are simple ways of instructing Google to use or not use certain words in a search or to group terms or words. The common Operators are briefly described below:
- + means use the following specific word and not it’s plural, synonyms etc.
- - means specifically exclude the following word.
- AND means include the following word (AND however is redundant as Google by default assumes AND where no other operator is specified before a word).
- OR means the results must include either the preceding or following word.
- “” means include the exact phrase, as entered in the quotes, in the search.
(Boolean logic may also be used in place or addition to the operators).
We can therefore be far more specific about what we want Google to search for by using the Operators. A search for landlord increase rent “consumer rights” nsw has reduced the results on the SERPs to 20,600. Still way too many results so let’s keep going …
Site
The Australian Federal Government as well as state governments have some excellent information on their websites. As the student wants fast facts without endless commentary our student is well advised to search the New South Wales (NSW) government websites for information. The site: Operator will therefore be useful.
The site: Operator is generally recommended for searching a specific Internet address however I use it mostly for searching specific domains e.g. .edu for education domains and .gov for government domains. For our student to search only Australian Government domains all he/she has to do is enter site:gov.au after the search term in the Google search box. Google will only return results on Web pages which end with .gov.au. The full search syntax is therefore landlord increase rent “consumer rights” nsw site:.gov.au
Google now returns 313 results which is far more manageable than the 69 million originally returned. Clicking on the first result on the first SERP page from Google has taken our student to a site which answers his question.
Other Useful Search Function and Operators
Three hints have been provided above which have significantly improved the search results returned by 
Google. There are numerous other simple ways of assisting Google to return the most appropriate search results for you such as searching by date and file type. Most of these may be accessed using the Advanced Search which may be found by clicking ‘Advanced Search’ next to the Search button.
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July 22nd, 2009
WordPress Wp-O-Matic not working with godaddy? Here is the solution…
GoDaddy is used by many people to host their websites. Among the many Tool offered with GoDaddy Linux hosting is a Cron Manager. Cron is very simplistically the Linux / Unix equivalent of Windows ‘Scheduled Tasks’. The GoDaddy version simplifies the usual command based Cron interface by providing a GUI where just a few options need to be filled. Because the GoDaddy Cron Manager is not command line based, many people find it difficult to get the Cron Manager to work. Below is a tutorial of how to get WordPress WP-o-Matic Cron to work with godaddy.com hosting:
Use Cron for WP-o-Matic
WP-o-Matic is a popular WordPress Plugin which creates posts from RSS feeds. The posts may be ‘Fetched’ by WP-o-Matic manually, by accessing a specific URL on your website (URL supplied in the Options tab of WP-o-Matic) or via Cron (Cron command supplied in the Options tab of WP-o-Matic). The Cron method is great for automating WP-o-Matic to fetch and create posts however there is a little trick that seems to have many GoDaddy users unable to automate the WP-o-Matic fetch.
In the first paragraph of this post it is described that the GoDaddy Cron Manager is GUI and not command line based. The Cron string supplied on the Options tab of WP-o-Matic is intended for Cron Command lines. So, to get GoDaddy to tell WP-o-Matic to fetch according to a specified schedule all we need to do is
- Go to WP-o-Matic Options Tab in your WordPress install.
- Ensure that in ‘Unix cron’ is checked (in WP-o-Matic Options in your WordPress install).
- In the Cron command highlight all characters EXCULDING those before ‘/usr’ (i.e. in the Cron command field the value will look something like ‘*/20 * * * * /usr/bin/curl http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/WP-o-Matic/cron.php?code=ba360243’ however we only require ‘/usr/bin/curl http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/WP-o-Matic/cron.php?code=ba360243’ to be highlighted).
- Copy why you have highlighted.
- Paste into the ‘command’ field in GoDaddy Cron Manager.
- Fill the other GoDaddy Cron Manager fields with your options and save.
(see the diagram below for an example of setting up a new ‘Cron Job’ to get WordPress WP-o-Matic to fetch posts at 6 P.M. daily.).
You will now receive an email from Cron Manager every time the Cron command is run.
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Tags: cron, godaddy, hosting, how to, instructions, Linux, rss, troubleshoot, tutorial, WordPress, wp-o-matic | 
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March 20th, 2009
Microsoft Visio is a very useful, popular and powerful diagramming tool. The tool does however have its quirks and following some basic ‘best practice’ can significantly enhance the effective and efficient use of Visio. The following tips apply equally to Visio 2003 and Visio 2007:
Repeat Shapes
Particularly when using many pages in a single Visio file, use the same shapes repeatedly (i.e. standardised shapes). When loading a file, Visio ‘processes’ all the different shapes it Read the rest of this entry »
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