Attention all bloggers out there, WordPress 2.6 (Code name: Tyner) is already out! The release is about one month ahead of schedule.

WordPress just keeps on getting better and better and I personally believe it is the best open source content management system right now. New enhancements make your “blogging life” much more easier. In fact it makes your life so easy that you won’t have to buy wrinkle cream since you won’t be as stressed out as before when working on your blog.

I can’t wait to have it installed! Sadly my hosting company is not yet offering the upgrade, I guess I’ll have to wait for a couple of days before I start enjoying the upgrades.

So what’s new with WordPress 2.6 ? Watch this youtube video and be surprised.

One of those is a company called “Kontera.” Kontera is a contextual advertising program that allows you to make money from the content of your blog or website. This is achieved by displaying relevant in-text ads that looks like regular text link except that it is underlined. When visitors to a blog or website put their mouse over the high lighted text, the ad is displayed. You make money when the visitor to your site or blog clicks the ad. If you notice, in all of the post in this blog you can see some words that looks like a link that is underlined. Those are examples of a Kontera ad.

Most bloggers agree that Kontera is another great way of monetizing your site. I have been a blogger for about 7 months now, and I have enrolled in Kontera when my blog was still new. However I disabled it for several months because of two reasons. First, I have to “Hack” into my theme in order install the Kontera Code. I don’t like this because when I do a lot of code modification to my theme, it all gets messed up. This “hacking” into themes is also not advisable for newbie bloggers, better get yourself bushnell binoculars if you want to do this.

Secondly, if you are earning money through reviews, you might have some problem with this. Some review companies do not allow other forms of advertising in the blogpost that you are doing for them. Since Kontera appears in every post that you make, you have to manually disable it for every review that you write.

But now, I am putting up Kontera ads in my site again and I hoping to increase my blog income because of this. Thanks to a cool wordpress plugin called Kontera Integration.

Kontera integration solves the two problems that I have mentioned above. All I have to do is download the plugin, input my Kontera publishers code and viola ! I’ve got Kontera in my blog.

Kontera integration also allows me to turn off Kontera ads for a certain post. Once you have the plugin installed, you will see a box in the sidebar of the post editor called “Kontera Integration”. Setting this option to “no” will disable Kontera ads for the post that you are working on.

Now isn’t that cool !

I wanted to achieve this effect but I did not know how. I did not want to “hack” my way into my word press theme since I am no word press expert and I don’t want to get into the hassle of “crashing” my wordpress theme.

So I decided that a plugin is the best solution to this problem. I was sure that there is already somebody out there who has developed a solution to this problem.

Ask and it shall be given, seek and ye shall find, yep, I found out the right plugin to achieve what I was looking for. Let the drums start rolling . . . Tadah !!! “SHYLOCK ADSENSE PLUGIN”

However before I start “exalting the virtues” of this plugin I want to inform you that this plugin can be used to place html ad codes for anything not just for adsense. (Although the author named the plugin “adsense” plugin) I used this to put TTZ Media codes.

To quote from the plugin creator “Shylock Adsense is a WordPress plugin that allows you to insert Adsense ads on your blog without modifying the template. More then that, you can set it up to show different Adsense ads for articles older then X days (x is the number of days you decide).For example, you can insert a 468×60 ad at the bottom of a new article, and once that article turns 7 days old it will have a more aggressive 336×280 ad blended with the text from the beginning of that article.This way your regular readers will not be bothered by your ads, while visitors coming to older posts from search engines or other sources, will see a version that is monetized better.

The plugin is so easy to use. Easier than using scanner software.  Just copy it to your wordpress plugin folder in your host, activate it, placed your ad codes and off you go !

For more information on how to install and where to download the Shylock Adsense Plugin go to the plugin creator’s site.

I’m sure you must have read my post “What’s the big deal about “No follow” and why you should disable it ?” If you haven’t read it, I encourage that you do so since I will be discussing here how to remove “No follow” in your Word press blog. But if you know what I am talking about, read on.

There are lots of ways to remove “No-follow” in your word press blog. You can even do a hack. But most of us would prefer doing it through a plug-in, much easier, less messier.

However there are several plugins available to remove “No-Follow” which of them should you choose ? Before I pick one out of the bunch let me just say that all of them are good. But there are those who stand out from among them and for me personally there is no better plugin that does it better than “Lucia’s Linky Love”

Lucia’s Linky Love is a “A DoFollow Plugin to Foil Human Comment Spammers!”
The plugin says exactly what it does. It gives lots of linky love to people who comment on your site as it allows “DoFollow” allowing search engines hopefully to follow the author links and the comment links placed in your site.

This cool plugin does not only enable a “DoFollow” it also gives you several options. You can set the number of comments a person has to make before the his author link is followed. For example I set mine to 3. After 3 comments, the author link is set to “DoFollow.” If the person comments some more, “DoFollow” is activated in the links he placed in the comments itself. (For mine I set it to 7 comments) Other cool features are the “comment counts” where the number of comments by a particular visitor will appear after their name. You can refuse to add a ‘dofollow’ to persons with long names. (Most spammers use long names like “Joe — SEO expert” or “Cashemere Dog Sweater”)

The plugin is so simple to use and to activate. Just install it like any other plugin, click activate go to options, configure it and you are ready to go !!!

So what are you waiting for ? Get Lucia’s Linky Love plugin today !!! And instead of giving cheap avo cigars give love link on Valentines day !

One of the things that I’ve always wanted to accomplish is putting a big RSS button in my header. Sure you can have the default RSS button in your side bar but it is a small teeny winy button. I wanted a big RSS button, not only because it looks nice but because they say it will increase your number of readers (subscribers I should say) And I must agree it will increase your feed subscribers. For who wouldn’t wont to click that shiny orange button ? Go ahead click on mine !

I discovered a big nice juicy orange RSS button by GEEK WHAT. So I decided to use this button. Now that I have the .GIF file for the button how do I link this to my RSS and how do I place it in my header file? It’s quite easy. As easy as taking out easy personal loans.

I’m no good at HTML. In fact I just learned to manipulate HTML codes for the past few weeks because I have no choice. I was forced to study it because I wanted to achieve stuff beyond the call of ordinary blogging.

I read some HTML codes about creating RSS feeds and linking RSS buttons, but I was somewhat confused. So I decided to go for a plugin to achieve this.

The solution I found was provided by the blog TWISTER MC. It involved downloading a word press plugin called “Chicklet Creator WordPress Plugin.”

Chiklet creator is not primarily used to place a big RSS button into your blog header. It is an easy to use WordPress plugin for creating RSS subscription buttons. I encourage you to explore its primary function but for purposes of this post, I am using it to place a big RSS button in my header.

So here are the steps that I did in order to place the Big RSS button where it is right now in my blog:

1.) Go to the blog GEEK WHAT.com to download the BIG RSS button.

2.) Rename the file for the BIG RSS button to “feed-icon” (minus the quotes)

3.) Go to the blog TWISTERMC.COM to download the plugin. Follow the instructions there.

4.) Before you upload the Chicklet creator plug in, copy the “feed-icon” file that you just created in step no. 2 to the folder “Chicklet-creator” under the sub-folder “RSS Image.” It will over write the existing feed-icon file, replacing it with the big RSS button from GEEK WHAT.

5.) Go to your Word Press administrator console > Options > Chicklet Creator. Uncheck everything except the big RSS button.

6.) One of the instructions in the Chiklet creator site is to place this code: “<? if (function_exists(‘chicklet_creator’)) { chicklet_creator(); } ?>”where you want the feed buttons to show up. So for purposes of this post since I want it to show up in my header, I placed the above code in the Main Index template. (You can achieve this by going to your Word Press administrator console > Presentation > Theme Editor > Main Index Template) Place the code just below the google adsense code. The effect will be that the RSS button is at the right, the same as what you see in the header of this blog. You can experiment with it by placing the Chicklet creator code before your ad code in order to make it appear at the left side.)

If you have other ideas as on how to tweak the BLOGGER PRO theme, drop me a comment. Happy tweaking !!!

There are times that I get discouraged, especially when I could not find a solution to the desired effect I am looking for. I am sometimes tempted to switch themes in order to solve the problem immediately. However until now I have resisted that temptation. I figure out that it is better to face the problem than run away from it. I always tend to look at the glass half full hence I decided to stick it out with this theme and study hard in order to achieve the desired effect I want implemented on my blog.

As I said I am no HTML expert, and I mostly rely on widgets to make tweaks to my blog. However since I desire to transcend to the level beyond the ordinary blogger, I was forced to hack my way around the theme deleting and adding html codes into the theme editor as necessary.

A blogger who uses the same theme as I have, has managed to place google ads just below his blog title and above his post. I wanted to achieve that effect too.

After several hours of viewing the source, and trying to find out where to insert the google adsense codes, I finally accomplished what I planned in achieving. If you notice in this blog, you can see that I now have google ads displayed at the top of the post, just below the blog title, I also have google ads and a webhosting ad displayed at the top of the footer. So here are the steps to achieve this:

1.) In your Word Press administration panel go to Presentation > Theme Editor > Main Index Template.
2.) To place ad below the header, Place the google adsense code below the first line of code (which is <?php get_header(); ?>) You can get the google adsense code at your google adsense account. Or if you wish you can get the html codes of other ads and place it here.
3.) Enter the HTML code <hr NOSHADE> in order to place a line below your adsense code in order to separate your first post from the ads.
4.) To place ads just above the footer, scroll down and place google adsense codes or any other html ad codes just above the last line of code (The last line is <?php get_footer(); ?>)
5.) If you wish to put a space between the codes use the html code “<p>” (Without the quotes)

If you have any other ideas on how to improve the BLOGGER PRO theme, drop me a comment.

Some blogs have too much ads that visitors to the site get turned off by pesky ads. (Ads such as Pop-ups, pop-overs and pop-unders) But what can I say, a blogger has to earn some dough for what he is doing.

There’s a new way to put a non-obtrusive ad in a blog that will not in anyway affect a user’s experience. This is made possible by a Word Press plugin called MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad 1.2. (If you notice there is an ad strip at the top of this blog. This is what I am reffering to) Most leading bloggers refer to MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad as a new non-obtrusive way of displaying an advertising message.

Putting ads and their corresponding links is very easy. There is even an option to put several ads and put them on “rotate” so that each time a user visits your site the ads are different. You can use this plug in to promote anything that comes into your mind. You can change the ad font, text color among other things. This is surely another advertising revenue source. The only draw I see about this plug in is that there is “Powered by MaxBlogPress” that appears on the right side of the Stripe. But who are we to complain, after all the author gave released it for free? Perhaps this is one way of “repaying” him for his act of kindness in coming up with this great idea and this great plugin. Using Max Blog press stripe ad is like placing your blog in Lipofuze. So what are you waiting for ? Get the MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad 1.2 today !!!

I tried to contact the author of the BLOGGER PRO theme about the problem through her blog. But I did not get a response immediately; hence I was forced to do a little research in custom laptops and discovered the work around. The good thing about it is that I was forced to study HTML. After several weeks the author of the theme, Elena Gafita sent me an email and gave me the code on how to put a home button to the BLOGGER PRO theme. This is the instruction and the code that she gave me:

Replace this into header. <div class=”TopMenu”>
<ul>
<li><a href=”/” mce_href=”/”>Home</a> </li>
<?php wp_list_pages(” ); ?>
</ul>
</div>I followed her instruction and placed the code in my header. (This can be achieved by going to your Word Press administration panel > Presentation > Theme Editor > Header)

The code worked. But unfortunately the “Home button” was placed above the “About” button. I am no HTML expert. But I was very determined to make it work. I studied the codes, the existing one and the new one she gave me. I found that they are somewhat similar except for two lines. I experimented with the code and finally I got it to work. So here is the code I am using now:<div class=”TopMenu”>
<ul>
<li><a href=”/” mce_href=”/”>Home</a> </li>
<?php wp_list_pages(‘depth=1&sort_column=menu_order&title_li=’ . __(”) . ” ); ?>
</ul>
</div>

This “REAL SOLUTION” is better than the work around I previously posted, since this solves the delay problem I was talking about. So I suggest you implement this solution rather than the work around I first posted. I hope this post will hope those using the BLOGGER PRO theme. Thanks to the author of this theme for taking the time to help me out.

UPDATE (4/1/2008) : Recently, I did a blog overhaul and the code I have posted above does not seem to work anymore. If you have tried the code above and it does not work for you try this new code:

<div class=”TopMenu”>
<ul>
<li><a href=”http://www.zdiaz.com”>Home</a></li>
<?php wp_list_pages(‘depth=1&sort_column=menu_order&title_li=’ . __(”) . ” ); ?>
</ul>
</div>Post your comment if you you still can’t make it work. Perhaps I can render some assistance.

1.) Christmas Days – My favorite design by my favorite Word Press theme designer, Design Disease. Unfortunately I cannot change to this theme since it has only 2 sidebars. But the design looks very cool and it even has a Christmas countdown. You can download and find out more about the theme here.

2.) Christmas Gift – My Favorite three column theme. The design looks great, its widget ready and works with the latest and previous Word Press versions. You can download and find out more about the theme here.

3.) Merry Christmas – A simplistic yet powerful theme design. You can find download and find out more about the theme here.

It is quite exciting to know how many numbers of users you have at a certain time browsing through your blog. It just shows that your blog content is interesting. The solution to that is a plugin called “WP UserOnline 2.20”

If you want to know what the effects of this plugin looks like, check out this blog. There is a page called “Users Online.” (See image at the left)

You can also see that at the left side bar there is a link called “Users Online.” (See mage at the right) This link at the front of your blog tells you instantly how many users are there.

Once clicked it will bring you to the “Users online page” wherein the details as to who are online is shown. (Click image at the left to enlarge) Details include who are online, (Guest, administrators and bots) the date and time, what are they looking at and their I.P addresses. It will also tell you the “Most users ever online” and what date and time did it occur.

In order to go about this you need to install the WP-UserOnline 2.20 widget and follow the steps below. The instructions here are for users of Word Press 2.3 hosted by a hosting company.

I – Preliminary steps

1.) Do a google search for “WP-UserOnline 2.20” and download the file.
2.) Extract the file and copy the folder “user online” to your host specifically in the folder wp-content/plugins Folder
3.) Activate WP-UserOnline Plugin by going to your Word Press administration console > Plugins > Activate

II – Putting “Users Online” in your side bar

1.) Go to ‘WP-Admin -> Presentation -> Widgets’
2.) Drag the UserOnline Widget to your sidebar
3.) Configure the UserOnline Widget if you like by clicking on the configure icon
4.) Click ‘Save changes’

III – Making a “Users online page”

1.) Go to ‘WP-Admin -> Write -> Write Page’
2.) Type “Users online” or any title you like in the post’s title area
3.) Type ["page_useronline"] in the post’s content area (without the quotes”" however enclose with the [ ])
4.) Type “useronline” in the post’s slug area (without the quotes)
5.) Click ‘Publish’

See how easy this is ? this is much easier than using velobind machines For more information check out the publisher’s plugin site. WP UserOnline 2.20 is created by Lester Chan.