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Simple guidelines for WordPress 3.3 updates

Codex Meridian — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:32:04 +0000

If you have not yet updated your blog to WordPress 3.3, try using the auto-updating feature first. But make sure you have performed a back-up of your blog. If time is limited, pay attention to backup these important elements:

a.) root directory .htaccess
b.) wp-config.php
c.) wp-content directory
d.) other important scripts in your blog (custom-made and not part of the WordPress core files).
e.) WordPress database
f.) robots.txt – if you are using this.
g.) wp-includes/languages –if your blog uses a language file.

The auto-updating feature in WordPress would safely bring your site to maintenance mode and update the core files to WordPress 3.3 quickly and easily.

Case#1: Auto-updating Fails

If auto-updating encounters an issue; then you can safely revert back to the previous version by following the procedures below:

1.) Login to your server root directory using FTP/SSH or your hosting control panel.
2.) Find the file named as (with dot before the file name):
.maintenance
3.) Delete this file to remove the maintenance mode message in your site.
4.) Clear your browser cache and history then your site should return back to normal.
5.) You can now login to your WordPress admin again but the core files are still not updated to use the latest version.
Aside from timeout issues (which you can safely click auto-update again when your server is not anymore busy); one of the common causes why auto-updating does not work is in relation to file permissions and owner settings in Apache server. To troubleshoot:

1.) Check if your WordPress directory and folders are using correct file permissions, some guide:
a.) wp-content, wp-admin, wp-includes is using 755.
b.) WordPress core PHP scripts (index.php, etc.) are using 644.
c.) Other wordpress folders such as “upgrade”, “themes”, “uploads”, “plugins”, etc. will be using 755.

2.) If any of the above items are not in the proper file permissions, try changing them to designated permissions. You can use Filezilla FTP client to do these changes. To do this, login to your server using Filezilla; right click in affected WordPress folders or scripts then click “File permissions”.

3.) Check if your WordPress directory is owned by you. To do this, login to your WordPress root directory and make sure all files and directories are owned by your assigned username (which you use when logging in FTP or SSH). See screenshot below:

In the above example, the username assigned by the hosting company is “phpdevel” and the WordPress directory is owned by this username also. This is correct. The group can be owned also by you or another party but it’s the owner that is important. If the owner is not the same, you need to contact your hosting company.

3.) If all file permissions and ownerships are in place; try performing the auto-update again. It should be working fine.
If it still fails, delete .maintenance and you need to manually update WordPress core files. Read this guide on how to safely update WordPress core files manually.

Follow the steps in the first section: “Overview of the Upgrade Process” except that after “Step3. Verify the backups”; you need to bring your site to maintenance mode first by:

a.) Create a PHP script and named it as 503.php with the source code below:
header('HTTP/1.1 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable'); header('Status: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable'); header('Retry-After: 10800'); header('X-Powered-By:'); ?> URGENT WEBSITE MAINTENANCE!

`Doing maintenance`



This site is under maintenance right now.


This should be ready again in under 3 hours.

You can change the number of maintenance hours from 3 hours to any number of hours by converting the number of hours first to seconds and then replacing 10800 seconds in:

header('Retry-After: 10800');

b.) Open your current WordPress .htaccess and paste the code below starting on the first line of your .htaccess
RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / # Allow blog admin to access the website normally RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^91\.210\.196\.8 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/503\.php RewriteRule .* 503.php [L]

Replace 91.210.196.8 with your own IP address which you can find here. This will let you login and access your WordPress site normally while other visitors (bots, etc.) to your blog will be provided with a 503 temporary not available status.

c.) Upload your .htaccess and 503.php to your WordPress root directory.
d.) Check if 503 server header status are now returned in your blog using this server header status checker.

If the homepage now returns 503 header status then proceed with deactivating the plug-ins and the rest of the manual updating process as stated in this guide.

To remove maintenance mode, simply delete 503.php in your WordPress root directory and remove the maintenance code in your .htaccess.

Special case to those that are still using PHP 4 and MySQL 4: As of WordPress 3.2, the minimum hosting requirements is changed to PHP 5 and MySQL 5. So if you are still using PHP 4 or MySQL 4, you need to upgrade them first before upgrading WordPress to use WordPress 3.3.

Case#2: Auto-update successful but Returning with Errors

In this case, you have succeeded updated your blog to WordPress 3.3 but the site runs unstable or returning a lot of errors. There are two possible causes for this:

1.) Plug-in related issues.
2.) Theme related issues.

The first thing to check is whether plug-in related issues exist. To troubleshoot, refer to the steps below:

1.) Put your website in maintenance mode (refer to previous section for guide).
2.) Disable all plug-ins first. If you cannot access to admin panel for some reasons, you can read some guide here.
3.) Enable the plug-ins one by one and check your blog for the presence of errors or blog instability. If you are using a caching plugin, enable it last because it can be difficult to check if other plugins are working with caching enabled. Remember all the configuration settings so that you can safely revert to it.
4.) Continue doing this until a certain plug-in returns with error. This is an incompatible plug-in with WordPress 3.3. Disable them back.
5.) Continue with the rest of the plug-ins until you have completed testing all of them.
6.) Finally enable the cache plugin with the settings you have been using before. If it returns an error; then the caching plugin you are using is not compatible with WordPress 3.3.

What to do with incompatible plug-in?

1.) Contact the plugin developer for updates and report that the plug-in is incompatible with WordPress 3.3. In some cases, you can go to the plugin page in WordPress to check if it’s compatible with version 3.3.
2.) If there is already an update available to sort out the incompatibility issues; update them before enabling them for use with WordPress 3.3.
3.) If there is no update available, you can either:

a.) Do not update to WordPress version 3.3 until the new version would be released.
b.) Remove the plug-in if the feature is not very important to your blog functionality and operation.
c.) Replace the plug-in with other compatible plug-in.

To troubleshoot for theme related incompatibilities. Follow the troubleshooting steps below:

1.) Put your site in maintenance mode.
2.) Login to your WordPress admin panel and change your WordPress theme to “Twenty Eleven”.
3.) Check whether those errors are gone by switching to Twenty Eleven.

If the errors are gone, then your theme is not compatible with WordPress 3.3 you have to report that to the theme developer and have it fixed. If for some reason you cannot login to your admin dashboard; you need to login to your WordPress website via FTP/SSH and then manually remove all themes (do not forget to back up your original theme files) except “Twenty Eleven”. This action would force WordPress to use Twenty Eleven.

Case#3: Theme errors due to overwritten WordPress core files

If you have edited your WordPress core scripts (which are not advisable) then updating to WordPress 3.3 can introduce errors because your changes will be overwritten.
To resolve this issue:

a.) Look for compatible plug-in that will replace the functionality removed by the update. Or edit only your theme files to add the features.
b.) Do not anymore edit the WordPress core files to prevent this issue from happening again in the future.
Finally for cases that are not mentioned in this post, you can refer to the quick FAQ in WordPress. Scroll down until you will see the “quick FAQ” section.

Integrate a fully functional Q&A section in your WordPress website

Codex Meridian — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 08:53:27 +0000

Do you want to add Q&A section in your WordPress website that is fully integrated with WordPress user management system and database? With this method, your Q&A section and your WordPress website share the same database and user-management system.

In this beginner tutorial, you will be using “Question2Answer” which is an open source Q&A platform that can provide similar functionality to top question and answer websites like StackOverflow. This tutorial will illustrate the complete steps of integrating this Q&A platform to your existing WordPress website. This also assumes you are installing WordPress in the root directory of your domain.

The integration is actually very simple; just follow the steps below:

Preparatory Steps before Uploading Question2Answer

1.) Download the latest Question2Answer version to your Desktop and extract it.

2.) First, you need to know the WordPress path in your server. To do this, open a notepad or any text editor, then copy and paste the code below:

Then save it as absolutepath.php

3.) Upload this script to your WordPress root directory (the same path where wp-load.php is found).

4.) Finally access this script using a web browser. Since you have installed WordPress in the root directory of your domain; you can enter this URL in the browser and press enter to get the path:

http://www.example.com/absolutepath.php

Or if you are using a sub-domain which is using WordPress in its root directory, you can run absolutepath.php like this:

http://subdomain.example.com/absolutepath.php

It should return this result in the browser such as:

/home/phpdevel/public_html/absolutepath.php

Remove the absolutepath.php from the above result, and then the remaining is your WordPress path. For example, this is the WordPress path based on the above result:

/home/phpdevel/public_html/

Take note of this path.

5.) Go to the extracted “Question2Answer” folder and find qa-config-example.php.

6.) Open qa-config-example.php and find this line:

define('QA_WORDPRESS_INTEGRATE_PATH', '/PATH/TO/WORDPRESS');

By default this is commented in PHP so you need to uncomment this line. Then replace:

'/PATH/TO/WORDPRESS'

With your WordPress path as determined in the previous steps:

define('QA_WORDPRESS_INTEGRATE_PATH', '/home/phpdevel/public_html/');

This is how it looks like after doing these changes, take note that the line is now uncommented:

Then save it as qa-config.php. You can now safely delete qa-config-example.php.

7.) Login to your server using an SSH client (recommended than using FTP because of security) and create a folder at the root directory of your WordPress website. Assign a good name to your WordPress Q&A section that makes it easy for your visitors to understand and make it SEO friendly. For example, if you are running a PHP programming website and would like your readers to ask a question, you can name the folder as: “php-programming-help”. See the screenshot below showing this created folder at the root directory of your WordPress website:

8.) Using an SSH Client such as Filezilla, right click on the created folder and click “File permissions”. Assign a file permission of 755 to this folder.

Uploading and Installation of Question2Answer

9.) It is time to upload Questions2Answer to your WordPress website. Using an SSH client; connect to your server and go inside the created folder for Question2Answer files (e.g. “php-programming-help” in the above example). This is how it looks with Filezilla GUI:

10.) Upload all the files and folders of the Question2Answer core files including the qa-config.php, .htaccess, etc. It can take some time, wait until all files are completely uploaded and then you can see it like this one below:

11.) Launch a web browser and then enter the Question2Answer URL to install the software. If your Q&A folder is named as QA; then the path to enter would be:

http://www.example.com/qa/

In the previous example on setting a php programing help section on your WordPress website, this is the URL to enter in the browser address bar:

http://www.example.com/php-programming-help/

12.) The first thing you would see is that Question2Answer will ask you to set up the database. Click the “Create Database” button.

13.) If you see the message “Your Question2Answer database has been created and integrated with your WordPress site.” click “Go to Admin Center” then login as an administrator.

14.) Since Question2Answer is now integrated with WordPress database, login using your WordPress administrator credentials. Bear in mind that if you click the login link, it would be redirected to your WordPress login page.

15.) Finally after successful authentication, you should be able to see the Question2Answer:

The quickest admin configuration you could do is to set for user/SEO friendly URLs in your Q&A site integrated with WordPress which is supported since you are using htaccess. The rest are easy and simple. For configuration details and editing of your Q&A templates; you can go to the official website: for related documentation.

You can further secure your Q&A site by reading some tips here. Now if a user registers your site, it will automatically be managed by WordPress and all questions and answers would be saved in the same database used by WordPress.

How to Create a WordPress Friendly robots.txt File

Karol K — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:30:04 +0000

Let’s get one thing clear. Robots.txt isn’t just a fancy file for webmaster-purists and professional SEOs. In fact, every WordPress developer should know a thing or two about the file and why it’s so important for every blog’s SEO.

So first, here’s the big question:

What is robots.txt and why is it important?

Speaking as the captain obvious: it’s simply a file. But there is one interesting thing about it. It isn’t displayed to the actual visitors anywhere on the blog itself.

Instead, it sits in the root directory of the blog and serves only one purpose. It is the file that search engines look at before they start crawling the contents of a blog. And the reason for looking at it is to find information on what they should and shouldn’t be crawling.

So in essence, by using this file you can inform search engines what you want them to index and rank, and what you DON’T want them to index and rank.

The truth is that not every page (or area) of a blog is worth ranking. As a webmaster or a person working with WordPress you have to be able to identify those areas and use robots.txt as a place where you can speak to search engines directly, and let them know what’s going on.

Creating robots.txt for WordPress

First of all, let me tackle the actual guidelines which you can find at codex.wordpress.org – this page in particular: Robots.txt Optimization. There’s an example file. Here’s the thing … don’t use it as a template!

I’m not saying that it’s completely bad, but it can create a lot of problems for some WP blogs. It all depends on your settings. Things like permalinks, category and tag bases. That’s why you need to create robots.txt for each individual blog and be careful when you’re dealing with a template of any kind.

Things you should always block

There are some parts of every WP blog that should always be blocked: the “cgi-bin” directory and the standard WP directories.

The “cgi-bin” directory is present on every web server, and it’s the place where CGI scripts can be installed and then ran. Nowadays, some servers don’t even allow access to this directory, but it surely won’t do you any harm to include it in the Disallow directives inside the robots.txt file.

There are 3 standard WP directories (wp-admin, wp-content, wp-includes). You should block them because, essentially, there’s nothing there that search engines might consider being interesting.

But there’s one exception. The wp-content directory has a subdirectory called “uploads”. It’s the place where everything you upload using WP media upload feature gets put. The standard approach here is to leave it unblocked.

Here are the directives to get the above done:

Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/

Notice the small difference between the template at WP codex. They tell you to block “/wp-admin” (without the trailing “/” character). This can be problematic if you have your permalinks set to “/%postname%/” only. In this case every post with a slug beginning with “wp-admin-“ won’t get indexed.

I know that there’s only a small group of bloggers that could have created such posts (the “blogging about WordPress” group), but as a WP developer you can’t make any assumptions about what’s going to happen on the blog you’re working on after it takes off. That’s why it’s better to remember about the trailing “/” character here.

Things to block depending on your WP configuration

Every blog has a set of settings that are unique and need to be handled individually when creating the robots.txt file.

First thing is whether the blog uses categories or tags to structure the content … or both… or none.

In case you’re using categories to structure your blog make sure that tag archives are blocked from search engines. To get it done first check what’s the “tag base” for tag archives (Admin panel > Settings > Permalinks). If the field is blank then the base is “tag”. Use this base and place it in a Disallow directive:

Disallow: /tag/

In case you’re using tags to structure your blog make sure that category archives are blocked from search engines. Again, check the category base in the same place and then block it:

Disallow: /category/

In case you’re using both categories and tags then don’t do anything here.

In case you’re using neither categories nor tags then block both of them by using their bases:

Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /category/

Why should you bother? An honest question. The main reason here is the duplicate content issue. For example, if you’re not using categories then your category archive looks exactly the same as your home page, i.e. there are two sites that are exactly the same but have different URLs:

yourdomain.com/
yourdomain.com/category/uncategorized

I’m sure I don’t need to explain why that’s bad. You have to make sure that such situation doesn’t happen.

Next up is the authors’ archive. If you’re dealing with a single author blog then there’s no point in keeping the authors’ archive available to the search engines. It creates the same duplicate content issue as the tag-category thing. You can block author’s archive by using:

Disallow: /author/

Files to block separately

WordPress uses a number of different files to display the content. Most of these don’t need to be accessible via the search engines.

The list most often includes: PHP files, JS files, INC files, CSS files. You can block them by using:

Disallow: /index.php # separate directive for the main script file of WP
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$

(The “$” character matches the end of an URL string.)

However, be careful with this. It’s not advised to block any other files (images, text files, etc.). That’s because even if such a file is not placed in the uploads directory you probably still want it to be recognized by the search engines.

Note. If you used the “Allow: /wp-content/uploads/” line earlier on, then all PHP, JS, INC, and CSS files that are inside the uploads directory would still be visible to the search engines – nature of the Allow directive.

Things not to block

The final choice is of course up to you, but I would not block any images from Google image search. It can be done by a separate record:

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow:
Allow: / # not a standard use of this directive but Google prefers it this way here

Another robot to handle individually would by the Google AdSense robot, of course, only when you are a part of their program. In this case you need to make sure that it can see all the pages that your users can see. The easies way of doing this is by using a very similar record:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:
Allow: /

Of course, the issue doesn’t end with just these two examples. There are probably many more of them because every blog is different. Feel free to comment and point out some additional areas of a WP blog that shouldn’t be blocked.

How to handle duplicate content

No matter what you do your blog will always have some duplicate content. It’s just how WP is constructed, you can’t really prevent it. But you can still use robots.txt to prevent search engines from accessing it.

There’s a number of duplicate content areas on every blog, for instance:

Search results

This is what a search result page URL usually looks like for a WP blog:

yourdomain.com/?s=phrase

(Sometimes there’re also some additional parameters after the search phrase.)

This is both duplicate content and content generated automatically – something Google really doesn’t like. That’s why it’s good to block this by using:

Disallow: /*?

Apart from blocking the search results this directive blocks access to all URLs that include a question mark, but this shouldn’t cause any problems when it comes to WordPress.

Trackback URLs

Some blogs use trackback URLs that are essentially duplicate content of the original post. Here’s an example of a normal post’s URL and its trackback URL:

yourdomain.com/some-post/
yourdomain.com/some-post/trackback/

To prevent search engines from accessing such content you can use:

Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: */trackback/

Now why the duplicate statements? The fact is that the implementation of the Robot Exclusion Standard can vary for different robots. By using these two lines you can be sure that it’s understandable for all of them.

RSS feeds

RSS feeds are just another example of content that’s purely duplicate. You can eliminate it from search engines by using:

Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: */feed/

Date-based archives

Very similar to RSS feeds, only date-based archives create a lot more duplicate content. Let me give you an example. Let’s say that today is Jan 2nd, 2012, and you’ve published a post. If we only look at the date-based URLs then this post can be accessed via:

yourdomain.com/2012/
yourdomain.com/2012/01/
yourdomain.com/2012/01/02/

That’s a lot of duplicate content. You can eliminate it by using:

# the year your blog was born
Disallow: /2009/
Disallow: /2010/
Disallow: /2011/
Disallow: /2012/
# and so on

Now, what’s important here. Why all the separate directives instead of just using one “Disallow: /20*/$” which would work too? If you were to use such a directive you’d block every post which slug begins with “20”. And such posts are easy to imagine, for example “20-reasons-why-something”, “20-tips-for-someone”.

Using separate directive for each ear of your blog’s existence is the safest way to block only the date-based archives and nothing else.

Other possible duplicate content

There are three things I was talking about earlier – categories, tags, and author archives. This is all duplicate content, so make sure to take care of that.

Additionally, some plugins create even more duplicate content. Whenever you’re installing a plugin make sure to check whether it creates any additional URLs.

I can give you one example – the WP-Print plugin. It’s a very cool plugin and I highly encourage you to use it. It creates a printer-friendly version of your posts and pages. The only downside are the additional URLs. For example, here’s a normal post and its printer-friendly version:

yourdomain.com/some-post/
yourdomain.com/some-post/print/

Classic duplicate content. Make sure to exclude it by using:

Disallow: /print/
Disallow: */print/

How to actually edit the file

There are two main ways of doing this: you can either use a plugin or handle the file manually.

The plugin’s called Robots Meta. And it does a lot more than just letting you create the robots.txt file. I really advise you to get familiar with it. Setting it the right way can really give you an SEO-advantage.

If you want to do it manually then just create a robots.txt file in your notepad and upload it to the blog’s root directory using FTP. The file needs to be accessible via this URL:

yourdomain.com/robots.txt

Once you have it set up you can test it in Google Webmaster Tools (learn what is Google Webmaster Tools and how to use it here.)

The final template you can use

I know, I told you not to use templates, but we’ve been talking about many various directives here, so I think it’d be nice to give you a template which you can take as a starting point when working on your robots.txt.

Again, it’s probably not a template you can just plainly copy onto your blog without any adjustments.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
# Disallow: /tag/ # uncomment if you’re not using tags
# Disallow: /category/ # uncomment if you’re not using categories
# Disallow: /author/ # uncomment for single user blogs
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/
# Disallow: /print/ # wp-print block
Disallow: /2009/ # the year your blog was born
Disallow: /2010/
Disallow: /2011/
Disallow: /2012/ # and so on
Disallow: /index.php # separate directive for the main script file of WP
Disallow: /*? # search results
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: */feed/
Disallow: */trackback/
# Disallow: */print/

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow:
Allow: /

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:
Allow: /

Sitemap: http://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Here it is. A complete guide to creating a WordPress friendly robots.txt file. I hope you enjoy the information. Feel free to comment and tell me what you think. Also, let me know in case I’ve forgotten about anything.

And finally, did you spend a significant amount of time when creating the robots.txt file for your blog?

Learning Thematic hooks and creating Thematic child theme

Abbas Suterwala — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 07:05:27 +0000

WordPress helps you build professional sites with minimum efforts required. To give your WordPress site a unique look one needs to create a custom theme to give your site the unique identity. But creating a WordPress theme from scratch could be a tedious process . So in the article I am going to explain how you can use the Thematic Theme framework and create child theme using the Thematic hooks.

Step 1: Getting Thematic framework.

The thematic framework is licensed under GPL like WordPress and can be downloaded from the WordPress site itself .In fact it is one of the top downloaded themes from the WordPress site. You can grab your copy from http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/thematic and upload to the wp-content\themes folder of your WordPress installation.

Step 2: Creating your Thematic child theme

To create a child theme first create a folder ‘thematic child’ in your wp-content\themes and create a file called style.css with the following lines . .

/*
Theme Name:     Thematic Chld
Theme URI:      http: //example.com/
Description:    Child theme for the Thematic
Author:         Your name here
Author URI:     http: //example.com/about/
Template:       Thematic
Version:        0.1.0
*/

If everything has gone correct in the themes section of your admin you will see your child theme now . Activate the child theme from the admin.

Note :- you can read more in detail about WordPress child themes at http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

Step 3: Getting the lay out correct

After activating the child theme now if you see your blog you will see the lay out is not proper. This happens because now your style.css has overridden the parent thematic theme style.css and you have provided no layout in your style.css . You can provide your own style in the style.css , but again we will use the power the thematic framework and import the css provided by the thematic framework . The parent thematic contains a number of layouts which we can use from

2 columns layout with sidebar on right
2 columns layout with sidebar on left
3 columns with one sidebar on right and one on left
3 columns with two sidebars on right.

Let us use 3 columns layout with one sidebar on right and one on left for our child theme . Add the following lines y\to the style.css in your child theme .

/* Reset browser defaults */
@import url('../thematic/library/styles/reset.css');

/* Apply basic typography styles */
@import url('../thematic/styles/typography.css');

/* Apply a basic layout */
@import url('../thematic/library/layouts/3c-fixed.css');

/* Apply basic image styles */
@import url('../thematic/styles/images.css');

/* Apply default theme styles and colors */
@import url('../thematic/library/styles/default.css');

/* Prepare theme for plugins */
@import url('../thematic/library/styles/plugins.css');

If all has gone good you will have a nice 3 columns layout child theme ready.

Step 4: Styling in your child theme

Now once the lay out is done you an style your theme by changing its colors by adding them to the style.css of your child theme . You can either use some tool like firebug etc to figure out the element tag name of the element or check the default.css in the parent thematic folder. We will change the body background color , the header color and the links and heading of the sidebars. Please add the following ode to the style.css of your child theme.

body {
   margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	background: #FFFFFF ;
	font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
	font-size: 12px;
	color: #787878;
 }
#header {

background: #2871FB;
}
#footer {
background: #2871FB;
}
#siteinfo a:active, #siteinfo a:hover {
    color: #FFFFFF;
}

#siteinfo a {
    color: #FFFFFF;
}
#siteinfo
{
color: #FFFFFF;
}

#blog-title a {
    color: #FFFFFF;
}
#blog-description {
    color: #FFFFFF;

}
.aside a {
    color: #4486C7;
}
a:active, a:hover {
    color: #FF4B33;
}

.aside h3 {
   color: #32639A;
}
.entry-title
{
 color: #32639A;
}
 .entry-title a{
 color: #32639A;
}
.entry-title a:active, .entry-title a:hover {
    color: #32639A;
}

Your site should look as below

Step 5: Creating a featured post section on the home page

Now lets create a section below the header on the home page to display the post of category named – featured . First create a category named featured and assign 3 post to that category. We want to display the featured post on the home just below the header and above the main section . To do this thematic provides an action hook called thematic_belowheader on which we will hook our function to display the posts in the featured category for home page. Create a new file functions.php in your child theme folder and add the following code to it


 

        
            
             
             
             
 
        

    
    


The function child_list_category just displays the post from a particular category . Then we hook our function child_list_featured_category to the thematic action hook using add_action(‘thematic_belowheader’, ‘child_list_featured_category’, 10); to display the featured post on the home page. To get the styling correct we have to add the following style to style.css of child theme.
#featureposts {
	padding:10px 0 0 0;
    margin: 0 auto;
    overflow: hidden;
    position: relative;
    width: 960px;
	height:70px;
}
.featurepostbox
{
	width: 310px;
	float:left;
}
.featurepostcontent
{
 background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #567EDC;
    color: #FFFFFF;
}

 
Step 6: Display Related post below every post.

To display related post after every post first download the plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/installation/ and activate it . Now we are going to use one more action hook provided by thematic called thematic_postfooter to which you can hook and display content after each post. So we use this hook and the above downloaded plugin to display related post below each post. To do this please add the below code to functions.php
function child_belowpost() {

	 if ( function_exists('related_posts') ) related_posts() ;
}

add_action('thematic_postfooter', 'child_belowpost', 10);
Here the function child_belowpost is hooked below the post and used the theme function related_posts provided by t

he plugin above which displays the related post to the current post.

So this is how we can added functionalities to our site using the different hooks provided by thematic without changing

any code in the parent thematic theme. You can get a more elaborate list of all the hooks provided by thematic from http://themeshaper.com/thematic/guide/?page_id=10
Step 7: Changing the footer link using Thematic filters

Like hooks thematic also provided quite a few filters which we can use in our child theme. We will use the thematic_theme_link filter to provide you child theme url instead of thematic url . To provide your child theme URL added the following code to child themes functions.php
function child_footer($themelink) {
 return 'Your Child theme Name';
}
add_filter('thematic_theme_link', 'child_footer');
This basically uses the ‘thematic_theme_link’ filter and returns the child theme url which you provide.

 
You can get a complete list of the filters provided by thematic from http://themeshaper.com/thematic/guide/?page_id=12
Step 8: Adding more widgetized Area in thematic child

Thematic has a lot of widgeized areas by default on which widgets can be dropped from the WordPress admin. In all by default there are 13 widgetize areas by default in thematic frame work. Your child theme will also by default have all these widgetize areas. But you might want more widgetize area , so that you can drop widgets at those specifics places on your theme. Add the following code to your functions.php
if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) {
    register_sidebar(array(
        'name'=> 'Footer Above',
        'id' => 'footer-above',
        'description' => 'Add widgets above footer here',
        'before_widget' => '',
        'after_widget' => '',
        'before_title' => '',
        'after_title' => '',
    ));
}

function add_widget_area(){
    if (function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')){
    ?>
    
        
    
    
Here we are first registering a widgeized area using the WordPress api register_sidebar . Then using the Thematic hook ‘thematic_abovefooter’ to register his area above the footer. Now you can drop the widgets on this area from the WordPress admin as shown belo.

 
And the content of he widget will be shown above the footer in your WordPress front end as shown below
 

 
Step 9: Adding more theme options to the thematic child theme.

Thematic by default has some theme options that can be choosen and changed from the WordPress admin. Now we will add more options specific to our child theme which can be changed from the WordPress admin . Lets make the displaying of the featured post on the home page controlled be a theme option. In the file \themes\thematic\library\extensions\theme-options.php thematic has the code to read the options from a global array called $options . So to add our child theme option we will hook on the init hook of WordPress and add our child theme specific options to this array . So the default code in thematic will also add our theme option. Add the following code to functions.php
function add_child_theme_option(){
global $options,$shortname;

$newoption = array("name" => __('Display Featured listing on home page','thematic'),
                   "desc" => __("Display Featured listing on home page",'thematic'),
                   "id" => $shortname."_displayfeatured",
                    "std" => false,
                     "type" => "checkbox");

array_push($options,$newoption);

}
add_action( 'init', 'add_child_theme_option', 1 );

Now lets change our function child_list_featured_category to even check the value of this option to decide whether to display the theme option or no.
function child_list_featured_category() {
global $shortname;
if( is_home() && get_option( $shortname."_displayfeatured" ) )
     child_list_category('featured');
}
Now you can control if the featured posts are seen on home page or no from the theme options.
Bombshell of Thematic Theme Framework

Thematic is a great theme frame work to build WordPress themes and sites on . It provides a lot of features by itself like

Different layouts
Lots of widgetized areas
Theme options etc.

With all the above things provided thematic provides a lot of hooks and filters in which your child theme can plugin and functionality and content as required without changing anything in the parent thematic framework.So using the power of the thematic framework it becomes very simple to create custom themes which can be used for your WordPress site.

How To Block Ads Being Shown In Certain Countries

Ng.Bien — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 02:05:12 +0000

When you run ads on your WordPress site, sometimes you need to block ads being shown in certain countries. That’s what I’m doing to block visitors from some countries viewing ads to protect my Adsense account.

Image source: Google Adsense Blog

Traffic source from some certain countries may harm your Google Adsense account.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to write your own WordPress plugin to do it. I won’t try to build a complex plugin, but keep it simple; and sure, you can develop it to meet your needs. Let’s begin.

First of all, you need list of IP Ranges of the countries you need to block. For example, this is the US’ IP ranges. You can search these kinds of ranges easily on the Internet.

  3.0.0.0 - 4.17.135.31
  4.17.135.64 - 4.17.142.255
  4.17.143.16 - 4.18.32.71
  4.18.32.80 - 4.18.40.135
  ...

How it works? I’ll use WordPress Shortcode to display ads, once there are requests from these IPs, the plugin won’t show ads.

You can leave the IPs in the plugin file, but I prefer push them into database, working on database will make the plugin loads much faster.

We use ip2long() to convert the IPs to numbers and insert them to a table in the database:

$range = "3.0.0.0 - 4.17.135.31
  4.17.135.64 - 4.17.142.255
  4.17.143.16 - 4.18.32.71
  4.18.32.80 - 4.18.40.135
 ... "; // // Paste all the IP ranges. These are just sample ranges

                 $range=str_replace(" ","",$range);
                 $range = str_replace ("-",",",$range);
                 $range = str_replace ("\n",",",$range);
                 $range = explode(",",$range);

                 for ($i=0;$i<=count($range);$i++) {
$ipaton[$i] = sprintf("%u", ip2long($range[$i]));
$ipaton[$i] = (substr($range[$i],0,3)>127) ? ((ip2long($range[$i])
               & 0x7FFFFFFF) + 0x80000000) : ip2long($range[$i]);
//The above two lines were broken to fit the theme's width!
//It's just one line
                 }

                 $i=0;
                 while ($i

The $firstip[] and $lastip[] of the ranges above is now something like this:

$firstip[$i]          $lastip[$i]
 0185088                20447231
 234885120              234889215
 245366784              247463935
 249561088              251658239
 452987904              452988927
 ...

When there is a IP requests your page, the plugin will convert that IP to number using ip2long() then a function will check if the IP is between the $firstip[] and $lastip[]. Here is that function:

function blockip_check() {
 global $wpdb;
       $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
       $ip_aton = sprintf("%u", ip2long($ip));
       $ip_aton = (substr($ip,0,3)>127) ?
                  ((ip2long($ip) & 0x7FFFFFFF) + 0x80000000)
                   : ip2long($ip);
       //The above 3 lines were broken to fit the theme's width!
       //It's just one line
       $sql = "SELECT * FROM wp_blockip
                WHERE $ip_aton >= startip
                AND $ip_aton <= endip
                ORDER BY startip DESC
                LIMIT 1";
       $row = $wpdb->get_row("$sql");
 return $row;
 }

The function return $row, if $row is empty, that means the visitor’s IP is not in the table, the plugin then display ads.

$check = blockip_check();
 if (empty($check)){
                 function ads1() {
                 return ''; //Display ads with no content!
                 }
 add_shortcode( 'ads1', 'ads1' );
           //If you have more ads spot, make a copy of ads1() here!

} else {

function ads1() {
                 return 'Ads Content 1';
                 //Replace Adsense code or any ads code here!
 }
 add_shortcode( 'ads1', 'ads1' );
// Now you can put [ads1] to your theme or widget to display ads1
// If you have more ads spot, make a copy of ads1() here!
 }

Once the plugin is activated, you can use put [ads1], [ads2]… anywhere in your theme or widget to display ads.

It’s just that simple! Let’s put all together and make a complete plugin.

Create a .php file and put it under the plugins folder. For example: /plugins/blockip/blockip.php
Edit the source code below to meet your needs. (Change ads code, IP ranges… )
Activate the plugin through the admin board.
Use WordPress Shortcode to display ads, by place [yourads] in your themes or widgets.

prefix . "blockip"; //Your table name

    $range = "3.0.0.0 - 4.17.135.31
 4.17.135.64 - 4.17.142.255
 4.17.143.16 - 4.18.32.71
 4.18.32.80 - 4.18.40.135"; // These are sample ranges

         $range=str_replace(" ","",$range);
         $range = str_replace ("-",",",$range);
         $range = str_replace ("\n",",",$range);
          $range = explode(",",$range);

     for ($i=0;$i<=count($range);$i++) {
   $ipaton[$i] = sprintf("%u", ip2long($range[$i]));
   $ipaton[$i] = (substr($range[$i],0,3)>127) ?
                 ((ip2long($range[$i]) & 0x7FFFFFFF) + 0x80000000)
                 : ip2long($range[$i]);
//The above 3 lines were broken to fit the theme's width!
//It's just one line
    }
    $i=0;
    while ($iget_var("SHOW TABLES LIKE '$table_name'") != $table_name){
    $sql = "CREATE TABLE " . $table_name . " (
        startip int(11) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
        endip int(11) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
        KEY startip (startip)
        );";
    require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php');
    dbDelta($sql);

    $i=0;
while ($iinsert($table_name,
                            array('startip' => $firstip[$i],
                                  'endip' => $lastip[$i]));
     //The above 3 lines were broken to fit the theme's width!
     //It's just one line
     $i++;
        }
    }
}

    register_activation_hook(__FILE__,'blockip_install');

function blockip_check() {
global $wpdb;
    $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
    $ip_aton = sprintf("%u", ip2long($ip));
    $ip_aton = (substr($ip,0,3)>127) ? ((ip2long($ip) & 0x7FFFFFFF)
               + 0x80000000) : ip2long($ip);
    //The above two lines were broken to fit the theme's width!
    //It's just one line
    $sql = "SELECT * FROM wp_blockip
            WHERE $ip_aton >= startip
            AND $ip_aton <= endip
            ORDER BY startip DESC
            LIMIT 1";
    $row = $wpdb->get_row("$sql");
return $row;
}

    $check = blockip_check();
        if (!empty($check)){
                function ads1() {
                    return '';
                    //Display ads with no content!
                }
            add_shortcode( 'ads1', 'ads1' );
                function ads2() {
                    return '';
                    //Display ads with no content!
                }
            add_shortcode( 'ads2', 'ads2' );
//If you have more ads spot, make a copy of ads2() here!
            } else {
                function ads1() {
                    return 'Your Ads Code';
            //Replace Adsense code or any ad code here!
                }
            add_shortcode( 'ads1', 'ads1' );
//Now you can put [ads1] to your theme or widget to display ads1
                function ads1() {
                    return 'Your Ads Code';
//Replace Adsense code or any ad code here!
                }
            add_shortcode( 'ads2', 'ads2' );
//Now you can put [ads2] to your themes or widgets to display ads2
//If you have more ads spot, make a copy of ads2() here!                
            }

?>

If you have any question, please leave comment. I will answer within my knowledge!

How to trigger ideas to write new article

Richard - WPWebHost — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 07:01:13 +0000

It is true that sometimes being a blogger may face situations where I would personally like to call it your brain juices got dried upas you have pretty much ran out of topic to blog and you are in crisis as your readers are anxiously waiting for your new posts but you are unable to give in.

That’s when you will probably come with excuses like I just posted last week although that post was more directly towards the newbies who stop themselves from making money but it’s still pretty much the same even though you consider yourself not a newbie.

The fact is that ideas are everywhere and I mean everywhere if you know where to find it and know how to leverage it. You may be surprised that sometimes these ideas are just right in front of you but you are not observant enough to convert these ideas and turn it into your blog post.

Today I will share some tips on where to get these ideas and most of it is part of your daily routine work.

Speak from your mind
Read
Follow the news
Utilize the internet
Look at your own stats
Teach
Tweak your old posts

1. Speak from your mind

Do not be afraid to speak from your thoughts or your conscience because your readers would love to be connected with you and this is the simple fact. It may be slightly off from your niche but it will be great to speak out within yourself. The real definition of blog is to have a SAY or TWO in the industry. It’s all about taking risks at times.

2. Read

You will be able to compile related posts that you want to blog about if you read a lot. It can be from any source including books, newspapers, and even other people’s blog. As a matter of fact, by reading other people’s blog, you will be able to improve you own writing skills by seeing the flow of other blogger’s post. Of course I am not asking you to cut and paste other people’s material. Think of it as you are reading some sample essays as a preparation before you go for your essay exams.

3. Follow the news

Keep updated with the news will just give you the latest updates that is happening and this will definitely help you to generate ideas as well. The headlines of a news may help you in many way and if you are the first person to blog about the headline, just imagine if people around the world type that as keyword for example : “Hurricane Irene”, just imagine the amount of people that will stumble onto your blog and not forgetting all those unique visits.

4. Utilize the internet

There are so many helpful sites/tools to help you generate ideas. Tools like wordtracker.com will help you list top 100 searches in the keyword you typed for example: WordPress and it will list top 100 searches within that niche. Other sites like PRWeb.com enables you to view latest press releases of your search term and Ted.com gives you the latest information in Technology, Design and Entertainment.

5. Look at your own stats

By using tools such as Google Analytics or AWStats, you can analyze what topic your readers/followers click the most. From there, you can actually have the idea to expand which topic they are fond of so that you can expand the corresponding topic or branch it out to sub-topics. That way, your readers will know even more detail about that topic and you will never run out of topic.

6. Teach

When you are able to teach your readers or provide some tutorials, they will ultimately have the faith and confidence in you. Besides that, if your teachings or tutorials are good, your readers might even recommend their friends to come to your blog for your tutorials so if you are good at something and you may provide tutorials, you may start one now.

7. Tweak your old post

It will be a waste if you don’t look back into your own old post and did not realize some of your old post has the potential to expand into some other sub-topics. This generally gives you the free idea instead of cracking your head to look for ideas so use it to your fullest advantage as it’s just right in front of you.

Some additional tips to the bloggers out there, all the ideas are actually around you. In fact every person is a walking idea. It comes and it goes and it’s always around us. You just have to dig a little deeper and with all the essential tips that I just shared, I guess there’s no reason why you say No to your own blog. Before I virtually ink a full stop for this post, you may actually follow the first step that I mentioned and I urged you all to Speak Out From Your Mind.

How to block traffic from autosurf sites using .htaccess

Arren - WPWebHost — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 07:41:00 +0000

If you are making some serious money from Google Adsense or other online ads publishing company, you need to read this post seriously. Failure to do so may caused your account Adsense from getting banned or being disabled.

Image credit: Free Digital Photos

According to their blog, Adsense strictly prohibit any means of artificially generating ad impressions or clicks, including third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, auto-surf, and click-exchange programs.

Autosurf is the automated traffic exchange sites or better explained by Wikipedia as the traffic exchanges that automatically rotate advertised websites in one’s web browser. Therefore, they are capable of bringing a large amount of traffic to the advertised websites. Members earn credits for each site that they view, which can then be spent to advertise members’ sites by adding them to the autosurf rotation. Sites may additionally be added by external advertisers who pay the autosurf operators.

Well, what if I am a good blogger and I am always posting a good unique articles and doing everything according to Google Webmaster preferences and whitehat SEO practitioner and in the end my rivals or my competitors submitted my website URL to the autosurf sites?

Not only that my website will get infused with unwanted bullshit traffic and possibly lead to server overloading, it will also cause to my Adsense account getting banned.

Here’s how you can block the traffic from this autosurf sites using .htaccess rules from entering your website

There are actually 2 types of .htaccess rules that can be used

.htaccess rules Type 1

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} auto_surf_site\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} auto_surf\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteRule .* - [F]

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

.htaccess rules Type 2

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://www.auto_surf_site.com/" BadReferrer
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://www.auto_surf.com/" BadReferrer
order deny,allow
deny from env=BadReferrer

They will then redirected to a error 403 Forbidden page like below

There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of such as autosurf websites and it is impossible to block all of them. How can I block all of them and my .htaccess rules must be pretty damn long to list all of them?

You don’t really need to block all of them because not all of them is autosurfing to your website. All you need is just identify them out using Google Analytics or WordPress.com Stats plugins. Here’s how

Using Google Analytics

Login to your Google Analytics account
Go to Traffic Source > Referring Sites
Check on the list of domains whereby it is not familiar to you or having the keyword “auto“, “traffic“, “exchange” or similar on the domain name to and giving you a rather high referring traffic

Using WordPress.com Stats

Login to your WordPress Dashboard account
Go to Site Stats> Referrals
Check on the list of domains whereby it is not familiar to you or having the keyword “auto“, “traffic“, “exchange” or similar on the domain name to and giving you a rather high referring traffic.

That’s it. Feel free to let me know if you find any new .htaccess rules or having any questions.

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money

Richard - WPWebHost — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 07:33:51 +0000

Blogging can be a passion for everyone but not everyone can turn passion into a money tree. The word blogger is definitely not a stranger to us however, to be a genuine blogger or to be more precise, to get involve in the blogging scene professionally definitely requires true dedication with proper planning and targets.

Thus, when some newbies that just got their hands in the blogging scene, the first thing that comes into their mind is how do I make my blog into a profitable blog and earn some bucks for myself. To turn your blog into something profitable, definitely it requires a lot of hard work and research to understand on how you blog and how you reach to your audience but the problem with a lot of newbies is that they do not understand the meaning of patience is virtue and they want to see immediate results.

When the results does not show, they will tend to come out with excuses as they feel that by updating their blogs, the result will still be the same. Some feel that by updating once a week is sufficient and others may feel that updating everyday will be sufficient. The key to be successful in blogging is not to hold back and be consistent and do it in a mannered way and be persistent as well.

Some of the famous excuses or “Quotes” from bloggers that tend to hold back :

1. I will write the post tomorrow

As a matter of fact, this excuse can be branched out to so many other such as today I am not in the mood, or lack of inspiration or I am tired so I shall do it tomorrow. Let’s face it, we all know that tomorrow never dies and this excuse is by far one of the most common excuse from bloggers that clearly shows you tend to take things for granted and leave it as unfinished business.

2. Cost too much money

Does hosting or purchasing a domain name cost you too much money? If you are just in the beginning stage, I don’t see a reason why you should purchase the most high end hosting. A simple basic hosting that can cater your site and that can ensure your site is up at 99% all the time is fairly good. If you are in the beginning stage and you want to do like pros where you implement things like guest blogging or outsource someone to write your article simply defines your character that you are lazy. If you are newbie in the blogging scene, you should treat every aspect as your learning curve opportunity.

3. Not enough time

Everyone have the same 24 hours a day. I have a full time job and I am blogging as part time or I just don’t have adequate time to maintain my blog. These are a few tips and advises for those who doesn’t have the time.

If you think you can’t, what about the really successful bloggers? (And some does it as part time too) Do they have extra hours in a day and you don’t? The most important thing to stop using this excuse would be the discipline. Make yourself a schedule and be punctual to that deadline that you make.

4. Get active in social medias first

A lot of newbies think that they should spread their blog in social networking sites and hopefully it will go viral as social networking sites have unlimited potential of visitors. The problem is that some of these blogs from newbies don’t even have a proper article, how is it gonna be viral? Your post/article is like your MAIN COURSE and your other factors such as spreading it through social medias are just your side dish.

5. Blog earning is zero. I’d rather quit

This is by far the most common problem faced by new bloggers. They don’t know the real way to make money and they just throw as many Google Ads as they expect every visitor to click the ads. One thing that you have to bear in mind is that your blog isn’t a classified so even if you have 1000 Ads in the beginning, you will go nowhere. Earning from blog is relatively a slow process and requires time and your patience. Once you have the frequency of the amount of visitors, you will slowly see the result. Nobody can be rich in months.

6. Can’t compete with the pro-blogger

You may be very new in this blogging scene but do not hold back thinking that you are a small fish and you can’t compete with these big fishes. You have to remember that these big fishes were once a small fish just like you. Instead of being afraid and feel helpless, you may try to provide review and compliment their products or their post’s selling point and you might turn your competition into your affiliate.

7. Can’t stare in front of my computer all day

Being a blogger doesn’t mean you have to be in front of your computer all day. You can incorporate your hobbies or daily routine such as snapping great photographs and blog about it. With the rapid growth of technological gadgets, you can blog in your notepad such as iPad or even in your smartphone when there’s a real time event happenings.

8. Blogging is not my thing

After so many attempts and it still doesn’t work out, you decide to quit. If you are a quitter, you’ll never be successful in whatever you do. Perhaps after reading some of the basic tips from this post, you might change your mind, but if you were to accept the fact the blogging is not your thing, all your efforts of making your blog something big will be like something that is being flushed away and down to the sewage system.

To give some newbies out there a glimpse of light to earn some money, you can check out the details and click here to join our WPWebHost Affiliate as your appetizer.

How to Integrate Your WordPress with CDN

Richard - WPWebHost — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 08:38:16 +0000

Below are the steps to accelerate your WordPress loading speed throughout every part of the world.

Stage 1: Integrate WordPress With CDN

First, login to your CDN portal via http://portal.myinstantcdn.com and click Add Resource.
You will then see one Add CDN Site page. In the settings panel, configure it by stating your CDN Hostname and the origin site. Below is the sample of a snapshot on you can configure the CDN. To enter CDN Hostname, type cdn.yourdomain.com and origin site at yourdomain.com
Check on box for Advanced Setting and you will be able to configure features like Hotlinking Protection, Content Partitioning, URL Signing and also Multiple Origins. You may skip this settings if you does not require the features.
By clicking OK, you will then see the next page which will have a resource validation or CNAME record that will state that your CDN is Active.
Then, go to your control panel (cPanel) and configure the CNAME record that requires to refer the CDN hostname to the CDN record by clicking Simple DNS Zone Editor in your cPanel. Just follow the sample in this below’s image to configure the CNAME record.
After configuring it, log out from your cPanel and you are done with the first setup stage. You will then have to proceed to Stage 2 of setting up the CDN.

Stage 2: Activate W3 Total Cache Plugin and enable the CDN

After finishing the first stage, you may need to go back to your CDN portal again and do the following by clicking Resources > List Resources > Select the CDN that you created and click it.

You will then see a page that state Migrate to CDN and click WordPress and follow the instruction in the portal as you will need a W3 Total Cache Plugin to integrate the CDN. The page will look something like this.

First, download the W3 Total Cache plugins. Once you installed W3 Total Cache plugins, you will get the Performance tab below your dashboard settings.
Click General and you will see the Preview Mode is enabled. Turn it off by clicking the Disable button and your General panel in you Performance tab should look like this screenshot.
Then, Scroll down and look for “Content Delivery Network” panel in the General page of Performance tab and choose enable CDN services by clicking the checkbox and select Original Pull (Mirror) for the CDN Type and click save all settings.
Click CDN at the Performance tab and look for Configuration panel in the CDN page. Replace site’s hostname with your CNAME you created. (In this case scenario, I just type cdn.drunkenmunkie.com) which I just created in the first stage and click Save All Settings.
After completing all the steps and also this two stages, your blogs in WordPress are now being integrated with your CDN services.

Migration from Tumblr to WordPress

Richard - WPWebHost — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:16:30 +0000

Tumblr to WordPress

For those who has contents in Tumblr and would like to migrate to WordPress, these are some of the steps you need to follow in order to migrate your contents to self-hosted WordPress.

Firstly, go to this link for Tumblr to WordPress export tool as Tumblr does not have the export features. http://haochen.me/tumblr/
Once, you’re in the page, type in your tumblr blog name. For eg. [example.tumblr.com]
It has two choices either in WordPress.com or WordPress self-hosted. Choose according to your preferences and click the export button. It will then convert the tumblr files into an XML file and will be saved into your computer.
Login to your self-hosted WordPress dashboard and go to Tools > Import.
Select on WordPress and it will prompt you for the WordPress importer plugin and just click Install.
After install the WordPress importer plugin, go back to Tools > Import and click WordPress and you will see a page like this below
Choose the converted XML file you have exported earlier and click Upload file and import.
You will then see a page that prompts you to assign author from your earlier blog or assign author to an existing user and there will be list of users in the dropdown list. You may choose to assign it to the respective authors of your preferences.
After you clarify all the details, just check the box at Download and import file attachments and click Submit and you are done.

That’s it and you will get all of your posts and pages from Tumblr successfully migrated to your self-hosted WordPress