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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.

Themefuse Original WordPress Themes Giveaway : Winner Announced

Richard - WPWebHost — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:42:56 +0000

Our latest Tweet and Win Giveaway which we collaborated with Themefuse that was held on last November has ended. It’s time to announce the lucky winners for this game. We, WPWebHost team would like to congratulate the lucky 3 winners and they are:

@affanruslan
@dickvincedor
@iheartcontest

Congratulations to this 3 lucky winners again and you will receive our email shortly for further details.

To those who did not manage to win this giveaway, stay tuned as there will be next giveaway in a few days time and also there will be more surprises from WPWebHost. Thanks to all who participated this contest.

Follow us on Twitter or Like our Facebook page for more surprises and also exclusive giveaways.

Theme Junkie Premium WordPress Themes Giveaway : Winner Announced

Richard - WPWebHost — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 07:03:29 +0000

Our latest Tweet and Win Giveaway which we collaborated with Theme Junkie that was held on 9th November has ended. It’s time to announce the lucky winners for this game. We, WPWebHost team would like to congratulate the lucky 3 winners and they are:

@phuongtruc0705 (Freshlife Theme) winner
@webuniwu (Daily Theme) winner
@dementia (Newspaper Theme) winner

Congratulations to this 3 lucky winners again and you will receive our email shortly for further details.

Follow us on Twitter or Like our Facebook page for more surprises and also exclusive giveaways.

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Richard - WPWebHost — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:35:18 +0000

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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.

Tweet and Win Elegant Theme membership giveaway by WPWebHost

Richard - WPWebHost — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:15:34 +0000

The goodies room in WPWebHost had triggered an alarm. Here’s another exciting giveaway to all out there. We are giving away 1 limited membership of Elegant Themes worth $39.00 in the market price. This membership will last for a year and you’d be able to get all the features from Elegant Themes for one year. Constantly ranked in top 10 for WordPress themes, this is a giveaway you do not want to miss.

How to win?

1. Follow @WPWebHost Twitter.
2. Tweet/Retweet the following message:
Hosting with @WPWebHost makes perfect sense as I am about to win a giveaway.
3. Submit the URL of your tweet at comment section below.
4. You may enter this giveaway multiple times by tweeting the message once a day until giveaway closes. Each tweet is counted as one entry, which will be put into the list of entries.
5. Tweeting game starts as soon as this post is published and ends on 26th October 2011.
6. Winners will be chosen using Random.org’s List Randomizer after the game ends.

Do you want to change your current theme to something like this?

Note
* You don’t have to be existing customer of WPWebHost to win this giveaway.
(You can ask your followers to tweet too).
* LIKE our Facebook fan page as we might give another surprise giveaway as well in our Facebook Page.

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.

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.

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

How To Localize WordPress Themes

Zen — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 02:20:59 +0000

If you are a WordPress theme developer or designer and you wish to localize your themes with your local language, this is a post not to be missed.

One of the amazing features about WordPress is the ability to display in all languages using GNU gettext localization framework. Theme developers can provide a localisation template file and allow users to translate their themes easily using software like PoEdit.

In this tutorial, we will look into how to create a POT localisation template file for your WordPress theme.

Here’s the shortcuts to get your themes localized

Strings translation
Enabling localisation
Applying the function
Creating the POT file
PO & MO translation
Helpful links

1. Translating strings, one at a time

WordPress uses gettext framework that provides message-level translation, that is, every string is translated individually. There are 2 WordPress functions that allows you to translate strings.

As a developer, you need to apply the function to all strings that you want to translate:

__() returns the translated string.



// assigning an untranslated string to $normal
$normal = 'Featured Posts: ';

// Example 1 , assigning a translated string to $translated
$translated = __('Featured Posts: ');

// Example 2 , assigning a translated string to $translated, skip translating the colon
$translated = __('Featured Posts') . ': ';

?>

_e() output the translated string



// output an untranslated string
echo 'Featured Posts: ';

// this will output the translated string
_e('Featured Posts: ');

?>

Note:

If no translation is provided for that string, the original string will be returned.

Difficult cases

Sometimes you might need to translate a string which has variables inside.



$author = get_the_author();

// untranslated string
$string = 'This blogpost is written by ' . $author;

// translated example 1
$translated = __('This blogpost is written by ') . $author;

// translated example 2 (BETTER)
$translated = sprintf(__('This blogpost is posted by %s'), $author);

?>

Is example 1 a good translation?

It is not. This simply because not all languages works like english, there might be a language that works in another way round (for instance, mentioning the author name first, before saying “This blog post is posted by”)

Example 2 is better.

Example 2 is the correct way to translate this string. We are using a PHP function called sprintf()) that returns formatted strings. %s refers to a string literal, it’ll be replaced by the function’s next parameter, in this case: $author. Using this approach, the translator can decide where the author name should appear in the sentence.

Even more variables?

If the string have even more variables:



$author = get_the_author();

$time = get_the_time();

// untranslated string
$string = 'This blogpost is written by ' . $author . ' at ' . $time;

// translated string
$translated = sprintf(__('This blogpost is written by %s at %s'), $author, $time);

?>

The first %s will be replaced by the content of $author, the second %s will be replaced by the content of $time.

Note:

sprintf() returns the formatted string while printf() output the formatted string.
For more information on how to use the functions, please refer to the documentation.

2. Making your theme supports localisation feature

The localization feature is not enabled by default. Therefore, after applying __() and _e() to all your strings, now it’s time to make your theme supports this localization feature using load_theme_textdomain(). Add these lines to your theme’s functions.php :


function mytheme_localisation() {
load_theme_textdomain('yourthemename', get_template_directory() . '/languages');
}

mytheme_localisation();
?>

Of course, replace “yourthemename” with the $domain that you want, we recommend it to be your theme’s name.

Explanation for load_theme_textdomain($path , $domain)

The first parameter $domain refers to an unique identifier for retrieving translated strings. In this case, our theme name will be the most suitable unique identifier.

The second parameter $path sets the path to look for po/mo file. If undefined, the theme root folder will be the default path. In the example above, WordPress will look for po/mo files inside /theme-folder/languages/ folder.

3. Applying the function for all theme files

Next, add this lines to the very top of all PHP files in the theme.

 mytheme_localisation(); ?>

4. Making a POT template file

POT file is a template file consisting information about all translate-able strings in the theme. POT file should be included when distributing the theme so that users can translate the theme themselves by importing it into translation software like PoEdit.

We will use PoEdit in this guide.

First, create a new catalog by clicking File > New catalog and fill in your theme details under “Project Info” tab.

Next, under “Paths” tab, leave the Base Path with a dot. Now, depends on your $path you set just now, you need to let PoEdit know where is your theme’s root folder. eg: Based on our example above, $path is theme-folder/languages/ , so now press “create item” button and enter “../” as the value.

Explanation:

“../” means one folder up, in relative to base path, thus it is referring to the theme-folder/ directory , because you went one folder up from languages/ folder.

Another example, if your $path is set to theme-folder/extras/language/ , you need to use “../../” to go two folders up.

Now go to “Keywords” tab, press “create item” button and type “__” (two underscores) as the value. Add another item with value “_e”.

Explanation:

We just told PoEdit what function names to look for. Remember we just applied __() and _e() on all our translate-able strings?

Press okay and save the file into the theme-root/languages/ folder (based on our example) as template.po

Now here’s how the whole process run, PoEdit will now scan through your selected PATH (theme root folder) for the 2 KEYWORDS “__” and “_e” (the 2 wordpress functions we talked about earlier on). When PoEdit finished scanning the folder, you will then be presented with a long list of translatable strings.

Now re-save the clean untranslated po file. Rename it as template.pot and all done! You just created a POT template file.

Note:

You will notice another file called template.mo inside the same folder. MO file is a machine language file that is meant to be read by computer, while PO file is meant to be read by users like us. MO file is being saved along when you save PO file. Delete that file for now since we just need to create a POT template.

5. Translating into PO & MO file

As a theme developer our job is done, but if you want to continue translating your theme into another language, here’s how:

Click File > New Catalog from POT file > choose the POT file you just created. Verify your project Info and press OK to skip Path and Keywords tabs, because there is no change needed on path and keywords.

Save it into the theme-root/languages/ folder (based on our example). The filename must start with the language code, an underscore and the country code. Eg: en_GB.po

After you are done translating all the words, save it and your translation for the theme is ready, provided that IF you already set WPLANG constant value in wp-config.php to your locale, such as en_GB, same as your filename.

Important Note

The value for WPLANG constant in wp-config.php needs to be exactly same as the filename of po and mo files in order for the translation to take place.

If your filename is en_GB.po , update wp-config.php like this:
define(‘WPLANG’, ‘en_GB’);

By changing WPLANG’s value, you are telling WordPress to display in another language.

Helpful Links

Translating WordPress – WordPress Codex
ISO 639 Language Codes
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 Country Codes

If you have any problem translating your theme, feel free to contact me and I will try my best to help.