I know I do!

And that is what I have been getting so far for MiniSitePacks.com

Here’s some of the feedback:

“Unfortunately, I don’t have time to test right now, but I just wanted to say it *looks* great! :-)”

“Signed up and started testing…..so far so good….
Looks like a really good site and the designs are very good….well done…”

“Looks great Erum!
I’ll dig into it more here in a bit, but so far so good
Might want to draw a bit more attention to the “sign up” link, I did have a bit of trouble finding it at first…”

Advice taken into consideration and the signup link is now in the menu and in bold letters next to the login.

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I can dance for joy!

I finally managed to get the programming completed on MiniSitePacks.com

The site is now open for Beta Testing. If you are one of the first ten to twenty people to register you will also receive 10 free credits for testing purposes. You can use the product you download as part of the beta testing as a thank you for your help.

But please don’t sign up just ‘cos you are getting something for free. I need serious beta testers.

In case you are wondering what the product is. The website provides minisite packs..these are complete designs including header, footer, order button, tick marks, background and ecover. A basic XHTML and CSS file is also included.

These help jazz up your minisite. Get visitors to stay longer and get a positive impression of you and your product. Other than these packs you can also download individual 3DEcovers from MiniSitePacks.com

So if you are one of those people who have really wanted to try out 3DEcovers but didn’t want to invest in the whole package, here’s your chance to get the individual ecover actions you wanted.

Just go to MiniSitePacks.com and register to receive the free credits. Report any bugs and/or feedback using the contact form at the website. And thank you in advance.

I’ve been writing on and off about this little project I’ve been working on. I had planned on a soft launch and a testing phase this week and an official launch by next week. Unfortunately my net troubles have set me back by a week or so.

However, I think it is time I gave you guys and gals some hints as to what the project is. And if you are interested be sure to subscribe to this blog (option in the top bar).

Head on over to MiniSitePacks.com

Pretty soon minisitepacks like these are going to be available for download from this website. In the meanwhile make sure you download the Christmas pack as it is only going to be free till the launch.

I am looking for beta testers. So if you love bug testing and don’t mind downloading a minisite pack as thank you for your help, be sure to be subscribe to my RSS feeds or sign up for the mailing list at MiniSitePacks.com

You can also leave a comment here if you are interested in being a beta tester.

That is not a question you think of when everything is working out alright. Not when you can get up in the morning and start work as soon as you are ready.

However, this is a question you are forced to face the moment your net dies on you. In my case it was my phone line. Since I have a DSL connection, that is pretty much the same thing. What makes matters worse is the company I have my phone line and DSL connection from chose this very moment to be a chaotic mess. In other words, I cannot get someone to get my phone line and DSL connection back up.

Three full days without the Internet. Let me tell you it wasn’t fun. It is sad but I cannot remember what I used to do in the pre-Internet era. How did I spend my day? How did I pass my time?

Since I work from home and all my work is Internet related, my entire work world revolves around having a stable Internet connection. So living without the Internet wasn’t very pleasant.

Anyway the good news is I now have a wireless connection so no more dependency on the phone line. And that feels great! It is good to be back

So what do you think your life will be like if you lost your Internet connection for three days?

Good news! There is a new version of CForms that is out and has got great features. The best thing about it is it has got most of the features on my wish list

So here goes…

Plugin Compatibility

CForms is now completely compatible with three of the most used comment plugins.

• Subscribe To Comments
• CommentLuv
• WP AJAX Edit Comments

First Step is to install the above mentioned plugins and activate them.

Next… adding Subscribe To Comments and CommentLuv

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If you have just upgraded to Wordpress 2.6 you might notice one slight problem. You are no longer able to upload your images. They show up as broken images. It doesn’t matter whether you use the AJAX option or not, the result is the same.

Surprisingly not everyone is facing this problem.

A client of mine has the exact same configuration on his blog (give or take a couple of plugins) as mine. However, he faced the broken image problem while I did not. Of course we have blogs on different servers so that might have something to do with it.

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It is amazing how many blogs do not do this. They have the messiest comments section with a zillion comments, trackbacks and pingbacks all jumbled up. And it is almost impossible to make some sense of out of the entire mess. Want to follow the conversation? Try evading the trackbacks and pingbacks along the way.

What’s the solution?

Separate the two, of course.

But How?

That’s a good question. You will find plugins that do this but if you can manage something in the theme design, it is best to do so rather than install plugin upon plugin. Plugins are best used where you cannot achieve your objective without touching the core Wordpress files.

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If you scroll down you will see a live preview option for comments. Just try it out by typing in a comment. Pretty cool, huh!?

A friend asked me why this was useful and why anyone will want to see their comment twice?

My answer: If your comment is pretty long, the textarea will start to scroll and you won’t be able to look at your entire comment in on go. The preview on the other hand shows the comment in its entirety. This way you can see how it looks and proof read with ease before you post.

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I have already discussed a few techniques and plugins you can use to increase your comments. Here is a re-cap of some old and some new plugins I haven’t discussed before. All are must-haves if you want to explode your comments:

1. Subscribe To Comments
   I am absolutely staggered that so many bloggers don’t use this one. Don’t they want their commenters coming back? When I comment on a blog, I really want to know when there is a reply. And subscribe to comments is the perfect plugin as it sends me an email whenever a comment is posted.

   Without this option, your commenters may just get sick and tired of checking manually or not bother at all. Not everyone subscribes to the comments RSS feeds so make sure you provide this option.

   I cannot stress this one enuff!

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Today I came across this software - TrackBoost.

The first deterrant to looking into this further was the fact that the website only had a video and hardly any content about the software. My speakers are not working at the moment and I find using my headphones to be a pain. However, I put them on unwillingly as I wanted to get more information.

If you are like me and don’t want to be forced to watch videos, here is a lowdown of what the software is about and what I liked and disliked about the product.

What It Does

The software links to your Wordpress database. According to the website:

TrackBoost is made for self-hosted Wordpress blogs, but will work with any blogging system that supports the MetaWebLog API

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