Cforms II is a Wordpress plugin which makes it easy for you to add a contact form to your website.

Once you install and activate the plugin, don’t get intimidated by the dozens of options available. It is pretty easy to set up. Click on CForms from your WP admin menu.

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You have to motivate your visitors to leave comments.

How do you do that?
By giving them a good enuff reason to do so.

Like they say there is no such thing as a free lunch.

We have already discussed one approach and that is by making your blog do-follow.

Another option is the CommentLuv Plugin.

This plugin searches the commentator’s RSS feed and adds the title of their last blog post to their comment.

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As soon as you make your blog a Do-Follow you will notice a slight if not a large increase in comments.

Some of these are great as they contribute something. Fair enuff for a link back to your website.

And then there is the category who want a link back for nothing. If they could they would leave a blank comment. Since they can’t they just leave comments like ‘Thank you’ or ‘ I came upon your website and wanted to say hi’.

Bring Something To The Table

As much as I love new comments, they need to have some substance. It is ok to add one line comments as long as you add to the discussion. Don’t just say thank you .. show that you are by adding something meanigful.

Fair Exchange

It is only fair that if someone is letting you add a do-follow link to your blog or website then you give something back in return as well. A simple thank you is just not enuff.

I finally upgraded to Wordpress 2.6.

I first installed it locally to test it out and make sure that nothing was broken and the website was showing up fine. Good idea on my part.

Turns out there was a permalinks issue.

Everything was totally mucked up. I couldn’t get the post pages to load. I was getting tagged headings on category pages and the rest were just giving a page not found error. Oops!

Am I glad I didn’t directly upgrade live!

But there is good news.

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This can either be a very useful or a very dangerous trick depending on how it is used or abused.

I found this little tip at: FiddyP (it’s a really cool blog btw).

It only works in Firefix and boy does it work!

If you have a stored password that you can’t remember and all you can see are asteriks, just add this line to the address bar:

javascript:var els = document.getElementsByTagName('input'); for(var x=0; x<els.length; x++){ if(els[x].type.toLowerCase() == 'password' ){ var test = els[x].type = 'text';}}

Press enter and wait to be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised to see your password staring back at you.

Is Google Experimental going to change our Google search rankings forever and further more?

Apparently Google is experimenting with enhancing search results. The first experiment deals with ‘Alternate views for search results‘. This includes the list view (current option), info view, time line view and map view.

Now the interesting thing to note here is that each view gives different results. So although you might have worked hard to get your web pages to the top 10 in the current Google scenario (list view), you might find your listing missing in the three new proposed views.

Just imagine if Google were to introduce these as actual search options. The face of Google SEO will not be the same. It will be better for some, worse for others. May be nothing new about this but it is going to cause some upheaval and shifts in results depending on what view gets to be more popular.

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I’m still figuring this one out, folks. Personally, I am the laziest person when it comes to writing. Designing I can do all day long but writing … that is a completely different story.

So how do I motivate myself to keep at it?

1. Get Motivated By Others
   When I am really out of it and I don’t feel like writing at all, I go and read blogs at random. Not only does that give me ideas and get my creative juices flowing, it gives me the extra push I need. After all if so many people can keep blogging day after day then so can I.

2. Look at my RSS Subscriptions
   Alright so the current number isn’t exactly anything to write home about. But I like to see numbers go up (who doesn’t ). So every time I make a post, there are chances of that number going up. (Psst you can help … go subscribe up there). Anyway that gives me a little push sometimes.

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It is time for an updated list of useful Wordpress Plugins that work with the 2.5.1 version.

I’m not going over 2.6 as it is still in its early stages and not all plugin authors have successfully updated to this version. But I will get to this soon.

Some of these are going to overlap with my previous list as they have been upgraded to work with this version and some I have already discussed in detail in several other posts.

1. Accordion Tabs
   This lets you add Wordpress functions in a tabbed interface. Not only does this look pretty neat but it also saves space. A must have for any blog!
2. Add This Social Bookmarking Widget OR Add To Any
   Both plugins offer your visitors the chance to bookmark your posts and pages. Instead of adding several icons under your post and making them look cluttered, the whole menu pops up AJAX style on mouseover.
3. Adsense Deluxe
   This is a classic and should not need any introduction. It lets you add adsense or YPN ads to your posts at the click of a button. Manage the codes on the plugin settings page.

   An alternate which lets you add either adsense or YPN is the All in One Adsense and YPN. However, I haven’t tested this one yet.

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Sticky Posts

There is no option to make a post sticky when you add it. However, once you have added a topic, click to view it. Then browse right down. You will see a link ‘Stick Topic (to front)’

If your click STICK TOPIC, this topic will become a sticky in its respective forum. However, if you click TO FRONT, it will stick to the front page Latest Discussions list. One downside of this being, the topic is no longer shown in its respective forum. It is still counted there but no longer viewable from within the forum.

What purpose can this serve? Well for one you can use this to add General Forum Rules that you might not want appearing in any of the forums but visible on the front page. Any announcements can also be added here.

Favorites

How this works is you can add a post to your favorites. There is the option of subscribing to your favorites RSS feed so you can receive the latest posting in your favorite topics.

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After going thru many bbPress plugins here are some that work with bbPress 0.9.2 and provide added functionality to your forum.

1. bbPress Latest Discussion
   This is actually a Wordpress plugin which displays up to the last 10 discussions going on at the forum. Let your blog visitors know what is going on at your forum.
2. bbPress Signatures
   Let registered users add a signature to their posts. You can also add the option to individially toggle this option on or off per post.
3. bbRatings
   Add the option of post ratings. Let registered users voice vote on the posdt on a star rating of 1 to 5.

4. Censor
   Want to filter posts for bad words? This is the plugin. There is just one issue at the moment … its settings page doesn’t show up in the bbPress admin. A slight tweak will do the trick.

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