Category Archives: Computer Technology

Hello New Web Host

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Recently I saw a number of queries asking How To Move A WordPress Website To A New Host in a few of the forums and Facebook groups that I frequent. Since I am still in the process of moving KodeeXII.Net to a new host, I might as well document the steps I went through to get it done and share it in here for others to refer to.

How I Moved A WordPress Website (KodeeXII.Net) To A New Web Host

1. Export KodeeXII.Net into WordPress XML.

wordpress-export-500.png At first I thought of moving the entire WordPress DB and folders over. However, I didn’t want to bring along all the other sites (KodeeXII.Net was running WP Multi site) into the new install. As such, I decided to go the WordPress Export way of moving WordPress. Simple. Export all from the old KodeeXII.Net. Import all into the new KodeeXII.Net.

2. Changing DNS Settings.

addon-domains.580.png First thing to do is to remove KodeeXII.Net from the list of Addon domains in my BlueHost hosting account. This is easy as there is a tool to do this in CPanel. Pretty much click, click, click and it’s gone. After which, next comes the DNS reconfiguration.

Two options. One, I can configure the new hosting’s DNS as KodeeXII.Net’s name server. Second, I can configure KodeeXII.Net’s A record to point to the webhost server.

To make things easy, I decided to just point the A record of KodeeXII.Net to the new hosting server. This allowed me to keep every other DNS settings as they were.

cloudflare-dns-565.png If you want to utilize Cloudflare, then you will have to use Cloudflare as your Name Server and create an A record as I’ve done.

3. Install WordPress + Plugins.

Thanks to Simple Scripts, WordPress installation is just a few clicks away. Among the few must have plugins for all my WP install these days include:

  • WordPress SEO by Yoast – This is now my preferred SEO plugin.
  • Spam Free WordPress – This has protected me from Spam for many years now.
  • Google Plus Authorship – This enables your articles to appear with your Google+ profile photo next to them in Google Search.
  • Permalink Finder – This automatically finds the best posts to redirect to for your readers should you have a lot of 404 pages in your site.
  • Cloudflare – This integrates your website with the Cloudflare platform. You will need to configure Cloudflare first.
  • Child Pages Shortcode – This allows you to display child pages in a fancy way.
  • Picasa and Google Plus Express – This allows me to easily pick images stored in my Picasaweb Albums

Following are plugins I use for my Online Business:

  • Affiliate Link Cloaking – This allows you to hide your long affiliate links into shorter links using your own domain.
  • JomNiaga Ad Manager – This auto-magically create links in your posts to products within JomNiaga.
  • WP Affiliate Platform – This allows you to run your own affiliate program.
  • WP eStore – This is my preferred shopping cart plugin. I use it to here and here
  • WP Optins – This makes it easy for you to create Optin pages like this, this and this.
  • WP Social Coupons – This is an essential plugin that enables marketers to create viral social coupons like this
  • WPFB 2.0 – This plugin enables marketers to build viral Facebook Apps from within WordPress. I use it here.

4. Import WordPress XML.

Before you can import your posts and pages back into the new WordPress host, you will need to install the WordPress Import plugin. I think this feature used to be readily available in WP. It is now, however, a plugin. Once installed, you can then import your data from the WordPress XML you created in step 1.

I also do not want to bring over all the image files from the old WP install. In this installation, I would like to store all images in Google’s PicasaWeb (now Google Photos, I think). So, I did not import images from the old KodeeXII instance. I did, however, copy and zipped the upload folder into my notebook.

I will have to figure out what is the best way to put up all the images into Picasaweb and update the links in my posts. I guess, I will just have to manually update posts that are using images not from Picasaweb. I will do this slowly.

In the meantime, there will be many many posts with broken image links.

Once the import is complete, run a quick verification to see if your posts and pages were indeed imported into the new WordPress.

5. Pick a Theme.

I’ve decided to go with Twenty Twelve Excerpts theme. This is probably just temporary while I test out a few more things and ensure that everything is fine with this new host installation. I will be looking at responsive themes since quite a number of my visitors are using mobile devices.

Yes, if you want to reuse your previous theme, you obviously can do so. Nothing wrong with that. I just want a new look for KodeeXII.Net as well. It’s been running with the old theme for quite a while now.

The Five Steps above are the major steps you need to perform in order to move your WordPress to a new host. Upon completing them, there are probably still a few minor things you still need to do depending on your installation. These include things like:

  • Inserting your statistics/analytics code.
  • Inserting your ads scripts.
  • Inserting your products.
  • Creating your affiliate links’ short url.

Oh yes, one last thing to do once you have your site up and running. Take a snapshot of your WordPress site immediately.

Did I miss anything? I’m sure there are more ways to move your WordPress to a new web host. There may even be a plugin that allows you to do this with a few clicks, perhaps. If so, do share them with me and all my readers here.

860 Reasons Why You Need Spam Filters On Your Blog

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Stop Comment SpamHave you got a spam filter installed on your blog? Yes, blogs are also the target of spams, not only emails. Blog spams come in the form of comments on your blogs.

Wait a minute.. Comments spams? Yes, comments that do not add value to your blog entries. These are comments that people leave for the sake of getting a backlink to their website. These types of comments normally do not add any value what so ever to your blog entry. Most of the time they are one liner comments such as the following:

I love this blog! more then I love my wife!

Now, can you tell me how the above comment adds value to my blog?

However, nowadays, there are many spams that is more than a one liner. I have to say that I admire these people. They are willing to spend the time to write up long irrelevant comments for the sake of getting a backlink to their site. Take a look at the following:

Thank you for give very good knowledges. Your website is so coolI am impressed by the information that you have on this blog. It shows how well you understand this subject. Bookmarked this page, will come back for more. You, my friend, ROCK! I found just the information I already searched everywhere and just couldn’t find. What a perfect site. Like this website your website is one of my new favs.I like this info presented and it has given me some sort of commitment to succeed for some reason, so thank you

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The thing is, that long comment up there was posted to a blog post I wrote last year in October. More than a year ago. It’s on this post – Spurs, Canes, Fins and the Red Giants. They all went down. Do you see any relevance between my entry and the comment spam? I sure don’t.

Okay enough of that. Allow me to ask you this once again. Do you have a spam filter protecting your blog from these spams? If you don’t, I would like to ask a favor from you. Please go and install a spam filter on your blog. Go and do it now.

Don’t think that the comment spam issue is not serious. Following is what I’ve discovered after just 10 days of experimentation.

A few weeks ago, on December 8th 2010, I cleared my comment spams. Can’t remember how many there were in the Spam folder. I also decided to monitor how many spams I will get after 10 days. This was the result.

860 Spams In 10 Days
After just 10 days, I had 860 spams in the Spam folder of my blog. So, on average, I was getting like 86 spams per day. That”s just about 3 plus spams per hour.

Not bad. I wonder how many of those are automated. I would say they are all automated since none of them seem to be relevant to the entry they were posted in. Thanks to both Spam filter plugins installed, I am not too worried about the spams. Both plugins are doing their job superbly.

Thanks to my spam filters, I don’t have to spend any time at all removing these spams from my comments. Just imagine how long it would have taken me to remove the 860 spams manually.

I’m not sure about other blogging platform. However, WordPress comes preinstalled with a comment spam blocker. Thank you Matt for bundling in Akismet into the WordPress core. It is certainly one of the best plugin ever made for WordPress. I’ve also got another comment spam plugin installed. It’s called WP SpamFree. Since the day I’ve used both these plugins in my WordPress, I have yet to see a spam slipping through. They have worked fine so far.

Now, why don’t you go and install yourselves these two anti spam plugins. Free up some time and enjoy a good night’s sleep. Don’t wait until your blog is targeted by 800 plus spam comments. By then it would have been too late.

I do hope this entry have enlightened you somewhat to the importance of a spam filter plugin.

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I Thought I Have Lost It All

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The other day, while I was working on this Blog, I suffered quite a scare. As I was working in the Admin section of the blog, I suddenly received a surprising response from the server.

I received a dreaded “Internal Server Error” message. I tried every other URL I can think of on this site. They all produced the same error message. I just could not get into my site and also the back end admin site.
Internal Server Error

I was worried. Have I just lost everything on the site?

The first thing I did after that was to go check on my backups. Following is what I discovered.
WordPress Automated Backup Email

I was under the assumption that I’ve got my WordPress Automated Backup running. I’ve slacked and have never checked my backup email since.. I don’t even know when was the last time I checked on my backups. My last backup was in June!

Since I can’t rely on my automated backup, which was not running for some unknown reason. I had to make sure that I don’t really need the backup.

I removed all my plugins. Still cannot access the website. I removed all my themes. Same result. What else is there to check besides going down into the database?

I then checked the .htaccess file. I saw that the .htaccess file has got two WordPress configuration entries. So, I removed one of them and saved the file. Tried to access the site again, and .. Voila! Everything is back to normal. Phewww!

Following is the default WordPress htaccess. This is normally autogenerated for you when you define your site’s custom perma link settings. So if yours look different or don’t have any and everything is working just fine then you are okay.

# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress

Now, my first task is to perform a complete backup of this site. Then I will have to reconfigure my Automated Backup.

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I still find it strange though. Why did the system actually fail? Was it really caused by the duplicate WordPress entries in the .htaccess file? If so, how did the duplicate entry came about in the file? If I remembered correctly, everything was fine. I was working on the Post area of the Admin.

Should I try to recreate the problem? Perhaps, but certainly not now.

So, my question to you now is.. Have you got a backup system in place for your website? It doesn’t matter if the site is for personal or business. If you value the work and data you have put into your site, I recommend that you configure a backup system for your site.

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Scheduling Your Blog Entries

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By now, you should already know why Blogging is important for your online business. As a matter of fact, I can probably say that your business is not going to make it in the long run if you don’t have a blog. However, for many, blogging may seem like a chore. This is especially true if you don’t really like to write.

In order to be a successful blogger, you need to write content regularly. Some say, you should write every day. Well, that’s probably where most people have problems with. I have to admit, it is not easy to write everyday. Especially when you have a lot of other things to do in your daily life.

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Thankfully, we have WordPress. WordPress allows you to schedule your writings. In other words, you can schedule one day for writing. On that day, you write all the posts and schedule them to be published on specific dates.

Lets say you set every Monday as your writing day. So, on Mondays, you write 5 or 7 posts, more if you are in the mood. Schedule these posts to be published for that particular week – one post per day.

If you have been following KodeeXII.Net, you might have noticed that I don’t post regularly. In fact, there are months where I only write a single post. That certainly is not they way to become a successful blogger. I intend to change that in 2011, which is approaching really soon.

This was how my Blog schedule look in the past.
Past Blogging Schedule

This is how it looks like at the moment.
Current Blogging Schedule

This is how it will look like in the coming weeks and hopefully continue into the future.
Blogging Schedule Future

Thanks to the Editorial Calendar Plugin. It certainly is an excellent plugin to have. It helps in planning all your posts. As can be seen from the above image, I now have a number of posts scheduled in the future. I know, there are still a lot of days where I don’t have a post scheduled. That’s just a brief snapshot of what I plan to do. I will probably go back in and make some revisions here and there.

Yes, we can already create future posts in WordPress even without this plugin. However, this plugin allows you to visualize your schedule in a format very familiar to everyone – a Calendar. The best thing about it.. it’s not going to cost you a single cent. It’s totally F.R.E.E!

Are you using WordPress’ post scheduling feature? If not you really should. The Editorial Calendar plugin should be included as one of the must have plugin for all WordPress users. Do you have a list of must have WordPress plugins? Add this to it.

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WordPress Wins The Hall Of Fame CMS of [Packt] Open Source Awards 2010

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WordPress wins the Hall of Fame CMS category in the [Packt] Open Source Awards 2010. Yes people. The 2010 Open Source Awards results have been announced. No, WordPress did not win the Open Source CMS category. It is not eligible after having won it last year. So, this year WordPress is nominated in the Hall of Fame CMS category instead.

WordPress has gone a long way, indeed. What started in 2003 as a blogging platform, has grown into a full fledge CMS today. The main reason WordPress is successful is the backing it has from the open source developers, bloggers, webmasters and designers. Together, they have all made WordPress the platform it is right now.

Let’s take a look at the winners of this year’s [Packt] Open Source Awards.

In the Open Source CMS category, CMS Made Simple, SilverStripe and MODx captured the first, second and third position respectively. I tested CMS Made Simple but decided to stick with WordPress. I find WordPress is actually simpler and easier to handle than CMS Made Simple. As for the other two winners, I’ve never used nor tried them before.

You have been informed about the Hall of Fame CMS category. Yes, WordPress is the winner this year. Followed by Drupal and Joomla. Seriously, I think all three of them make for a great CMS. However, the thing that probably separates WordPress from the other two contenders is probably its’ user friendliness. Yes, compared to Drupal and Joomla, WordPress is easier for normal non techie users to handle.

The Most Promising Open Source Project title goes to Pimcore. In second place is TomatoCMS. Second runner up in this category is the BuddyPress project. BuddyPress is really a social networking plugin project for WordPress. Using BuddyPress, you can turn WordPress into your very own social network .

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The Open Source e-Commerce Application award goes to Presta Shop. OpenCart and Tomato Cart follows suit. Wow, just how many e-Commerce carts are there right now? I still remember back when I first started making my online presence, there were only a handful shopping cart softwares. The two which I tried back then was OSCommerce and Zen Cart. Today, I even build e-Commerce sites using WordPress.

Can you guess the application that won the Open Source Graphics Software title this year? No, it’s not GIMP. This year’s winner is Blender. Followed closely by GIMP and Inkscape respectively. I discovered Blender only recently while trying to find an alternative solution for a cousin who was looking at 3D Studio Max.

jQuery is the award winner for Open Source JavaScript Libraries surpassing Mootools and Raphael.

There you have it. The Open Source Awards 2010 is now complete.

Didn’t I just posted about Why You Should Use WordPress in Your Online Business? Now, this award makes for another great reason to use WordPress in your internet business ventures.

Ready to give WordPress a try? Click Me to learn all about WordPress on video.

Netbooks Or Notebooks – Which Do You Prefer?

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Any of you went down to the recent PIKOM PC Fair? I didn’t. Seriously, the last time I went to the PC Fair was like more than 10 years ago.  I didn’t have the problem of choosing between netbooks or notebooks. I spent like RM10K for a Twinhead notebook. Is Twinhead still around these days? If only netbooks were available back then.

Anyway, the recent PC Fair saw two of my siblings purchasing netbooks. One a Lenovo S10-3T, while the other a HP Mini 210. I’ll put up a review of each in my next few posts.

Today, I think I’m going to dwell on a topic some of you might be pondering about. Yes, I believe that some of you might still be wondering about which technology you should invest on – Netbooks or Notebooks. As a matter of fact, I’ve recently received a few calls asking me what a netbook is.

What Is A Netbook

According to the Wikipedia, a netbook is

a category of small, lightweight, and inexpensive laptop computers suited for general computing and accessing Web-based applications typically with long battery life
~Netbook in Wikipedia~

If you don’t know what a netbook is, then read my first netbook related post two years ago titled – 5 Reasons to Get a Low Cost Netbook in the Market Today. Basically, a netbook is defined with the following criteria:

  • Size – 9, 10 or 11 inch in size. Anything less will be in the subnotebook category.
  • Weight – Should be around 1kg – 1.5kg.
  • Battery – By current standards, a netbook’s battery life should last at least 7 – 8 hours in one single charge.
  • Price – RM900 – RM1600 ($300 – $500)  should probably be just about right at the moment.
  • Performance – With Intel’s new dual core Atom CPU, netbooks may no longer suffer from performance problems. They may not perform up to par with their larger brethren yet. Still, a dual core Atom shoud do just fine.

How To Decide Between Netbooks Or Notebooks

When people tell me they need my advice on choosing between a Netbook and a Notebook, I’ll first ask them what do they want to use it for? Are they going to use it for work? Wurfing the net? Play games? Video Rendering? etc.. Seriously, you need to assess your netbook business needs before purchasing one.

If you are just using it for surfing and occasional word processing, then a netbook should fit you just fine. However, if you are a heavy user, a netbook  may not suit you. You will probably need the processing power available on notebook.

If  you really can’t decide, then just go on over to the nearest notebook shop and test them both. Let your hand, fingers and eyes decide for you. Don’t worry about the minor details like performance and stuff. My guess is, by this time next year, if not sooner, netbooks and notebooks shall become one again. Even now, you can get notebooks at netbook prices and netbooks at notebook prices.

Windows Live Spaces Users, Are You Ready For WordPress.com?

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Are you a blogger on Windows Live Spaces? Here is a piece of news for you. Windows Live Spaces is in the midst of migrating all users to WordPress.com blogging platform.

This surely is a major boost for Matt and the WordPress community.

30 million+ Windows Live users will be migrated into the WordPress.com blogging service. Can the WordPress.com service handle this huge surge in users and traffic? This will surely be a test to the WordPress.com service. I’m pretty sure Matt and the WordPress.com engineers are hard at work to ensure their service is not interrupted by this project.

The world is now left with only two major free blogging services – Blogger and WordPress. Yes, there are many free blogging services out there, however, they are pretty small if compared to the two giants.

I’m not a Windows Live user (hmmm.. maybe I do have an account with them.. gotta check) so I can’t really compare their services and WordPress.com. However, I do own a number of WordPress based sites. I do believe that WordPress is truly an outstanding platform to build websites with. So, I do think that migrating Windows Live to WordPress is a good move.

Read more about it from Matt Mullenweg, Lorrelle VanFossen and Weblog Tools Collection.

Do you think it’s a good move? What’s your take on this?

Running With WordPress 3.0 – Quite A Challenging Upgrade But Worth It

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WordPress 3.0After many months of waiting, WordPress 3.0 was finally released to the public a couple of days back. So, I decided to just jump in and upgrade this site to the latest version. As always, I just clicked on the Automatic Upgrade option in the WordPress Dashboard.

The core upgrade went without a problem. No errors were registered. At first look, I’d assume that the upgrade was totally successful. However, when I tried to access the site after the upgrade, all I got was a blank screen. I cannot even get into the Dashboard.

Something is definitely not right. Googled around for a bit to see if anyone else have experienced the same result. No luck.

What do I do next? Hmmmmm…

Uploaded a fresh WordPress 3.0 into the server. Launched the WordPress 3.0 manual installation page. Used back my existing configuration settings.. and.. Voila! I can now get into the WordPress 3.0 Dashboard. Cool.

Apparently something broke during the upgrade. Not really sure what it was. Not going to waste my time to find out the cause of the problem. Probably some theme stuff not compatible with the new WordPress. Oh yes, I was using the Mimbo 3.0 theme.. or was I…

I’ll be using the default Twenty Ten theme for now. I’m thinking of getting the new Socrates Theme. Have you checked out this brand new theme yet? I you have not, here are the few features of the theme: The Socrates Theme

  • Built in Header Generator
  • 200+ Niche Header Designs
  • Upload Your Own Headers
  • Custom Navigation Bars
  • Optional Built In Adsense and Clickbank Ad Bar
  • Social Media Slider
  • Choose from Dozens of Backgrounds On The Fly
  • Custom Styling and Color Options
  • Affiliate Program Integration
  • Custom HTML Rotator
  • Multiple Sidebar Layouts
  • Internet Marketing and WordPress Training
  • Monetize With Any Affiliate Program or Network

The Socrates Theme sure looks dandy to me. Also love the fact that it’s got an unlimited domain license to go with it.

So, have you upgraded your site to WordPress 3.0? Did you face any problems during the upgrade? Talk to me people…

Update (August 20, 2010): Apparently this is a known issue with WordPress 3.0. Themes and plugin incompatibility simply breaks it. So, if you are blogging on WordPress and plan to upgrade to 3.0, you might want to read this WordPress White Screen Of Death article.

WordPress OptinPop Is A Great Plugin For List Building

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Configure Settings For Optin Pop

Configure Settings For Optin Pop

List building is certainly a must for internet businesses. If you have yet to start building a list for your business, it’s high time you start. If your internet business website is built on WordPress, here is an excellent plugin you can use to start building that list of yours. It’s called the OptinPop Plugin.

I’ve been testing out this plugin for a couple of weeks now. Setting it up is fairly easy. It installs like any other plugins. There’s not that many options to configure too. Just set the optin page and how you want the pop up to appear. That’s it.

Of course, you will need an autoresponder account to manage your opt-ins. You will also need to create the optin page yourself. A good autoresponder will have the necessary codes ready for you.

I’ve faced a problem while testing out the FREE version of OptInPop. It will always show the pop up box even if I set it to show only once in 1 day.

I checked the Cookie set by the plugin – iOptinPopBox and saw that the path is set to “wpfolder” which is where my wordpress is installed. However my blog site is not where my wordpress is installed.

mysite is at http://domain.com
my wp is installed at http://domain.com/wpfolder

Removing the SITECOOKIEPATH code in Optin Pop

Removing the SITECOOKIEPATH code in Optin Pop

That seems to be the cause of my problems. So I went to the Plugin Editor and modified the code portion where the cookie path is set.

I basically removed the portion containing SITECOOKIEPATH and saved the code.

Upon testing, the plugin now works as it should on my Internet Marketing Expose site.

Maybe it’s not really a problem with the Plugin. Maybe it’s a WordPress setting somewhere that sets the SITECOOKIEPATH value to the installed wordpress url.

What’s the correct SITECOOKIEPATH value anyway? Should it be the wordpress installation url or the blog url?

Am I the only one seeing this problem?

Actually, I don’t recommend the fix I’ve used here. This fix will be overwritten when the plugin is updated. As such, you will have to edit the code every time you update the plugin.

Hopefully the next update will have this issue solved.

WordPress 2.9.1 Released And WordPress MU 2.9.1 Is In The Pipeline

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WordPress 2.9.1 has just been released a few days back. Have you updated your WordPress installs? Go and update now if you haven’t as this update fixes a number of bugs in the 2.9 release.

WordPress 2.9.1

WordPress 2.9.1 Released

Just completed updating this blog to 2.9.1. The autoupdate works like a charm as usual. So far, all my plugins seem to be working just fine. I did however update my plugins first before updating the WordPress core. Not sure if this is a best practice but that’s just what I normally do before updating the WordPress core.

I’m sure many have opted to wait for this 2.9.1 release before updating to 2.9. Well, now should be the best time for you to update your WordPress site. My experience with WordPress has been great so far. I’ve always updated my sites to the latest version as they become public. Yes, I upgrade immediately, always. Alhamdulillah, thankfully, I have never faced any problems on any of my sites.

Related to the 2.9.1 update, WordPress MU 2.9.1 is also in the pipeline. It’s been a while since the MU has been updated. I think it’s at 2.8.1 right now. Anyway, I am now patiently waiting for the release of WordPress MU 2.9.1. Have a number of sites running on MU at the moment.

Not familiar with WordPress MU? MU allows you to run multiple WordPress sites on a single WordPress installation. Makes your life as administrator slightly easier especially in terms of plugins and themes updates. Do it once and all your sites are updated.

If  you are not familiar with MU, now would be a good time to try it out. The next major release  (WordPress 3.0) will merge  WordPress and WordPress MU, together into a single core version. Will the merge make WordPress more complex?

At the moment, many shared hosting sites do not support WordPress MU. How will the merge affect them in the future? Will they stop supporting WordPress? I sure hope not. I they do, it’ll cost them quite a bit. I’d say many sites today are built on WordPress even if it’s not a blog. WordPress is almost everywhere now. It’s not only running blogs either. You can run a company Intranet on WordPress (see video at the end of this post).

You might want to check with your hosting provider about this. You can probably ask them now. See if they allow you to run WordPress MU in your account. If they don’t, ask if they plan to allow it in the future.

Should you not be allowed to run MU, you might want to start looking around at new hosting providers. I use Bluehost. I’ve got some  WordPress MU installations running on them too. You can check them out here.

Have you updated your WordPress? How did the update go?