WordPress 3.0 Beta 1 has been released by WordPress which is available for early beta testing.

The new version features a new theme “Twenty Ten” and many new features and enhancements that are not present in the current version. However, the version is still incomplete and might differ from the final release. So, they are looking for beta testers who can test it especially the following features:

1. Play with the new default theme, Twenty Ten, including the custom background and header options.

2. Custom Post Type functionality has been beefed up. It’s really easy to add new types, so do that and see how it looks!

3. WordPress MU users should test the multiple sites functionality to make sure nothing broke during the merge.

And email them if they find any bugs so they can be fixed as soon as possible.

Download WordPress 3.0 Beta 1

Post from: Sizzled Core

Wordpress 3.0 Beta 1 Released: Twenty Ten Theme Added

Android version of WordPress was finally released today and is now available in the Android Market.

WordPress for Android Features

Features include the ability to:

• Configure and manage multiple blogs
• Comment moderation including the ability to reply to comments
• Create and Edit Posts including categories, tags and photos
• Create and Edit Pages
• Get notified of new comments in the Android notification bar

The current release v1.0 offers you enough features so you manage your blog and write posts while on the go. This release is pretty stable. I couldn’t get the screenshots up because of my Nexus One drivers are not working on Windows 7.

Download WordPress for Android

You can download this Android app by pointing your mobile browser here: Download WordPress for Android

Post from: Sizzled Core

WordPress for Android

Though you might have tried ScribeFire and w.blogger for the same purpose. I bet you won’t be disappointed with Zoundry Raven.

Zoundry Raven is a free open source app which let you blog in ease. It is a feature-rich client with the power of WYSIWYG editing.

You will also get benefit of FTP as well as Picasa/Image Shack integration and more. For advanced users it also supports custom fields.

Features

When I say feature-rich, I really meant it. ZR is designed for bloggers only specially for pro-bloggers.

• Tabbed true WYSIWYG Editing – fully XHTML editing, what you see is what you get type of post writing, with the power of drop images, text and video. Which can later be viewed in template of your own blog.
• Improved content management – built in indexer which let you view you see all your posts according to added blogs, tags, links. It also has tag cloud to let your feel the original dashboard browse environment.
• Manage multiple media storage services – Here you can setup many storage media services like custom FTP, Picasa, Image Shack etc
• Manage multiple blogs offline – simple click to publish same post for all blogs.
• Portable Application support – is also available to let you blog on the move for all the extended aand home like features.
• WordPress 2.2+ Page & Tag support – create pages with WYSIWYG power even tag support is available to let you add, modify and import tags.

Note: The only requirement you need to set is to enable Remote Blogging to start blogging with ZR.

Interestingly supported blogging platforms includes all of them like Blogger, Movable Type & TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, and more

Download Zoundry Raven

Post from: Sizzled Core

Zoundry Raven – Portable Blogging Client

This app is a completely new app and the previous WordPress for iPhone won’t upgrade to WordPress 2.

When you launch the new app, you’ll immediately see “Version 2.0? at the bottom of the screen. When you’re no longer using it, you can safely remove the previous version from your device.

WordPress 2 for iPhone New Features

• A new, more efficient user interface that makes it faster to switch between comments, posts, and pages.
• Various user interface refinements and bug fixes
• New Comments interface, with Gravatars and the author URL shown in the comment list
• Passwords are now stored in the keychain
• Posts are now automatically saved and restored if network connection is lost during publishing
• Added persistence, so the app re-opens in the blog you last used
• Added an interface for manually entering the XMLRPC endpoint for non-standard setups
• Fixed rotation-related visual glitches
• Fixed errors where malformed XML prevented access to XMLRPC endpoint
• Fixed edge case where local drafts were sometimes not saved
• Fixed the order of photos so that they’re displayed in the order they’re uploaded

WordPress 2 for iPhone Screenshots

Download WordPress 2 for iPhone

You can download WordPress 2 for iPhone from here: Download WordPress 2 for iPhone

Post from: Sizzled Core

WordPress 2 for iPhone now Available

Recently, many WordPress websites have been getting hacked and now it has been confirmed by a WordPress developer himself that older versions of WordPress are under attack.

The number of sites being hit by this attack is growing every hour and the only and the best way to save your blog from this attack is to update it to the latest version. All versions prior to WordPress 2.8.4 have been found vulnerable to this attack.

What the attack actually does is that it adds strange keywords in your permalink structure and also creates a back door administrator account on your blog which is inaccessible by you.

For more information on this attack and how to protect new and already hacked blogs, can be found at Lorelle’s blog. A must check out for every WordPress using a version older than 2.8.4.

Upgrade now to the latest WordPress!

Post from: Sizzled Core

Old WordPress Vulnerable to Attacks: Upgrade Now

HyperWebEnable is known to be providing such services from quite some time now, and offer a free domain (www.yoursite.com) with a CMS installed (e.g WordPress, Joomla etc.).

Unlike Blogger, where you get limited templates, HyperWebEnable offers many themes for all CMS, and if your favourite one isn’t there, you can always request for it. I gave them a try few months back, and signed up for freewebhostoffers.com, which is now inactive because I never got time to work on it. The registration process went smooth, ignoring the part where they took 4 weeks to register and accept my domain.

You get full control over your blog and can also make money by monetizing it. HyperWebEnable has their own affiliate program which pays you a dollar for every new friend who registers with your reference.

In my view, they are doing an amazing job by providing these free services for bloggers with a free domain and 1GB web space. The site is still in beta, so you might experience some hiccups in the service, overall, they are good.

HyperWebEnable – Get Free Domain and Web Hosting

Related: 8 Blogging Tips for Beginners

Post from: Sizzled Core

Get Free Domain and 1GB Web Space for Blogging

Previously, Windows Live Writer had this auto-save feature enabled by default which would automatically save changes made to our articles after every 3 minutes. But they have left this option unchecked (disabled) in the latest Live Writer release.

This can be enabled by following the steps given below, because you never know when it might come in handy.

How To Auto Save in Windows Live Writer

1. Go to Tools from the top menu and select Options.

2. From the left side, select Editing.

3. The first option you will see at right side will be of auto-save feature.

4. Check “Automatically save drafts every” and enter the number of minutes below after which it is suppose to auto save. I kept it to 2 minutes.

5. Click OK to close the Options window.

Now Windows Live writer will automatically your post after every 2 minutes (or whatever minutes you entered).

Post from: Sizzled Core

How To Auto Save in Windows Live Writer

Oxite is the blogging engine powered by Microsoft technologies which can be used for small personal blogs to large corporate websites as a CMS (content-management system).

This has been launched in competition with WordPress, which is by far the most popular open-source blogging publishing platform. But it is more ASP.NET driven and only corporate web developers would like to use it.

WordPress has one of the biggest user and developer community, and provides the power and flexibility that no other CMS can provide. In my opinion, Oxite is no match for WordPress in any way!

If you are curious to see any blog powered by Oxite, check out MIX Online.

Download Oxite and more info here.

Post from: Sizzled Core

Oxite: Blog Engine by Microsoft

Google Adsense has now started giving recommendations for the best optimization of the Google Ads for your blog or website. So far they have made two posts on such tips. Below is a brief overview of what AdSense said about optimizing your ads.

I – For AdSense Ad Units

Last Week they released their first video enforcing towards an important logic while putting AdSense adverts and making more out of them. This logic was Bigger is Better. Yes, they recommend that bigger add size will give you the maximum opportunities for your AdSense revenue.

These three ad unit were their recommendation regarding choosing the best size of your ads.

• 300×250 medium rectangle
• 728×90 leaderboard
• 160×600 skyscraper

Video:

II – Design to Impressing Your Audience

This is the second and latest from the AdSense Team in their Optimization Essentials for publishers. In this they have showed the importance of design, and what colors you should use for ad units. In most cases, publisher ads with contrast suit best and webmasters stick to them for years. But at some places, like this blog, you will find ads with blending colours.

They suggested the following tips:

• Using colors that either blend or complement with site’s colors. Make the ads a part of your site.
• Using lighter colors for borders, or no border at all.
• Using the rotation colors strategy.
• Occasionally switching the location of your ads on the page.
• Implementing saved sets of frequently-used colors as a palette.

Video:

Post from: Sizzled Core

Google Optimisation Essentials Video Series

I never did, until my friend tweeted about it. Well, there is nothing new in this book but simply the basics covering every aspect of the Search Engine Optimization. This e-book has been named as “SEO for Beginners”.

In this book you can find out about all the terminologies, and important things taking part and organizing the whole SEO setup, but from Google’s aspect.

In this book some basic questions are also well answered, like:

• Can Google index your site?
• What are Robots and what Robot.txt means?
• What is really controlling Google indexes ?
• Robots.txt vs. Meta tags 9
• How to controlling caching and snippets?

Or if you are searching the ways to Increasing visibility of your content, some best practices are also mentioned by Google itself.

Download Making the Most of Your Content – A Publisher’s Guide to the Web – PDF file

Post from: Sizzled Core

Google SEO Book

Finally the first beta of WordPress 2.7 is now available for download. The WP Team has been working hard on the pretty visuals you will see. At the moment, there are many glitches in WP 2.7 for IE and Opera, but it works fine in Firefox and Safari.

For all those who are eagerly waiting for the full version of WordPress 2.7, there’s a small bad news. It won’t be releasing on November 10th, 2008 as planned before since the WP Team is two weeks behind schedule. What you get on Nov 10, is a Release Candidate release of WP 2.7.

Nothing has been said about the final release date, but they won’t take long since the Release Candidate version will be released next week. For now, enjoy the first beta!

Download WordPress 2.7 Beta 1

Post from: Sizzled Core

WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 Released

Many blogs have comment moderation enabled to prevent from spam. Even this blog uses comment moderation, and I daily have to moderate a big pile of comments. This has just been made easy, thanks to Daniel.

Moderator is an AIR-based app that lets you moderate comments on your WordPress-powered blogs right from your dekstop in rela-time and you don’t have to login to your Dashboard just to approve/unapprove comments. Some features included in this early release are:

• Viewing unmoderated comments.
• Dock and system tray notifications of the number of unmoderated comments.
• Accept, delete, and spam comments from within the desktop client.
• Close application window, or minimize it to the system tray while running.
• Shows the Gravatar icons for the user who posted the comment.

Moderate also supports the upcoming WordPress 2.7. Since this is an early release, expect it to be buggy. The only two requirements this app needs is WordPress 2.6+ and Adobe AIR 1.1.

Download Moderator

For more AIR applications, click here.

Post from: Sizzled Core

Moderate WordPress Comments from Desktop

All WordPress users should upgrade to the latest WordPress version to avoid being a victim of this particular vulnerability. There are many obvious and less obvious ways to upgrade WordPress, a few possible ways, in decreasing order of required time, are:

• Download the latest WordPress source, unzipde it on your harddisk, connect to your server via ftp and transfer the files. Then follow the upgrade instructions on the WordPress website. This is the method Windows users are most likely to use ;-)
• Do the above, but transfer files via scp
• Log on to your server via ssh / putty, do a wget http://wordpress.org/download/ to download the latest installer zip file. Unzip using unzip latest.zip. mv the required files to your WordPress folder and run the installer using the instructions from the WordPress website.
• Download and install the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin on your WordPress blog. Go to the plugin page and follow the simple instructions each time there is a new upgrade available. This is suitable if you are running a single blog.
• If you want to upgrade from 2.6.2 to version 2.6.3 , you simply need two files [file1] and [file2]. Just download and overwrite these files in your wp-includes folder, afte changing their permissions, using any one of the methods listed above. Doing it via ssh/wget/cp should take less than a minute.

Whichever method you choose to use, do keep your WordPress installation up-to-date to avoid potential problems and hacking attempts.

Post from: Sizzled Core

Upgrade Wordpress to 2.6.3 Quickly

Several complaints have been heard from people about Google Analytics saying that it updates only once in 24-48 hours and does not include any sort of live visitor tracking tool. There are many other tools that offer live tracking, but they don’t even come near to Google Analytics when website analytics is concerned.

Woopra is a new live web tracking and analytics tool that lets you analyze your websites/blogs in real time. It is targeted towards small and medium websites (particularly bloggers) with up to tens of thousands of daily page views.

It is still in private beta but if you signup, there are 90% chances that yuo will be accepted soon. Current restrictions also include the number of websites you can have tracked for the beta. It has a very intuitive interface and offers advance features that include many graphical visualizations such as, charts, maps and panels.

Some of the basic Woopra features are:

• Live Visitor Tracking
  Live tracking enables webmasters to analyze visitor statistics in real time and can track over 40 different statistical events and analytics.
• Rich User Interface
  Woopra’s rich graphical user interface has n delays in the response time as comes with web-based programs. And it is designed to be flexible, with plans for future development of various color schemes and themes.
• Manage Multiple Blogs and Websites
  You can track multiple blogs and websites at the same time and the quick site tabs at the top of the Woopra panel lets you acess them with one-click.
• Deep Analytic and Search Capabilities
  The huge data can be easily searched for more deep analysis as specific user names, IP addresses, geographic locations, user browsing data, visitor history, visitor paths, arrival and departure points.
• Chat With Visitors
  Woopra allows you to initiate chat sessions with visitors without any installation. This sounds quite creepy, and I myself scared a few of my friends by saying: Your PC has been hacked! Thanks for visiting Sizzled Core.
• Visitor and Member Tagging
  You can tag regular site visitors with names to monitor their activities easily.
• Easy Installation and Update Notification
  It is very easy to install and set up. WordPress and vBulletin users can use the official Woopra plugin instead of manually adding the code. The desktop application can be installed on any recent version of Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Currently, Woopra is offering tons of features for free to all the private beta users and will later also add premium services.

I would recommend all bloggers to signup for Woopra because of its ease of use and the depth of statistics it provides!

Woopra: Live Web Tracking and Analytics Tool

Post from: Sizzled Core

Woopra: Live Web Tracking and Analytics Tool

Yesterday, the first release candidate of WP 2.6 (codename Tyner) was released and a day later, the final version of WordPress 2.6 is out and is now available for download.

WordPress again brings in lots of new features and usability improvements with its latest version. They have also done some minor tweaks to improve its security.

What’s hot and new in WordPress 2.6

• One of the major features to be added is the WordPress Turbo, that uses Google Gears to save your WordPress Dashboard files on PC and load pages at lightening speed.
• Then comes Post Revision, with which one can track all the changes made to their posts and restore any old saved data if needed.
• The Press This! bookmarklet is back. This was one feature that many people missed in WordPress 2.5.
• Now blog admins can preview themes on their blog using Theme Preview without making them live for everyone. You can test it for possible errors and fix them before applying it for everyone.
• Other minor features include word count, bulk management of plugins, image captions, revamped image control and reordering of Galleries are just to name a few.
• WordPress 2.6 fixes a total of 194 bugs.

More details on features and bug fixes can be found on the WordPress blog.

Download

You can download the latest WordPress from the link below:

Download WordPress 2.6

Post from: Sizzled Core

WordPress 2.6 Released – Download Now!

You see a navigation bar on the top of every blog hosted at Blogger. With this navigation bar, you can search blogs, visit the next blog, sign in or create a new account. You can even flag a blog for posting some objectionable content.

One thing I like about WordPress.com blogs is that they don’t display any navigation bars at the top or at the bottom, but here at Blogger.com they don’t provide any option to remove it. I was hoping to see an option to remove this in the latest Blogger Draft features.

But who needs them when you can manually tweak it not to display the navigation bar.

How To Remove Navbar In Blogger Blogs

1. Open your Blogger dashboard.

2. Go to your blog’s Layout settings > Edit HTML

3. Look for:

/* Variable definitions
====================

4. And above that add:

#navbar-iframe { display: none !important; }

5. Save your settings and open your blog now. The navigation bar will be gone.

Here’s a sample blog that you can see without the navigation bar: http://freehostingoffers.blogspot.com/

Post from: Sizzled Core

How To Remove Navbar In Blogger Blogs

Blog Traffic:

Unique Visitors: 172,784
Pageviews:  369,465
New Visits: 89.39%

Earnings:

AdSense: $790
Kontera: $62

Total: $852

You can compare these stats with my May stats.

Post from: Sizzled Core

June 08 – Blog Roundup

Finally, the first beta of WordPress 2.6 has been released, with many new features in it and is now available for download. WordPress is one of the world’s favourite blogging platform. This release won’t be as big as WordPress 2.5, but will be worth upgrading to, because of the number of interesting new features it has. WordPress 2.6 is slated for a mid-July release which will have many usability improvements including the features mentioned below.

Features

Here’s a brief list of new features that are included in this beta, and will be included in the final WordPress 2.6 as well.

• The old bookmarklet is back in WP 2.6
• Caching of Admin Dashboard files with Google Gears
• Theme previewing like in WordPress.com
• Built-in post word counter
• Ability to relocate your content directory
• Drag-and-drop sortable galleries
• Customizable default avatars
• Bulk delete, activate, and deactivate for plugins
• Plus lots bug fixes and performance improvements

For a complete list of updates in WordPress 2.6 Beta 1, head over here.

I waited for about 3 months before I finally upgraded to WordPress 2.5 after its release, but looks like I will now upgrade to WordPress 2.6 as soon as it gets released because of its new features.

Download

Download WordPress 2.6 Beta 1

If you are looking for more posts related to WordPress, click here.

Post from: Sizzled Core

Download WordPress 2.6 Beta 1

On WordPress’ birthday, I published a screenshot of my upcoming WordPress theme, which will be based on the new Dashboard theme of WordPress. I’m actually a big WordPress fan, and wanted to use a theme like the dashboard. But unfortunately, I didn’t found any and ended up in making one my own. The theme is very simple and clear in design and offers fresh colours that don’t go hard on eyes. Since the past few days, lots of changes have been made in it. I’m still experimenting with better fonts to match it exactly with the default Dashboard theme.

I’ve decided to name it DashPress (Dash for Dashboard, and Press for WordPress) after much brainstorming. I’ll be releasing it in a couple of weeks (or may be earlier) since I’ve got lots of other work to do as well these days. I’d suggest you to subscribe to my RSS feed to know about the latest updates on the theme.

I’ve set up a demo site for everyone to test and see what the theme will be like and let me know what you think about it. This will be my very first theme, and will be my first attempt to come out with something like this using CSS. I used trial and error method to make this theme. I’m still trying to fix as many bugs as I can. Any help, suggestions or feedback would be highly appreciated.

Demo Site: http://www.sizzledcore.com/demo/

How Would You Rate This Theme?

Help me know how much you like DashPress by leaving comments below and by casting your vote in this poll.

Post from: Sizzled Core

DashPress: WordPress Theme Under Development

Choosing a style is very easy. You get to choose from three styles vertical, vertical stacked and horizontal. You can see an example of the horizontal style in the image above. In feed expression, you just add the name of the blog, and Google will find the feed for that blog itself and show you its direct feed URL. If you think that’s all what you need, press Preview button to see how it looks. Finally, when you are done with adding blogs, press the Generate Code button. You can copy/paste the code on any page where JavaScript is allowed.

This is a very useful tool for bloggers who write on multiple blogs and would like to display a headline rotator on each showing the latest headlines from all his blogs. FeedBurner also provides this feature as Headline Animator, but it displays headlines only from one feed URL.

[Via LifeHacker]

Post from: Sizzled Core

Embed RSS Headlines Using Google AJAX Feed API

Let’s head on to this week’s highlights now.

June 2 – June 8, 2008

• How To Create A Live USB Stick Of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy
• Android Demo Shows Cool Features
• Optimize Windows XP With Thoosje Quick XP Optimizer
• RapidShare Gets New Website Design And Logo – Looks like a 1998 website :P
• Windows XP SP3 Includes Vulnerable Flash Player – Another bug, huh!
• Tweak Windows Vista Installation With vLite
• Greasemonkey For Firefox 3 Now Available – I was waiting for this one, yay!
• Kaspersky 2009 Now Available With 6 Months Trial

Post from: Sizzled Core

Sunday Highlights – 5

One of the most notable feature is the crop and screenshot feature which can now be down right from Windows Live Writer without the use of Paint or Photoshop. Another interesting feature is of visual effects i.e reflection, rounded corners etc. that can be added to our images. We can also rotate images by a custom angle in WLW now. Other features that can be found in this update are:

Video and Image Publishing Enhancements

• Upload videos to Soapbox
• Image cropping and tilting
• Additional border styles
• Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
• Support for centering images

Editing Enhancements

• Auto Linking
• Smart quotes/typographic characters
• Word count

UI Improvements

• Revised main toolbar
• Tabs for view switching
• Improved category control with search/filtering

This is not the final version, and is only meant for plugin developers to test their plugin compatibility with the upcoming latest release. I didn’t found any problems with this Technical update, but you may still encounter bugs and application crashes as it’s not the final version.

Download

You can try out this Technical update of Windows Live Writer from here.

Post from: Sizzled Core

Windows Live Writer Gets New Features

This tool can be very useful for bloggers who want to compare their feed readers count with other blogs or sites.

Visit FeedCompare to compare feeds!

[Via TechnoBuzz]

Post from: Sizzled Core

FeedCompare: Compare FeedBurner Subscriber Count

Now let’s kick off with this year’s first roundup post, and first begin with the best posts of the previous month. Do let me know which one you enjoyed the most.

Blog Posts:

• RapidShare Happy Hours Detector (2)
• Free Orkut Themes (first wave)
• How To Install Windows Vista On PSP
• How To Type In Bold In Google Talk
• Free Facebook Themes
• WordPress 2.6 Features
• 50 Rapidshare Search Engines
• New Facebook Profile Design (How to apply?)

Click here to read all the posts made in May 2008.

Connect:

If you would like to add me on social networks, click here!

Blog Traffic:

Unique Visitors: 71357
Pageviews: 486578
Page/visits: 2.29
New visits: 89.24%
Average Time: 00:02:04

Search engines dominated my this month’s traffic and I think it’s really good.

Earnings:

Adsense: $222
Kontera: $38

Total: $260

Top 5 Keywords:

1. orkut themes
2. rapidshare happy hours
3. orkut theme
4. rapidshare happy hour
5. rapid share happy hour

Feed Readers:

The increase of feed readers this month has really amazed me! At the start of previous month, my feed readers were 220 on average, and in the end on May, they are 420! My target is of 500 readers by the end of June.

May rocked for me! How has it been for you all?

Post from: Sizzled Core

May 08 – Blog Roundup

Let’s head on to this week’s highlights now.

May 26, 2008 – June 1, 2008

• Introducing Windows 7 With Real Screenshots
  
• Happy Birthday WordPress
• Turn Windows XP Into Media Center With Media Portal
• FeedReader 3.13 Midrelease 2 Released
• Yahoo Messenger 9.0 Beta Gets New Features
• How To Revert Back To Old Google Favicon
• How To Uncompress Files Online With WobZip
• Help Firefox Achieve A World Record

Post from: Sizzled Core

Sunday Highlights – 4

Previously, only a few beta-tester publishers were allowed to use AdSense for RSS Feeds. But from next week onwards, all publishes will be able to enjoy the benefits of this ad-publishing program. Initially, it will be experimented with a few AdSense publishers, and then soon will be expanded for everyone.

Ad Sample

Image Source: Digital Inspiration

One of the biggest advantages I see for bloggers in this program is that, the more feed subscribers you will have, the higher you will earn, since the ads are CPM based. Ad units will be created and managed from the AdSense Setup tab and you can find the earning reports from the Reports tab. You will have full control to manage your campaigns along with using ad channels in AdSense.

More details will be out soon when it officially gets released.

Post from: Sizzled Core

Coming Soon: Google Adsense For RSS Feeds

With all the tons of exciting features, and ease of usability and flexibility of designs, there can be no better CMS than WordPress. I would like to congratulate, Matt and all other WordpPress developers, on its birthday and would like to see it grow more in the coming years.

If you are interested in reading my WordPress related posts, then head over to the WordPress category.

WordPress Teaser From Sizzled Core

Here’s a teaser for what’s going to come in the next few days! I’m not going to further open my mouth about this.

By the way, no, it’s not the WordPress Dashboard! :)

Post from: Sizzled Core

Happy Birthday WordPress

May 19, 2008 – May 25, 2008

• Amazing Face Art
• Upload Files To Multiple File Hosts At Once
• Download UXtheme.dll Patch For Windows XP SP3
• Free Webroot Desktop Firewall License Key
• Google Hacks – The Ultimate Google Exploit Tool
• IE7Pro 2.3 Released – Download Now
• Free Facebook Themes
• Download Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8 Special Edition
• Ad-Aware 2008 Final Released
• WordPress 2.6 Features
• Rapishare Happy Hours Detector – Firefox Extension
• 50 Rapidshare Search Engines
• Sneak Peak At The New Facebook Profile Design
• How To Try Out New Facebook Design

Post from: Sizzled Core

Sunday Highlights – 3

Here’s a small WordPress tip I would like to share with you all. As you all know, previously, I took a 4 months break because of my exams. In the meanwhile, you you kept getting posts on Sizzled Core regularly for some time, even when I was busy studying. That’s one of the features why I love WordPress so much. WordPress has a built-in feature by which you could time-stamp your posts for later publishing.

Like if you plan to go on a tour to a different city/country for a week, and you know you won’t get time to blog, then all you have to do is sit down one fine day (before going), write down posts for the next 7 days and time stamp them one for each day. Pretty useful, eh? Your readers won’t even notice much difference whether you wrote it that very day, or was it written at some other day.

How To Schedule Posts For Later Publishing In WordPress

1. Complete your post in the WordPress dashboard of your blog.

2. After completing, in the right sidebar menu, under Publish Status, you will see Publish immediately.

3. Click the Edit link beside it.

4. Set the date and time of whenever you want your post to get published.

5. Click Publish (don’t click Save, or it won’t get lined up for publishing).

Next time you leave for a holiday, don’t forget to write down posts for your readers to avoid traffic loss! I hope this trick has been useful to you, and do tell me if you already use this tick and how does this helps you.

Post from: Sizzled Core

Schedule Posts For Later Publishing In WordPress

The talks about WordPress 2.6, the next version of WordPress, have already started. WordPress 2.6 is going to be another much-awaited release because of the introduction of many interesting features and usability improvements in it. I’ll give you a very brief overview of what this latest version of WordPress is going to offer.

WordPress 2.6 Features

• New and improved bookmarklet (Yes, it’s coming back!)
• Post words count
• Shif-click checkbox selection hack
• Wiki-style revisions management of blog posts
• Google Gears support for writing posts offline
  
• Identicons

If you would like to know more about these features, head over to WordPress Expert.

Demo Site

A demo site for WordPress 2.6 Alpha has been set up. If you would like to try it, visit:

http://wp.chrisjohnston.org/wp-admin/

Username: admin
Password: demo

Looks like its about time I upgrade my WordPress to the latest version. Don’t know what’s making me less interested in upgrading!

Via [Sizlopedia]

Post from: Sizzled Core

WordPress 2.6 Features

Let’s kick off with this week’s highlights now!

May 12, 2008 – May 18, 2008

How-To Guides

• How To Install LimeWire Skins
• How To Hide Files And Folders In Windows
• How To Install Windows Vista On PSP
• How To Enable Thumbnails For PSD Files
• How To Type In Bold In Google Talk

Softwares

• Messenger TV By Microsoft Launched
• Download Opera Mini 4.1
• Microsoft WorldWide Telescope Launched
• YouTube Batch Downloader
• ReadAir – Google Reader On Adobe AIR
• Free Templates For Office 2007 For Download
• Download Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1

Misc.

• Free Orkut Themes (Free Orkut themes II coming soon)

I hope you enjoyed reading them all. Rapidshare Premium Account contest is just around the corner :) Grab the RSS feed so that you don’t miss that out!

Post from: Sizzled Core

Sunday Highlights – 2

The most notable newly added feature is the “Find Feeds“. Now you can subscribe to multiple feeds related to your query at the same time. And best of all, FeedDemon is still free!

Download FeedDemon 2.7

For some reason, the FeedDemon home page still says FeedDemon 2.6, but if you download it, the installer is actually for FeedDemon 2.7.

Via [Digital Inspiration]

Free RapidShare Premium Account Giveaway

Hey readers, I just got over with the free domain giveaway, and now I’ll soon be giving away a 1 month free RapidShare Premium account. Subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t miss out this chance!

Post from: Sizzled Core

FeedDemon 2.7 Released

So let’s kick off with this week’s highlights!

May 4m 2008 – May 11, 2008

• Free WinRAR 3.62 License Key
• Find All The Installed Windows Updates
• Free Licensed SecureZIP For Download
• Free Kaspersky License For 6 Months
• iPhone 2 Pictures
• Another RapidShare Happy Hours Detector
• My First Facebook Application
• The Free Domain Contest Comes To An End
• Introducing Zune 2.5
• Download Windows XP Service Pack 3
• Big List Of Ping Services
• AdSense For Search Now Powered By Custom Search
• Download Windows XP SP3 Standalone (25 Languages)
• Winner Of The Free Domain Giveaway
• Facebook’s Private Messages Gets Better
• Microsoft Office 2007 SP1 Releasing On June 16
• Petition To Stop Facebook From Deleting Profiles
• How To Enable Notifications In Google Talk
• Firefox Ultimate Optimizer
• Adobe Photoshop CS4 (Stonehenge) Leaked
• Reset Your Kaspersky Trial Period

That’s all from the previous week. Do tell me which posts did you liked the best and why.

Post from: Sizzled Core

Sunday Highlights – 1

People really like free stuff, and by giving away such goodies, you make an ever-lasting bond of trust and friendship with your readers and gives you a lot publicity over the Internet.

Grab A Free Domain From Sizzled Core

I promised to give away a free domain to one lucky participant in my Grab A Free Domain From Sizzled Core contest. It started on April 28, and ended on May 6, 2008. And now it’s time to announce the winner!

Winner Of The Free Domain Giveaway

I used Random.org to pick a random winner from all those people who participated by commenting. I used the integral generator to generate 5 integers in between 1 and 105 (as there were 105 comments to that post). The number in the center column (89) was chosen as the lucky winner number. The comment posted corresponding to that number was selected as the winner and here is his name.

Name: Justin Hitchcock
Email: justin813[at]gmail.com
Blog: skullcandy19.deviantart.com

Congratulations to you Justin! And thanks for all the participants for joining me in this contest.

That’s Not All…

Well, you all must have see a little reminder at the end of every post of mine. Yes, I’m talking about the free RapidShare Premium account for 1 month! I’ll be starting that campaig, may be next week, or may be a little earlier. ;) I’d suggest everyone to subscribe to my RSS feed and keep a lookout for it.

Post from: Sizzled Core

Winner Of The Free Domain Giveaway

Below is a list I found on DailyBlogTips, and would like to share it with you all. I have also included some of the ping services that were not included in the list I found.

WordPress bloggers can update their blog’s ping list from their Admin Dashboard > Options > Writing.

• http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
• http://api.feedster.com/ping
• http://api.moreover.com/ping
• http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://ping.amagle.com/
• http://ping.bitacoras.com
• http://ping.blo.gs/
• http://ping.feedburner.com
• http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
• http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
• http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
• http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
• http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
• http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
• http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
• http://rpc.newsgator.com/
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
• http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
• http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
• http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
• http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
• http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
• http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
• http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
• http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
• http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
• http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
• http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://1470.net/api/ping
• http://api.feedster.com/ping
• http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
• http://api.moreover.com/ping
• http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
• http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
• http://bblog.com/ping.php
• http://bitacoras.net/ping
• http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
• http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
• http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
• http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
• http://coreblog.org/ping/
• http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
• http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
• http://ping.amagle.com/
• http://ping.bitacoras.com
• http://ping.blo.gs/
• http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
• http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
• http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
• http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
• http://ping.feedburner.com
• http://ping.myblog.jp
• http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
• http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
• http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
• http://ping.weblogs.se/
• http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
• http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
• http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
• http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
• http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
• http://rpc.newsgator.com/
• http://rpc.pingomatic.com
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
• http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
• http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
• http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
• http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
• http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
• http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
• http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
• http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
• http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
• http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
• http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
• http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
• http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
• http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
• http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
• http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
• http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
• http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
• http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Free RapidShare Premium Account Giveaway

Okay readers, I just got over with the free domain giveaway, and now I’ll soon be giving away a free RapidShare Premium account. Subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t miss out this chance!

Post from: Sizzled Core

Big List Of Ping Services

Finally, the free domain contest has come to an end. As this was the first contest on Sizzled Core, I was very excited with it. I will announce the winner after 2 days as I’m a bit busy with my school projects. But, just as I promised, the lucky winner will definitely get the domain! I keep my word ;) I congratulate the lucky winner in advance.

Thank you all for participating. Now everyone keep your fingers crossed! :)

Update 1: The winner has been announced.

Post from: Sizzled Core

The Free Domain Contest Comes To An End

This blog has gone quite far and this is all due to support and contribution from my readers. Thank you all for reading and visiting my blog. Now it’s time to treat my readers with something that they will really like. Therefore, as a reward, I’ll be giving away a free domain to one lucky reader.

Free Domain

This is the first freebie I’m sponsoring, so for now I’m only giving out one domain. Next time, there’ll be more! :D

How To Participate?

Anyone who wishes to participate is just required to post a comment below in the following format:

Name: Your Name
Email: Your Email
Blog/Site: Your Blog/Site URL (if any)

Last date to send your entry is 6th May 2008. The winner will be decided on a lottery basis. The good thing is that you don’t need to be a blogger to take part in this lottery. Anyone can enter this chance for a free domain!

No Cheating! ;)

I will be logging the comment IPs, so don’t think you can fool me by changing your name and email address. However the good thing for bloggers is that, they can have double their entries by just linking back to this post from their blog. I will count the trackback as another entry, which means, bloggers get two chances to get this free domain.

How Will I Choose The Winners?

The winner will be randomly selected using Random.org. It’s safe, and the result will be shown online. :)

Conditions

• This free domain will be registered for one-year. If you wish to renew it later, contact me to transfer it to your registrar.
• Only .com, .net, .org, .info domain extensions are allowed.
• Any spam or incomplete entries will be rejected without notice.

So, did you like this giveaway? This is not all. Soon, there is going to be another free giveaway. I’d suggest you to subscribe to my RSS Feed, so that you don’t miss out any! :)

Update 1: The contest has officially been ended. No more entries will be attended. Winners will be announced on May 8, 2008.

Update 2:  The winner has been announced. Congratulations to Justin!

Post from: Sizzled Core

Grab A Free Domain From Sizzled Core

First let me tell you what BlogBackupOnline really is. It is a free online service that backs up your blog daily, and stores all the data on their server. It doesn’t matter whether you use Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, Friendster, LiveJournal, Serendipity, Windows Live Space, Movable Type, Terapad, or Vox, it recognizes the blogging platform itself and starts collecting data in no time. Every member gets 50MB of disk space for their backup and restoring a blog’s backup was never this easy. You can add as many blogs as you want and anyone’s blog you want. Yes, that’s right! You can backup anyone’s blog (using their feeds), and restore it wherever you want. Still confused? Duh! Continue reading…

A couple of weeks ago, some guy backed up my blog data (thanks to BlogBackupOnline), and was about to sell it off on Digital Point forums under the title Database of PR3 Blog for Sale (hey, I’m PR4 not PR3 :P ) for $20. I was watching my blog visitors through the Live plugin when surprisingly I started getting visitors from Digital Point. Just out of curiosity, I opened the traffic source, and found what was going on.

I reported that guy, but instead of banning him, those idiot admins at DP banned me for using multiple accounts even though I just have one. Luckily, the database wasn’t sold to anyone! :D When I found that I’m banned on DP, I made 10 new accounts and when I checked them today, they all were still working lol. The whole point of this article was to make all the bloggers aware of the disadvantages of this service.

I backed up three blogs yesterday. There was no one to stop me! You can see the screenshot below:

(Cick the image above to enlarge)

What could be done?

Hmm.. I went through the FAQ pages of BlogBackupOnline and found their support email address (support@techrigy.com). Everyone mail and request them to block their blog from getting backed up. Or what happened with me, could also happen with you!

So how many are with me in this? Spread the word! And do let me know your views below…

Post from: Sizzled Core

BlogBackupOnline Should Be Banned!

Well… A very bad month for me :( Maybe because of my exams. My traffic and the earnings dropped approx. by 200%. Even though I got a PR4 in October, still no change. But at least, I got something to be happy about. My feed readers count went up :) And you guys must have noticed the theme change in October. Unfortunately, it was full of errors and problems. So I decided to fix it this weekend. And guess what? Huh, I had to redesign the whole thing again LOL. You can now see the better-than-before and tweaked version of my theme. I hope you guys will like it :)

Now coming back to the stats, the most popular posts of the previous month are as follows:

Blog Posts:

• Trick To Remove Ads From Yahoo Messenger
• Diwali Theme for Orkut
• Download Windows XP Service Pack 3 RC1 (The most popular one!)
• Bypass Likeness Quiz Limit In Facebook

Blog Traffic:

Unique Visitors: 11,706
Pageviews: 22,903
Page/visits: 1.95
New visits: 89.00%
Average Time: 00:01:30

My major traffic source was Google followed by StumbleUpon. I’m also happy that my organic traffic (Google, Yahoo etc.) has increased than inorganic traffic (SU, Digg etc.).

Earnings:

Google Adsense: $27~ ($90~ in the previous months)
Konetra: $9~ ($16~ in the previous months)

Total: $36~ :(

Top Keywords:

1. vlc skins
2. gmail emoticons
3. vlc player skins
4. pc_efi v5.2
5. yahoo mash invitation

Feed Readers:This is something I’m very happy about: 170+ readers in November! :D Now my target is 200+ readers this month. I hope I’ll achieve it. :)

That’s all…! You can compare these stats with my September stats (was busy in Oct.) and see how much I lost this month.

Post from: Sizzled Core

November 07 Roundup

The weekend… Finally! :D I won’t be blogging anything this weekend. In fact, I just got tagged by my friend, Mariuca, for a ‘two things’ meme, so I’ll be doing that instead of tech-related posts :) And hey, how’s the new logo above? I’ll be using this soon. I also made some wallpapers that I’ll share with you guys. Monday is the day…! :D

1. Two names I go by: Haris & MoNSt3r
2. Two things I am wearing right now: Clothes :D & Headphones
3. Two things I want (or have) in a relationship: Friendship & Trust
4. Two things I like to do: Blog & Play Counter-Strike!
5. Two things I want very badly in this moment: New PC & Nokia N95

6. Two things I did last night: Made 2 wallpapers & Listened to music
7. Two things I ate today: Chicken Burger & Lay’s
8. Two persons I last spoke to: My mom & Small brother
9. Two things I am doing tomorrow: Eat & Sleep (What are weekends for then, eh?) :P
10. Two favourite days of the week: Saturday & Sunday
11. Two favourite holidays: Eid & Christmas
12. Two favourite beverages: Hot & Cold Coffee
13. Two things about me that you may not have known: I fear Lizards & I love watching cartoons! :D
14. Two jobs that I have had in my life: CS Clan Manager & Admin on a forum.
15. Two movies I would watch over and over: Transformers & 300 (The effects.. WOW!)
16. Two places I have lived: Dubai,U.A.E & Karachi, Pak.
17. Two of my favourite food: English and Chinese Food
18. Two places I would rather be right now: At a gaming zone & In my kitchen (I love eating!) lol

Now the tagging part.. :) My picks for this meme are: Brown, Keshav, VJ, Mayank, Shankar, and Ram.

Phew…! That finishes the meme :) See you on Monday, and do subscribe to my feeds because I’ll be posting some wallpapers that I made to promote Sizzled Core.

Have a great weekend!

Post from: Sizzled Core

Two Things Meme

Here’s mine:

(Click the image to enlarge)

It’s created by Nivener and is called Blue White. You can download it from here. (520KB).

Just like any other tagging game, I’ll also have to tag my friends. I’ll tag Madhur, Keith, Ram, Nasir, Satish, Kannan, VJ, Anirudh, DJ Flush, Shankar, Sankar, Daniel, PChere, Thilak, JohnTP, Mayank, Ashish, Abhijit, Brajeshwar, Mariuca, Brown and Ajay to show their wallpapers. If I’ve missed someone, leave a comment below.

Post from: Sizzled Core

Wallpaper Tag Game

It’s a dream of every blogger to get listed in the top 10 search results of big grand search engine daddies like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. And even you know that it’s quite a tough job. The reason why you want to get to the top is that getting higher rankings in search engines means more traffic and more traffic leads to more revenue.

WordPress is the best blogging platform available on the Internet. And to get most out of it, many plugins have been developed. There are plugins for almost everything you need in WordPress. Similarly, there are SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugins to help you improve your ranking in search engines.

There are countless blogs with articles listing the best SEO plugins for WordPress. Just Google the keywords “Best SEO Plugins” and see the number of results you get. And today, I’m also going to add one more article in those results :D I guarantee you that with the help of the plugins I’m about to share, you will be listed in the top search engine ranking within 2-3 weeks.

Apart from the list below, if you would like to see the small, old list of SEO plugins I have, then head here.

1. SEO Title Tag

With this plugin, you can create search engine optimized titles for your blog posts and pages. Download from here.

2. Head META Description

This plugin automatically adds META description in your blog posts and pages in WordPress. The plugin inserts a dynamic description from the content that is written in the post/page depending the query-type. META tags are still very important to get a higher rank in search engines. Download from here.

3. Ultimate Tag Warrior – UTW

UTW is the best tagging system available for WordPress. You can add tags to posts, pages, categories and archives. Search engines, even today rely, on META keywords to index pages. Tags and keywords make it easier for search engines bots and spider to crawl on your blog. You can add the tags manually below every post, or create a tag cloud in the sidebar. Tag cloud makes it easier for your readers to search posts of their interest. Download from here.

4. All-In-One SEO Pack

This is the ultra all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress powered blogs. Unlike the above mentioned three plugins, this plugin doesn’t work for only one SEO factor. But it does all the three jobs (plugins above) mentioned. :)

• Generates META keywords
• Optimizes your titles
• And META description

Download from here.

5. Permalink Redirect

This plugin saves you from getting a duplicate content penalty by search engines like Google, Yahoo Search, Live Search etc. It associates all your blog posts and pages respectively to their own one URL. Because as you know, a URL with an trailing slash in end and a URL without the trailing slash in end are two different URLs.

For example:

http://www.sizzledcore.com/youtube-video/

and

http://www.sizzledcore.com/youtube-video

So, this is a must-have plugin for every blogger. If you are not using this, download yours now.

6. Google Sitemaps Generator

This plugin generates a XML sitemap of your blog which can be used to submit to Google Webmaster service. Google Sitemaps help your blog/site pages to get indexed in a better way. This means more traffic :) . I haven’t seen a single blog that doesn’t uses this. And I hope, you are also one of them. Download from here.

7. Permalink Migration

If at anytime you feel like changing the permalink structure of your blog, but fear that all the posts and pages indexed by search engines, and linked by other blogs will become inaccessible. But don’t worry. This is where the plugin’s part comes. After changing the permalink structure, this plugin does a 301 Redirect on all the old posts and pages. This way, search engines update to the new link and you don’t even lose and traffic or effect your pagerank. Download from here.

8. WWW Redirect

With this plugin, you have more control over the URL of your blog. For example, it’s up to you that you want your blog posts and pages to be accessed with www or without www. This way your blog posts and pages will be saved from getting indexed on major search engines with different variations of the same domain. Download from here.

9. Optimal Title

This plugin does the same job as SEO Title Tag, but if you want to use the standalone title optimizing features of Optimal Title, then you must give it a try. Download from here.

10. Search Meter

This plugin helps you keep your blog focused on what you visitors are looking for. With this plugin, you can know what your visitors are searching on your blog and what do they want. THis plugin works like a search recorder. It records all the search queries, and you can focus more on the content people are looking for. Download from here.

Phew! That’s all :) I would love to see your comments and views about my SEO plugins list.If you have any SEO plugins to share, do share it here. Download from here.

Re-Publish This Post

You can even re-publish this post with a backlink to me and thanks a lot for reading. :)

RSS Feeds:

I hope you have enjoyed reading this post and would love to subscribe to my RSS feed for more updates and to catch the latest posts first!

Post from: Sizzled Core

Best SEO Plugins for Wordpress

September is over, and October has arrived. Now, I’m going to do my second roundup post for my readers. :) This month has been a very successful month for the traffic, but my revenue earnings have dropped a little. Read more to know about the best posts, blog traffic, feed count and revenue earned this month.

Blog Posts:

• 8 Tips For New Bloggers
• Trick To Multiple Login In Yahoo Messenger
• Free Glass Style Feed Icons
• Bush Has Something Hidden In Notepad
• Yahoo! Mash Invitations Giveaway
• Trick To Rename Internet Explorer Titlebar
• Wallop Invitations – Grab them first!
• How To Draw Mona Lisa With MS Paint
• A Look At The Toothpick City (21 pictures)
• How To Restore Desktop Icon In Quick Launch Bar
• How To Add Emoticons/Smilies In Gmail

Blog Traffic:

Unique Visitors: 42,307
Pageviews: 85,109
Page/visits: 2.01
New visits: 89.55%

Earnings:

Google Adsense: $90.21
Kontera: $16.68

That makes a total of $106.89 :)

Top 5 Keywords:

1. vlc player skins
2. vlc skins
3. yahoo mash invitation
4. vlc media player skins
5. restore recycle bin

Feed Readers:

Last month, the highest number of feed readers I had were 104, but this month it’s 139 :) Subscribe today and help me increase my feed readers! :p

You can see my last month’s stats here and compare them with this month’s.

Post from: Sizzled Core

September 07 Roundup

But I finally got some time, and here’s my crowded desktop.

Most of the applications I use, are in my Quick Launce bar. So, there are more junky stuff than applications on my desktop. I usually change my wallpaper once a month, because I’m kinda lazy person. :p

[TAG STARTS HERE]

My Desktop Free View Instruction:

A. Upon receiving this tag, immediately perform a screen capture of your desktop. It is best that no icons be deleted before the screen capture so as to add to the element of fun.

You can do a screen capture by: [1] Going to your desktop and pressing the Print Scrn key (located on the right side of the F12 key). [2] Open a graphics program (like Picture Manager, Paint, or Photoshop) and do a Paste (CTRL + V). [3] If you wish, you can “edit” the image, before saving it.

For MAC users: Press [ Apple] [ Ctrl ] [ Shift ] and [ 3 ]

B. Post the picture in your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop just below it if you want. You can explain why you preferred such look or why is it full of icons. Things like that.

C. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktop as well.

D. Add your name to this list of Free Viewers with a link pointing directly to your Desktop Free View post to promote it to succeeding participants.

List of those who have participated: Francine of La Place de Cherie Chez Francine Bloggishi Unchained Melody LadyJava’s Lounge Mariuca Revellian Dot Com|Desktop iRonnie Rebecca Jon Rolando Speedcat Brown Baron Tish Mike Money Online NoDirectOn Max Elena’s Photos Comedy Plus Me And My Drum Choc Mint Girl Amel’s Realm Madhur Kapoor Sizzled Core

[TAG ENDS HERE]

Now, for the tags. Hmm… I’ll tag: DJ Flush, Nasir, Nirmal, Ram and Valibhav. I’d be waiting to see your desktops :)

Post from: Sizzled Core

My Sizzling Desktop Looks Like…

1. Own Domain: Your domain should be small (10-12 characters are enough) one and easy-to-remember. For more tips on choosing domain names, read Shaun’s article.

2. Good Host: If you have a self-hosted blog, then host it on a reliable host. Make sure your is a reliable one, has no downtimes and has 24/7 support. (If anyone has written a good article on importance of good web-hosting, please let me know below. I’ll add the link here.)

3. Nice Theme: You should have a nice, clear and simple template. Don’t make it full of images, because that will increase the loading time of your blog. Remember, your theme gives the first impression of your blog. Read Nirmal’s post for more info. on selecting a theme.

4. Feed Button: Place the feed link/icon in the first fold of your blog. The feed icon should not be too big or too small. Use a medium sized icon depending on your blog layout. For more tips, visit Shankar’s place.

5. Comment on other blogs: Well, yes. This is important! Or you, yourself, won’t get any comments on your blog. So, this is a must. When I started out blogging, I used to be very lazy in commenting on other blogs, but the result was that I hardly got a comment the whole week. Read more tips by Brown.

6. Reply to comments: It’s good to respond all the comments given on your posts. Your blog looks more active this way. Don’t ever piss of your readers. If you do want to do, read some tips to piss of readers by Shaun and read another good article on how to increase comments on your blogs by Nirmal.

7. Participate in discussions: Participate in discussions on other blogs.Participation doesn’t mean you start spamming. Make a comment related to the topic. This will help your blog gain some exposure.

8. Join Link Directories: Join as many link directories as you can. It gets you link backs, and link backs help you get a higher PageRank.

As this is my first attempt in giving out tips, I’m sure there will be many points I’ll be missing. Feel free to point out my mistakes, or add more tips below. I’d appreciate them all.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to my RSS feed.

Post from: Sizzled Core

8 Tips For New Bloggers

From this month onwards, I’ll also post my blog statistics every month and so that everyone can know about the ups and downs of my blog. I’ll be posting the best posts of the month, traffic statistics and my total earnings. I might include other things in my next round-up post.

Blog Posts:

• How to delete an undeleteable files
• Free Domains: Top-Level Domains (Part Two)
• How To View Gmail Messages with Feed Aggregator (Guest blogged by DJ Flush)
• Services You Can Safetly Disable in XP
• 10 Ways to increase traffic (Guest blogged by Shaun)
• Top 5 Animated Movies Of All Time
• Kill Tasks from Command Prompt
• 25+18=43 Hidden Applications in Windows XP (The most popular post – 37,000+ hits)
• How to restore Recycle Bin after deleting

Blog Traffic:

Unique Visitors: 32,516
Pageviews: 64,868
Pages/Visits: 1.99

Earnings:

Google Adsense: $97.65
Kontera: $19.22

That makes a total of $116.87.

My feed readers increased from 44 to 90-104 :) The maximum readers I had this month were 104. So c’mon everyone, subscribe now and help me incresase my feed reader count

Post from: Sizzled Core

August 07 Roundup

Blogging is all about communication. If you are a shy person in the internet world then blogging might not be your cup of tea. You have to be able to communicate a valuable point to your readers, read other blogs and participate in online discussions. If you expect any form of traffic to your site your going to have to do a bit of blog promotion. Here are some important tips that will help drive some traffic to your site!

1. Create quality and meaningful content

Everyone always says backlinks are queen but quality content is king. You should provide useful information which will cause your readers to return to your blog. No matter what niche you cover you will have something to say but make sure you present your information well to your readers.

2. Visit other blogs in the same niche

Reading other blogs in your niche will not only give you extra knowledge and experience, but you should comment on articles that interest you. If you say something interesting in the comments section on other blogs your readers might want to check out your blog to see what else you have to offer. Also signing up with MyBlogLog and visiting other blogs will leave your picture left in the MyBlogLog space that is on the blog you are visiting. This will bring in a few extra visitors.

3. Use Google analytics

You can actually use any stat tracking system but I recommend using Google Analytics. Using a stat tracking system will tell you which keywords and posts are most popular. Having tracking system and using it effectively to determine which traffic boosting methods work best for your site is key for properly growing your readership.

4. Offer full Feed RSS

Always make sure your readers can easily locate your RSS subscribtion button. Not having a full feed will often turn off many readers and you will not be able to grow your blog as effectivly. P.S if you like this post I highly recommend signing up for this feed :) .

5. Ping your site

You should submit your site to all of the search engines you can as well as constantly pinging your site. It’s a good idea to ping your site every time you update your blog. There are free pinging services that allow you to submit your site such as Pingomatic and Pingoat. By pinging your site you are notifying a bunch of blogging services that you have updated your site.

6. Use Google Site Map Generator

Google Site Map Generator is an excellent plugin that makes it easy for Google to crawl your site every time they send over a spider bot. You will get better seach engine rankings and Google will be able to access your site better. Feel free to download this plugin here.

7. Use Technoarti

If you have a blog you should have claimed it with the using Technorati. When you claim a blog using Technorati you make your site available to others. If you post frequently with quality content you will gain higher rankings in Technorati’s system therefor making it easier for others to find your site while searching.

8. Link to other blogs (give some link love)

Linking to relevant blogs on your site not only increases the quality of your blog’s content, but you might also get a reciprocal link from some of the blogs you linked to. This will give you a boost in traffic and also give you a better search engine ranking.

9. Actively participate in forums

Visiting forums in your niche will give your blog an extra boost of traffic if you post meaningful comments. Don’t be silly and make comments such as “Come visit my blog”, stay on topic and provide the other readers with something of value to read and you will see traffic coming from those forums.

10. Post! Post! Post!

The more you write the more information your blog has and the more traffic you will get. If you keep pumping out quality information you will get return visitors. If your site is not updated on a frequent basis there is no reason for readers to return.

Always research and find other ways to start your traffic building. There are many other ways to help promote your site, some are free tactics and some require a cash investment. Find out what works best for you and don’t give up. Time and patience are the key to a successful blog.

Post from: Sizzled Core

10 Ways to increase traffic

Last night, I opened my WordPress Dashboard to check out all the comments and link backs. I clicked the more button, and went to the Technorati page to check my authority. And there, to my surprise my authority was only 25 and my rank was 1 :D

I refreshed the page several times to see if there’s a problem  at my side. But the rank remained the same. I even took a picture :)

See…! My happiness didn’t lasted long… I accidentally clicked another blog’s link on the page, and when then page opened, I saw that even that blog was on 1. First, I got confused. But then I remember, that Technorati keeps having stupid problems and errors.  Sometimes their monsters run away and this time, they ranked everyone at number one.

I hope they stop giving us short-lasting surprises ;) .

Post from: Sizzled Core

Finally, back to original rank on Technorati

So, continue reading below to see how any have joined the train yet. I’ll be looking forward to meet you in there :) .

Geek Train – All aboard!

———- START COPYING HERE ———-

1 – Write a short paragraph at the beginning of your post and linkback to the blog(s) that put you on the list in the paragraph. You MUST do this. No-one plans on getting slapped for duplicate content any time soon, do they?

2 – Next, copy the list of originals below COMPLETELY and add it to your own blog. If you’d like a different keyword for your blog then change it, when you do your post, and it should pass to most blogs with that keyword, provided the train keeps on spreading.

3 – Take the adds from the blog that added you and place them in the “Originals” list.

4 – Add at least three new favourite blogs of yours to keep the train going, e-mail the blog owners (or comment on one of their posts) and insist that they post.

The Originals:

(The kick-ass) Nate Whitehill
(The original) 13-Year Old Blogger
(The money-making) Affiliate Marketing guide
(The crafty two at) TechRave
(The AdSense ‘dude’) Michael Cheney
(The overclocker) Shawn Knight
(The incredible) Chris Hooley
(The rhetorical) Michael Kwan
(The talented) Leo Chiang
(The root of all evil) John Chow
(The business dude) Josh Mullineaux
(The brilliant) Shoemoney
(The absurdly loud) Ed Lau
(The mastermind) Jon Waraas
(The yaketty) Stephen Fung
(The wickedly cool) Everton Blair
(The uber blogger) Ms Danielle
(The enterprising) Matt Coddington
(The career minded) Jane May
(The legendary) Gary Lee
(The nifty) Dosh Dosh
(The ambitious) Jeff Kee
(The Down Low) Shawn Low
(The Reviewer) Thomas De Maesschalk
(The Post Whore) Derrich
(The brown town) Brown Baron
(The hawk) Gregg Hawkins
(The sizzler) Sizzled Core
(The millionaire) Shaman

My adds:

(The reviewer) Nirmal
(The money-maker) CristianR
(The tech-guy) Lovedeep
(The cell-phone lover) Gautam
(The lime-lover) Glock and Lost
(The tech-byter) Mr. Byte
(The tips guy) Madhur
(The web 2.0 flush) DJ Flush
(The technical) Rishi

This link train is the brainchild of David Wilkinson, hyper, money-making kid, and kick-ass blog designer Nate Whitehill.

———- END COPYING HERE ———-

I hope that was everyone :) . If I did miss out anyone, do let me know so that I can include him.

I hope you enjoy the ride!

Post from: Sizzled Core

The Geek Train – Get aboard now!

Hello readers once again :) . Time for a new set of links. This week I don’t have as many links as before. Actually I had very busy week so didn’t got much time to read other blogs. But still I have managed to come with some interesting posts. I’m soon going to start a Gmail Signature Generator. I’m still trying to integrate it into Wordpress. If it works, I’ll start it somewhere within this week :) .

And yeah, I have also changed the title of my links post from Speed Linking to Sunday Linking, because I always post links on Sundays :D .

Shankar explains how you can change your XP’s start menu to look like Vista’s.

Glock tells us how can we make our old/dead CD’s back to work.

Madhur introduced a new site analysis service called RobotReplay. I’m sure if it’s new or old, but it’s definitely new for me :) .

Shashank tells us 22 reasons why we should shift to Wordpress.

Rishi explains some rules for good commenting on other blogs.

And in the last, Jake has come up with the best 10 Blogger themes that are better than the original.

I hope you have a nice time reading them. I’d be glad if you add me in your Technorati favourites :) . Have a nice day!

Post from: Sizzled Core

Sunday Linking #1