Blogjer is about bloggers

Video : Just Google song

zaki — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:03:02 +0000

Aha.. Video clip about varieties of Google logos entitled ‘Just Google‘. The song is not too bad, but don’t except too much from it. Enjoy!!

via searchengineland

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This post originally came from Zaki's Blogjer.com

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Wordpress theme - Pertama

zaki — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:35:27 +0000

Pertama (first) as it named, is my first ever Wordpress theme. Created from scratch (except the CSS) based on WPdesigner tutorial and Wordpress codex notes, Pertama is a simple theme with almost no image and spot a white clean design, useful for personal blog.

Features

Widget-ready on the right sidebar and footer
Simple and clean design with 880px width
2 menu bar on the header for pages and categories
Search bar on the header to provide ease of searching
Additional widget - author and recent entries widget (as part of my experiment of using function.php and incorporating more plugin in the next release)

Pertama tested on Wordpress 2.3 up 2.6 without any compatibility issue. It displayed properly in IE7 and Firefox 2.2 and 3.0.1 as well

You’ll see more WP themes and other themes or template (especially for article directory) released in future, so stay tune!!

DEMO (run on my personal blog)

DONWLOAD

Feel free to comment and report any bug on the comment section

click to enlarge

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Wordpress 2.6 released

zaki — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:51:34 +0000

Oh yeah, it’s finally released. I guess some of you might grumbling. why Wordpress team is releasing a new version quite often lately. It’s barely 3 months after major release of 2.5, follow by bug fix version on 2.5.1. I know i know.. you’re tired of upgrading isn’t it. (especially when the WAU plugin doesn’t work)

I manage to install 2.6 in my personal blog using Wordpress Automatic Upgrade (WAU) plugin. The fully auto mode is not working and stuck on step # 2 (backup database) as the exec() function was disabled on my hosting. So I choose semi auto mode, skip the DB backup (not recommended if you have tonnes of content) and completed all steps in less than 5 minutes

User interface wise, there is not much different, except on the plugin and manage posts/pages menu. Both now has check box to select multiple option. Plugins also were now separated between active and inactive plugins. On the Plugin tab menu, there is a small red numbers indicating how many plugin is out dated

There are couple of interesting features on this release. For me, the top feature is non other than the post revisions where it keep a version of your saved draft, which can be viewed later. Oh wait, you can compare them and restore it anytime you want!

You also can preview the theme before activating it from the control panel. I was mistakenly interpreting this feature on my previous post that this is kinda like a theme preview plugin. (saying to myself: SWITCH and PREVIEW is not similar ZAKI!). I definitely need more English lesson.. lol

Then, there is GEARS support to speed up the blog loading espcially on the slow internet connection. It cached the CSS and javascript on the local disk.

What else?? The are new image control (caption, resize, a new gallery), customizing the gravatar, bookmarklet (called press this) bla bla bla and etc.

On the compatibility issue, Wordpress dev team has mentioned that most of the themes and plugins released for 2.5 should be compatible with 2.6. But I found that couple of plugins installed in my blog has a new update released for this version. Plugin dev should have more work now to ensure their plugin compatibility. Kudos to you guys!!

If you still uncertain to upgrade or not, or has not yet upgrade even to 2.5.1, perhaps the video and the full features list will help you to decide if you’re going for 2.6 now.

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secure your paypal before it’s too late

zaki — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:59:57 +0000

Last week, I blog about the appearance of Paypal Security Challenge (captcha) screen, which shows up on the screen, once I logged in into my Paypal account. I never came across it before. It’s odd.. The same screen won’t appear again, even though I purposely key in wrong password multiple times using different system. What I’m wondering is, if this screen appears whenever there are repetitive invalid attempts by unauthorized user/bot to access my account, as pointed out by Eches. Sounds creepy huh?

Back to the CAPTCHA, it is not a new stuff in Paypal. According to the source in Wiki, Paypal has been using it (and some say invent it) since 90s to block an attempt by automated system to access Paypal. However, I’ve no answer on what kind of form or situation triggering this CAPTCHA

A quick check on my RSS feed spot 2 webmasters on Ghacks and Saifulsham(his brother) who has their Paypal account fund been stolen or used for unauthorized transaction. Fraud can happen to anyone, even without you notice it or provide early signal. Even after all security measure being taken, to ensure the safety of the account, this kind of thing can still happen when hackers become more creative than ever.

1 commentator in Ghack point me out to Youtube, where there are a lots of how-to-hack-paypal videos. I watch couple of them, including the one on top of the search result. It shows how to update certain paramenter on salespages’s source code to buy stuff on net with 1 cent. I never tried it (and not gonna tried it), so I’m not sure if it works now. But it give basic impression that fully automated peyment system using Paypal is not that secure, without the involvement of human check.

There are couple of points that I learn from these 2 posts. I bet you know it, but not yet implement it. First and foremost is, don’t ever use your Paypal account (your email) for any registration, regardless with any kind of services. You might also consider to limit the usage of your Paypal email account even for email purpose. Use or create a new email account

Use debit card instead of credit card for your Paypal account. I’m sure many will disagree with this, but please give it some thought. Here is why. In case your account hacked, the damage is minimum to the extent of fund only in your account. You’re not risking losing more money since debit card amount is limited and most of the time, it only has amount whenever you want using it

Be careful when selling your Paypal fund for cash in forum. Your identity is in risk even though you’re registered using different email address. This is especially true if your password is not strong enough, which consist of common personal info such as your name, your nickname, what you like, your website etc. All these infos are crucial for intruder, in process of guessing your password using automated system, thus gain a control. But you shouldn’t put much worry on this, if your password is strong enough.

Other than that, you might want to consider login into your e-commerce account (such as Paypal) from only your system. Avoid using public computer by any means if possible. You might not aware that public computer could have been installed with keylogger. It’s not hard to find free keylogger nowadays. There are tonnes of free keylogger available on the net

OK now, it’s turn to listen to Paypal advice (taken from their website)

Website Security

Type in the PayPal URL: To safely and securely access the PayPal website or your PayPal account, open a new web browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Netscape) and type in the following: https://www.paypal.com/

Password Safety

Never share your PayPal password: PayPal representatives will never ask you for your password. If you believe someone has learned your password, please change it immediately and contact us.

Create a secure password: Choose a password that uses a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. For example, $coo!place2l!ve or 2Barry5Bonds#1. Avoid choosing obvious words or dates such as a nickname or your birth date.

Keep your PayPal password unique: Don’t use the same password for PayPal and other online services such as AOL, eBay, MSN, or Yahoo. Using the same password for multiple websites increases the likelihood that someone could learn your password and gain access to your account.

Email Security

Look for a PayPal Greeting: PayPal will never send an email with the greeting “Dear PayPal User” or “Dear PayPal Member.” Real PayPal emails will address you by your first and last name or the business name associated with your PayPal account. If you believe you have received a fraudulent email, please forward the entire email—including the header information—to spoof@paypal.com. We investigate every spoof reported. Please note that the automatic response you get from us may not address you by name.

Don’t share personal information via email: We will never ask you to enter your password or financial information in an email or send such information in an email. You should only share information about your account once you have logged in to www.paypal.com/row.

Don’t download attachments: PayPal will never send you an attachment or software update to install on your computer.

Use Your Account Wisely

Don’t share your account: Don’t use your PayPal account to collect or transfer money for someone else. These types of activity are often conducted as forms of money laundering or mail fraud and may result in significant criminal penalties. If someone contacts you and asks you to transfer money on their behalf, you should deny the request and contact us immediately.

Increase your security: Become a Verified PayPal member.

Look for legitimate sites: Examine all privacy and security seals before doing business with a particular website and make sure they are legitimate.

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Wordpress blogging tool for iPhone - what’s next?

zaki — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:56:35 +0000

Not to be left behind by Six apart which lauch iPhone app last month during the WWDC 20083 G (the video) Wordpress is going to launch it’s own iPhone app soon, most likely when iPhone 3G on sale starting today (tomorrow in the US).

Watch the app in action on this video. I hope Wordpress will rolled out similar app for Windows Mobile or Symbian OS, which has huge present outside of the US

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Red Ferrari Shell stickers-it’s free!!

zaki — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:36:24 +0000

Hooray!!finally I received a set of shell ferrari sticker, that I applied last month. It’s free, and you can have it too, free of charge.

I’ll post more free stickert, once I verify their offer is genuine

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New dell.com, now in black color

zaki — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:10:14 +0000

I spot the Dell.com new website design upon looking for upcoming mini Inspiron (not yet released). The main blue color web design has now gone, replaced by new color… black. Even Dell has touched up its logo, now a black rounded logo, with the old Dell logo inside, in white color.

The new design put more emphasize in providing users with ease of navigating the website from the beginning, browsing the systems, viewing the promotion, customizing the system until the users checked out and complete the transaction.

Dell also put some initiative to gain traffic from social media websites, with the social bookmarking icon on each page.

At a glance, do you think the new design made Dell.com front page looks like blog with magazine-style theme? I do…

New looks

Old design

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wp-chgfontsize-change font size dynamically

zaki — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:53:08 +0000

After been ’scold’ many times by readers and commentators , finally 2 weeks ago, I manage to make my self free , to modify the CSS file and increase the font size by 1 pixel

Technically newbie on web development stuff, I have to refreshed my CSS skill that I have left years ago.There is small problem with the template, the CSS simply set similar font size for the whole blog, so I have to find out which part of code for my left and right sidebar (good they were commented) and put a different font size over there. It doesn’t look good to have sidebars having the same font size with the post. The sidebar too thin and.. I just don’t like it.

Don’t feel bad if you have zero CSS knowledge. By utilizing Wordpress plugin WP-ChgFontSize, you can do the same. In fact, you have control of your blog font size from your Wordpress dashboard (overriding the CSS setup) . At the same time, put the font menu size on the sidebar, and let the readers choose their desired font size.

Have a reading pleasure, and don’t hesitate to leave your comment!

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utilise webdings font to create simple signature or logo

zaki — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:25:55 +0000

I spent some of my time today playing around with webdings font. Whoa, it’s far more useful than what I’ve ever thought. Microsoft invent this font with purpose. If not why would font be made from images, right?? I see it why now. I can create couple of simple signatures and logos in a seconds.

I refer the character set from CharacterMap. It’s a lot. Some of the characters (called special character) are not available on the keyword, and use keystroke. But I make my life easier, by copying the special character from here, paste it in your word editor, change the font to webdings, and done. Simple

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Why is it difficult for non-US/english websites to get higher compete/alexa

zaki — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:21:47 +0000

Alexa and Compete ranking are perhaps arguably, the most widely recognized website ranking systems especially for those living not in the US. Often, they’re referred to when doing traffic comparison. But how accurate is their system, when it comes to ranking of websites outside of the US or for non-English websites?

My 99th sense is telling me that something is not really accurate. I sometimes noticed that popular non-English websites/blogs have low ranks in Alexa and Compete (especially) compared to websites or blogs in the US. Before that, this is purely my personal observation without having backed up with any statistic/number. So if you feel that I’m wrong, feel free to leave your comment.

So let’s see some comparison. I’m using Utusan Online (online daily news) and HarakahDaily (political daily news) VS John Chow (renown blogger). Do you notice how different their ranking is?

Harakah Daily - Ranked 6k in Alexa, but none in compete (actually there are merely 500 people if you run it on Compete website.

Utusan Online - Ranked 2.9K in Alexa, but merely K readers in Compete.

JohnChow - Ranked 27K in Alexa, but ranked 16 K in compete

What do you think? Which one is accurate? It sounds like Alexa ranks makes more sense here.

1. How the traffic is estimated

The comparison is not complete without understanding how the traffic is estimated. The table below taken from Compete website should provide you a clearer view.

a) User Sampling

Compete

Compete estimates site traffic and engagement metrics based on the daily browsing activity of over 2,000,000 U.S. Internet users

The main reason why US with english websites rank better. US is the undisputed power on Internet, and as we all know, major websites reside in US. The internet penetration is among the highest as well as in the world. So when it comes to tracking their daily browsing activities, you can clearly guess, which website they’re going to browse. Be it Yahoo, Google, MS, Facebook, MySpace they’ll reside in the US.

Can you imagine them reading Harakah Daily or Utusan Online on daily basis. Absolutely not. What the heck would they want to read news of other countries, not my own business. Ok, they may visit, but it is by incident whether from search engines or they stumbled upon somewhere.

Alexa - Alexa does not disclose any information about this. So it is unknown of how many samples are used, from which country or region it was selected and etc. But based on the sample traffic estimation provided above, it seems like Alexa is tracking the browsing activities from all over the world.

b) Clickstream -What is clickstream?

A virtual trail that a user leaves behind while surfing the Internet. A clickstream is a record of a user’s activity on the Internet, including every Web site and every page of every Web site that the user visits, how long the user was on a page or site, in what order the pages were visited, any newsgroups that the user participates in and even the e-mail addresses of mail that the user sends and receives. Both ISPs and individual Web sites are capable of tracking a user’s clickstream. Clickstream data is becoming increasingly valuable to Internet marketers and advertisers.

Toolbar - Both Compete and Alexa has their own toolbars. Before this, Alexa has been using Alexa toolbar which many said, the main resource is estimating the traffic on certain websites, before this method was changed earlier this year. They might still be using it though, plus other sources of data. Compete Toolbar has similar function here, even though it is not as popular as Alexa and rarely becomes benchmark to estimate the traffic. I don’t see much different of my Compete rank before and after installing Compete Toolbar. Furthermore, Compete rank is not updated as often as Alexa rank.

US as the major internet power, has more Internet users than any other countries have. And since they’re the pioneer, their Internet users who’re familiar enough, should have known more the existence of such tools. So having this toolbar installed on their web browser, which will track their browser activities which definitely are centered around their country, US. Again, English+US websites have the advantage when it comes to this. Taking online daily news website as an example, would US folks read Utusan Malaysia or Harakah Daily or vice versa?

ASP & ISP - Clickstream data also gathered from from ISP (internet service provider), ASP (application service provider). ISP especially has a complete log of browsing activities for each of its customers. By utilising the data that ISP has, traffic estimation is more accurate, but it’s not possible to estimate all data.

Script/Javascript - Probably the most accurate way not only to estimate the traffic, but in fact to calculate the number of traffic itself. Rarely practised, and who’d want to overload websites with scripts isn’t it? It is mostly used by web tracking websites such as Google Analytic and Statcounter. Having script installed on each of page definitely provides more. Alexa has Alexa Rank widget which is said to help increase your ranking.

That’s it, the factor that directly hits the traffic estimation, but there are many more external factors that have their roles on this.

2. Non-English content

English is the most used language in Internet as well as the language that has the most content. Your website is written in your mother tongue which is not wrong (in fact is highly recommended since not all are English-fluent). But since some of the methods of estimating the traffic is focused mainly on the US internet users, which speak and read English, logically they’ll go after English websites before the other non-english websites with help of online translator. But not all US folks speak and read English, they have Africans, Hispanics, Asians and etc, but the portion is small.

3. Lack of interest/knowledge of these ranks

Internet is not yet matured in developing countries (as well as some developed countries). The usage is mostly for emails, researches, fun or socializing purpose far from monetizing it. The internet business/entrepreneurship is not yet booming as well as the awareness of internet business itself. And even if there is internet entrepreneuship, the importance of having good rank such as Pagerank, Alexa or Compete is not really being taken care of.

It’ll be either lack of interest or lack of knowledge and expertise to get this done. Even though the accuracy of this rank is highly doubtful especially for non-english and non-US websites, but some publishers are giving a considerably amount of weight to this rank before making any advertisement offer.

Download Alexa Toolbar, Compete Toolbar and Alexa Widget

Domain name and extention .com

.com might be the most registered domain extention on the internet and among the earlierst domain extention ever exist. What is the relation of domain extention with this rank? On the countries which pioneer the internet and WWW, their citizen has the opportunity to register desired domain name earlier than any other countries, thus most single verbs or nouns domain names (especially .com) have already been owned by them.

Most of these websites have been in business earlier than anyone else, which gives them a slight advantage in terms of marketing strategy and SEO. The age of domain is given weight by search ranking when it comes to rank for certain keywords. By having an SEO friendly website, your website contents will appear on top of the search engine result, and you’ll enjoy high number of visits from users. This is then translated to high traffic and thus positively affecting your ranking.

Other than that, on the case of new users who’re looking for something without using search engines, they tend to type the domain name plus .com extention even though the actual website they’re looking at has different domain extension.

SEO

I touch on the basics of the importance of SEO in my point of view above. The analogy of SEO is like….. a house without address or postal address. Or imagine you building a house in a newly found no-name land. I hope I make it right. Who in the earth can find your house? Accidentally yes perhaps. Or perhaps after asking for direction many times. So no matter how ‘cool’ your house is, or how expensive your furniture is, without address, it’s worthless. No one can find it. Same goes to websites.

Everything starts from zero including building websites. While you’re working hard to get your website up and running, SEO plays an important role to attract traffics. You can overtake who’s who in the market you’re jumping into, no matter how long they’re in the business, how big they are, as long as your website arms with the right SEO package. Remember, SEO enhances your credibility and ranks you well in the eye of peers and competitors.

Content and creativity

Content + creativity is something that is within everyone’s control, but possibly the hardest to achieve. The biggest obstacle is human capital and expertise needed to built world class system or appllication, which is something that developing countries (such as Malaysia) is lacking off. Our IT, especially Internet related is too new. Our IT is moving into other directions especially BPO as we witnessed in our own mini Silicon Valley, Cyberjaya Quality content will gain traffic, thus ranks high on the search engine and resulting a better traffic estimation.

It’s not an overnight job, absolutely. But having to identify what we’re lacking of can cover ourself now and in the future, and save ourselves from spending our time and effort meaningless. It’s not as simple as doing very good in 1 area will bring us up, but it works like a package where you must patch all holes before you can move further.

We have a lot of things to do, but being able to prioritize your stuffs according to the urgency will reward you nicely sooner or later.

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Wordpress 2.6 scheduled for release July 2008

zaki — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:34:17 +0000

Barely 2 months after upgrading blogjer’s wordpress version to 2.5.1 , and yet to fix my broken page, Wordpress 2.6 is on it’s way to be released July 7th (tomorrow GMT-5/6) or July 14th. What are they gonna released? (plus my little comment)

Version/revision saves a copy of a post every time you edit it, allows you to view (not edit) each of those copies (revisions), Shows forward (in time) diffs between any two revisions. - love this function especially for post with multiple authors

Add paging of Themes in Design panel

Word Count displayed when writing and editing posts and pages

Press This bookmarklet- cool!! i want this back

Add sorting to gallery

Export/import post excerpts

Theme Previewer- no longer need theme switcher plugin

Check (assigned) Categories at top Category box in Write/Manage Post

Show when a term is both a tag and a category - for SEO purpose??

Wider Profile fields

TinyMCE 3.1

Two categories can have sub-categories with the same name - ok I want this too

Via jwebdev, I got to know these new features described in more detail manner, thanks!!

Out of all these new features, I hope that the permalink bug for wordpress page introduced on Wordpress 2.5 will be fixed. I’m not interested to add index.php to my current permalink structure (/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/) if I want to stick with it. It made it looks rather long (and ugly)

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How to display your social media profile widget on your blog

zaki — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:54:22 +0000

You have multiples social media profiles, which you want your readers to be your friend, or part of your community. To shows what you have, you want to put your social media profile on your blog sidebar, but you have profile on multiples social media websites. It’ll be troublesome, to put up images and link it to your profile one by one. Fortunately, there are tools to make this task easir

1. justaddme .

Register, key in your profile and follow every steps to get the code widget such as below. The downside is the social media offered is limited

Add me here

justaddme.com

2. Mybloglog

This is better, it has almost all social media websites inside.

Login into mybloglog account (register if you haven’t). By default you should be in Myblog home. Click Add Service link on the right sidebar. Fill up all social media service that you have an account, with your user id

Click Widget tab follow by About Me Widget sub tab. Customize the looks and get the script code. I hide almost all panels and options and use white color to get clean & clear widget such as below

You now have your social media profile widget displayed in only couple of minutes. Don’t forget to visit my profile and add me as your friend!!

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