A New Tab

Add Logo to Genesis Theme

aswin — Wed, 09 May 2012 04:47:57 +0000

A site without logo is incompelte. In Genesis there are many ways to add logo. In some child themes if you add logo.png in the images folder it will be automatically shown as logo for your site which is simple and better. If you can edit your funtions.php you can add a option in your theme so that you can upload header image in the header region of your genesis theme of your desired height and width. Here I am explaining another procedure which is quite simple and no need to login into your cpanel.

Before starting this tutorial hope you created a child theme for Genesis Framework. If not please follow our tutorial how to create child theme for Genesis

#1. Go to Dashboard->Genesis->Theme Settings.

#2. Once you created a child theme. Go to Dashboard->Editor->functions.php add the below line

add_theme_support( 'genesis-custom-header', array( 'width' => 960, 'height' => 100 ) );

Save it!

If you want to have a custom image of custom height and width just change the width and height option accordingly.

#2. Now you will see Header under your Appearance as shown in the below figure

#3. Click on header and upload your header image size 960X100 which contains logo to left most of image.

Let me know if you face any problem.

Google Drive vs SkyDrive vs Dropbox vs iCloud: A Comparision

aswin — Wed, 02 May 2012 07:03:00 +0000

Google drive from Google, Sky drive from Microsoft, icloud from Apple and the world Famous Drop box are major competitors for online storage. Though the market for drop box, icloud and Microsoft is quite stable introduction of Google drive is for sure a threat for them. If you don’t know what exactly these terms Google Drive, Sky Drive, iCloud, and Drop box means let me explain you in simple term ‘ an online storage for your files and media so that you can access from any PC, phone etc’

By default a free space is available and Instead of their free space you can upgrade your space by choosing their premium services. Let us compare the these three famous drives in each and every aspect in detail

	Google Drive	iCloud	Sky Drive	Dropbox

Free Space	5GB	5GB	7GB	2GB
Mobile Support	Android, iOS (coming soon)	iOS	Windows Phone, iOS	Android, iOS, BlackBerry
Easy of use	Easy	Easy-	Easy	Easiest
Developer	Google	Apple	Microsoft	DropBox
File Size Limit	10 GB		300 MB	300 MB for uploads via Web, No limit via Desktop
Media Streaming	Not Available	Available	Not Available	Available
Desktop Support	Windows, Mac	Windows, Mac	Windows, Mac	Windows, Mac, Linux
Developer API	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Minimum Upgrade	25 GB at $2.49/month	10 GB at $20.oo/year	Add 20 GB to your free storage at $10.00/year	50 GB at $9.99/month or $99.00/year (+ 1 GB per referral, up to +32 GB)

Google Drive, SkyDrive, iCloud, Dropbox are the 4 famous cloud storage devices from Google, Microsoft, Apple and dropbox set a new pavement for the cloud storing. Each one have its advantages and disadvantages when compared to other.When it comes to value services, it’s a toss-up between Dropbox and Google Drive. When you are a windows PC user and you will get a good free space of 7GB with Sky Drive. If you own a android phone Google Drive is a perfect option. If you love apple and want to sync music/video/files with iPods, iPod and you Mac icloud rocks

Start Youtube Video at specific time

aswin — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:48:10 +0000

We know YouTube allows you to link to a specific time of its videos using the hash parameter, but many of the people don’t know how to link to a particular part of YouTube video so that when you refer that video at Facebook, google+ or where ever your video will be started from that particular point of time which is really good. This option will really helps you to start if the video you are referring is too long and you want to discuss at particular point. Let see how to copy YouTube video such that it can start from a particular location.

Copy YouTube video from a specific time.

Copying YouTube video from a specific point of time is so easy. You can do that using YouTube default feature most of us wont find. Just pause the video ->right-click on the YouTube video you are playing and click the option copy video URL at current point

Explanation

Have a look at the below URL copied at particular location

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=KR_9A-cUEJc#t=78s

and the original URL of the YouTube video from starting position

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=KR_9A-cUEJc

as said earlier a # tag at the end specifies the timings is appended t=78s which tells to start video from 78th second.

Embed YouTube video starts at specific time

Actually there is no direct method of starting YouTube code from desired point with specified height and width. For this you need to embed the original code of your desired height and width and replace the code of YouTube video URL wi the URL copying at your desired location.

Original embed code of a YouTube video

Embed code of a YouTube video starting at particular location (say from 78th second )

Know about How to use Google drive

aswin — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 07:23:00 +0000

This is the time for storing online. Google introduced Google Drive which helps you to manage your important files, pictures, videos and other important information online which can be accessed from any where in the world. Instead of having a online storage the interesting part of Google Drive is Google Drive desktop installation. Once you installed you will find Google Drive desk folder, just drop your important files inside that folder and your files will be automatically shared to your online account. Lets see how to install Google Drive, how to use and other cool info about Google Drive.

What is Google Drive.

Google drive is online storage from Google providing a free space of 5 GB for each user so that he can share his docs, files, pics etc and these files can be accessed from any other PC via browser. Google Drive is available for,PC and Mac, Android devices and soon it will be i Phone and iPad (coming soon). If you feel your files are very important it is better to store online and it can be easily shared among friends with a single click.

Create a Google Drive Account.

Creating Google Drive account is so easy and all you need is you should hold a Google account Go to Google Drive and click sign in and provide your Google username and password

Download Google Drive Desktop Version

This is so cool install Google Desktop version which create a folder as shown in the below figure. After installing drop files into this folder and they will be automatically sync to your Google Drive account.

You can use this folder like just like your other folder, create folders, pics etc and the content inside this folder is stored at Google Drive.

Google Drive Storage Plans

By default Google Drive provides 5 GB of FREE space. If you like and want to increase your online space, you can upgrade here and the prices as shown in the following table

Advantages of Google Drives

Simple Interface
Can access all your content from anywhere using email
Easy Searching inside your drive
Easily upgrade your storage
Google Brand Name
Cool Desktop version
Single click sharing among your circles.

Privacy and your content

If you want to know about your privacy and whether can see your content which is stored on your Google drive have a look at video below which explains Google privacy polices.

Best Alternatives to Windows Live Writer

aswin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:22:18 +0000

Windows live writer is one of the best off line blog editor cum publisher tool which is favorite for many blogger all around the world and even it is a FREE tool from Microsoft. It is one such nice tool that can download the theme of your blog and makes you feel that you are writing directly at frontend of your blog. There is no doubt that these blogging tools helps in your writing productivity, productivity in the sense for example if you can write 2 articles in 2 hours using the tools helps you to write 3 articles as these are desktop based and no need to login to your blog tool dashboard and Windows live writer is good in handling the drafts of your blog.

If you don’t like Windows Live writer there are some good blog publishing tools available for free. Let us have a look at good blogging tools which can compete with windows live editor.

BlogJet

This is my favorite tool after windows live writer. It has interface just close to windows live writer. You can crop images, paste YouTube links, WYSIWYG Editor, Categories and tags classification and above all FREE and very light software. If you are looking for an alternative this is best one.

BlogDesk

This is a famous tool and widely used blogging tool after windows live writer. It supports all features supported by Windows Live Writer and even it is so simple and quick in terms of GUI as it wont use much of graphics. It helps you to edit fields like categories, tags, WordPress, Drupal, Movable Type and almost all other blogging platforms. Many people in the world like to use BlogDesk after Windows Live Writer.

Zoundry Raven:

A bit advanced in the class of the desktop blogging software. Generally helps for the people who want to keep a copy of all drafts locally in your PC. It confuses you if you have seen first time its interface but comes with many advanced options to search your previous drafts using tags and categories. Zoundry Raven is a popular competition to Windows Live Writer.

ScribeFire

A popular browser based application for creating, drafting your blogs offline. This is available as browser based extension for popular browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari with a full-featured editor that lets you create and edit blog post. It supports support for numerous blog clients; post scheduling, ability to save drafts; tagging and categorizing; and Zemnata integration. This is one such alternative if you don’t like the desktop based tools.

As I said earlier the usage of tools for blogging helps in your blogging productivity and for sure increase your efficiency in writing articles. If you are serious about blogging chose a one nice blogging tool which helps you a lot in your blogging journey.

Install and Configure Windows Live Writer for WordPress Blogs

aswin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:07:49 +0000

Productivity is one hidden secret for success of any blog. It is very difficult every time to nee d to login to your wordpress admin board and writer your article and highly difficult to write the article in the small box adjusting font size and position may kill your time and boring even. For those people who are looking for a productive replacement of blogging over online is Windows Live Write a perfect blogging tool by Microsoft where you can write article with ease and perfection.

Installing Windows Live Writer is simple like any other software but for configuring with your wordpress self hosted blog need couple of steps. Let us have a look at how to install and configure windows live writer

Install Windows Live Writer

#1. Go to this location and Download Windows Live Writer

#2. Once downloaded double click on the file and click install. set the path and other settings just like installing any other software.

Configuring Windows Live Writer

#3. Go to your WordPress Dashboard –>Settings->Writing and enable enable XML-RPC publishing option as shown in the below figure.

#4. Open Windows Live writer > Click on Blogs > Add blog account

#5. Select last option ‘Other Blog Service’

#6. provide your blog name, user name, password as shown in the below figure.

#7. After a while it will setup your blog with the in between it will ask to post a temporary post to your blog via blogger which is used for internal testing inside windows live writer to detect your theme.

#8. Finally Name your Blog and start blogging

Some times windows live writer unable to detect your theme. Make sure your blog published uncategorized posts which helps windows live writer to detect your theme.

Insert Adsense after the first post in Genesis Theme

aswin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:34:47 +0000

It is very important to place the at least 3 ads in each and every page of your blog. This will increase the CTR . This is very common question in WordPress and the implementation changes for as the theme changes. It is bit difficult to implement in case of frameworks when compared to general themes. As part of our Genesis Tutorials let us have a look at how to add or insert Adsense slot after the first post in Genesis Theme fact. In fact once you could able to add after first post you can implement the same for after 2nd, 3rd … nth position.

Before stepping further make sure you have created a child theme or using a child theme for genesis. If you don’t know how to create a child theme please have a look at detailed tutorial how to create child theme for genesis.

Go to Appearnace->Edit

in your funtion.php of your child theme just add the below part of the code and replace the text REPLACE THIS TEXT WITH YOUR ADSENSE CODE with your Adsense code.

add_action('genesis_after_post', 'ad_after_first_post');
function ad_after_first_post() {
global $loop_counter;
if (!is_singular() && $loop_counter == 0) { ?>
REPLACE THIS TEXT WITH YOUR ADSENSE CODE

after the end of your file.
Explanation of code.
Here we are create a simple function ad_after_first_post and calling the function at the position after posts using genesis hooks genesis_after_post. This will enable us to add part of code after first post. In the next line we initiated a global variable which as a loop counter to count the posts. In the next line we checked some true conditions like is_singular to avoid posts on single posts and loop counter == 0 to check for the first posts and finally display you ad code.
If you are looking to insert your ad after 2nd post replace the value of $loop_counter with 1 in the above code and if after 10th post make $loop_counter with 9 in condition
Related posts:

Remove Post Info from Genesis Theme-Genesis Tips
Remove or Edit Post Meta Function in Genesis
Genesis Theme Tutorials

How to delete photos from Facebook Album

aswin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:02:45 +0000

Things wont be at same place in social Media sites, that too in case of fast growing and developing sites like Facebook options changes often. One thing which we are discussing is how to delete your photo uploaded in Facebook. Many people confuses and keep on searching for how to delete the facebook image uploaded. We previously wrote about how to delete facebook album which helps you to remove the complete album at once. In this tutorial let have look how to remove image in facebook uploaded by you.

#1. Login to facebook.

#2. Go to your photos

#3. Open the image you want to delete from your facebook account

#4. Just below the image you will find ‘Options’ and there you can find Delete this photo as shown in the below figure to delete that particular image as shown in the below figure.

How to change Joomla URL to search engine friendly

aswin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:25:31 +0000

These days Google is target one for every site. If you are using any CMS to develop your website it is must to optimize your site according to basic web standards. If it is the case that you are using Joomla as your CMS. It is must to change the URL to Search Engine Friendly so that the site content can be tracked by major search Engines easily.

The steps to make the Joomla URL search engine friendly are ::

Access htaccess.txt in your root directory and rename it to .htaccess
Visit your Joomla Global Configuration and in SEO settings set all options to ‘yes’ and save.

How to move Joomla site to another directory

aswin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:24:45 +0000

Many web designers build their websites in test folders and when their designing is done they want to move their Joomla site to the root folder. I am going to explain the steps involved in moving your joomla site.

Consider that I have developed my joomla site at ‘test’ folder( youdomain.com/test ) and I am plannig it to move to root directory so that if any one access your site at yourdomain.com it should open my joomla site.

Move all of the files and folders from your Joomla folder(test folder) to the new directory. In our case from public_html/test to public_html/

Here you need to reconfigure your application. Open ‘configuration.php’ file and make the following changes in it:

Change: var $log_path = ‘/home/user/public_html/test/logs’;
To: var $log_path = ‘/home/user/public_html/logs’;

Change: var $tmp_path = ‘/home/user/public_html/test/tmp’;
To: var $tmp_path = ‘/home/user/public_html/tmp’;

Change: var $ftp_root = ‘/public_html/test’;
To: var $ftp_root = ‘/public_html’;

Change: var $live_site = ‘http://www.yourdomain.com/test’;
To: var $live_site = ‘http://www.yourdomain.com’;

There is a cache folder which stores the cache files. Delete that. (public_html/cache in our case) and this folder will be automatically created once we access our site at yourdomain.com

Reload your site at yourdomain.com. It should work perfectly.