The other day, I was playing around with the new WordPress menus that came with version 3.0 and up; I created a new menu and throwed some pages and posts in the same menu, which was a cool and an easy task. I figure out that  you can create a custom link with whatever you like in it, so I added all my social networks in a sub-menu, which was an easy task too, until I find out that when you click one of this external links on the menu, it opened on the same page, and since I didn’t want my visitors to leave my blog but to open the external link in a new window, it got me thinking that this was worthless. I started looking into the code which took me a lot of time and no results, then I started browsing the web and stumble upon a thread at wordpress.org that had the answer to my problem. While reading it, I felt so stupid because the answer was just standing in front of me all this time.

I found out that day that WordPress is becoming extremely friendly and easy to manipulate, We are so use to change things from the core that most of the time we don’t realize that somebody else has already been through all that trouble to make our lives easier.

So here is the stupid answer >

Go to > Appearance > Menus

Under your Menus Admin Go to > Screen Options and CLICK it

There you will find a lot of cool stuff to add , like

Posts > If you want to add a single Post or Article to one of your Menus

Post Tags> If you want to add a tag to your menu that redirects to the archive

Link Target> To check how you would like your custom link to be open : Same Window or Tab or New Window or Tab

CSS Classes> To include some cool stuff to your Menus, like Custom Icons to go with each link , like the ones that are on my menu ( Twitter and Facebook )

So you just Check everything that works for you, and it will add up to your custom links,

BEFORE

AFTER

Akismet or Automattic Kismet is a spam filtering service. It attempts to filter spam from blog comments and spam TrackBack pings. The filter works by combining information about spam captured on all participating blogs, and then using those spam rules to block future spam.

It is an Incredible tool to use if you have a WordPress Blog or Site. I receive about 10 to 15 spam comments daily, if those add up at the end of the month I will end up with 450 or so spam comments, Akismet will  handle this for you in a very efficient way.

But there has been some controversy on how AKISMET started charging for its service, when they use to be free. Most people will go and try to create an account, but will get the surprise of a paid service. Well let me show you how you can get it for free.

First you need to create an account at http://akismet.com/

Then you need to select a package, which now is a little confusing since every package has a paid amount, but don’t you worry , you can still get it for free, so go ahead an select the Personal Account

Here is the tricky part, when you get to the signup form you will see a $36.00/yr amount you have to pay, also shows a payment method; So your first impression is , “ I will get out of here and keep looking for a free solution”. But don’t panic since this is just an alternate way of the famous DONATE button, what the guys at AKISMET are asking you is for a donation, so if you don’t feel like giving away a couple of bucks, then just click on the price node and bring it to the left until it shows 0.

Fill in your contact info and go check your email, there you will find your api key, which you’ll need to activate AKISMET at your WordPress site

Now go to your WordPress Admin, and enter this API key into your AKISMET options menu. Click Update, and your are done. You have won the first battle against SPAM. For FREE!!

So we talked about how Google changed their url where PageRank was queried from systems, causing every PageRank add-on and plugin to crash and return a 0 PR o N/A.

So there is an easy fix for this, you just have to change the url the your current add-on is using with the new one, here is a quick fix on how to tweak the SEO Status PageRank/Alexa Toolbar 1.5.7 from Ruby Web for Firefox, which gets you the current PageRank of a Webpage and the current Alexa Rank.

This Fix is for this particular add-on from Firefox but the same steps can be used on any other plugin, you just have to find the script that checks the page rank and change the url that is currently calling for the new one.

I am assuming that you already have install the add-on on your computer , if you haven’t done it yet , go ahead an download it and installing first, then come back to the tutorial.

Open Firefox

In the Menu go to > Help > Troubleshooting Information

Click on > Open Containing Folder button ( This will open your current directory where Firefox is install, we will do this for us to look for the add-on file to change )

Click in > extensions Folder to open it

Find Your Plugin Folder > seostatus@rubyweb then click on it for it to open

Find and open the folder > chrome  ( even though it is installed on Firefox, it uses the folder chrome , don’t get confuse by the name )

Find and open the folder > content

Find the script that returns the page rank > gprAlg

Rigth Click on the File and open it with your favorite code editor, I use PSPAD , but you can also use Notepad++ 

Find  line 236 or do a lookup for http://toolbarqueries.google.com/  there you will see the old Google Page Rank URL, Which you are going to change

Now you just have to change the word search for tbr which is the new directory that Google is using for Page Rank

Now save the file

Restart Firefox

Go to the Menu at > Tools > Add-ons

At first you will see the add-on Disable, so click on the Tools Button on the side of the Search all add-ons bar then click on Check for updates so Firefox acknowledges your changes

Restart your Browser and Voila , your Page Rank is Back

UPDATE

YOU CAN INSTALL THE SEO Status PageRank/Alexa Toolbar UPDATED WITH GOOGLE’S NEW PAGERANK DIRECTORY AT https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/seo-status-pagerankalexa-toolb/versions/  VERSION 1.5.8

So I was creating a blog for a client today and came to my attention that my PageRank bar was returning a 0 or a N/A ( Not Available ) answer, I did not pay that much attention to it, because some times after long hours of work on Firefox, some add-ons crash , so I said to myself, since I was not writing articles today, there was no need for SEO at the time.

But later forums and groups had mixed reactions when they saw that their Google Toolbars and other SEO plugins that had the PageRank Checker where returning values of 0 or N / A. The most reliable PR Checker (Google Toolbar) showed the same error.

After speculation, I came to the conclusion that Google had removed the Google PageRank.But then I thought  that Google was not going to take such a drastic measure. But what if it did? Where was all the SEO businesses and gurus out there going to end since their main Website Rate was gone?

After many hours of browsing I came across a Google+ Share John Mueller, ( John Mueller’s Blog ), who is a webmaster trend Analyst at Google Switzerland, share this on his wall

From the update: “It turns out Pagerank is not dead after all. Google has simply updated the URL which is used to query it, which has caused various toolbars and websites to stop reporting the number. Dave Naylor spotted the update and has subsequently updated his own tool, which is now once again reporting PR accurately.”

PageRank is still alive in the Toolbar but Google changed the lookup URL. This change has caused third party tools from looking up a page’s PageRank. If you use Internet Explorer and turn on the Google Toolbar, you will still be able to look up the Toolbar PageRank score. But you may not be able to do so if you use a third party tool, not until they update their lookup scripts, or you can just hack them like I did with the SEO Status PageRank/Alexa Toolbar from Ruby Web.

The Old URL:

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=8f3b58e04&q=info:[URLHERE]

The New URL:

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=8f3b58e04&q=info:[URLHERE]

So don’t Panic Google hasn’t abolish PageRank ( YET )

Check out this Quick Fix on How to enable your PAGERANK Indicator on Firefox Add-ons

Fixing Google Page Rank in Firefox

A few lines of extra code in your header probably won’t slow your site down or risk performance, but you would like to keep things as clean and efficient as possible, since it only takes one line at the time to end up with a load of unnecessary code piled up on your wordpress blog, and that will surely slow it down from time to time.

This tip will not only help add up to your Blogs Security but will help with performance by removing unnecessary code from your Blog. Since WordPress uses the function wp_head() to add a bunch of code to the header of each page. Some of it is absolutely unnecessary.

By default, many WordPress themes include the version information in the document this information proves very useful for the hackers as they can easily target blogs that are using the older version of wordpress software. Here is what many themes use to display this info:

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(‘version’); ?>” />

To prevent this information from being displayed in older themes, you can simply remove the previous line from your theme’s header.php file. In newer themes, however, the entire meta tag is generated by the wp_generator function from deep within the WordPress core. Fortunately it is just as easy to remove by adding the following line to your active theme’s functions.php file located in your WordPress theme folder:

<?php remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’); ?>

The purpose for meta tags is to provide useful information to spiders and search engines. Meta tags do not display on a blog or website, but do display in the HTML or XHTML . Many meta tags are obsolete or do not serve any real useful purpose. You can remove these meta tags from your WordPress pages.

I’ve been a Firefox fan since its beginnings, but I’ve been struggling with some issues ever since Version 3.6; First every website that uses the Helvetica Font, became  Arial as from Version 3.6; Then the Delicious plugin that I love so much, was no longer compatible on version 4.0 and up,  fortunately I found a way to install it and went through the tweak in every Release ( since every time I update it, the Delicious plugin broke again, they fixed this on Version 6.0 and up ) , but now that Firefox 7 is released and is supposed to be better, faster and less memory consuming, it turns out that every now and then it crashes.
Since updating to Firefox 7 , after browsing and working with it for a while , every website  I load just sit there forever trying to load, but never actually doing so. This issue has only started since the Firefox 7 update, it never occurred in prior versions , and does not happen in Chrome which I am using now, despite not really liking it. So I went nuts trying to figure out what was going on, so here is a list of the things that I tried in my attempt to fix the issue. ( You can skip to the solution, this list was made to save you some time on the things that you shouldn’t do ).

• I have tried running it in Safe Mode yet the problem remains.
• I have done a clean reinstalled of it , twice now,
• I have disabled every add-ons or themes added upon reinstall and again the problem persists.
• My internet connection is good so it is not a problem with that, which Chrome or the ugly explorer performing this task properly confirms.
• Finally I started using Chrome since I needed to keep on with my work, but I couldn’t sleep thinking what was happening. I came across a solution, that resolve the problem for a couple of minutes: Every time Firefox froze, I went to >Menu>File>Work Offline , I turned it off and on, then everything went back to normal, but after a couple of minutes everything started freezing again.

So Finally today I stumble upon a solution, that was easy to perform and worked like a charm, so here it is:

1. In the address bar, type about:config
2. If it shows up, click on I’ll be careful
3. Filter for network.http.max-connections
4. Click on network.http.max-connections
5. Change this from 256 to 48
6. Restart Firefox

That’s it , after restarting it, the problem will be fixed and you will be able to work for hours on the best browser around.

If you are more of the Visual Kind, then here are some images to follow..

So here is the GEEK explanation of this problem ( Feel Free to skip it, if your are one of those who gets a headache when us geeks begin our code talk ). The developers at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ said that they did the 256 limit because at first the limit was at 30. That limit was global, it was different than the per host limit of 6 which remained unchanged. The primary problem with the low limit was that it forced valid idle connections to be closed in order to meet demand for connections to different hosts. This used to happen a lot, and of course some fraction of those connections we close would have been useful in the future. There are some pages that involve more than 5 hosts and therefore exhaust the pool all by themselves. the resources used to manage an idle connection in the client are pretty minimal, even the kernel. So the guys went up to 256 on the new Versions but I think this change make Firefox slower, 256 is too much, so after testing developers tried out 48 , and so far it works.

Thank the Firefox Community Forums for posting every bug and helping us by always finding a solution.

Do you want certain articles from your WordPress Blog to be accessed only by logged-in members?

You don’t have to install a plugin to turn your WordPress Blog into a membership site, you just have to unlock some features that WordPress comes with out of the box, but many users simply doesn’t know about.

You can use this feature for:

• Online education centers where registered students can access their learning material
• Share download links or information for member only visitors
• A place to gather ideas for a project restricted to team members only.
• Valuable Information worth sharing to subscribers

You can password protect it so that only the users that are logged in to your blog are allowed the access to your post. This option is available on your ‘add new post’ under the publish box. You have to click on ‘edit’ next to ‘visibility public’, change the settings and add a password if you want it protected and then click publish.

Giving an article a private members only feature turns it onto something you can sell, or something to help you gain new susbcribers. Of Course this information that you are going to lock has to be very important and appealing in your niche, to be able to turn your visitors into subscribers.

Remember that by using less plugins you optimize the performance of your WorPress Blog, when it comes to user experience,  you would prefer sacrificing the comfort of setting parameters in the dashboard , than having a slow blog that scares visitors away.

WordPress comes with lots of features, some of them are hidden, some can be fired up by a simple shortcode and some have been in front of us all this time and we haven’t even notice.

Stick around and let us show you some cool tweaks to turn your WordPress Blog into something Amazing.

Would you like your Landing Page to look amazing by using the latest BuzzSpeak words and pointing out why you think your product is the best or would you like to get results?

Results!! Ofcourse. Creating a Landing Page is all about the results and conversions, is about how your audience perceives your product, because at the end is them who are going to buy it not you.

The first thing you have to remember is that you have to respect your audience by telling them your story straight, You can achieve this by following  this simple rules to communicate effectibly with them:

1. SIMPLICITY: If you want your audience to buy what you have  for sale on your landing page, do not  make them learn a new language. Because when people feel they are not smart enough to understand what you are offering them, they feel they are not smart enough to do buy your product or service.
2. BRILLIANCE: When you offer a product or service that will bring a great solution to your client, always remember that You are not the brilliant one  for bringing them the solution, they are the brilliant ones for bringing your solution to the table. Always take some time to think how your solution will make your client shine to his or her group.
3. TIME: The greatest of all solutions save time. Tell  how your product or service will save them time on achieving their goal and you will surely make the sale. Take a look at our Landing Page on Setting up a Blog For For Free, it sure will help you save weeks or months when starting a new Blog. Remember Time is Money
4. USABILITY: Your product or service does not only have to save your audience time, but it has to be simple enough for them to operate. Offer  easy to use solutions, do not ever expect them to change their routines to get your product up and running.

Always remember this: “The problem is not the audience, it is you ” Yeah I know it is hard to digest but as soon as you learn how to Take a walk in your client’s shoes the sooner you will achieve success and end up with a high converting money making LandingPage.

“The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein – it rejects it.”

P.B. Medawar

First of all , what is a Keyword? Well a keyword is a word or phrase a person enters in a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing.

You must learn how to develop a Keyword Strategy before starting your blog or website, by following this simple rules, and chances are you are going to attract a lot of visitors from the start by ranking high with your predifine keywords.

More and more consumers are finding online business through search engines. These companies can be found through their keywords. Fortunately, you can optimize your blog or site around the keywords that relate to your business. This increases the opportunities for people to discover your blog or site by searching with those keywords, which drives more and better quality leads for your business.

Even if you do not know exactly which keywords will get the best people to find your business, there are ways to determine the popularity and competitiveness of some keywords, like Google Adwords Tools, where you can also test and analyze the effectiveness of different keywords on how they can attract visitors to your site.

Here are 3 Step to plan your Keyword Strategy

Create a list of 5 keywords relevant to your business.

Never think on how you would search for your product but think how your target market would be searching for your product. For small and medium companies, the key words are not your brand. Instead, think of words that are at the heart of your product or service in question.

Select keywords based on difficulty and relevance.

Some common words like “SEO” or “BLOGGING” are very competitive, making it harder to rank well for them. If you are a small or medium-sized companies, you may decide to choose less competitive keywords more closely related to your business. A higher number of keyword searches, is more competitive. You can use Google’s keyword tool to determine the number of searches a specific keyword.

Design and optimize your website around your keywords.

Now that you have chosen your keywords, you should include in your blog or website, by using them on your articles, content, social media, comments, etc.

Now take these keywords and print them on a piece of paper and keep it around your working area, so you will always remember to use them, this way you will increase your website’s chances of ranking high with does keywords.