SearchMarked.com
I search, I bookmark, I write, You learn.

As if I didn’t have enough to do, I have decided to roll my own blog in Ruby on Rails. I am doing it for the learning experience that it will give me.

In usual Searchmarked.com fashion, I want my readers to learn along with me. So, I will be exposing the blog at its various stages of development. Ugly and all . I will be posting updates, including code example snippets here at Searchmarked.com until I get the RollingABlog.com blog running with RSS.

Keep checking back at RollingABlog.com for the URL to the blog. I will also let you know here when it is available. So, remember to subscribe to the Searchmarked.com RSS feed!

Happy Learning!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Ruby on Rails, Rolling A Blog

Searchmarked.com Tip

A friend of mine decided to Join the Wordpress Revolution and purchase the Wordpress Revolution Theme. Overall, he was very happy with the theme. After all, you can’t do a Google search for “Best Wordpress Magazine Theme” without seeing Revolution come up.

However, he had a small problem when he first installed the theme, which turned out to no fault of Revolution and very easy to fix. Upon changing to his shiny, new theme, he got the below error message:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function the_content_limit()

The fix was dead simple. All he had to do was install and activate the Limit Content plugin that comes with the Revolution Theme. That’s it. That’s the fix.

Sometimes the best solutions are the easiest. After activating the plugin, everything worked smoothly and the Revolution Theme is just plain gorgeous.

If you would like to Take Your Blog to a Higher Level I would highly recommend the Revolution Theme.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress Themes, Blogging

Searchmarked.com Tip

I get a lot of questions on how I created my Popular page on Searchmarked.com. I use a combination of Lester Chan’s wp-postviews plugin and some thinking outside the box (literally) to accomplish this.

This recipe requires that plugin to work so follow the steps below to get started:

-Download wp-postviews

-Install wp-postviews on your Wordpress blog

-Read the usage instructions

-I used the below scenario for my page

From the readme:

• To Display Most Viewed Post
• Use:


<?php if (function_exists('get_most_viewed')): ?>
<ul>
<?php get_most_viewed(); ?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>

The first value you pass in is what you want to get, ‘post’, ‘page’ or ‘both’.

The second value you pass in is the maximum number of post you want to get.

Default: get_most_viewed(’both’, 10);

-Now the trick is to actually get this code on the page. As you probably know, you can’t put php code straight into a wordpress page or blog post. This is where you have to think outside the box (the text box in this case).

-You need to create a new template and assign it to the page. The template will contain everything that needs to show up on the page, including the blog skin itself. Nothing will actually be written in the page itself (hence thinking outside the box).

-To create your own page template all you need to do is use the following code at the top of your php file:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Popular
*/
?>

-The rest is just normal php and html.

-Our template will use the code from /wp-content/themes/YourTheme/page.php as its base.

-Copy and paste the code from /wp-content/themes/YourTheme/page.php into a new file named popular.php if you wish.

-Make room at the top for the following code to make popular.php into a page template:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Popular
*/
?>

-Look for a line similar to the following:

<?php the_content(); ?>

-Place the code for your wp-postviews page under this line.

-For example, here is the code for my Popular page:

<h2>Below are the top 10 posts on Searchmarked.com.</h2>
<?php if (function_exists('get_most_viewed')): ?>
<ul>
<?php get_most_viewed(); ?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>

-Now save this file as popular.php or whatever you want to name it.

-Upload it to your /wp-content/themes/YourTheme/ directory.

-Now create a new page for your popular posts and name it whatever you like (I named mine popular).

-Leave the page blank and choose the page template that you just uploaded for it.

-Now publish the page with the new “popular.php” template and you’re all done.

That’s it! You should now have a popular posts page. Happy Posting!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Wordpress, PHP, Plugins

Google Query: Wscript.Shell Application redirection output

I was trying to run ipconfig in one of my vbscripts using wscript.shell and the run method. However, I was trying to redirect the output to a text file. It just wasn’t working. It was a combination of those tricky double quotes and me not knowing the proper syntax to accomplish this from inside a vbscript. Thankfully I found the answer quickly after some googling.

There was a post at the ScriptingAnswers.com forum that had a solution to my problem. Basically, it can be summed up with the following code:

Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
strRun = "%comspec% /c ipconfig.exe > " & AddQuotes("C:\temp\ipconfig.txt")
objShell.Run strRun, 1, True
Function AddQuotes(strInput)
AddQuotes = Chr(34) & strInput & Chr(34)
End Function

The function AddQuotes takes care of the double quoting issues by surrounding whatever is input (using the built in strInput function) into the AddQuotes function at the beginning of the script with additional quotes using the built in Chr(34) function.

As for the %compspec% /c syntax. That is covered in this Microsoft KB Article.

That’s it! You should now be able to redirect the output of any shell command using this technique. Happy Scripting!

Technorati Tags: VBScript, Microsoft, Windows, Scripting

After reading his free whitepaper on building a successful blog as a business, I had to learn more from Yaro Starak. His advice made so much sense to me, I can’t believe I hadn’t approached blogging from this perspective before. You can download the free report below:

Click here to download the Blog Profits Blueprint

I started to follow Yaro’s writing and came upon these invaluable tips that every blogger should know about generating more traffic:

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

Google Query: hide password in vbscript

Sometimes you may need to prompt the user for a password in one of your vbscripts. No big deal right? It wouldn’t be except that the password can be seen in plain text as the user types it in. There is no way that I know of to hide the password typed in with regular vbscript.

Fortunately, I found a very useful function at the Quick Test Professional blog. It calls upon *shudder* Internet Explorer to create a password box for the user to type in the password. Because it uses Internet Explorer, the password field text is hidden when it is typed in. The code for the function, as well as an example of using it can be downloaded below (just change the *.txt extension to *.vbs).

Download the Script here

Technorati Tags: VBScript, Security

Searchmarked.com Tip

I don’t remember exactly where I found this little hack or I would have put the usual google query with a link to the source in this post. So whoever you are out there, thank you. I love the WP-Postviews plugin, but I found out after some Googling that it does not work with PHP 4 (only PHP 5). You will get the following error:

MBCS in html_entity_decode()!

Fortunately, if your site uses utf-8 encoding you can use the following one line hack to work around the PHP 4 incompatibility.

Make sure you make a backup of your wp-postviews.php file before you edit it.

-Open up wp-postviews.php in your favorite text editor.

-Look for the following line:

$text = html_entity_decode($text, ENT_QUOTES, get_option('blog_charset'));

-Replace the line with the following:

$text = utf8_decode($text);

That’s it! WP-Postviews should work perfectly now. It did for me at least . Thanks for the awesome plugin Lester!

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, Plugins, Programming, PHP

Google query: vbscript on start menu

I was playing around with one of the VBScripts that I written and I was trying to get it to pin to the start menu. The only problem is that pinning to the start menu is only available to applications. So I did some googling and came upon a post at Renegade’s Random Tech Blog that helped me indirectly.

I went through his instructions about using iexpress to package the vbscript file and they didn’t work for me (Sorry, Renegade). However, his post was the catalyst for my solution. One of the anonymous commenters mentioned that you could just do this with a shortcut. Here’s how:

-Create a new shortcut and point it to wscript.exe

-Click next and name the shortcut the same as your vbscript if you wish

-Click finish. You should now have a shortcut to wscript.exe (the windows script host used to execute vbscript. This by itself will not do what you want.

-Now right-click and go to the properties of your new shortcut.

-In the “Target:” field you should put the path to the vbscript file right after “%windir%\system32\wscript.exe” In my case, my complete “Target:” box looked like this:

%windir%\system32\wscript.exe c:\temp\searchmarked.vbs

-Now click “OK”. You should be able to test the shortcut by double-clicking on it. What an awesome vbscript!

-Once you have verified that the shortcut worked, you can right-click on it and choose “pin to start menu.”

-Voila! There is my vbscript pinned to the Windows start menu.

That’s it! Happy Scripting!

Technorati Tags: VBScript, Windows, Scripting

Searchmarked.com Tip

This tip requires that you host your Wordpress blog yourself and it’s easier to accomplish with Wordpress 2.5.

I get a few questions on how I implement the Google Custom Search that I have on Searchmarked.com under the Bookmark Search section. It’s actually quite easy.

-The first thing you need to do is set up a Google Custom Search.

-Once the search is set up, go to your Google Custom Search control panel and click on the code link.

-To have the results show up on your site, choose host the results on your website and the iframe option.

-Choose the url you would like the search results to show up on your site (you will need to create this page on your blog).

-You should now have two code boxes. One for the search box and one for the search results page.

-You need to create a private results page on your Wordpress blog by selecting “keep this page private.”

-Make sure this page name matches the one you used in the url for the Google Custom Search.

-The search box code is what forms your Search Box. Mine is implemented on a separate page by pasting the code in HTML view on the page, but you could just as easily paste this code in a text widget on your sidebar.

-Remember that private search results page you created? That is where you should paste the Search Results Code.

-Now publish the Search Results page (keeping it private) and you are all set.

That’s it! Happy Custom Searching!

Technorati Tags: Google, Wordpress, Custom Search