Just finished reading Darren’s post about WordPress plugins, I found four plugins are useful for my blog.
Simple Tags: the most attractive function to me is the Tag Suggestion. Suggestions come from Yahoo, Tag The Net and your old tags. Another useful function is the Auto Tags.
WordPress.com Stats: I have Google Analytics on my blog, but it’s said that WordPress.com Stats updates in real time, I would like to give it a shot.
WP-Polls: it’s time to poll. This is an Ajax poll system, very easy to use. Update: I found that the WP-Polls can only use in Sidebar, not for single post. And you need to create a page for it. I don’t like that, so I deactivated this plugin.
Ajax Edit Comments: allow users to edit their own comments for a limited time.
I will create a poll for my WordPress Theme, Black n White, to find out what visitors think about it. You can check out my theme and poll it here.
Published at: 03:11 am - Saturday November 01 2008
This is my second WordPress theme, I called it BlacknWhite because of the main colors of the theme are black and white. I created this theme according to l.m.orchard’s blog. I added some small icons to improve the design. It’s released under GPL license, you can download it for free.
If you found any bug or you want to say something about the theme, please leave a comment below.
Theme Name: BlacknWhite
Theme Version: 1.0.2
Theme Author: Zack
Theme Category: Two Column Themes
Theme Properties: 2 columns, Fixed width, Widget ready, Right sidebar, Black, White
SuSuNa.com is a micro-blogging website based on Laconi.ca. SuSuNa.com supports Twitter, you can add your Twitter account to SuSuNa.com, everytime you post a message on SuSuNa.com, the message will be sent to Twitter, too.
It’s very easy to integrate Twitter to SuSuNa.com, click Setting one the menu, and then select the Twitter tag. You can now enter your Twitter account and password, remember to check the first two options. You will get the same functions as Twitter.
Try to post a message on SuSuNa.com, and then go to check your Twitter account, you can see your message from Laconica.
I tried to set up a web server on my own computer, I found it difficult to set up a DNS server on Windows, and then I came to ZoneEdit, a website offers free DNS service. I like the design of their home page, it’s just a list of services they provide, very clear and direct. They have Dynamic DNS allowing home users(cable modem, DSL, dial up) to run a website on their own pc, which is exactly what I need. They also have WebForward and MailForward. If you are looking for free DNS service, you may like to try ZoneEdit.
Features of ZoneEdit:
Managed DNS Service - Did your registrar sell you a domain name, then leave you without any DNS? ZoneEdit.com provides DNS, with an easy front end. Just type in a domain name and an IP address on a web page, then browse to the domain you’ve created, instantly!
Secondary Name Service - ZoneEdit’s high-speed managed network is located across the US/Europe. Adding more DNS servers to your domain results in reliability and speed.
WebForward™ - Do you have a web site with a complicated address? Would you like to have a “www.___.com”? Use our pathed WebForward™ service, and visitors will get transferred automatically!
MailForward™ - Easily forward mail@yourdomain.com to other email addresses using MailForward. You can set up a ‘default’ email for every domain as well.
Free starter web page - No place to park your domain while you develop it? Park it here!
Branded Site - Get your own nameservers and your own control panel to complement your firm’s existing website. Give your clients secure access to only their own domains, and they’ll save you time and money by editing their own DNS entries.
Our Network - All of our servers are colocated at top-tier NOCs, with redundant fiber connectivity, diesel backup and climate-controlled environments. Click here for more info.
Dynamic DNS - Full free dynamic DNS support allowing cable modem, dsl, and dial up users to run web sites on your home pc.
Backup Mail Service - Want to run your own mail server, but you’re afraid of missing important e-mails? Our optional “Store and Forward” service will accept e-mails for you while your mail server is down or unavailable, and redeliver them when you’re back up!
SuSuNa.com is a micro-blogging website, like Twitter.com. It’s powered by Laconi.ca, an open source micro-blogging tool.
I think micro-blogging is quite interesting, you speak out a short sentence to describe what you are doing or feeling now, and the others will respond to you if they’re interested in what you said. I want to have my own micro-blogging website, it turns out to be SuSuNa.com. And thanks to Laconi.ca, because of this great tool, I set up SuSuNa.com in two days with all main features a micro-blogging website should have.
After the installation of Laconi.ca, I activated the FancyURL function, and then I found the Tag page was not able to be visited. I couldn’t figure out what caused this problem. But after I registered the first user, everything became normal.
One thing about Laconi.ca, I think should be improved is that you can only edit the CSS file of a theme. Which means you cannot change what to be displayed on a page, but only how to be displayed.
SuSuNa.com is online now with full features, there are still something to be done, for example, a new theme is necessary. If you got any idea, feel free to let me know, although I may not be able to implement it.
Published at: 03:10 pm - Wednesday October 22 2008
As a blogger, you may want to use a photo in your post to emphasize your subject. For stock photos, you can buy from iStockPhoto or Fotolia, as low as $1.
If you don’t want to pay for it, there are also some places to find free stock photos. Here I recommend FreePixels, it has over 3,000 photos/images in 37 categories. You may find some useful photos for free there.
Published at: 02:10 am - Wednesday October 22 2008
Open source community changed the way I use my computer and save a lot of money for me. I am using Open Office instead of Microsoft Office. Photoshop is too powerful and expensive, Paint.Net is good enough for me. I blog with WordPress, the browser I am using now is Chromium which is the open source software behind Google Chome. Most softwares in my computer are open source softwares, so I am always want to do something for the open source community. But I am neither a programmer nor designer, I am not sure what I can do.
I found Kalator recently, which is the easiest way to help the open source community as I know.
Kalator is an ad service much like Google™ Ad Sense or Yahoo!™ Ads. The main difference between Kalator and other ad services is Kalator only shows Open Source Project ads. Better still, putting your Open Source project’s ad on Kalator is free of charge.
All we have to do is to put a Kalator Ad on our blog, like what we do with Google Adsense. Kalator Ad shows free ads to promote open source projects. Project teams do not pay for the ads, and the publishers(bloggers) will not get paid, too. If you are already using Google Adsense and you want to keep it, you can use the Proxy Link. Put the Proxy Link into the “ ” section, you can find it by managing your ad units. Therefore Kalator Ads will be shown when Google has no ads for your blog.
For more information about Kalator, you may visit the official website of Kalator: Kalator.com.
- monitoring, 
