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Tips: How to Install and Fix the New ‘ShareThis’ WordPress Plugin

August 26, 2010 By James View Comments

ShareThis recently updated their WordPress plugin to allow you to choose a bunch of great new styles and display options. However, I found out that it took a little trial and error to get it to play nicely and do what I wanted it to do.

IMPORTANT: It was my experience if you already have the ShareThis plugin installed and simply update it, your options won’t show up on your page. You need to first deactivate, then delete the plugin, then reinstall it.

Fixing the Weird Little Lines that Show up at the Bottom of the New ‘ShareThis’ Plugin in Horizontal mode

Once you have the new plugin up and running, one of the popular options seems to be “Horizontal Count”. The problem is that for some reason the default style associated with that choice gives off funky little lines under the two “share” buttons.

It’s not much but it was enough to bug me so here’s how I fixed it.

You’ll need to be able to edit your head tag and add some style code to that.

Add this code inside style tags somewhere before your /head tag:

.stButton_gradient{background-image:url('http://w.sharethis.com/images/gradient.gif');background-repeat:repeat-x;border-left:1px solid #bfbfbf;border-right:1px solid #bfbfbf;border-bottom:1px solid #bfbfbf;padding-left:2px;padding-right:2px;padding-top:0px !important;padding-bottom:0px !important;line-height:16px;font-size:16px;font-family:serif;}

You can see the difference between the image and the actual buttons below. For some reason, the default padding the plugin puts on those buttons causes it to break just a little bit. What the code above does is simply remove the bottom and top padding.

If you try it, post your results in the comments so we can take a look.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: css, plugins, sharethis, Social Media, style, Tips, WordPress Tips

Deleting a Post From Your RSS Feed

August 4, 2010 By James View Comments

I was working on cleaning up some old posts on my site earlier today and wound up accidentally publishing a post I meant to delete. If you’ve ever had this happen to you then you probably know that even if you catch your mistake immediately and proceed to unpublish or delete the post in question it’s too late, it’s already been pulled into your RSS feed.

Obviously if it was important enough to delete the post immediately it’s important enough to get it out of your RSS feed. Depending on what the content is this could range from a minor annoyance to oh my god I just crapped myself.

If you’re leaning toward the latter then you more than likely are freaking out about how to get the post you already deleted from your site out of your RSS feed. The bad news is if you’re not using feedburner to handle your feeds you’re on your own. The good news is if you’re using feedburner to handle your feeds then removing a post from your feed is quick and easy.

Step 1: After you’ve deleted the post in question from your site, go to login to feedburner and click on the feed in question.
Step 2: Once you’re in the correct feed click on the “troubleshootize” tab.

Step 3: Scroll down until you see the “Resync Now” button and click it.

Although it’s called the “Nuclear Option” it’s not nearly as serious as it sounds. The only thing the resync does is to delete all of your current archived RSS posts and immediately crawl your site for existing posts that belong in the feed. Since you’ve already deleted the post you want gone, feedburner rebuilds your entire feed without the post in question. That’s all there is to it.

For the record, I’m not saying that there isn’t a way to get rid of a post in your feed if you’re not using feedburner, I’m just saying that, if there is a way, I’m not familiar with it. If you know of a solution for non-feedburner users feel free to share it in the comments section and let us know.

Filed Under: Blogging, Tips Tagged With: Blogging, feedburner, feeds, rss, Tips

Zen and the Art of Blogging: Hosted vs. Self-Hosted – Where to Begin

August 3, 2010 By James View Comments

One of the first things you need to do once you’ve decided that you want to become a kick ass, famous blogger that can change the world with a few keystrokes is to decide what type of platform you your blog to be built on. No matter who you are, or how big or small your audience will be initially, everyone has to make this decision before they begin.

First, let’s start off with some basic definitions so that we’re clear on what we’re talking about.

Self-Hosted

Choosing a self-hosted blog means that you, not the blogging company, will be taking care of hosting your site. If you choose to go with a self-hosted blog you’ll need to make a few more decisions like which platform to use and where to host it. As far as the choice of platform goes, for the purpose of this post, I’ll only be dealing with WordPress.org. For hosting, that’s up to you. You’ll need to start off with a simple hosting package from some place like GoDaddy (affiliate link) or Bluehost.

While a self-hosted blog gives you the most flexibility to what you want with your blog, it also means that you, or someone you hire, will be responsible for virtually every aspect of you site. Fortunately WordPress now has an automatic update feature so when a new version is released all you need to do is click a link that shows up at the top of your dashboard and the update will be handled for you. Installation shouldn’t be an issue either considering virtually every hosting provider worth its salt (certainly the two mentioned above) have one-click installs of WordPress that handle everything from the database creation to populating the initial files for you.

Hosted Blogging Solutions

Hosted blogging platforms do one thing spectacularly. They let you focus solely on content. Once your site is set up you never have to worry about what’s going on in the background, upgrades and general maintenance is taken care by the blogging platform itself.

  • WordPress.com – WordPress.com is a hosted and slightly crippled version of WordPress.org. The main difference is that you can’t run ads on your site. In my experience the ability to theme a WordPress.com site isn’t quite as flexibility as the self-hosted version. WordPress.com is free but they do charge for certain add-ons such as using a custom domain name.
  • Typepad.com – Typepad has been around for a long time and has a lot to offer the small-business types. One thing Typepad does well are their clean, professional looking themes. Typepad is a paid service.
  • Tumblr.com – Tumblr is a “short” blogging platfrom that makes it easy to post a wide variety of content while drilling each post down to the specific kind of content you are posting.
  • Posterous.com – Another “short” blogging platform boasts it’s the easiest way to post and it probably is. The only thing you have to do to start your blog on Posterous is send a post to post@posterous.com and you’re all set.

If you’re looking for a hosted blogging solution you’re going to need to do a lot more research to find out which one of these is right for you. Don’t be afraid to sign up for an account and play around with the dashboard of each and see which one you’re more comfortable with. Even Typepad, which is the only service that charges, has a 30-day free trial so you can get in there and see what it’s like.

This is by no means a complete list of every blogging platform out there. These are just a few that I’ve had a good deal of experience with and would feel comfortable recommending to someone who asked my opinion.

Filed Under: Blogging, Tips Tagged With: Blogging, posterous, Tips, tumblr, typepad, WordPress Tips, zen and the art of blogging

Five Chrome Extensions That Will Make Your Life Easier

July 20, 2010 By James View Comments

One of the reasons I was so hesitant to move from Firefox to Chrome was that I had my FF tricked out with so many custom plugins that it really slowed me down to try and surf without them.

Now that Chrome has opened up the floodgates and allowed extensions, the playing field is starting to even out. Here are five quick and easy Chrome Extensions that come in handy and will make your life easier.

  1. Webpage Screenshot – While not as slick as Firefox’s ScreenGrab! it still does the job. This is probably one of my most used extensions.
  2. AdBlock – Basically the same concept as the FF version but since Chrome doesn’t fully support the code it’s not quite as effective as it is on FF but it still gets the job done.
  3. MeasureIt! – I love this extension. This is actually one that I could never find on FF and have always wanted. MeasureIt! is a simple tool that let’s you measure the width of something right on your browser. It’s a lot easier than doing a screencap, firing up Photoshop and measuring it that way. This app will save you lots of time when trying to figure out the dimensions of something you like.
  4. Google Mail Checker – It’s simple, that’s exactly what it does. You don’t have to worry about keeping Gmail open in your browser, Google Mail Checker lets you know how many unread emails you have in your inbox and once you click on it, it opens a new tab and takes you right to your inbox. Pretty handy, especially if you’re waiting on an important email and don’t want to keep hitting refresh all the time.
  5. Eye Dropper – This is another app I use a lot. Again, it’s not quite as good as its FF companion but it still does the job. If you need to find the color on a page this will definitely get the job done for you.

Honorable Mention: Web Developer - This didn’t make the list because I think it still needs a little bit of work. The Web Developer add-on for Firefox is arguably one of the best plugins out there for anyone building websites. This plugin has a lot of potential but still seems a little clunky and harder to use.

There you have it, enjoy. Let me know what some of your favorite Chrome extensions are and maybe I’ll check them out.

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: browser, chrome, extensions, google, Tips, Web Apps

How to Tune Out the Droning of the Vuvuzelas on Your Samsung TV

June 16, 2010 By James View Comments

How to adjust the equalizer on your Samsung TV to drown out some of the incessant vuvuzela noise.

Samsung Vuvuzela Killer

  1. Press the menu button
  2. Scroll down to Sound > Equalizer option
  3. 100Hz all the way up
  4. 300Hz all the way down
  5. 1K all the way up

This is what I found works best for me. You may need to play around and tweak to find something that works better for you. It doesn’t completely tune out the vuvuzelas all together but it definitely helps drown them out a bit, especially when the commentators are speaking.

If you give it a shot let us know how it worked in the comments.

Also, while I have Samsung tvs, I presume that the basic equalizer options are the same on most tvs that actually have an equalizer so go ahead and give it a shot. Look at it this way, it’s not like the sound could actually get more annoying so what do you have to lose?

Filed Under: Tips, Uncategorized Tagged With: equalizer, samsung, television, Tips, vuvuzelas, world cup 2010

Skype and Google Voice Finally Start Playing Nice

June 10, 2010 By James View Comments

It seems clear that I’ll probably never get my wish that Posterous and WordPress get wasted and make beautiful blogging babies, but my dream of Skype and Google Voice hooking up is finally a reality.

Skype has always allowed you to change the number that shows up on caller ID when you call with skype, the one caveat has been that it has to be a mobile number because they way Skype verifies that you actually own the number is by sending you a text to your mobile device which you then enter into Skype.

For Google Voice users this seemed like the perfect match, the only problem was that, for a long time, Google Voice wouldn’t accept text messages from Skype, meaning you couldn’t verify your Google Voice number as your Skype caller ID. There is a workaround to this but it’s more of a hassle than having to open up Skype and just dial.

I just found out that recently Google Voice adjusted its settings and now allows you to receive that verification text from Skype meaning that you can use Skype all day long and make sure the calls come back into your Google Voice mailbox.

How to set up a Google Voice Number as your Skype Caller ID

  1. Log in to your account at Skype.com. Note: this is not the same as logging into the desktop client. Go to the account tab and select Caller ID.
  2. Enter your Google Voice number.
  3. Check your Google Voice inbox. You should almost immediately receive a text in your Google Voice inbox with a confirmation code.
  4. Type or copy the code into Skype and click the “verify” button.

That’s it, within 24 hours your Google Voice number should start showing up on caller IDs whenever you make a call with Skype.

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: google voice, skype, sms, Tips, voip
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