Hi John,

I have one doubt. What plugin do you use to create the Archives page http://www.johntp.com/archives/

I have searched many places but didn’t find an answer.

I don’t use any plugin to create the Archive page, I just use this code:

<h3>Browse by Month</h3>
<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives('show_post_count=1'); ?>
</ul>
<h3>Browse by Category</h3>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_cats('hierarchical=0&optioncount=1'); ?>
</ul>

You may also use a WordPress plugin called Clean Archives. I have not tried this plugin but have seen some bloggers using it to display all the posts of their blog on the archive page.

Here are two easy to use WordPress plugins that should make managing your 125×125 ads a lot easier: UBD Block Ad and WP125.

Watch the below video to find out how they work:

You can watch the video in higher quality from here.

If you like the video, please rate it on YouTube and you may also want to subscribe to my YouTube videos to be notified of any videos I upload to YouTube in the future.

I tried reinstalling the plugin, and also tried clicking ‘Update Tweets’ and even ‘Reset Tweet Checking’ buttons but it did not work.

Finally I decided to delete the Twitter Tools table from my blogs database and reinstall Twitter Tools WordPress Plugin and it worked

Hope this helps those of you who faced the same problem.

By default the message shown is "If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!" and disappears after three visits.

I have been using this plugin for the past few days on my hardware review blog. Here’s a screenshot of it in action:

Installation is easy. All you have to do is upload the what_would_seth_godin_do.php file to your plugins folder and activate it. The plugin also allows you to customize the message, its lifespan, and its location.

Download the What would Seth Godin do plugin from here.

1. Secure your /wp-admin/ directory – lock down your wp-admin folder so that only certain IP addresses can access that directory
2. Make an empty wp-content/plugins/index.html file – it helps prevent people from finding out which plugins you use. If you use an outdated plugin, someone could hack your blog by exploiting a bug. To prevent people from viewing which plugins you have installed, just create a blank index.html file and upload it to your plugins folder.
3. Subscribe to the WordPress Development blog – you could subscribe to the development blog to be alerted as soon as a new WordPress version is released. Upgrade your WordPress blog as soon as possible or it could be hacked. I haven’t subscribed as we already get notified of a new WordPress version from the dashboard.
4. Hide your WordPress version: by default, WordPress theme’s have a line in the header.php to display the current version of WordPress you use (can be found by viewing source). Since anyone can find your WordPress version this way, your blog is prone to hackers until you upgrade to the latest version. To prevent displaying your WordPress version, just open your theme’s header.php file and look for the following line<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>” /> and replace it with <meta content="WordPress" name="generator" />

Twitter is a great service that most of us use to let our friends and family know what we are doing. But as a blogger you may have also wanted to let your readers  know what you are doing.  I have been displaying my Twitter status on this blog for some time now. It’s a great way to keep readers updated on what we are doing as well as to put up something short that you don’t want to write a post on (like to ask your readers to vote for your blog post on Digg or when you want to share an interesting post on another blog with your readers).

There are many Twitter tools for WordPress blogs, but the one I use is a modified version of twitterRSS that you can download from here (found via Paul’s blog).

Plugin Installation

• download the ‘twitterrss.txt’ to your computer and rename it to twitterrss.php
• edit the file to add your Twitter RSS URL, home URL, username,  number of twitters to display, etc (your Twitter RSS link can be found at the bottom of your Twitter page)
• Upload the file to your WordPress Plugins folder and activate it
• Add <?php get_twitterRSS(); ?> in your theme where you want it displayed

That’s it. You should be able to immediately see your Twitter status displayed on your blog. 

By the way, this is my Twitter page incase you would like to follow me

Recently I have been seeing strange characters appearing on many of my posts and some of the pages on this blog. I tried many things but could not find out the reason for this. Yesterday after reading this post on QuickOnlineTips, I realized the reason why I was seeing the strange characters. During a recent WordPress upgrade I had upgraded my wp-config.php file too as I had seen some new additions to it.

This is what I found added to the new wp-config file

define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

Since WordPress Version 2.2, DB_CHARSET was made available to allow designation of the database character set to be used when defining the MySQL database tables.

Warning for those performing upgrades: If DB_CHARSET and DB_COLLATE do not exist in your wp-config.php file, DO NOT add either definition to your wp-config.php file unless you read and understand Converting Database Character Sets. Adding DB_CHARSET and DB_COLLATE to the wp-config.php file, for an existing blog, can cause problems — as Ryan Boren says, “your queries will go boom!”

source: Editing_wp-config.php

Since I had already added the two definitions to my wp-config.php file, I just commented it out and the strange characters seem to have gone

Have you upgraded your wp-config.php file and experienced the same problem?

Got Banners will be very useful for those who sell ads directly to advertisers as it will give all advertisers even exposure. Even if you don’t do direct sales you can still use this plugin to rotate affiliate banners from AdSense, Text Link Ads, Chitika eMiniMalls or any other affiliate program.

You can see this plugin in action on this blog by just refreshing the page (125×125 ads on sidebar). Download Got Banners WordPress Plugin from here

found via JohnChow.com

WP-Sticky is useful when you want to make an announcement on your blog or when you want to make sure that your blog’s visitors see any particular post.

Installation of the plugin is easy, simply upload the folder ’sticky’ to the plugins folder and activate it. Once the installation is over, configure the WP-Sticky options in WP-Admin -> Options -> Sticky. You can find the post’s ‘Sticky‘ Option under ‘Post Sticky Status‘ Options in the ‘Write/Edit Post Screen‘.

There are three options – Announcement, Sticky and Normal

Difference between Announcement Posts and Sticky Posts

Posts marked as ’sticky’ will only stay on top of all the posts which is posted on the same day as the sticky post whereas posts marked as ‘announcement’ will stay on top of all posts.

You may want to read this post by the plugin author if you have not understood the difference.

Download WP-Sticky

I first wanted to use this plugin but then decided not to when it showed yesterdays feed count when tested with EasyPHP.

Update: There is an ‘Update interval’ option that will update the feed count every 60 minutes.

Feed Count Plugin Options

If you decide to use Feed Count WordPress plugin, be sure to enable Awareness API for your feedburner account (you can find it on the Publicize tab on your feedburner account).

Also check out the 51 RSS Buttons put up by Bloggers Journey.