WP-Sticky is a WordPress Plugin that allows you to put up a post (or posts) before all other posts on your blog’s homepage. The plugin is a modified version of Adhesive which is currently not compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

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‘.

Continue reading ‘WordPress Plugin: WP-Sticky’

Feed Count is a WordPress Plugin that displays the number of subscribers to your feedburner feed in plain text. The plugin allows you to customize the feed count with CSS and I am sure those who don’t like the feedburner chicklet will like this plugin.

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.

Continue reading ‘WordPress Plugin: Feed Count’

This is a guest post by Jake Bouma from JakeBouma.com. If you are interested in writing a guest post too, let me know

If the task of developing a successful blog were divided into different phases of growth, it is my belief that the most difficult step for many bloggers is moving from Phase 1 to Phase 2:

Phase 1: 1 – 20 readers/subscribers. This is mostly family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances who think it’s “neat” that you have a “weblog”.
Phase 2: 21 – 100 readers/subscribers. This includes Phase 1 people as well as people genuinely interested in your niche who discovered your blog via search engines and/or referral links.
Phase 3: 101 – 500 readers/subscribers. Will not be discussed in this article.

You see, in the bloated world of blogging self-help articles, you will find tons of articles promising to “Shoot your RSS subscribers through the roof”, “Become a world-famous blogger in 5 easy steps” and so on. The reality, however, is that for many people becoming a successful blogger considerably more difficult. Here’s how I moved from Phase 1 to Phase 2, starting with a single post.

Continue reading ‘How To Become A Semi-Successful Blogger’

Ades just let me know about his newly launched site, UserInterfaceIcons, that is dedicated to providing high quality free icons to software and web application developers. You are also welcome to use them on your websites and blogs.

The icons are available in different sizes and are in the PNG format with transparent background.

Continue reading ‘Free Icons For Download’

Have you ever wanted to be online on Google Talk and at the same time appear idle to your friends? Google Talk does not provide built-in functionality to allow you to control your idle status but by installing a simple program called gAlwaysIdle you can be always idle as well as never idle to other Google Talk users.

Once you have installed the program, right click on Google Talk on the taskbar and you will be able to see three new options- ‘Normal Idle’, ‘Always Idle’ and ‘Never Idle’.

Continue reading ‘How To Make Google Talk Status Always Idle’

This post is to reward regular commenters of this blog by linking good posts from their blogs and sending them some traffic. If you would like to get rewarded too, all you have to do is start commenting regularly on this blog.

I hope you enjoy reading these blog posts

• How To Group Chat in Google Talk – Madhur Kapoor
• FriendFeed – One feed to keep track of all your friend’s activities – Shankar Ganesh
• Tips for instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger – indyank
• How to Achieve Blogging Immortality – David Bradley
• 7 Free Anti Spyware Softwares – Nirmal
• TNX.net: Innovative Way Of Trading Text Links – Simonne
• How to Scan your RAM with Windows Vista Memory Diagnostic Tool – Shivaranjan
• Yahoo Messenger Tips and Tricks – Keith Dsouza
• How to Read all your Emails from Gmail – Vijay
• 12 habits of successful bloggers I found interesting – Mani

This is a guest post by Keith Dsouza from Techie Buzz. If you are interested in writing a guest post too, let me know

Images can say more than a thousand words. There was never a more truthful saying than this. Images make your posts livelier giving users a clear picture of what you are trying to explain.

Not only do images spice up your posts it also allows you to depict in a visual way what you want to explain to your readers. I tend to use a lot of images while I write how to articles allowing the user to have a view of what exactly they need to do.

While hosting your images you can either choose to host it on your own server or use a third party service like Flickr or Image Shack. There are certain advantages and disadvantages in choosing either of these options.

Here is a detailed comparison which will help you make a decision on where you should host your images.

Continue reading ‘Image Hosting, What is the Best Option?’

Do you take a lot of time to write a blog post? A lot depends on how well you can type. If you don’t type well, you should try out some freely available Typing Tutor softwares to improve yourself. The better you get at typing, the lesser time you need to spend on writing the post.

While there are many softwares available that teach you to type faster, the freeware that I liked the most so far was TypeFaster that teaches you how to touch-type and improve your typing speed.

This program has been designed to teach people to touch-type. Touch-typing is a skill that can be learnt with practice and perseverance. Touch-typing is a method of typing which uses 8 fingers and one thumb. Touchtypists do not have to look at the keyboard to find the keys they want to type.

When you first start TypeFaster, it introduces you to the software and gives you basic info like what are homekeys and which keys each of your finger should rest on. Once you are ready you can start the tutor.

Continue reading ‘Improve Your Typing Speed With TypeFaster’

Due to the recent PageRank drop I faced by selling text links on this blog, I decided to remove Text Link Ads and let TLA team know about it by sending them the following email:

Dear Text Link Ads Team,

I will stop using Text Link Ads at the beginning of next month (November
1st) due to the recent PageRank drop I faced by selling text links on my
blog (www.johntp.com).

My blog had a PageRank 6 and now its dropped to 4.

I will be uninstalling the Text Link Ads plugin next month (November 1st).

Regards,
JohnTP

and they replied back that they had refunded all the advertisers, meaning the advertisers had almost one month of FREE advertising on my blog!

Continue reading ‘Text Link Ads Refuses To Pay Me This Month!’

Looks like I am the only blogger who hasn’t talked about the latest PageRank update so far. So here goes…there were two batches of PageRank drop – in the first some sites like JohnChow.com, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com and this blog itself (from PR 6 to 5) that were selling text links were hit.

The second batch took place yesterday and I came to know from DailyBlogTips that this blog’s PR had dropped again from 5 to 4 this time. Many blogs were hit in the second batch including popular ones like Engadget, Problogger, Copyblogger, John Chow, QuickOnlineTips and Weblog Tools Collection!

Continue reading ‘Google Drops PageRank For Many Websites’