MyTutorialz

Check Out My New Widget!

Admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:15:21 +0000

Hey all! I’ve now decided to start making widgets too… and publishing them to Widgetbox, check out my profile at http://widgetbox.com/developer/mytutorialz . My first widget is a multi-search widget called “Webarqie” (styled as “webarqie”, pronnounce: web-ark-ey), take a peek at my widget below, and install it on your own site. What it basically does is allow your visitors to search the major search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Bing for anything – without leaving your website! All good!

MyTemplatez :: New Theme : SleekFeel 1 Pack

Admin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 12:37:06 +0000

I would like to show everyone my new theme! It’s called SleekFeel. SleekFeel has many features, including:

Automatic sizing sidebar.
Drop down menu
Custom-defined h1, h2 and h3 tags
Many more features
ALSO: Now includes SleekFeel Red.

Take a look at a ScreenShot of SleekFeel Black:

Try a demo: http://demo.mytutorialz.fi.st/sleekfeel

SleekFeel 1 Pack Contains a .zip file of SleekFeel Black 1 and SleekFeel Red 1.

iPhone Site (Part 2): HTML

Admin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:12:01 +0000

Assuming you have already seen Part 1 of this series, in the Final Part (2) we will take a look at actually delivering the mobile site to the visitor – this like any other desktop site can be done through good ol’ HTML.

Take a look (and cut’n'paste) the below code into a new html file (in the same directory as your style.css created in the first part of the tutorial). For the purpose of this tutorial – I’ve called my file index.html




My Example Mobile Site





My Example Site


Tagline



This is my mobile site, hard to believe it is so small on a normal browser, but in a mobile browser for iphone, it fits to screen and looks perfect!


© 2010, MyTutorialz

I shouldn’t need to explain the code above if you already know about HTML, but hang in there – what about this line?

This line of code simply scales the content of the page to fit to the screen. So in a desktop browser, the page will normally look like this:

But in a iPhone browser, the content will fit to screen, and the text will also scale to be bigger. The code also stops viewers of the site from using their fingers to zoom in.

Go have some fun creating mobile sites! If you need any help, drop a line below!

Could This Be The Start?

Admin — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:39:42 +0000

Readers, prepare yourselves! Over the last couple of days I have been reading up on developing WordPress Plugins, And you know what? I think I’ve done it! It’s a pretty basic WordPress Plugin, at the moment – all it does is display a Search Box on the Admin Dashboard that let’s you search the web. I’m looking to expand this so that the users of the blog can also search the web, right from the sidebar, I probably won’t submit the plugin to WordPress, but keep it on MyTutorialz. More details to follow!

iPhone Site (Part 1): CSS Style

Admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:18:12 +0000

In the first of this 2 part special series, we will be taking a look at how you can design a simple but quite pretty looking and fast loading iphone website. The good part about having a mobile website (moreover iPhone website) is that some of your visitors will want to access your site through a device such as an iPhone. And the last thing your visitors want is to find your page is too dynamic for mobile browsers, and therefore takes ages to load – due to the vast amount of ads, javascript and other memory-hogging objects crammed onto your page. So it’s a good idea to have a spacey mobile site.

In the first part of this tutorial, we will have a look at developing the required .css file for the mobile site, within the .css file will be the styling commands for our page.

Below is the code you’ll need for your .css file, cut-n-paste this, and scroll down the page for an explanation:

body{
	background-color:#FFF;
	font-family:Arial;
	font-size:10px;
	color:#000;
	border-style:solid;
	border-width:medium;
	border-color:#036;
}
#headtitle{
	background-color:#096;
	height:95px;
	color:#FFF;
	font-size:8px;
	padding:5px;
	margin:0;
}
#headsub{
	background-color:#069;
	height:55px;
	color:#CCC;
	font-size:6px;
	padding:5px;
	margin:0;
}
#content{
	width:100%;
}
#footercont{
	background-color:#036;
	height:35px;
	color:#FFF;
	font-size:5px;
	padding:3px;
	margin:0;

So, basically there is not much to explain here if you understand .css, all this basically does – like I said before – is define how the page should look when loaded in a mobile browser. The .css has been kept nice and simple for faster loading, so there are no “not really required” DIVs defined here.

In the next and final part of this series, I will show you the .html page that your mobile visitors will actually see. Stay tuned!

Update: here’s Part 2.

One Year On: Happy Birthday MyTutorialz!

Admin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:19:12 +0000

Wow, you’re kidding? It’s been exactly a year today since I launched the first MyTutorialz website back on 9th August 2009! Yes, it only took me a week to make the very first website (using a drag-n-drop editor), which was hosted at the domain (mytutorialz.totalh.com) does everyone remember it? It was really basic and cramped, at the time it seemed as though things couldn’t get any better!

After just 2 months with the first site design, I decided to go one better and make my own site using pure HTML, it was the first site I had ever coded on my own, and for a first go (and probably a bit of a biased opinion) it was actually quite good, the layout was cleaner but darker, it really reflected the site logo!

Then 3 months later, I changed the site layout again – using more advanced CSS, HTML and PHP techniques to really make my site look good, I also moved the blog from WordPress to be hosted on my own domain, which at this point was (mytutorialz.isgreat.org). But things didn’t work out (the free host was about to go into administration – damn the credit crunch), and as a result – I had to take my site elsewhere, it was time for a fresh start.

Finally I found Sitefrost.com which hosts my current website, and provided a better cPanel, at this point, I had decided to change from website and blog format to just a blog which is now hosted at (mytutorialz.fi.st) – and over the past year from all 3 of the domains in total – I have clocked up over 50,000 visitors – which is a hell of alot for the small blog I was planning on! And that’s the story of MyTutorialz’s first birthday!

At this point I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of my visitors and fans for coming to the site, subscribing to me on YouTube, following me on Twitter and basically supporting me and my blog! So at 5.30pm on 9th August 2010, it will be exactly one year on since MyTutorialz launched!

Here’s to another great year!

P.S: Got a suggestion for my blog, something for me to join, tutorial suggestion – please post it in the comment form below – I will happily take your comment into consideration!

Get Users To Interact With Your Blog!

Admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 20:16:05 +0000

Well, these gaps between my posts are getting larger aren’t they? It’s time to start posting more! So – in this post I’ll be looking at the different methods to get visitors more involved with your blog, this will range from plugins to things you can do yourself.

Meebo Bar: Ah, yes the Meebo bar deserves alot of attention! There are alot of social bars out there for your blog, from bars like Wibiya to ones you make yourself, but none seem to compliment your blog/site/whatever like Meebo does. So what’s all the fuss about? Well, like any other bar it floats at the bottom of the screen. BUT: hover over an image in your post, and down flies a ‘dock’ of social networking icons, enabling visitors to share this image with others. Also, from the Admin dashboard – you can also insert items such as your recent Facebook Page Activity, and ‘Like’ this post capabilities. The meebo bar is available from: http://bar.meebo.com/

Reward Your Visitors: Let’s face it – you and I are in this for the freebies, yep? Nothing beats going to a webpage to find that you can enter some sort of competition for free, and win a prize – no matter how big or small, nothing beats it! So, isn’t it a good idea to focus around this on your blog? A few months back, I held a comment competition, here I selected one random commenter from any of my posts to win a prize (vouchers), the uptake was amazing, try for yourself and see!

Be Personal: (In the clean sense!) Talk to your visitors, engage your visitors in the conversation – and let them express themselves via the comment section! As you will see at the bottom of this post I will ask all visitors to share their ideas in the comment form on how to engage visitors in your site. By directly asking visitors a question, increases the likelihood of your visitors dropping a comment on the post. Kerching!

So, have you got your own method that you use? I invite you to share it below… Everyone would be so grateful!

8 Free Social Networking Icons

Admin — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:35:56 +0000

In this post, I attatch 8 social networking icons, that you can save individually and use on your own site/blog for free. Enjoy!

Just a note: In the process of making these icons, I did not use any copyrighted images, all aspects of the icons were made myself.

5 Of The Best Ways To Increase Your Alexa Page Rank

Admin — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:34:03 +0000

Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension – why? Well, it appears that Alexa ranks are dependant on who visits your website with the Alexa toolbar installed or the Firefox alternative.

Encourage visitors to use the Alexa toolbar, you can do this through jQuery pop-ups, banners – however you want, just encourage, encrouage, encourage your visitors to install that toolbar! It will make all the difference!

Use Alexa redirects on your website URL. Do this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.mysite.com . Replace ‘www.mysite.com’ with the www. address of your site. So what effect does this have? Well, if you leave this URL in blog comments, forum posts etc. This directly increases your rank, regardles of whether or not the visitor has the toolbar.

Flaunt Your Address in sites like forums, blogs, and other popular sites – in summary, wherever you think you can get your site name and address, get it in there! But be cautious not to start spamming.

Blog About SEO and SEO related content, such as Alexa – this is one of the things that gets webmasters hyped up! They love to hear about it! So obviously they will read about it, meaning better rank for you!

3 Of The Best Web Editors For Mac

Admin — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 14:54:47 +0000

Most of us these days use a Mac, and they are pretty good in everything they do, there’s just one problem, it’s hard to find a decent free web editor for use on a Mac. Well, help is at hand! In this post I will show you 3 of the best web editors for this OS.

Amaya

I personally use Amaya on my Mac, it’s one of the best web editing experiences I have ever had. In fact who needs Dreamweaver, when you’ve got Amaya? The editor doesn’t just act as a web editor, but also a web editor. Incudes WYSIWYG.

KompoZer

In my opinion, and the words of others KompoZer is also a good WYSIWYG editor, but personally – it’s not as good as Amaya. KompoZer is likely to be a favourite amongst those who where fans of the Nvu software package. They are both quite similar.

Aptana Studio

Aptana Studio is one of the most advanced web editors out there, it too is almost influenced by Dreamweaver, it’s hard to believe it is free!

WordPress 3.0 Finally Released! :D

Admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:20:48 +0000

Well finally, WordPress 3.0 has been released – it is a really good admin interface too! WordPress have posted this video to their blog:

3 Essential Plugins To Mobilize Your Blog

Admin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:20:01 +0000

In this post I will show you 3 of the best plugins and themes for use with your WordPress blog, to enable your visitors to view your blog in a stylish and mobile-friendly theme.

WPTouch

Download: Here

One of the things I love about WPTouch is the fact that it runs and looks just like a native iPhone app, just take a look at the styles and the AJAX coding in the plugin – you can’t fail to notice that it looks like a wep-app – on the plus side – it’s an awesome experience and admin interface!

WordPress Mobile Edition

Download: Here

WordPress Mobile Edition was a plugin that I previously used on this blog before WPTouch. The main reason I changed was because, well – it just wasn’t right for me – as much as the author’s try to make it look like an iPhone app, it does (sort of) but on the whole it just doesn’t – and as a result it looks terribly dull and a bit of an eyesore.

WordPress Mobile Pack

Download: Here

And my final choice of plugins to mobilize your blog is a plugin known as ‘WordPress Mobile Pack’ – it’s a nifty plugin, mainly because it comes with a fine selection of pre-installed themes, and a really comprehensive admin panel!

New Theme : Super Awesome Red

Admin — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:16:49 +0000

Hello, I mentioned in earlier posts that I would now start developing themes for websites (prehaps even WordPress) – that’s why it’s been quiet round here recently.

This is my first theme that I will be posting to this website. So, what does the theme look like? Take a look below!

As you can see the theme has a nice basic layout. And in future releases of the theme, I will extend the features of the theme! So – what are you waiting for? Download now:

Make A CSS Circular Search Box

Admin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 19:03:13 +0000

Well, It’s been a while since I last posted on this blog. (I swear – I’m gonna have to start posting more)! So in this post – I thought it was time I covered another HTML / CSS tutorial. In this post, I will show you how to make a circular search box for your site, just like the one below:

Screenshot taken from my theme: Super Awesome Red. Available soon on this blog!

So, it looks hard to make is it? No. All it is - a text box placed over an image (with margins – using CSS.)

So:

Step 1:

Download the image below – DONT CHANGE THE NAME!

Step 2:

Create a directory on your host (or computer), with this layout:

img – directory

index – html file

style – css file.

With the image above downloaded, save this to the img directory.

Step 3:

Create a CSS file with this code: (style.css)

#search{

	float:right;

	background-image:url(img/searchframe.png);

	background-repeat:no-repeat;

	background-position:center;

}

input.pink {

	background-color: #FFF;

	font-size: 17px;

	font-family:Verdana;

	color:#333;

	border-color:#FFF;

	border-width:thin;

	border-style:none;

	margin-left:45px;

	margin-top:10px;

	margin-bottom:10px;

	margin-right:15px;

}

Step 4:

Now, it’s time to bring it all together in the html file (index.html):

And that will give you the final result! You can downlaod the files below:

2 Free Stunning Sun Graphics

Admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 12:26:12 +0000

Hello,

Included with this post are 2 images which I have created using Adobe Fireworks CS5. The image are based on sunrise and sunset, and are available for free download and use on your website, posters, etc. 2 tutorials showing you how to create these images will follow shortly.

Here they are:

Sunrise

Sunset:

You can download the resource files here:

http://mytutorialz.fi.st/downloads/sunrise-sunset/

MSN Messenger For Mac – Now With Webcam?

Admin — Thu, 20 May 2010 19:04:03 +0000

Hello,

Whilst having a look around on the Mactopia website today, I found that the site has released a new beta of MSN Messenger for Mac beta 8. It also looks like this version included webcam, audio and much more.

I found it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx

Enjoy!

Another Quick Poll

Admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 09:43:40 +0000

Hello,

Please could you answer the poll below, I would be grateful of your help!

[polldaddy poll=3215260]

Blog Closures

Admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:48:55 +0000

Hello,

This is a quick notice, that from the 24th May 2010, my blog will be closed to the public for one week. This will allow me to upgrade plugins, etc. Edit posts, plus other admin activities.

However, people with a MyTutorialz account will still be able to access the blog, by logging in at:

http://mytutorialz.fi.st/login/

Thanks,

MyTutorialz.

An Example WordPress 3.0 Blog

Admin — Sun, 09 May 2010 09:58:02 +0000

Hello everyone, whilst on my daily internet searching I came across a site that is using WordPress 3.0 as the blog version! So, why is it such a big deal? Right? Well, for those of you who don’t know – WordPress 3.0 is the next milestone of the huely popular WordPress blogging system!

And where can this site be found?

It can be found at: http://www.anexamplewordpressthreeblog.totalh.com/ (P.S the author of the blog is uknown, and it looks like it’s a test blog.) You can also see that the theme that is currently in use is the new default Twenty Ten theme!

Splendid stuff!

Site Visits (Part 3): Monitoring Site Content

Admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:10:31 +0000

Now that we know what our site rank is, and how to boost our site rank – it’s time to start monitoring what’s popular on our site. So to do this, there are many ways, however, I will be using StatCounter.com to monitor in this tutorial.

Once you have signed up for a free StatCounter account, and embedded the code into your site, you simply need to monitor your content for about a month, and see what content gets the most views. Whatever proves to be popular you need to try to reproduce more content like this.

Sorry this was a rushed tutorial.

This is the end of the series.

Site Visits (Part 2): 5 Ways To Improve Page Rank

Admin — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:33:54 +0000

Now, in the second part of the series we are going to look at ways to improve upon your page rank, if you scored 7 or over in the last post, there isn’t really a need for you to read this post, but hey – if you want to – i ain’t gonna stop you!

One: If you’re the owner of a non-script site, e.g. a regular site owner, not WordPress – every document will contain tags such as description and keywords. These can be found in the of your document. You should add relevant keywords to help people find your site through search engines, and a good description in under 160 words about your site. If you’re a WordPress owner, you can also install many plugins which can help you do this too. A good example is: All In One SEO.

Two: Join Google’s Webmaster Central. Link. From here you can easily analyze your website stats. By doing this you can also monitor how your website keywords affect your SEO performance. In fact – I use this service, it’s really good (and free!)

Three: Feed Google and other search engines with a good sitemap! Sitemaps are so important to your site, it allows search engines to crawl your website to find all the pages in your site. A sitemap is also something good to use in conjunction with Google Webmaster Central.

Four: Visit popular forums! I will soon be starting a forum here at MyTutorialz! (You can post your site here). However, there are many more popular forums out there. All you need to do is find a forum that is relative to your site, join the forum – and as a signature just add your website link. This will gain you links from popular sites, guaranteed to give you a higher rank!

Five: Encourage other sites to link back to your site. This may work also if you do a bit of ‘give and take’ with the owner of another website, prehaps they display a link to your website, you display one to theirs? Sounds good!

Now watch that figure keep growing!

Site Visits (Part 1): Check Page Rank

Admin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:47:13 +0000

I’m back ! And with a new blog post series, this time not about HTML, staying with the website theme – but looking at how to increase website visits. This tutorial will be an extremely short one!

First: You’re gonna need to see how your site ranks, use the tool below to help you:

Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly:

This free page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

So, how did you do? Did you get 5 or lower? If so – oh dear, we’re gonna have to improve upon that aren’t we? Well, in the following posts we will improve this!

For now, goodbye!

5 Unique And Different Plugins To Allow Post Sharing

Admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:43:21 +0000

Well, I’m excited about the new iPhone OS 4.0! (that’s besides the point of this post!) This will be my last post for a while (come on, I need a bit of time off too!) - So, I thought I would cover blog post sharing. There are now more bookmarking plugins than ever available from the WordPress plugin ‘store’, but only a few are extroadinary. Today, I will show you my top picks.

Drag To Share eXtended:

You wouldn’t know drag to share extended existed on your page, until you hover over an image! Highly inspired by Mashable social bookmarking – DTSX allows a visitor to drag an image, and then be presented with a number of social icons, on which the visitor can share the article. Very clever idea!

SexyBookmarks:

No, the name isn’t a dirty gag! It’s easy to see why the plugin is called ‘sexy’, instead of showing the visitor a long list of social networks available for sharing, you can customise which icons are displayed, and if they should all appear at once, or when hovered over (ideal for space-saving bloggers!)

Social Bookmarking RELOADED:

The Social Bookmarking RELOADED plugin for WordPress adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts and/or pages that allow your visitors to easily submit them in a number of social bookmarking sites. Furthermore, the plugin adds a page in the WordPress admin section that lets you customize it. Best of all – now supports Buzz!

Add To Any: Share / Bookmark / Email Button:

Help readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and over 100 more social bookmarking and sharing sites. The button comes with AddToAny’s customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor’s browsing and usage history.

Top Social Bookmarking Buttons:

The plugins contais the top social bookmarking buttons on the net. Post your articles to the social bookmarking sites and get traffic. The plugin supports SociBook.com, Digg.com, Google.com, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Yahoo Buzz and FaceBook.

Enjoy messing with your new plugins, while I enjoy a short break!

The Success Of Guest Blogging

Admin — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:02:51 +0000

Yesterday, my frist ever guest article was published to the site, focusing on browser-proofing your site. All the efforts of the tutorial are thanks to bishbashbosh. You can see the article here: http://mytutorialz.fi.st/2010/04/04/guest-article-cross-browser-test-your-website/ After this I have seen blog visits rise! You should consider guest blogging on your site. If you’d like to guest blog on this site, please see here: http://mytutorialz.fi.st/become-a-guset-blogger/

This is also probably a good time aswell to thank you all for watching MSN Messenger For Mac, which has reached over 20,000 hits on YouTube!

GUEST ARTICLE: Cross-Browser Test Your Website!

bishbashbosh — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:57:19 +0000

If you spend alot of time making websites, surely yo don’t want to spend even longer testing the website on several different operating systems, web browsers and other variables. This just wastes time and money! Today I (bishbashbosh) will show you how to test your website accross many of these variables.

Just follow these steps:

Go to http://browsershots.org
Configure what variables you would like to test.
Enter your website URL
Click submit.
Observe your website screenshots, from different browsers, os’s – etc!

And that’s all from me (bishbashbosh), thanks to MyTutorialz for letting me guest blog!

Sending Flash Game High Scores To Twitter

Admin — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:43:09 +0000

It’s been a while since I posted a tutorial relevent to Flash, and in addittion – earlier this week I posted about promoting your Flash game. So it seemed fitting for me to post this today. In this tutorial, I will show you how you can allow players of your game to send their score to Twitter.

This method we will use today is the only method that allows us to intergrate this social feature without creating a Twitter application, so therefore the user has to login to Twitter and click the ‘Tweet’ button. So the user can always change their score!

Twitter allows people to tweet statuses by using this URL:

http://twitter.com/?status=

So, a good place to put the ‘Tweet score’ button would be when the user is presented with their score. When the button is then clicked, the actionscript would be something like this:

Actionscript 2:


getURL('http://twitter.com/?status='+

	escape('played '+gameTitle+' '+shortUrl+' and scored '+score+' #'+hashTag),

	'_blank');

Actionscript 3:


navigateToURL(new URLRequest('http://twitter.com/?status='+

	escape('played '+gameTitle+' '+shortUrl+' and scored '+score+' #'+hashTag)),

	'_blank');

So, the final tweet would look something like this:

TWITTER_NAME: played awesome game, http://urlhere.com and scored Score #hashtag.

So go and allow your users to promote your game!

Guest Blogging

Admin — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:10:44 +0000

Hello,

In this post, I would like to cover the fact that I am now accepting guest bloggers! If you are interested in gaining more traffic to your site/blog and writing a good post on a high-traffic blog, please go to: http://mytutorialz.fi.st/become-a-guest-blogger/

Thanks!

5 Effective Ways To Promote Your Flash Game, Without Spending A Penny

Admin — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:34:16 +0000

So, you’ve made a flash game eh? Well, your probably looking fot traffic to this game now that it’s hosted on your website. Well, what happens if your website doesn’t recieve much traffic? You need to get out into the bigger world! In this post, I will show you methods to promote your flash game to the world – without spending a single penny!

Join Twitter!

If you’re already on Twitter, that’s a good start. When you have a Twitter account, you can easily tweet about your game, and provide links and news regarding the development of the game. Attach screenshots etc.

Viral Features

Yes, viral features get the word spread about! One of the most popular and best features to have would be a ‘Tweet my score’ feature, this would allow players of your game to send an automatic message to their Twitter account, showing their score, whilst promoting your game.

Post To Game Websites

Now websites that specialise in a topic of interest are bound to recieve alot of hits, this is the perfect place to upload your game! Websites such as; Miniclip.com and Freeonlinegames.com recieve a high amount of traffic each day.

Post Demos To YouTube

If you have a YouTube account, why not film yourself playing your game, purposely get a low score, and ask others to beat your score! Provide a link in the video, and ask others to film themselves playing the game. This way will see a long chain of people trying to beat each other and posting videos to YouTube!

Free Link Exchanges

Have a look around the internet for websites which allow you to post links to your site in exchange for a small ad. Will deffinately get you more traffic!

So, good luck with sharing your game – you may be the next big game developer! You can also post a link to your game below! I will write a future post containing the top 5 games posted below!

WordPress 3.0 Feature Wishlist

Admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 11:01:46 +0000

With WordPress being the largest blogging system available, updates are constantly being rolled out. But the next release WordPress 3.0, will be a huge milestone for Auttomatic. Below are a few desired features for inclusion in the next release (BTW, these features are not certain, just a wishlist!)

Ability To Run Multiple Blogs:

Wouldn’t it be great? We already have WordPress MU to run multiple blogs, but after 3.0 has been released, sources suggest MU will no longer be available. So, wouldn’t it be great if 3.0 was to include support for multiple blogs? It would also be great if we could manage these blogs under just one back-end.

A Better Back-end

Ah, yes – the good ol’ WordPress backend, we have seen it change in the past. Prehaps the next major release could do with a major change to the theme in the backend? And a cleanup under the ‘Settings’ tab – It can get very crowded in there!

A Better Theme

OK, Kubrick (the current default theme) is good, but extremely basic. It’s not just me – but other people are calling for the default WordPress theme to be changed, and prehaps WordPress 3.0 would be a good time to change it!

Custom Passwords

Yes, there are plugins to allow users to register to your blog with a custom password, but this doesn’t always work. Other plugins can override the function of the custom password plugins, therefore visitors can not have custom passwords. But what if WordPress 3.0 was to have this feature built in?

This is just my opinion, what would you like to see in the next release? Drop a comment below!

Gain Exposure Through Technorati

Admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 15:48:10 +0000

All blog owners want exposure in the ever increasing internet space. There are many ways to go about this, submit to Google and other search engines, advertise, spread the word and linkback to your blog. But there are many other ways you were probably unaware of. Ever heard of Technorati? Of course you have! Technorati is one of the world’s largest blog directories. Guaranteed to gain your blog some well-deserved exposure! In fact, check me out: http://www.technorati.com/people/MyTutorialz

By following these simple steps below, you too can gain exposure through Technorati:

Navigate to http://technorati.com/account/signup/
Create a free profile on this page.
After following the registration and confirmation steps, go to your profile – and click submit new blog.
Enter your blog details.
These steps will take about 4 days to complete, the vertification step is backlogged at the moment.
After verifying this blog is yours, you will start to see posts from your site featured within the site!

Watch & enjoy the exposure!

Creating A Grass Effect In Fireworks

Admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:45:05 +0000

In this tutorial, I will show guide you through a step-by-step version of my ‘Fireworks: Create a grass effect’ video tutorial. You can watch the video here.

Step 1:

Create a 500px X 125px canvas in Fireworks, and insert a rectangle, this should cover up the bottom half of the canvas.

Step 2:

Insert circles over the top of this rectangle, using this picture below as a guide:

Step 3:

Then, for each circle, hold ctrl + shift to highlight one circle at a time with the main rectangle, then go to Modify > Combine Paths > Punch for each circle.

Step 4:

Now, we have a shape with curves on the top, grooveh! We need to apply a linear gradient to this:

Step 5:

Change the colours of the linear gradient, like this:

Step 6:

Duplicate this shape, then send the duplicate 1 shift up, and 1 shift to the left. Send this to the back. Now, select the original shape, and apply a Drop shadow effect to it. +, Shadow and Glow, Drop Shadow:

And this is our final result:

Sorry about the black background, your’s won’t have this.

HTML Basics (Part 5): META Tags

Admin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:49:26 +0000

In the final part of the HTML Basics series, we will be looking at how adding a few simple META tags, can help optimise our websites for search engine indexing (so the site shows up in search engines.) In this tutorial, I will only be covering the basic and essential tags.

Now, we need to add this code:


WEBPAGE TITLE HERE

IT IS AN ABSOLUTE REQUIREMENT, THAT YOU ADD THIS CODE JUST BELOW THE FIRST TAG, AND JUST ABOVE THE FIRST TAG. LIKE SO:

There isn’t really a result that I can print-screen to show you here, the results will differ as to what content you include. Your content may also display differently on each search engine.

I hope this series as been of some help to you, if you would like any help designing a website, I will help you! Drop a comment below!

NOTE: For the purpose of this download, I have added an extra CSS file! Enjoy!

HTML Basics (Part 4): Images

Admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:14:34 +0000

We can also insert an image easily into our web document! In the fourth part of the series, I am going to show you how we can insert a new image into the document with alternative text.

First, open up the example from last time, and insert the following code:

For the purpose of this tutorial, I have inserted mine here:

This gives me this result:

There is our image! Now let’s go through what the attributes in the code mean:

img src="http://images.mytutorialz.fi.st/2010/03/html2.png"

Defines where the image can be found.

alt="HTML Basics From MyTutorialz"

Defines alternative text to be displayed if the image does not load.

And that’s all for this short tutorial! In the next & final post, we will be looking at using META data to optomise our pages for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

HTML Basics (Part 3): Lists

Admin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:29:16 +0000

In the third part of the HTML Basics series, we will be looking at inserting unodered and ordered lists into our document. Lists can be a very important part of a web-page, it allows page creators to list items either with dots, or numbers. Let’s have a llok at how we insert these into our documents.

If you are carrying on from the last part of our tutorial, open up the existing document, and enter the below code:


Example 1
Example 2
Example 3

I have inserted mine here:

This gives me this result:

As you can see, a list has been displayed with dots next to each item, we can also display numbers next to each item – insert this code:


Example 1
Example 2
Example 3

Note the change between

and

I have inserted the code here:

This gives me this result:

Well, that’s part 3 finished with, in the next part – we will have a look at inserting images into our pages.

5 Reasons Why Sabre For WordPress Is A Blog-Saver

Admin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:20:59 +0000

Your blog is currently spam free, and you probably want to keep it that way, don’t you? The Sabre plugin for WordPress can help you achieve this and much more, and on this page I will be showing off the top 5 reasons why you should install this plugin.

Are you human? Has the capability of allowing the admin to set multiple ‘tests’ for visitors to complete, such as captcha, maths and spelling.
Would you like a password with that? Also allows admins to set wether users can select their own passwords – and comes with a nifty password strength monitor!
Banned IP? The plugin can also check wether visitor IPs are on the database of trouble-causing IPs, if so they are not allowed to register.
Speed is everything! The plugin can also detect how fast ‘visitors’ fill out the registration form, if it’s too fast, they are obviously a spammer, and will not be allowed to register!
User or admin confirmation I really like this feature, you can either set the admin (via the dashboard) to confirm the user, or the user to confirm registration (via email), and accounts will not be activated until confirmed, neat huh?

So, I have installed this plugin already, and I have noticed that the amount of spam registrations has stopped (or reduced).

The plugin can be found here: http://wordpress.org/plugins/Sabre

The New iPhone Layout

Admin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:13:07 +0000

Hello,

You can now access this blog easily through the new iPhone layout, available at: iphone.mytutorialz.fi.st .

Enjoy!

30 Must-Have Plugins For WordPress

Admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:17:31 +0000

There are so many plugins for WordPress available out there! That’s why WordPress is my favourite blogging system. But, with all these plugins, it’s so hard to find which ones are truly awesome. In this guide, I will show you through 30 of the best plugins out there.

Note: = Plugin used on this blog.

Broken Link Checker, this plugin has the ultimate functionality of being able to search through your posts and pages to find links which lead to a non-existant page, and suggests alternatives.
WPTouch iPhone Theme Prehaps you have website visitors, who visit from their mobile device, such as an iPhone? Well, this nifty little plugin can help generate a theme which is pleasing for mobile visitors to visit.
Mingle Blogging may not be enough for you, so why not add social network capabilities – with Mingle? Mingle allows you to add social network features to your blog, with individual user pages, status updates, friend adding and more!
Watermark RELOADED Visitors to your website may be copying-and-pasting content from your site onto their own – and giving you no credit. This plugin allows you to add custom text to every image you upload.
Series If you are publishing many posts that fall into one series, e.g. Part 1, Part 2. It may be hard to link all of these posts together, look no futher, to create many posts in a series with this plugin – you only need to check a button – and the plugin does the rest.
Social Web Links If you have joined external social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Twitter etc. You can just list links to these profiles. OR you can display beautiful favicons to 130+ different social profiles.
All In One SEO One of the best SEO plugins I have seen for WordPress, This plugin can allow you to customise how, when and where your blog posts and pages appear on many search engines, always updating your blog.
WordPress.com Stats There are many plugins out there for analysing website visits, you can use services such as Google, but these may be overwhelming. So, Automattic decided to create this useful stat plugin to simplify the stat counting, but increase the depth of analysis.
SexyBookmarks This bookmarking tool is used on a lot of blogs, it’s easy to see why – it’s so easy to personalise and incorporate into your theme, with loads of services to choose from!
Autocompleter This is quite a small plugin, which can add a whole lot of change to your search. We’ve all seen the Google search suggest, well this does exactly the same thing for your blog, should work with all ready-made Search Widgets.
Digg This O’Mine Very simply adds a ‘Digg This’ button to your blog posts and/or pages.
Mailpress Sends out mail notifications to all newsletter subscribers, and allows for much customisation.
TweetMeMeButton Very simply adds a ‘Tweet This’ button to your blog posts and/or pages.
User Messages Your blog users may be looking for more interactivity with each other, besides commenting. This private messaging widget can allow all or some of your users this functionality.
WP-Ban Has an IP been causing trouble on your blog? It’s time to stop this with WP-Ban!
WordTwit This plugin tweets your blog posts to your Twitter accout, and can be used in conjunction with the WordPress iPhone Theme.
WP Greet Box If your visitors are coming from different websites, why not show them a different greeting?
Maintenance Mode You may want to make some changes to your blog, but you can’t because it’s open to the whole world! Change this with Maintenance Mode!
Sabre D’oh! Spammers are constantly signing up to your blog with fake accounts. This plugin can detect whose real and whose not, with many more features such as custom passwords and re-CAPATCHA.
FormBuilder Include gorgeous forms in your blog.
Cleanup WordPress Searches through your WP databases to find content which is unused.
Ad Buttons Display ads on your blog without joining programmes such as Google AdSense, however this can be used.
WP-MalWatch Keep an eye on hacks to your blog!
UAM It’s a tricky task, who can access what pages, posts, files, comments and more. This plugin enables a secure environment for you to control these variables. With password protection.
WordPress Download Monitor Insert downloads into your blog and control and monitor who can download them.
Capability Manager Who can use what plugins? You decide!
Tweet Blender Better than Twitter’s own widgets – Tweet Blender is tag-aware and has support for multiple authors, lists, hashtags, and keywords all blended together. The plugin can show tweets from just one user or a list of users (as all other Twitter plugins do); however, it can also show tweets for a topic which you can define via Twitter hashtag or keyword. But there is more! It can also show tweets for multiple authors AND multiple lists AND multiple keywords AND multiple hashtags all blended together into a single stream.
Login With AJAX Login With Ajax is for sites that need user logins and would like to avoid the normal wordpress login, this plugin adds the capability of placing a login widget in the sidebar with smooth AJAX login effects.
Enable Media Replace Enables replacing attachment files by simply uploading a new file in the media library edit view.
WordPress Admin Bar This plugin replicates all of the menu links in your normal admin area at the top of your main site for logged in users (i.e. you). You can go right to the “Write Post” or manage options pages in one click from anywhere on your blog. No more having to go to your dashboard first. You can even have it replace your admin area menus if you want.

Get More On Social Networking Sites!

Admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:14:28 +0000

Hello readers!

This is a quick notice, to let you all know that you can now find me on these social networking sites – and I would be so greatful of your support!

Digg: http://www.digg.com/users/MyTutorialz

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/MyTutorialz

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/user/MyTutorialz

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MyTutorialz

Viddler: http://www.viddler.com/MyTutorialz

RSS Feed: http://www.mytutorialz.fi.st/feed

Any support you show me, I will be more than happy to return!

MyTutorialz.

HTML Basics (Part 2): Insert Forms

Admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:59:43 +0000

If you remember, in the last tutorial – we had a look at constructing a basic page layout with the ‘’ and ‘’ tags. In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to extend this page even further, by adding a simple First & Last Name form to the page. Note: This tutorial will not cover adding functionality to the form, if you would like to read about this – please do so here.

To start, copy and paste the below code:


First name: 

Last name:

And copy it below the final

tag and just above the tag, like so:

Now, preview this in any browser, and you will see this:

Here are few of the many different form fields available:

:: Password:

A password field allows visitors to enter sensetive information, by hiding data entered with a ‘•’

:: Radio Button:

Allows visitors to make one selection only from a list of many choices.

:: Checkbox:

Allows visitors to select more than one choice from a list.

You can find more fields here.

Protect Your Blog From Hacks

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:34:32 +0000

If you have spent ages trying spruce up your blog, the last thing you would want (or expect) would be to find that your blog has been hacked – and looks different, or has been deleted. This can be prevented in many ways, in this post I am going to cover 2 of the best methods to prevent a hack.

Tracking IP Addresses.

This method is the most complex of the 2 methods I am covering. This method requires you to have a free stat counter over at statcounter.com and the wp-ban plugin installed on your blog. After installing both of these tools and following the simple setup instructions we are ready to begin.

Every so-often (3 times a week, I recommend) login to statcounter.com and check the IP addresses of your visitors. Suspicious activity could be possible if:

The user IP loads the page many times within a short space of time. e.g. 24 – 48 hrs.
The IP is trying to access private posts.
The IP is trying to access content for members only, and the IP address does not belong to a member.

So if you see any of the signs above, it’s time to act!

Start up the WP-Ban plugin in your WordPress admin panel Settings > Ban. Now, copy and paste the suspected hacker IP into the ‘Banned IPs’ textarea.

You can also customise the plugin to meet your needs.

Scan For MalWare Using WP-Malwatch

This method just simply requires you to install the WP-Malwatch plugin, and configure the plugin to meet your needs.

Hopefully, these methods have helped. Drop a comment below if you would like further assistance!

HTML Basics (Part 1): Constructing Basic Webpage Layout

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:59:16 +0000

If you’re a newbie to website development, you will probably find that your head is in a spin with all these terms used on the web such as ‘HTML’ - Hyper Text Markup Language. Well, in the first part of this tutorial – I am going to guide you through the process of making your own webpage.

My First Page Title

This is my content paragraph, at the moment I have only inserted dummy text in this area

Tutorial from MyTutorialz

Now, that has given us an extremely basic, and pointless web-page. Copy the above code into your favourite web-editor, e.g. Dreamweaver, KompoZer. The result in a web-browser should look like this:

As you can see, all the page contains is a baisc ‘My First Page‘ header, a couple of sentences with a link back to MyTutorialz, I Will now explain what each rule means in the code:

These 2 rules declare what language the web-document is written in. Just in case you didn’t know: there are many different types of web-document languages – but that won’t be covered in these tutorials.

These rules state where the content of the page begins and ends.

Defines the H1 style type.

Defines a paragraph

MyTutorialz

Displays a link to MyTutorialz.

And that concludes part 1 of the tutorial series. In the next part we will be looking at inserting form controls into the webpage.

10 Mins: Creating Random Effects In Fireworks

Admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:14:27 +0000

Fireworks is probably one of the easiest vector-image editors that I have seen, so that is why I use it so much, in fact most of the graphics you see on this website have been created by me on Fireworks. So, in this 10 minute tutorial, I am going to show you some of the most effective textures that can be made so simply with Fireworks!

Let’s Begin:

Step 1: Open up Fireworks, and create a document of any size. For this tutorial, I used 400px X 400px.

Step 2: Draw a rectangle, of any size, onto the canvas.

Step 3: Select the rectangle, and click on the drop down menu at the bottom of the screen labelled ‘Gradients’ select ‘Radial’ . Use the image below as reference.

Step 4: Now, you can edit the colours seen on the shape. Use the image below as a guide.

And, my final result:

Your final image will differ, depending on what pattern and colour you used.

Here are some other possible outputs:

6 Of The Best Free WordPress Themes

Admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:35:57 +0000

Any new blogger will probably assume it is one of the most unimportant factors of a blog, but choosing the right blog template means everything. In this post I will show you some of the best blog layouts that are free, but of a premium standard. Remember – themes are everything!

I should say sorry at this moment, as my image uploader is not working – so I can not provide screenshots of each template. But I will work to get this fixed.

I may add some more templates!

Get More Registrations On Your Blog

Admin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:40:47 +0000

You’ve made yourself a neat little WordPress blog, You’ve spent ages trying to piece together exciting blog posts, You’re expecting loads of blog registrations – and it’s just not happening. This is a common scenario for many new blog admins (like myself). Well, fear no more (or less), in this blog post – I am going to show you one of the many easy methods to make this happen!

This tutorial will work even more for you if you have a Twitter profile, if not – it dosen’t matter!

Install the Members Only plugin for WordPress here.
Install WordTwit here. (Only if you have a Twitter profile, if not move on to step 3).
Configure these plugins to work with your blog. Make sure on the Members Only plugin, you make your blog private to members only!

Now that we have the plugins installed, let’s get on with the main focus of the tutorial!

Create some blog posts, with stunning titles, e.g. 16+ Plugins You Can’t Live Without!
Now, publish the blog post. Making sure it publishes to Twitter via WordTwit.
If you don’t have Twitter, submit your blog to Google, however, this will take longer.

So, with all the steps over, let me explain what this tutorial should of achieved, and how the method works:

You create blog posts, with excellent blog titles.
Another person sees the link to this post.
Person sees that blog is member only.
Person registers to gain access to post!

See it’s simple! And it worked for me!

Manage Your Twitter Followers

Admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:41:39 +0000

Twitter has so quickly seen a boom in activity recently, so that mean’s more tweeters, right? Well, it’s time you manage your followers! This can be easily done by using a free online service known as ‘Buzzom’. This website let’s you ‘flush’ any people you are following, who aren’t following you back.

Navigate to http://www.buzzom.com
Click on the ‘login with Twitter’ button.
If not already logged in, you will be prompted to login to twitter.
You will then be redirected to a screen with 3 large blue buttons. Click on ‘flush’ .
Now, if you are following people who are not following you back, check the check box next to their user name.
Then click the form button ‘flush’ (not the blue button).
You can also follow your followers back, do this by clicking the big blue button called ‘reciprocate’

You should now be up-to-date with your followers.

10 Mins: How To Customise Your Firefox Background

Admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:15:17 +0000

You may find, like me, that when you are using Mozilla Firefox that well… it seems very dull. Well, now Mozilla have created a new website enabling you to install themes for your browser! In this tutorial, I will show you how we can do this!

And in case you are wondering what my Firefox looks like:

Snazzy, eh?

Navigate Firefox to: http://www.getpersonas.com/
If you haven’t already, you will need to install the free plugin from the website, this can be done by clicking the button named ‘Get Started’ this should auto-install the plugin. You will need to restart Firefox.
After re-opening the browser, navigate to: http://www.getpersonas.com/gallery/
Hover over a preview image, to see what the Persona will look like on your browser. If you like what you see, click ‘wear it!’.

And that brings me to the end of this tutorial!

How To Become A YouTube Partner

Admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:14:06 +0000

It is one of the most visited sites on the web. Claiming to receive 1 billion hits a day. That’s right, YouTube is one of the most popular video sharing websites, yet alone visited website. So, with all these users, you need to be seen above the rest! That’s why YouTube run a programme called the ‘Partners Programme’ This programme allows you to access more features than other regular users, and implant extra content on your channel, such as banners, auto-play, etc (Plus, you get payed for every subscriber!). So on this post, I am going to show you the minimum requirements that YouTube looks for, and how you can sign up for the programme.

Let’s start off with the boring bit, the minimum requirements. (These are not the official requirements, please refer to them as guidelines only).

You need to post at least 20 videos before signing up. These must consist of content you have made entirely yourself. Or with strict permission. (Not favourite videos)
At least 1,100 subscribers.
At least 11,000 channel views.
At least 1,000 views on all videos.
All videos must have at least a 3-and-a-half star rating.
You upload a video at least once a month.

However, YouTube may allow for some exceptions. E.g. You have 40,000 subscribers with only 2 or 3 videos you have posted on your account (Not favourite videos)

So, if you meet these guidelines, I would suggest you signup to the partner programme, by following these steps. If not – it won’t hurt to try!

I should just mention at this point, I cannot garantee you will be accepted as a partner.

Login to your YouTube account.
Navigate your browser to http://www.youtube.com/partners/
Fill out the form on the page.
Now, you have to wait. If you’re not accepted, you will have to wait 2 months before re-trying.

Good luck!

Join MyTutorialz’s Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/MyTutorialz

Creating Your First Visual Basic App

Admin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:56:53 +0000

In this first tutorial about Visual Basic 2008, I will show you how to create your first application in the package. This tutorial will show you how to make a basic ‘Hello World’ message box when the app loads. The final item at the end of the tutorial should be:

So, what will you learn from this?

You should know how to use the

MsgBox

function in Visual Basic, this function just displays a message box.

Step 1:

Open Visual Basic 2008, and click ‘Create New Project’, a dialog window will appear, just like this:

In the name textbox, call the app whatever you want (in this case I have called it HelloWorld), but you must ensure you have checked the ‘Windows Form Application’ icon.

Step 2:

You will be presented with a form like the one below:

Now right-click in the area just below the tab named ‘Form1.vb’, you will see a menu like the one below, select View Code:

Step 3:

You will now see the code screen:

You need to insert the below code: (between the Public Class Form1 and End Class tags)

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
 MsgBox("This is an example message dialog for a tutorial on MyTutorialz <- a great blog!", MsgBoxStyle.Information + MsgBoxStyle.OkOnly, "Hello World!")
 End Sub

Your code should look like this:

Step 5:

Finally, we need to test our code, so lets preview the app – by pressing F5. Hopefully you should have the final result of:

^Couldn’t agree more with that message!

How To Get More Twitter Followers

Admin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:36:48 +0000

This is just a quick way to show you how to get more Twitter followers. There have been many websites that have offered ‘free followers’, which was true, but the admins would hack your twitter account and send out automated tweets.

But, I have found a website that offers free followers, and DOES NOT hack your twitter account, Plus, it works!

Try now:

http://www.twiends.com

10 Mins: Adding Thumbnails To Your WordPress Posts

Admin — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:07:05 +0000

It’s one of the most stylish ways to represent a single post on your blog. That’s right, thumbnails can play a big part in your WordPress blog. But many people can not upload thumbnails using the ‘post thubmnail’ widget on the ‘new post’ page, due to a bug in the WordPress code. However, in this 10 minute tutorial, I will show you how to upload a post thumbnail (and it’s easier than you think).

So what are thumnails? I hear you ask. They are small icons that represent a post on your blog. The thumbnail for this post is a clock with the text ’10 MINS’ below the clock. Funky, eh? Let’s crack on!

So for starters, you need to have a thumbnail ready to upload, I would recommend a thumnail based around the size of 64px x 64px. That the size I use for mine.
Create your post. You should know how to do this, but if you are a newbie, you can read my post here on creating your first WordPress post.
Stop! Don’t publish just yet, we now need to upload and insert the Thumbnail. You can’t do this via the ‘post thumbnail’ widget, like I mentioned earlier, the widget is currently not functioning correctly due to a coding error. So we need a different method, this can be achieved in the next step.
Click the add image icon, just above the story editor. Looks like a white box, with a grey box inside.
Upload the thumnail you want.
After upload, an edit box for this icon will appear, scroll to the bottom of this box, and you should see the label ‘use as thumbnail’. Click this.
Ta-da, you can now close that box and publish your post!

See, I said it was simple!

The New MyTutorialz Web Ad

Admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:48:31 +0000

Hello,

This is just a quick post, to show you wonderful people, the new video that I have made and submitted to YouTube, Viddler and other video sites. In the hope to show-off MyTutorialz. Below is the video. Enjoy!

[pro-player type='video']http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byulCy0By88[/pro-player]

Poll: Return To MyTutorialz?

Admin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:25:26 +0000

I’d just like to take a minute of your time to ask you to complete the poll below! Thanks for your help in advance! This will be the first of many polls I will be posting on this blog. But not all of them will be about me, and how I can improve my website, some will be based around, general day-to-day things, like ‘what web editor do you use?’ etc.

[polldaddy poll=2721338]

10 Mins: Making Your First WordPress Post

Admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:38:47 +0000

With this being the first of my ’10 mins’ series, showing you how to do web/design tasks in under 10 mins, I thought I would start of with something for the beginner blogger. Every blog consists of posts (duh, like this one!) So to keep your blog active you need, errrr… posts. So if you’re a beginner, here’s how to start:

Log in to your WordPress control panel. This by default can be accessed through: www.YOURSITEHERE.com/wp-admin/
Click on ‘posts’ in the sidebar.
Then click on the ‘add new’ button.
Now, if you are a newbie, you’re deffinately going to be stumped here at first. You will now see the new post screen. It may seem that there are alot of boxes on this page, but believe me, there’s not!
Now, it’s time to create your headline, and craft your post! The headline can be edited via the long box at the top of the page. The story content can be edited in the textbox with the little icons. (TinyMCE Editor) by defeault.
Add a couple of keywords in the ‘post tags’ box, this helps search engines, and your blog search find the post.
Now, select categories, relative to your post.
Finally, you can ‘save draft’, ‘preview post, or ‘publish’.

And that is the end of my first 10 mins post!

5 Free CMS Systems To Take Control Of Your Site

Admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:17:33 +0000

There are now many ways for you to take control of your site. There are also many formats, e.g. blog, forums and now CMS (Content Management Systems) seems to be one of the most popular formats for sites. As you can throw away your web editor and start editing on the internet! Below are 5 of my personal best CMS systems!

Joomla! Joomla! is probably one of the most popular CMS systems out there. This is probably due to the wide range of features such as the widget directory, themes, plugins, modules, mass-mailing and more. However, if you’re a newbie, it will definately take some getting used to! Available From: http://www.joomla.org/
Elxis CMS One of the main features about Elxis, is the fact that you can take advantage of themes and modules that have been developed for other CMS systems such as Joomla! and Mamobo. Elxis also has many other tools and features, such as Login, Bridges, Supporting multiple databases and much more! Available from: http://www.elxis-downloads.com/com_downloads/elxis-cms/209.html
Mambo Mambo is described to be ‘award winning’, ‘simple to use’ and ‘can be used for everything’. It appears this may be true! Mambo suggest that their CMS system is used by personal, business and government websites. Available From: http://mambo-foundation.org/
EcoCMS The makers of this cms claim that EcoCMS is the easiest and most friendliest cms system available on this planet! What, with the no-need-for-MySQL-setup and ‘famous’ admin interface. EcoCMS is worth a try! Available From: http://www.ecocms.com/
Sitemagic CMS This is quite a powerful, simple and new cms system that is free. However, every good point has a bad point! Displayed in the titleof every site is and ‘advertisement’ that reads ‘Sitemagic.org CMS’ this can be removed through purchasing a license key. Available From: http://sitemagic.org/

Moving Around

Admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:29:13 +0000

You have probably noticed that most content from the old MyTutorialz site is now displaying over on this site. This is because I have taken the desicion to move my website to blog format.

Mailing List

Admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:28:16 +0000

Hello,

Since creating MyTutorialz in 2009, I have always thought about ways to keep people updated about my blog posts. Well now I have a new solution, a mailing list! When you join the mailing list (use the form below or register), you will be notified each week of the posts I have made. And you can pull out at any time!

Make A Contact Form

Admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:20:16 +0000

Make A Contact Form

On most websites you visit, there is normally a contact form (like the one on my site). This enables communication between clients and companies. This guide will show you how to create that communication link.

How It Works

Take a look at the diagram below to understand how the PHP Contact Form works.

Step 1

Creating The Form:

So, to begin, open up your favourite html editor, in my case – I will use Adobe Dreamweaver. Create a new HTML page, named contact.html, or another suitable name.

Insert the follwing code between the and tags:

 Email:
 
 Message:

Step 2

The PHP Script:

Create a new PHP page in dreamweaver, call this ‘sendmail.php’. This page will process our form.

So, again, between the and tags on our new page, enter the following code:

Lets analyse the code:

The first line: $email = $_REQUEST['email'] ; retrieves the email address entered in the email field within the form

The next line: $message = $_REQUEST['message'] ; retrieves a copy of the message entered in the message field within the form.

The next line: mail( “yourname@example.com”, “Feedback Form Results”, this first of all, posts the form to your email address, with the title you then specify.

The next line: $message, “From: $email” ); displays in your inbox as from the email entered in the email field within the form.

And the last line: header( “Location: posted.html” ); redirects to a thank you page or another page to inform the user that the message has been submitted.

Summary:

This text tutorial showed you the basics of creating a PHP Contact Form, however the script can be modified to add more fields, such as name, age etc. For a working example of a contact form, check out the website contact form.

This brings us to the end of this tutorial!

Make A Login System

Admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:10:31 +0000

Make A Login System

Most websites you visit these days, including this one, seem to have a login and registration system. This is normally to control who can download files, or control access to certain content. In this guide, I will show you how to do the same.

Before we begin, it is a requirement have you have had experience with MySQL and PHP, if not you are probably going to struggle completing this guide.

Step 1

Let’s begin by creating the top part of the structure. First save the file below to the website images folder:

Now, as we are going to be storing information permanently, we need access to a MySQL database, if you do not have a database at this stage, please create one before continuing.

So to create our table in the database, enter the following SQL code:

CREATE TABLE users (ID MEDIUMINT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, username
VARCHAR(60), password VARCHAR(60))

So, this will create a table called ‘users’, and 3 fields – entitled: ‘ID’ , ‘username’ and ‘password’.

Step 2

Registration Script:

Now this page concentrates on the registration part of your login system. You should copy the code below into a new PHP document entitled: ‘add.php’.

Congratulations

That's another user! You may now login>.

Step 3

Login Script:

You should now copy this code, into the file, named: ‘login.php’.


Click Here to Register');
}
while($info = mysql_fetch_array( $check ))
{
$_POST['pass'] = stripslashes($_POST['pass']);
$info['password'] = stripslashes($info['password']);
$_POST['pass'] = md5($_POST['pass']);

//gives error if the password is wrong
if ($_POST['pass'] != $info['password']) {
die('Incorrect password, please try again.');
}

else
{ 

// if login is ok then we add a cookie
$_POST['username'] = stripslashes

($_POST['username']);
$hour = time() + 3600;
setcookie(ID_my_site, $_POST['username'], $hour);
setcookie(Key_my_site, $_POST['pass'], $hour); 

//then redirect them to the members area
header("Location: members.php");
}
}
}
else
{ 

// if they are not logged in
?>


Login


Username: 


Password:

Step 4

Members Page:

Now, you need a page called ‘members.php’, on this we will include a code to check that the user has a valid seesion, and that they are not just entering the url in the address bar.


Your Title";
echo "This is an example parapraph displayed to all users who have logged in successfully.";
echo "Logout";
}
}
}
else 

//No cookie? No go! They are redirected to the login page.
{
header("Location: login.php");
}
?>

Step 5

Logout Page:

You now need a page called ‘logout.php’, on this page the login cookie is destroyed.

This brings us to the end of this tutorial!

Flash Countdown Timer

Admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:56:09 +0000

In this tutorial, we will take the first steps to creating a countdown timer. The timer in this tutorial (by default) counts down to Chrstmas of the current year, however, keep reading to see how to change to a custom date.

Below is the code:

this.onEnterFrame = function(){ 

var today:Date = new Date(); 

var currentYear = today.getFullYear(); 

var currentTime = today.getTime(); 

var targetDate:Date = new Date(currentYear,11,25); 

var targetTime = targetDate.getTime(); 

var timeLeft = targetTime - currentTime; 

var sec = Math.floor(timeLeft/1000); 

var min = Math.floor(sec/60); 

var hours = Math.floor(min/60); 

var days = Math.floor(hours/24); 

sec = String(sec % 60); 

if(sec.length < 2){ sec = "0" + sec; } min = String(min % 60); 

if(min.length < 2){ min = "0" + min; } hours = String(hours % 24); 

if(hours.length < 2){ hours = "0" + hours; } days = String(days); 

var counter:String = days + ":" + hours + ":" + min + ":" + sec; time_txt.text = counter; }

Changing the default time:

First, you need to locate this code:

var targetDate:Date = new Date(currentYear,11,25);

Then, input the time to countdown to, using the reference table below. The date format is: Year, Month, Day. Below is a table of referance for dates in Flash.

**Reference**
Default:	To Use In Actionscript:
Current Year	currentYear
January	0
February	1
March	2
April	3
May	4
June	5
July	6
August	7
September	8
October	9
November	10
December	11
Days:	No Change

WordPress Twitter Widgets Not Working?

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:59:06 +0000

Hello,

In this tutorial, I am going to show you what to do if your Twitter Widgets (in the sidebar) will not display your most recent tweets. Simply follow the steps below:

Go to http://twitter.com/goodies/widget_profile
Change the settings to your desired criteria.
To preview the widget, select ‘Preview’.
To grab the final code, select ‘Grab Final Code’.

Now, we need to return to WordPress (self-hosted or WordPress hosted). Navigate to the Widgets page. Appearance > Widgets. And follow these steps:

Drag a ‘Text’ module to the sidebar.
Edit the content of the widget, by pasting the code we have just copied.

Now, when you preview your site/blog you should see your tweets are displayed.

An Effective Twitter Background

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:57:30 +0000

Hello,

Yes, I did promise that I would publish a blog post about my Twitter background. I have uploaded a .zip file with my background template for you to use. If you are going to use it, I would be happy if you would give me a shout out like:

Thanks for the background @MyTutorialz !

You can download the file here:

twitter_template.zip

I would suggest editing the template with Fireworks.

Please follow me on Twitter! @MyTutorialz

Review Of Windows 7: Winner Or Loser?

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:54:04 +0000

Hello,

In this post, considering I have just bought Windows 7, I thought I would compile an article which reviews the new features of Microsoft’s new OS.

Desktop:

The first contact you will have after installing Windows 7 is the desktop, as you can tell from the screenshot above, quite alot is different, i.e. the taskbar. Let’s have a look at this in greater detail!

Taskbar:

Yes, this is one of the biggest updates of the taskbar I have seen. Instead of displaying the full programme name, only the icon is displayed. In the example above I am hovering over the Internet Explorer tab, in which I have 3 browsing tabs open, just by hovering over the IE logo, a screenshot of all tabs open in IE is displayed.

When you right click on a specific icon (in this case iTunes) a programm-specific menu is displayed – with items such as “Shuffle all library” and “Shop on iTunes store”, these factors increase the ease of access.

Start Menu

At frist glance, you could say that the taskbar looks the same as in Vista. Well you are wrong – take another look, you will see that your default programmes for E-mailing and internet browsing are no longer displayed above the line – in fact the line has gone!! This leaves you with more space to pin more items that you frequently use to the start menu, this again leading to faster access to the items you use the most.

In addittion, if you take a glance at, say the Adobe Dreamweaver label, you will see that a “>” is displayed, if you hover over this, in the sidebar of the start menu, the most recent documents opened with Dreamweaver will be displayed.

Windows XP Mode:

Just a few notes:

Windows XP is mode is only available on Microsoft Windows 7 Proffessional and Ultimate (Which I Use). It is also required that you download this extra content from the Microsoft Website.

Yes, if you have programmes which only work with Windows XP, you are in look (if you have Windows 7 Proffessional or Ultimate) you can download the extra content, and run Windows XP inside Windows 7.

Documents Browser

In Windows 7, even the document window got a make over! As you can see, in the sidebar, there are now more links to:

Your favourites
Your library (e.g. Documents, Pictures)
Computer
Network

I feel that this is a very easy tool to help you navigate around your files and folders.

A Few Bad Points:

In Windows 7, the parental controls software has been removed, however, you can download Windows Live Family Safety (similar to parental controls) - this can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.
It may take you some time to get familiar with the new look operating system, especially the taskbar (to be honest, this baffled me for a while.)
If you have portable devices (such as iPods, USBs and phones) your computer will need to install the driver software again.

My Overall Personal Opinion:

Well, in just under 490 words, I have managed to summarise the best new features of Windows 7, and overall it would be a good idea to upgrade to the new OS. Why? well, if you are a user of Windows Vista, you will be familar with the UAC (User Account Control), this became very annoying after a while, in Windows 7, this feature has been removed (or you can turn it off!). Also, this latest release also appears to speed up your PC. You also get the new IE 8, which is a bonus – as this runs quite fast!

My Rating:

4/5: Excellent, however you may struggle at first to get familiar with the new features, this shouldn’t take long though!

Thanks for reading my review!

How To Be A Good Blogger

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:52:44 +0000

Hello,

I thought as though I am getting around 150 views on my blog everyday, I would create this article – based upon what I do.

Be catchy:

Yes, attract the people you want to read your blog, the most common way that people find blog posts is through a search, whether that be a web search or blog search. So the first contact people will have with your blog is the title and a small sentance from the blog post. In order to attract attention, make your title small, but very informative. Say you are writing an article about baking a cake.

You Shouldn’t Use The Title:

How to make a cake using the method featured on this article.

You Should Use:

Follow my steps for a gorgeous cake!

You see, although it may be long, it is still shorter and more appealing than the first.

Keep Relative:

If your blog is about tutorials (like mine) keep it about tutorials, don’t al of a sudden start posting about who you think might win the X Factor, or anything like that. If your blog is about tutorials, let it stay like that basically!

Layout:

Ahh, yes! A good layout, helps improve how the information on the page is sorted, the clearer (and more informative) the page, the more likely the reader will return and subscribe!

Be Heard!

Yes, if you can try and connect your blog with Twitter (if you are using WordPress, see this article!) this way titles of blog posts will also be posted to Twitter, this will lead to more visitors on your blog.

Social:

Gain more popularity, by posting replies on Facebook, MySpace etc. By saying, checkout this great blog post: (YOUR LINK HERE). This will lead your friends to your blog, however they may (or may not) know if it is your blog!

Well, hopefully these tips have helped you!

Oh, and thanks for adding another hit to my stat counter!

A Virus On Twitter?

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:51:13 +0000

Hello,

I thought I would post a quick bulletin, as one of my Twitter accounts (not the MyTutorialz) has been ‘hacked’ after I used a service called WannaFollowMe.com.

If you have used the service to get more followers, read the tips below:

Change your Twitter password.
Report as spam to Twitter.
Say sorry to your followers (as the virus automatically sends out advertisements, like ‘Get More Followers Now! Visit: http://www.wannafollowme.com’)

Also, this service does not help you to ge more followers in any way.

Be safe!

Why Create A Blog

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:45:39 +0000

Blogs have become quite a popular resource, for both publishing content to, and reading content from. Many people are still wondering whether or not to create a blog, a few of the reasons why you should create a blog are listed below:

Get Noticed Quicker:

When you publish a new post to your blog, it is more likely that the content from that article will appear quicker in teh major search engines than when you create and upload a new page to your website. A wider range of tags are also indexed for each individual blog post. Thus leading to more possible traffice for your blog.

A Wide Range Of Themes:

If you create your blog with WordPress (like me!) You can easily select, and modify if you wish, a large range of CSS-enabled templates. You can also design and upload your own blog template for personal or world-wide use.

Widgets:

From my own experience from blogging with WordPress, I know that there are alot of customisable side bar applications, such as Twitter feeds. Take a look down my sidebar, you can see many widgets, such as tag cloud, search, categories and RSS feeds.

So, WordPress Or Blogger?

Blogger:

Good Points:

Blogger requires no signup if you already have a Google account, all you have to do is choose your blog address and create a password, authenticate and then you are up and running!

Bad Points:

Unlike WordPress, Blogger has a very small range of templates available for use, in fact theres only about 7. It is harder to publish a post, and there is a small range of widgets, quite complicated to udnerstand.

WordPress:

Good Points:

There is actually alot of good points for WordPress, a very easy and clean dashborad, alot of widgets and templates, password protection, publishing to Twitter, quick publishing and more.

Bad Points:

There is only one possible bad point for WordPress, the fact that it can be slow loading the dashboard. This can easily be made faster though. When you login, click on ‘Turbo’ in the top-right hand corner.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go and get blogging!

HTML Emails For Beginners

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:43:19 +0000

In this guide, I will show you how to take your first steps to designing your first HTML email.

The first thing you need to do, is log into your email client.

Now follow these steps:

Compose a new HTML Email.

Copy the below code into the HTML view.

My Newsletter
The Official Newsletter

About Time

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum semper dui at lorem facilisis nec convallis nibh placerat. Morbi consectetur diam ac dolor iaculis faucibus a non libero. Quisque a blandit sem. Etiam faucibus dolor eu eros fringilla suscipit. Vestibulum quis eros vitae leo fermentum scelerisque. Nulla bibendum suscipit orci a pharetra. Pellentesque vel dolor nec eros iaculis ornare. Nulla facilisi. Suspendisse potenti. Cras dapibus malesuada lorem nec feugiat. Ut vitae quam a mi ultricies malesuada id eu diam. Integer nec metus elementum felis rhoncus scelerisque. Aenean ut mauris quam, varius porttitor purus. Mauris faucibus tempor nulla, nec aliquam enim posuere a. Nulla neque augue, vestibulum id dignissim at, iaculis nec nisi.

Aliquam volutpat auctor ornare. Maecenas convallis varius massa, vitae ultrices enim vehicula vel. Curabitur quam felis, adipiscing nec dapibus sit amet, venenatis posuere ipsum. Suspendisse tincidunt porttitor diam, sed eleifend arcu ornare vel. Cras nulla est, mattis mattis accumsan quis, adipiscing mollis felis. Proin nec eros risus. Phasellus lobortis nisl vel lectus placerat non eleifend tellus posuere. Duis sollicitudin diam et orci dignissim ac egestas massa volutpat. Sed ultrices est et est rutrum nec blandit diam dictum. Ut luctus malesuada metus id lacinia. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Pellentesque fermentum erat sed elit consectetur non elementum urna aliquet. Donec mattis lorem nec quam dignissim mattis. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos.

Sub Feature
Yes, this is quite a good idea to have a sub feature box here. Within thin this space you could have an advertisement, navigation links, new blog posts or anything you would like!

Finally
Duis quis libero erat. Nam tristique dui turpis, ut dictum tortor. Curabitur ultricies nisl vel ipsum adipiscing vitae sodales purus consequat. Nunc varius, massa non dapibus facilisis, magna augue fermentum sapien, nec laoreet lacus dolor at tortor. Praesent porttitor bibendum ipsum, id faucibus risus posuere sed. Nunc ullamcorper suscipit elit, tincidunt viverra elit tincidunt eget. Morbi vel ipsum lorem, quis scelerisque augue. Cras sed metus enim, eu lacinia nulla. Donec ultrices neque at nulla facilisis a vestibulum dui posuere. Pellentesque vestibulum libero ac risus iaculis lobortis. Curabitur malesuada scelerisque velit, eget laoreet mauris sagittis eget. Nam metus nibh, lacinia vitae gravida a, elementum at lorem. In nisl sem, tempor lacinia tempor vel, lobortis in purus.

Suspendisse eget massa orci. Pellentesque tellus lorem, aliquam id gravida sit amet, sodales congue ipsum. Sed pulvinar purus et lacus varius sed pretium augue rutrum. Pellentesque pharetra mi at arcu lobortis tincidunt. Pellentesque in tristique metus. Proin semper vestibulum quam, quis lobortis diam bibendum consequat. Integer consectetur lorem suscipit felis malesuada lacinia. Vivamus cursus mi eget odio imperdiet et pellentesque dolor iaculis. Nullam rhoncus nisl metus. Vestibulum mattis laoreet tortor nec lobortis. Pellentesque sollicitudin adipiscing euismod. Praesent porta tempus consectetur. Donec lacinia mi dignissim nisl rutrum ac varius elit scelerisque. Vestibulum in nunc vel enim posuere auctor. Suspendisse ut luctus sem.

Mauris pretium justo vel leo pulvinar tincidunt. Nam vitae sem mauris, rutrum accumsan ante.

Phasellus lobortis nulla eget enim pulvinar vitae dignissim nisi scelerisque. Fusce lectus risus, sollicitudin in hendrerit id, ornare quis erat. Donec ultrices fringilla elit quis tincidunt. Duis scelerisque, ipsum id imperdiet feugiat, purus risus tristique massa, et vestibulum nisl lorem sed purus. Aliquam laoreet pellentesque eros ac sagittis. Nullam sit amet enim nisl. Vestibulum sit amet massa mauris. In ac leo id purus consequat malesuada non vitae ligula. Nunc ultricies sagittis mattis. Proin at tristique nibh. Aliquam sed libero nisi, nec tempus nibh. Suspendisse potenti. Nam iaculis elit in nisi facilisis ut ullamcorper metus placerat. Donec fermentum euismod eros vitae molestie. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum facilisis sagittis leo, eget mattis lacus elementum in. Nam congue feugiat scelerisque.

This should give you the below result:

My Newsletter

The Official Newsletter

About Time

Sub Feature

Yes, this is quite a good idea to have a sub feature box here. Within thin this space you could have an advertisement, navigation links, new blog posts or anything you would like!

Finally

Duis quis libero erat. Nam tristique dui turpis, ut dictum tortor. Curabitur ultricies nisl vel ipsum adipiscing vitae sodales purus consequat. Nunc varius, massa non dapibus facilisis, magna augue fermentum sapien, nec laoreet lacus dolor at tortor. Praesent porttitor bibendum ipsum, id faucibus risus posuere sed. Nunc ullamcorper suscipit elit, tincidunt viverra elit tincidunt eget. Morbi vel ipsum lorem, quis scelerisque augue. Cras sed metus enim, eu lacinia nulla. Donec ultrices neque at nulla facilisis a vestibulum dui posuere. Pellentesque vestibulum libero ac risus iaculis lobortis. Curabitur malesuada scelerisque velit, eget laoreet mauris sagittis eget. Nam metus nibh, lacinia vitae gravida a, elementum at lorem. In nisl sem, tempor lacinia tempor vel, lobortis in purus.

Mauris pretium justo vel leo pulvinar tincidunt. Nam vitae sem mauris, rutrum accumsan ante.

Make A Stripey Background With CSS

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:41:26 +0000

Hello,

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a stripey background with CSS. This method gives a stylish look to your website.

So follow these steps:

Save the image below as bg.png .
Add this to the default images folder on your website.
Add this code to the CSS Style Sheet for your website:

body {
background-image: url(images/bg.png);
background-repeat: repeat;
}

Here is that image I promised too:

And there you go, test to see that you have a background with that image repeated.

Customise Your iPhone/iPod Touch Screen

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:38:52 +0000

Hello,

In the first part of this blog post, I will show you how to ‘shuffle’ your iPod Touch/iPhone home screen application icons. So to start turn on your device, and you should see the ‘main’ home screen (below) or the last screen you left your device viewing.

Then slide to the page you wish to re-shuffle.

By holding down on an app icon, you will notice all the icons ‘dance’ about, see above, small x’s will also appear above the ‘deletable’ apps. By holding and dragging an icon, you can re-shuffle the icon layout. You can’t delete the apps which came with your device (e.g. Safari).

Slide to the screen which holds the application you wish to delete, press and hold the icon, the icons will then shuffle about (see below).

Then press the ‘X’ in the top -left corner of the corresponding app icon. You will then see this message (as below):

Tap ‘Delete’ to delete the app, or ‘Cancel’ to leave as! If you decide to click delete, then you will be greeted with a message asking you to rate the app, you can skip this step by tapping ‘No Thanks’.

And you can exit ‘edit’ mode at any time by pressing the ‘Home Screen Button’ (The Circle Button With The Square.)

Enjoy!

MSN Messenger For Mac Errors

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:32:08 +0000

Hello,

In this post, I will cover a few debug tips – as a few of you commented on my YouTube video: MSN Messenger For Mac (FREE + SAFE) – a few of you commented saying that it didn’t work. It does work – do not worry!

If you have tried to download it and it didn’t work, you should try to follow these tips:

Check Your OS:

Is your Mac OS below 10.4.9 (Tiger)? If so, you need at least Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) to run this piece of software. The current Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) costs around £25, and can be purchased from Apple stores, online store and other PC/Mac retailers.

Downloaded Fully:

Did you let the download fully complete? No? Then you need to re-download this file, and let it FULLY download!

These are only some of the debug options available. There are also other versions (from non-official developes – e.g. Non-Microsoft) available. Such as aMSN

Thanks!

Getting To Grips With The New Facebook Layout

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:30:51 +0000

Hello, In this guide, we will be focusing on how to use and navigate around the new Facebook layout, which was updated during the months of October / November 2009.

Homepage

When you sign in to Facebook, you might notice that some stories appearing on your homepage are from the previous day (or earlier), this will probably down to the fact that Facebook by default loads with the ‘News Feed’ feature – this just displays statuses etc. that happened whilst you were offline. The other type of feed is ‘Live Feed’ – this displays statuses etc. which are current and up-to-date. You can follow these steps below, to help you view the News Feed.

Log in to Facebook.
Navigate to the homepage (default page upon signing in).
Above that status update box, a link which reads: View Live Feed should appear – click this (If the text View News Feed is displayed – then the items displaying on your homepage are already live.)
You should now see the live feeds.

Status Update

Not much has changed with the status update box – apart from the appearence. When you are not typing in the box – the box compacts revealing more content on your page. However, clicking on the box and typing a status expands the box and displays status add-ons. You may follow the steps below to help you publish a status.

Navigate to the homepage
Go to the top of the homepage.
A text box with the words What’s on your mind? should appear.
Click in this box.
Type your status.
Optional: Click the icons to add video, photo’s etc.
Press ‘Update’.
Your status will now be shared with your friends.

This box may also appear when participating in a quiz. When the results are displayed, you may be asked for your comments on your score, this will also appear on your profile and your friends’ homepages.

Well, I think I have covered the basics in the new Facebook layout. I will post a new entry soon with the more advanced featuires of the new Facebook layout.

Thanks for reading this article!

Custom Error Pages

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:27:59 +0000

Hello, in this tutorial – I will show you how to create a custom error page for your site. In this tutorial – we will be focusing on the Error 404 page, which is displayed when the page can’t be found.

So, follow these steps:

Log in to your website control panel.
Create a new file.
In this file enter the following text: ErrorDocument 404 404.html
Save this file in your ROOT directory as: .htaccess
Now open your website editor.
Create a new HTML file, named: 404.html
Enter custom text, such as: Error 404 – The Page You Were Looking For Could Not Be Found.
Upload this also to your ROOT directory.

Now if you navigate to your website, and type a sub-direcotry you know dosen’t exist – your error 404 page should display – if not – you need to follow these steps again.

Enjoy.

Submitting Your Website URL To Google

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:24:31 +0000

If you want to index your wordpress, blogger or other hosted blog – these are normally automatically indexed with the search engines – so no need to worry!

However, if you are a webmaster – you need to index your website – in order to gain more traffic (visitors) to your website. So if this is you – read on!

Navigate your web-browser to: http://www.google.co.uk/addurl
3 fields will appear: URL, Comments and “Re-Enter The Words”.
So in the first field – enter your website address – e.g. http://www.mywebsite.com
Then in the next field – enter a description of your website – e.g. This is a website which I have made by myself.
In the last field – you must retype the words displayed in the image – into the textbox. This is required to let Google determine if the URL you submitted was submitted by a human or by a robot (e.g. WordPress).

After completing these steps successfully, your URL will be listed for indexing with Google. You can do this with all the Websites you own until you pass out with excitement! (Note: It may take a while for your website to appear on Google search results – depending on the size of your site).

You may also want to submit your URL to these:

Submit to Yahoo!: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Submit to Bing: http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

Enjoy!

How To Connect Twitter With WordPress.com

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:14:13 +0000

In this guide I will show you how you can connect your WordPress blog posts to your Twitter account. So that when you publish a new blog post – it automatically posts the blog title and link as your twitter status.

There is also no need to download ANY software! As this method is completely web-based.

So, lets begin: (You need to be logged in to WordPress and Twitter).

After you log into WordPress, from the sidebar – select My Blogs.
Here you will see a list of the blogs you own – find the row(s) in the table which is the blog you want to connect.
There will be a column labeled ‘Publicize’ in each cell below this will be 2 options : Yahoo and Twitter – for all the blogs you wish to connect with Twitter – check the ‘Twitter’ option.
Then after checking the ‘Twitter’ option, you need to enter your Twitter username and password.

You can customise the setup of the status and more.

Don’t forget:

Follow me on Twitter

Protecting Your Website Images Folder

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:09:08 +0000

Hello,

In this guide, I will show you how to protect the images directory on your site. By default, your images can be displayed on your website (e.g. www.mywebsite.com/images). This will show the images directory, which hosts all the images on your site.

However, you can protect this directory from been shown. It’s a very simple method – Simply create a file called index.html and upload it to your /images folder. As there is a file called index.html, the web-browser will detect this and automatically show the index.html file instead of the images directory. However, your image will remain visible – on the page you embed it on, and if the user enters (www.mywebsite.com/images/image.png).

So lets create index.html:

First, open your favourite website editor (I use Dreamweaver).
Create a blank HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) file.
Now, lets insert some content (or you can leave this blank – skip to next step) you could insert text that reads “Oh No You Don’t – This Directory Is Protected!” etc.
Save the file (if you have a website editor with an FTP client – e.g. Dreamweaver – save it into your /images folder) as index.html .
Now using the web-based FTP client or your desktop-based FTP client – upload the index.html file to your /images folder.

Now – when you visit your images folder on the internet the directory should display the index.html file.

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