Wordpress 2.9 has been updated to 2.9.2. This update fixes many bugs found in previous versions. Some of the bugs addressed by this update are,

1. could not be converted to UTF-8 / WordPress should cache failed feed fetches so as to avoid overloading feed sources
2. ‘$wpdb’ typo in wp-admin/maint/repair.php causing table prefix not to appear
3. Code editor bug in Safari
4. upgrade.php dies hard on MySQL < 4.1.0
5. cron stopped working with standard configuration

For a complete list of issues addressed by this update, click here

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For bloggers who hold full time jobs it can be a daunting task to manage their blog while working. This, I think is one of the reasons a blog might fail. iPhone to the rescue! Here is a list of 10 most useful iPhone apps with which you can manage your blog. This is a list of apps I have used on my iPhone to work on my blog.

1. Wordpress for iPhone: This is one of the most useful iPhone apps for bloggers who want to manage their blogs on the move. It lets you create blog posts, add images and resize them as you would on a pc/ mac. It lets you write posts and  put them into proper categories. You can even add images to your posts right from your phone. Once the post is written, you can preview it. If you choose to, you can publish it to your blog, save a local copy, save a draft on your blog. You can even schedule it to be published at a later date. It also offers some blog management features like writing pages and managing your blog comments. You can approve, unapprove, mark comments as spam, or delete the comments. This app offers some great features to make it priceless for busy bloggers. As a matter of fact, this post is being written on an iPhone using this app!

2. Pro RSS reader: This is a RSS reader. You might be wondering what the heck? This is one of the priceless apps ? Yes, it is, for a user who reads a lot of other blogs to learn or just wants to leave relevant comments. It allows you to setup RSS feeds from unlimited number of sites. It also gives you the option to archive the posts which you think are very informative. For a person who doesn’t have a EDGE or GPRS connection, you can preload the feeds and you can read it on the go. It caches the feed including the images for a better experience. Other options include the ability to view the website, send the post to a friend via email.

3. Photogene: This is a photography enthusiasts dream. The options offered by this app is unsurpassed at the moment by any other app for the same purpose. You can crop a photo, rotate them to fit your blogs needs. It also offers advanced features like the histogram, hue and saturation, exposure controls, color controls. You can even add a custom symbol to write text on the photo. Not to mention the ability to add frames, adding effects. You can even add special effects to your photos. You can sharpen the images too. This app gives the user a ability to post excellent photos to their blog. If used in tandem with the wordpress, its a great way to keep blogging even if you are not in front of a computer.

4. Awesome Note: This is a very aptly named app. This is basically a notes app. You might be wondering when i have the notes app in my iphone, why would i need another app ? The answer to that question varies a lot. From my standpoint, i like to organize my thoughts and categorize them. This app allows you to jot down the ideas in a very quick manner. It lets you categorize the ideas. You might categorize it like marketing ideas, blog post ideas, budget control etc. You can even color code it for easy access. This app is not only useful from a blogging standpoint but also useful for other things as well. Like shopping list, expenditure list, monthly budget etc. The next app we’ll look at is just designed to give you more control over your budget.

5. iXpenseIt: Money management is one of the basic things we need to do in life. More so, when it comes to blog management. This is a highly neglected areas of blogging. If you are a new blogger, you need to maintain records of how much you are spending on the blog. For bloggers who have already established a income, they need to manage their investments on their blogs. This app lets you manage your money. You basically decide how much do you want to spend on the blog and setup a budget. Now, how much you spend and on what did you spend it on, you make an entry into the log. By the time you do this for a week, you’ll exactly know how much you wasted or how you could have used the money in a better way on better things. This is one of the most used apps for me.

Other apps which i think you already know are good. Ones like Twitterrific, TwitterTrend etc are great. The apps mentioned above might not be useful for everyone. Your needs might be different from the next person. I hope i have brought some nice apps into your notice using which you can take your blogging life to the next level.

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Have you ever wondered what is all that RSS, XML, Syndication is ? Well, you are not different from anyone of us a few days, months or years ago. I will explain what is RSS. This is a newbie’s guide to RSS and how it is built and what are its advantages.

The Basics

RSS is a short form of Really Simple Syndication. To subscribe to RSS means to syndicate, or to subscribe to the site’s feed. By subscribing to a RSS feed of a site, you no longer have to visit the site to read the latest articles posted. You can read them at your disposal from a RSS reading software. We’ll talk about the different kinds of RSS readers available in a moment. If you visit many websites on a daily basis, RSS maybe your best online friend. You can read the updates posted on many different sites without even having to visit them.

So, how does a RSS feed look like ? The image you see on the top is the standard image for a RSS feed. Most of the websites use this icon, though some of them have it in slightly fancier styles. A general RSS link would look like this.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/tipslab

If you click on it, you’ll be presented with a list of RSS readers with which you want to read the feed.

Feed Readers

There are two kinds of feed readers you can use. The online feed readers and the feed reading software. One of the most famous online feed readers is Bloglines. It lets you add and categorize the feeds in many different ways. It is just like the feed reading software, except that it is completely based on the internet. Perhaps, the most important area in which the online feed readers win over the feed reader software is that you don’t need to be on the system on which you have installed the software. You can virtually access your feeds from any system in the world.

RSSOwl is a very famous feed reading software. As with any other software, there is a learning curve associated with this. But, once you have setup your feeds, its pretty much easy managing your feeds and reading them. If you are a person who always uses a specific computer to browse the internet, using a feed reading software might be useful for you. It saves you time and energy to login to a online feed reader. Phew, that would be one password less to remember.

All blogs will have a link which you can subscribe to. It might be called Atom, or RSS, or simply Syndicate, but they all do the same thing. The reason there are so many names is because there are different standards to create web syndication services. At the moment, it looks like RSS is leading the pack.

If you are not a tech savvy person, just know that the RSS feeds are formatted in a language called XML.  XML is the language behind the formatting the feeds and delivering them to your feed reader. If you have no knowledge of HTML, then you probably don’t need to know much about XML. Just know that the language behind syndication is XML.

As with any other thing, we learn by doing. The same goes for RSS, we learn when we try it.  Try subscribing to a feed or two and check out if RSS is for you.

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  One of the myths surrounding the field of photography is that some people just have a knack to shoot superb photos. But in reality, those excellent photos you see are shot with a very good understanding of few principles. One such principle is the 2/3 rule or the two thirds rule. Its  a compositional principle.

You use it when you are looking through the viewfinder just before you click. Imagine two lines vertically and two lines horizontally as shown below.

According to the 2/3 rule, the highlight of the photo should be placed close one of the four intersections of the imaginary lines. In the photo above, the highlight is the sun disappearing behind the mountains. It is placed at the top-right intersection. It makes this this photo an excellent composition. If you are shooting a person, then its advisable to place them on the top two intersection points. Its known that the viewer’s eyes tend to focus these 4 intersection points easily and quickly. If the key compositional element is placed at these points, it makes the photo interesting and powerful. Try it out and i think you’ll be able to take very good pictures.

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Why do you need a local development environment ? Be it coding work or just theme development work, we need to make sure that the live blog doesn’t get affected by your development work. One of the widely accepted idea is to setup a local environment mirroring the same settings as your web server. In this way, we are completely detached from our live blogs and are free to perform any modifications we want.

How do i create a local dev environment for wordpress ? There are three steps in creating your own local environment:-

1. Setting up the web server.
2. Setting up the database .
3. Installing Wordpress

1. Setting up the web server: In this step we are going to setup the webserver, install PHP, MySql. We’ll use a package called WAMP. which already has Apache2, PHP, MySql already integrated into it. So, if we install this WAMP we would have installed all the things we are going to need for installing wordpress. You can download WAMP here. Once you have downloaded it, go ahead and install it. When installing, use the default options.  The installation is pretty straight forward. Once the installation is complete, c:/wamp/www will be your web server’s directory. Now we can proceed to database creation and wordpress installation.

2.Setting up database and installing wordpress: Start the WAMP server by clicking on Start > programs > wampserver > start wampserver. Once you have started the wamp server, look at the taskbar beside the system time. You should find a icon which looks like a  speedometer. Click on it and select phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin will open and you should get a screen similar to the one shown below.

phpMyAdmin

Now under MySQL localhost, create a new database, enter the name of the database you want to use for wordpress installation and click on create. You have just created a new database. The connection information for this database will be as follows;

Server: localhost

Username: root

Password: [no password - empty]

3.Setting up Wordpress: We know how to do this, don’t we ? Download the newest release of wordpress and extract the files to c:\wamp\www and proceed with the installation. Click here if you need more information on installing Wordpress. Once you have completed all the steps in this tutorial, we have established a completely offline wordpress development environment.

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Chris Pearson’s Thesis theme for wordpress is one of the most beautiful wordpress themes out there. For a person considering whether to buy thesis or not, there will be lot of questions about the theme itself. How is thesis theme different than the other themes ? Is the price tag of 87$ worth it ?

When i was looking at a theme for my blog, i came across Thesis theme. At first, I was skeptical about purchasing this theme. 87$ seemed like a lot of money to pay for a theme. To make a educated decision whether to buy it or not, I started reading some articles and blogs about thesis. Later on, during my research, i came across some pretty useful features which would help me in developing my blog. So i finally decided to purchase this theme. Once i did,  a tremendous amount of information was available to me in the DIY Themes forums. People were friendly and support was excellent. Using this information available i went on to customize the stock Thesis theme to create this theme you are currently seeing on this website.

After being impressed by this wonderful theme, i wanted to write a review about this theme providing a indepth information. So, what were the features which set this theme apart from the other themes ? Lets have a look at them.

1.Configurability: Thesis theme is highly configurable without any programming knowledge. It offers two configuration screens. First, Thesis options and second, Design options. Have a look at the screenshot below to get  a first person perspective on the configuration options available.

Thesis Options

As you can see, Lot of options are available for the user to configure the theme down to the minute details. Detailed explanations for each of the options make it very easy for the non tech savvy users to configure their theme according to their wish. The second configuration screen is the Design options. The design options of the Thesis configuration offers a lot of options for the user to customize the look and feel of the site. Lets have a look at the screenshot for a better understanding.

Design Options

Pretty much everything a user needs to configure to make his/her site look unique is available and can be performed with just a few mouse clicks. For other users who want to customize their themes like problogger.net, copyblogger.com etc, they have a more advanced customizing feature called Custom programming and Custom CSS. Using these two advanced customization features, the whole look of the site can be changed.

2.SEO Options: If you ask me to mention one feature in which thesis really stands out, i will have to say, SEO. The whole point behind the design of thesis theme is SEO. Wordpress, as it is, is optimized for SEO. But the theme we use should enhance the SEO capabilities of wordpress. From a search engine perspective, the code of the website is very important. It is also important for us to keep the theme design separate from the wordpress design as it would ensure the consistent look of the website in case of the wordpress updates. This is ensured by keeping the theme functions and css completely separate from the functions of the wordpress. Search engines love this. And we don’t need to worry about our theme compatibility when wordpress releases a new version. Thesis also provides a In-post SEO capabilities. Have a look at the following screenshot.

In-Post Options

As you can see from the above screenshot, pretty much all the SEO options you need for individual post SEO is already available for you without even installing a plugin.

The support and the information available in DIY themes forums is unmatched and the people on the forum are very helpful. There are many pros on DIY theme forums who are willing to answer pretty much every question you might shoot at them. All this for 87$, lifetime updates, unmatched support, its a good offer. But, is it worth it ? Considering what i have learnt using and hacking many free themes in the past,Thesis is way better. In my opinion, definitely it is worth it. 87$ is not a lot to spend on a theme when we weigh in the fact that it saves a lot of time, gives you ability to have a completely unique blog design.

We would like to know, how many of us are using paid themes ? Please leave a reply saying whether you are using a free theme or a paid theme on your blog. Thanks.

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Social bookmarking today has gained a lot of popularity and it would be more than helpful to add a social bookmarking plugin to your website. With a lot of plugins available for wordpress which achieve the same goal, the process of selecting a correct one for your website can be a  difficult task. Lets have a look at what are the most popular plugins available for wordpress.

1. Sociable : This is the most popular plugin available for wordpress today. Rightly so because of the configuration options it offers. Once you install and activate the plugin, you get a configuration link in your plugins menu. Here you have the options of selecting upto 99 social media sites including the most popular ones. This is a very highly configurable plugin.

2. Share This : This is a good plugin in terms of configuration options it provides. It lets you add up to 12 social media sites. You can add or remove the sites when you are configuring it. It also lets you customize the look and feel of the plugin to match your site.  Once you have setup the options you can generate the share this code and use it in any place you like.

3. Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email : This is very similar to share this in terms of  the way you customize it. It gives you options to customize many elements of the plugin.

So, which one to use on your site ?  Have a detailed look into the features of these plugins  and you should find out which one suits your site better in terms of look, feel and the options it offers.

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no virus thanks

These days, it is very common that you download a file from the internet and next thing you know is that your system is infected by a virus. Ofcourse, your system has a antivirus and all, but the best thing would be to make sure the file doesn’t contain any virus before you download it. Here are some of the free online web scanners.

You will find lots more online antivirus scanners if you do a simple google search. But, wouldn’t it be nice to scan a file using all these online scanners at once and for free ? That is what  NoVirusThanks.org does. It scans your files using 22 different virus scanners and provides you with a report which looks like the screenshot below. You can scan a file by just pointing the link to that file. You also have a option of scanning the files on your system. For more info visit www.NoVirusThanks.org

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There seem to be many of us who just don’t realize the power of Firefox. The addon functionality built into the Firefox makes it so power packed that it can be tuned for many purposes including  making your online life a lot more easier and safer. Here, i will provide a list of Firefox addons which i think every average user should have. So lets proceed to the list.

1. Adblock plus : This is by far the most useful addons of all. This addon blocks those pecky ads you see on most websites. It automatically blocks different kinds of ads like the pop up, pop under, banner ads etc. It also offers a functionality by which you can exclude ads on certain websites or pages from being blocked. This will be very helpful if you are shopping for something. For more info visit  http://adblockplus.org/en/ .

2.Interclue :  Interclue, in terms of the addon creator, is a ultimate hyperlink multitool. This addon tells you what is behind a link without you having to click on it. It warns you of phishing sites,  malware sites etc. It also tells you whether the link is working or not. This is a priceless addon for people who are security conscious. Its a real time saver if you are looking for something. More info can be found on this site http://interclue.com/ .

3.Fire Gestures : This is addon that enables you to execute various commands like back, forward, close tab, open a new tab with mouse gestures. This is very useful in the sense that you don’t have to go up to the navigation bar to click on the icons up there. You can execute them where ever your pointer is. It gives you various options to customize the gestures to whatever you like and use the most. More information can be found  at http://www.xuldev.org/firegestures/ .

4. Site Launcher : Site Launcher opens your favorite websites with just a press of a keyboard button. You press a hotkey to bring up the site launcher window and then a unique hotkey to open your favorite site. This is as neat as it gets without creating a cluttered bookmark list below your address bar. A very useful addon if you visit many sites on a regular basis.

5. Read it later : Read it later saves the pages of interest to read later. It gives you option to add pages to the read later list and remove them once they are read. It also categorizes the list by days and months for easy access. This is a great addon for people who read a lot of articles.

I hope this post is of some help in making your online life a bit more easier and safer.

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