Richardcqz Secret HideOut
Technology, Gadget and Web News

If you’re after torrent downloads, chances are you’re searching Piratebay, IsoHunt, Mininova, and possibly a few others. Why not save yourself time and effort and search them all in one place?

USniff provides a nicely styled web 2.0 interface for multi-site torrent searches and allows you to query up to eight sites simultaneously. Results load extremely quickly, and I was pleased to see that they sort by number of seeds by default.

It’s ajax, so filtering and re-sorting your results is almost instant. The design is totally clean so far, there’s not even a single banner ad in sight. You’ll still have to click through to the actual tracker, of course, to grab the actual torrents. USniff doesn’t host anything…blah blah blah…insert usual torrent search engine disclaimer here.

For anyone looking for multiple options to download that new Ubuntu release (since you’re all using torrents for purely legal downloads, of course!), take a gander at USniff.

Any Microsoft™ Windows™ original comes with the shortcut keys such as Windows explorer, Internet Explorer, Microsoft™ Words, Control Panel and etc, but the keys are hard to remember. So now recommend you a new software not only let you know the shortcut keys but also have the drag and drop configuration to let you customize your own shortcut keys, QLiner.

QLiner is a free and open source keyboard productivity environment. It can be use by a person who have or dun have computer knowledge. Besides that, the drag and drop configuration also easy to set up. There are two ways, one is open the QLiner keyboard window by holding the windows key for 5 seconds or just press windows key + z, a keyboard explorer will be pop up and then you drag the shortcut key and place at the key you wish to.

You also can change the color and layout of the keyboard explorer to match with your actual and physical keyboard. Besides that, QLiner also support for more than 100 international keyboards layouts, hotkeys also supports Dvorak layout.

Relevant Link:
Learn hotkeys in 5 minutes: Here
QLiner Hotkeys Download Links: Here

Recently online forums have been flooded with tales of WordPress blogs being hacked and then banned by Google for spreading badware. To avoid these nightmares, follow the simple WordPress security tips in this article to keep your blog safe.

Update to get the current version that’s secure

No software is free from bugs and security holes. Make sure that you are running the latest secure version. For WordPress - as of this writing - that means versions 2.6.

Since WordPress gives plugins and themes full access to your blog, you also need to keep your plugins up-to-date. With the latest 2.3 series of WordPress you are notified in the admin screen when the plugins that you have installed are released in new versions.

Disable and remove themes and plugins that you are not using

If you are like the majority of bloggers, you have tried several different themes for your blog. More than likely, you now have a few different unused plugins that are installed.

Every single piece of unwanted software may provide a new vulnerability. Since no one is using them, why waste the energy to take these packages to the latest version? Get rid of the software, eliminate all associated files and be done with the trouble.

The last step of actually removing the files from the server is very important. Almost all themes and plugins are installed in well known directory locations. An attacker can use that well known URL to exploit a vulnerability even if you’re not using that theme/plugin.

Only download and install trusted code

Just like you shouldn’t click on email attachments coming from people you don’t trust, you shouldn’t install software on your blog from untrusted sources. Only download code from the authors’ web site.

Since WordPress and most themes and plugins are released as open source, anyone can modify the code with malicious intent and put up the badware for download to unsuspecting web surfers.

There is a penalty for being an early adopter! Allow other people to work through the holes and security issues before you attempt to use the package.

Watch out for JavaScript includes

Web analysis services and ad networks require the addition of JavaScript to blog pages. JavaScript code is allowed to do almost anything with your web page without your permission. In Essence, you are trusting the security of your website to this unknown, third-party service

I would be unwilling to have JavaScript put on my web site by an entity I was not familiar with. I would be more receptive to legitimate, well-known ad network and web analytic providers such as Google AdSense and Google Analytics.

Ad networks also pose another problem if you don’t have control over who is allowed to advertise on your network. Google applies the guilt by association principle: If you are advertising for a site that has badware on it, your site may be blacklisted too.

So you’ve tried free web hosting services, had a blog on sites like blogger.com and basically had fun and treated it as a hobby, but all of that changed when you discovered that you actually love blogging and that there are people out there that are actually making money with their blogs, you figured out that you might as well get into the game as well but your main obstacle is that few (if any) advertisers are willing to do business with you if your not hosting your own blog with a proper domain name, hence your hosting experience begins…..

1.Assess your needs - This is one of the crucial parts of determining your Web Host, assess what you need, not everyone needs a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a Dedicated Server right off the bat.A majority of bloggers begin their web hosting journey with a Shared Hosting service.

2.Support and Scalability - When choosing a host for your blog it is a good idea to ensure that they provide good support and that their services are scalable.Test their support by sending emails and see how long it takes before they reply, do they give you an option at the end of the reply mail to answer further questions?, did they answer your questions well enough?.

A plus point for a hosting company is if they provide you with good support via 24 hour email, forum, live chat , etc.

By scalability i mean do they allow you to “grow”?, some hosting company only offer shared hosting services and this could be a pain if your blog starts to blossom and you discover that 5GB bandwidth a month is not going to be enough anymore,a good hosting company would normally also have a VPS and Dedicated Server plan so that moving your blog to a better server won’t be that much of a pain, trust me sometimes moving a blog from one hosting company to another can really be a nightmare is it doesn’t go well.

Web Hosting services like Exabytes.com and Webserver.com.my are a good choice to go with.

3.Do Your Research - Just because someone on a forum somewhere said a particular host provides good services doesn’t automatically means that the you should host your blog with them.

Search online, get reviews and feedback, search for all types of hosts, some of the best places to search are:

Malaysia Webhosting

Malaysia Mesra Hosting

Malaysia Exabytes Blog Hosting

4.Beware the “unlimited” ploy - Stay away, in fact run as far as possible from hosting companies that promises you ‘unlimited’ space and ‘unlimited’ bandwidth.

There simply is no such thing as ‘unlimited’, everything has it’s limitations.This question has been going on and on for some time now and i can tell you honestly there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth, it’s just part of their marketing tactics.However you will also come across the term “unmetered” and there is a difference between unlimited & unmetered

Unlimited means there is virtually no limit, which is frankly impossible. Unmetered means that you will not be billed for any extra bandwidth being transferred but you still technically have a limit depending on the type of port connection you are on.

source

5.Control Panel - This is quite important too, choosing a good control panel is essential to your overall hosting experience especially if your a complete beginner and know almost nothing about web hosting.

I have found that Cpanel is the control panel for me, mainly becuase of the cool feature that normally comes bundled with it - FANTASTICO.

Fantastico is a commercial script library which automates the installation of web applications to a website. Fantastico scripts are executed from the administration area of a website control panel, which basically means that installing Wordpress is as easy as pie.

6.Uptime - After figuring out all of the above and you start rolling out your blog the last thing you need is for it to crash every hour or so, keep track of your hosts uptime to ensure that your blog stays online (if possible) 100% of the time, most hosts will promise you 99% and that’s fair enough actually.

7.The $$ Factor - I saved this for last because often times most bloggers who are looking for a host will tend to check out the price of the hosting and miss out everything else.

“Ask not what your host can do for you, ask how much?”

Don’t ever follow that rule, it’s really not a good idea to get a hosting service based on price alone, always remember that you get what you paid for!.

Along the years i have seen many of my friends suffer alot because of this, i too had an experience with this issue way back in 2006 when i choose a dirt cheap host that eventually went missing which meant that i lost my site and whatever files i had stored in there, looking back at it now it was quite a funny experience but it won’t be funny if your running a succesfull blog only to see it dissappear overnight.

** Just in case your wondering, this blog is hosted at Exabytes.com.my with EBiz Gold Linux, they have so far provided me with excellent support and uptime, hopefully that trend continues.

Link Popularity is one of the most important factors affecting your Search Engine Ranking. When your site is popular with other web-sites, the Search Engines love you, but if you are the new kid on the block, they ignore you; totally. Its great to be popular; and improving your Link Popularity will also get you higher rankings on the search engines.

Why is Link Popularity important for higher rankings?

Search Engines are just software programs that try to analyze the utility and validity of your content with regard to certain keywords. It also tries to understand the importance or ranking of your site against all competing sites in its index.

Just how do Search Engines learn about the utility and the validity of your content?

Search Engines just love sites that users love to visit. They love it even more if users spend more time at the site before they browse away. Now how do they know which sites humans love? Obviously with the billions of web pages on the world wide web, the Search Engines cannot manually go to each site and check their content. They let other humans do that work for them. Then they watch as others link to your site. They watch your LINK POPULARITY.

Link popularity simply means how popular are you on the World Wide Web. And your popularity is determined by the number of people linking to your web-site. The greater the number of external links pointing to your web-site, the greater is your ranking. Simple, isn’t it?

Here is how to find YOUR link popularity: Go to Google.com and type in link: followed by your URL. This returns all the sites that link to you in the Google index. eg. link:http://www.yourdomain.com.

How do you get a lot of people to link to you?

Getting people to link to you is easy if you establish your presence. Show that you are a master of your domain. Even if you deal in manure, and there are people out there wanting to know more about it, you have an audience. And if you establish your presence well enough, the links will automatically follow.

Here are a few ways you can increase your inbound links.

1) Articles : Almost anybody can write articles. This is the easiest way to get started on your way to Search Engine manna. Its just the question of putting down your thoughts in a coherent manner. As long as the information you are providing is useful and valid, your articles are sought after by publishers out there. There are also hundreds of article directories on the net.

To find article directories, Google ‘Article Directories’. You get nearly 2 million hits. There are also some awesome free tools available for this.

For those with a morbid fear of writing, you can find ‘Ghostwriters’ as well as ‘Virtual Assistants’ on the Internet. Search on Google for those terms and you will find many a link to sites that provide you suitable services. You may also use sites like Elance.com and RentACoder.com for people who will write articles for you.

2) Blogs: Blogs are not as easy to do as Articles are. But they are a very useful tool, nevertheless. When you have a blog, you have an audience. It like a fan base. They have certain expectations of you. They want you to churn out hit singles or albums. But they want you to give them more. Even though they started out as mere diaries or daily jottings of a few people, currently they are excellent link building, content management and search engine optimization tools.

In fact almost industry may have its blog portal. As always run a search and you will find something in your industry. Or you may go to blogger.com or wordpress.com to start your own blog free of charge.

3) Free Products: The easiest way to do this is to write a tool and offer it for downloads. Or may be even provide a service for free. The greatest example of building a business with free service that comes to mind is hotmail.com. Once your service becomes a must-have, its only a matter of time before you can start making money from it. Also you can have people point to your site to give their customers access to your tool.

4) Trackbacks: This is the easiest way to get your links out there. What you do is go to other blogs(Authority Sites) in your industry and become a regular contributor. Or comment on the blogs. Along with your signature, most people offer a link to your web-site. And the more links you have pointing back to you, the more popular you get. Also, when you become a major contributor/commentor, people start valuing your opinion more.

5) Syndications : You can offer your articles to other sites for publishing for free or for payment. Your article links back to your site.

6) Reciprocal links: You offer a link to another peer site, in return for them linking back to you. This is a good way to get your target industry users to come to your site. Also you introduce your users to other sites that they may be interested in visiting. They will be thankful to you for pointing them in the right direction. And they come to trust you more.

7) Partner links : Your local Chamber of commerce, Suppliers, Resellers, Affiliates, Sites selling complementary products etc.

Study your competition: Google your product and study the linking strategy of top ranking sites. There are tools that help you do this. Webposition.com has a good tool but I prefer EliteSEOTool.com as it has some additional features that I love. These tools help you conduct an ongoing study of your competition and their rankings thereby helping you beat them consistently.

Of course, no amount of link popularity will help you if don’t have the content to keep visitors at your site. So start with good content.

A note of caution! Make sure that you are being linked to by Authority sites with a Good PageRank. Also the linking sites should somehow be relevant to your industry. If not, it only serves to confuse the Search Engines and your rankings will suffer.

As many people know Wordpress is a blogging software, but now it is also can be a content management. So i would like to share some plugins, themes and tips that should be useful to you if you plan to done a content management.

Install Wordpress

Get the latest release of WordPress and install it on your clients server, some prefer to use Fantastico but i would suggest against it considering that Fantastico rarely install the latest version of WordPress.

Install the “One Click” Installer

(**if you ever used the Mambo/Joomla CMS before than this feature will be familiar to you)

Trust me this little plugin is going to be a lifesaver, the plugin allows uploading of a plugin or theme without the need of manually uploading by FTP, allowing the upload from the Admin panel. All you have to do is browse for the zip file and click “upload” and the plugin does the rest.

Permalinks/SEO

Nothing is worst than to have a person who doesn’t bother to do some SEO work for their client, WordPress has made it a tad easier to have a good SEO optimized site, just changed your Permalinks and you already on your way, next you should install the All in One SEO Pack.
If you need SEO help, i suggest you get the Seobook.

Customizing WordPress

Most probably you would not want your client to know that your using WordPress to build their site and even if you wanted them to know it’s always good to customize and tweak a little so that it doesn’t look “out-of-the-box’ and to achieve that you will need:

Custom Admin Branding - Customize the login screen, header and footer of the Wordpress Admin.

Clutter Free - Clutter Free is a plugin that lets you hide portions of the WordPress posting interface that you rarely (or never) use. Instead of being minimized (and still taking up room), they’ll be completely invisible.

WordPress Admin Themes - A list i compiled a while back about Admin Themes.

Custom Admin Menu - This plugin gives you full control of your Wordpress administration section, without requiring any changes to any files! All customizations are done using a very intuitive graphical interface.

Admin Drop Down Menu - This plugin makes life a little easier (Live Demo)

Wordpress Organizer - This plugin helps you or your client to manage the files uploaded to the site.

Custom Write Panel - In WordPress, a user could be assigned a role and, accordingly, that user will or will not have the capability to write a new Post.

With this plugin, a custom write panel could be accessible to certain roles only. For example, a custom write panel “Music Review” is created and a role “Music Review Writer” is invented. This custom write panel could be set to be visible to this new role only.

Dashboard Editor - This plugin allows you to add whatever you want to the Dashboard through PHP and HTML and allows you to even add Sidebar Widgets. You may also wipe the entire dashboard or individually remove some of the more irritating sections like the Dev news, Planet Wordpress and the getting started section.

Other Plugins to consider

Here’s a list of plugins that i found to be extremely useful when i’m working on my projects:

Contact Form & Forms

I’ve come across people who wanted not just a contact form but a form with many entry fields and i would highly recomend using the Dagon Design Form Mailer or cforms to accomplish this.

Gallery

There might be a need to run a gallery on the site and luckily for you there are already tons of “Gallery” plugins out there, you can find them all here.

Search Everything

One thing that bugs me about WordPress is the incapability to search anything that it outside of a “post”, if your projects requires you to have a good chunks of content on pages instead of posts than your going to appreciate the Search Everything plugin.

Page Navigation,Polls,Post Ratings,Print Page

All 4 of these plugins were created by Lester Chan, and it really does come in handy, you can find the plugins here.

QuickTags
Quicktags are those useful ‘one-click’ buttons that insert code for you,your client might not be as tech savy as you and so you could help them out by adding some quicktags, here’s a tutorial on how to add a quicktag.

‘Category Visibility’ Plugin

This plugin is ‘da bomb” UNFORTUNATELY it does not work with WordPress 2.3 and as far as i can tell it only works with version 2.2 and below which is really a sad thing considering what this plugin is able to do, with this plugin you can prevent a post from appearing on the frontpage and you can set it so that it enevr appears unless you link to that particular post…really really cool, i wish the author would update this plugin!.

Comment or No Comment?

Well if it’s going to be a site that a comment form on every single post is not needed so don’t forget to remove that from your theme, most of the time you can find and edit the code in the single.php file.

(if for some reason your using comments that don’t forget to activate Akismet)

Themes

This is a rather huge topic, there are tons of WordPress Themes out there and now there’s also quite a few Premium theme, i’m afraid i can’t say muuch about this topic because it’s really up to you to find the perfect theme and tweak or you could just design and code your own theme or buy a Premium Theme.

if you need help in finding themes you should read this.

That’s basically the steps to make the Wordpress as content management system, hopefully this post will be useful to you BUT remember this is just the tip of the iceberg, there are tons on tutorials, plugins and themes out there to ensure that you wil be able to bring out the best from WordPress.

All The Best!

here is a list of other sites where you will be able to find great wordpress themes:

www.wpthemesfree.com

www.themeporter.com

www.wpthemespot.com

www.justskins.com

www.wpskins.org

www.templatesbrowser.com/wordpress-themes

www.themesbase.com

www.BloggingPro.com

www.wordpress-theme.org

www.bloggingthemes.com

After completing the list above there were some people who pointed out to me other good WordPress themes outlet, so here there are:

Additional Sites:

www.fresheezy.com

WordPress Wow

WPsnap

RockinThemes

That’s it for the basics, but StExBar doesn’t quit there. It also does bulk renaming with regular expression support and allows you to set up your own, customized buttons. You can tweak new commands a number of ways, applying them only to selected files or folders or when nothing is selected. Don’t want your new command to function in a vital area? Just check off “enabled when showing system files” to prevent accidentally screwing up important folders like System32.

And don’t ignore the edit box on the right of the bar. It’ll match expressions in your current folder and select all matching files and folders. Want to move all your MP3s containing the word “Manilow?” Type *manilow* in the box, hit enter, and StExBar highlights them all for you. If you have any.

Which I don’t. I swear.

StExBar is freeware, 32 and 64-bit Windows only, and it packs a wallop for a 370k download.

Few days ago I logon to MYNETFM, The site is load properly, when it is almost finish loaded, the Internet Explorer 7 prompt me a message that “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://www.mynetfm.net/. and operation aborted” and thanks to the new Sitemeter bugs. Sitemeter is a free web analytics service used by many popular blogs and web sites including Lifehacker, Gizmodo, and Consumerist. All of the site mention just now also affected by the Sitemeter bugs. But, the web sites load just fine in Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

It’s likely that the bug is due to tracking code changes Sitemeter has been rolling out. Visitors to web sites using the code who are using IE will see the page start to load, and then get an error message. When you click OK to make the error message go away, the entire site goes with it. Nice.

If your site has been affected it looks like you have two options. You can either remove the code altogether until Sitemeter gets its act together, or you can try modifying your code by using the plain HTML version instead of the Javascript version. If you take the latter route, your counter won’t show up thanks to another bug, but at least it will continue tracking visits to your site.