A PollDaddy poll outside your WP blog

January 2, 2010 By 1 Comment

I mentioned in my earlier PollDaddy post, I am not a great fan of polls, but here is an opportunity to have another demo of a poll created using PollDaddy.

Someone asked me if a poll created in my WP blog can be displayed outside WordPress.com.

Yes, you can. I don’t think there is a restriction as to where you can display a PollDaddy as long as you use the correct embedding code.

To display the poll outside your WP blog, in your Polls > Edit control page, click HTML code link, then highlight and copy the poll’s javascript, and paste it to where you want to position your poll on your external page.

I am currently running in my personal site a very simple poll (see image on left).

No, the question asked in the poll is not earth-shattering. The question is very simple, and can be answered in less than one minute. I also wrote a brief background story about the poll with invitation to my readers to use the Comments to share their thoughts on the issue.

Poll results? The poll is generating good responses from my website followers.

Why not visit the poll and let me know what you think.

tweet-this-wp

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A simple solution to tweet and retweet your WP posts

January 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Our post two weeks ago on Publicize: Twitter is about automating the process of sending an update to a Twitter account each time a new post is published in your blog.

tweet itBut what if others want to tweet and retweet your posts?

One simple solution: Place a Twitter sharing code at the bottom, or anywhere else, on your post.

A sharing code comprises the Twitter grabber, a teaser which normally is the title of the post, and optionally, the permalink of the post or its equivalent shortlink. A shortlink is the “tiny URL” version of your post’s permalink generated by and stored in WP ~ very useful to get around the 140-character limit of a Twitter update.

Here is a sample structure of a Twitter sharer:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home/?status=This+is+the+post+title+OR+Create+another+teaser+http://wp.me/Get-Shortlink”>Tweet it</a>

End Note: I acknowledge currently there are social bookmark applications which automate this process taking into account the scripting limitations imposed by WP. At this time though, I don’t think I am ready to use them, particularly if these are run in a local drive. I will just wait until their scripts are taken on board by WP.

Feel like designing your own “tweet me” icon? Why not create your own special Twitter graphics and store it in your Media library. Try googling out “Twitter icons” or similar search terms to pick up Twitter icons for use as-is or for customization.

Here is a sample Twitter icon customized for this blog:

tweet-this-wp

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How to embed a Vimeo video

January 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Following a tip in Comments to a WP’s support page on how to embed a Vimeo video, here’s a demo:

Click here to view the embedded video.

]

The above video was embedded using this shortcode (no space after [ and before ] ):

[ vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/7243598 ]

How to resize

The above video can be resized from the standard 400×300 to a larger 600×450 by inserting the width and height parameters in the shortcode:

[ vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/7243598 w=600&h=450 ]

This is the resized video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hmmm, that was easy too.

Thanks T3CK for the tip. And thanks Ileane for the prompt.

More resizing and formatting

Using a DIV tag and CSS, you can easily position a smaller video (left or right) and wrap text around it.

Here is a sample of the above video resized to 300×225 and text-wrapped:

Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah.

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How to embed a video in your WordPress.com-hosted blog

January 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I didn’t realize that embedding a video in a WordPress.com-hosted blog is so easy until I tried it. I guess my initial impression of not being able to install any plugin in my WP-hosted blog was mentally blocking me from even trying it.

In my company’s self-hosted WP sites, we have to install plugins to add video embedding functionalities.

Actually, I just accidentally hit the Add Video icon when adding a new post.  When pressed, the icon popped up a new window displaying the familiar (to me, anyway) shortcodes in embedding YouTube and Google videos.

Wow! I exclaimed. So, these video-embedding plugins are already built into my blog. Excitedly I searched YouTube for a test video clip which I could embed here. And I have this video titled “Sydney Sites” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3qY3pP1ARg which I am using here for the same reason that I want to help promote Sydney.

So, how do you embed a video? Here are the steps:

1. When in Add New / Edit Post mode, click on the Add Video icon to open an Add Video window.

2. Select the URL tab. On the Video URL, enter the video URL.

3. Click the Insert into Post button.

The video shortcode with the entered URL is generated and entered onto your post. The URL without the space after [ and before ] looks like this for a YouTube embedded video.

[ youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3qY3pP1ARg ]

Here is the video generated by the above steps:

Click here to view the embedded video.

How do you resize the video?

Just add the parameter &w= (w for width) and &h= (h for, you guessed it, height) to the shortcode like:

[ youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3qY3pP1ARg&w=600&h=425 ]

and you get a resized video like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

or like this, if you want it smaller with w=200 and h=125:

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are tutorials found in WordPress.tv on how to embed YouTube videos. Search also “video embedding” in WordPress.com and you will find several posts where WP users narrate and share their experiences.

This is just one of them.

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How to blog spam-free at WordPress.com

January 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

My last post about email spams was more for working than WordPress-ing. This time let me go back to the latter, albeit on the same subject, but focused on WordPress.com blogs.

You know of course I am referring to comment spams.

When you log in to your Dashboard, you are greeted with a note like:

Akismet has protected your site from xxx spam comments already, and there are xx comments in your spam queue right now.

In my calculation, more than 70 per-cent of comments posted to date on this blog are spams in the six weeks it has been online.

Big deal? No, not really. Akismet is a friend to WP bloggers. Well, at least to some.

So what is this Akismet?

It is a plugin or software that deletes or “kills spam” in comments and trackbacks. It is an “Automattic production” and native to WordPress.

As of this writing, 3:30pm AEST 27 Oct, Akismet reported that it had caught more than 13 billion spams since it started more than 3 years ago, and that 83 per-cent of all comments are spam, a fair estimate considering that for emails about 88 per-cent are spam according to reports.

Here’s a screenshot of an Akismet stats page (time-stamping is mine to jog my memory):

Akismet stats

In its early years, I gather that Akismet had received a lot of complaints from WP users. Quite understandable, I think. The plugin was new, and it is the type of plugin that can only be perfected through actual practice. Akismet has to update its database and lexicon of words and phrases of words used in spamming.

The plugin also needed to learn from patterns of comment spams and feedback from users.

After more than 3 years, we could only expect Akismet to be more effective and more learned than when it started.

That said, it does not mean that you should leave Akismet totally on its own.

From time to time, you need to check your blog’s spam queue. There may be comments from friends mistakenly considered as spams by Akismet.

For example, today when I checked my blog’s spam queue, I found one comment posted about a week ago by another WP blogger. I guess the reason why that comment was caught was that in the comment was URL of the page I was being invited to visit. I am not sure here, I am only guessing.

Anyway, the point I am driving home is that we should not leave everything to Akismet. We still have to do some work.

Two things we can do:

1. As mentioned above, check your blog’s spam queue. If there are any comments which should not be considered as spams, you simply approve the comments to remove them from the spam queue. Just like with emails, from time to time we need to check our Spam folders. Sometimes, spam filters get so over-zealous and over-protective that even legit messages are being erroneously classified as spams.

2. Check your blog’s settings. On a WP blog’s Settings | Discussion page, there are two options you could configure to “teach” how Akismet should behave. These are the “Comment Moderation” and “Comment Blacklist” options. Why not put them to good use and fine-tune Akismet?

Comment moderation and blacklist options


I hope this post helps. Here’s to a spam-free blogging.

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