Continue reading »]]> I have updated my ping list for WordPress after reading this post.

The list still uses Ping-o-Matic, but also includes a few other sites I had not thought about;

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

So, now I just have to see if this increases the traffic.

What about you? Do you use any other sites in your ping list that we should all know about?

Technorati Tags: ping list, WordPress

Continue reading »]]> Microsoft have just spoken about the new Windows Web Gallery at Mix09

Basically the Windows Web Gallery is a single web site that makes community apps available based on both ASP.Net and PHP.  The site is still in its early days, but already features well known apps such as DotNetNuke and WordPress.  There is also a submission system for you to have your own apps included as long as it meets the guidelines set out by MS (I haven’t read them yet).

The plus points are it should allow you to always ensure you have the latest versions of the apps and keep your eyes out for new material arriving on the scene.

Check out the Web Gallery now here.

Technorati Tags: ASP.Net, community apps, open source, php

Continue reading »]]> Ok. So, I’m finally using Twitter and I love it!

Now I want to hook my blog up to my Twitter account so that anybody following me on Twitter gets a Tweet when I post.

So, I did a quick Google and I have just installed TweetSuite.  Seems to do all I wanted and more.  I found it on a list of top 10 Twitter Tools for WordPress which is work checking out.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, WordPress

Continue reading »]]> Today, I upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1, which I am glad to say was really simple.  Along with this, one of my colleagues suggested I try Windows Live Writer as a blogging tool to post to this blog, so I installed it.

When you first open Windows Live Writer it has to query your blog via the xmlrpc.php file in the WordPress root directory.  However, when I tried this I kept receiving the following error;

“Invalid response document returned from the XmlRcp sever”

After a bit of digging around the WordPress files and folders, here is how I fixed it;

1. Open your favourite text editor (I like Notepad++ because it also shows me characters that some editors can hide).

2. Open the following four files and check for extra characters after the closing PHP tag (which looks like “?>”).  If you find ANY blank spaces or blank lines after this closing tag, delete them.

• wp-blog-header.php
• wp-config.php
• wp-settings.php
• xmlrcp.php

3. Save your files and upload them to your server.

4. Try Windows Live Writer again and hopefully enjoy using it

Technorati Tags: windows live writer, WordPress

Continue reading »]]> I was asked this question this week by one of my clients for whom I produce a couple of web sites for that have been growing steadily for a couple of years. So, I thought I would post about this question from a general point of view;

So, do you need one?

Before, you we can answer this question, we need to look at the advantages of having a blog.

- Blogs are an excellent way of getting up to date news out to your potential and existing clients. If you provide up-to-date and useful information on your blog, then you are likely to get more readers. With a good blog, you can be seen as the expert in your particular field to whom people look to for advice. If that blog is connected to your business, then this will inspire confidence in you and your product / service, which will hopefully lead to more sales / leads.

- Search Engines love Blogs! As the primary goal of search engines like Google is to provide relevant and up-to-date results, blogs, by their very nature, rank well when compared with a static web site. To give you an example, I just posted an item about updating my blog called “WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Complete”. Within 5 minutes (I kid you not), I did a search on Google to see what other people were saying on the matter, and I was already ranked 3rd on Google UK when I searched for “WordPress 2.5 Upgrade”. So, having a blog, where your competitiors do not might allow you to connect with a potential client before your compeition do!

Therefore, in answer to the question “Do I need a blog for my business?”, I suppose the answer is yes, because of the many benefits created from having a blog.

Ok, so now you know why you need a blog, what about a few tips for actually writing one;

– Most bloggers use a blog called WordPress (including myself with this blog). If you are new to the whole blogging / web design scene, you can sign up for a free blog at www.wordpress.org. There are many helpful articles on the WordPress web site and all over the internet to assist you in getting started. Alternativiely, you can ask your web designer (or me if you don’t have one ) to set one up for you.

– Wiriting material for your blog takes time, if you do not have time to carry out the task of writing a blog, you could consider using the services of a Ghost Blogger, who can take the time to write relevant and well written articles for you. A useful guide for hiring a ghost blogger can be found here.

If you have any other questions about blogging, please email me or leave a comment at the bottom of this post and I will be happy to help.

Happy blogging!

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, business, WordPress

Continue reading »]]> Hi all,

I know I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks now, but I have been really busy!

Just a quick post to say that I have just upgraded WordPress 2.3 to WordPress 2.5. This was my first upgrade with WordPress and I must admit, I am very impressed. The upgrade was seamless!

Just deleted everything but my wp-content folder, uploaded all of the new binaries from WordPress 2.5, logged in and clicked upgrade. Thats it….Done!

The only other thing I had to do was update my plugins, but this was as easy as clicking “Upgrade Automatically” and it did all the updating in place for me.

And, for those of you who are wondering about the new admin panel? Well, this is my first post….but from what I can see, it is extremely well designed and very intuitive. I have found no problems navigating around to find my plugins or writing this blog entry.

If I find anything more that I think is worth a post I will do so.

All in all though…hats off to the WordPress team!

Technorati Tags: WordPress

Continue reading »]]> After some more playing around with my blog today, I realised that the rich text editor including with WordPress (TinyMCE) was not displaying at all. After some more searching, it became obvious that this again was not a problem unique to myself.  Did some digging around and the fix is as follows;

In the tiny_mce_gzip.php file located in /wp-includes/js/tinymce/tiny_mce_gzip.php you need to add the line in bold after the code shown below.

 if ((in_array(‘gzip’, $encodings) || in_array(‘x-gzip’, $encodings) || isset($_SERVER['---------------'])) && function_exists(‘ob_gzhandler’) && !ini_get(‘zlib.output_compression’) && ini_get(‘output_handler’) != ‘ob_gzhandler’) {
  $enc = in_array(‘x-gzip’, $encodings) ? “x-gzip” : “gzip”;
  $supportsGzip = true;
 } 

$supportsGzip = false;

It would appear that this is again due to the server which you are hosting WordPress on, but this time, down to the fact that it does not handle gzip properly. Anyways, that line fixed everything and now I have a fully working editor.

Technorati Tags: WordPress

Continue reading »]]> This morning, I decided, for the third time, that I was going to start a blog. My previous two ventures led to me simply not writing anything at all :p. This time, I hope it will be different. And, for once, I have something relevant to post because this blog nearly didnt happen!

After deciding to use WordPress I set about installing the app on my hosting (Windows / IIS), only to find that I recieved the following error;

CGI Error
The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers.

After trying to figure out what the problem was on my own and looking through endless Google search results, I was about to throw in the towel and decide that blogging just wasn’t for me. This was until, I found a post that detailed the issue. Turns out that WordPress 2.3 will not install correctly on windows hosting unless you replace the default wb-db.php file with an updated version suitable for IIS.

Here is a link to the fix in case you have ran into the same problem yourself.

Worked for me!

Technorati Tags: general, WordPress