Many bloggers and developers who create PHP applications rely on web development platforms like WAMPServer or XAMPP to create, test and debug applications before releasing them publicly. Testing web applications locally (on our computer) is very important because it gives us a chance to rectify problems before others point it, especially your boss or an end-user.

After a recent OS reinstall I was installing wordpress locally using WampServer and I was in a phase where I have to import my existing database. My database is around 10 MB, but when I went to import it using phpMyAdmin (a module of WampServer) there I found that upload/import file size limit was set to 2 MB. But, here I want to import a 10 MB database, so, I started to look for workarounds and started with the php.ini file that is found in WampServer (C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.13\php.ini). I remember that previously I fixed this issue by changing few values in that php.ini file. But, this time the changes I made are not being reflected and the file size limit was stuck at 2 MB only.

I don’t know what mistake I was doing, so I started to search again for possible solutions and this time I found an interesting thing. I found another php.ini, that is located inside apache folder (C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.2.22\php.ini). So, may be phpMyAdmin is making use of this php.ini file rather than the file that is located insider php folder. So, I opened this php.ini configuration file located in apache folder and selected this line:

upload_max_filesize = 2M

and changed it to this :

upload_max_filesize = 20M

Now, I restarted All Services of WampServer by clicking the systray icon and then tried to import the database file. But, this time even though the limit was changed, it didn’t changed according to the value given. We gave 20M as the limit but it showed me the limit as 8M. So, I went back and opened the php.ini configuration file found in apache folder and then selected this line:

post_max_size = 8M

and changed it to:

post_max_size = 20M

Now, the database import file size was changed to 20M and hence I was able to import my 10MB database successfully. So, if you are my situation where the size of your database is exceeding the file size limit, then change the above two lines according to your requirements i.e. change value ’20′ to the required value. Also, make sure that the value of post_max_size is greater than or equal to the value of upload_max_filesize, because phpMyAdmin will consider the lowest of these two values as the import file size limit.

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Situations that lead to the birth of Giveaway Helper :

Usually, most of us (Bloggers) use Random.org to select winners of a giveaway. Unfortunately, we waste a lot of time in copy-pasting Email addresses or Names of the participants into Random.org. When number of participants are less, then copy-pasting their Emails or Names into Random.org is not a big task. But when there are hundreds of participants and copy-pasting each Email Address or Name into Random.org is a tedious process.

Apart from the tiresome copy-pasting issue, sometimes there will be multiple entries of same person. Without noticing that, we may wrongly allow multiple entries of same person into drawing, which gives that particular user more chance to win over other participants and the giveaway isn’t fair anymore.

So, we have to be very careful in selecting the winners of giveaways. Sometimes small mistakes may lead to disasters. Even though we take a lot of care, mistakes do happen depending on the situation we are in while selecting winners. This is why Giveaway Helper is created. To take your burden down, so that you can concentrate more on what you are best at.

Giveaway Helper interface

Features of Giveaway Helper :

I’ve personal experience with these giveaways and I know the problems my fellow bloggers are facing. So, Giveaway Helper is created in such a way that it cuts down those tedious tasks and allow the blogger to select winners in a fair way without putting much effort. So, here are the features of Giveaway Helper :

1. It cuts down multiple entries into single entry (based on Emails used to comment).
2. It allows you to filter-out unnecessary entries (using emails), such as those entries “Thanks for the giveaway. But don’t Count me in!” etc etc. Giveaway Helper allows you to remove such kind of entries.
3. You can either retrieve Email Addresses or Names of the participants.
4. A nice Select All (to copy all entries at a time using Ctrl+C) button and a Link to List Randomizer will make your task simpler.

How to use?

Detailed instructions on how to download and install it on wordpress are available here.

What’s in for future?

Right now it has all basic capabilities of making your job simpler. In future, I’ll add more functionality like blacklisting users who cheat using different Email ID’s etc and if you think that this plugin didn’t met your problem (related to giveaway winners selection) then kindly mention them in comments and I’ll make sure that your problem will be solved.

I may not be a big help to others. But let me help those who are a big help to others.

The post Announcing Our Very First WordPress Plugin – Giveaway Helper appeared first on Tech I Share.

A massive giveaway from Tutorial9.net. Starting from today, Tutorial9 is giving away lots of freebies (Actually they are paid products) to everyone under the name “The Ultimate Resource Package for Web Designers”. This give away will continue for 1 week. The Ultimate Resource Package consists the following :

• 4 Free Premium WordPress themes.
• Vectors
• 3 Premium Tumblr and Posterous themes
• Free beautiful PSD’s for you.
• 22 Icon packs including Social Networking icons and many more.

This ultimate package is available only for 1 week, starting today. All you have to do is subscribe to Tutorial9, that’s it. Just subscribe and the download link to the Ultimate Resource Package will be made available to you through email. Thanks Tutorial9!

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I wrote that review on June I think, 3 months have passed by and Dreamhost Apps has improved a lot than I expected. At the time of my review there are actually no good themes, no plugins. But now, they have some of the best themes such as Copyblogger theme by Chris Pearson. Also, Dreamhost has added some very useful plugins like Re-Captcha, WP-Shortstat, Extended comment Options, Trackback validator and more.

But there are some drawbacks with Dreamhost apps, as I mentioned in my review. I would like to remind you about them again for the sake of people who are not aware of Dreamhost Apps.

No writable file permissions, implies

• No ads. No money.
• Cannot edit themes, plugins.
• Cannot add new plugins as you like.
• No FTP access etc.

I don´t care about money, I love blogging.

If you are that kind of person, then Dreamhost Apps is for you. Just pay for domain every year (about $10) or use a free sub-domain, yourdomain.dreamhosters.com that´s it. Right now, Dreamhost apps is still in trial beta period. Anyone can signup for free. I am sure that they´ll improve Dreamhost Apps a lot. After the beta period they´ll be accepting new invites only through invitation code. This is the best time for you to get Dreamhost apps account now, Use it or leave it, it´s your wish, because getting it for free will be easy, rather than begging someone for an invitation code later. Join Dreamhost Apps now.

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This warning is just for WordPress bloggers. There is a worm which is hacking and cracking all the wordpress blogs which are not running the latest version (2.8.4). Here is what WordPress has to speak about

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.

Recently Smashing Magazine, one of largest web designing resource went down and here is what they say,

We don’t yet know how exactly this attack was done. Very likely, an outdated WordPress plug-in or old script allowed it to happen. We also don’t know what the main purpose of the attack was.

I think Smashing Magazine is one of the victim of this worm. WordPress says that the latest version that is WordPress 2.8.4 is immune to the worm. So, it’s high time for you to upgrade to the latest wordpress engine and protect your blog from this worm if you are running older version of WordPress.

Download : WordPress 2.8.4

[WordPress, Smashing Magazine]

The post Bloggers – Upgrade and protect your blog now appeared first on Tech I Share.

Two ways to update your wordpress installation :

1. If you have automatic upgrade option then use it.

2. Else, download wordpress 2.8.3 from here. Backup your posts, comments and everything using the option Tools>Export. Upload wordpress 2.8.3 to your database using FTP. Install wordpress and import your settings using Tools>Import option.

Check out the release notes of WordPress 2.8.3 here.

The post WordPress 2.8.3 update recommended appeared first on Tech I Share.

Recently I have upgraded to wordpress 2.8. From then onwards I had problems with Google XML sitemaps generator plugin. This plugin is the most popular and must wordpress plugin without which it’s impossible to top Google search results. Here is the problem that I came across when I tried to rebuild the sitemap manually.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 262144 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 541 bytes) in /home/pcaddons/public_html/wp-includes/link-template.php on line 113

When I go to XML sitemap plugin configuration page I found these lines

# The last run didn’t finish! Maybe you can raise the memory or time limit for PHP scripts. Learn more
# The last known memory usage of the script was 14.75MB, the limit of your server is 128M.
# The last known execution time of the script was 0.02 seconds, the limit of your server is 120 seconds.
# The script stopped around post number 36 (+/- 100)

I never faced this problem in wordpress 2.7. Also I’m not that much familiar with wordpress. So I was stuck in between and looked here and there on google but only in vain. So I tried to solve it manually and to my surprise I solved it. May be you came here to find a solution to a similar problem and you came to the right place.

I use Global translator plugin to reach millions of people around the globe. Global Translator plugin has an option of integrating sitemap. If you select that, then the posts that are translated by Global translator plugin are added to sitemap. Don’t know why? but Global translator plugin is the culprit in my case. At that time Global translator was not compatible with wordpress 2.8. But an update is released which says it to be compatible with wordpress 2.8. But the problem is not solved with that new plugin too. There is some compatibility issue going on in between Global translator and Google XML sitemap plugin. To rebuild your sitemap successfully, you should not use sitemap integration option in Global translator. This should solve your problem. Hope the developers fix this issue soon! Alternatively, you can checkout what WordPress people say about this (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/279132?replies=5).

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Why Google?

• Google’s search algorithm is the best and till now no one defeated it.
• The results are quick and very accurate. Where as wordpress search is slow and search results are not very accurate as Google.
• $$$ Money money money $$$ : By integrating Adsense into Google custom search you can boost your income.

Step-by-step guide to add Google Custom Search into your WordPress template :

1. Create account at Google Custom Search. After creating the account login to it and select Get code under Control Panel.
2. Select the second option, Host results on my website using an iframe. Specify the URL as below http://example.com/search/. Also specify the space where you want to place your Adsense ads.
3. You can see two codes, one for search box and other for search results. Copy the search box code and place it anywhere you like (Preferably in sidebar or navbar).
4. Now create a page with name Search and make sure the permalink is same as the above, i.e. http://example.com/search/
5. With Notepad create a file with name search.php and paste the following code in it.

<?php get_header(); ?>

Your search results code goes here

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Replace “Your search results code goes here” with the actual code. That’s it. Now do a sample search to test whether everything is fine or not.

Styling search results page :

1. Aligning search template to the center of the page :

Here is a Sample search results code :

<div id="cse-search-results"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var googleSearchIframeName = "cse-search-results";
var googleSearchFormName = "cse-search-box";
var googleSearchFrameWidth = 600;
var googleSearchDom = "www.google.com";
var googleSearchPath = "/cse";
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/afsonline/show_afs_search.js"></script>

To align the search results at center of the page just replace <div id="cse-search-results"> with <div id="cse-search-results" align="center" >.

2. Add space between header and search results :

If you saw the test search results, you can observe that the search results are touching the header and they look ugly. Make it look professional by adding <br> at the first of the code and </br> at last. See below :

<?php get_header(); ?>

<br><div id="cse-search-results" align="center" ></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var googleSearchIframeName = "cse-search-results";
var googleSearchFormName = "cse-search-box";
var googleSearchFrameWidth = 600;
var googleSearchDom = "www.google.com";
var googleSearchPath = "/cse";
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/afsonline/show_afs_search.js"></script></br>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

3. Adding search form at the top of the search results :

By adding search form at the top of the search results page your visitors can search more without going back. form just add the search box code above the search results code.

<?php get_header(); ?>

<br>search box code goes here

<div id="cse-search-results" align="center" ></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var googleSearchIframeName = "cse-search-results";
var googleSearchFormName = "cse-search-box";
var googleSearchFrameWidth = 600;
var googleSearchDom = "www.google.com";
var googleSearchPath = "/cse";
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/afsonline/show_afs_search.js"></script></br>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

You can also add align=”center” inside div (<div align="center">) of the search box code also to align search box along with search results in the middle.

This is the method I followed to integrate Google into WordPress. You can take look on how it works by doing a sample search. If you have difficulties in following the above tutorial let me know, I’ll try to clarify the doubt.

P.S : The codes above are only sample ones

. They are just for reference to show how it should look like. Don’t directly copy and paste them in your blog. They won’t work. Please use your Google Custom Search Engine codes.

The post 5 Easy Steps to Embed Google Custom Search into WordPress appeared first on Tech I Share.

Image via Wikipedia

I always loved Dreamhost, don’t know why? but I just love them. Definitely Dreamhost is different from other hosts. Dreamhost people are very generous, they started Dreamhost Apps to encourage bloogers who can’t afford web hosting, like me. The first thing that impressed me is

Unlimited Bandwidth!

Unlimited Diskspace!

History teaches us that those webhosts which gave unlimited free services will become a history! These free webhosts abruptly shut down their services because they fail at meeting the requirements of customers, less support staff which leads to poor service etc. Unable to handle the expenses, such free webhosts disappear in a night. But DreamHost Apps is completely different. DreamHost company is reputed company and why they want to give free unlimited hosting! Are they running into trouble? Let us see how DreamHost Apps differ from the usual web hosting plan.

Strings attached -

So here are some points that are to be noted before you go with DreamHost Apps

1. At DreamHost Apps we have to select an application such as WordPress or drupal and then sign up. DreamHost will install that application for us and give us the username and password in order to administer that blog.
2. You won’t be given any FTP accounts. You will be given a blog and that’s it.
3. You can’t change themes as you wish, you have to select from the themes that are made available by DreamHost (Only 2 or 3 themes are good out of 46 themes or so).
   
4. You can modify templates (But modifications are limited).
5. If you already have a blog then you can’t import them to Dreamhost Apps.
   

DreamHost Apps doesn’t not give much freedom but gives you lightening fast hosting and it’s up to you to go with DreamHost Apps or not . At last the old proverb holds true  :

You get what you pay for

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Recently I went to my old blog to see how is it doing, whether it is receiving traffic or not. When I saw the ads on my blog I got very angry. Not even a single ad is related to my blog. My blog deals with computer related stuff and the ads put Adbrite is no way related to the content. I advise everyone not to go to Adbrite. Here are some ads that Adbrite published on my site.

Ad 1 :

Many of the ads they publish on my blog are of this kind and they are very irrelevant and are  scary indeed. These kind of ads drive the traffic away and disturb your visitors.

Ad 2 :

The other ad they show is this. Adbrite wont show any other ad apart from above two. They do no good to visitors and infact they drive away your visitor. Another point here is that Adbrite CTR rate is very low. In four months I’ve made only $2 or so, even there are several hundred clicks. Adbrite does no good to you and your visitor. Just throw them a side. Sayonara Adbrite!

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