Open the index.php file for your theme in a HTML editor and look for a line similar to this:

<?php comments_popup_link(’0 Comments’, ’1 Comment’, ‘% Comments ‘); ?>

Change this to:

<?php comments_popup_link(”, ’1 Comment’, ‘% Comments ‘); ?>

You’re just deleting any text that should be displayed when there are no comments so if there are none, then nothing will be shown. Geddit!?

You might need to edit this line in several other template files also such as Archive.php, Category.php, Search.php, Tag.php and anywhere else comment numbers are displayed.

Leon.

I then got to wondering if it was possible to Email pics to Dropbox and found a few sites/apps that can do it well. This one seemed best – SendToDropbox.com.

So, armed with the above knowledge, here’s what I done:

Contact Form 7

This is one of the most popular FREE form plugins for wordpress and the current version includes the ability to add File Upload fields to a form. As many as you want. I setup a new form with standard questions like Name, Email, etc..and included a few upload file fields with specifications as to File Type, File Size, etc.. I then pasted in the automatically generated email address from SendToDropbox.com in the “To” field. Contact Form 7 also has the option to send the results of the form submission to a second email address and I setup a duplicate of the first email to go to the proper contact email address of the website, minus the file attachments, just so the website admin would get notification of newly uploaded files. Of course, the Dropbox PC software also alerts you straight away when new files are added to your folder. See below for Contact Form 7 settings:

SendToDropBox.com

This is a simple but cool site that connects to your Dropbox account and provides a custom email address that you can send emails and file attachments to. It also has a copule of extra features that process emails received such as: Automatic Unzipping, Email Content Inclusion and control over Dropbox Folder Names/Trees for emailed files, ie – files uploaded in this way can be added to folders named by Date, Email Address, Subject, etc..handy for keeping thigs organised and finding customers uploaded files! See below:

Result

The end result is a normal looking contact form on the customers site that allows basic personal info to be uploaded to Dropbox along with files and photos. The website admin gets instant notification of new files added to his Dropbox account as well as email notifaction of the customer’s details. Nice!

Of course, it can be even simpler. If you just add an email address to the site like Upload@SiteName.com and have that forward on to the custom SendToDropbox email address then people can use the methods they already know for sending emails and attaching files and it will work just as good. I personally think it’s best and more professional to use the form method but perhaps a choice can be given.

Leon.

There’s a new breed of spam that escapes filters like Akismet and appears to be a bit more real than traditional spam, ie – no mention of viagra or no funny email or web addresses with foreign lettering. They look and read like a manually created comment by a real person and probably are actually created in this way. Typically they take the form of complimentary comments about your content. Here’s one I got today for example:

“I loved this post. Very informative.”

The commenter added this web address – http://articledominance.com/freereport.html which appears to be a get rich quick offer/site asking for your email address and name, possibly to spam you some more!

My basic, common sense advice when you get comment notifications from your blog is to have a quick look at the commenter’s url/website and see if it looks legit. Also see if the commenter’s text is generic or actually relates specifically to something you’ve said in your post. As another general rule of thumb, if the comment doesn’t contribute anything interesting, related or useful to the discussion on your article then I’d delete it.

Here’s a few things, specifically to do with the commenter’s website that I would delete or mark a comment as spam for:

• Overselling something,
• Get rich quick content,
• Asking for signups/email addresses,
• Advert heavy sites,
• Sites with tons of Google adverts,
• Completely unrelated site.

Leon.

I vaguely remember using this plugin a few years back just to test but since I’m comfortable editing HTML/PHP files and manually adding Google Analytics code, I didn’t really have a use for it. Now that I was actively looking for an external link tracker plugin and found that this one did it, I was happy.

The plugin once activated in wordpress asks for your “Google Analytics UID” which is easily available next to your account in the Google Analytics dashboard. There are various options in the settings on what to track such as:

• Admin users.
• External Links.
• Downloads.
• Google AdSense.

You can even specify which types of file extensions to track by adding them to a list. This is handy for seeing how many people might rob your images! There’s widgets for adding stats to both the admin dashboard and public sidebar but I had issues authentication with  Google and couldn’t get them to work. Perhaps a hosting issue.

After a few days I checked the Content – Event Tracking section in my Google Analytics account and was happy to see detailed stats on what exact external links people were clicking on and which exact files were being downloaded.

My intended use for this will be to try to monetize the clicks from my site by agreeing click costs with the companies/sites I link to.

Leon.

Download the WordPress Manual PDF

Get the Free Adobe Reader to view this PDF if you havn’t already.

* Update: The value pasted into the “Mail – From” field and the “Message Body” should be [name] and not [text* name] as outlined in the video.

Leon.

FREE Plugins:

• Contact Form 7 – Pretty good form building with upload and captcha features.
• Exec-PHP – allows you to write and execute php code in widgets and content.
• Loudervoice – allows you to write reviews on your blog which are then picked up by Loudervoice.com.
• NextGen Gallery – create photo gallerys and flash slideshows with ease.
• Podpress – Full multimedia support and podcasting with a nice little player.
• TinyMCE Advanced – add extra buttons and functionality to the content editor such as tables.
• Subscribe to comments – let your commenters know when a post receives new comments.
• WorsPress.com Stats – keep track of your visitors and most popular posts.
• Comment Referrers – Tells you were commenters came from.
• Facebook Like Button – Add a Like button to your posts.
• Google Analyticator – Add Google analytics and track outbound links.
• Linkedin Share Button – Allow your visitors to share your content on Linkedin.

Commercial Plugins:

Here’s a few decent commercial WordPress plugins:

• Shopping Cart – Full e-commerce system for your site with Realex credit card processing module.
• Newsletter – Full newsletter system for wordpress al managed from the admin.
• Banner Ads – Display adverts on your blog with rotation and stats.

Remember to keep these plugins updated too once installed, you’ll see from admin which ones need updating.

Leon.

It reminds us that we Irish have the talent and dedication to compete on a global IT scale. Polldaddy’s service is mostly free which makes it both cool and weird that they were bought!? Take my own Polldaddy survey here – www.polldaddy.com/s/42024AC96D8B0BF0/ or my Poll below

I’ve been doing a bit of this myself recently and I think its been a bit of a waste of time. By default, wordpress seems to set all external links in comments as ‘nofollow’ links which means that most of the search engines including google will either not follow the links at all or if they do they wont index the linked to pages/sites.

Most wordpress blogs and sites ask for your name, email and web address when you post a comment and when the comment goes live the personal name that you put in becomes a link to your site and links to your site are great, the more the better but the search engines just wont take notice! The link can still be followed manually by other visitors to the blog so by all means continue to comment on other blogs but if you want to be noticed by the search engines then try to get links on non-wordpress sites or sites that don’t use nofollow.

Pingbacks and trackbacks seem to be treated the same way so these are pointless from a search engine point of view too.

*TIP – if you use the firefox or internet explorer browsers, theres a great SEO plugin called SEO QUAKE that will tell you whether a site or ‘Links page’ uses nofollow.

Fo more info on ‘nofollow’ see HERE.

Leon.

When you exclusively use wordpress to power clients sites you find your creative talents suffer a bit. You become a web site installer rather than designer and the only bit of creativity you get to engage in is logo or banner design or design tweaking so it can get a bit boring.

So I done a bit of research and eventually figured out how to design my own wordpress theme or template, borrowing the main wordpress framework and adapting elements of other themes so its a bit of a mashup. Its imaginatively entitled “Reverb” theme!!

If anyone wants to try it out and tell me how many flaws it has, heres a screenshot/download link!!:

(Click thumbnail to download)