Get Rid of CommentLuv Flaw Once and For All

I am a dedicated fan of ‘CommentLuv’ in Wordpress blogs, you know, that plug-in that seeks out your last post and hangs a link to it on the end of the ‘Comment’ you are making on a blog: BUT, I really hate those blogs where the apostrophe is missing from the code and your ‘CommentLuv’ link has your name with  two Esses on the end - see red text in example below:

• The Cure:

The blog-owners cure for this is really easy - Open your WPress dashboard at Settings/CommentLuv and add the apostrophe after [name] as in the example below:

Change  [name]s last blog post.. to read  [name]‘s last blog post..

Then all your  commentators sigs will be correct like this

Maybe Andy Bailey (Fiddyp.co.uk) of Comment Luv could edit his plugin to include the apostrophe as the default - after all, that would be grammatically correct! (What say Andy?)

• Update

Andy just fixed that with version V2.0b Release 11. It seems that this is not quite a simple problem because some versions of WordPress stall when you add the apostrophe.  The cure is to update your CommentLuv or to put the ascii code instead, I.E.

[name]´s last blog post..

• Download CommentLuv

If you don’t already have this magic plugin, leap on over to Andy’s site and download it now, set it up, and add the apostrophe when you do the settings, so that you can get rid of CommentLuv Flaw once and for all.

• Update

Andy has revamped the CommentLuv Plugin and it now has lots of new features, like Click Stats, works on Blogger, etc., and the dreaded “Apostraphe Flaw” is now a thing of the past.

How to Tame IE6 Hover Problem

Suppose you want to make a pop-up tool-tip with CSS and you get it all done, but your tool-tip won’t work in Internet Explorer because of the IE6 Hover Problem. You can solve this with Java Script, but it takes quite a bit of code, and it isn’t really necessary.  There is a way to make IE6 hover work just using CSS and one simple trick.

• Use Tool-tips ??

Maybe you want to provide an explanation or some other info when the user hovers the mouse over a word in your text like this. You can make a tool tip appear by putting your explanatory text in the ‘title’ field of an anchor.  The problem with that is that you can’t style it, and by default it disappears after 5 seconds.  Useless for long explanations because you don’t get time to read it before it vanishes.

• Pure CSS Pop-ups

You can have  nicely styled pop-upsYour beautifully styled Tool Tip pop-up window looks like this.

You can add code to it (E.G., <p>), style it how you like, and generally stamp your imprint on it to reflect your site or your personality. that fit your theme and are cross browser compatible using just style statements - no Scripts!  Add the following code to your style sheet or style statements in the header:

/* Pop up styles  */

a.ref   {
position: relative;
}
a span   {
border: 1px solid #700;
padding: 4px;
visibility: hidden;
position: absolute;
top: 30px;
left: -20px;
color: #900;
background: #ffd;
width: 250px;
}
a:hover   {
background-color:white; /* Trigger for IE6  */
}
a:hover span, a:active span, a:visited:hover span    {
visibility: visible;
text-decoration: none;
}

• The Secret

Note this code: a:hover   { background-color:white;  } /* Trigger for IE6  */ Because IE6 will not action a hover call for anything other than the <a> anchor itself, you need to trigger the hover event by calling a straight hover action like this a:hover {something}, then it will read the rest of the hover code and action it.  In this case I have used a <span> to make the tool-tip hover, but you can apply this to  <img>; or whatever…..

• The Code:

The Page code looks like this:
<a href=”#” class=”ref”>anchor text here<span> Pop-up Text contained in the span statement</span></a>

Hover this to see it work anchor text herePop-up Text contained in the span statement and beat the IE6 Hover Problem once and for all.

• Tip:

If you are doing this in WordPress, use the ‘HTML’ tab, not the ‘Visual’ Tab for editing it, ’cause WP makes a right ‘Dog’s Breakfast’ of the embedded code if you save it in Visual.
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What Everybody Ought to Know About WordPress Backup

I was a bit careless and I lost a whole Blog. AND I DIDN’T HAVE A BACK-UP! Big panic, much self blaming, ‘Oh dear, how sad’, and ‘Now what do I do?’

• Use Google Cache to Recover Your Data
  

Panic over when I realized that most of the info was still recorded in the Google Cache, so I IMMEDIATELY did a full search and saved all the pages off G back to my hard drive. This gave me the text of each post, and also the pictures.

• How to Back Up

So how do you back up your data? It’s really easy - log in to your Admin control panel and click the Manage tab. There is a top menu item called Export, so click that, then click the ‘Download Export File’ button to bring up a dialog where you can choose how to name and save it to your own hard drive.

• How Did it Happen?

Well this is what you DON’T do! I did an upgrade from 2.5 to 2.5.1. I deleted all the files on the server as instructed, and loaded in the upgrade. I navigated to MyDomain.com/wp-admin/update.php and hit the enter button. And it all turned to custard! The error message came up like: “You already have tables in your database……” So I “Dropped” them. And all my data went slithering down the tube to limbo………….. I had backed up the data from ANOTHER BLOG by mistake, and when I did the “Import Back-up” trick it was all the wrong data. Please feel free to jeer! I think I should be thoroughly jeered at for 10 minutes every morning BEFORE breakfast for a week to reinforce the message of -

• “Do regular backups!”

So There you go, that is what everybody ought to know about Word Press backup!

Rhys B’s answer to:
“How Do I put My Picture on the Internet”

• Rhys B This is an experiment to see if I can resolve the question: “How Do I put My Picture on the Internet?”, so that it shows up with my name for a Google Search?????

• See it Here So what I have done is displayed it here and

• Used Keyword Coherence and Site Synergy“: to be sure that my name shows up as the first keyword in the Google SERPs, and now you just might discover exactly, “How Do I put My Picture on the Internet?”

• UPDATE OK, so Mr Google spotted this post 43 minutes after I posted it, and it showed No 1 in the SERP’s in a search for the keyphrase, “How Do I put My Picture on the Internet”, but so far the picture hasn’t come up on an image search for Rhys B.

• UPDATE 2: 14 days later and still the picture hasn’t come up on an image search for Rhys B. Seems Google images results lag way behind the data searches!

• UPDATE 3: 6 Weeks on and still no sign of the Google image crawler. Oh, well; This very informative post from Xarj Blog and Podcast suggests that G is very slow indeed to index images, like it can take up to a year.

• UPDATE 4: Very discouraging - nearly 6 months on and still no sign of the pic in Google Images. Have added a DIV frame around it with a Title in Bold, to see if that helps!

• IMAGE SEO: If you want to do any SEO on your images, then this article is the tops. The most important tip for me was that when G uses random text to label an image, it takes it from ABOVE the image. Therefore, be sure to have descriptive text above the image as well as below it.

Stitch (Join) 2 Photos with Photoshop CS2

Follow the link to the tutorial to discover how to stitch or join 2 photos together with Photoshop CS2.

Joining or merging two pictures in Adobe Photoshop is really easy using the full tutorial link here
The easy to follow steps are:

1. Make your Canvas Size big enough for the new stretched photo(s)
2. Paste the 2nd pic into a new layer
3. In Quick Mask, select a rectangle on the overlap end where you want to join it and use the Gradient Fill tool to make a vertical graduated mask
4. Back into normal view and do Ctr/Shift/i to reverse the selection and hit delete to create the fade-out
5. Move the top layer to blend it in with the one below.

These pics were taken as part of a panorama of the famous Barossa Whispering Wall in Sth Australia.

Photo stitch, I.E., Stitching two pictures together is really easy once you have learned the routine, so read the tutorial and you too can find out how to stitch (join) 2 photos with Photoshop CS2

The Barossa Whispering Wall

This is a quite accidental miracle where the perfect arc of the reservoir dam wall has magical acoustic properties and can transmit even a child’s whisper the full 140+ meter length of the Barossa reservoir whispering wall.

I have just put up a site to display and explain this amazing phenomenon. See it here and I was enchanted to discover lots of other reference to it in blogs all over the world. This guy even has a poem about the “no secrets” factor and this lady has some quite professional down-loadable pictures; and so on.

Any time you are in South Australia take a little time and check out the beauty of the reserve and the miracle of the Barossa whispering wall. All this is in the famed Barossa Valley, a world renowned wine region with countless wine trails, tours, scenic delights and so on.