Extreme Tutorials

May 20, 2008

Were you ever in need for some cool Photoshop hacks, but don’t seem to find them right away? Have you ever been bothered browsing the web for a suitable tutorial that fits in your present needs? Are these kind of recourses running out? Well, don’t worry anymore! [Read more]

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WordPress Locally

May 16, 2008

Are you not sure about certain things that WordPress plugins or themes are doing? Want to try it out on a dummy to see whether things are working the way you like? Well, the first thing that could come to your mind would be either to set your site unto maintainance mode and do the experiment or create a dummy blog on your webserver. But why waste all the resources speed and bandwith when there is a local alternative you can grab to?

Don’t you know that you can install WordPress locally now too? Yes, you’ve heard it right, WordPress on your local Windows XP machine that you are using to browse the web and doing other activities with. I’m glad to help you out install the software locally, so that you can make your own test run now!

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Bring Your OS XP to life!

May 5, 2008

Did you ever know about, that your Windows XP could be designed? I mean, totally re-designed, not just picking among the default themes like, Silver, Blue, Olive and the Classics?

If you didn’t knew about it yet, and are interesting in styling your Windows, then just keep reading.

First of all, I want to present to you my logon welcome message:

I didn’t really designed it personally, but I have installed it, and well, it’s quiet easy.
First of all you need to make sure that you nave this software on your computer, if you haven’t then simply download that software. (It’s safe, don’t worry.) After you have installed that software, the next software that you should have is the Logon Loader, which enables you to tweak around the logon design of yours.

Now we are set with the basic computer application needed to create a logon or to install one. Your user interface should look like this:

A good question would be where to get those premade log-ons, those can be found on costumize.org. NOTE, the files that you download should be in a zipped folder or should be .EXE, other file formats are not supported and may cause you some error.

Let’s assume you’ve finished downloading a design that you want to have. Here’s how you install it.
Most of the time, all files there are zipped. Unzip the folder on your local machine and look for the logon, which is usually named “logonname.exe”.
Open your Logon Loader and click on Select a logon screen
Browse your computer for the desired file and click ok.
Your logon should now be installed. To check it, hit the windows key and L at the same time. If the installation was unsuccessful or the desired logon is incompatible, the default logon should show up.

That easy it is to create a logon!

THAT’S NOT ALL YET!

Style Your Windows

Do you want your boring default windows XP them styled up? There’s nothing more easier to do than that, all you need to do is download Windows Blind, and you are ready to go! Sad to say, (assuming you have no money) you need to make use of the free-trial version which lasts for 60 satisfying days of fun.

After the installation of your Windows Bind, you should be able to see this kind of interface:

After having you’ve opened the said application, I recommend you to visit here to download the latest and hippest styles for your computer. All you need to do is to download and double click on them, and finally, simply activate them via the application.
Look at my red hot desktop:

Go on and experiment, your style could look much better than mine
If you like this and found this helpful, or if you have any problems and need assistance, please comment below!

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Download Videos from Video Sites!

May 5, 2008

in this post, I’ll gonna teach you how to download videos from popular video sites like YouTube for example. If you are a internet explorer user, please click on the blue banner above the blog which says “Get Firefox with Google Toolbar” to switch to firefox now, since only Firefox and Netscape users benefit from this share. And believe me guys, it’s much more faster and safer.

Now back to the topic. There’s this add-on for firefox, which is called Flash Video Resource Downloader. Having this plugin installed will add a little button to your status bar on your browser. Clicking that button will open up a new tab and lead you to their website wherin you simply need to click on Get Video to get the download URL of that video you wish to have locally stored.

For more guidance, I’ve some screenshots below:

(above) After installing the add-on, check your status bar for the button

Let’s try our Baby, view any video on YouTube and click on the button!

After clicking it, it should lead you to the site above

After clicking get video (see above) right click and save as. Don’t forget to add .FLV to the file name!

There you have it. THe add-on should work fine for FF 2+ - 3FF 5B

You might also be interested on how to play FLV with Windows Media Player

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Trice on Track - WordPress Plugins for Tracking

May 4, 2008

Today I will be presenting you 3 plugins that are very useful to track down your visitors, their activity path, referrers and on which respective links they’ve exited your site. These kinds of plugins are tracking plugins, each and everyone of them of its unique kind, which serves purpos accordingly.

Let’s start with my favorite among them, the so called StatPress:

What WordPress tracking plugin StatPress does:

The real-time plugin dedicated to the management of statistics about blog visits. It collects information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browsers etc.

Once the plugin StatPress has been activated it immediately starts to collect statistics information.
Using StatPress you could spy your visitors while they are surfing your blog or check which are the preferred pages, posts and categories.
In the Dashboard menu you will find the StatPress page where you could look up the statistics (overview or detailed).
StatPress also includes a widget one can possibly add to a sidebar (or easy PHP code if you cant use widgets!).

Screenshots:

Details Interface of StatPress

Spy Interface of StatPress

StatPress Overview

For more details and the download of this plugin: Visit the Plugin Site

WordPress Wassup Tracking Plugin:

While WordPress Tracking Plugin StatPress is more concentrated with the front end for user experience by widget, this Wassup plugin does the work behind the scene at the back end for stats rich and keen analysis of the sites activity.

Screenshots:

Wassup Tracking Interface

Wassup at the Dashboard

Wassup Spy Management

To know how to configure the plugin, install it and download it, visit the official site of this plugin

Let’s proceed to the last but not the least tracking plugin that I am making use of with all my WordPress blogs. It’s a plugin created by Automattic itself, and it does it job well, with a lovely interface similar to WordPress.Com, well, you need a API key of WordPress.Com to be able to use it, but don’t worry registration is free on WordPress!

Here are some screenshots first:

WordPress Stats DashBoard Widget

The Tracker Interface

Hot Search Terms

For more details and the download, checkout the download page of it

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Emphasis Permalinks

April 28, 2008

I had a post about this one before, but I will repost a new version of the Permalink Tutorial, and this time as a tag game.

*START COPYING FROM HERE*

Once you get tagged, please repost it on your blog so that everyone will know! If possible, please tag those blogs who have not optimized their permalinks, so that they will do so in future! Tag 5 friends/affies of yours and add them to the tag list! Do not remove the people who are already in the tag list!

Here is a little tutorial about permalinks, because there are a lot of blogs who are not using it, and a lot of bloggers who don’t know what permalinks are.

First, let’s start and know what permalinks are. A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. Most modern weblogging and content-syndication software systems support such links. Other types of websites use permanent links, but the term permalink is most common within the blogosphere. Permalink is a portmanteau word made from permanent link. Permalinks are often simply stated so as to be human-readable

Let’s say you’ve just started a WordPress powered blog, the permalinks usually look like this

Ex: domain.com/?p=33

Does that look good? No. Is it comfortable to read? No, What should I do? Read on.

This tutorial is especially for WordPress users, because other Blogging Softwares may have another process in optimizing permalinks. Here’s a step by step guide on how to do that.

Log in to your blog administration
Go to settings (or options for WP 2.3.3 and below)
Click on Permalinks
Select the desired permalink structure, (we highly recommend: Day and Name)
Now, save your changes.

Why permalink?

To make your URLs more user and search engine friendly, because once you have your permalinks updated, you will surely get better placing in search engine results and more.