I’ve revamped several of my blogs the past month. I have been very happy with the way blogs have worked and haven’t seen a need to fix or change anything. I think I have been a little too complacent with the status quo and was surprised to see there are several plugins that I really like and need. The advent of social media has created a new wave of plugins and some of them are really good.

One of my blogs is a very busy craft site and is image heavy. I sort of ignored Pinterest for a while until I noticed in my stats a LOT of traffic was being f=driven to my site from Pinterest, I first used a Pinterest button plugin that added a button just below my post titles and that was “okay”.
I recently discovers another plugin that does exactly what I want it to do:Pinterest Pin It Button For Images

Pinterest Pin It Button For Images adds a mouse over hover of Pinterest logo to images on your site ( You can configure to NOT show up as well). When visits click on the image they are automatically taken to their Pinterst account and they can even choose which image to use from the page to post.

It is a TEENY bit tricky to configure. You need to input how many pixels the content area of your blog is – this just sets where there Pinterest logo will sit on your images just play with the default values til you get what you like. I like the image to hover on the far left.

Tags: Internet Marketing and Blogs // Add Comment »

Long ago I started automatically replacing notepad text editor with the feature rich Notepad++.

I lover having tabs and have multiple text files open and can very easily toggle back and forth. More importantly lines are numbered and can easily navigate to line of code.
This is especially handy when getting dreaded error messages with WordPress after adding a new plugin and there is a problem. Error messages will the line code of where to find the error.

Recently I got a new laptop and swapped out my notepad.exe file for notepad++.exe

I edit most of my files on the server in ftp. I replaced notepad with my trusty notepad++ I kept getting error-

Scintilla error: can not load the dynamic library

If you are getting this error most likely you have fiddled with notepad or did as I did and not copied over properly.
My problem was my new laptop was a Windows 64-bit operating system and I needed to copy over to one more system folder.
Read through my introductions below on how to replace notepad with notepad++ (or similar) and you will likely find your source of the problem.

Download Notepad.exe File

If you think you have completely effed it up – you can download original notepad.exe below
Download notepad.exe for 64-bit system HERE.

Instructions for replacing Notepad With Notepad++ or Other Text Editor

1. Download your Notepad replacement.

I highly recommend notepad++.

Install.

2. Back up notepad.exe in your system files.

If you have 32 but system you only have to do this in 2 folders. If you have windows 65-bit there are 3 system folders you need to work with.

C:\Windows
C:\Windows\System32
C:\Windows\SysWOW64 (64-bit versions)

Navigate to each system folder above and do the following in each folder.
- Find notepad.exe in C:\Windows and copy then paste into same folder.
- Find notepad.exe in C:\Windows\System32 and copy then paste into same folder.
If you haev 64-bit operating system
- Find notepad.exe in C:\Windows and copy then paste into same folder folder.

The file will be renamed “notepad – Copy.exe” I would hang on to these files in case you need to re-install notepad.

3. Copy into System Folders

Find the notepad++ (or other notepad replacement) executable file, notepad++.exe in program files. Copy.
Now, paste into those system folders as above.
C:\Windows
C:\Windows\System32
C:\Windows\SysWOW64 (64-bit versions)

You need to do for each System folder.

4.Deleting Notepad and Changing Permissions

Next this may be tricky- delete the notepad.exe file. You will have to change permissions/owner of the file or it wont let you delete. Right click and go to Properties, then Advanced. Change “owner” of the file from “Trusted Installer” to Admin or other user i.e. yourself.

Close. Then right click again and re-open Properties. Go to “security” and give new owner of “notepad.exe” full control. Do this by going to ” edit” and checking and saving “full control option” for user you are assigning control.

It sounds more complicated written down than it really is.
Taking me much longer to type this out than to to actually do
Save. You can double check your permissions if you like before you proceed. The owner of file should be name you assigned and they should have “full control” of file.

Okay. So… delete the notepad.exe file.

5. Re-name notepad++.exe to notepad.exe

You will now have two files in each system folder,
notepad – Copy.exe ( your original copy of notepad should you ever need it again)
and
notepad.exe (formally named notepad++.exe).

You are done! Now whenever you click on file formally associated with notepad, notepad++ will open!

If you were trying to fix the Scintilla error: can not load the dynamic library but aren’t replacing notepad as your editor do as above with clean copy of notepad.exe.

Tags: Internet Marketing and Blogs // Add Comment »

Here is a quick tip for WordPress users that takes seconds and has significant impact.
Use the “Recent Comments” widget in your sidebar. It doesn’t matter where you put it- I usually bury mine under everything else.
Why use it? Every time you approve a new comment it is added to your sidebar and the content on your webpages changes.
This will be seen as “fresh” content by Google et al. ( Another latin insertion… I know… I use latin ad nauseum.)
You can get fancy plugins that do this but I don’t like sidebar clutter and prefer default.

Tags: WordPress Blog // 2 Comments »

I am experimenting with Thesis, a premium WordPress theme- and really it is more than a theme- its adds incredible functionality to your WordPress site. If you are a beginner it might be overwhelming but if you know coding or can handle modifying your word press theme it is fairly easy to learn.

Now, having said that.. I REALLY struggled getting a very basic task done with Thesis. There is no “single.php” or “index.php” and the css styling is handled a little differently that usual themes. I was pretty surprised on how difficult this was to find out how to do- either there is a way others are doing and I am new and ignorant or my skills are not what I thought they were!
I will cut to the chase and just give you the codes

How to add Adsense Code To Header of Thesis WordPress Theme

By far this was most difficult to solve and took me a good 2 hours to get Adsense code working and the way I wanted it into header of Thesis.

You need to edit custom_functions.php file and custom.css . you will find both in “custom” folder in the Thesis theme directory on your server.
If you haven’t changed name of file folder “custom-sample” in Thesis directory change it now. You need to do this through an ftp client ( like FileZilla )

You can edit the file either directly on the server ( and for the love of god do NOT ignore my BACKUP YOUR FILES warning!! ) or through WordPress interface.

To put Adsense code in the header the way *I* like it is a 728×90 leader board under the title/image/taglines of my blog.
You can use other code- link units or half banners as well.

So… to add Adsense Code to your header in thesis UNDER header here we go:
Create your ad in Adsense. Copy the code it gives you.
Add following to custom_function.php file:

function header_ad() { ?>
<div id="header_ad">
<p>
ADD YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE
</p>
</div>
<?php }
add_action('thesis_hook_header', 'header_ad');</blockquote>

Next we need to edit the style.css file in “custom” folder.
This code works perfectly for me- centered and aligned perfectly for my site. You may have to change values for yours- its not that hard. Just change numbers and see what it does. If you want to place ad along side of title or title image use “-” sign in front if the first value. try -60 first and go from there.
So, simply copy and paste this code into your style.css sheet:

/* HEADER ADSENSE */
.custom #header_ad {
margin: 10px 0 10px 0px;
}

and that’s it! Hope this saves people the headaches I had doing this

How to Add Adsense Code to Thesis Below Post Title

This was slightly easier and you don’t have to add anything to style.css.
I use either a half banner or link units under the post title.
Create your ad.
Copy the code into custom_funtions.php file where indicated below.

function before_post_ads() {
if (is_single()) { ?>
YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE
<?php }
}
add_action('thesis_hook_before_post', 'before_post_ads');


Add Adsense Code To End of Post in Thesis WordPress Theme

function after_post_ads() {
if (is_single()) { ?>
Your Ad Code Here !
}

add_action(‘thesis_hook_after_post’, ‘after_post_ads’);

Tags: WordPress Blog, Wordpress Themes // 3 Comments »