A friend blogger asked me a question on how to backup WordPress Blog if they don’t have any ftp access  or cpanel access.  Because she wanted to update to latest WordPress 3.1 and she wanted to make sure the migration will go smoothly.  That’s why I said, “Ok, I’ll make a post about it.” I highly recommend that you download and install the following plugins:

Export (Tool Sidebar)  WordPress Tools –  WordPress will create an XML file for you to save to your computer. This format, which we call WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR, will contain your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. Note, this only save your contents, this tool does not save the uploaded pictures, widgets configuration, plug-ins and themes. Once you’ve saved the download file, you can use the Import function in another WordPress installation to import this site. You can use this if you want to backup your content on a day to day basis.

Online Backup for WordPress Plugin by Backup Technology – this will make sure that we have the complete sql script that I can later restore and give to my hosting provider. This plugin lets you backup the sql database of your wordpress configuration and installed plugin settings. (I will make a separate post regarding this plugin so watch for it.) Important: To be able to used this plugin you need to register to their website.

Word Press Backup by Blog Traffic Exchange – this amazing tool lets you save your uploaded images, theme directory, and install plugins on your own computer. This plugin can also email the backup files to you if your email client permits it.

Please take note that,  it is very important to make sure we have backup the Word Press wxr file, Word Press mysql database script, theme folders, plugin folders, and the uploaded images folder because this are the core files you need to restore for your Word Press Blog. That’s why I highly recommend running the above tools prior upgrading to a newer version of Word Press. Once you have successfully run the above plugins, you can recover from any disaster.

Hope that I’ve resolved your problem, if there’s anything I can do or discussed regarding this post, please feel free to ask it below using my comment section. Thanks for reading….

After the recently update last February 7, 2011. WordPress released the fourteenth version named “Reinhardt” WordPress 3.1 from WordPress 3.0.5. It was named in honor of the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. The latest version is available for download, or you can update from within your dashboard.

WordPress 3.1 Release Features

Redesigned Linking Workflow

Admin Bar

Streamlined Writing Interface

Refreshed Blue Admin Scheme

Developers Features

For developers,new Post Formats support which makes it easy for themes to create portable tumblelogs with different styling for different types of posts, new CMS capabilities like archive pages for custom content types, a new Network Admin, an overhaul of the import and export system, and the ability to perform advanced taxonomy and custom fields queries.

Have you updated to WordPress 3.1? Before you do so, make sure to backup you codes and databases. Enjoy!

Qlick Search Engine Optimization Tips

According to Google (the big G), to be able to help Google find, index, and rank your site you should take note of these (3) three Webmaster Tool Guidelines:

1. Design and Content
2. Technical Guidelines
3. Quality Guidelines

Design and Content

But on this article I will focus more on Design and Content Guidelines. The Design and Content Guidelines pertains to the proper organization or syntax usage of your html tags and css combine. The Design and Content Guideline indicates that in creating website:

1. Make sure that a site has clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

- What does google means about clear hierachy…? It is about the proper usage of tags.

h1, h2, h3, and h4 tags

The image below compare the proper usage of header tags:

H2 tags is ideal for Title Post

H2 tags should be used in Title Post

In the above example I compared the old and new bloggers template of my friend Elmot, animotivation. The first image shows his first template uses h2 tags for the date instead for the title post. In which the crawler will read the date first rather than the title of the post. An SEO friendly template should present the following hierarchy.

ttle Tag – Page Title
h1 Tag – Blog Title
h2 Tag – Title Post
h3 Tag – Subtitle
a tag – Links

The relevance of the page will be based on the keywords on its proper hierarchy of your tags.

2. Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map has an extremely large number of links, you may want to break the site map into multiple pages.

Last time I post an article about how to create a sitemap.xml. but this falls to the technical guideline of the Webmaster Tools Guidelines. This sitemap pertains to the links to all your blog post or pages. If your a wordpress user you can use the archives widget or use a Plugin by dagondesign.com to automatically create this links for you.

3. Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number.

Links going out to your page will give you less priority in ranking for the serp.

4. Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

5. Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.

The hierarchical positioning of words or keywords thru out the pages will help you rank on search engine result page.

6. Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the “ALT” attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.

7. Make sure that your elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.

8. Check for broken links and correct HTML.

You can use the W3C Markup Validation Service to check for errors and problems regarding your tags.

9. If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

That’s about it. Next time I’ll be giving example on how to explain the other 2 two guidelines. If you have something to add please feel free to share any additional information regarding this matter.

Recommended Post:

• What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ? Part I
• What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ? Part II
• What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ? Part III
• Creating sitemap.xml manually

Personalized your Firefox Browser with Personas Add On.

Downloading Personas Add On

What are Personas? Personas are easy-to-install, easy-to-use themes that change the look of your Firefox web browser. You can easily install Personas Add-on from the firefox menubar => Tools>Add-ons menu and search “Personas” in the search box. Or simply click the green download button in the Personas Website.

Selecting Themes

Once you have successfully downloaded and install the Personas Installer, it will ask you to restart your Firefox. Click yes and then your ready to customize you Mozilla Firefox Browser. You can select your preferred design in the gallery or you can create you own design. Like what I did to my browser, you can download my design to by clicking this link. Qlick Cafe Personas Design

Creating Your Own Design

Creating your design is so easy. Just follow the steps in the Create your Own, in the website and you’re ready to go.

Important Note: You should create your header and footer using the following specifications:
HEADER:
* Dimensions should be 3000px wide x 200px high
* PNG or JPG file format
* subtle, soft contrast images and gradients work best
FOOTER:
* Dimensions should be 3000px wide x 100px high
* PNG or JPG file format
* subtle, soft contrast images and gradients work best

Deployment

Once you’ve finished with the design you can upload it by registering to the Personas Website and follow the steps below:

1. Agree with the Terms and Conditions( Of course you have to read it.)
2. Click “Yes, I want to make my design available to everyone under a Creative Commons license.” if you wish to share you design to the world wide web.
3. Define you design, enter a short description of your design and select the foreground color for the theme, download your header and footer design, and fill-up the rest of the details. Lastly click submit.
4. Once finished. Wait for the notification from the Personas Team before your design become search-able in the web. It took my design to received the notification almost one week before it became available.

Well, that’s it. I hope to see your design too, send me a link here. Enjoy!

Related Post

1. Download FireFtp
2. How to use Mozilla FireFox – FireFTp

How to guide – to verify your friendster account.

If you haven’t open your friendster account since September 2009, you might haven’t read the below notice:

“Please Note: As of September 24, 2009 all Friendster members are required to Verify their Email Address. Follow the instructions below.”

A lot of my friedster’s users in my internet cafe are having problem with verifying there email address. They’re having problem accessing with their account because last September 28, 2009 Friendster have tighten up their security by cleaning-up unverified emails, that is why this is happening.

Why Do I Need To Verify My Email Address?

As per friendster, you need verify your email address to:
- Receive network activity from friends
- Send messages to friends
- Post a comment or bulletin
- Create and manage your Blog

This mean you won’t be able to update your profile or even post a comment using you account. But to view your account, you can just simply search for it without logging-in.

How to verify your friendster account.

First, make sure you have an existing email account. Email account can be registered or create under Yahoo Mail or Google Mail – Gmail.

If you have an email account already you can proceed in email verification process. Just follow the simple step below:

1. Click on “Resend Email” if you’d like to verify the address you currently have registered with Friendster. If you want to first edit the email address you have registered with Friendster and then verify that address, please click on the “Update this email” link

2. Once you’ve clicked “Resend Email” you’ll receive an email to the email address you’ve registered with Friendster (this is sent to your personal inbox on Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, etc)

3. Login to your personal email inbox (yahoo/gmail/hotmail) and find the “Verify Email” from Friendster.

4. Please open the “Verify Email” email and click on the “Verify Email” link/button (in the verify email)

5. Once you have successfully verified your account you will be directed to you friendster profile.

That’s it! On my next post I’ll be posting on how to change friendster profile email. Hope this step by step procedure will help you update your friendster account.

Recommended Links

1. How to create your own favicon.
2. How to use Team Viewer to your Remote Computer.
3. Mikogo Free Online Sharing
4. Pacquiao vs Cotto – Firepower Final Roundup

Using Mozilla FireFox – Fire FTP Addon

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy management of file access to FTP servers. When you say cross-platform it can be used in any operating system to any FTP Server. It works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. And what is great about this toll it’s FREE!

What you’ll need for this tutorial:

1.) Mozilla FireFox Browser

2.) FireFTP Add On

Downloading the FireFTP.

1.) Make sure that you have the latest firefox version, if not please update it now.

2.) Then download the FireFtp.

3.) Install the add on by clicking “Install Now” from the prompted dialog box.

[Figure 01]

4. Then it will ask you to restart firefox, click yes.
5. Once you have already successfull downloaded it, you would be able to see the add-on on your menubar at Tools>FireFtp.

[Figure02]

Creating a FireFTP Connection.

By creating a FireFTP Account it will let you connects to your FTP server, and you will be able manage securely your pages, files, and web directory. An FTP server is a software application running the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), which is the protocol used for exchanging files over the Internet.

1. Create a FireFTP Account under Tools>FireFtp on your menu bar. (Please refer to Figure 02.)

2. A new tab will be added and gonna look like this.

[Figure 03]

3. When you click the “Create an Account” combo box a Account Manager Dialog Box will appear.

[Figure 04]

4. Enter the following details:

Main Details

Account Name: [The name you wish to use for this account]
Category: [This can be blank but it can be useful in organizing your account if you have multiple account.]
Host:[the address where your FTP Server is hosted, it can be an IP Address or your domain name]

ID

Login: [Your user account from your FTP Server]
Password: [Your Password]

5. Click “OK” to update your account details. Then you can select your account in the combo box provided and click connect to access your FTP Server.

[Figure 05]

Note: If a dialog box prompted you for a password, just key-in the password again and click “Ok”.

6. Once you see folder and files on the right pane you have successfully connected to your file server. You can now just drag and drop files from left to right to upload files and right to left to download.

[Figure 06]

So What have you learned? Please feel free to ask question regarding this post by commenting below. Next time I’ll be posting the How to properly backup your Word Press Blog.

Related Links

1. How to create your own favicon.
2. How to use Team Viewer to your Remote Computer.
3. Mikogo Free Online Sharing
4. Pacquiao vs Cotto – Firepower Final Roundup