I actually don’t really sure whether this site’s theme support threaded comments. At first, I thought it didn’t as I didn’t see the reply link on each of comments. But it is actually because the nested comments option was not enabled! I blindly follow the instruction from C.Bavota and fortunately, it works. Maybe this theme actually do support threaded comments, who knows? But now it matters no more.

Does your themes support this feature? If not, you better implement it. Don’t let your reader miss this cool function.

Ok, back to business. Today I want to write something about digital music player. For some reasons, I would like to have an iPod now and the new iPod Touch is very appealing. This thing started as I began to use iTunes as my music player instead of Winamp. For me, iTunes is a very ingenious. The main reason why I like iTunes is that it can manage podcast very well. If I were to have an iPod, the experience with iTunes will be greater because iPod and iTunes seem to have seamless integration.

Now, my digital music player is one of Sony Walkman MP3 player, which I borrow from my friend, as he has already got his iPod, the new iPod Nano 3rd Generation to be exact. And the best part of Sony MP3 player is the attrac file format, which compresses the music better, without compromises the quality of the sound. In other words, the sound is still great to many ears even at low bit rate, compared to mp3. But the best part is also the worst part. Since I do listen to lots of podcasts, it is very annoying to first download the files from website and then convert it to atrrac using SonicStage format to be stored into the player (Sony MP3 Players do not support Drag-and-Drop). If the SonicStage is a great as iTunes, the world will be better, at least for me. Or if SonicStage just supports RSS Download for podcast…

And if you installed TiSP at your home, you will get a benefit when purchasing things via Google Checkout. The things will be delivered directly to you through the sewage network into your bathroom. Don’t worry, the package is sealed with waterproof bag.

In-Commode Package Delivery
With professional installation service, you can also have your Google Checkout purchases delivered directly through the sewage network into your bathroom. Each package comes pre-sealed in a watertight and nanobot-resistant bag made of biodegradable corn-based plastic. For a limited time, TiSP subscribers who sign up for a Checkout account will receive free bathroom delivery on their first ten Checkout purchases.

And this part is funnier. Google are taking a step forward leaving their competitors in contextual ads. They now can display ads after reading your DNA, so that the ads are related to you. Damn again.

How can Google offer this service for free?
We believe that all users deserve free, fast and sanitary online access. To offset the cost of providing the TiSP service, we use information gathered by discreet DNA sequencing of your personal bodily output to display online ads that are contextually relevant to your culinary preferences, current health status and likelihood of developing particular medical conditions going forward. Google also offers premium levels of service for a monthly fee (see below).
Note: We take your privacy very seriously. So we treat all TiSP users’ waste-related personal information with tremendous discretion, in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

And for Wordpress, last year, they came up with Wordpattern (and changed to Wordpattrn, after being acquired by Yahoo! and Flickr). This year, it is almost the same story. And the name is Forkpress. Owen of asymptomatic.net is tired with Habari and Wordpress. So, he comes up with great blogging tools, Forkpress. By the way, Forkpress has K3, while Wordpress still having K2.

To my surprise, Forkpress has been downloaded 20,070,401 times, almost 20x than Wordpress 2.1 (1,047,562 times). No wonder that the download section is facing some problems.

Happy April Fool!

After few days, I realized that my blog still can be accessed using the subdomain. Moreover, my blog is listed on Google and Yahoo with the address http://korokmu.eizil.com. And the fact that Google does not like duplicate content make me worry a little bit. I need to redirect the subdomain to my new domain. Before this, I've writen about redirecting a webpage using PHP. But this trick cannot be done because the index of korokmu.eizil.com and techlogs.net is the same. Therefore, I searched for other solution.

Luckily, I've found the .htaccess trick. It is just simple. What you need to do is, copy the code below in your .htaccess file and replace the domain.com with your domain.

And the most important part is, this redirection is search engine friendly. You can use this tool to check whether your redirection is friendly or not.

Related Links:
.htaccess forward subdomain to domain
Comprehensive Guide to .htaccess

P.S: The action from TheCicak.com to make this theme public is actually a brilliant idea. This is because, at the bottom of the theme, there are links back to ikram zidane's blog and TheCicak.com. With this great design, I am pretty sure that many Wordpress users will make this theme as their default theme. This will lead to the increase of links to TheCicak.com, which is very important in SEO. And now, what you can do is, hire a designer to design a Wordpress theme for your blog, and then publicize it. And don't forget the link back to your blog.

Related Links:
Live preview
Download
Marki Wordpress Theme

Now lets talk about webspace. You can get gigabytes of disk space just for a small amount of money. For example, my hosting (not this blog) offers 3GB webspace for just only RM80 (USD22.80) per year. But do you really need that much space? If your blog is still fresh and new, 3GB is too much for you. For most blog (except photo blogs), 50 MB is already enough. This blog begins its first 6 months with just 50MB. After that it begged for more due to increase in the number of posts and images.

Actually, it is not that hard to find hosting providers, which offer small amount of webspace. One of the example is Sempoihosting.com. You have the option to choose how many disk space you want for one year and you can upgrade your package anytime.

Another example is NearlyFreeSpeech.net, which offer you ultra low price, USD0.01 per megabyte-month, USD1.00 per gigabyte for data transfers and USD3.65 per year for one MySQL databse. At first, I think this is a great and cheap solution for me. Besides, Bugmenot.com is also hosted by this company. But after calculating the amount that I must pay for a year, it is clear that the hosting package from my current hosting is more favourable.

This is the details of the calculations
My monthly data transfers : 2.5GB
Cost per year: 2.5x1.00x12= USD 30.00

My webspace : 115.68 MB
Cost per year: 115.68x0.01x12= USD 13.88

MySQL Database: USD 0.01 per day
Cost per year: USD3.65

The total amount: USD 47.53, more that double the cost of my current webhosting. Hmm, I have read all over the internet about bloggers do not really need big space. But if I can get more spaces, bandwiths, and addon domains (NearlyFreeSpeech offers unlimited addon domains, but not Sempoihosting). If you have more spaces, you can experiment a lot. For example, I am now building my photo gallery and photo blog under the same hosting account. If you plan to have multiple blogs, do not hesitate to buy the big-sized hosting package. It worths a while.

Regarding the title of this entry, all emails sent to me using the WP-ContactForm plugin are considered as spam in my GMail. Even after I tagged the emails as "not spam", the next emails still land in the Spam folder. To solve this problem, I switched to another contact from plugin, intouch. But the result is negative.

Luckily, I have found the solution, although it is not so ideal. You just need to change your gmail address in the WP-ContactForm option page to Yahoo Mail address or other not-so-good-at-filtering-spam email providers.

Scraper sites are mostly created for monetizing the site using advertising programs such as Google AdSense. Such sites can get ranked better in search engine because the contents of the website are based on the selected keywords and the content if updated daily if the website is using RSS method.

My scraper site is about Wordpress and powered also by Wordpress. It is only about two months old and has currently 437 posts. Techlogs is over one year old, but the number of post is only 136.

Ok. Now let begin to make your own Wordpress scraper site. (This is only for educational purpose. Scraper sites are bad and it will make the search engine crowded with unwanted results. In other words, scrapper sites are spams)

Steps of creating scraper site.

1. Get SmartRSS Plugins from DevPlug.net, which can be downloaded here.
2. Follow the installation steps.
3. Blend your adsense code into the blog
4. Generate traffic to your scraper site.
5. Start earn money

Some tips to get RSS feeds. Search for the targeted keywords with google. For my Wordpress scraper site, I've chosen the keywords like Wordpress themes, Wordpress plugins, and Wordpress Tips and trick. Thanks to the blogger, who are using wordpress because it is very easy to grab RSS feeds based to category.

For example: A blogger blog about Wordpress theme and categorize it into Themes category. To get the category's feed, just put feed at the end of the permalink for that category.
E.g. http://blogaddress.com/category/themes/feed.

Want to see scraper site in action? Take a look at my scraper site here.

What I don't like with affiliate link is, it is very long and it shows my referrer ID. I dont want that because it gives the impression to the readers that I am just trying to earn some money and the review just to lure you to buy the product.

And my solution is to change the URL to a friendly one. Below are some methods that you can use.

TinyURL (not so friendly)
With this free service, you can turn the long URL into short URL such as http://tinyurl.com/2b5mau. But the letters and numbers have no meaning.

Simple PHP redirect (more friendly)
Make a PHP file. Make sure that the file will give the users a little idea, where will it take the users to. For example, if you make a link to your Webhosting affiliate, you can name the PHP file like "recommended-webhosting.php".

After that, paste the code below in your PHP files. Replace the http://www.new-url.com with your affiliate link. Upload the files to your root server. After that you can point to the file http://yourblog.com/recommended-webhosting.php in your review post. Is it simple?

Give this trick a try and share your comments and thoughts using the comment form below.