Although I have Akismet installed, I still can get a lot of spam comments which will be filed under “Akismet Spam” for further manual moderation. Although you can mark the comment as spam to let Akismet learns to identify more spams, it is still quite tiring if you have to moderate all spam comments that looks like this:

Won’t it be just annoying to receive whole lots of such comments in your Akismet spam section? Furthermore, to enable Akismet plugin, you need an API key which can be obtained from creating a free account in WordPress.com. That’s something extra you have to do if you want to use Akismet.

Now, it’s time to also install the WP-SpamFree plugin for your WordPress blog. I’ve been using this plugin for some time and it has captured lots of spam comments and deleted them automatically.

What is WP-SpamFree?

An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well.

Can I use Akismet with WP-SpamFree?

Yes, you can. I have both of these plugins installed, although not necessary. Actually WP-SpamFree can do all the cleaning job. Sometimes one or two comments will be left out and it will be caught by Akismet.

Say no to spam and get WP-SpamFree for your WordPress blog today! Just install the WP-SpamFree plugin, sit back and relax to watch it do all its magical work.

You may also want to read additional information on:

• Uploading plugins to host via FireFTP
• Adding contact form to your blog

There are many Firefox add-ons to enhance your browsing as well as blogging experience. Here is a list of 8 useful Firefox add-ons which I think every blogger should have them installed in their Firefox browser.

One of the important elements in the blogging world is social bookmarks. You can promote your blog posts through social networking sites, share your interest, as well as getting information from others (blog authors), and also it’s one of the source for you to get blogging inspiration. Among all those many social bookmarking sites, I would love to introduce StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us.

So, you must not miss out these social bookmarking Firefox extensions.

[1] StumbleUpon

This is not a stranger in the Web 2.0 world. Sign up a StumbleUpon account and start stumble good blog posts that you think worth sharing or bookmarking. Registration is FREE.  It’s a great site for you to wider your blog network, make new friends, stumble similar interest articles. If your article is being stumbled by someone, it means higher chance for you to gain more blog traffic. Isn’t it just nice?

After installing the StumbleUpon extension, you can customize where to locate it in your Firefox browser. If you like a site, just click on the blue thumb up icon (to rate it, bookmark it) and vice versa. Notice the number in red? That means someone in my contact list is recommending me an article which he or she finds interesting and would love to share with me.  So, by using the same method, you can also recommend your own blog post to your StumbleUpon contact. There are many more features to be discovered by using the StumbleUpon add-on.

If you happen to have a StumbleUpon account, please feel free to add me to your contact as well.

[2] Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is another bookmarking site. Among all the social bookmarking site, I find that Del.icio.us is the best tool to bookmark anything I found useful from the Internet; easy to use, nothing fancy about the interface, straight to the point. You can find out more on why I like to use Del.icio.us as my bookmarking tools.

After installing the Del.icio.us Firefox add-on, you can customize your toolbar to show your Del.icio.us short cut, so that whenever you see an interesting article, you can easily bookmark it by clicking the TAG icon. Oh, in order to use Del.icoi.us, you need to sign up for an account, it’s FREE.

[3] Wizz RSS

It’s a web base RSS reader. I always encourage people around me to use RSS reader to read their favorite blogs. Some argue that they prefer blog hopping, but when your network expand, you may really want to switch to a feed reader. You can really get benefits from using a feed/RSS reader to get any updates from your favorite blogs. If you dislike installing extra feed reader application or sign up for an RSS account like Google Reader, you can try this Wizz RSS Firefox plugin. No registration needed, just subscribe to any feed you like. However, if you read blogs in different computer most of the time, it’s better to stick with a registered RSS reader account like Google Reader.

After installing this add-on, the Wizz RSS will appear on the left panel without disturbing what you are currently browsing. You can make your feed subscription more organized by creating categories by right clicking any where within the Wizz RSS tab and choose “Add Category“.

To add a feed, do the same thing by choose “Add Feed“, make sure you get your favorite blog’s feed URL. You can do that by searching the feed subscription link and right click on it and choose “Copy Link Location“. Next paste the link to the Feed URL field.

At the end you will have something that looks like this. You get a list of feed updates. If you click on any post, you see a summary of the post, for further reading, double click on it, and the content will show on the right panel.

[4] ScribeFire

Say, you want to have something all-in-one. ScribeFire is just for you. With ScribeFire, you can blog anything you find interesting right away within a few clicks. You can also add blogs/articles to your Del.icio.us bookmark. Or even share what you found in social networking sites like Propeller, Reddit, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc…. ScribeFire integrates with several blogging platform, check out a list of supported services to find out more.

[5] FireFTP

This add-on is one of my favorites which I think it is an essential Firefox extension for bloggers who have their own domain. It’s very useful when you need to upload files to your host. You do not have to install extra FTP client, FireFTP work the same way like almost any FTP client. Learn how to use FireFTP to upload files to your host.

[6] Web Developer

Very often, when I need to customize my blog theme or helping friends to mod a little here and there on their blog theme, I will depend a lot on this Web Developer extension. Most of the time I use this to view the source code. This plugin is for intermediate user who at least knows more on web development like HTML, CSS, etc.. It’s a great tool for all web developers.

“The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.”

[7] Screengrab

Sometimes it’s tedious to take a full screenshot of a page by just using the PrintScreen key on your keyboard. Screengrab can do all the job for you. Who and why need this extension? It’s an essential toolfor those who always make tutorials on the web, when you need to take lots of screenshots to show your reader. I often do that too. Find out more about Screengrab.

[8] ColorZilla

When it comes to customizing the theme color of your blog, you must be digging a list of colors available, searching for it’s 6 digits hexadecimal codes. You can install some free color picker software, but won’t it be nice if you can do it just within your browser? ColorZilla is the answer. After installation, there will be a tiny icon on the bottom left of your browser, click on it to activate and click on any color on the screen that you want, in order to get the 6 digits hexadecimal codes. Click that icon again to deactivate, just as easy as that. Find out more here.

So, that’s the 8 Firefox add-ons which I think is really useful for bloggers. Hope you can benefit from this list.

Happy blogging.

Most hosting plans include a bundle of pre-install scripts in your control panel (eg. CPanel, DirectAdmin). There are several script library like Fantastico, Installatron, etc. (depends on your host provider). To make life easier, you can always install your WordPress blog via the script installer. Learn how to install WordPress using Fantastico. It’s more or less the same for other script installer.

Now you have WordPress installed, and you probably don’t want to stick to the default K2 theme, which looks so plain and not attractive. Although content is the king, first impression is also very important. What to do next? Search for your desire WordPress theme! There are plenty of free themes available. But please beware of free themes provided by less trustful source. (hacker can encrypt codes in the theme and easily access your blog.)

After you find your favorite WordPress theme (mostly come in compressed format like .zip or .rar), extract it and you will have to upload it to your host. How to do that, you wonder. It’s very easy. You can either upload the whole theme folder via your control panel but that will be kinda slow, so I highly recommend you to upload your theme (any files) via FireFTP (Yes, you need Firefox to do that).

Next, you have to navigate to the correct directory to upload your WordPress theme. First you have to look for your WordPress folder, the folder that have all your WordPress files. Normally it will be in WWW or public_html folder.

Take this as an example: www.yourdomain.com/blog

The /blog is your WordPress folder. The folder name defers, as you are the one who determine the name earlier during WordPress installation stage.

To upload your WordPress theme (the whole theme folder that you have downloaded and extracted), navigate to the following directory (in FireFTP or your control panel):

Your wordpress folder (eg: blog)/wp-content/themes

After uploading your theme, you will be able to see your uploaded theme in the “Design” tab in your WordPress admin panel. Just click on the theme you want, and you have successfully change your blog theme!

To add your sidebar, just click on the “Widgets” and have fun adding (available only for widget-ready themes).

Tip: You can use the same method to upload plugins to your host (WordPress folder).

If you have any questions regarding this topic, do not hasitate to ask in the comment section.

You can search of almost all of the possible Blogger hacks there in a Wiki style, from A to Z. Oh, what is Blogger hack? It’s the changes of source code that enable your blog to have extra functionality rather than the default ones.

Are you running a Blogger / blogspot.com blog? Are you interested in:

• Expandable Post Summaries
• Converting to 3-column template
• How to show latest 25 of your Recent Comments or Posts
• many more….

Get all your answers at Blogger Hack Wiki.

Note: These hacks are available for the new blogger or known as Blogger Beta or xml Blogger.

Happy blogging.

Blogger’s Hideout is a brand new blog that acts like a blog directory, but with pseronal reviews done by the admin. This is a good start for promoting your blog and also gain traffic to your blog, specially amatuer / part time bloggers like us.

Why Blogger’s Hideout?

1. Expose your blog
2. Increase blog traffic
3. Get opinion from readers
4. Making new friends in the community
5. Discover new blogs

Who need Blogger’s Hideout?

1. New bloggers
2. Bloggers who want more exposure and traffic

Are you interested? It’s free to get a review from Blogger’s Hideout. How?

Then Jason, the author fo Blogger’s Hideout, will write a review for your blog.

Check out the following short clip for a preview of WordPress 2.6.

Are you a WordPress user? Will you update to WordPress 2.6? Find out more about WordPress 2.6 here.

New to WordPress? Find out how to upgrade your own WordPress blog.

Download WordPress 2.6 now.

I’ll be upgrading this blog shortly after.

What is Word Press’d and how does it look like?

Directly quoted from B2L:

Word Press’d aims to give Wordpress users around the world the chance to make their blog look similar to the highly anticipated Wordpress Admin Theme release with version 2.5.

The theme tries to incorporate the best parts of the Admin theme while at the same time add customisability, compatibility and suitable to serve as a blog template while at the same time be visually attractive and have a light quick loading framework.

I really appreciate this theme. It is really similar to the new WordPress 2.5 admin control panel. If you are a WordPress 2.5 fan, you may love to turn your blog into a Word Press’d blog.

According to B2L, they are going to release version 4 soon.  In the upcoming version, they are going to include a Tabbed Sidebar Widget.

The below image is the screencast of Word Press’d v0.3

Word Press’d is fully compatible on WordPress 2.5+

[ Download Word Press'd v0.3 ]

[ Learn more about Word Press'd theme by Blog2Life ]

Please take note that I did not create any of these themes. Credits to all their original authors. All themes are widget-ready.

Books And Imagination

This is a nice theme for those who are into literature or writing.

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Download: Books and Imagination Theme

Dark Mood V3

The original theme is not widget-ready. However, I have made this time widget-ready for your using pleasure.

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Download: Dark Mood V3 Theme

KayuPress

This is really a splendid theme! I personally love it very much. The theme is designed to work with several WordPress plugins. You can check out the plugins you need to get the best out of this theme.

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Download: KayuPress Theme

Mag On Wood

This is a simple and neat 3 column theme.

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Download: Mag On Wood Theme

Marcus

If you are a fan of big header image, this theme may suit you. It’s simple and neat as well.

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Download: Marcus Theme

Papyrus

This is another splendid theme by SK Design Studio.

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Download: Papyrus Theme

Plant-a-Tree

This is another splendid theme originally by Igor Penjivrag, and the theme that I shared here is the one that has been modified by Noktah Hitam. For installation instruction, read this.

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Download: Plant-a-Tree Theme

Plasticine World

This is a simple theme featuring a “globe”.

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Download: Plasticine World Theme

Wood

A darkwood theme that look similar to Plant-a-Tree theme. Quite a nice theme if you favor dark theme.

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Download: Wood Theme

WP WoodBlog

WP WoodBlog theme is a nice theme with paper and wooden texture and some stationery, which is almost alike to Office Theme 1.0.

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Download: WP WoodBlog Theme

Hope you like my collection of Wood Theme.

Posting up your email for readers to contact you is the most basic way of letting your readers contact you besides leaving comments/feedback in your blog (comment section or chatbox widget). However, it will be much more easier if you can provide a “contact form” feature in your blog.

This will facilitates your readers to contact you just by filling the contact form.

Why Contact Form?

[1] Readers can contact you easily.

[2] Ensure the message is successfully delivered to you.

[3] Having a more professional feel (impression wise).

Adding a contact form nowadays is not difficult at all. You don’t need to have HTML knowledge to have this done. There are free services or plugins available to help you add a contact form to your blog.

How to Add a Contact Form?

For WordPress user, you can install the Enhanced WordPress Contact Form plugin. Once you activate this plugin in your WordPress blog, you can set the configuration under the “Settings” tab (for WordPress 2.5). The settings is quite straight forward. Take a look at the sanpshot which is quite self explained below.

Then you will have to create a Page, and add in the following code and publish your page.

<!--contact form-->

For more support on this plugin, click here.

For Blogger (Blogspot) user, you can add a contact form to your blog too! No, you don’t need to code the contact form yourself. All you have to do is to sign up for a FREE account at WebFormDesigner. Follow the instructions and you can get a simple yet functional contact form like this:

I will not go into detail on how to generate a contact form like the above. Instead, you can read read this detail tutorial on adding a contact form in your Blogspot blog.

Do you have a contact form in your blog? If you haven’t, try to add one now.

When you click on the icon below a blog post, provided you are signed in to your Facebook account, that particular blog post link will be added to your Facebook Mini-Feed. Now, everyone in your network will be able to see your posted link. If they are interested and click on the link, you gain traffic to your blog!

Yes, of course you can click on the icon at your own blog post. Haven’t got the social bookmarking icons / buttons? Try Sociable for own hosted WordPress or AddThis for other blogging platforms. If you don’t implement such social bookmarking buttons, you will have to post the link to Facebook manually.

Adding a post link to your Facebook account with the icon is easy.

First, look for the post that you want to share with your Facebook friends and click on the icon. (I’m using my other blog as an example)

If you already login to your Facebook account, you will see something like this:

When you are done with the setting, just click on the Post button below that page. The post will then be posted to your Facebook profile. If you want to send this link to your friend instead, choose the Send a Message and follow the instruction.

Go to your profile and now you can see the post. When someone click on the post link, he/she will then be directed to the orginal blog post. Anyone can leave comment or share with others.

Easy, isn’t it? This is how you can boost some traffic to your blog. Try it out.

Oh, you can add me in Facebook too!