How to Embed Tweets In Your Posts

Blog posts,Twitter, Facebook and many other social networks often go hand in hand. When you publish a blog post, you will often tweet the link to your Twitter account. Sometime when you send a tweet, you will also embed it in your blog post. The problem is, embedding a tweet in your post is not as easy as it should be. It often involves taking screenshot of the tweet, crop/edit it before you upload it to your post. With the introduction of Blackbird Pie, the whole process just become much easier.

Blackbird Pie is a method created by Twitter Media to easily embed a tweet on your site. Feed it with the tweet's URL and it will generate the necessary code for you to copy/paste to your site.

Fixing the Blackbird Pie Plugin - undefined function mb_strlen

If you are using the Blackbird Pie plugin to embed tweets to your posts, you might see an error message Call to undefined function mb_strlen(). The reason for this error is because the plugin is using the mb_strlen function that is not activated by default.

To fix this, go to the Blackbird Pie plugin folder and open unicode.php in your text-editor. At line 18, replace the line:

[php firstline="17"]return mb_convert_encoding($swap,"UTF-8"); //not really necessary, but why not.[/php]

with

[php firstline="17"]if ( function_exists('mb_convert_encoding') )
return mb_convert_encoding($swap,"UTF-8"); //not really necessary, but why not.
else
return $swap;[/php]

At line 21 and 25, replace the line:

[php]$strlen = mb_strlen($string);[/php]

with

[php]if(function_exists('mb_strlen'))
$strlen = mb_strlen($string);
else
$strlen = strlen($string);[/php]

Save and upload the file to your server. It should work now.

via WordPress Support

Limit The jQuery Lazy Load Plugin to Operate Only In The Content Area

If you have noticed, one of the way that highly-trafficked site save bandwidths is to use a lazy load plugin. What this lazy load plugin does is to load the images only when they become visible on the screen. Any images below the visible screen will not be displayed. This is also known as on-demand loading.

In WordPress, there are several lazy load plugins that you can use. One of my favorite is the jQuery Image Lazy Load plugin, simply because it just works the moment you activate it. No configuration is required.

How to Add Custom Navigation Menus to Your Themes

WordPress 3.0 comes with support for custom navigation menu. The new feature is a good way for you to add navigation menu to your theme with little configuration. Best of all, it allows you to administer the menus from your dashboard. No longer do you need to tamper with the code to add/remove items from the menus.

Now, unless you are using an updated theme, chances are, your old theme does not support this new custom navigation menu feature. Here is how you can modify your current theme to support the menus feature.

Dropbox-CDN Uses Your Dropbox Account As Free CDN

I am sure you have heard of Dropbox - the web storage service that allows you to access your files from almost everywhere. If you are a WordPress user as well as a Dropbox user, you can now host (some of) your theme files in Dropbox and save some bandwidth.

A new plugin known as Dropbox-CDN helps you automate the process. All you need to do is go to your Dropbox's Public folder, create several level of folders with the same folder structures as your WordPress server (for example: /wp-content/themes/your-theme-folder/) and place all your js, css and image files into it. Copy and paste your Dropbox public link to the Dropbox-CDN options page and it will do the rest for you.

Note: This plugin only supports themes who use the filters 'template_directory', 'template_directory_uri', 'stylesheet_directory', and 'stylesheet_directory_uri' to determine the paths to the theme's template and stylesheet files.

How to Secure Your WordPress Login With One Time Password

If you have a little sense of security, you will know that it is totally unsafe to login to any of your private account, be it email, bank, or your WordPress site, in a public unsecured network (a.k.a free wifi). Many hackers are hanging around in the open network looking for opportunity to obtain your login credential and wreak havoc with it.

Much as we like to prevent, there will be situations (for example, when we are travelling) where we need to access our WordPress account via a public network. Luckily, we can add extra protection layer to our WordPress account so that when such situations occur, we can be sure that we are safe from hackers' clutches.

How to Test Drive New Plugins And Themes Without Making Them Live On Your Site

Apart from being a user-friendly CMS, what makes WordPress really great is the support for plugins and themes. With a huge library of plugins and themes, you can instantly add new features and new skins to your blog without any coding on your part.

However, if you have been blogging long enough, you will know that sometime a badly coded plugin can break the site. Worst still, it can even cause the site to crash. This goes the same for a new theme. Without any tweaking and configuration, 9 out of 10 times the theme won't look great on your site. For such cases, it is wise to test them out before making them live.