Guide

How to link within a local post using hash tags?

October 5, 2014 by Arun Sarathy Leave a Comment

This is also known as Bookmarking within a webpage.

This tip is useful when you want to display Table of Contents within a long blog post:

Let’s say the text that you want to be hyperlinked is ‘Mary had a little lamb‘. And this ‘Mary had a little lamb‘ is somewhere in the first paragraph of your webpage. This text has to be hyperlinked to the last paragraph of your webpage which has an explanation to the song. In other words, clicking on ‘Mary had a little lamb‘ will take the visitor to a location within the same page which has the explanation to the song. [Read more…] about How to link within a local post using hash tags?

Top 14 Tips For Great Blogging From Amit Agarwal

October 3, 2014 by Arun Sarathy 8 Comments

blog tips

Thanks to BigRock and Amit Agarwal for this wonderful video. Amit Agarwal from www.labnol.org shares his Blogging tips at WordUp (brought to us by BigRock and in association with IndiBlogger).

Amit Agarwal sharing his Blogging Tips at WordUp

Though, this video is really insightful, I have listened to Amit’s words completely twice and have put it in text below – these are not just word-to-word transcripts but just the key take aways and points as suggested by Amit. I am hopeful that you’ll find this useful.

Amit Agarwal’s 14 Tips for Bloggers:

1. Move out of Blogger to take your blog to the next level.

There is nothing wrong in Blogger – in fact it’s great for beginners. But there are some reasons, why one should raise from Blogger to take his/her blog to the next level.

Major reasons:

a. Blogger blocks everything from Search Engines that is not a blog post. So if you have pages around labels, what we call as taxonomy – categories and tags, these are blocked in a blogger blog. So you will miss these out in organic searches made in Search Engines.
b. It’s very difficult to take out content from Blogger and re-use if you need to make an eBook.
c. Google might some day mercilessly kill products (like in past…Orkut, Google Reader, Google Buzz, etc.) Blogger could become one in the list, someday. Just being cautious.

2. Have a great content!

Not just great content but probably a great way of communicating stuff and great writing as well. Writing skills matter more than you can imagine. Just follow few books for their styles and try to improve your writing style regularly. Use word processing editors like Mac Pages and MS Word that help you in spelling and grammar corrections. Develop a consistent style of writing.

3. Do not imitate someone when you are writing. Don’t follow someone else’s style. Try and be unique.

4. Headlines:

Headlines are the most important point in any blog post. It shows up on social media, RSS feeds, search engine results, etc. take at least 50% of your time in thinking about what your blog post’s title should be while thinking about your post itself.

Amit suggests: write boring headlines – headlines that may not be clever or cute but they accurately display what your content is all about. when people look at your headlines say in Twitter or Facebook or anywhere else they should be able to accurately guess what your post is actually all about.

5. Add value: Think Big Picture.

Are you adding value or just adding noise to the Eco-chamber in the blogging world. Of course, there are few big blogs who have to maintain and keep up with daily happenings and post news as soon as it happens but for the rest of us, we’ve to step back and really think. if you are not a big media or a big blog, Amit suggests…we better step back and say Something that we have more interesting to say.

6. Guest blogging –

Stay away as much as possible. 99% of guest blogging is for gaining links. it’s out of fashion and SEO as well. Instead of writing content by spending time for someone else, you can use that time and knowledge for your own blog and increase your own profile.

Amit suggests: never ever give away content on the internet for free.

7. Here’s an idea to pitch your blog post idea effectively:

Don’t get disappointed if your content doesn’t go up in results or is not becoming famous. Don’t end up writing up to big guys, big blogs and social media influencers as they are quite often very busy. What you should do: look at content and see who has commented and shared your stories in the past. They may not be big social influencers, but they may be big fans of your content – you should actually pitch your story to them and they will happily spread it more for you.

8. Get rid of irrelevant items from your blog:

Biggest problem for tech blogs: get rid of irrelevant items from your blog. Need not have something about everything. Follow and post what you know better and add value.

9. Advertising:

When it comes to ads, please think of readers first and your revenue later. Amit suggests: Go for some good ad networks like Google AdSense, BuySellAds, BlogAds…but I would suggest never ever go for InfoLinks or TribalFusion because these reduce quality on your blogs.

10. Develop the practice of generous linking:

Links are the backbone if you want to rank good in the Google search engine. Have the good habit of citing good references to external websites. if for e.g. there are two websites and one has core content with well cited external resource links and the other doesn’t have anything extra other than their core content – obviously readers will flock to the website with more citing and resource links. Develop the practice of generous linking. this is how you also grow in the internet as well.

11. SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Google says there are 200+ guidelines to follow to rank better in Google search results. However, none of us here know all the rules. Nevertheless,, Google provides their webmaster guidelines and if you can just grab the PDF and read it, the rules are pretty much covered in that. Always also, have an HTML sitemap on your website. Always consider inter-linking your content. this is very important so your human visitors want to see that as well. Every website has two kinds of content – the main content for which your users land up to read. And the supplementary content – the sidebar, categories, and everything else. From html perspective, design in such a way that your main content is always at the top and the supplementary content is at the bottom. Have responsive websites – that takes care to show your website to both desktop and mobile users alike in a format that is UX-friendly.

12. Google Analytics –

Metrics and page views do not matter. What really matters is how much the visitor is spending on your page on an average and what is the bounce rate. That’s really REALLY important. Reduce bounce rate as much as possible because if it’s 100% then the reader is landing and leaving your site in no time. Try infinite scrolling as an option
if you find yourself having more bounce rates.

13. Republishing content –

There are so many nice sites – FlipBoard, iTunes, SlideShare, YouTube. These have millions of visitors. You can even try republishing as eBook in Kindle format. This will take you to the big and vast Amazon store with many visitors as well.

14. Separate the business side of your blog with the editorial –

What separates you from other bloggers is your talents, your writing skills, and your credibility. Also the blogging world operates on the principles of transparency so there is no reason why that should not be your guiding principle as well.

List of tools Amit highly recommends –

THE TOOLS

Key Take-Aways from Amit Agarwal’s Presentation:

Never publish a post without images
If you have text only content, make it more visual
Stay away from the distraction and see what value you can add to the blogging world. Don’t add noise.

Relevant Resources:

Conclusion:

I compiled this tech talk by Amit Agarwal for the sole purpose that Amit’s points are so true that I wanted a written record of the key points he spoke about. Instead of watching the YouTube video, I thought my notes will not only help me – but if posted to my blog – it could help others too in need. These are not just points, these are facts worth following. Thanks Amit Agarwal, BigRock and Indiblogger.

MS Excel: How to highlight every fifth cell in a column

September 20, 2014 by Arun Sarathy Leave a Comment

A tip on using Conditional Formatting to highlight every fifth cell in a column:

In MicroSoft Excel, whenever there is a requirement to format cells based on a condition, it's always Conditional Formatting that comes to mind. To solve this question too, we will use Conditional Formatting only.

Let's say, we want to highlight every 5th cell in a column. We're going to use a formula to first identify every fifth row so as to apply Conditional Formatting. This formula can be altered to select any number of subsequent rows – i.e.,
every second row, every third row, every sixth row, etc. And this formula will be part of our condition within the Conditional Formatting.

Here's the formula:

=MOD(ROW(),5)=1

Let's break this formula to understand it better:

MOD is a mathematical function in MS Excel which will return the remainder, after the number is divided by the divisor. The result will have the same sign as the divisor.

Here's the actual syntax for MOD function:

=MOD(number,divisor)

Number is the number for which we want to find the remainder.

Divisor is the number by which we want to divide number.

Number Part:- In =MOD(ROW(),5) formula, by having the 'Number' part of the syntax written as ROW(), we are letting Excel decide to bring the Row number of a given reference into MOD. By leaving the reference blank within ROW(), we are also letting Excel automatically pick and use it for every cell that this formula is attached to.

Divisor Part:- This will be 5 in our example. If you want to highlight every 4th cell, then the divisor will be 4.

=1 => here, we're saying that if the remainder is '1', then highlight based on the conditions given.

Thus, by performing the above steps, we will have every 5th cell in selection highlighted in Grey color.

MS Excel: How to format cells in a column based on character length

September 18, 2014 by Arun Sarathy Leave a Comment

Making best use of Conditional Formatting to format cells based on character length:

If you have a list of words that needs to be formatted (highlighted in yellow, marked as bold, etc) based on the cell content's length (the length of the word or sentence), then Conditional Formatting will be our rescue partner.

Let's see how to get this done, step by step:

1. In this e.g. I have a list under Column A and the length of each cell content under Column B. I am using 'LEN' formula here on cells B1:B5.

=LEN(A1)

2. Select Column A cells A1:A5

3. Select Conditional Formatting > New Rule. In the 'New Formatting Rule' window that opens up, select the last option under 'Select a Rule Type' – which is 'Use a formula to determine which cells to format'.

You'll see an option to 'Edit the Rule Description:'

4. There in the box that reads 'Format values where this formula is true:' type in the following formula:

=B1>=5

This is because we have cells under Column B that has the numerical values showing the length of words input under Column A. So, whichever cell has 5 or greater than 5, then the corresponding cells under Column A will be formatted.

As you can see now, we're trying to format cells in Column A that meets the above condition – i.e. any cell that is greater than or equal to five characters in length. But for that to work, we first need to set some format settings.

5. Hit on the 'Format' button and select whatever formatting option you want to make.
In this e.g. I am going to highlight the cells in light green and format text as 'Bold'.

6. Click on 'OK'. In this window now, you can also read the formula under 'Applies to' to see if it shows up correctly.

i.e. =$A$1:$A$5

Click on 'Apply'. and then on 'OK' again to close this window.

Note: you'll notice that the cells that are highlighted in Bold and in light green, will not show as 'bold' on the formatting toolbar nor as a green filled cell. They'll show up as normal in font – which is NOT strange. The reason is given under Note 2 below.

Note 2: even if you try to change the format settings which is part of your 'formatting rule' under your selected 'conditional formatting' rules, it will not override your conditional formatting. In other words, your conditional formatting settings takes precendence over the manual settings made.

Hope this Excel tip helped you to accomplish whatever made you to land on this page. If yes, please do leave a comment to let me know your thoughts or any other questions you may have. Will be glad to help.

Best way to remove generator meta tag in WordPress

September 11, 2014 by Arun Sarathy Leave a Comment

How to hide the Generator meta tag in WordPress:

The solution that we’re going to see now is pretty simple. But first let’s look at some background and usefulness before the solution is given. If you came here just for the solution, head straight there now.

Hackers have many ways to attack your website. One such way is to know which version of WordPress you are using and using this information to find vulnerabilities in that specific version. Using this weakness, hackers can easily take control or spam your website. Obviously this is something that we want to avoid.

There are many ways to get rid of the generator meta tag that shows the WordPress version to the world. However, some will advice you to remove the tag directly from the header file which will just remove it from the website. A well learned hacker knows that that is not the only place to find your WordPress version. If you have provided RSS feeds option in your website, then removing this from header will not solve your problem, because the WordPress version shows up in RSS feeds too!

So, what’s the best way to get rid of this unnecessary information being shown to the world that may cause you heart ache? Of course, other solutions include, adding a piece of code to your functions.php file under the theme editor area. While this too does the job well, there are few of us who don’t want to get our hands dirty by editing the code stuff. So, for the people who are not so good at tech or coding, there is a plugin available to do the dirty work for you – let’s get ahead and employ the plugin for this purpose – note: this plugin not only does this thing, but will also help you with MANY other security features, that is a must for your website.

Here is that best solution:

Get this plugin installed in your WordPress: Wordfence Security Plugin.

Wordfence is a plugin that I’ve started using as soon as I learned that teh WordPress version is not required to be shown to the world – however, it took me few days to get this knowledge.

What Wordfence does is that it first starts checking your website to see if its already infected. It does a deep server side scan of your website’s source code comparing it to the official WordPress repository for core, themes and plugins. Then, it secures your website and also, as it claims, makes your website a little more faster in loading time.

As I mentioned above, there is no need to edit any code. Wordfence takes care of it. Additionally, wordfence also offers the below security features:

Other Wordfence Security features:

(as given in WordPress plugin repository page)

Includes Falcon Engine, the fastest WordPress caching engine available today. Falcon is faster because it reduces your web server disk and database activity to a minimum.
Includes support for other major plugins and themes like WooCommerce.
Real-time blocking of known attackers. If another site using Wordfence is attacked and blocks the attacker, your site is automatically protected.
Sign-in using your password and your cellphone to vastly improve login security. This is called Two Factor Authentication and is used by banks, government agencies and military world-wide for highest security authentication.
Includes two-factor authentication, also referred to as cellphone sign-in.
Scans for the HeartBleed vulnerability – included in the free scan for all users.
Wordfence includes two caching modes for compatability and has cache management features like the ability to clear the cache and monitor cache usage.
Enforce strong passwords among your administrators, publishers and users. Improve login security.
Scans core files, themes and plugins against WordPress.org repository versions to check their integrity. Verify security of your source.
Includes a firewall to block common security threats like fake Googlebots, malicious scans from hackers and botnets.
Block entire malicious networks. Includes advanced IP and Domain WHOIS to report malicious IP’s or networks and block entire networks using the firewall. Report security threats to network owner.
See how files have changed. Optionally repair changed files that are security threats.
Scans for signatures of over 44,000 known malware variants that are known security threats.
Scans for many known backdoors that create security holes including C99, R57, RootShell, Crystal Shell, Matamu, Cybershell, W4cking, Sniper, Predator, Jackal, Phantasma, GFS, Dive, Dx and many many more.
Continuously scans for malware and phishing URL’s including all URL’s on the Google Safe Browsing List in all your comments, posts and files that are security threats.
Scans for heuristics of backdoors, trojans, suspicious code and other security issues.
Checks the strength of all user and admin passwords to enhance login security.
Monitor your DNS security for unauthorized DNS changes.
Rate limit or block security threats like aggressive crawlers, scrapers and bots doing security scans for vulnerabilities in your site.
Choose whether you want to block or throttle users and robots who break your security rules.
Includes login security to lock out brute force hacks and to stop WordPress from revealing info that will compromise security.
See all your traffic in real-time, including robots, humans, 404 errors, logins and logouts and who is consuming most of your content. Enhances your situational awareness of which security threats your site is facing.
A real-time view of all traffic including automated bots that often constitute security threats that Javascript analytics packages never show you.
Real-time traffic includes reverse DNS and city-level geolocation. Know which geographic area security threats originate from.
Monitors disk space which is related to security because many DDoS attacks attempt to consume all disk space to create denial of service.
Wordfence Security for multi-site also scans all posts and comments across all blogs from one admin panel.
WordPress Multi-Site (or WordPress MU in the older parlance) compatible.
Premium users can also block countries and schedule scans for specific times and a higher frequency.

All said and done, hiding the WordPress version alone is not going to safeguard your website. It’s wise to always have your website updated with latest plugins and themes. Mainly, keep your WordPress software up to date. You can also install WordPress version check and alert plugins that are available from the WordPress plugins repository.