Blog on Lin's Blog

Hosting a Static Website on GCP Storage - Getting Started on My First Try

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 09:20:02 +0000

Want to host a static website on Google Cloud Storage but don’t know where to start? Every time I upload files to Google Cloud Storage to share with friends, I have to click “Public,” which is a hassle, right? I looked into this for a few days because of a work requirement. At first I thought I just needed to set up the domain and share the files, but after researching, I found there are many little tricks. For example, having to make every uploaded file public is really annoying, but you can set a bucket so that new uploads are public by default. You can even set the default file names for the index and 404 pages. And even the SSL problem that I thought had no solution: the official docs offer a good workaround!

Google Analytics Exception Tracking

Sun, 19 Feb 2017 10:15:29 +0000

Google Analytics has a hidden feature called exception tracking. It collects error messages from a website’s front end or back end (or from an app) so you can analyze them. Here’s an example from my recent project. When a user fills out a form and submits it, I validate the information they entered. If they forgot to fill in a field, the error message is sent to GA. Afterward, I check how many times that error message appeared in GA. To some extent, this can suggest whether the interface design is poor and causing users to skip that field.

Shared Links Not Showing Up as Expected on Facebook? Here's How to Optimize Your Site for Facebook!

Sat, 18 Feb 2017 20:39:46 +0000

For every webmaster, Facebook has become just as important a traffic source as Google. In the past, we did a lot of SEO work for search engines, but did you know that Facebook has also published a document, “Best Practices for Sharing Websites and Mobile Apps,” that explains how to adjust your web pages so they are displayed in the best way when users share them on Facebook? In this article, I’ll share what I tried on my personal blog.

Worried About Visitors Copying Your Articles? Use JS to Automatically Append a Reminder or Disable Copying!

Sun, 12 Feb 2017 23:43:41 +0000

Many content sites have a mechanism that automatically appends the original article URL when text is copied, such as Mojing Lyrics and Zhihu. Some sites even ban users from copying text altogether. Achieving these features isn’t difficult; it only takes a few lines of simple JavaScript. But first you should think about whether your site really needs such a feature. When a regular visitor copies text and pastes it into Facebook, does that really harm your site? And if you truly want to stop visitors from copying text, these tricks only keep out the honest, not the determined. Are you really protecting your interests, or just making your site harder to use?

Lessons in E-commerce Flow Optimization from My Shopping Experience at udn Books

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 17:16:31 +0000

Perhaps because of the pressure from Amazon’s e-books, Taiwanese publishers have become more willing in recent years to offer e-book purchase options. A few days ago I wanted to read Zheng Feng’s Chronicles of Strange Peaks and Stones, and I found that udn Books actually sells the e-book. Although you have to bind it to udn’s own app, and the files can’t be downloaded (Kobo offers an EPUB with DRM download), at least I could read it at home at my leisure. Who knew that after I pressed the buy button I would run into so many problems? I’d like to take this chance to share them.

Possible Causes and Fixes for the "HTTP Error" When Uploading Files in WordPress

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 01:37:25 +0000

If you use WordPress, you may occasionally run into the “HTTP error” problem when uploading images. Search online and you’ll find all sorts of explanations — some say it’s a file permission issue, others say you need to add a snippet of code to your theme. In fact, all of these are “possible” causes. The most correct approach is to check the server’s error log to determine what the actual cause is. I happened to run into this problem today, so let me put together my solution along with other possible causes!

Google Analytics Tips: Let Annotations Tell Your Future Self Why Traffic Goes Up and Down!

Sun, 29 Jan 2017 23:55:48 +0000

Every time you redesign your website or run an experiment, your Google Analytics data changes. For example, the bounce rate might go up. You may remember the reason for a big change in traffic or data for a short while. But if a year goes by, can you still remember why? Just as code needs comments, Google Analytics has a built-in annotation feature that lets you write notes on specific dates. That way, when you read your reports, you’ll understand what happened to cause the change in traffic!

A Simple Approach to Scheduling Bulk Newsletter Sends and Handling Yahoo Deferrals

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:20:59 +0000

When you send a large newsletter, have you ever thought about how to send it? Say you have 10,000 addresses. Would you send them all at once, or spread them out over different times? Most people send them all at once, and that’s usually fine. If your sender reputation is good and you do this regularly, sending bulk email is normal for email providers, and the messages almost always land in the inbox. But there’s one troublemaker: Yahoo. For some reason, if you send too many emails in a short period, they get deferred (temporarily rejected). You can retry, and after a few tries they usually go through. The most I’ve seen is one that only got through after being resent 100 times. Looking at the Yahoo situation, it seems that no matter how good your reputation is, you run into deferrals when you send at high frequency in a short time, regardless of content. Here I tried several approaches to solve the problem.

An Explanation of the Recent Site Outage

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 23:15:59 +0000

I think many of you noticed that my site was unreachable for the whole day yesterday. Let me explain what happened. It was definitely not because I wanted to give up on the blog XD.

The night before last, while I was writing a post, I logged into the wrong host. I have two servers: one for the site and one for writing posts. While I was writing, I accidentally logged into the site server and made some changes there. I didn’t realize my mistake until I finished the post… So the server that runs the site got messed up. The Apache configuration file was overwritten, and unluckily I had no backup of it. I had only backed up the site folder and the database, and I never imagined I would do something this stupid XD. So the site went down for a whole day…

The Blog Is Moving to a New Host, DirectSpace, and I May Not Be Able to Write Posts from 7/11 to 7/15

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:03:03 +0000

Let me recall: about half a year ago, I couldn’t put up with the stability and performance of the shared hosting service Bumeng, so I switched to renting a semi-managed VPS from a company called PhotonVPS. Since it was my first time trying a VPS, I was worried I would regret it, so at the time I only paid for half a year. Then yesterday (7/7), the six-month VPS contract expired, so I moved the site to another VPS provider, called DirectSpace.

Google +1 Button - Google's Version of "Like" That Affects Search Rankings (With a +1 Chrome Extension)

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 12:43:51 +0000

When we agree with what someone says or writes, we express our support with words like “like,” “+1,” or “well said.” “Like” is a Facebook button. And +1? Well, now even Google is copying Facebook and has launched a +1 button. Its function is similar to the Like button, but there’s one very important difference: the +1 button affects your website’s search ranking. How much it affects it, I don’t know, but what’s certain is that “+1” affects search results. Also, the websites you +1 will show up in your Google Profile. Now let me show you how to put a +1 button on your own website xD

[CMS] Why Do Plugins Slow Down Page Loads and Hurt Server Performance?

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 09:00:37 +0000

Anyone who builds a site with a CMS (such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla) has probably heard the saying: use fewer plugins and your site will load much faster. For example, if I want a Lightbox effect on my site, I can manually add the jQuery code, or I can just install a plugin. Both methods achieve the same result, but they can make a noticeable difference in how fast the site loads.

How Do I Manually Enable and Disable WordPress Maintenance Mode?

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 09:00:32 +0000

Maintenance mode seems to have been introduced around WordPress 3.0. When your WordPress is being updated, it automatically enters maintenance mode to keep visitors from seeing error messages. I had actually been looking forward to this feature for a long time, because almost every other mature CMS has it — Xoops, for example, lets you temporarily shut down your site, and the well-known forum software Discuz! can also temporarily close a forum and restrict access to specific users. WordPress's maintenance mode, though, isn't very good yet: you can't enable it manually. It only turns on automatically while files are being updated. This article will show you how to enable maintenance mode by hand.

The Zhufeng Tech Blog Is Now Live~

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:58:25 +0000

It’s been a busy day. From getting the site set up yesterday to getting the domain bound today, it’s been about 24 hours~ I hereby officially announce: the Zhufeng Tech Blog is live~

The Zhufeng Tech Blog is a branch site of the Wind Chaser blog. The site owner is the same person, but the articles on the Zhufeng Tech Blog will be more in-depth, focusing on technical topics like programming languages and web design. Currently the posting frequency is about two articles a week; if I have time it’ll be more, but it won’t drop below two a week. Also, as for ads on the Zhufeng Tech Blog, I can guarantee that there won’t be any ads for the first six months, because the funding for the next six months is definitely enough to keep the site running, and the ad revenue from the main site is still sufficient.

Zhufeng Tech Blog permalink: https://coder.tw/
Zhufeng Tech Blog permanent RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/tfeng-tech

My First Google AdSense Payment: Notes on Collecting It Through Western Union

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 19:18:50 +0000

I finally received my first Google ad payment today. I originally wanted to write about receiving my first money earned online, but that isn't quite accurate 0.0 so I'm calling it my first Google ad payment XD. Google originally told me the money would be sent on January 30, and I could collect it on January 31. But they actually sent it on the 25th, and I didn't notice. By the time I realized they had paid early, it was already the 29th. That day was a Saturday, so the bank was closed, and I could only go on Monday. So in the end, it made no difference whether they paid early or not.

Right now, Google AdSense supports two payment methods: Western Union Quick Cash and checks. I know that a check feels really satisfying to hold. Even though the amount on it is a bit small… a check feels great, but it comes with a fee. Also, mailing a check from the US to Taiwan takes several weeks. With Western Union, there’s no fee, and you can go to the bank to collect the money the day after Google pays out. It’s very convenient, which is why almost everyone uses Western Union to get their Google ad money these days.

The Blog Turns Two!

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:00:10 +0000

Two years. Not short, not long. I’ve gone from a junior high student back then to a first-year high school student now. I went through the Basic Competence Test (jīcè), went through a lot, and learned a lot. My blog has also changed, from the very first one, “Simple, Non-Computer” (Jiǎndān Fēi Diànnǎo) on Wretch, a Taiwanese blog service, all the way to today’s WordPress blog, “The Wind Chaser” (Zhú Fēng Zhě). Time really flies, and two years have just passed like that!! It feels like a blink of an eye, just like when I graduated from elementary school and couldn’t help looking back on those years, even all the way back to kindergarten, and realized six years had slipped away. It’s a little sentimental, but also quite happy, because I’ve grown up XD, and so has my blog ^^

Moved to a Taiwan Host and a New Domain~

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:16:11 +0000

Before I knew it, a whole year had gone by. The virtual hosting I was using from server zoo was also about to expire. During this period I had a slightly bad impression of server zoo. At one point they said something about a system problem or whatever, and that files might be corrupted (luckily mine were fine XD). I was really annoyed back then. But they later made up for it with compensation, so it was fine, and my data didn’t disappear^^

WordPress Plugin & Theme Installation Tutorial (For WP 2.9 and Below)

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:36:01 +0000

Someone asked me the other day what WordPress can do. That's actually a hard question to answer, because WordPress is extremely extensible — you can use plugins to add all sorts of features to your blog, and you can even make your blog not look like a blog at all ^^ WordPress also lets users install themes to dress up their blog nicely. If your skills are good enough, you can design your own theme too, but that's not what this article covers. This article is mainly about how to install plugins and themes.

WordPress Installation Tutorial — The World's Most Popular Blogging (Blog) Site-Building Software (This tutorial applies to WP 2.9 and earlier)

Mon, 31 May 2010 11:02:53 +0000

~~You ask me how deep my love is, how much I love you?~~ (just kidding~) You ask me what I think is the best blogging software in the world for building a site? I’ll definitely tell you it’s WordPress. It’s not just because my own blog is built with WordPress that I say this. Back when I was choosing what software to use to build Wind Chaser, I considered using something like Xoops paired with plugins to construct a blog, and I also tried LifeType, the blogging software the school uses, but neither was very good. LifeType’s interface in particular was really unbearable, extremely unfriendly, and it had our English teacher dropping by every so often to ask me how to read replies, how to publish a post… On top of that, LifeType’s extensibility isn’t as good as WordPress’s. Anyway, WordPress is just the best ^^ If you don’t believe me, try installing it yourself~~

Broken Link Checker - Automatically Find Dead Links and Broken Images in WordPress

Fri, 28 May 2010 00:05:48 +0000

When you look for files online, you often run into an annoying situation: you finally find the file you want, click the link, and get… “This page has been removed. Please contact the site administrator.” It’s really frustrating. But it’s not entirely the webmaster’s fault. Once a website grows, it has a lot of outgoing links, and the webmaster can’t check every one of them by hand. Some webmasters ask users to report broken links, but I don’t think that works well. Someone who has already hit a dead link is annoyed enough. Why would they bother reporting it? Here I want to introduce Broken Link Checker, a plugin made specifically for WordPress. It automatically checks your WordPress blog for broken links and broken images (the broken-image icons that Chinese speakers jokingly call “steamed buns”). Broken Link Checker can also email you when a broken link appears on your blog. It’s very convenient, but I’d recommend that first-time installers don’t turn that feature on right away. Many people find over a thousand broken links or images the first time they run it, and their inbox gets flooded XD

Goal Reached! The Zhufeng Blog's Load Time Dropped to 7.6 Seconds

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:36:46 +0000

Have you noticed that this blog has been loading much faster lately? IE users also find it less likely to crash when browsing this site now. I just checked Google Webmaster Tools, and it turns out the theme optimization I did a while ago really worked. Load time has finally dropped to under ten seconds!

[Announcement] Switching to the Pyrmont V2 Theme – Feedback Welcome

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:12:11 +0000

Hi everyone~

Long time no see.

I haven’t been posting much lately, and you probably all know why: the junior high school basic competence test has been wearing me down…

Still, I know posting less hasn’t been a good thing.

I was also getting tired of the iNove theme I’d been using.

Most importantly, the iNove theme loaded too slowly.

Blog SEO Essentials: Must-Do Steps to Push Your Blog Rankings UP! UP! UP!

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 12:30:20 +0000

In this post, I’m going to share a few SEO tasks that I think are essential when setting up a blog. But first, a disclaimer: I’m not an expert, so some of what I say may be wrong. I’d appreciate your corrections (not criticism). Also, most of the methods in this post don’t apply to BSPs (blog service providers) such as Wretch and Yam Sky Blog……

Most people who run a blog probably want to be popular, with lots of readers visiting their posts instead of writing only for themselves. But how do you get people to read your posts? That’s what SEO is for! (If you don’t know whatSEOis, you can read about it onWikipedia) However, SEO isn’t a simple technique. Doing it well might even require hiring a designer, which is a bit too much trouble for a blogger. But learning SEO yourself isn’t easy either. So in this post, I’ll share the techniques I’ve tried.

Google Webmaster Central - Find Where Your Site's SEO Falls Short & Submit a Sitemap

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:25:32 +0000

Today I’m introducing Google’s Webmaster Central. The Webmaster Tools are one of the tools most blog owners in Taiwan use. Besides analyzing where your site’s SEO falls short, this service also lets you submit a Sitemap to Google, which is a site map. The Webmaster Tools can also check whether your site has malware and how fast it loads. But to use any of these features, you first have to make sure your URL has been indexed by Google! So in this post, I’ll cover the following:

WordPress 2.9 - Quite a Few New Features Added, No Major Issues in My Own Testing

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:11:03 +0000

After I got up today and logged into 逐風者, I saw a very important message on the login screen - WordPress 2.9 has been released. And this time it isn’t just a bunch of bug fixes; quite a few features have been added too. Based on my own testing, WordPress 2.9 doesn’t have any major problems, so everyone can go ahead and update right away!!

Top 10 WordPress Security Tips

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:51:54 +0000

As the saying goes, the tall tree catches the wind. WordPress is the most widely used blogging platform in the world, so it's also a prime target for hackers everywhere. Strengthening your WordPress security is something every blogger has to do. WordPress releases security updates every so often, but keeping your site safe also depends on you. A Japanese organization once studied computer incidents (computers being attacked) and found that a large share of them came from user mistakes rather than from problems with the system itself. So in this post, I'll borrow an article from the Chinese blog Moonlight Blog to show you how to check whether your WordPress installation is secure enough.

WP Security Scan - Scan Your WordPress for Vulnerabilities

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:39:56 +0000

WP Security Scan is a WordPress plugin that scans your site and reports WordPress vulnerabilities. If you host your own site, you probably already know that before setting things up you need to configure file permissions — things like 777 and 655. What WP Security Scan actually does is check whether your file permissions are set correctly, and it can also check and change your database prefix. It's a great fit for beginners.

Gzippy - Enabling Gzip (Web Page Compression) in WordPress

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:14:26 +0000

In this post I’ll show you how to enable WordPress’s Gzip feature with the Gzippy plugin. First, a heads-up: not every hosting account supports Gzip. If your host doesn’t support it and you install Gzippy anyway, your site may break. If that happens, just remove Gzippy via FTP! So what’s the benefit of installing Gzippy? Of course there is, otherwise why would I bother XD. Gzip is simply web page compression. It can make your web pages smaller. A page that’s 100K might shrink to about 30K after Gzip compression, which makes pages load a lot faster.

Plugin name: Gzippy

Official website: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gzippy/

Download link: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/gzippy.1.0.2.1.zip

WP-Polls: A Poll Plugin Made for WordPress

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:18:00 +0000

Today, the site admin Tingfeng is going to introduce a plugin called WP-Polls. WP-Polls gives your blog Ajax-based polling, and it is completely free, has no restrictions, and won't slow your site down. You might worry that WP-Polls's theme isn't pretty enough, but that's not a problem either, because you can set WP-Polls's own theme and color scheme.

blogupp - Get Your Posts Seen by More People

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:35:50 +0000

You’ve probably seen a scrolling widget on other people’s blogs. That’s actually a service from blogupp. blogupp can get your posts seen by more people, but your blog needs to have an RSS feed (by the way, my RSS has been having problems = =).

Some people may wonder how blogupp works. Basically, blogupp just reads your blog’s RSS feed. It’s a bit like a blog syndication network, but blogupp’s reach is even bigger. blogupp also supports multiple languages. In fact, as soon as you enter the blogupp website, it automatically switches to Chinese!

Website: http://www.blogupp.com/

blogupp Features

No account registration required
Your email and privacy are never exposed
No extra advertising agreements or other requirements
Anti-fraud system and fair sharing principles
Reach your target readers
Exposure rewards for new users
Good support for Blogger, WordPress, and other similar platforms
The industry's highest exchange ratio (10:9)

whos.amung.us - The Online Visitor Counter Bloggers Love

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:10:05 +0000

whos.amung.us is the best-known counter I know of. It can count how many people are online right now, and whos.amung.us can also tell you which posts those visitors are reading. Most importantly, whos.amung.us requires no registration and costs nothing. You don’t have to give them any information to use their service.

URL: http://whos.amung.us/

Small Market Strategy - An Easy Path to Becoming a Popularity Champion

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:40:16 +0000

In this post, I’m going to teach you a strategy for building popularity: the small market strategy. What is the small market strategy? I’m sure you all know that for a blog to become well known, it needs good SEO, and its articles need to be good too! Many books about gaining popularity say you should write about hot keywords so people will read your posts. But that… isn’t necessarily right. If you understand how SEO works, you know that the more links a web page has, the higher it ranks in search engines. In other words, if your site doesn’t get many visitors, your articles won’t rank near the top. For example, suppose I write an article about Gmail right now. If you search for it in a search engine, you might find your article on page 2 or 3, or not at all. Even if it ranks on the first page, if the articles ahead of yours are all very similar to yours,

All Blog Optimization Work Is Done!

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:22:59 +0000

Haha~

Summer vacation is almost over.

I’ve finally finished all the optimization work on the blog.

I’m sure everyone has noticed that pages load faster now!

Feedburner: Creating a Permanent RSS URL (Application Tutorial)

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:37:15 +0000

Feedburner is a very well-known website. Feedburner gives you a permanent RSS URL (until Feedburner shuts down, XD), and it also tracks statistics for the people who subscribe to your RSS feed, so you can see who is subscribed. You probably understand those last two features. But what is a permanent RSS URL? Here is an example. If you run your own blog, you probably move hosting from time to time. When you move, your RSS URL changes too. But if you use a Feedburner RSS URL, after you move you only need to update the settings on Feedburner’s side. Feedburner doesn’t have a Traditional Chinese version yet, so it may feel a little unfamiliar at first. Don’t worry, though, because I will show you how to create a permanent RSS URL.

Note: Feedburner is now owned by Google, so you need a Google account to use its services.

. URL: http://www.feedburner.com/

WordPress 2.8.1 RC

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:14:51 +0000

Yesterday when I logged into 逐風者, I was surprised to find that WordPress 2.8.1 RC was already out. It’s only an RC release, but at least it’s better than a beta. This time it doesn’t add many features — it just brings the visual editor back from the dead (in 2.8 the visual editor would disappear). Other than that, I didn’t notice any particularly special updates. If you want to try it out, go download it now.

Inserting a "Continue Reading" Tag in WordPress Posts

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:54:44 +0000

Today I’m going to teach you a handy little trick: the more tag. Anyone who has just set up WordPress has probably noticed that WordPress doesn’t have a built-in feature to display only a few lines of a post, so every post shows up in full on the homepage, which makes the homepage look pretty ugly. In fact, there is a way to insert a continue reading tag, and it’s built into WordPress. I have to admit, when I first started I used it as an <hr> tag XD

Let’s take a look at what it does first!

dokoda - Forced Full-Text Reading for RSS

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:25:39 +0000

dokoda offers a very special yet practical feature: it converts ordinary RSS feeds into full-text RSS. If you use a computer a lot, you probably know about RSS and subscribe to some feeds. If so, you’ll know that some sites don’t show their full articles in the RSS feed, to get people to visit the site. You have to click through to read the rest, which wastes a lot of time for people with slow connections. dokoda can convert those RSS feeds into full-text ones. Amazing, right! Now let Ting-feng show you around this site.

How to Find Out How Many Websites Link to Your Site?

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:16:52 +0000

I’m sure you’re all curious about which websites contain links to your site! Here I’ll show you how to search with the link syntax. It’s a Google operator that lists the websites that link to your site, and note that the unit here is websites, not pages, so let Ting-feng walk you through this syntax!

Syntax: link:URL Replace URL with your site's domain, without "http://"

WordPress 2.8.1 Beta

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:12:27 +0000

WordPress 2.8.1 Beta is out!

But personally I don’t quite dare to try it yet, because after I installed 2.8 last time the visual editor disappeared

and a whole bunch of other problems………….?

Even though 2.8.1 is out this time, it’s only a beta, so it’s hard to say how stable it is

I don’t want to waste time downgrading XD

If you want to use it, go ahead and grab it!

Subscribe To Comments - Automatically Notify Commenters That Their Comment Got a Reply

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:13:26 +0000

Today I want to introduce a plugin called Subscribe To Comments. It can automatically tell commenters that their comment has been replied to, so they don’t have to come back and check for themselves. Subscribe To Comments was recommended to me by Brother Sausage, and since I think it’s pretty useful, I’m sharing it with everyone.

Subscribe To Comments Info:

Download: Xun6 | 4Shared | Box.net | WordPress

Virus scan report: VirusTotal

WordPress 2.8 Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:16:13 +0000

Today I finally updated WordPress from 2.7 to 2.8! WordPress 2.8 is said to focus on performance this time, and it doesn’t really add many features, but it does fix a lot of bugs from older versions (more than 700 of them — scary, right?). That said, WordPress 2.8 does still come with some new features (though, as I mentioned above, not many). As for the interface, it might give you the illusion that… the update was just a version number change = =, because this update keeps the same 2.7 admin interface with no obvious changes. That’s roughly all I have to say. Next, let me walk you through a few of the main new features in WordPress 2.8.

WordPress 2.8 Information

Official site http://wordpress.org/

Core program http://wordpress.org/latest.zip

Chinese language pack http://wordpress.kirin-lin.idv.tw/news/wordpress28zhtw

Cbox Blog Comment Board Plugin: Limited to 100 Comments

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:29:49 +0000

I’m sure you’ve often seen a guestbook plugin in the sidebar of other people’s blogs and wanted one for yourself, right? Today I’m introducing Cbox, one of the best free guestbook services on the web. Cbox is excellent in many ways, but the maximum number of comments is 100, so you have to delete old comments regularly. Its anti-spam is also weak, so it’s easy for advertising comments to flood it. = = Even so, Cbox has some advantages, such as letting you use emoticons. Below, I’ll show you how to sign up for Cbox.

URL: http://www.cbox.ws/

Go to the Cbox homepage and click Sign up.

My Blog Is Now Indexed by Google

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:51:01 +0000

Recently I noticed that my popularity suddenly went up.

Do you know why?

It’s because this blog has been added to the Google search engine.

So now you can find this blog when you search on Google!

That brought in quite a lot of traffic XD

I never expected anyone to come visit, given how bad my SEO is………

P.S. This post now ranks above the original creator’s post = =

The Ministry of Education Blog Contest Results Are Coming Out Today!

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:25:21 +0000

Today………………

It’s a very special day

Because????????? Today the results of the blog contest are finally coming out!

I’m really looking forward to seeing my ranking

Because this is the first contest I’ve entered since elementary and middle school

And it’s my first time in a national-level contest, and I made it to the finals :)

If I win a prize, that would be awesome xD

But the Ministry of Education clearly said the results would be announced today

Scheduled Posting in WordPress Without Any Plugin

Sun, 31 May 2009 10:55:32 +0000

How do you schedule a post in WordPress? Do you need a plugin? Actually, no — WordPress has a built-in scheduled posting feature, but it is hidden so cleverly that very few people ever find it. I only learned about it after seeing it on someone else’s blog.

So how do you use scheduled posting? Follow the tutorial below and you are guaranteed to get it. If anything is unclear, feel free to ask me in the comments.

WordPress Account & Password Change Tutorial

Sun, 17 May 2009 12:40:18 +0000

Last time we finished setting up WP, and the system gave you a set of account credentials. The only problem is that the password is really hard to remember, and the username is adm, which is easy to guess — that’s a real security risk for your blog. So now let’s show you how to change your username & password.

Changing the username

Log in to your web host’s control panel and click phpMyAdmin.

Introducing WordPress 2.7.1 & Download

Wed, 13 May 2009 18:37:53 +0000

Today I’d like to introduce a package for building blogs — WordPress.

It’s a program that lets you set up a blog very easily.

It’s written in PHP.

In the future, this site will publish more related tutorials.

Its latest version right now is 2.7.1.

One of my favorite features is its heavy use of Ajax.

You don’t have to reload the page every time you organize it.

It also supports a lot of plugins and themes.

So you don’t have to figure out how to lay out your interface yourself.

For people who don’t know CSS, this is a real blessing.

Also, it’s an open-source package.

That means if there’s anything inside it you’re not happy with, you can modify it yourself.

In effect, it gives me a great place to practice web programming.

Here are some things to note when setting up WP.

If you want to set it up on your own host, you just need to install AppServ.

But if you want to put it on a web hosting space,

you first have to make sure the provider offering the space provides PHP and MySQL services.

Without these services, you can’t set it up at all.

[Announcement] Error Reports & Suggestions

Sun, 10 May 2009 22:40:13 +0000

I’ve been using Firefox lately, so I hadn’t noticed that this blog has problems when it’s opened in Internet Explorer.

For example, page script errors, or the sidebar sinking to the bottom, and so on.

To give other visitors a better environment,

I’d like readers who run into these problems to report them here.

The report format is as follows:

Operating system:

Screen resolution:

Computer type: (laptop or desktop)

Time: (when the problem occurred)