You’re right, clicking on the Close button only removed the bar for that current session. There is a way you can hide the tab, but you can only do this if you’re using Firefox and the AdBlock Plus plugin. AdBlock Plus is one of my favourite Firefox plugins. It hides ads, banners and all sorts of annoying things from your browsing experience. If you don’t use it I seriously recommend it. Anyway, here’s what you need to do:

1. Selected Tools and click AdBlock Plus
2. Click on Add filter and paste in the following code snippet:

twitter.com#H1(class=elections-promotion)

3. Click OK

And there you have it. If you don’t have AdBlock, you’ll need to get it, but you won’t regret it one bit. Advertisements have become just like luggage when traveling. You may need them sometimes, but most of the time you can get around quicker without them. If you don’t use it yet, try it out; your browsing experience will change forever.

I came across this question being asked by Craig from Videogame Vagabond on a message board I frequent and thought I’d echo my answer here, as I’m sure this problem has been experienced by many a WordPress user. Here’s the bottom line:

The problem is caused by missing bits in the WordPress theme. As a plugin author I find it very frustrating when people complain that plugins aren’t working correctly, I investigate, and find that theme authors have omitted certain sections that should be there!

In this case, the stats tracking code is embedded in the footer of the website, which means that the plugin assumes you have a line reading:
<?php wp_footer(); ?>
in the footer file of your template.

If you’re missing this tag, any plugin that needs it won’t work and this includes the WordPress stats plugin. The solution is to add the line to the footer file of your template, and contact the template author to let him know he’s been a “very naughty boy“.

Unfortunately this problem is more common than you may think and it may cause people to abandon plugins or themes that don’t work well together. Resolving the issue is not hard, if you know what hooks the plugin is using and what tags are needed in the WordPress theme. Wading through code can be a daunting prospect for the uninitiated though. (someone once compared it to trying to use one of these adjustable beds without a manual) so if you have a specific issue, just Ask a Question and I’ll help you out!

I came across this question asked by Tina from Mummified Times Five who was looking for a way to add a contact form to her blog. I pointed her at WP-ContactForm: Akismet Edition which has worked brilliantly for me in the past. Not only does it let you add a contact form quickly and easily to your blog, but it also helps eliminate any spam you might get through the contact form. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial how to set it up on your WordPress blog.

• Upload all files to wp-content/plugins/wp-contactform-akismet/ – The first step is to download the plugin, extract the files from the ZIP file into a folder on your harddisk, then upload them to your blog, making sure you put them under the plugins folder.

• Activate the plugin on the plugin screen -When you go to your plugin screen within the WordPress administration interface, you should now see the new plugin listed there. Click on Activate to start it up.

• Go to Options -> Contact Form and update the fields with your information. Here you will be asked to supply some information for the plugin to work successfully.The plugin needs to know what e-mail address to send the contact form to and what subject to use for the messages. You can also specify success and error messages to be shown on the contact page.

• Create a post or a page and copy and paste <!–contact form–> where you want it to appear – The final step is to identify where you want the contact form and put the comment above in the right place. Here’s an example of how this could be done:

And that’s how you can add a contact form to your WordPress blog. And the great thing is that it doesn’t matter if your website is about McDonalds, Orovo or weight loss, you can use the same plugin regardless of what your blog is about. Not too difficult was it?

Most PDAs come bundled with a mobile browser so that their owners can use them to browse the web. I was lying in bed the other night playing with my XDA and decided to have a look at what my blog looked like. On a normal browser this is what I see:

There are lots of graphics, lots of things happening on the screen, which when my PDA tries to render them end up like this:

The problem here is the my PDA’s version of Internet Explorer is not up to the task of interpreting everything that’s on the page. Not only that, my PDA has a much smaller screen than my PC, so even if my PDA did a good job, I would still need to scroll around quite a bit to make anything out.

So I asked myself: How can I fix this? It I were out on the road in Stonebridge Village, looking for a place to stay, and I remember I had blogged about Branson rentals, wouldn’t it be nice if I could just access my blog easily? Luckily there’s already a plugin around that can help out here. There’s a WordPress PDA Plugin that keeps any eye on the device that’s reading the page. If it turns out to be a PDA it sends an alternative stylesheet that tears out all the graphics and renders a clean, textual representation of the page. After installing the plugin, my blog looks like this on my PDA:

As you can see, it’s extremely readable and I have direct access to the content. Installing the plugin is a doddle as there’s no configuration needed. Just upload and activate the plugin and you’re set to go!

Recommended!

Tags are a great way to annotate posts to your blog and group them together to help visitors get a view of the different topics your blog is about. They’re also more flexible that categories as you’re not really restricted to what tags you use.

My tag plugin of choice is one called Ultimate Tag Warrior. It’s a great tool that lets you add tag to posts, group by tags and my favourite feature of all, create a tag cloud for your readers to browse. However, the last time I upgraded WordPress, it all seemed to fall apart.

The problem was that every time I edited a post, my tags fell off. UTW was forgetting what tags posts had, and my tag cloud dwindled down to practically nothing. After I did some research, I found that the fix was relatively easy. This was a known bug with the plugin and the latest version fixed it. Solving the problem was simply a matter of heading to the download page, getting the most recent version of the plugin and upgrading my blog.

The underlying message here is that you always need to be aware of what plugins you’re using and whether new versions of these are available. Software changes from time to time and if you’re not using the most recent version, you’re open to flaws and exploits that may have been fixed in the new version. So, keep an eye on your plugins, it’s worth doing.