Jupiter was supposedly hit by a rogue object several days ago that resulted in a dark bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean. The bruise is now thought to have been caused by a comet.

Astronomers have been covering the event extensively, but the Hubble telescope was important to take a look because “it’s the sharpest at visible wavelengths,” Hubble spokesman, Ray Villard told SPACE.com. Here is the image:

July 2009 Jupiter comet impact taken by Hubble

There is a short little mini-documentary posted here about searching for comets. Particularly the impact comet from an event from the 1990s. The shoemaker-levy 9 broke into 21 fragments and they watched as all of them collided with Jupiter. The event would have obviously been catastrophic for us on Earth.

Events such as these bring the search for these cosmic missiles back into public thought. Seeing the kind of impact that happened on Jupiter and thinking about it happening to us is indeed terrifying. Muc more so than making sure you get the right Honeywell Barcode Scanner . There are some pretty good discussions in those links I posted earlier. Some doomsday morons of course, but some interesting posts about the overall impact (pardon the pun) of this event.

On a few sites I have there is information that is pretty much timeless, but it will sit dormant because there is nothing I need to add to it that often. My Agloco site is one that I have that problem with because there just isn’t a ton of information that needs to be added to it, and news is particularly scarce. So rather than pulling your hair out trying to keep all these sites updated, and ending up in drug treatment this plugin is pretty handy.

The Scheduled Post Shift plugin can be applied to sites such as that one so that you can make older posts pop up at the top as if they were new. This basically tells all your friends at the search engines that your site needs to be pinged regularly rather than it just sitting there. It also pings all the ones you list in your ping page when it rotates a post.

There is something you will need to do however if you want to use this plugin as it relates to your permalink structure. If you use a time based structure like this blog does it is sort of an issue to use this plugin as it will change the url of the post every time a post is shifted. The only structure that will work, and not not change your link structure every time is to use the Custom section and to put only /%postname%/ as your structure. Otherwise it will change the url every time it comes up and anyone that has ever linked to you will show a dead link when it is clicked on to your blog posts. We don’t want that!

To find this on your WP dashboard go to Options>Permalinks. Then select the “Custom” option and put /%postname%/ in there for your permalink structure. Then all your posts will just be either what you put in as your post slug, or the title of your post.

Configuring Scheduled Post Shift Plugin:

As for the plugin, it is very easy to set up, but there are 2 pre-activation things you should work on.

1. Change your permalink structure as indicated above so that your posts keep the same url at all times.

2. For every post that you want to rotate on a regular basis they will need to have the SAME category. The reason for this is that the plugin works on a category basis. It will only rotate based upon a specified category, so if you have any posts that you want rotated you must have them listed under the same category. I used Agloco as my standard category for all posts on my Agloco site so it looks alright. There are hidden category plugins out there as well that you may want to search for, but I haven’t done this myself as I wonder as to whether it will be considered as black hat SEO .

the easiest way to change categories on mass posts for me was to add the plugin WP-Cats to your directory. This plugin allows you to use an A-jaxy way to change categories right on your mangae posts screen instead of having to go into each post and edit the categories individually. Very useful anyways, but especially useful for this.

As for configuring the plugin follow these easy steps:

1. This file is sort of different from most, but you should be able to figure it out right enough. Right-click on this file and “Save Link As”. You must do it this way or it will open up and just show you the code. Once it is saved rename the file from a .txt file to a .php file.

2. Upload it to your Plugins directory and enable it in your dashboard.

3. In your WP dashboard select Manage>Categories. Look for the category you used for these posts and on the far left you will see a number for the category ID. Remember that.

4. Got to your WP dashboard and select Options>DDPostShift. In this area you will need to insert the amount of time you would like between post shifts and then enter the category ID that you just found into the other box. This will ensure that for whatever amount of time you entered, the oldest post in that category will be pushed to the front page of your blog when the time is up.

5. Click on “Enable Post Shift” and it is ready to roll.

Pretty useful for this type of thing, eh? Of course this isn’t useful for every site out there, but if you are using a blog to create a place for affiliate marketing, timeless info about anything, and just need it to appear as if it is updating regularly, this plugin will do the trick.

Take a look at other useful Wordpress Plugins I use on various websites.

This plugin has been on my radar for some time now, but until now I hadn’t gotten around to installing it because I wanted to have a few dozen posts in my archives to have a decent amount of content to pull from. Now that I have it I love the way it helps readers find more related articles for my posts such as more Wordpress Plugins when you read a post such as this at the bottom of the entry.

In addition to the help to your readers, this plugin also gives you some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefits as well. Mainly the fact that you are linking to more of your own posts, which in turn helps you get more content indexed in the search engines. This is something you should be doing on a regular basis in posts as well. Take a look at one of my other posts on deep linking and theft sites to see other reasons why I suggest deep linking in all your posts.

The installation isn’t difficult, and is the same as most other plugins, but the set up may be a bit confusing to most who read the documentation that comes with it. (I had a Wall O’ Text of code at the bottom of my posts at first.)

Like most plugins you need to download the plugin zip file for the plugin before you can do anything. This one is one of those where you will want to unzip the file before uploading it most likely so do so. Once you have the folder with the plugin code in it you must then upload the related-posts.php text file into your Wordpress Plugins directory.

That is the easy part. Well..not the easiest. Go to your Dashboard and activate the plugin next which is the easiest part .

After activating the plugin you will see a “Related Posts Options” tab under the Plugins tab on your Wordpress dashboard. Once you get to this page you should see this:

Go to the very bottom of that page to find: “If this is your first time installing this plugin you will have to run this script (opens a new window) in order to create the index table required by the plugin. If this fails, please refer to the readme on how to create it manually.”. Click on the “This Script” link to create that index table. It only takes a few seconds and it will tell you that it was a success.

Next, you have to decide where you want to display the related posts, as well as pick a catchy title for this section of your blog. For this site I went into my index.php file and found the section under which I have the code for “Enjoy this post? Subscribe to the RSS Feed”. This is under the code:

<?php _e('Filed under:'); ?> <?php the_category(', ') ?> <?php _e('by'); ?> <?php the_author(); ?><br /> <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?> <?php edit_post_link('Edit', ' | ', ''); ?> </p>

on this particular blog as you would be able to see by looking at the elements I have on a full page of posts at the bottom of my posts. Once you decide where you want it to appear you will need to create some sort of title to tell people why you have these links on your page. Don’t forget to do this! You can pick whatever you want for such a title. I chose “Related Entries” for mine. You want these to stand a bit a part from everything else on the page instead of using text that looks like that of the paragraph text in your posts so I used this code: <h3>Related Entries:</h3> to set it a part a bit. The <h3></h3> highlight this text and give it a title feel. Those tags increase the size of the text the LOWER the number so if you were going to use <h1>Related Entries:</h1> the title would be HUGE. That is all up to your personal preference. Once you have that situated, you need to place this code below it so that the posts will actually show up:

<?php related_posts(); ?> This code can be modified various ways, but I used it with the settings I have in the options. If you want more customability look at the link towards the end of this post when I mention customization again.

In addition to the index.php file for inserting this you may have to go into your single.php file as well in order to display related posts for when visitors click on just a single post and not your home page. Same theory applies here as to where you want it as the other file. Phew…the hard part is over.

Now head back into your WP dashboard and back to the options page for the related posts plugin. This time you will want to work with the input fields. The first is self-explanatory. I chose 5 related posts to display, which is the default anyways, but I wasn’t able to get them to display with out entering a value there so you may as well do so as well.

The next part you see is the “Before / After (Post Title) :” part. This has nothing to do with your last post, but it has to do with how the links to your related posts are displayed. If you do nothing with this they will show up as a string of words together and just look silly to your readers so you should enter values here. Take their advice from the example and put <li> in the first box, and </li> in the second. This will display them in list form. Mine are bulleted because that is how my stylesheets for this theme are set up to show lists. Yours will look how your stylesheets have been set up.

Show excerpt? This is all up to you. I went the non-SEO route with mine in favor of a sleaker look, but you may want to show a bit of an excerpt yourself. If so select “True”. If not leave it alone. If you do show an excerpt you must pick the number of characters in the next box and you will have to enter the list tags again because you interrupted the other action by enabling excerpts.

That should be all you have to do now to generally set this up. It does fairly well at finding related posts itself, but if you want to go into more advanced strategies you will want to either read the “Readmefirst.txt” that came in the .zip file, or just visit the plugin creator’s documentation page for the Related Posts Plugin for more detailed descriptions of the code.

Also, please visit my archives for more Wordpress Plugins that I use on this site, or just look at my related entries below this post!

I’ve been using the Snap Shots plugin for a while now and really never bothered to go look at how to turn them off and on for specific links. I finally got sick of all the scripts on the sidebar having snap shots so I went and looked at how to turn them off for links when I wanted to. Pretty easy process really, but I figured I’d explain it to anyone that may be interested. So jump into your cPanel web hosting, or whatever it is you use, and get ready to do some remedial coding.

All you have to do is create a <div> class before the links and it is all you need to do. You will need the code <div class="snap_noshots"> to keep them from showing up. Here is an example of how it should look:

<div class="snap_noshots"> <a href="webpage3.html">this link does not trigger Snap Shots</a> <a href="webpage3.html">this link does not trigger Snap Shots</a> </div>

Simple, eh? You can use it in your template files, as well as any post you want to. If you take the “no” out of the code it will obviously display Snap Shots on those links.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to ask if those that read this blog actually like them, or if they feel it is too much. I know I have these and the Kontera inline links going on so it may get a bit cluttered from time to time. I contacted Kontera the other day and they have knocked the amount of links down to 6 per page on this site and informed me that they will spread them around a bit more. (Very helpful, BTW) Should clean the pages up a bit and make it less obtrusive. Still…I’d like some opinions on it as to whether you like the previews, or they are just annoying to you. The Kontera links probably won’t go anywhere at this time, but I’d still like some feedback if you could .

Visit my archives for more Wordpress Plugins I use on this site.

This is a neat plugin for Wordpress bloggers. I had seen it around,b ut never looked into it until my friend at The Tech Inspector introduced it to me.

You can download the plugin here:

Translator Plugin

Installation instructions

1. Upload the wp-translate directory to your plugins folder, usually wp-content/plugins/
2. Activate the plugin on the plugin screen.
3. Add to your template where you want the list. n can be either 1 or 2. Use 1 for a vertical display. Use 2 to make it horizontal.

As you can see I chose to do the horizontal display on this site so I picked 2. The vertical version is a little bit different in that it will show the language next to the flag as a link as well. I figure it fits better horizontally here and right at the top so readers can see it right away. Besides…who doesn’t know what their own flag looks like? Only one that kind of stumped me was the Spanish and Portuguese one because it looks like Mexico to me, but anyone that speaks Portuguese would know the flag I would guess. Complain if you can’t figure out which is which for your language and I’ll put it somewhere else with a vertical solution and the name .

I think this is a great little plugin and according to my buddy snuz at The Tech Inspector, it is a satisfactory plugin. You can also see the vertical display in effect on that site if you want a preview of that too. Visit my archives for more Wordpress Plugins I use.

This is one of the better plugins created for Wordpress in recent memory to me. The great plugin creator Owen at Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot has created another fantastic plugin for us to interact better with our readers.

The Comment Email Responder plugin does exactly what the title suggests. When someone comments on your blog you can make sure that they get your reply even if they haven’t come back to your site. When you look at the comments on your blog you will see a mail icon next to the commenter’s name. If you click on that icon you can leave a comment on your blog in response like any other comment you leave, but that is not where it ends. Once you publish the comment on your blog, the person you replied to will get an e-mail with a copy of their comment, and your response. It is a fantastic way to get readers to come back to your blog and keep them up to date with the conversation.

This plugin is pretty simple to install. In fact all you have to do is upload it to your Wordpress database and activate it. Once activated it will show the mail icon next to the users who make comments on your blog. Then all you have to do is start replying to those comments.

This is quickly becoming one of my favorite plugins. Visit my archives for more Wordpress Plugins I use.

While reading there I saw that he was utilizing a neat feature for our blogs that allows readers to edit their comments after they have been posted for a set time of about 30 minutes. So i added it here. In his comments I found out who had told him about it and decided to give Kelly Cho some link love as well for showing me the Edit Comments Plugin.

Kelly Cho is also a proud member of the Do Follow Revolution.

Test it out! You know you want to.

For more Wordpress Plugins I use check my archives.

Got an e-mail yesterday informing me that Snap Preview Anywhere is no more. These are the little preview balloons you see for all the outgoing links on this site. Now they have added a ton of new features to their new Snap Shots name.

Snap Shots new features include Wiki Shots, Movie Shots, Stock Market Shots, Product shots and a few more. They even integrated the Amazon affiliate program for us to use with previews of the products we are looking to promote.

A ton of cool new features that we can add. I haven’t had much of a chance to take advantage of these yet, but they have done a ton of work and everything looks spectacular. The e-mail I received said that I didn’t need to make any changes if I have it running already so i guess I’m all set.

You do need the Wordpress Plugin that was called Snap Preview Anytwhere before, but it is now called Snap Shots Plugin and can be found here. That plugins page is helpful to walk you through the steps of getting these Snap Shots set up on your site.

I have a few posts that have a fair amount of trackbacks on them and it becomes extremely annoying when there is a decent conversation going in the comments. I noticed on a few sites that they had the comments and trackbacks separated so that the conversation could flow better. So i decided to go out and look for a plugin that would help me do the same.

Didn’t take long to find a plugin that would take care of this nasty annoyance. The directions on what to do are a bit sketchy though so i figured I’d give you a more in depth breakdown in how to get it up and working.

1. Download the TrackbackList Plugin v1.3
2. Upload the zip file to your plugins directory.
3. Go into your comments.php file and place this code:

<?php trackback_list() ?>

directly before this code:

<?php if ($comments) : ?>

if you want your trackbacks to appear before your comments.

4. Then find this code in the same file:

<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>

and replace with:

<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : if (get_comment_type() == "comment") : ?>

AND

Replace this code:

<?php endforeach; ?>

with this:

<?php endif; endforeach; ?>

5. activate the plugin on your WP dashboard.

If you did it this way you should be able to see the results immediately on a post that has trackbacks. Remember if you don’t have any trackbacks on a post you won’t see anything! An example of it on my site could be found in this Chacha Pranksters post. They show up in a list right before the comments begin.

You can place it anywhere you want actually on the single page, but I like it before the comments. You would just have to tinker with placement of this code: <?php trackback_list() ?>. You can also make changes to the way they appear there, but I like it as the list form rather than having it show a bit of a snippet. It will look different on different templates so you can make adjustments to the style any way you choose. After adding this one I couldn’t believe I had waited so long to find a Wordpress Plugin that actually accomplished this goal for me.

A lot of my fellow bloggers use this already, but there are many that do not so I figured I would add a review to my site as well. MyBlogLog is an amazing way for bloggers to connect and get noticed by other users because they allow you to be seen on blogs when you visit them. You should notice the MyBlogLog Widget on my sidebar that shows my recent visitors who are registered at MyBlogLog. You only show up there if you are registered, so if you are a blogger you will want to join MyBlogLog ASAP and get yourself noticed a bit more, meet tons of great bloggers, and find some amazing blogs you might otherwise never see.

The plugin does even more for your commenters who use MyBlogLog. Every time they make a comment on your blog their pic from there shows up and anyone can click it to see your catalog of blogs there. It goes right to your profile page so even though you can only link to one site in your name with a comment other readers can actually see ALL of your blogs by clicking on your pic!

The MyAvatars plugin is very easy to install.

INSTALLATION

1. Download the file myavatars.zip, extract & copy it in your plugin directory preserving the folder name
2. Activate the plugin in your plugin page

THEME INTEGRATION

Paste the code given inside the comment’s loop (just after the “foreach ($comments as $comment) :” instruction) in your comments.php file. You can style the code for a better integration using the dedicated CSS in the plugin folder.

Call the function MyAvatars with a true for Gravatar support. E.g. MyAvatars(true);

Leave blank for default settings

if(function_exists("MyAvatars")) MyAvatars();

CONFIGURATION

From version 0.2 MyAvatars has some settings you can change. You can change settings by editing the php file in the plugin folder. Comments will help you during configuration.

BLOGGER USERS

Merlinox made a Blogger plugin. Ask him for support about blogger plugin.

LEGAL STUFF

For support or suggesting a feature leave a comment with the designer. This plugin is to be used at the user’s own risk.

Check out more Wordpress Plugins I use on JMH Techtronics and on other sites. I add more all the time and write a review on their usefulness so bookmark the page and come back often!

UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention by another fellow blogger, Geek’s Corner that the plugin has some Italian language in it for what it displays. I had to change this as well when I did it when I was looking at the plugin code. This doesn’t effect a ton of things, but it does effect what you see if you hover over the MyBlogLog Avatar pic of the commenter. In the case here when you hover over the avatar it says “Visit My Profile at MyBloLog.com”, but I had to change the plugin code to make that happen.

Open the .php file for your plugin before you upload it, or simply edit it on your dashboard. You will want to find the code that looks like this:

// Link titles for mybloglog avatars: when avatars exist or not. $mybloglog_TITLE = "Guarda il mio profilo su MyBlogLog.com!";

Change the “Guarda il mio profilo su MyBlogLog.com!” part to whatever you want it to read in English. Remember that the link goes to their MyBlogLog profile so something along those lines would be appropriate.