On Google Custom Search

As a preamble let me state that Google Custom Search Engine can be used not only to search one of your sites, but you can add any number of sites you own (or otherwise) and have the results appear on your site. You can even get the custom search the whole web too. The service is offered free by Google by serving ads. The ad-free offering is for $100 per annum. But the “Google Site Search” is altogether a different service meant for businesses looking to create a highly customized and Google hosted site search solution for a structured fee plan. The difference between these two are enumerated on this web page.

The search parameter question

Google custom search set up asks you to specify the query parameter name to be embedded in the search url and the letter “q” appears on the text box by default. You can either have “q” or have any other alphabet, or select “s” specifically since WordPress uses that operator for searching the database when the native search is used. I followed this method and found that a separate search box using the Google code is not necessary when “s” parameter is used. So no change in the theme’s searchform.php is necessary. But in this case I had to modify the search.php template file of the theme by including the code generated after selecting the “result only” layout on the “Look and Feel” panel. I pasted the Google code so generated on the location where the “loop” resided in search.php. The job was done.

But on second thoughts, I felt it was not a desirable step especially in a site with loads of posts and pages. It is because when you use the “s” search query parameter, the WordPress script drills through the entire database and fetches the results (but fails while displaying the results since the code the search.php has been changed. But the search action is done anyway..). This is a server-intensive process using up your site’s resources. This effectively reduces the advantage of using Google’s custom search engine.

Instead if you use any other query parameter, like “q” for instance, you get the Google engine search through the indexed pages and fetch the results. This will be more advantages since the whole process of searching your site is effectively “outsourced” to the Google cloud!

But for this, you will have to follow the following steps:

• Select the “Two page layout” on the “Look and Feel” panel of Google custom search set up.
• Decide on the name of a separate search result page where the results are to be displayed. Let us call it “Search Results” with the url yoursite.com/search-results – this may vary depending upon the permalink structure of your WordPress setup.
• Type this URL correctly on the text box under “Specify the url in your site where you want the search results to appear:” in the Google “get code” page.
• Copy the code snippet of the search box part and paste it in the searchform.php of the WP theme.
• Create a “page template” in your theme, name it s “search-result.php or some such and paste the search result part of the Google’s code on this template replacing the “loop”. Upload it to the theme directory.
• Create a new WordPress “Page” and name it exactly as decided by you earlier and use the “search result” template instead of the default.

And that is that!

Changing the number of search results per page of results

Google renders the search results by paginating them by 10. If you feel this is too small, you can increase (or, decrease!) by replacing the snippet “google.search.Search.FILTERED_CSE_RESULTSET” in the results code with the number you desire. I understand the maximum number allowed is 20, but I haven’t tried to exceed it to aver it to be true.

Tweaking the stlyesheet

• Formatting of the search results is done by the css file: http://www.google.com/cse/style/look/default.css. You may modify it to suit your site’s design.
• You may modify the initial “loading” text to something else or even use an image to tell your visitors that the results are loading, even though the time lag would be a fraction of second or a couple of seconds utmost.
• If you want to change the default “no result” string to a line of your choice, try this:
  Find a line like this in the search results code:
  “customSearchControl.draw(‘cse’, options);”
  Below that line add this:
  “customSearchControl.setNoResultsString(‘…’);”. Add your no results message in between quotes.
• The no result part is styled by the css classes “gs-no-results-result” and “gs-snippet”. You may re-style it to your liking.

I will try to tinker with the code further and share with you my experience by and by.

I have been embedding many MP3 songs in my WordPress blogs using the ultra-reliable “WP-Audio Player” plugin. But when I looked at one such blog with a podcast on the iPad no audio player could be seen. Reason: no flash in iPad and the audio player uses Shockwave Flash player.

That opened my eyes. My audio embeds lose eyeballs (rather, eardrums) because of the Flash and I don’t like it a bit. Now I have to do something about it. The alternative is not difficult to spot. Yes, it is the newfound darling of the geekosphere – “HTML5“.

MP3-jPlayer Plugin for HTML5 Audio which will work in iPad

Then I zeroed in on a WordPress plugin which embeds a HTML5 jQuery plugin. In case of an old browser devoid of HTML5 support, the player falls back on Flash seamlessly. It is the “Mp3-jPlayer“. It is a veritable darling. You can embed a single file or a playlist; either from your own server or from an URL. It also supports short codes. A comprehensive option page as well as detailed help is built in. You can customize the player either on the options page or write your own CSS rules. You can embed a player in its own line or make it inline with the text flow. It has sidebar widget too.
I have embedded a sample audio here for your appreciation:

  Vande Matharam is the National Song of India. But may Indians feel it should have been the de jure National Anthem of the country.

More HTML5 v ideo and Audio players

Well, that is not the only plugin to embed a HTML5 player. I found a couple of others too which help embed a video or an audio.

1. MediaElement.js – HTML5 Video & Audio Player

   This is an “all-in-one” player which plays almost all formats – MP3, MP4, OGG and WebM. Almost all parameters and options of the player can be controlled by using shortcodes: width, height, preload, autoplay, progress, volume etc. The plugin uses “MediaElement.js” HTML framework and library (more about “MediaElement.js” – a magic unicorn HTML5 video library). The unique feature of this player is as follows:

   Most HTML5 players offer one player to modern browsers and then a competely separate Flash player to older browser. This creates an inconsistent look and functionality.

   Instead, MediaElement.js upgrades older browsers, using Flash to mimic the entire HTML5 Media API. Then once all the browsers have something that looks like HTML5 Media, we build a consistent player on top using just HTML and CSS.

2. WP YouTube Lyte

   You can embed a single Youtube video or an entire playlist or only the audio component of an Youtube video. It is “lite” because the HTML5 player loads only after you click on “Play” button. It helps fast loading of your site even if you have more than one video embed.

   You can see this plugin in action here:

   Audio alone from another Youtube video is played in this player. All you do is suffix either “v” or “a” to “http” of the Youtube URL.

Change over to Linux today and be a part of this great movement!

The new dozen are:

1. Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
2. Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
3. Apple Pages (.PAGES)
4. Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
5. Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
6. Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
7. Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
8. PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
9. TrueType (.TTF)
10. XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

Read more on Gmail Blog.

If you get any of these files as attachments, you can see a “View” prompt for opening them in Google Docs Viewer.

In addition, Google is also offering “Cloud Connect Plugin” for Microsoft Office suite. With this you can seamlessly share, backup and collaborate MS Office documents through Google Docs.

The following are the nifty things that you can do with the Google Cloud Connect:

• Simultaneous editing for Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, no document or paragraph locking
• Google Docs sharing URLs for each Microsoft Office file
• Revision history for Microsoft Office files, stored in Google Docs
• Offline editing with smart synchronization of offline changes
• No Microsoft Office upgrade or SharePoint® deployment required

More information on this gizmo together with elaborate video tutorials can be seen at the Google Apps page.

But Indians have got a shock of their lives last week. Their inward remittances which were actually towards goods and services delivered had been arbitrarily assumed as personal payments and reversed, to wit, sent back to the remitter.

Added to that agony, all withdrawals into the bank accounts in India had also been suddenly stopped. People who had assigned payments to firms for business transactions had been taken by surprise by this kind of bolt from the blue!

This is a sample of messages received from Paypal:

We are currently experiencing an issue processing withdrawals to Indian bank accounts. As a result, there may be some delay in withdrawals from your PayPal account to your bank account.

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused, and are doing all we can to resolve the issue.

But according to this entry on Macworld, “some delay” will be in the order of many months!

Wanna know how the Indians affected by this adverse development whine?

The reason is that some activity in the back end is eating up the memory allotted by the server set up for PHP processes and/or MySQL database operation. It may be due to multiple processes trying to operate simultaneously.

Now to the remedy:

There are several fixes suggested in different blogs. Most of them talk about either modifying the php.ini file in the PHP installation on the server or tweaking the wp-settings.php in the WordPress core.

While 99% of the WordPress users are in a shared hosting environment, access to php.ini file of the host set up is out of question. so forget about it.

Let s now discuss various types of remedies obtained through a Google search.
Audio Visual Junkie focuses on the flooding of “wp_options” table in the database with entries like “rss_f07b6018d7bc77b2520b5ec4296f3e66_ts” which seemed to cause the memory problem. It also feels that certain plugins cause such bloating of the table.

The blog suggested complete flushing of such entries out of the options table, by running this SQL query:

DELETE FROM `wp_options` WHERE `option_name` LIKE “rss_%”

Though there is a word caution expressed since such indiscriminate removal of all options starting with RSS would cause your blog’s feeds being not valid. Mittineague had suggested use of “Clean Options Plugin” for judicious removal of such unwanted entries in options table.

Narfstuff suggests a few sane ways to get into the root of the problem. One of them is to divine what exactly the memory limit allotted by the web host for PHP based processes by creating a phpinfo.php file with the snippet as follows:

and placing it in the root directory. When called through the browser, it will display the entire PHP and MySQL environment. Search for the value against “memory_limit”. If it shows more than 64MB, you are good. Most good web hosts allot 128MB. But this will not help prevent throwing up of error when one of your WordPress processes consume even 2.5 MB because of various other parameters coming into play while executing WordPress commands which have not been explicitly stated anywhere! But it may be due to the server overload at the time of taking backups etc.

Narfsurf also analyses the generic issues thus:

Test to see whether there is any improvement after:

* Taking Plugins Offline.
* Switching large sections of the site onto ‘Draft’ mode (i.e pages with large quantities of sub-pages).

It is worth pointing out that whilst low PHP memory can be the root of rendering problems, it can also be the case that a badly written plugin or modification to WordPress’ core code may munch its way through vast swathes of system RAM. It’s important to make certain that any code is well formed and written, before placing blame on the package’s low memory.

When reducing WordPress’ memory footprint, there’s a few tricks that can help us to make progress. Converting tags such as bloginfo(’template_directory’) to their hard coded counterparts can help reduce system load, and Disabling plugins which aren’t core to the operation of the site.

Perishable Press has come up with a few solutions like assigning a higher value to the memory_limit parameter in .htaccess file and php.ini files in specific directories where the problem occurs.

My web host, the friendly HostPC.com did a Goggling on my behalf and came up with this web site containing a solution to the memory_limit problem.

The site suggests tinkering with wp-settings.php file which is part of the WP core which will get overwritten on every upgrade, which is of course, once in a couple of months. Hence it is not a desirable solution. But you can find a cue from that suggestion. To wit, the lines of code in wp-settings.php that is asked to be changed reads thus:


if ( !defined('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT') )
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '32M');

It reads that if the memory limit had NOT been defined (negativity indicated by the “!” sign), define it now. The default value is 32MB. It can be increased to 64 or even 128 MB depending on your choice and what your web host allows.

Hence the best option would be to define it in the first place as enumerated in the following FAQ offered by MichaelH:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of xxxxxxxx bytes exhausted
If deactivating plugins doesn’t work try one of these methods for increasing the amount of memory a PHP script may consume

1. If you have access to your PHP.ini file, change the line in PHP.ini
If your line shows 32M try 64M:
memory_limit = 64M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (64MB)

2. If you don’t have access to PHP.ini try adding this to an .htaccess file:
php_value memory_limit 64M

3. Try adding this line to your wp-config.php file:
Increasing memory allocated to PHP
define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

4. Talk to your host.

As for me I did item no. 2 and 3 and did talk to the host who was very helpful. So far so good!

(Picture courtesy: Austin Passy.)

It is very simple and easy to install and configure. In fact there is very little to be configured to make it work, except, of course if you want to customize it further to suit your requirement. This need may arise if you want to use the form for different purposes in your site.

The form script has in-built security and you can add CAPTCHA and Akismet spam filter. You can also let your viewers upload files – subject the settings that you fix.

The status of form processing is shown to the viewers on the form page through Ajax and it looks cool!

You can download the plugin from this page.

Customization:

Though the tags that you can use both in the form as well as the email that is sent to the admin after successful form submission can be selected from the form admin page. The error messages under different circumstances can also be edited to your satisfaction on the options page.

But the developer (Takayuki Miyoshi) has not furnished any detailed guide as how to use use different tags on the “Additional Settings” box on the website dedicated to this plugin. In fact the developer of the plugin has added many nifty features to the plugin but unfortunately he doesn’t find time to write a comprehensive users’ guide for enhancing the functionalities by the settings tags.

But he is kind enough to visit the support forum and provide tips.

For the sake of users of the Contact Form 7, I have tried to cull the following tips for customizing the plugin. These have been culled from the discussions in the forum as well as the old posts in the blog of the plugin developer, Mr. Takayuki Miyoshi

1. Additional headers:

   You can input any header lines into the field and you can insert any tags into any place in each header line, just like other Mail fields. Viz: CC, BCC etc like this:

   

2. After the form is submitted the viewer is able to see the response messages such as “Your message was sent successfully”, “Validation errors occurred.” etc. at the bottom of the form which is rendered through Ajax. This is the default behaviour. In some cases the location of the messages may fall below the first fold resulting in the viewer not being able to see the message unless he looks it up by scrolling the browser up. So you may like these messages to appear somewhere up so that it is not missed by the viewer.

   For shifting the message location, a tag [response] as the placeholder has been introduced. You can insert this [response] tag into any place of your choice in your form. You can use it multiple times in a form. If there is no [response] used, the response message is shown at the bottom of the form by default.

3. By default, the same page is shown after submission of the form. You can change this behaviour to take your viewer to a “Thank You” page for instance or any web page of your choice by inserting the following javascrpt code into the “Additional Settings” box (insert the URL of the page of your choice within the single quotes in parenthesis):

   on_sent_ok: “location.replace(‘http://yourdomain.com/thank-you/’);”

4. The same action hook “on_sent_ok” can be used for multiple action after the form is submitted successfully. The following is the description offered by the plugin author in respect of this enablement:
   

   Sometimes you might think of running custom codes after the form has been submitted. For example, you may wish to run Google Analytics’s tracking code for tracking their visitor’s usage of the contact form and counting it as conversions.

   The new JavaScript action hook would be useful in such a case. If you have a JavaScript code you wish to run after form submission is completed successfully, simply insert the code into the Additional Settings section (which is new in this version and is placed at the bottom of the admin panel) with preceding on_sent_ok keyword, like this:

   

   Note that you need to quote the codes properly; and the code must be in one line.

   To show you a more practical example, if you want to insert Google Analytics’s tracking function, enter it like this:

   on_sent_ok: "pageTracker._trackPageview('/funnel_G1/step1.html');"

5. By default, Contact Form 7 loads three JavaScript files — contact-form-7.js, jquery.form.js and jquery.js — into the header of each page. They are necessary for Ajax. If you want to disable such loading of these files in all pages and control it to load in select pages only, you can do that by first prevent their loading totally by inserting the following line in the wp-config.php file.

   define ('WPCF7_LOAD_JS', false );

   Then you may call these files to load in a particular file by inserting the following line in the relevant template ahead of the call to wp_head():

   wpcf7_enqueue_scripts();

   You may agree that the page loading will be slower if too many files are loaded through calls to them in the header. Hence, the plugin author has coded it in such a way that these files are loaded only in the footer. Say “Thanks” to him for this!

6. Now you can specify the file upload limit size in bits, kb and mb units like this:

   [file your-file limit:1048576]
   [file your-file limit:1024kb]
   [file your-file limit:1mb]

   (Note that you can’t use a decimal point in it (i.e., like this: [file your-file limit:1.5mb]) and it will be ignored if it exists.)

Though WordPress core files are gettexted fully and a .pot file is being generated for each version which are made available available for download, unfortunately many WordPress themes including those listed in the WordPress “Extend” repository do not have the theme files gettexted.

This becomes a big handicap for non-English users of WordPress, who are really sizable.

But if you start trying to introduce the gettext strings to the messages in each theme file as instructed in the Codex page on translation, it is a real pain and scary to a non-techie user.

This is because of the fact that each “message” of interface string is to be located in the theme files and should be enclosed with “_e(”)” or “__(”)” as the case may be as per gettexting convention. In addition the name of the theme and the language folder is to be assigned as a “text domain” on the theme file appropriately so that WordPress engine locates the corresponding language’s .mo file in the assigned folder, in order to render the translated “messages”.

Curiously even the Default theme contained in the WordPress package (including the latest version 2.8.4) doesn’t have the files getexted! You’ll have to visit the SVN folder to download the internationalized version of default Kubrick theme!

Having said that, I have to admit that the localization facilitation (Polyglot) team of WordPress is doing an excellent service to the users by promptly offering all help that is needed. The team is headed by an young wizard name of Nikolay Bachiyski, “the Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiønër” from Bulgaria.

You can get to know more about him from here and here!

And you can download the latest WordPress.pot file from the SVN repository and download the .pot file of the latest stable version of WordPress (it is 3.1.2 as on 2011-05-05).

I am one of the active users of the localization technology for my blog in Tamil and to help others who wish to set up Tamil blogs.

I use Poedit for making .po and .mo files for use in the Tamil blogs.

If anyone wants help in localization technologies of WordPress in general and about Tamil blog in particular, please ask for it in the comment box.

Further reading on translation of WordPress plugins and themes: Urban Giraffe blog page

But it is true that web servers of Word Wide Web are busy returning “File Not Found” messages all round. It is part of the ecosystem. You can’t wish it away. After all, it is perfectly human to err, and continue to err.

So what can’t be cured may be endured in a more elegant way.

WordPress has made the process of rendering a “404 Error” page from out of the active theme itself without the need for creating one and assigning its path on the .htaccess file. You can spot a 404.php file in (almost) all themes. They are just bare-bones page merely announcing to the wanderer that he has lost his path and an error has occurred.

But 404 has much to offer. You can communicate the person who has strayed on to your site and convert his as a regular customer. There a plugin called “AskApache Google 404” which has many options including integrating Adsense. I’ll try that plugin and write a comprehensive review.

Recently Theme Hybrid ran a competition for the “coolest, smartest and funniest 404 page”.

On my part I tweaked the 404 Error page on this blog using the tricks enumerated in the WordPress Codex page.

I used a conditional tag to sense if the visitor mistyped the URL himself or followed a dead link and print a different message. In addition, an email will be sent to the admin (read, myself) if a dead link was spotted.

I made a slight modification to the code furnished in the WordPress codex page cited. Here it is:

<?php
#some variables for the script to use
#if you have some reason to change these, do. but wordpress can handle it
$admin_email = get_bloginfo(‘admin_email’); #the administrator email address, according to wordpress
$website = get_bloginfo(‘url’); #gets your blog’s url from wordpress
$websitename = get_bloginfo(‘name’); #sets the blog’s name, according to wordpress

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'])) {
#setup a message to be sent to me
$failuremess = “A user tried to go to $website” . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] . ” by clicking a link somewhere and received a 404 (page not found) error. “;
$failuremess .= “It wasn’t his fault, so try fixing it. He came from “.$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$casemessage = “<br />I can’t blame you for this. The site administrator has been emailed about this problem.”;
mail($admin_email, “Bad Link To “.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $failuremess);
}
?>

You can see it in action by clicking here: “Not Found“.

alternately, you can type fictitious URL on the browser to view a different message, which won’t accept any responsibility, at least overtly!

Welcome to the friendly WordPress ecosystem!

Now let us take a look at the basic requirements to kick-start your blog (ok, site)!

1. A domain name – which forms the name, address and identity for your web presence
2. A web real estate where you can park your blog content media et al – they call this a “Web hosting Account”
3. WordPress blogging package – to be downloaded fresh from http://wordpress.org/
4. Themes and plugins as necessary from this page

I assume that you have a domain name already registered with a good and reliable domain registrar or repute.

Now the most important decision that you will have to take is selecting a good web host to park and deliver your site/blog.

First lesson you have to learn is that all web hosts are not the same, though their web sites look the same!

And hosting you blog with a professionally-managed and reliable web host is vital to ensure that your site is up all the time without conking out during most hours of the day or for weeks together. And to ensure that you do not encounter hiccups at each point by being restrictive and paranoid. I will discuss about this aspect later in this article.

How to select a good and reliable web host?

I’ll try to list out the indication of typically bad hosts to be avoided upfront.

1. Run away from hosts that advertise “Unlimited” web space and unlimited bandwidth. Don’t be gullible to believe that those two thingys are so cheap that you can use “unlimited” resources. Hard disk and data transfer do cost money.
2. Avoid web hosts who are touted to be “specially optimized for WordPress” and who flaunt their special features that are tailor-made for WordPress. There is nothing like that in web-hosting parameters. It is just a gimmick to hoodwink you. Much of the touted features are mere snake oil. Do not fall a prey to such glib sales pitch!
3. Do not believe blindly on hosts advertised in www.wordpress.org. It is just a sales promotion. Make your own assessment
4. Hosts who eternally advertise promos and special offers. One time offers to commemorate some occasions are normal marketing behavior. But permanent “Sale” indicates that you are for sale!
5. Hosting companies who are vague in listing their offerings and features. They will be either silent or ambiguous on terms that are vitally important like billing, payment, dispute resolution, response time etc.
6. Restrictive hosts who place a barb at every turn like PHP, MySql, POP mail etc.
7. Hosting firms who are rated very low and negative in discussion forums like WebHostingTalk, SitePoint Forums etc.
8. Hosts who do not have a support forum, ticket system etc.

The list is not exhaustive but will suffice to avoid hosting pitfalls which are serious.

Now to the elements to look for that are indicative of a good web host:

1. Mention of specific information on vital parameters like disk space, monthly bandwidth, POP mail accounts, MySql databases etc.
2. Clear mention of the version of Apache web server, PHP etc., and ability to test the PHP parameters through a PHPinfo file.
3. Provision of Control Panel software like cPanel, Direct Admin, Plesk etc.
4. Availability of pre-sales discussion their forums
5. Clear and no-nonsense terms and conditions and TOS
6. Support ticket system and clearly defined response time, ability to contact via IM, phone etc.
7. Clear identity of the hosting company and publication of its verifiable postal address, telephone number etc.
8. Standing and rating of the company in discussion forums indicated above. It is better to make a Google search for the host to get a feel of what their customers have got to say about their standard of service.
9. Not being overly restrictive and paranoid by making PHP run on “passive mode” and introducing “open_basedir restriction” restrictions which will render many WordPress plugins unworkable and keep your hands tied without any elbow room to tweak your blog
10. Having a record of consistent good performance over many years
11. Who offer to help in smooth migration of your blog from the old host

In fact my search for a professionally managed, reasonably priced and reliable web host who will not cheat me was over when I selected my current hosts, viz: HostPC. I wish to recommend them for the following positive reasons.

1. They are running successfully for over 11 years under the same ownership without any negative review from customers
2. HostPC have got outstanding reviews on WebHostingTalk forums.
3. The owner and the support staff reply to your support tickets withing 6 to 8 hours even if you had flagged your ticket as “medium” and try to solve your problems earnestly
4. HostPC makes nightly backups
5. If you want to use e-commerce and your data and the files are so vital that you can’t afford to lose even a bit, HostPC offers the facility of back-up in “cloud” for a nominal fee ensuring encrypted data transfer and storage
6. HostPC offers “true” multiple domain hosting providing individual control panel for each domain with mail boxes, definable quote and FTP for each domain
7. They also provide Unrestricted Subdomains
8. Their rates are reasonable and competitive
9. They do not abruptly close your account whimsically, nor do they bug you with hypothetical overuse of CPU complaints, though they are very strict about spamming and other kinds of misuse
10. Guaranteed server uptime of 100%. Even on rare occasions when some disruption happens which had affected internet traffic globally, the host does everything under his control to move your site over different data centers.
11. HostPC has data centers at different states of US connected to reliable ISPs and fast upstream providers.
12. They treat shared hosting customers too as important as their dedicated server hosters and VPS hosters
13. Since the web server is maintained by technically savvy professionals, they do not introduce restrictive and paranoid controls over scripting engines. This will make your WordPress experience smooth and problem-free
14. They give 30-day Money back guarantee
15. EasyAntiSpam solution
16. 24 Hour Helpdesk
17. User Community Forums
18. DirectAdmim Control Panel is very easy to navigate and unambiguous

On the whole your experience with HostPC will be pleasant and memorable! That is why I recommend that host to you all!

Cheers!