Lately, I’ve been working in some small details in my blog – as some of you might have noticed.  This time, I just wanted to post a quick tutorial about how to customize your comments in your WordPress blog.

How to Change the Style of the Author’s Comment in WordPress

You probably have seen this before, whenever you are reading the comments of a post and you notice that the author’s comment is highlighted in a particular way, just so it’s different than the rest. Well, there are many ways to get this done.

An easy way to do it is by going to Appearances -> Edit -> style.css and add the following class:

.author_comment {
background-color: #F1C056 !important;
}

This simple class will just change the background of the author’s comment box. Here you can customize the style of your author’s box by changing the border color, etc.

Finally,  you need to make a small change in comments.php,  so go to Appearances  -> Edit -> comments.php. Once you are in the page, look up the line

<li <?php echo $oddcomment; ?>id="comment...

Change it to this:

<li class="<?php
/* Only use the author_comment class from style.css if the user_id is 1 (admin) */
if (1 == $comment->user_id)
$oddcomment = "author_comment";
echo $oddcomment;
?>" id="comment…

That’s all, if you followed this two simple steps correctly, your author’s box should be displaying with an improved and personalized style.

How to Change the Avatars Sizes in Comments

This is really easy, the kubrick wordpress template resizes the images to 32×32 by default. In order tyo change the sizes, go to Appearances  -> Edit -> comments.php and look up

<?php echo get_avatar( $comment,

You will find a line that looks like

<?php echo get_avatar( $comment, 32 ); ?>

In order to make the image bigger just try changin the number 32 to 50.  That’s all.

I hope you enjoyed this small tutorial.  Until next time!

Many businesses have seen an opportunity in the rapid development of internet transactions, to the point that you can do your shopping right from your computer and have the product at your door after a few days. Browsing in cyberspace you will find stores that only do their marketing and sales online – that’s the audience they attend to.

The same way, many professionals have decided to go freelance and work online with a lot of success. But, this also raises the question,  if I decide to work freelance online, how will people know I’m the right person for them?

The answer can be simple and complex at the same time.  It’s pretty much the same basic requirements you need to have in order to do business in the outside world: do good work and continue advertising yourself and your services.

But offering services online will also require for you to create a medium from where people will get to know you, here are some ideas:

Have an Online Profile

This could be a social networking account, website, blog,  store, etc. This is pretty much the first step you will need to take in order to have a presence online.

Show Them What You Do/Provide

It’s important for your potential customer to see the type of work you have done in the past. This will help them get to know you better through your work.

For instance, if you are a web designer (like me), it’d be good to have a portfolio where you can showcase the best of your work. You don’t have to show all of it, just the ones you are confident are the best designs you’ve done.

Meet People, Let People Know You

You need to let people know you are on the cyberspace now, in order to do so you will need to network. A good idea is to have a profile in the different social networking sites outhere, sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. and of course the microblogging tool everyone is talking about, Twitter . If you don’t have an account on Twitter yet, consider creating one. I’ve been in Twitter for about four months and I already have more than 500 followers and get many clients through that medium. You don’t only get to know potential clients but also many talented professional who you can learn from and share ideas with.  Make sure you check my last post about Twitter and the advantages of having a Twitter account. Meanwhile, here’s an idea, you can follow me!

Let Your Face be Known

The best thing about doing business in person is that your clients get to know you, not only your work but your face. It’s interesting how much effect this small detail has. It’s recommendable to have a picture of you in the profile or website/blog you create, just so they can have that personal touch when reading your website.  If you like to leave comments in blogs, I’d recommend you create an account in Gravatar (globally recognized avatar), this allows you to link your email address with a picture/image. So whenever you leave a comment in other WordPress blogs (that have this plugin installed), your picture will automatically appear and readers will start recognizing you by just looking at your picture.

Stay Active

Leave comments, post something interesting in your blog, say “hello” to people,  keep in touch, you will get to make some good friends in the cyberspace. Plus, you never know when the people you get to know will require your services.

Be Yourself

Just like in any other case, it’s important that you show yourself for who you really are. This doesn’t mean you need to disclose every personal information you can think of, it just means that you need to be honest when talking about yourself to other people. They are  getting to know you, so be honest and try to get to know them as well.

Be Friendly

The fact that you decide to advertise yourself and your services or products, doesn’t mean you need to shout it out loud to whoever you talk to. People can get turn off by that, just let them know you first and when the time is right, you will be able to share about what you do.

Have Fun

Internet is a lot of fun, you get to meet people, share ideas,  have fun in your free time, and on top of that you learn a lot! So relax and have a good time!

I thought it was about time that I make a post about WordPress Plugins again.  In this opportunity I have put together a collection of articles listing a great number of really good plugins, 81 plugins in total.

Hope you enjoy this post, and if you have any favorite plugins that you consider I should have listed in this post, just leave me a comment, and I’ll add it.

I’m sure I probably forgot to list some other very useful plugin,  so I apologize for that. leave me a comment letting me know what plugin is your favorite, and if you have any suggestions of what plugins I should add, just mention it in a comment.  Until next time, ciao!

Navegando por la red, me encontre con una gran colección de plugins para WordPress muy buenos.

De acuerdo a Wikipedia, RSS(Really Simple Syndication) significa:

RSS es una familia de formatos de fuentes web codificados en XML. Se utiliza para suministrar a suscriptores de información actualizada frecuentemente. El formato permite distribuir contenido sin necesidad de un navegador, utilizando un software diseñado para leer estos contenidos RSS (agregador). A pesar de eso, es posible utilizar el mismo navegador para ver los contenidos RSS. Las últimas versiones de los principales navegadores permiten leer los RSS sin necesidad de software adicional. RSS es parte de la familia de los formatos XML desarrollado específicamente para todo tipo de sitios que se actualicen con frecuencia y por medio del cual se puede compartir la información y usarla en otros sitios web o programas. A esto se le conoce como redifusión web o sindicación web (una traducción incorrecta, pero de uso muy común).

Basicamente RSS te ayuda mantener a tus lectores al tanto de las ultimas novedades que publiques en tu página, el lector se puede subscribir a tu página via e-mail o agregar tu “RSS feed” a algun programa que ellos usen por ejemplo: Google Reader, etc.

Aqui esta la lista:

WordPress Plugins Round-up You Shouldn’t Miss For Anything | Plugins WordPress Que No Debes Perderte Por Nada

Aqui listo los plugins esenciales para tu experiencia en WordPress. Plugins como Related Posts que te permite escoger que enlaces quieres mostrar como recomendados al pie de tu articulo, entre otros.

18 Plugins WordPress para Administracion RSS y Trucos (Inglés)

Este articulo posee una gran coleccion de herramientas para mejorar tu monitoreo de RSS desde tu blog. El articulo los ha clasificado en diferentes categorias, tales como: Análisis y Monitoreo (Analytics and Tracking, Insercion de Feeds y Trucos(Feed Insercion and Tweaks), y Administración (Management).

En el articulo menciona plugins tales como: BBU’s RSS Feed Campaign Tagger Plugin for WordPress (permite marcar los enlaces en tu RSS para que puedas ver como tus visitantes interactuan con tu pagina, que publicidad hacen click,  y cosas por el estilo) , Feed Subscriber Stats (permite revisar cuantos suscritos tienes via FeedBurner desde tu pagina de control de tu blog para que ya no tengas que estar yendo a la pagina de FeedBurner para ver tus estadisticas, por lo contrario, recibas tus estadisticas desde tu propia pagina de Administrador en tu blog), Feedage Tracker (agrega botones para que tus visitantes pse puedan suscribir desde tu sitio web, y enviara una notificacion a Feedage indicando el total de suscritos que se han agregado a tu pagina), FeedBurner Widget (muestra el número de suscritos que tienes via FeeBurner en un widget en tu sidebar), FeedStats (muestra estadisticas de los lectores que visitan tu pagina provenientes de tu RSS. Tu puedes agregar opciones tales como ver el tiempo que invirtieron en una pagina, excluir Ips especificos, establecer el numero de dias para monitorear informacion y mas.) , RSS Link Tagger for Google Analytics (agrega un codigo especial para tu RSS feed para que  google Analytics pueda monitorear de una mejor manera cuantos lectores recibes provenientes de tu RSS), y muchos mas, aqui solo menciono los de la primera categoría.

5 Plugins para hacer WordPress Más Seguro (Inglés)

En este articulo se hace mencion a muy buenos plugins que mantendran tu blog seguro contrar cualquien spam que quiera ingresar a tu pagina. Entre la lista menciona plugins como Limit Login Attempts (el plugin blockea al usuario por 20 min despues de haber ingresado la clave incorrecta 4 veces, esto se puede cambiar de acuerdo al limite que desees), Sabre (agrega seguridad para evitar registros falsos provocados por bots. Agrega verificacion por imagen o una pregunta de matematicas, etc.),  Semisecure Logic, entre otros.

Otros dignos de hacer mención son:

12 WordPress Plugins para mostrar y resaltar codigo dentro de tu Blog (Inglés)
13 Mas Esenciales Plugins para WordPress (Inglés)
18 Plugins de Seguridad & Tips para Asegurar tu Blog (Inglés)

Here is how it works:

First, it will ask you to browse through their list of fonts, you will have the option of picking out the font you like of over 1000 quality fonts. Then you will have a  that you will need to embed in your website and that’s it! you’ll be enjoying the beautiful typography in your website.

For WordPress users, FontBurner has a wordpress plugin that simplifies the process of embedding the code in your website.

Existe una buen plugin para WordPress que te permite subir tu favicon que has disenado a tu pagina. Favicon es el icono pequeño que se ve al costado del titulo de tu blog, y en la direccion URL. Al usar un Favicon les permites a tus lectores encontrar tu blog de una manera mas facil. Este plugin the permite cambiar tu favicon de una manera muy simple. El nombre del plugin is MaxBlogPress Favicon, lo primero que tendrias que hacer es instalarlo y luego subir tu Favicon a tu blog via MaxBlogPress Favicon.

Read More

You could create different template files for each, but that’s time consuming and makes it difficult to easily update across your whole website.

In this article, we’ll show you how you can set the tag to have a different ID depending on the type of page, and then how you can use CSS to style the page any way you like because of that. No more template editing needed in the future!

Read More

I recently changed my blog to this self-hosted wordpress blog and I couldn’t be happier! As soon as I installed my blog in my server I started re-designing my site, and adding some wordpress plugins. Now THAT showed me the awesomeness of having a blog using wordpress.

I put together a list of plugins that have really given a lot of accesibility to my site and helped it become not only user friendly but also SEO friendly.

Related Posts: I have this plugin installed in my site, it’s very useful and light which is always a plus. It creates an effective system of related content; this plugin will let you manually select related posts, and turn your blog into an extended network of intertwined information. Selecting related posts is fully integrated, which makes it very easy to adopt it in your publishing workflow.

Improved Meta Description Snippets: It automatically creates effective meta descriptions following Google’s directions.

Sociable: Sociable is a plugin which adds social media buttons to your posts, and does so easily, and beautifully.

Yoast Breadcrumbs:This plugin allows you to add breadcrumbs to your theme. Why you should do this is outlined in my WordPress SEO article.

Search Suggest: Don’t you hate it when you search for something on a WordPress blog, and only after being frustrated for a bit there there’s no results, you realize that you’ve made a spelling error? Or that there’s.

Twitter Plugin: Add Twitter to your blog step-by-step.

More fields: This WordPress plugin is a flexible solution to adding additional fields available when writing a post. Any number of fields can be created in any number of boxes on the Write/Edit page, which hold additional fields that are to be associated with a post.

Cforms: cforms is a plugin for WordPress, offering convenient deployment of multiple contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page. The form submission utilizes AJAX, falls back, however, to a standard method in case AJAX/Javascript is not supported or disabled.

Photodropper: It searches for Creative Commons licensed photos – images that are licensed for shared use – and lets you drop them into your posts – right from your dashboard with just 1 click.

AdRotator: Ad Rotating Solution for your Ads (including AdSense, Clicksor, Chitika etc.)

NexGen-Gallery: Really nice and clean gallery.

WP-Polls 2.31: Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.

WP-UserOnline 2.3: Enable you to display how many users are online on your WordPress blog with detailed statistics of where they are and who there are(Members/Guests/Search Bots).
I hope you found this list useful. Now, which one was your favorite? did I left out some other cool plugins?