It takes a little bit of tweaking to create a contact form in WordPress. Although it is quickly evolving as full-fledged blogging and content management software, WordPress doesn’t come with a dedicated section for building a contact form on your website or blog.

An online contact form is a must have if you want your website or blog visitors to contact you. If it’s a business website then you’d like your customers and clients to get in touch with you with some initial information. Even if it’s just a blog it’s good to let people contact you without going to the trouble of logging into their own email, copy/pasting your email ID and then sending you a message. Your contact form not only allows your visitors to supply important information quickly, they also hide your email from prospective spammers.

You can easily create a contact form in WordPress on your own if you have a little bit of programming knowledge and you know some basic HTML. WordPress is built with PHP so most of your problem is solved if you know PHP. But most WordPress users are not programmers. They simply install WordPress with some basic settings or they take free or paid help.

Here’s when plugins help you. Whenever there are some features lacking in WordPress, the community comes up with plugins. Here’s a review of some WordPress contact form plugins.

Once you’ve installed Ubuntu you have most of the software applications you’re going to need, nonetheless you’d like to install many new software applications and as time goes by, you may even want to uninstall existing applications. There are two ways you can install and uninstall software applications in Ubuntu: using command line Terminal, and using the Synaptic Package Manager.

Using the Synaptic Package Manager is quite easy. Just fire it up by first going to System and then Administration. You’ll need to enter the system password before you can access this feature. This package manager is connected with many online software repositories. Some repositories are supported by Ubuntu, and some are not. In order to install a particular software, the repository link needs to pre-exist. Normally if it doesn’t, the software website gives you a link that you can add by going to Settings and then Repositories.

Assuming the repository already exists, you simply have to search the application, select it for installation. You’ll finally have to click the Apply button in order to install the software. All the applications that are already installed appear with a colored checkbox. So you click a particular, colored, checkbox and uninstall the associated application.

Click Apply in order to install the selected software package

You can also use the Ubuntu Software Center to install and uninstall applications.

Installing/Uninstalling software applications using Terminal Window

In Ubuntu you can also use the Terminal to install and uninstall software applications. Start the Terminal window by clicking Applications -> Accessories

For installing programs in the repository, simply execute:

sudo apt-get install {package name}

Don’t use the curly brackets. Replace {package name} with the actual name of the package. For instance, if you want to install audacity, you can use:

sudo apt-get install audacity

Some packages require dependencies — other programs and files it needs to run, but are not supplied with it. You can install the dependencies with

sudo apt-get build-dep {package name}

In order to uninstall a software application using the Terminal window you need the following command:

sudo apt-get remove {package name}

To remove the package along with all its data files you use:

sudo apt-get –purge remove {package name}

Some packages come as .deb files. After downloading the package, go to the folder where you have downloaded the .deb file and double-click it. It’ll install. Or in the terminal window, use ‘cd’ to go to the folder where you have the .deb file and then execute the following command:

sudo dpkg -i package-name.deb

You also get .bin files as program files. Read how to execute a .bin file in Ubuntu.

Now that you have installed Ubuntu, you may like to install some of your preferred programs. Unlike in Windows, you don’t get executable files in Ubuntu. There are different types of executable files in Ubuntu, and one of the most common file extensions is .bin file.

If you download a .bin file and try to straight away execute it, in Ubuntu you won’t be able to do so. You’ll need to tell Ubuntu that this file must be “executed”, and not opened in another program, as in, like .odf files are opened by OpenOffice.

So how do you execute a .bin file in Ubuntu? Save the file somewhere on your Ubuntu desktop. Then right-click the file and click Properties. This brings up this window:

Click the Permissions tab and check the “Allow executing file as program” checkbox.

Press Close and you are ready to execute a .bin file under Ubuntu.

In case it doesn’t work you will have to resort to executing some commands inside the terminal window. Open your Terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal window). In case you have saved the bin files, let’s say executethis.bin file on your Desktop, execute this command first of all:

sudo chmod +x executethis.bin

It will ask for your password. Enter it and hit Enter. Please remember that being Linux, Ubuntu is case sensitive. Now, simply execute the file by executing:

./executethis.bin

It may again ask for the password, but this way, now you can execute your bin file.

Changing data in a MySQL table using command line command is not as complicated as it sounds, and the basic problem is the way commands are written in various tutorials and manuals. If you want to update data in a MySQL table, alter a column or a low, you can modify your MySQL command accordingly.

Suppose you want to change data in a single MySQL table cell. In order to achieve this you need to know the name of the column that contains the cell, the row number, or some trait that can uniquely identify that cell. Normally, a complete row in a MySQL table is a complete record and this record is distinguished by a unique record ID, let is say, “rec_id”. Suppose the cell you want to change belongs to rec_id 678 and the name of the cell is “first_name”. Let the MySQL table be “students”. This is how you change the first_name:

update students set first_name=’Suba’ where rec_id=678;

Isn’t it a straightforward command? No matter what value first_name originally contains, it now has Suba in it. Notice that you don’t write “update table students”, you simply write “update students”.

The more a visitor stays on your blog, the greater amount of content he or she consumes. A typical pattern of a visitor begins with the visitor looking for certain information on a search engine or some other blog or website, coming across your blog link, clicking the link, reading the blog post and then leaving your blog.

The key to a blog’s success is repeat visits by its visitors, and with millions of blogs vying for everybody’s attention, it is very difficulty to make abode in one’s memory: for that you need to make your visitor stay on your blog longer. After reading the needed post he or she should be encouraged to explore your blog further. This blog post at ScribeFire tells you how to do so.
Technorati Tags: blog marketing

An earthquake is a natural calamity that can strike anyone, anywhere, and you most know how to survive, how to protect yourself during an earthquake.

An earthquake comes without warning. Although there are some zones that are prone to earthquakes and people there usually remain prepared for the earth-shaking events, some regions experience earthquakes out of the blues.

This link has a list of things you can do to survive an earthquake.
Technorati Tags: survive an earthquake

Are you bored of downloading custom Photoshop brushes from various websites and need something unique for a Photoshop brush? Well, you can easily create your own custom Photoshop brush using a pre-made image, or a new image, or a shape.

Why would you need a custom Photoshop brush? By default when you select the brush tool it is a solid circle and when you draw with it the ball moves on the screen leaving a trail in your selected color. What if for this trail you want stars, or leaves, or a human eye? The sky is the limit when it comes to using a custom Photoshop brush.

The link tells you how to create a custom Photoshop button.
Technorati Tags: photoshop, photoshop brushes

Sometimes when you are searching for news or updates on Google you want to see pages that have been most recently updated. For instance, if you are writing an article in global warming, you would like to know what all has been written on the topic of global warming today, or in the past 3 days, or during the past week. There is no direct interface on Google that lets you search results by day and week, but you can manipulate the search string to achieve the desired result.

For instance, first search for “global warming” (with or without quotes), and then whatever appears in the URL (it is also termed as the query string by the technically gifted) just append &as_qdr=d in the last and hit the enter button. It sorts the results by day and for the consecutive queries it even presents to you with a drop-down menu that lets you sort the search results by days, weeks, months, etc. Go to the Techcrunch blog for a detailed description.

Not only Twitter, you can use any social networking and bookmarking website to increase traffic to your blog or website. For instance, many people have their servers crashed by the Digg surges that happen when their links appear higher on Digg. Still, Twitter has its own mechanism. In fact I’ve been using Twitter for a few months now and this is perhaps the only social networking website that I use with regularity, although I’ve hardly interacted with people whom I am following or who are following me.

Darren at Problogger has a post on how he drives traffic to his blog through Twitter. He regularly posts links to his latest blog posts on his Twitter feeds. He also uses Twitter to get new blogging idea and to obtain information from other Twitter users.

Just imagine what all we could achieve if we could improve our memory tremendously. Some psychologists believe that whenever we learn something, memorize something, it gets stored somewhere in our memory and it is never deleted from our memory. We forget it because we cannot recall it. Once we develop this ability to recall things as and when we need to, we have got ourselves a great memory.

Do you know how to improve your memory? Just repeat whatever you have learned exactly when you are about to forget it. Now how can you know when you are about to forget something that you have recently learned. By using a software called SuperMemo. Read this excellent Wired article that throws some good light on how you can improve your memory by using simple techniques promoted by the developer of this software.