Friedbeef’s Tech

The following is a guest post by Syahid Ali of TechMalaya.com

Wordpress is undoubtedly one of the best blogging platforms that one can use because of its stability and extensibility of the system.  Comments meanwhile, are :

1. The heartbeat of a blog that keeps posts alive
2. Useful to grab a reader’s attention
3. An important indicator of a popular post

Thus with this post, I’ve listed 10 useful plugins to enhance your Wordpress comment section. Here they are in no particular order:

1- Subscribe to Comments - Allow your readers to subscribe via email to keep up with subsequent comments on a particular post.

2- Highlight Author Comment - Automatically differentiate and display author’s comments with custom CSS styling.

3- AJAX Comments WPMUified - Let your reader’s post their comments without having to leave the same page. It even has a very nice post effect too!

4- Commentluv - Append a reader’s latest blog post to your comment section. Show them that you care.

5- WP-Ajax Edit Comments - Allow users to edit their own comment from the same page, for a period of time. Great for correcting comment typos.

6- SezWho - A very good comment rating system. Allow your readers to rate their favorite comments and separate the best comments from the worst.

7- Hide or Show Comments - Let your reader focus their attention to the post by letting them to hide or show the comments section on demand.

8- Riffly Webcam Video Comments - Bring some spice to your page by allowing audio / video comments with the help of Riffly.com .

9- 4Avatars - A simple plugin that allows you to add avatars to comments on your blog. Supported avatars are from MyBlogLog, Gravatar or Avatars.pl .

10- WP-Grins - Adds clickable smilies to be used on your comment section.

What Wordpress comment plugins do you like?  Let us know in the comments!

This has been a guest post by reader and frequent commenter, Syahid Ali of TechMalaya.com.  Stop by his site to get a good view on tech updates, tips, free software, blogging and photo editing.  Want to guestblog for this site?  Drop me a line!

[tags]wordpress, blogging[/tags]

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Want to squeeze more productivity from your mouse?  Here are 7 simple ways you can do just that!

1. How to Move a Mouse With Extreme Precision

Extremely handy when doing graphics work, a built-in Windows feature called MouseKeys allows you to move your mouse with your keyboard so it becomes much more precise than eve the most careful flick of the mouse.

1. Open the Control Panel, and click ‘Accessibility Options’.
2. On the mouse tab, and check the ‘Use MouseKeys’ box to turn the feature on.

Check out Microsoft’s MouseKeys Tutorial for more details.

2. How to Copy and Paste Faster

If you thought using keyboard shortcuts to ‘copy and paste’ was faster than a mouse, you haven’t tried True X-Mouse Gizmo.  More than just a funky name for a free app, it gives you the option of auto-copying anything you highlight, and pasting it simply by clicking the middle mouse button.

3. How to Add Extra Functionality to Your Right Click

ClickZap allows you to run a predefined action when you double right-click at your mouse.  Set up anything from locking your computer, to muting volume, or even minimizing windows when you double right-click.  Free of course.

4. How to Lock Your Mouse So You Can Clean It Properly

If you’re not using an optical mouse, but one with a ball - you know how annoying it is to clean a mouse.  One common headache is having the mouse active while cleaning it - where the cursor floats all over the place and you may click around unintentionally. 

ToddlerTrap basically intercepts any keyboard or mouse inputs and makes the computer think that the key was never even pressed. 

The mouse lock is automatically activated once the program is started, and it is disabled when the program is closed and the good thing about it is that it requires no installation.  Now you can clean your mouse without having to worry about accidentally clicking on something.

(Thanks CyberNetNews!)

5. How to Control The Mouse More Intuitively

Mouse Gestures refers to a process where quick flicks of a mouse perform basic functions in a program. (Think of it as shortcut-keys via mouse).  For example, if you want to open a new window, just flick your mouse one way.  If you want to close a minimize a window, just flick your mouse another way.  (You can of course do many more things than that).

If you’re interested in a powerful Firefox browser mouse gesture package - check out ‘All-In-One-Gestures’.  For a less powerful package but one which works for browsers, Windows explorer and Itunes - try out Rocker.

6. How To Quickly Select Lines of Text and Paragraphs

Triple click on a paragraph or line of text and Windows will instantly select it.  This shaves off seconds right away, and really frees up a significant amount of time in the long run.

7. How to Scroll Without Using the Scroll Wheel

Clicking the scroll wheel on your mouse will give you a new interface to control your mouse.  Just middle click your cursor on a web page, or document and the mouse cursor should change to look like the below picture. 

Now you should be able to scroll by simply moving the mouse around, and you can click any button to return to normal mode.

Bonus tip #1: Get smarter just switching the side of your mousepad

Bonus tip #2: Historical look at the man who invented the mouse

Bonus tip #3: Increase size of text and graphics in a web page, or office document by holding down the CTRL key and using your mouse scroll wheel.

Bonus tip #4: A free application called Edgeless causes the mouse pointer to wrap around the screen instead of stopping at the edges.  Why you’d want to do that - I have no idea :)

In what other ways do you use your mouse?  Tell us in the comments!

[tags] mouse, tips, windows [/tags]

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We’ve finally reached a million unique visitors in total ever since this blog started on December 31^st 2005…

Nothing would have been possible without readers like you – thanks so much.  Keep on reading, keep on commenting, and here’s to another million.

[tags] stats, blogging [/tags]

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