Who would have thought the same design would be cloned and made available publicly to all WordPress users for free? In 6 hours, Sahas of Skattertech had successfully replicated the design (along with most of its functionality, if not all) and released it as a WordPress theme under the name, Qawker.

You can compare this demo blog with that of any Gawker’s blog and have yourself amazed. The theme can be downloaded for free here.

©2011 SheepTech

Qawker: WordPress Theme Cloning Gawker’s Design

• You wouldn’t know when your host will go out of business
• When disaster will strike the data center
• It’s not all that uncommon with stories about web host holding customer’s files ransom.

By setting up an automated complete backup of your WordPress blog, you can set up your blog in the exact same way on another host without begging anyone, anytime you want.

Automating the process will give you better sleep at night knowing you will always have access to the latest backup, without ever doing anything.

wp Time Machine is the best backup plugin for WordPress yet, for it will not only backup your database, but also all your files in wp-content, which includes your themes and uploaded images (unless you specifically uploaded them in another directory).

What’s better? Dropbox is supported, meaning you can store your backups in Dropbox, which in turn will sync the files onto your PC. Your data will now be available both in the cloud and locally.

How to setup?

1. First, install and activate the wp Time Machine plugin on your WordPress blog.

2. Go to Settings > wp Time Machine

3. Select Dropbox as your offsite service

4. Setup other settings based on your personal preference. Only enable “Time-stamped Subdirectories” if you have boatloads of storage on Dropbox.

5. Enter your Dropbox credentials and click on “Save my password“. (use a separate Dropbox account if you’re not comfortable storing your password in WordPress)

6. Click on the “Generate wp Time Machine archive” button.

Your backup will now be generated and will be uploaded to Dropbox shortly.

Automate the backup process

Now that you have setup your Dropbox account with wp Time Machine, you can automate the backup process by setting up a cron job on cPanel.

1. Login to cPanel

2. Go to Cron Jobs

3. Add a new cron job with the command:

curl "http://www.example.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-time-machine/cron.php?generate=1"

Select how frequent you want your blog to be backed up, depending how busy your blog is. Generally once a day would be good enough.

You will now not lost a single article, comment or the tiniest modification to your theme files.

Are you using wp Time Machine as your WordPress blog backup solution? If no, what other plugin are you using?

P/s: If you haven’t heard of Dropbox, it’s an online storage service that will sync your files across all your devices. You will need a Dropbox account if you intend to use the above method to backup your blog. Sign up here.

©2011 SheepTech

How-To: Automate Full Complete WordPress Backup

What’s wrong with Akismet?

False positves, false positives, false positives.

Darren Rowse and Abe Olandres complained about it in 2008. Fast forward 2011, the problem still very much exist.

I had fish legit comments from the sea of spams caught by Akismet countless of times, even when SheepTech is relatively new.

What’s worse? You cannot whitelist that particular person after you’ve “Not spam” his comment. The next time he post a comment, it will again be marked as spam. Damn.

The blog lost a legit comment. The commentator wasted his time and effort. Lose-lose.

What is GASP?

This plugin will add a client side generated checkbox to your comment form asking users to confirm that they are not a spammer. It is a lot less trouble to click a box than it is to enter a captcha and because the box is genereated via client side javascript that bots cannot see, it should stop 99% of all automated spam bots.

Simply put, GASP is a checkbox that fights comment spam on WordPress blogs. It works the same way as CAPTCHA, except instead of typing in random characters, you will only have to tick a checkbox.

And yes, I have replaced Akismet with GASP on SheepTech.

I was as skeptical as you when I first learn about GASP, how can a checkbox possibly be more effective than Akismet, the most popular anti-spam plugin for WordPress?

The number speaks for themselves.

Real Statistics

Akismet catches hundreds of spam comments a day here on SheepTech. It takes serious effort to search for legit comments among them, I would rather spend my time doing something more productive.

What about GASP? First day of installing, 2 spam comments made it through. The following few days, maximum two spam comments a day, but just once or twice they were published before my eyes. The rest (which also rarely exceed one) were held for moderation.

In fact, there is totally no spam comments on SheepTech for the past two days!

In short:

• Akismet: Search for legit comments among hundreds or thousands of spam comments everyday
• GASP: Moderate/check one or two (or none!) spam comments occasionally among the not-so-overwhelming legit comments

It says a lot to reduce thousands of spam comments to just a few.

GASP is Not Foolproof Though

As mentioned above, GASP is not totally foolproof. Very few spam comments still manage to bypass GASP and got themselves published.

This is however totally manageable. Since the first day GASP is activated on this blog, I have added quite a number of keywords to the comment blacklist. Most of the spam comments have common characteristics, so it’s really effective.

Keywords can be added to the blacklist at Settings > Discussions.

Akismet or GASP?

I have absolutely no regrets after deactivating Akismet for GASP. It’s your call though. I would put the situation like this:

Akismet is your elite army, a team of killing machines defending your castle against your enemies. With the advanced weapon they are equipped with, the enemies stand no chance against them.

They however are too arrogant. They would kill anyone on the battlefield, including civilians. Of course, they will not take your orders. You as the king would have to go out yourself, search among the injured armies for civilians and try to rescue them.

GASP? The enemies don’t even know where your castle is, let alone attack it. You can live peacefully, but only until the day the enemy’s intelligence found your castle (if the spammers can break CAPTCHAs, it’s only a matter of time till they have a workaround for GASP, I guess).

[GASP on WordPress Plugin Directory >>]

©2011 SheepTech

GASP vs. Akismet; Why GASP wins?

The <!--INFOLINKS_OFF--> tag is supposed to get the job done easily, but it doesn’t on my blog, no matter where I insert the tag. The in-text ad is still appearing at inappropriate section, such as the sidebar and comment section.

The culprit? W3 Total Cache.

With the HTML minifying feature enabled, all html comment tags is being removed, including the <!--INFOLINKS_OFF--> tag.

The good news is you don’t have to sacrifice the minifying feature just for the Infolinks off tag to work. Just simply include the tag in W3 Total Cache’s ignore list and W3TC will leave it alone.

You can do that via Performance > Minify > HTML > Ignored comment stems. Enter “INFOLINKS_OFF” in the list.

The off tag will now work as intended. Insert it in sections you want to keep clean and Infolinks will no longer show up. If you are not using W3 Total Cache, you might want to check if you have other plugin with similar HTML minifying feature.

©2011 SheepTech

Infolinks Still Appearing In Areas With Off Tag

Instant Install is created exactly to solve this problem. Instead of downloading and uploading the entire script of your desired web application, which really is a lot of files, you can complete the same task with just a tiny php file (417 bytes).

Just upload the Instant Install php installer to the directory where you want to install your web application, point your browser to it, select your desired web app, and lastly, sit back, relax.

Instant Install will then download and extract the files to your server and then forwards your browser to the setup. For now, Instant Install supports the installation of 9 web applications, namely:

• WordPress
• bbPress
• Chyrp
• Drupal
• Joomla
• phpBB
• PrestaShop
• Symphony
• Vanilla

Head over Instant Install to download the php installer.

©2011 SheepTech

One Click Install WordPress & Other Web App

There is no way to stop the public from viewing your blog posts unless you set a password for each of them. The privacy settings only allow you to block search engines, but not normal visitors.

But on WordPress, when something is lacking, there is always a plugin to compensate it. For this purpose, you can try using Registered Users Only.

Upon installing, all URLs to your blog will be redirected to the login page. Only registered users are able to log in and view your blog posts. That being said, if you wish to keep your blog posts only to yourself and no one else, you should disable user registration (General Settings > Membership) on your blog.

There are other similar plugins, but I have only tried this one and it works great.

©2011 SheepTech

Making WordPress Blog Private

Smashing Magazine started releasing WordPress themes since 2007, but there isn’t any easy way to see all of them on one single list as far as I’m concerned. To make life easier for you, I have compiled all (if I didn’t miss any, that is) the WordPress themes released by Smashing Magazine, all the way from the first theme dated in year 2007 to the most recent one released in February 2010.

designPile [Demo] {February 20th, 2010}

SimpleFolio [Demo] {February 7th, 2010}

Christmas and New Year’s Eve WordPress Theme [Demo] {December 21st, 2009}

Glassical [Demo] {November 7th, 2009}

Creative by Nature [Demo] {July 30th, 2009}

Paper Wall [Demo] {July 10th, 2009}

Gallery [Demo] {May 4th, 2009}

Magazeen [Demo] {February 23rd, 2009}

Compositio [Demo] {February 18th, 2009}

Vintage and Blues [Demo] {January 28th, 2009}

Atlantic [Demo] {January 5th, 2009}

Viewport [Demo] {December 29th, 2008}

Christmas WordPress Theme [Demo] {December 24th, 2008}

Black Magic [Demo] {November 10th, 2008}

Color Paper [Demo] {October 30th, 2008}

Cellar Heat [Demo] {October 20th, 2008}

Simple Ornate [Demo] {October 1st, 2008}

Agregado [Demo] {September 8th, 2008}

Notepad Chaos [Demo] {August 20th, 2008}

Infinity [Demo] {August 8th, 2008}

Fervens [Demo] {August 5th, 2008}

Tigerpress [Demo] {July 28th, 2008}

WordPress Fun [Demo] {July 16th, 2008}

Dilectio [Demo] {December 21st, 2007}

©2011 SheepTech

Free WordPress Themes released by Smashing Magazine

How often do you see an amazingly beautiful WordPress theme, only to disappoint when you discover its price tag? If content is king, I would say design is queen.

Why is appearance important? Just imagine Obama campaigning for his presidency in just sandals and short pants.

There is definitely no shortage of good WordPress themes, but the free ones are used by so many other blogs that it has lost its uniqueness, while for the premium ones are sometimes just to pricey.

Now what about this—join a premium WordPress themes giveaway which will guarantee you a win if your blog has a PageRank of higher than 2? That’s exactly what ThemeGrade is doing.

Blog about the contest on your PR2+ blog and ThemeGrade will pay for your premium WordPress theme. You can choose from either of these designers:

• Elegantthemes
• Woothemes
• Wpzoom
• Modthemes
• Wpnow
• Obix-Design
• Richwp
• Vivathemes
• Prothemedesign
• Themejam
• Signaturetheme
• Organizedthemes
• Gabfirethemes

Act quick if you want to enter the contest because once are enough eligible participants.

You can read more about the details of the contest here.

Update: ThemeGrade has listed me as one of their winner. It’s this easy to win

©2011 SheepTech

ThemeGrade Premium WordPress Theme Contest

If you are thinking the same, here’s how to disable it. I’m unsure if it’s the best way to do it, but it works at least.

How to disable Info Panel from CommentLuv

1. Go to your “Edit Plugins” page (http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/plugin-editor.php)

2. Select “CommentLuv” from the dropdown menu. You should be on the “Editing commentluv/commentluv.php (active)” page now.

3. Search for <span class=”heart_tip_box”>. There are two instance this code will appear in the php file. Do the same for both of them. It looks like this:

$commentcontent .= '<span class="heart_tip_box"><img src="' . $this-&gt;plugin_url . 'images/littleheart.gif" border="0" alt="My ComLuv Profile" width="16" height="14" /></span>';

4. Remove the code in red from it. It should look like this now:

$commentcontent .= '<img src="' . $this-&gt;plugin_url . 'images/littleheart.gif" border="0" alt="My ComLuv Profile" width="16" height="14" />';

5. Click on the “Update File” button. Now search for <span class=”heart_tip_box”> again. If it’s gone, the lovely heart icon will now probably not prompt the info panel when you hover on it.

Let me know if it works on your blog too.

©2011 SheepTech

Disable Info Panel from CommentLuv

Top Commentators plugin on the other hand, as its name suggest, will list the top 5 commentators at the sidebar. As the comment activity on this blog is low, it’s not at all difficult to get on the list. The highest commentator at the point of writing has just 2 comments, the rest being just one.

For the time being, all the links are nofollow. I might consider do-following in the future, depends on how things go.

Alright, start commenting already

©2011 SheepTech

CommentLuv & Top Commentators Enabled