Wow, time flies so fast! I never realized ’til a few days ago that I haven’t published a blog update for more than a year already. My last blog update was done on November 2009. For those who are new here and aren’t familiar with my blog updates, these posts are done not only to share with the readers the plugins/tools I use and site improvements/changes, but it also serves as a “note” for myself so I have a record of the stuff that I’ve installed/uninstalled and the changes I’ve made to the site.

Below are the plugins and other stuff that I’ve installed/uninstalled, added/removed or changed since my last update.

Uninstalled Plugins

• Comment Info Detector – plugin that detects and displays the commenter’s country, web browser and operating system.
• CommentLuv – plugin that displays the commenter’s latest blog post based on their RSS feed.
• Wibiya Toolbar – official Wibiya Toolbar plugin that integrates different social networking features, apps, widgets and other tools.

These plugins all work fine and are pretty nifty plugins but the reason I uninstalled all three plugins was to cut down the “fat” on this blog. I’m working on lessening the resources used on the server and lessening page load times. Less plugins = less resources used. Although they provided neat features, the blog could run without them.

Installed Plugins

• Dashboard Notepad – plugin that adds a simple notepad widget within the WordPress dashboard. You can read the review I made for this plugin here.
• PubSubHubbub – plugin that enables a blog to let other parties know in real-time when there are new updates.
• W3 Total Cache – performance optimization (caching) plugin that improves server performance, improves page load times and user experience.

Installed the Dashboard Notepad plugin so I could write down notes (drafts, to-do lists, etc.) on my WordPress dashboard. I installed PubSubHubbub to enable real-time updates to Google Reader, FriendFeed, etc. Last time, I was using WP Super Cache and then I came across the W3 Total Cache plugin. Tried it and never looked back as it provided more features, did the job better (page load times were better with W3TC than WP Super Cache) and it was compatible with other plugins I used.

Other Changes

• Reinvigorate – I previously had a premium account on Reinvigorate which cost $5/month (stats and analytics service). I love Reinvigorate and have been using it the past few years but I decided to cancel the premium account and just rely on Google Analytics to cut down on my expenses. I still recommend them and you can get a free account if your monthly traffic is less than 100,000.
• Infolinks – added Infolinks, an in-text advertising program as an additional revenue source. Those are the red, double underlined links found throughout the site. Btw, I’d like to know from the regular readers if the Infolinks ads bother you or not. Thanks!
• CDN – If you might’ve noticed, the posts, pages and the site as a whole loads faster. That’s because aside from using the W3 Total Cache plugin, JaypeeOnline has been using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) the past few months. I’ll publish a more detailed post about this soon.

If any of you guys have comments, feedback or suggestions to make JaypeeOnline better, please don’t hesitate to share it with me via the comments section or if you want to remain anonymous, you can send me a message via the contact page. Thank you and have a nice day!

It’s been a while since I last published a blog update. The last one was in March and since that time, there’s been a lot of changes made to the blog. For those of you who are new to JaypeeOnline, you might be wondering why I publish these blog updates. The purpose of these blog updates is to make my readers aware of the changes I’ve made to blog theme, design and layout, newly added features and the plugins I’ve uninstalled or installed so that they’ll have an easier time navigating through the different areas of the blog and make their browsing experience a better one.

Here are some of the changes I’ve made to the blog since my last blog update.

Uninstalled Plugins

• WP-Clickmap – Plugin that creates a clickmap (similar to heatmap) that displays the areas where visitors click for each page.
• Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress – Plugin makes using the Google Syntax highlighter to highlight code snippets within WordPress simple.
• UserAgent Spy – Plugin that displays the visitors operating system and web browser in each comment they make. Used this to replace the Firestats plugin feature that displays country, operating sytem and browser.

I uninstalled the Google Syntax Highlighter plugin because it is no longer compatible with newer versions of WordPress 2.8+. I’ve since replaced it with the SyntaxHighlighter Evolved plugin that works exactly like the first plugin, although the codes displayed by the Google Syntax Highlighter plugin looked better. The WP-Clickmap plugin is a very useful plugin especially if you want to know the areas where your visitors click on your blog. It also helps you determine the best spots to place your ads. Unfortunately, this plugin caused a problem on my web server and I had no choice but to uninstall it. I can’t remember exactly why I replaced the UserAgent Spy plugin with the Comment Info Detector plugin, but I think it was because of an issue or conflict with the theme or one of the other plugins I’m using.

Btw, I’ve removed the Twit This Post option with Twitter bird icon and my custom Social Bookmarking icons/buttons after each post because of the Sexy Bookmarks plugin. I’ve also removed/uninstalled the UserVoice feedback widget because it wasn’t doing the job or the readers/visitors aren’t accustomed to using it.

Installed Plugins

• Comment Info Detector – Enables you to detect your commenter’s info and show their country flag, web browser, operating system automatically.
• CommentLuv – Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.
• WP Greet Box – Shows a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from.
• LinkWithin – Displays recommended stories and associated thumbnails from your blog
• Sexy Bookmarks – SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts.
• SyntaxHighlighter Evolved – Easily post syntax-highlighted code to your site without having to modify the code at all.

Other Blog Changes

• Added a blog mascot. Hired a professional designer to create a blog mascot for JaypeeOnline.
• Changed the header image/banner font style.
• Changed the subscription options and added new buttons. Readers and visitors can now easily subscribe to JaypeeOnline’s RSS Feed or get updates via Email, Twitter and join JaypeeOnline’s Facebook Fan Page.
• Created a help page for RSS, Email, Twitter updates and other subscription options
• Tweaked the Author Info box.
• Added a Google Custom Search box below the post.
• Added the Wibiya Toolbar.
• Minor changes include changing the post title font from Times Roman to Trebuchet MS and making the content font size larger so readers won’t have a hard time reading or won’t have to squint their eyes while reading the posts.

Screenshots:

Subscription Options Buttons (top of the sidebar site-wide)

LinkWithin (after each post)

Sexy Bookmarks and Author Info box (below LinkWithin)

Btw, those icons aren’t misaligned. If you hover over those icons, they would pop up. Just wanted to make that clear coz I received a comment from one reader that my social bookmarking icons were hidden or covered by the author info box.

In-post Google Custom Search Box (below Author Info box)

I guess that’s it. In case I missed something, I’ll just update this post later on. Anyways, these are the changes that I’ve made to the blog and I hope that these changes can improve your browsing experience and make the blog more reader-friendly.

If any of you guys have comments, ideas or suggestions to make JaypeeOnline better, please don’t hesitate to share it with me via the comments section or if you want to remain anonymous, you can send me a message via the contact page. Thanks and have a nice day!

Uninstalled Plugins:

• Who Sees Ads? – I had to disable/uninstall the Who Sees Ads? plugin because it suddenly caused a fatal error the other day. It brought the site down and even prevented me from accessing the WP dashboard.

  At first, I thought that maybe Dreamhost was upgrading or fixing something so I sent them a ticket. When the support person replied I found out that the problem was caused by the Who Sees Ads? plugin and that it was eating up more than the allocated memory in my server. What I did was I deleted the plugin folder via FTP and it fixed the problem.

  I’ve contacted the author and discussed the issue with him. I’ll try to use the plugin again one of these days and see if the error pops up again.

• WP 2.3 Related Posts – I used this plugin because it came by default with the current theme I’m using. However I noticed that it didn’t display related posts on some of my posts so I decided to switch back to the previous plugin I used – Related Entries.
• Brian’s Latest Comments – Used this plugin in my previous theme to display recent comments on the sidebar. Now with my new theme, I no longer need a plugin to display the recent comments.
• New Tag Cloud – Also had this come by default with my theme. This plugin adds a widget that you can use to display tags. I uninstalled it because I didn’t need it and I don’t use widgets on my blog.

Installed Plugins:

• WP Ban – Installed and used this plugin only a few hours because I had to ban a certain IP from accessing my blog. I’ve deactivated it but I’m keeping this plugin around, just in case.
• WP Tag Manager – Useful plugin if you want to manage/edit your tags or delete a specific tag. No need to go through each individual post to edit or delete your tags. You can view and edit/delete all your tags on one page.
• Multi Column Link List – Recommended by one of my regular readers FruityOaty, it’s what I’m currently using for my links page. I switched to this plugin because the one I was previously using – IMP Links, doesn’t work with WP 2.3+ and the author has abandoned the plugin. Too bad, coz I really liked that plugin.
• Flash Tag Cloud – Came by default with my new theme and I liked it so I decided to keep it. It’s the plugin that displays the “tags” on the left sidebar.
• CommentLuv – I tried installing this plugin in my previous theme and couldn’t get it to work. I’m glad that it works with my new theme. It’s another way of encouraging your readers to leave comments.

I’m not sure but I think I missed one or two plugins that I’ve uninstalled. I already deleted them from the plugins folder so I have no way of checking. Hehe I’ll update this post if I get to remember something that I missed. Anyways, that’s most of the changes that I’ve done to this blog aside from the minor tweaks on the code.