Fortunately you can use javascript to do the work for you. Javascript is very versatile and perfect for these quick and dirty solutions where you don’t need something complex, just a little script that goes into a directory and replaces all instances of one word, or string, with another. I adapted this script from this snippet.

In this example, I’m going to rename all the files that end in .gif.png so that they end in just .gif. The code will replace all instances of .gif.png, even if they appear in the middle of a filename (so image.gif.png.jpg will be renamed image.gif.jpg), but I know that in my directory this won’t happen because of the files I have inside of it.

Again, this is a quick and dirty script, no error checking and is not a robust solution. Remember to make your edits to the values before you run it.

var sFolderName, sStringToFind;
var nResult;
//////////////////////////////////////////
// Set these values
sFolderName = "C:\\Temp\\Images"; // use directory containing image
sStringToFind = ".gif.png";
sStringToReplace = ".gif";
//////////////////////////////////////////
 
nResult = renameFiles(sFolderName, sStringToFind, sStringToReplace);
WScript.Echo(nResult + " files renamed");
 
//    Function Name:    renameFiles
//    Parameters:
//    sFolder:    Folder Name (use double backslashes)
//    sString1:    String to search for
//    sString2:    String to replace
//    Returns:    Number of files renamed
 
function renameFiles(sFolder, sString1, sString2) {
    var oFSO, oFile, oFolder;
    var re, index;
    var sName;
    var i = 0, n;
 
    oFSO = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
    oFolder = oFSO.GetFolder(sFolder);
    try {
        index = new Enumerator(oFolder.Files);
        for (; !index.atEnd(); index.moveNext()) {
            oFile = index.item();
            sName = oFile.Name;
            n = sName.indexOf(sString1);
            if(n != -1) {
                try {
                    sName = sName.substring(0, n) + sString2 + 
                            sName.substr(n + sString1.length);
                    oFile.Name = sName;
                    i++;
                } catch(e) {
                    WScript.Echo("Can not rename file " + sName + " because\n" + e.description);
                }
            }
        }
    }
    catch(e) {
        WScript.Echo("Could not access folder " + sFolder + " because\n" + e.description);
        return 0;
    } finally {
        oFSO = null;
        re = null;
        return i;
    }
}

There you have it, a quick search and replace javascript for renaming files.

Rewrite & Rename Filenames using Javascript is a post from: wangarific

For you trivia enthusiasts out there, GIF stands for graphics interchange format and was introduced in 1987. It uses the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) lossless data compression technique that was patented in 1985. CompuServe got into a tiff (haha, get it? TIFF?) Unisys, which held the patent, and the PNG standard was developed.

PNG stands for portable network graphics and nowadays it’s widely accepted as an image format by all major browsers. As a result, it’s becoming more popular as it is generally smaller than GIFs by 5-25%.

You may be wondering where the JPEG, joint photographic experts group, fits in all this. It differs from GIF and PNG in that it’s a lossy compression algorithm (whereas GIF/PNG are lossless) designed for photos.

There you have it, the differences between GIF and PNG (and JPEG!).

What’s the Difference Between .GIF and .PNG is a post from: wangarific

First, you need to put your Google Analytics code above the content of your page (or at the very least, before any link you want to track). The function call you will add to the OnClick javascript hook will reference a function in the Analytics code so it needs to be loaded by the time you get to the link. Page speed principles recommend that you put javascript at the bottom, since there can be a little lag in loading it, but in this case there’s no way around it. Google is pretty fast anyway so I consider this a fair tradeoff for additional data.

Then, simply add this bit to your links (if you use Google Website Optimizer, you’ll notice it uses the same mechanism to track clicks):

onClick='javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview("/click/tracking")'

You can change /click/tracking to anything you want. I like to bucket my tracking into different areas and change the term tracking to something that makes sense to me. If it’s affiliate clicks I might put /click/aff/company/tag and programmatically change the company name or the tag based on the page. (you can use php to do this).

Let’s say you want to track a click on an affiliate link on a particular page, you could do this if you were running Wordpress:

onClick='javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview("/click/affiliate/<?php echo $post->ID; ?>")'

which would resolve to:

onClick='javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview("/click/affiliate/XXXX")'

with XXXX as the ID of the post.

(remember, to run PHP in a post on Wordpress you’ll need to download a php execution plugin and turn off comments for security)

How do you review the data? Go into your Google Analytics and each of the clicks is considered a pageview. I review it by going to Content -> Top Content – View full Report and then searching on the term /click/. Advanced users of Analytics now recognize that you can start assigning goal values and whatnot but I generally avoid that because I don’t find that adds value.

How to Track Clicks with Google Analytics is a post from: wangarific

Is a favicon important?It’s not crucial to the success of your site but it’s always good to differentiate yourself from everyone else as much as possible. A favicon will appear in bookmarks, it will appear in aggregators, and in the end it really doesn’t take much time… so you mighta s well make it.

How do you make a favicon? If you have a site logo, you can use that, or try to find something distinguishable. A favicon is usually 16×16, 32×32, or 64×64 pixel image in the .ico format. You can use other formats but the .ico format is the most supported filetype.

After you’ve created the file, simply upload the favicon.ico (use that filename just to make it easy on yourself) to your root directory and many browsers will automatically pick it up. Internet Explorer will automatically load it.

Then, add this in the header of your website (this lets all the other browsers, the ones who don’t automatically load it, know where your favicon is):

<link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="http://www.website.com/myicon.ico"/>

That’s it, as easy as pie.

How to Make a Favicon is a post from: wangarific

The strategies mentioned in the article:

• The macaroon technique – where you sandwich the price of an item between two statements about its benefits. “Madam, this timepiece (or diamond or handbag) comes from our finest workshop [benefit] and it has a value of $10,000 [price]. If you buy it, your children are sure to enjoy it for generations to come [benefit].”
• Say value rather than price.
• Don’t offer a discount, offer gifts.
• Positively distract other members of the party so they don’t get bored and drag the group away (since the target customer of a high end watch is typically a man, the article discusses how to show a watch to his wife so she doesn’t get bored).

It’s a quick read too so it should only take you a few minutes to complete.

How to Sell Luxury Goods is a post from: wangarific

When you’re starting a blog, one of the first things that you’ll need to do after purchasing a domain name and setting up WordPress is to give your new website a design by choosing a WordPress theme. While most can probably agree that having a premium theme from the get-go isn’t essential (there are more important things like creating good content, testing and optimizing ads and promoting your site), I think most can agree that some premium themes will give you a leg up by giving you a superior look and feel, in addition to having more functionality available behind the scenes.

When I first started my blog at BibleMoneyMatters.com I was using a free template that I had found through one of the free WordPress theme websites. While the theme I chose was functional, it certainly didn’t give me the flexibility to make the kind of changes i wanted to, to take my site to the next level. After doing some research, I discovered a theme that did everything I wanted, and more. The Thesis WordPress Theme.

The Thesis WordPress Theme

Thesis Theme is a WordPress website framework that gives you a ton of flexibility to create the blog that you’ve always wanted. It gives great design, easily changeable layouts, optimized SEO (without the use of plugins) and a great support community.

Chris Pearson, designer of Thesis talks about why he designed the template:

I built the Thesis Theme because I wanted a framework that had it all—killer typography, a dynamically resizable layout, intelligent code, airtight optimization, and tons of flexibility. Now, after months of field testing, I’m confident enough to offer it to those of you who have come to expect nothing but the finest themes from me.

The theme definitely has those things and more. let’s look at a few of the reasons why I love the Thesis theme.

Superior Design And Backend Options

One of the first thing I noticed when looking around at themes is that so many of them try to do too much with the design, and become a bit too busy while not allowing you easy access to change things you don’t like. Thesis on the other hand has a nice clean design out of the box, has great readability, and if you like to tinker – is easy to customize to your own tastes. The Thesis back end tools allow you to change fonts, swap colors, update menus and change the complete layout of the site. You can have 1, 2 or 3 columns and order your columns however you want. Just about anything about your site that you might want to change, you can do it through the Thesis design and site options menus. If you’re a more advanced user, you can also customize your site further using CSS and PHP, which is made readily accessible through another menu option in the WordPress Dashboard. If you’re not as advanced there are hundreds of tutorials available that will walk you through more advanced changes.

SEO Optimized Site Framework

One of the great things about the Thesis theme is that it is search engine friendly out of the box. While WordPress sites in general do well with search engines, there are things you can do with your theme to help improve your SEO. For example, Thesis has the ability to specify each post’s title tags, keywords and meta tags without a plugin like All in One SEO Pack. Thesis also gives you the option to use canonical urls so that the search engines can index your content correctly. All of these things can be done with other plugins, but having them built into your theme is even better.

Easy Upgrades

One thing that sets Thesis above a lot of other themes is the fact that it is so easy to upgrade the theme when a new version comes out. To customize all you have to do is change two files, custom.css and custom_functions.php. If you’re upgrading the theme you just download the “custom” directory with those files in it, upgrade the theme, and then re-upload those files to the new version of the theme. Done. Upgrades only take a few minutes at most.

With a lot of other themes to make changes to your site design and layout you have to modify the theme’s core files. If you have to do an upgrade, you then have to figure out all the modifications you made to the theme’s core files, and then re-modify the theme once you’ve upgraded. That could take hours or days depending upon how many changes you’ve made to customize your site!

Support Community Second To None

One of the biggest selling points of the theme in my eyes is that it has a support community second to none. When you purchase the theme you get access to the member’s only forum where experts in Thesis are always ready to give a helping hand. In addition there are hundreds of Thesis tutorials out on the web that will help you do anything from change a background image to adding a header. If you’ve dreamed of doing something, someone else has already done it – and put out a tutorial on how it was done.

Thesis Theme Isn’t Perfect

As you can tell I’m a big fan of the Thesis theme, however, it does have its flaws. The theme does have a learning curve for newer users, especially if you want to do anything beyond the basic site changes. The theme uses what is called “hooks”, a framework that allows you to insert your own custom code or programming just about anywhere in your theme. If you want to use hooks, you’ll want to find a good tutorial on them, like the ones found on http://thesishooks.com/. Another downside of the theme is that if you don’t opt to customize your installation, the basic Thesis theme can have a pretty bland, vanilla look. So many people use the theme that your site can get lost in the shuffle if you don’t make changes.

Plugins To Make Thesis Even Better

While Thesis is great, it doesn’t address every need that users might have. Two plugins that I would suggest every new user of Thesis install once they buy the theme are:

• Thesis Openhooks: This plugin makes it easer for all users to use the hooks framework, and allows you to insert ads, text, graphics, etc anywhere in the theme that you want.
• Thesis Import/Export: This plugin allows you to export your Thesis theme and openhooks settings in case your site has a catastrophic failure and you need to re-import them from backup.

Conclusion

Since becoming a blogger I’ve tested out and installed countless themes on the websites that I operate. None of the themes, however, have come close to the Thesis Theme for WordPress when it comes to design options, optimized SEO, usability and flexibility. If you’re looking for a theme to use on your site, I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase your copy of the theme.

Thesis Theme Review is a post from: wangarific

While I have yet to see a news story about someone’s home being burglarized because a thief saw them check into a bar down the street, you know it will happen one day.

Be smart.

Please Rob Me (dot com) is a post from: wangarific

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.reddit.com/button.js?t=1"></script>

The cost of putting a button like this on a page is that it’s an extra javascript call to an external server. While the cost may seem minimal, it’s enough that you probably don’t want to put this type of button on every post in the hopes that someone clicks on it. If you just want a standard static reddit button, you can do this instead:

<a href="http://www.reddit.com/submit" onclick="window.location = 'http://www.reddit.com/submit?url=' + encodeURIComponent(window.location); return false"> <img src="http://www.reddit.com/static/spreddit7.gif" alt="submit to reddit" border="0" /> </a></script>

It’ll put something like this:

If you want to make it a bit faster, download the image and store it locally.

How to Add a Reddit Button to Your Site is a post from: wangarific