ROCKFUSE » Tricks & Tweaks http://www.rockfuse.com/blog Tips and Resources for Bloggers, Internet Marketers and Entrepreneurs Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:27:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 How to create a simple Contact Form with Google Docs http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-create-a-simple-contact-form-with-google-docs http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-create-a-simple-contact-form-with-google-docs#comments Mon, 18 May 2009 19:23:31 +0000 admin http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/?p=755 Today, we will look into creating a simple contact form using Google Docs. The submitted results of the Contact Form will be stored in an excel file and we will also apply notification settings to make sure that you get notified by e-mail whenever someone submits some info through the form.

Step 1: Go to Google Docs and create a new form by selecting New > Form.

new-form

Step 2: Play around with the template that you’re presented with and create all the fields adn configure them for data validation.

edit-form

Step 3: After building the form, go to More Actions > Edit Confirmation and review and edit (if necessary) the confirmation message that is displayed to the user after submitting the form.

edit-conf

Step 4: Decide where you want to put the contact form. You can let Google Docs host that contact form for you by linking to the published form. You can find that link right at the end of the form building page.

link-all

Or else, you can have the contact form right within one of your pages. For this, you will have to copy/paste the embedding code. Simple go to More Actions > Embed and copy/paste the code supplied.

Step 5: Finally, to be notified whenever someone submits the form, simply go to See Responses > Spreadsheets. And now, it will present you with the spreadsheet it will store your results in. And while you’re in the spreadsheet, go to Tools > Notification Rules and edit the settings accordingly so that a mail is sent whenever the spreadsheet is edited (i.e. the form is submitted)

noti-mail

That’s pretty much it. And this is not only limited to contact forms. You can basically create any sort of a form like this and use it within few minutes of being created. If you want to see the live form which I created for this tutorial, just click here.

save

save

save


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]]> http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-create-a-simple-contact-form-with-google-docs/feed 6 Get your Google Analytics traffic reports by E-mail http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/get-your-google-analytics-traffic-reports-by-e-mail http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/get-your-google-analytics-traffic-reports-by-e-mail#comments Thu, 14 May 2009 07:22:49 +0000 admin http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/?p=745 If you’re managing more than half a dozen of web sites, it’s typical that you forget keeping track of your site stats from time to time. Well, if you’re using Google Analytics, there’s a cool option that enables you to send you scheduled reports from time to time, right to your inbox, which eliminates the need for you to log in and analyze stats online. So, if you tend to forget to check your stats from time to time to see how well your site is performing, you can schedule those traffic reports to come knocking at your door, as frequently as you like.

Just go to the report that you want to get mailed, (whether preset or custom, doesn’t matter). And look for the “E-mail button on the top left. (See screenshot)

ga-mail

And thereafter, you can select “Schedule” from the tab and specify when you want to your scheduled reports to arrive.


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]]> http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/get-your-google-analytics-traffic-reports-by-e-mail/feed 6 Google Sets and it’s freaky AI prediction capabilities http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/google-sets-and-its-freaky-ai-prediction-capabilities http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/google-sets-and-its-freaky-ai-prediction-capabilities#comments Tue, 12 May 2009 15:00:29 +0000 admin http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/?p=734 Wow! Google is much smarter than what we most of us people give it credit for. Although it might be hard for the typical user to figure out Google’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) capacity though everyday searches, you might want to check out Google Sets.

I was having fun with it the other day, so I though I might share it with you guys here.

Now, Google Sets, as Google Claims, is able to take a few inputs from a user and make a list accordingly, accurately predicting the list items that are likely to come after it. Well, of course, this works on simple stuff. Like when I input Dog, Cat and Cow, it would probably give me back Bear, Rabbit, Frog, Duck.

dogcat

(Click to enlarge)

But, let’s push it a bit further. If it’s actually cutting edge, then this thing should be able to learn from what it’s fed and not just stick to algorithms. In other words, a list of animals is not uncommon to predict. To us earthlings, it’s kinda universal. But what about., hmm… LOST? Can Google predict something like the characters in a TV show?

lost

(Click to enlarge)

Guess, it can!

And finally, something really specific? Google can learn aboutthings that are pretty popular with relative ease. Like a Hit TV series or animals. But what about a list of tv channels in a little country called Sri Lanka (where I am) that absolutely has little or no international web presence whatsoever?

tvsrilanka

(Click to enlarge)

Most of you might not know the correlations between the predictions and the inputs for Sri Lanka TV stations, but take it from me, they are very accurate!

I guess it’s safe for me to say that Google already uses these techniques in optimizing it’s user experience, only in a level that we don’t tend to see. For an example, ona search for “Viagra”, an article from “How Stuff Works” has the 6th position. Now, if manipulating a search engine is what SEO does, I’d think that it doesn’t affect Google much because there are plently on other people wanting to sell viagra, placed after “How Stuff Works” on this result, necessarily spending thousands of dollars per year, trying to get into the first page.

Google Sets would not mean that SEO is dying, but it would mean that Google is getting smarter and getting increasingly harder to manipulate. After all, manipulation is what SEO does.

Just something to think about…


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]]> http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/google-sets-and-its-freaky-ai-prediction-capabilities/feed 1 How to make your blog load faster – PART 2 – Optimizing CSS, JavaScript and Images http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-make-your-blog-load-faster-part-2-optimizing-css-javascript-and-images http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-make-your-blog-load-faster-part-2-optimizing-css-javascript-and-images#comments Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:00:24 +0000 admin http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-make-your-blog-load-faster-part-2-optimizing-css-javascript-and-images How to make your blog load faster - PART 2 - Optimizing CSS, JavaScript and Images In the earlier post, we discussed how we can find the troublesome areas by using Firebug and YSlow. So, when are we actually going to do anything about it? Here’s the scoop on certain methods that can really give you a real performance boost.

Before going any further, I must state that it is extremely necessary you back your files up in case something goes wrong.

Compressing JavaScript

If you’re loading JavaScript file in your plugins – or maybe whole libraries, it would take your blog an awful lot of time to load everything. Certainly, the easiest thing would be to let go of certain JavaScript files if you don’t need them. But that’s not really going to work for the ones that you absolutely need right? In the earlier post when you were exploring your components, you might not have had the birds-eye view unless you played around the ‘net’ tab of Yslow.

How to make your blog load faster - PART 2 - Optimizing CSS, JavaScript and Images

This tab tells you everything about the different components in your blog and their loading times. Images, JavaScript files and CSS files, you name it!

Alright, at this moment, we can actually compress the JavaScript files that are taking a whole lot of time to download, to cut down on the loading time. What we do is, we get the appropriate file from your blog’s installation directory, copy the whole text in the file, and input it into a JavaScript Compressor.

After the compression, copy the compressed text out and replace the uncompressed(original) JavaScript code in the file – which will make the file size shrink. You don’t need to worry – it’s the same code, presented in a different manner, and nothing can go wrong with your blog.

Compressing CSS

The same goes for CSS file. Do you know that all the comments and the whitespaces in your CSS can add an unwanted weight to your loading time?

So, what we’re going to do is remove all the unwanted clutter from your theme/plugin CSS. Like before, you can bring up the ‘net’ tab and hunt down the CSS files with large ‘bars’. After you seek them out, do the same thing that you did to JavaScript files, only now, you’ll be using a CSS Compressor. This handy tool will shrink your CSS down dramatically.

As before, it’s the same CSS code, presented differently.

Optimizing the Images

One of the best ways to cut down the response time of your blog is to shrink the images down a bit. There are a couple of ways in which you can achieve this. But before we start it off, you should know when to use different image types, namely, JPEG, GIF and PNG.

  • If you’re saving an image that has sharper qualities, such as solid color text on a solid color background (without any smooth shades of color or gradients), use GIF.
  • If you’re having images with gradients and lots of shading variants – such as glows, shadows, blurs, use JPEG.
  • If you’re having a mix of these two, use PNG. PNG seems to work fine with both of them.

To optimize your images, it would be best if you can get your hands on a copy of the Adobe Photoshop. The latest version is CS3, but anything above 7.0 should do for the optimizations. Simply open you image and go to “File > Save for Web” or “Save for Web and Devices”. It’s pretty easy to figure out what you should do thereafter since it’ll give you a few optimization options and live previews.

If not, the easiest thing to do is go for an Online Image Optimizer. You wouldn’t get everything that Photoshop has to offer, but it still beats the un-optimized images. Input the image, and it will give you few previews and the sizes of optimized images with preset settings.

How to make your blog load faster - PART 2 - Optimizing CSS, JavaScript and Images

So, I guess that brings closure to our two part series on “How to make your blog load faster”. I know that this had been a rather geeky how-to series, so if you need any assistance anywhere, just shoot me a mail or a comment and I’ll try my best to help you out.


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]]> http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-make-your-blog-load-faster-part-2-optimizing-css-javascript-and-images/feed 7 How to make your blog load faster – PART 1 – Using Firebug and YSlow http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-make-your-blog-load-faster-part-1-using-firebug-and-yslow http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-make-your-blog-load-faster-part-1-using-firebug-and-yslow#comments Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:05:42 +0000 admin http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-make-your-blog-load-faster-part-1-using-firebug-and-yslow 2151959274_15d689978b_m copy Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot from my readers that the blog loaded slowly. Personally, I blamed it on me having to make every design look like the work of Picasso – but as I dug deeper, I found many more things that I could have simply changed/removed to make it load faster.

So, this series is made up of my own experiences in doing what I can to have a faster loading blog. Since there’s a lot to tell and explain, I’d break this topic down to parts.

Hunting down the problematic areas with Firebug and YSlow

There’s no point in hitting the nail where it has not need of it right? So, first, we need to identify exactly what is wrong with your pages and what’s slowing them down before fixing them. For this purpose, the coolest method lies in a Firefox add-on called Firebug and it’s extension – named YSlow.

Firebug is widely used by web developers to pick apart web pages and to get into the core of them. You can install the Firebug plugin here.

After that, you will need to install the YSlow extension for Firebug, developed by the Yahoo Developer Network. This will be the exact tool we’ll be playing around today and together, they will tell you exactly why your pages are loading slowly(if they are slow that is) and what to do about it.

After you’ve installed firebug and YSlow, you’re ready to roll!

You will be able to see a YSlow tab appearing on the status bar of your Firefox browser. Simply navigate to your blog, and click the YSlow tab, which will bring-up a small window at the bottom of the screen, and inspect your page components.

checkingcomponents

After that inspection, it will bring up this summary of a few recommendations that you can do to improve you page loading times, and it will give you a grading with it.

aftercheck

As you can see, I have a performance grade of F(25). Don’t worry – if you’re running a wordpress blog, it’s really hard to get a grading above F, mainly because we bloggers tend to use a lot of tools and elements in our blogs that use CSS an JavaScript extensively. Ajax plugins virtually kill your performance and so does private advertising:) (I’ll explain later)

If you click on the recommendations, you can bring up a new window from the Yahoo! Developer Network giving you advice on how you can improve these troubled areas. Read them I say. But the thing is you would not be able to much about most of them since there are some pretty advanced and ‘premium’ methods recommended there. But, you can always go ahead and do what you can – like putting your JavaScript at the bottom of the theme pages and Moving your CSS a bit upwards. They will give you a few performance boosts depending on how extensively you use them.

If you are an experienced webmaster, you can probably gain a lot more from the recommendations. But, not to worry – in the next posts, we will discuss how you can harness much more performance boosts with simple but effective methods., derived from these recommendations.


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]]> http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-to-make-your-blog-load-faster-part-1-using-firebug-and-yslow/feed 5 How you can fire up your blog with Ajax http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-you-can-fire-up-your-blog-with-ajax http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-you-can-fire-up-your-blog-with-ajax#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:30:21 +0000 admin http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/how-you-can-fire-up-your-blog-with-ajax ajax_wordpress_logo_220x120 Not really sure what (not who) Ajax is? Quoting Wikipedia:

Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), or AJAX, is a group of interrelated web development techniques used for creating interactive web applications or rich Internet applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. Data is retrieved using the XMLHttpRequest object or through the use of Remote Scripting in browsers that do not support it. Despite the name, the use of JavaScript, XML, and asynchrony is not required.

Alright! Still not sure what it means? Let’s just say that it’s a really cool technology that allows people like you and me to do magical things, that are still a bit uncommon within the blog communities.

Ajax is very powerful, but to code it down to meet our various requirements require a significant amount of Ajax know-how. So, today, I’d like to feature a plugin which enables to incorporate various Ajax snippets to your blog without you ever having to know anything about Ajax – Ajaxed WP Wordpress Plugin.

screenshot-3-150x150I’ve seamlessly integrated some Ajax features to this blog, to ensure the smooth flow of ’stuff’. But everyone of these features were just put into place by the Ajaxed WP Plugin. So without telling you what this plugin is capable of and re-writing it’s documentation, let me tell you what it did for me, and what it can do for you.

  • Post Excerpts: You may have noticed that in the blog’s homepage only the excerpts of the posts are shown. Usually, with Wordpress, this requires the use of ‘more’ tags. But with Ajaxed WP, this can be automated, and you can display any number of fixed words, without cutting single sentences in half.
  • Threaded Comments: This helps me reply to reader comments then and there rather than posting up comments below and addressing them altogether with a single comment.
  • Enhanced comment box: Ajaxed WP gives me a rich text editor to enhance the reader comments. When posting comments, commentators can use similes and etc to give their comments some personality.
  • Comment preview: Let’s the users see their comment preview live, before posting it.
  • Hide/Show comments at will: Allows you to hide or show comments in the comments section as you please.

screenshot-4-150x150Except for those ones I use here,

  • Built in Cache: Since Ajax uses a significant amount of resources, it may significantly affect your server load. Not to worry, the built in cache will give your server some breathing space!
  • Protect tags: Protects code, blockquote and pre blocks from being included in the word and paragraph counts, so they aren’t trimmed.
  • Ajax & Effects: Give your blog some lively transition effects, for you readers to feast their eyes on.

So, I believe these listed features and give you a birds-eye view of what this powerful plugin is capable of. Mind you, there are many other functions that I couldn’t mention. So, feel free to download this plugin and experiment. It’s too cool to be missed!


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