Entries from March 2007 ↓

Many a time, the Windows XP ARP cache becomes corrupt and needs to be cleared. The first symptom which points to a corrupt ARP cache is that connections to web pages will time out and fail.

Occasionally, clearing the ARP cache will fail due to a bug in Microsoft Windows XP. When you try to use Microsoft Windows to repair the network connection, you will receive an error message that says:

Windows could not finish repairing the problem because the following operation could not be completed:

Clearing the ARP cache
For assistance, contact the person who manages your network.

How To Solve The “Unable to repair ARP cache” bug in Windows XP

This bug occurs when Routing and Remote Access service of Windows XP is enabled. Routing and Remote Access service is almost unnecessary and can be turned off.

To disable Routing and Remote Access service:

• Click on the “Start” button.
• Click the “Run” button.
• Type “services.msc” and hit Enter.
• Scroll down to “Routing and Remote Access” under the “Name column”.
• Double-click “Routing and Remote Access”.
• Set the “Startup Type” to “Disabled”.
• Also make sure the service status is Stopped. If it is not Stopped, click the “Stop” button.
• Click the “OK” button.
• Close the services window.

Try clearing the ARP cache again. It will complete with no error messages.

Requirements

• A Wordpress Blog
• Lots of friend bloggers and favorite websites
• Wish to share the above addresses with your readers

End Result

• A extra large sidebar with no more space to keep other items

Do you have similar requirements? Then this post is just for you.

So what is the solution to the above problem. Simple, just move the links to a separate page so that the sidebar becomes free. Though you can create a page in Wordpress and manually add links to it, by doing that you will not be able to use the the inbuilt Blogroll management functionalities in Wordpress.

So the best solution will be to create a page which automatically grabs the links from Wordpress Blogroll, something like my Links page. This will also enable you to use the Blogroll management feature from within the Wordpress dashboard.

How to create a links page in Wordpress

1. First, you need to create a links page template. For that download the archives.php file of your template to your computer.
2. Open it in Wordpad or any other text editor of your choice. It will look something like below.
   

   <?php
   /*
   Template Name: Archives
   */
   ?><?php get_header(); ?><div id=”content”><h1>Browse the Archives</h1>
   <div class=”post”>
   <p>By Date:</p>
   <ul>
   <?php wp_get_archives(’type=monthly’); ?>
   </ul>
   <p>By Category:</p>
   <ul>
   <?php list_cats(); ?>
   </ul>
   </div>
   </div><?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebarRight.php’); ?>
   <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebarleft.php’); ?>
   <?php get_footer(); ?>

3. Now edit that file to look like below.
   

   <?php
   /*
   Template Name: Links
   */
   ?>
   <?php get_header(); ?><div id=”content”><h1>Links</h1>
   <div class=”post”>
   <ul>
   <?php wp_list_bookmarks(’arguments’); ?>
   </ul>
   </div>
   </div>
   <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebarRight.php’); ?>
   <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebarleft.php’); ?>
   <?php get_footer(); ?>
   </ol>

   What I did was replaced everything that was inside the <div class=”post> and </div> tags with
   <ul>
   <?php wp_list_bookmarks(’arguments’); ?>
   </ul>.
   Also I changed the the template name in the third line from Archives to Links and edited the page title inside the <h1> and </h1> tags from “Browse the Archives” to “Links”.

4. Now save the edited file as links.php and upload the file to the location from where you downloaded the archives.php file.
5. All set, now go to your Wordpress Dashboard —> Write —> Write Page. Fill in the “Page Title” as “Links” and then select the “Page Template” on the right hand side as “Links”.
6. Click “Publish”.
7. Now visit your blog to see a all new “Links” page with all links pulled straight from your Blogroll.

Now you can make your sidebar free of that extra long blogroll and utilize it for something else.

In case of any difficulties, drop me a comment..

A website or a blog can usually be accessed either through http://www.url.com or through http://url.com. Most people do not think there is any difference between the two as both of them always direct to the same place.

But search engines see the two addresses as two different sites. This can harm your blog’s ranking in search engines in the future. For example, the number of incoming links to your blog is one of the parameters used in calculating the Google Page Rank of your blog. And some people link to your domain with the www prefix while some link without the www prefix. This leads to the same blog having different number of backlinks for the domain with the www prefix and the domain without the www prefix and hence different Page Ranks for both.

Practically, I do not think there is any advantage whether or not you use www in your domain name. But the point is you need to pick up one and stick to it. It will help your blog in the search engine rankings in the long run. Normally what you need to do is edit your .htaccess file so that all links get redirected to either the domain with the www prefix or the domain without the www prefix.

But Wordpress users are at ease, there is a plugin for doing that.

How to solve the www problem in Wordpress Blogs ?

What is the need to fiddle with .htaccess when there is a plugin for setting your www preference. The plugin is WWW Redirect.

The continuous plague of several pages being indexed using numerous variations of the same domain name has definitely been experienced by most of us. In an attempt to remedy this extremely aggravating issue; WWW-Redirect was born. WWW - redirect allows users to opt for different redirect settings. This plugin allows bloggers to have more control over the uri in which their users access their blog. By doing so, you’re giving search engines and users a consistent link for accessing your content.

In simple words, what this plugin does is that it directs all traffic from http://manast.com to http://www.manast.com or vice versa according to the preferences you have set.

Update : As Harsh points out in the comments, you can also set your preferences in Google Webmaster tools as to whether or not, you want the www to be prefixed to your domain name in Google’s search index.

Download WWW Redirect Plugin

By default, the search function in Wordpress searches only inside the post body not the comments. This in my opinion, is a serious limitation as comments are a valuable part of a blog. Also sometimes there are very useful comments in some posts which are helpful to a visitor.

Wordpress plugin “Search Everything” attempts to eliminate this loss of functionality in Wordpress.

This plugin enables the searching of Pages, Comments and more. No Hacking or modifications necessary, just upload the downloaded folder to your wp-content/plugins directory, make sure to activate the plugin and then configure it under Options > Search Everything.

Apart from comments, there are also options to search pages, attachments, drafts,  and custom fields (metadata). To install this plugin, just extract and upload to your plugins directory. Then go to your Wordpress dashboard and activate the plugin.

Now in your dashboard, go to Options —-> Search Everything. Configure what pages you want the plugin to search and save your options. Now the search box in your blog will search inside comments and other things you set in your options.

Download Search Everything Wordpress Plugin 

Got a blog on Blogger.com and now want to shift to a new domain ? But fear you will lose your readers.

To ensure that you do not lose your readers during the transition, simply create a redirect from your Blogger blog so that every time a visitor visits your old blog, he will get redirected to your new blog. This way they will get informed of the address / URL change.

How To Create a 301 Redirect in Blogger

1. Log in to your Blogger account.
2. Go to the Template of the blog you want to redirect your visitors from.
3. Paste this code

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://newurl.com">

in between the <head> and </head> tags.
4. Replace http://newurl.com by the URL you want to redirect your visitors to.

That is it. Save your template. Now everytime someone visits your old blog, they will automatically be redirected to your new blog.

Bonus Tip : This will also help your new blog get indexed by search engines quickly.