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20+ Beautiful Photo Slideshow Plugins for WordPress

pbu — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:01:16 +0000

I have been long time a fan of photo slideshows rather using photo gallery because it conserves so much space. It has really given me a lot of goose chase in search of some of the best available wordpress plugins to perform a photo slideshow in my blog. I decided to compile and document these hard to find plugins for wordpress developers like me.

Please note that most are free ones but few are only available under commercial by paying a small fee. Enjoy!

NextGEN Monoslideshow

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-monoslideshow/

The NextGEN gallery plugin for wordpress is a free photogallery plugin, but to perform slideshows you will need JW Imagerotator or Monoslideshow to perform smooth slide transitions with zoom effect. Both JW imagerotator and monoslideshow are commercial.

Smooth Slider

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smooth-slider/

Free Plugin to create featured slideshows in your wordpress blog. It the best i have seen and easy to customize.

SlideShow Plugin

http://bit.ly/djxzjo

Easy to use wordpress plugin to create professional slideshows for your blog. You just need to upload the images easy and specify the dimensions of the images to create the slideshow. It is COMMERCIAL.

Showtime Slideshow

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/showtime-slideshow/

This plugin displays slideshow on pictures attached to blog post or page. It also performs a zoom effect and amazingly simple to work with.

Vertical Scroll Slideshow

http://gopi.coolpage.biz/demo/2009/07/18/vertical-scroll-image-slideshow-gallery/

This plugin is a sidebar widget which can perform a veritical scrolling slideshow in your blog. it is FREE to download. If you want to perform scrolling horizontally, you can use the variant Horizontal Scroll Slideshow plugin

WP SuperSlider

http://wp-superslider.com/superslider/

Superslider is a an image slider plugin which uses javascript mooflow and highly configurable with custom animations.

SlideDeck

http://www.slidedeck.com/wordpress/

SlideDeck is very easy use fully featured slideshow plugin. It can insert slidedeck to your wordpress posts, pages or a theme template. It is commercial.

FlippingBook Gallery Plugin

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/page-flip-image-gallery/

A beautiful image slideshow plugin works just like flipping pages in a book. It is FREE to download.

DM Albums

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dm-albums/

A free wordpress plugin to showcase photo albums with thumbnails. It is meant to showcase photos and does not perform slideshows but it is worth looking at, because it is FREE.

WP Featured Content Slider

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-featured-content-slider/

WP Nivo Slider

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-nivo-slider/

This plugin runs a slider with post thumbnails in your posts for a particular category of your wordpress. It is free to download.

WP Cycle

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cycle/

Upload of images from the settings page and you can showcase photos with smooth transition and slideshow using jquery cycle option. This plugin is free.

Portfolio Slideshow

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/portfolio-slideshow/

This plugin inserts a slideshow of all image attachments on a post or page. It is powered by jquery cycle and is free to download.

Meteor Slides

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/meteor-slides/

Easy to use slideshow by adding a custom post type in your post. It is powered by jquery cycle and has over 20 transition styles.

Smooth Gallery

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smoothgallery/

Slideshow Gallery

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/slideshow-gallery/

JavaScript powered slideshow gallery to showcase featured content on your WordPress website. It can be customized according to the needs and FREE.

How to output parent and child categories in WordPress

pbu — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:36:12 +0000

If you have a category tree in your site and often you might be needing to output both child and parents in your category page template (ex: category.php or archive.php). It can be tweaked to work like as breadcrumbs.

I will show you a very easy way on how to output child and parent categories with just one line of code the wordpress has. Further this code can be also placed outside the post loop.

echo(get_category_parents($cat, TRUE, ' » '));
echo(get_category_parents($cat, TRUE, ' '));
echo(get_category_parents($cat, FALSE, ' , '));

This will output

Internet » Blogging » WordPress »
Internet Blogging WordPress
Internet , Blogging , WordPress ,

depending on the current category name.

You can also change the separator intead of raquo you can use a blank space or commas to format the output. If you specify false, it will not print links.

Paypal Nightmare for Indians 2nd time! No bank withdrawals from August

pbu — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:54:56 +0000

The paypal nightmare never seems to end for Indian paypal users. You must have probably received the email by now, paypal notifying all indians of temporarily suspending ALL indian bank withdrawals andthe option is only available by check! This is the 2nd this is happening this year and indian freelancers are caught offguard.

The good news is indians can withdraw by check from Aug 1, 2010
The bad news is indians cannot withdraw electronically to bank accounts.

The most worrying fact is checks are only sent by ordinary mail and not even courier. You have no way of tracking the check and very often cheques sent to India takes 15-20 days to arrive and The chances of getting checks lost is truly worrisome!

The indian paypal users were asked to follow for updates in this paypal page – http://www.paypal-apac.com/india/ which explains check withdrawal process.

Further, on the same page if you look carefully paypal says that any funds received from export/import of services, you may not use it for purchase or payment.

On the wee hours of early morning, i and most indians received this email from paypal

Dear xxxx,

In accordance with regulatory instructions, we would like to notify you about a change in our withdrawal functionality in India starting on August 1, 2010. At present you can request for either an electronic or cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account if you are an India user.

From July 29, 2010 onwards, you will only be able to request for a cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account.

While we are working hard to restore the electronic withdrawal service, in the meantime, we are bringing this matter to your attention so that you can plan your future withdrawal activities accordingly.

To request for a cheque withdrawal:

Log into your PayPal account, click on ‘Withdraw’.

Click on the ‘Request a cheque from PayPal’ link.

Enter the withdrawal amount and select your mailing address, then click ‘Continue’.

Click ‘Submit’ to confirm your request.

In order to help you with this change and until further notice, we will refund the $5 USD cheque withdrawal fee to you for cheque withdrawals made on July 29, 2010 onwards.

For any questions, please log into your PayPal account and click ‘Contact Us’ at the bottom of the page.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused from this change in our withdrawal functionality. We will provide ongoing updates to you here. We thank you for your attention and patience as we work tirelessly to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.
Thank you,

The PayPal Asia Team

There is also an update posted on thepaypalblog.com

Finally problem SOLVED

How to upload/download files with FTP in linux commandline

pbu — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:27:52 +0000

Most linux system administrators prefer to use commandline for most of the time and i have always struggled to use ftp commands to upload and download backup tar gz files. That is why i decided to post it here. I know how important it is to know these commands in crucial disaster situations and you may feel handy with these.

It is very simple and just follow below on how to upload and download files from FTP server to your local host.

1. Just enter ftp and your hostname or IP in the linux command line. You will be asked to enter user name and password.

> ftp xx.xx.xx
Connected to xxxxxxx.
220 FTP server ready.

Name (xxxx:root): xxxx
331 Password required for xxx.
Password:
230 User xxx logged in, access restrictions apply.

Then

List files: ftp > ls

(2) Remember you should change to BINARY mode if you want to transfer files other than text files. Command to change to BINARY mode.

ftp> binary

(3) To upload a file use put and to upload multiple files use mput. Dont forget to change the destination directory.

ftp > cd testdir
ftp > put backup.tar.gz
ftp> mput backup*

(4) To download a file from your FTP server locally, just use get and mget command.

ftp > cd testdir
ftp > get backup.tar.gz
ftp> mget backup*

To close ftp shell, just type bye and it will close.

If you are having problems, transferring a file make sure that you have not blocked the FTP port 21 with the firewall.

HDFC bank online payments not working!

pbu — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:58:30 +0000

Has anybody noticed this issue with hdfc netbanking?

i have been quietly noticing this for the past 2 months and i am unable to use hdfc netbanking to make bill payments online.

i regularly make bill payments online from my hdfc bank account to airtel, tata indicom, vodafone and now all i see hdfc netbanking option missing or i get the error not supported this time. I really dont know what the problem with the bank i just hope that it will get fixed very soon.

Fix ->Nexgen Slideshow not working with imagerotator.swf

pbu — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:06:51 +0000

The slideshow of NexGen Gallery plugin never really worked no matter how many times i followed the installation procedure. i downloaded and placed the imagerotator.swf in wp-content/uploads folder and the plugin kept on throwing this error with everything seems ok. i did use the latest version of the plugin and wordpress.

The path to imagerotator.swf is not defined, the slideshow will not work.
If you would like to use the JW Image Rotatator, please download the player here and upload it to your Upload folder (Default is wp-content/uploads).

Added to the frustration, the javascript wasnt working properly in firefox and i keep seeing the blank page both in General options and in Slideshow menu. i used another older browsers like IE to see through the contents.

Here is how you can Fix:

1. First download the imagerotator.swf file here and upload to wp-content/uploads folder.

2. Go to NexGen options > Slideshow. If firefox shows you blank page or the contents will not load, use an older browser to get the page to load somehow. Then press search now button. Thats it. The plugin will be able to automatically update the path of the file and your slideshow should work.

WordPress query posts with tags not working!

pbu — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:16:59 +0000

i have been struggling with querying posts using tags and have found no solutions whatsovever. My idea is to query all wordpress posts having the same tags using query_posts and this just not working and giving weird results

query_posts('cat=-53&tag=best php scripts');
query_posts('cat=-53&tag=best+php+scripts');
query_posts('tag=best,php,scripts');

and tried every combination and it seems to be issue with wordpress 3+ version. Combining with categories also not working.

I have also tried using this code in the single.php page by retrieving tags and querying for posts. It also doesnt work.

$tags =  get_the_tags($post->ID);  

 if ($tags) {
 foreach($tags as $tag) {
 $tag = $tag->name . '';
 }
 }
query_posts('cat=-53&tag='.$tag.'');

Still havnt found any solution for this myself.

GD star rating issue replacing default 0 value

pbu — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:41:53 +0000

I was working on a wordpress review project and was so fascinated with the GD star rating plugin and i felt one real aspect missing. When a rating or review was not given in the post, the default it shows as zero. i want those posts which are not reviewed should be shown as N/A instead of zero. i found absolutely no way to change this and there no option for this in the settings page.

The gd rating plugin is called programmatically in my category.php theme template and i was able to get around the problem by checking the category name in the category template. I created a new category to place all the posts which needed N/A rating and then check category before outputting the review rating.

if (in_category('46')) {
echo "N/A";
 } else {
 if(function_exists('wp_gdsr_render_review')) {
wp_gdsr_render_review(0, 45);  }

}

In the above example, 46 is the category name where i secluded all posts and the 45 is the gd star rating T2 template number.

Eclipse IDE loading slow?

pbu — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 10:29:22 +0000

There has been a lot of talk on the Web regarding the Eclipse IDE which is regarded as the best editor and IDE for PHP and javascript development and other languages including.

i did give a try on the the new kit and later realized that the latest version of Java JRE is needed to run eclipse. Unfortunately, despite my machine having core2duo processor and 2GB ram i find the editor loading really slow and i find it difficult to open the editor every time to edit a php file. The eclipse IDE is really fun to work with and this slow loading is the only downside.

Despite being a programmer and developer, i am fan of lightweight and fast loading IDEs and there are so many around, which can be downloaded free – see: http://free-php-editor.com.

Of all the IDEs, i think Notepad++ and Netbeans are the best i have seen.

Neverthless, eclipse is fun to work with!

Importing Paypal Transaction History for TAX Purposes

pbu — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:56:41 +0000

Tax season is eventually upon us and many persons earning online, including freelancers and bloggers are required to report and pay taxes to their home countries every year. This includes declaring income received with paypal. You will be asked for source of funds by bank or tax authorities in your country and the paypal transaction history will be a definite proof of source of income for your legitimate earnings.

If you are doing hundreds or thousands of transaction payments in your paypal account and you might be wondering how it is possible search and print all paypal receipts received through email. Fortunately payal makes it easy everything for us through the Download history page and the datasets can be downloaded in PDF or in CSV excel data, just like a balance sheet. You have to print these data in long sheets of paper (landscape mode) and show it to your tax authorities.

(i) Login to Paypal > My Account Download History >

Important: Be sure not to omit fields like note and subject as these fields contain vital information from the buyer on the product or service you sell. This will prove that you are not receiving this money as personal payment or money transaction. In many countries like India, you are not allowed to receive personal payments through paypal.

One other note, when you receive payment from a sender, ask them to not to send it as blank payment and ask them to include a note (ex. Web hosting fee, Logo design fee) along with the payment. This will help in the long run if are questioned by paypal on the nature of transaction.

It is advisable to consult a tax expert CPA or lawyer in your country to seek qualified expert advice on tax laws and reduce tax liability.