By default, WordPress text widget only allows to execute the HTML code. If somehow you need to run PHP code in the text widget, you would have to add below snippet of code to your theme’s functions.php file – There are no other settings required. After you have put below code in functions.php file of your theme, the PHP code in the text widget would run automatically.

// Run php in text widget
add_filter('widget_text','execute_php',100);
function execute_php($html){
 if(strpos($html,"<"."?php")!==false){
 ob_start();
 eval("?".">".$html);
 $html=ob_get_contents();
 ob_end_clean();
 }
 return $html;
}

Lately I have been learning a lot of CSS stuff, because I prefer to use ‘pure’ CSS whenever possible instead of images. Indeed this blog is also a place for me to share whatever I learn ;}. Today I learned how to create pure CSS speech bubble without the use of any image thanks to Konigi. It’s a simple CSS trick that uses :after pseudo-class in addition to usual border-radius and box-shadow commands.

So here is the CSS code.

.bubble {
position: relative;
background-color:#eee;
margin: 0;
padding:10px;
text-align:center;
width:180px;
-moz-border-radius:10px;
-webkit-border-radius:10px;
-webkit-box-shadow: 0px 0 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
-moz-box-shadow: 0px 0 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
box-shadow: 0px 0 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
}

.bubble:after {
position: absolute;
display: block;
content: "";
border-color: #eee transparent transparent transparent;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 10px;
height:0;
width:0;
position:absolute;
bottom:-19px;
left:1em;
}

And Below is the HTML Code to trigger the above CSS code.

<div class="bubble">This is the text of speech bubble</div>
<p style="margin-left: 1em;">Your name</p>

Below is the screenshot how should it look like.

Live Demo Download code

Shouldn’t these measures have been taken years ago, or from the day one? – Back in 2004 barely anyone knew what blogging is, let alone, could figure how to make money out of it. There were a few bloggers, who even back then had no clue that blogging could replace their day job, and help them make far more than they used to make in 9-5 Jobs.

I have personally attended several meet-ups arranged by local Google staff. To encourage people to get into blogging for  money and start making money instantly of course through Google Adsense, and If you remember Google Adsense was quite ‘lenient’ back then, It would even tolerate MFA websites . However it was 3-5 years back.

Things now have changed quite a lot, now there is barely anything we hear from Google staff here in regard to getting into ‘pro-blogging’ or blogging for money.

I guess experienced webmasters or bloggers would understand my point, that it was a game. It was a game to get people into  ’content creation’ for the Google Index. Since Google itself does not create the content, hence it encouraged people to get into ‘content creation’ it also facilitated content creation (through its Blogger service and also favoring low quality sites with good amount of SERP traffic) and making money out of it. Even Low quality sites used to rank higher. I have experimented myself, with a low quality site targeting high traffic keywords and used to make $5000 a month. And I wasn’t alone. I at least know over 1000 persons who were doing it, and were making good money just through SERP traffic and targeting high traffic keywords, Although their and mine site did lack quality content, yet Google overlooked it ‘intentionally’. Because at that time Google aim was to encourage content creation to possibly fill its ‘unfilled’ index. When I meant unfilled it refers to technical or very very specific search queries. I guess ‘precise content’ did lack back in early 2000 for very specific or very technical queries, I’d try to cover it in another article through detailed analysis.

Later they knew they could easily filter out the Junk/spam/low quality content, once the Index was full to its brinks. This is what Panda update was aimed for. It’s just not a coincident that following Panda update, I barely hear anything from Google staff here, who would arrange meet-ups once in a couple of months to get people into ‘blogging for money’ or in other words, ‘content creation’. I do approve all these measures, being taken by Google to ensure the quality in SERP and discourage low quality content. However it’s just not as simple as it might look like.

So that was Google’s Game. Google 1 Webmasters 0

However the recent, blogpost from Google’s Webmasters blog has a totally different view on above the fold ads. Which sums up that placing too many ads above the fold will penalize your site ranking in search results now on. Which is pretty good. As currently too many ads above the fold is the major reason why people install Adblock Google Chrome or Firefox extension.

However, my disagreement is over the tips communicated by Adsense to its users. Does Google Webmaster team (esp., Matt Cutts) really read Adsense tips? Because they are contradictory to Google’s Webmasters tips, that are often communicated by Matt Cutts. I’d sincerely suggest to Matt Cutts to say Hello to their fellow googlers at Adsense to find out what kind of tips they have been emailing to users.

There is a known bug, which displays Internal Error, when installing Google Chrome on Ubuntu 11.10 – Apparently this bug was fixed, I was able to install Chrome with and without encountering this bug. As I installed the Ubuntu 11.10 at least five times in the last couple of days using WUBI.

Bug Description:

Double-clicking the latest version of Google’s Chrome .deb file (x64) results in Software Center (eventually) loading and displaying the following:

Internal Error
The file “/home/…/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb” could not be opened.

Fix:

Fix is quite easy, simply run below commands from the terminal. (You can launch terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+T)

 sudo dpkg -i googlechromeamd64.deb

(replace googlechromeamd64.deb with whatever version of Google chrome you downloaded) and make sure you are in the directory where you downloaded Chrome deb file, most likely it would be your downloads folder. Since you have to run this command as an admin, you would need to enter your password for your account too before it proceeds.

next run this command in the same folder

 sudo apt-get -f install 

This would fix the dependencies that Google Chrome requires. Hope this fixes the bug for you, as it did work for me.

Edit: The OS Updates after installing the Ubuntu 11.10 also fixed this bug. If you are going to run a Fresh Install of Ubuntu 11.10 I’d recommend first run the Software Updates before installing any other App.

FastCGI is now enabled by default on Dreamhost right?. But It does not mean it’s rendering the pages for your WordPress blog automatically. In order to get FastCGI to render pages for your WordPress site on Dreamhost you have to make below changes to your .htaccess file and create a .fcgi script. It’s little time consuming. But hey! it worths the efforts. Because it has decreased the memory load on my PS server by 70%. I am using the exact below configuration and I am using it on Dreamhost VPS and I guess it should work for all the sites hosted on Dreamhost provided FastCGI is enabled on their Domain.

Step.1 Create .fcgi script called ‘ dispatch.fcgi ‘ and put below lines of code in it.

#!/bin/sh
exec /dh/cgi-system/php5.cgi

Step 2. Upload this file (dispatch.fcgi) in the root of your domain or where you site is hosted or where .htaccess file for your domain resides.

Step 3. Put below lines of code at the beginning of your .htaccess file in the root of your domain and upload it after making the edits.

AddHandler fastcgi-script fcg fcgi fpl
AddHandler php5-fastcgi .php
Action php5-fastcgi /dispatch.fcgi

That’s all. You should have FastCGI enabled for your WordPress site hosted on Dreamhost. below is btw, the screenshot of my VPS showing decrease in memory usage.

It’s been a while since I reviewed any service. Anyway, today I am gonna review a very aspiring Advertising Network, Yoggrt. It’s a new One-Ad-per-Page (I am a Publisher and a Customer of Buysellads, However this post isn’t motivated by any incentive, it’s purely out of my love for them) service by popular Advertising network Buysellads, If you’re a professional advertiser and blogger I am pretty sure that you already know them and perhaps signed up for it too.

Yoggrt for Advertisers:

Online advertising is a multi-billion dollars industry. There are too many Ad networks of different kinds. Some are PPC based (old fashioned like Google Adwords), Some are CPM (Tribal Fusion etc), Some are socially driven like Facebook ads, Some are niche based, where you choose to advertise on the sites that are most relevant for your product and they usually yield good CTR and Sales ultimately, and Yoggrt is one of that kind.

As an advertiser, I think, these networks are best to yield more sales. Since All of the sites in such networks, are handpicked and are targeted at a specific niche. Therefore you are more likely to reach out to your potential buyers or customers than using Google Adwords (PPC), where you hardly control where does your ad appear on the Internet. As an advertiser Google Adwords Model has failed for me. Simply because most of my Ads appear on the sites that has nothing to do what I am advertising, and not to mention  75% or even more sites in the Google Adsense Network are just a piece of crap.

On the other hand, on Networks like, Yoggrt, the sites are handpicked and they are not let in the Network unless they meet a certain criteria of quality and they even take publisher’s online influence into account. Moreover you know the sites where your ads are going to appear., so you can predict beforehand what kind of people will be clicking your ads. However the most significant feature of these networks is ‘ One Ad per Page ‘ that means your Ad gets 100% attention on a given Web page. Your Ad doesn’t have to compete with other Ads on the same page. It’s actually quite good for brand building too.

Now the only question that may come in your mind is, ‘Why would you choose Yoggrt when you have Deck and Fusion ads networks‘ – Well they are established networks in this category. They have very popular and influential bloggers on their Network. While Yoggrt is just a few months old. However its parent company Buysellads is kind of huge and popular. Anyway below you can look at the price comparison for these networks, that might suggest why would you want to Advertise on Yoggrt.

Deck Network Price: $ 8300 per month

Fusion Network* Price: $ 1500 per month

Yoggrt : $ 500 per month

* Fusion Network now has been acquired by BSA the parent company of Yoggrt.

I don’t really mean to make other two networks look extremely expensive. Because it’s obvious why they have a such huge price tag than Yoggrt. This is mainly because Deck particularly has many influential bloggers on their network. So you have to pay some premium price for it. Having said that, other than ‘DaringFireBall’ I don’t remember visiting any other influential bloggers website on the Deck Network.

However if you look around there are plenty of quality sites, but you hardly know their founders. Moreover, I have been served exceptionally good experience with Buysellads, and here I want to point out, Neither this is a sponsored post nor did anyone from Buysellads ask me to write for it. It’s just purely out of my love for them. :} By the way who said Yoggrt isn’t getting influential bloggers on the list… *wink* They are, and they are working real hard on it. So for the time being enjoy the lower Advertising price on Yoggrt while you are at it. ;}

Yoggrt for Publishers:

Well, I have been blogging for over 7 years, and have made thousands out of it. For it’s my 2nd profession and alternative income source. I have almost used all of the popular advertising networks both PPC and CPM. The only problem with them is that, you can’t make money using them unless you really annoy or more blatantly piss off your readers. Adsense pays per Click. And 99% of the publishers put the Adsense Ads, where a reader is supposed to read the content of the page. That’s hell annoying. I have used this model, and made huge money too. But deep down in my heart, I always have hated this model. And If you’re a quality conscious blogger, I believe you hate Adsense too.

I can’t reveal what Yoggrt pays per 1K impression, But I can assure you, you can make reasonable and handsome income. And Quality of ads that appear on the network is exceptional. So the ads actually please your readers, contrary to, Adsense which is the No.1 reason for most people to use ‘Adblock’ browser extension. If you have an established blog with good volume of traffic, that targets the tech-savvier Internet users then you must consider Yoggrt. If you are the one that doesn’t care about quality and want to fill the internet with crap. Please don’t bother applying for it. Because you will get immediately rejected. :}}

Klout’s pervasive problem is that the deeper among us are never going to judge anyone based solely on some arbitrary decimal score. Especially when that decimal number ranks teenbot Justin Beiber at 100, but precludes me from claiming Windows Phone 7 “Klout Perk” and tickets to a Matt and Kim concert because I don’t have enough technology Klout.

We all have an inherent sense of who is influential and when that doesn’t stack up against some dumb number we lose faith. Case in point; I think all of you understand that there’s something wrong with a service that assigns me the same “influence” score as Mike Arrington. I’m willing to bet Steve Jobs didn’t check his Klout score.

Well, first of all, Klout service at the moment is in beta. And by no means, It’s perfect. However it doesn’t mean it’s a totally useless service as the above article makes it sound like. She is partially right, that no one gives a damn about the Klout Score (As yet). I don’t use Klout often, However I use it time to time to get some ‘hints’ about my online activity. That could help me determine how can I be more influential over the Internet., and that I guess is the ultimate goal of every online user or more particularly of a blogger like me.

With the advent and popularity of Social Media services, like Facebook and Twitter, the Online World is turning into much like the our real life World. In fact the Online World now is as much important as the real world. For users like me, It doesn’t matter who Am I in the real world, But it does matter to who am I on the Internet and How influential I am in it.

With the passage of time I believe the importance of Online World would become even more for the average users too. Like, we care about the Influence in the real world, everyone would have to take measure to become influential online this way or the other. That’s where, a service like Klout would come in handy. It as of yet, is not Industry standard to determine someone’s influence like Alexa. But I can bet, they would be. I can foresee in years ahead, Klout score could play some part in hiring people. So the bottomline is, it’s not really a useless service as the article makes it look like. It may not be important as yet. But as I predicted it will be.

What is Zerply?
Zerply is a professional network built around people who love what they do. We believe that professional networking can be done differently.

Yes it’s kind of a social network for professionals, similar to Linkedin, except that it’s dead simple and beautiful. As this is a new startup so there isn’t much social activity going on other than showing similar people in your dashboard. They don’t have ‘Status update’ feature as yet, and I would include that in my below Suggestions list.

However what importantly makes Zerply  stand out, is their beautiful, professional-looking CVs for their users. It’s hard to ignore a CV without appreciating its design. And Below you can have a look at my CV on Zerply which is designed by a renowned Web Designer Mike Kus. You can choose from four basic Templates, as a free user. All of them are great including the one that I am using below.

In addition to this you can also use your own custom domain for your CV for instance. http://cv.yourdomain.com/ however that’s an upgrade feature and would only cost $15 per year. Normally I can’t help buying upgrade features for all of the awesome web sites, Just like Flickr Pro. Therefore After playing around a little bit with Zerply I couldn’t help to click the upgrade button. And that seems to be only revenue model for Zerply and just like Flickr Pro I am pretty sure this model is gonna work great for Zerply as the service becomes popular.

My Suggestions:

1. Addition of ‘Status update’ feature in the Dashboard, to bring a little more social activity in the backend Dashboard.
2. Display users Tags based on Skills as they’re mentioned on the backend on the users CVs., I am sure that can help explore similar people. But only downside it might have is that potential employer might get interested in other similar peoples. But overall it should increase social activity.
3. Replace Paypal with your own Credit Card processing, Paypal is great, but there are a very few countries whom paypal doesn’t support.