According to MySql resources, you can convert your default server charset from ‘latin1′ to ‘utf8′ by modifying the server’s initialization file. This is fine if you have the time and technical skills, and of course access to your server’s root files.

The easiest workaround I found out, and without touching your server’s root files at that, on how get rid of those “funny characters” is to edit one of the lines in your wp-config.php file.

To do this, open the wp-config.php in a text editor after downloading the file via FTP to your local drive, or opening the wp-config.php using the file manager of your server’s control panel.

Once opened, look for that line (about line number 30) commented out with /** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */

Next to that line is: define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);

Simply change ‘utf8′ to ‘latin1′ and save the file, and then upload the file to your server if you edited the file in your local drive. Otherwise, just close the editing window of your Control Panel’s file manager.

That’s it.

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The best solution I have found so far is to post my blogs or news articles via email from a smartphone.

I use a WP.org script called “Postie” which allows email posting even with an image, video or audio attachment.

Setting Postie up is easy. Just enter the details of the recipient email account (mail server, mail I’d, and password) from which the script will grab the message, and the script is ready to roll.

The script can also be setup to allow only users with certain permissions like authors or editors to post. Administrators are automatically given permission to post by email. You can also specify if the post will be held under “pending review” or to be published once received.

I tried the WordPress app for Blackberry but I found that post-by-email is a much better solution.

Let me know if you need help with Postie.

By the way, this post is uploaded via email.

This is what has been bugging a friend for sometime. Each time she sent messages with hyperlinks of her suggested pages, the recipients had to highlight the entire URL, copy and then paste on the browser’s URL box to open the hyperlinked page.

This has been going on until one of her friends politely asked what she was doing to make the hyperlinks unclickable.

She said that she merely copied and pasted the URL of a page she wanted her friends to visit. Then, she press-clicked the link icon on her email composition window.

And that was the root of the problem!

If you’re having the same problem, simply highlight, copy and paste the address shown on the URL box of the page you want insert in your email message.

There’s no need to press-click the link icon. Today’s browsers automatically recognise and format hyperlinks.

We agree with the articles’ claims. It has long been held that titles including “H1 headings,” “H2 headings,” and so on are very important considerations if you want to have your webpages crawled effectively by search engine bots.

Here is an example to show that good titles and headlines greatly influence in making webpages to be ranked higher in search engine indexing lists.

The page titled “Shortened hyperlinks spams on the rise” was indexed number 4. The page contains an article which summarised its content:shortened hyperlinks, spams, on the rise.

Actually, the article is a news story developed based on the results of MessageLabs / Symantec’s July 2010 surveys on shortened hyperlink spams titled “Symantec Announces July 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report.” Google’s indexing of the source of the story is number 8.

Were there other factors which could have influenced the page’s higher index? What do you think?

How?

Try writing in ALL CAPS, that’s how.

When you write in all capital letters, this is considered by many recipients and readers as if you are shouting.

If all you want is to put emphasis on some parts of your message, use ALL CAPS for those important words only. (Or the other technique is to enclose the *important* words with asterisk like in this sentence.)

ALL CAPS have strong effect. If used in abundance, they have the same effect like shouting – and nagging. They annoy the wits out of the recipients and readers. Your messages lose their effect as they are completely ignored or deleted. Or, in discussion groups, if you repeatedly use ALL CAPS, you run the risk of being banned.

If you type in ALL CAPS because you find it faster and more convenient, consider using all lower case only.

You may not pass your English 101 class when you type in all lower cases, but the practice appears more widely accepted than ALL CAPS. And your message may get across easily.

You can use either tab. The Visual tab is something like a “WYSIWYG” (What you see is what you get) Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

How do you post your material to your site?

If you know how to compose and send an email, then you already know how to post material to your site. You have a subject or title and you have the body of your message.

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There are hundreds of professional-looking free themes on the web. But before going outside, have a look first of what you already have.

With WP3.0, a standard Twenty Ten theme is built in. The theme is very powerful and it has been built by the team of Automattic, the same people behind WordPress.

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But first, you need to familiarise yourself with the controls or menus you have on the left panel. Most of the menus are collapsible. On the screenshot, Posts is collapsed to show the menus under it.

I have been using WordPress for a number of years now, but from time to time I still get lost trying to locate the command I need.

You will get familiarised with the control menus as you go along, but if you want to get on the fast track, spend a few minutes exploring the left panel control panel. Prior knowledge of what that left panel has in store will come very very handy.

Setting up WordPress

When you sign up for webhosting, you’ll get a CPanel login from your host. Your CPanel control panel gives you an array of web management tools, one of which is WordPress.

It’s really a couple of clicks to install a new WordPress package on your new domain. You can install WordPress either in your domain root or in a separate folder under your root like yourdomain.ext/blog/.

You enter your WP admin username and password, which of course you should remember.

Once confirmed by your Cpanel that WP is installed, you’ll then log in to WordPress admin area at yourdomain.ext/wp-admin/ (or yourdomain.ext/blog/wp-admin/ if installed in a folder) with the username and password you just created, and you go straight in to the WordPress dashboard.

That’s all there is in installing WordPress.

NOTE: You can of course manually install WordPress using an FTP client. This means, you need to set up an FTP account in your CPanel and also, you need to set up a WP database, again using the Cpanel. You will be better off using the automatic installation. Installing WP via FTP is also very time consuming.