By default, the best you can do with a standard WordPress installation is add a text widget to your sidebar and throw in the code to insert the image. This means using the media library to upload your image, copying the URL, adding a new text widget, and pasting the URL in for the src attribute like this:

<img src="[URL to image]" alt="My Image" />

That’s a bit of a hassle! Then if you want to add a title or caption, you’ve got to insert more code to make that happen. Why can’t this be easier? Turns out, it is! Just install the image widget plugin, upload you’re image and enter in your settings of choice. Problem solved. Here’s how:

1. Login to your WordPress admin panel and head over to Plugins > Add New
2. Search for “Image Widget” and choose Install Now under the Image Widget plugin (normally the first result)
3. When it’s done installing, choose “Activate Plugin”
4. Now that the plugin is installed and activated, it will show up in the available widgets section. Head over to Appearance > Widgets.
5. Drag the Image Widget from the left side to your Sidebar of choice on the right.
6. Give it a title, add your image, write a caption, specify alignment, choose Save and you’re all set!

Even if you’re a web developer coding a site for a client, this is the best way to add an image to your sidebar. This way your client has the ability to log in and change up the image easily at any time. You an still adjust the CSS around that one widget by targeting its widget specific class.

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Installation & Configuration

This plugin is as simple as install and activate. It has a fantastically simple configuration page, as shown below, allowing you to easily turn on (or off) link checking for different types of content. When a broken link is found it notifies you on the Dashboard and provides you with simple controls to remove the link, edit the link or check it again (in case the site was temporarily down).

Prevents Frustration

It may seem like a trivial plugin, but Broken Link Checker is actually one of our most powerful tools because it actively prevents visitor frustration. Remember the last time you were on a website and the content you really wanted was just a click away? And you clicked and got the lovely “Page not found 404″? I bet you tried a couple more times, then abandoned the site, never to return again.

That’s exactly how your visitors feel, and exactly what your visitors will do when they discover you’ve left some links unchecked. So head on over to your WordPress admin panel and get installing the Broken Link Checker plugin!

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This WordPress Wednesday post is just a quick overview of the Canvas Theme and Framework from Woothemes. We’ve been following (and using) WooThemes since early late 2009. This site is actually based off of the Over Easy Theme.

There are several framework themes including Canvas, Genesis, and Thesis to name some of the top few, but when it comes to ease of use and customizing, Canvas takes the cake. We use it on many of our web design projects and have never had any issues with it. So, why exactly is it so good?

Incorporates blog styling and corporate styling very well

WordPress started as mainly a blogging platform, but quickly grew into an excellent content management systems for business and corporate websites. Most of the time, when you look for premium themes online, you will find either a nice looking blog style theme or a nice looking corporate theme. Rarely do you find a theme that has a good stating point for both.

It looks good out of the box

I use this theme for my personal blog without many customizations at all, and non that are too complicated for the average user to do. Although it’s quite minimalistic, it’s very nice.

No need to write code

Canvas has a wonderful theme manager that gives you the ability to change the layout, colors, and styling of almost anything without ever having to edit CSS. Here’s a quick screen shot of the admin area:

It also makes use of custom post types in order to let you quickly and easily add additional content. By default it comes with a Portfolio section, Feedback or Testimonial section and a JQuery slider for the business style.

Hooks for additional functionality

This is probably the main reason I love this theme. If you are looking to do a custom designed website, hooks are perfect. No need to edit the actual framework, instead you can use the built-in hook manager to add html code as you need it to fit with your design. Canvas always allowed you to add your own custom CSS in order to change the look and feel of your site, but now you can easily add in html to wherever you need with the hook manager. It has many places to add your html to including the header, navigation area, main body, and footer. Below is a screen shot of the hook manager.

There is so much that you can do with this theme. For example, Oui Coach, Casanova Notes, and Cash for Gold, are all running off of Canvas. They all have their unique style and look to them, yet all benefit from the extremely powerful backend that Canvas provides – both to the developer and to the end user.

This was actually going to be a demo video of Canvas, when I realized that (obviously) WooThemes already has a great demo. You can check out the demo video here.

If you are interested in picking up this theme, or any of the other great WooTheme themes:

Click here to use our affiliate link (I know you want to make us some money).

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Sick of all that comment SPAM? This week’s #wpwednesday quick tip is for you!

What is WP-ReCAPTCHA?

WP-reCAPTCHA automatically inserts an image verification system before registration and commenting is allowed on your WordPress powered website. This means automatic spamming tools will have a very difficult time getting comments onto your blog since they won’t be able to easily tell what is shown on the image.

This is what it looks like (you’ve probably seen it before!):

Help turn books into e-books!

Google’s reCAPTCHA is a particularly neat image verification system (CAPTCHA) because it accomplishes a hidden secondary goal! The text it shows in the images are actual snippets from old-school printed books that are in the processes of being digitized, or turned into e-book formats. This means every time one of your visitors (and a variety of others) uses your newly installed reCAPTCHA verification on your website, you’re helping to digitize books! Pretty cool.

Installation and Use

wp-RECAPTCHA has one extra step beyond the typical install and activate you normally do with WordPress plugins: you must get API keys to allow your website access to Google’s system. Without access you wouldn’t be able to retrieve the book snippets required for the plugin to work! But don’t worry, once you activate the plugin, it will prompt you to click a link to get your keys.

—

Have a question about wp-RECAPTCHA? Run into trouble installing it? Ask your questions or post any problems in the comments below.

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We love WordPress. This site runs on WordPress, as does our web design website and all of design clients that we help out. Many of our loved hosting clients also use WordPress and because of this, we need to be up to date on all the latest going on in the WP community.

It’s this awesome community that sparked our idea for WordPress Wednesday. We will be showcasing a different plugin, theme, developer, or framework every Wednesday. Some weeks we’ll even provide a bit more value and see if we can’t grab an interview with a plugin developer to share with you.

Interested in joining us? Use #wpwednesday on Twitter to showcase your WordPress-related reviews or information.

So without further ado, here is a look at our first plugin:

RoloPress: Contact Manager Built on WordPress

I spent most of the morning today playing around with RoloPress after looking for a CRM plugin solution for a client. Although RoloPress didn’t do exactly what I needed it to do for this particular instance, it did catch my attention as it is very simple and elegant.

If you are looking for a web-based contact manager for your business, this is a great option. Here are some of the things I enjoyed about it:

It’s free

Right now at least. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a premium plugin if he added more functionality and grew it into more of a customer relationship management solution, but for the time being it does not look as though that’s going to happen.

It’s themable and extendable

Because this is a framework and not a plugin, you have the ability to theme and style the front end of the contact manager using child themes and custom CSS. It’s current theme very much mimics that of 37 Signals’ High Rise Contact manager.

On the other hand, there were a few things I felt were holding it back:

It’s a framework not a plugin

What this means is that it does not easily integrate with an existing website and WordPress backend. I was looking for something that I could use with a single sign on point (WordPress admin area), and unfortunately this framework needs to be installed on a separate WordPress installation.

It’s not done yet

Although the developer is very active in responding to requests and questions, RoloPress is very much still in Beta. There is a big update expected before the end of the year, but for the time being simple tasks such as delete a contact or company needs to be completed from the back end instead of in the main site.

It’s not a useful CRM

It’s great at being a contact manager, and from what I get by reading the developers website that is everything it is going to be. That said, the same designer also created WP-CRM which has recently been discontinued in order to work on this platform. Although this software has the ability to add notes on each contact, you cannot create tasks assigned to each. Until this is the case, it will always remain a contact manager.

Overall, I think it’s a great start to a potentially awesome WordPress-based software. We may be promoting and using it in a variety of our WordPress hosting packages both here and at Grape Kiwi once we feel it’s to a point where it would benefit our customers.

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When configuring your publishing location as FTP, fill in the host as ftp.yourdomain.com and use the FTP username and password as provided in the email we sent you when you first signed up with us. If you need to reset your FTP login details, here’s how!

You will also need to ensure the Directory/Path field is set to ‘httpdocs’

For those who prefer to skim, here are the same directions in written format:

1. Select the site you wish to publish in the sidebar. If you only have one, it’s likely called “Site”
2. Change the “Publish To” dropdown to “FTP Server”
3. Name your site whatever you like and enter your contact email address
4. Under the FTP Server Settings section, specify the server address as ftp.yourdomain.com (e.g.: ftp.websavers.ca)
5. Supply your FTP Username and Password where prompted
6. Enter ‘httpdocs’ in the Directory/Path field
7. The Protocol can be set to either FTP or SFTP for good results. If you have trouble with one, try the other!
8. Choose the Test Connection button to be sure everything will work. If you get an error, let us know in the comments below or open a support ticket.
9. Enter your website address

When you’re ready to publish simply press the “Publish Site” button to begin uploading. Now that you’ve saved the server settings, you will only need to press the Publish Site button every time you wish to upload changes!

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Extremely Intuitive and Well Laid Out

With Plesk, things are where you would think they should be. There are many control panels that simply shove every feature and icon in your face on the same page without any sort of intuitive layout and design. Once you start using a Plesk hosting package, it does not take long to figure out how to manage everything that needs to be done.

From adding an email account to access your content via FTP, this is all possible with the Plesk control panel, and you won’t be left wondering how to do a task.

Extremely Well Designed

Some people may feel this is not that important. However, if you are spending a lot of your time staring at something and working within a particular piece of software, it is very important that it be well designed and that it looks good.

If you are to compare Plesk to the other popular control panels such as cPanel or DirectAdmin, you will quickly notice how much nicer the Plesk panel really is. If you are someone who spends a lot of time working on their websites, this is something you will quickly appreciate.

Built For The End User

This goes hand in hand with it being very intuitive and well designed. This control panel is very much designed for the end user. It does not require that you have any technical background what so ever in order to use it. Once you log in, everything will be made clear as to exactly what you need to do to accomplish any sort of management task.

Excellent Backup, Restore, and Migration Systems

Plesk prides itself on an extremely powerful backup solution for your website. Although many web hosting companies do routine backups and even provide restoration options should you lose anything, this isn’t always free if you just simply deleted something you shouldn’t have. The Plesk backup utility is perfect for making scheduled backups of your website and databases.

Another benefit of using Plesk is its simple migration manager. This tool allows you to effortlessly transfer your website between servers. If you are moving to a different web host, or are simply upgrading to a new package on a different server, you can do this with a click of a button within Plesk.

Supports both Linux and Windows Operating Systems

Unlike may other hosting control panels, Plesk can run on both Linux and Windows platforms. If you are thinking of converting a PHP website into ASP or adding some Windows-based web applications, you can easily migrate your existing website over to a Windows machine without any hassle. However, if you were on a different control panel, you would have to do this transition manually.

Excellent for Virtual Environments

The creators of Plesk (Parallels) also creates a variety of virtualization software. If you are considering upgrading your web hosting package to a virtual private server or VPS hosting, you may want to consider Plesk as your starting point. This will make your transition much easier when you do decide to upgrade down the road. Many of the best virtual private servers are all running the Plesk Control Panel with the Parallels Virtuozzo containers.

Whether you are starting a web hosting business or simply need the best solution to manage your websites, the Plesk control panel is a great option. Do your research and compare the choices available while keeping in mind what is important to you. The control panel is something you will be using on a daily basis – it’s important that you are comfortable with it and enjoy using it.

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Many web hosting companies support WordPress, but it is still very important that if you are going to be developing a website or blog based on WordPress to check with your web-host before signing up for any package.

What makes WordPress so popular?

You could talk for hours on what it is that makes WordPress and WordPress hosting so popular, but we have boiled it down to two core things that we believe helped WordPress catch on as much as it did.

Extremely easy to use

If you have ever installed WordPress and had the opportunity to play around in it, you will quickly realize that things are very simple and easy to use. It is a very powerful content management system makes it easy to update your content, add new pages and blog posts, and so much more.

Large community support and development

Another major benefit of WordPress is that because it is an open-source project, it has a huge community of developers, designers, and supporters that are constantly helping with extending what WordPress can do. If you ask any web developer if they have used some sort of WordPress hosting before, odds are they have.

It is this community that lets you as a website owner receive help and support from a wide audience. There are also countless numbers of plugins that extend the functionality of what the system can do – many of which are completely free.

What is WordPress web hosting and what do we offer

We believe we offer the best wordpress hosting. We have supported WordPress web hosting for over seven years and know it in and out. All of our packages have the support for WordPress with varying amount of support and resources. For those who already know their way around, you may want to check out our cheap wordpress hosting while those of you who haven’t had an opportunity to use it before, may be more inclined to go with our Support+ Package.

Regardless of what package you choose, we will make sure our servers are running exactly what you need to get the most out of your WordPress website.

One Click WordPress Installer

Another benefit of our WordPress hosting Canada packages is that we provide a one-click installer for WordPress and other popular applications with every package. This takes all the hassle out of configuring and installing WordPress. Here is a quick video and demonstration of our one-click web application installer.

If you have any WordPress hosting questions, never hesitate to send us an email, or talk to us on live chat if we are available – we look forward to hearing from you.

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We’re doing everything we can to try and change that impression by making managing your website and email easy, painless, and (hopefully) fun! With our completely custom designed client centre, our easy to use web applications installer (for installing apps like WordPress in just a few clicks) and our jam-packed knowledgebase full of up-to-date and relevant information, we’re doing everything we can to make web hosting as painless as possible. Adding INTERAC Online as a payment option to ensure you can pay with as many online user-friendly and instant payment options as possible is just one more step in the right direction.

All of our packages allow you to take advantage of INTERAC Online payment, so if you’re a Canadian looking for web hosting, then you’ve come to the right place! Our existing customers can also take advantage; simply login to the client centre to complete payment on any future invoices manually. You will be presented with the INTERAC Online payment option right alongside the usual payment options like PayPal, VISA, Mastercard and American Express.

Have any questions? How about suggestions? (We love those!) Send them on over by commenting below or sending us a quick email. The more ideas you have about how to improve our services, the better we get.

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Things you will need

• Your database username and password for the application. To find this, you will need to login via FTP and open the wp-config.php file. Other applications have similar configuration files. For example, Joomla uses configuration.php and most other apps use config.php
• The version of your installed application
• The path the application is installed to. For example, if you have to enter yourdomain.com/wordpress in your browser to get to the admin panel, then your path is /wordpress

Great, let’s get importing!

1. Login to Plesk through the Client Centre
2. Choose Web Applications in the sidebar and if you see a list of already installed applications, choose the “Applications Browser” tab in the upper right corner
3. Select the application you will be importing. In this example, you will be choosing “WordPress” in the application directory.
4. Choose the “Import Existing Install” button
5. Select the domain/website name that your application is installed to in the list
6. Enter the path to the application. Tip: do not include httpdocs or httpsdocs.
7. If you have more files saved in the domain than just your web application, then change the directory contents dropdown to tell the application manager which files are part of your application. If you don’t know anything about this, leave it at its default.
8. Specify the version of the application you have installed
9. Provide the applications installer your database username and password
10. Choose the “Import” button and after a few seconds, you’ll be all set! You can start upgrading your application through the installer and making backups whenever you like.

Not sure about how to do some or all of this?

No problem, we can take care of importing your application into the web apps installer for you! If you have our support plus web hosting package, this is completely free of charge. If you have a do-it-yourself WordPress hosting package, like the Ultimate or Extreme plan, you can either upgrade to the Support Plus plan, or pay a one-time fee of $49.99 and we will import your application to the apps installer, back it up and update it for you! Simply open up a support ticket with your request.

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