WAHMaholic

I was asked through email a while back how to disable right click in a blog or site to protect uploaded pictures. I found a code at DynamicDrive.com by Renigade, which does just that. It’s easy peasy to implement. Just copy and paste the following code immediately below the code of your template.

<script language=JavaScript>
<!--

//Disable right click script III- By Renigade (renigade@mediaone.net)
//For full source code, visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com

var message="";
///////////////////////////////////
function clickIE() {if (document.all) {(message);return false;}}
function clickNS(e) {if
(document.layers||(document.getElementById&&!document.all)) {
if (e.which==2||e.which==3) {(message);return false;}}}
if (document.layers)
{document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);document.onmousedown=clickNS;}
else{document.onmouseup=clickNS;document.oncontextmenu=clickIE;}

document.oncontextmenu=new Function("return false")
// -->
</script>

Please note that content in your site or blog can still be copied, even with the code, through highlighting the text and hitting CTRL+C in one’s keyboard. While this code against right clicking will not stop a determined and knowledgeable plagiarist, it does discourage the casual copier. Best thing to do is to watermark your images with your site or blog logo/URL, so that people know where they came from.

I don’t know if I can provide a proper tutorial for making a header, so the least I can do is tell you where I get the images for making them, as well as sites that I get my fonts from, for the header’s text. I mostly get my images from Fotolia.com, because that’s the cheapest place I discovered and they have tons of stocks to choose from, so I almost never run out of choices. When I do, I go to iStockphoto for their royalty-free images, but only when I really can’t find anything suitable on Fotolia.com.

As for the fonts, I mostly go to DaFont.com and Font Space to look for an appropriate font style to match the graphics I have in mind. Designing the mock-up takes up almost as much time as coding, sometimes even longer, because of the amount of minute editing and re-editing that the clients sometimes most of the times require.

I admit I’m unexceptional in conceptualizing the perfect layout, but if there’s anything I can do, I can be patient with clients and give them what they have in mind. I guess that’s what makes me a decent blog designer. Not my artistic skills, as I have little of that, but my people skills. Oookay. I should stop bragging now.

A contact form is an essential part of a website, whether commercial or personal. This is the portal where people can reach you if they want to say to or ask something from you that they don’t want to leave on the comment section or your shout box (if you have one). Ever since I started using WordPress, there is only one contact form plug-in I use, and for a single reason: it’s mind-blowingly simple to install and use. Curious what it is? It’s the Easy Contact plug-in by Scott Allan Wallick. So how do you have it up and running on your WordPress blog?

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plug-ins -> Add New.
2. Type in “easy contact wallick” in the search box and click Install on the search result that it will produce.
3. Once installed and activated, on the left side of your dashboard look for Settings -> Contact and click on it.
4. The only important thing you need to do at the Contact settings page is to supply your email address at the first available box on the page. That email is where you will receive the messages that were sent from your contact form. It’s up to you if you want to tweak the other settings of said plug-in on the same page.
5. Now we’ll need a Contact page. Go to Pages -> Add New on the left side of your dashboard.
6. Put Contact (or whatever floats your boat) on the page title and MAKE SURE to click on the HTML tab (beside Visual and in line with Upload/Insert).
7. Type inon the box designated for the page content.
8. Hit the blue Publish button.

And you’re done! Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for the fan mails to come.

I have been asked several times now how I achieve the shadow and rounded corner effects on recent pictures I posted here in my blog. You’ll need to have GIMP as a photo editor, though. Don’t have GIMP? Download it for FREE here! It can be quite handy for simple editing of your pictures. Not too complicated like Photoshop, and has the common features which can help you achieve simple effects for your photos. Here’s the quick and easy tutorial to make your photos more visually interesting:

1. Open the GIMP program and select the photo which you want to edit. Here’s mine:



2. Navigate to Filters -> Decor -> Round Corners (as shown in the screencap below).



3. A window will pop-up. Adjust the Edge radius (for the rounded corner effect. I usually go for 45 on images smaller than 500px) and check Add drop-shadow from the options presented.



4. You can also uncheck Work on copy (so that the effect will be added to the current picture opened and not on another copy) and Add background (if you want the picture to blend well with your non-white background).
5. Hit Ok and save the picture when it’s done. Save it as yourfilename.png if you have a non-white background and you’ve ticked off the add a background option in Step #4. If you save it as yourfilename.jpg, it will still have a white background even though you unchecked Add a Background in Step #4.

That’s it! Enjoy playing with your pictures! Will post more Gimp tutorials soon. This tutorial is especially for my marce Kikamz, because it’s her birthday today!