OptinPop is a Great Wordpress Plugin

Have you seen those pop-ups on sites asking if you would like to subscribe to the site’s newsletter? Often called an Optin popup, these pop-ups are now very easy with this free plugin from the Wordpress.org extend directory called the OptinPop. You can find the plug-in here.Or you can install it right from your Wordpress admin area.

Examples

Examples of the plugin in action can be found of the developer’s website at http://www.bigsellingoptins.com/blog/download-optinpop-wordpress-plug-in/ or a different use can be seen while exiting the website http://freeacaiberry.org/. The plugin is used to show an advertisement on the second site mentioned. You will need to create a stand along html document to show in the popup window. The on exit or on enter options are very useful in addition to the light box effect used on the Free Acai Berry site. The popup will also not be blocked by popup blockers as a new window is not created.

One Fix After Installation

If you install the plugin automatically from the Wordpress.org website the plugin will not work after installation and activation. After reading through the developer’s instructions I found that the plugin needed to be installed into a directory called ‘optinpop’. This doesn’t happen with the automatic installation. After renaming the directory or the installation, the plugin will need to be reactivated and will work fine thereafter.

HelloTxt Offers One Stop Microblogging

HelloTxt (www.hellotxt.com) is a nice site I found while updating an RSS feed on TwitterFeed.com. HelloTxt is now an option to feed RSS data to from TwitterFeed. So you can have TwitterFeed submit all your site posts to HelloTxt automatically. And what HelloTxt does is then submit your status updates or TwitterFeeds to a vast number of social sites and microblogging websites.

HelloTxt has 59 different microblogging and social sites that you can automatically post to from their one interface. Some of the social sites are the most popular today including Facebook, Flickr, Hi5, etc. And there are a good number of international microblogging sites that you have not heard of before.

I currently have three sites posting to HelloTxt through TwitterFeed and have not seen a big increase in inbound links or traffic to the sites but it is fairly easy to setup and establishing your presence on these newer Web 2.0 sites is a good ideal. It is still quite early for many of the sites so attractive usernames and vanity urls are available. http://ohiostate.shoutem.com/ is an example of a vanity url that was not taken at Shoutem.com.

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Exporting SQL Server Records To Excel

We have a large amount of data that we want to provide to our users through Excel files downloaded from our website. We found that by using the Openrowset command in a stored procedure afforded us the most versatility and the easiest redundant execution than the other options. For a nice explanation of the process and a full listing of the variables available take a look at MSSQLTips.

The final code looks like this:

INSERT INTO OPENROWSET('Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0',
'Excel 8.0;Database=C:\testing.xls;',
'SELECT Name, Date FROM [Sheet1$]')
SELECT * From dbo.MyTable Where Date = GetDate()
GO

There was a slight error with this implementation at one point in the day where we received this error:

OLE DB provider "Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0" for linked server "(null)"
returned message "Cannot open database ''.

A number of sites point you to the temp folder of the Administration login on the SQL Server. This is a good place to check read/write privileges for the account you are logged in as. But we found that restarting the SQL Server Agent correct the issue.

Best Bookmarking Tool Available Online

Internet users are always looking for tools to reduce the amount of time it takes to accomplish tasks. Onlywire.com provides a great tool that allows users to bookmark a page to over 30 different social bookmarking sites automatically. They promote their service as auto-syndicating your content to millions of readers. Now I thought that was what the rss feed was for? But if you want to bookmark a page automatically, this is the best solution.

With their Wordpress plug-in or their java-script based widget, any website on the net can install a button to allow their users to bookmark your pages. And the Wordpress plug-in posts to the owners account automatically when a new post is published. Account information must be setup ahead of time and 5 services require a manual step to complete, but the service is great.

The price for an account with Onlywire.com is completely free if you install the bookmarking widget on your site. Otherwise there is a month fee $2.99 or a yearly fee of $24.99. Just to be FCC compliant, I want to disclose that this is not a paid post as I use the service and am not being paid to recommend this service.

Exporting a DataSet to a CSV File in ASP.Net

If you have the need to export data from a SQL Server Dataset to a CSV file through your website application, you can write to the response object in the Page_Init function of your page to produce the file. The user will not see the page at all but will be prompted to open or save the file on their desktop.

Here is the Page_Init function with the Response Write that you will need:

    Protected Sub Page_Init(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Init

        Dim objData As System.Data.DataSet = New System.Data.DataSet

        Dim objCSV As String = BuildCSV(objData)
        Dim objFilename As String = "Excel" & Today.ToString("yyyy-mm-dd") & ".csv"

        With Response
            .AddHeader("Content-disposition", "attachment;filename=" & objFilename)
            .ContentType = "text/plain"
            .Write(objCSV)
            .End()
        End With
        
    End Sub

And here is the supporting function to return the DataSet as a String:

Public Shared Function BuildCSV(ByRef objData As System.Data.DataSet) As String

        Dim objList As System.Data.DataSet = objData
        Dim objCSVOverall As New System.Text.StringBuilder
        Dim objCSVRow As New System.Text.StringBuilder

        '*** Build the header row
        For intCount As Integer = 0 To objList.Tables(0).Columns.Count - 1
            Dim CurrentColumn As System.Data.DataColumn = objList.Tables(0).Columns(intCount)
            objCSVRow.Append(Chr(34) & CurrentColumn.ColumnName & Chr(34) & ",")
        Next

        objCSVOverall.AppendLine(objCSVRow.ToString.Substring(0, objCSVRow.ToString.Length - 1))

        '*** iterate through the rows
        For Each CurrentRow As System.Data.DataRow In objList.Tables(0).Rows
            objCSVRow = New System.Text.StringBuilder

            For intCount As Integer = 0 To objList.Tables(0).Columns.Count - 1
                Dim objValue As String = CurrentRow.Item(intCount).ToString
                Dim CurrentColumn As System.Data.DataColumn = objList.Tables(0).Columns(intCount)

                objCSVRow.Append(Chr(34) & objValue.Replace(Chr(34), "'") & Chr(34) & ",")
            Next

            objCSVOverall.AppendLine(objCSVRow.ToString.Substring(0, objCSVRow.ToString.Length - 1))
        Next

        Return objCSVOverall.ToString
    End Function