Arne Brachhold

I really like the new split pane layout of Gmail. Unfortunately the right most column takes too much space which could be better used for showing the mail content. Luckily this can be easily done in Firefox and Chrome with the AdBlock Plus extension installed.

• Install AdBlock Plus if you haven’t done so yet.
• Open the AdBlock Plus options and add the following rule:mail.google.com##TD.Bu:last-child

Before the change:


And after:

It works with the current version of Gmail, but might break if they change the CSS classes (which look pretty random)…

In the last time, I’ve seen many Google searches about WordPress and ImageShack in my referer logs. Too bad there wasn’t something on this page about that.

Since I had some time today and found this an interesting combination, I’ve created a small WordPress plugin which allows you to upload image files to ImageShack directly from your WP posting screen and insert them into your post with a few clicks.

More info about the plugin and the download archive can be found on the plugin page. I hope you enjoy it!

I’m using the Jerome’s Keywords tagging plugin on this site and noticed that all keywords (tags) for a post will go away if I approve its comments. After some search through the code I’ve found that the plugin is using the “edit_post” hook to update the keywords after you’ve changed them on the post screen.

The problem is that this hook is also executed when you approve a comment, but since you are not coming from the post form you’re not sending any post data (like the keywords) and the plugin assumes that the post has no keywords or you’ve deleted them. Mark Jaquith wrote about this behavior earlier this year. (Read on …)

If you are suddenly receiving a lot of request within a short period of time because you’ve been linked by a large site like Digg or Slashdot, your hosting solution might not be able to handle the load.

This article should help your to prepare your WordPress blog for such a case or if you’re just using a slow webhost and want to improve the general performance.

Note that your room for maneuver is limited in most shared-hosting environments, so you won’t be able to implement all possible options with a $2.95 hosting account.

On the whole there are two areas where we can try to save processing time by caching frequently loaded data. The first one is the server system like the web- and database-server software, the second one is the application (WordPress) itself.
(Read on …)

YAHOO and MSN Search have announced that they will support the popular format for XML-Sitemaps which was invented by Google in 2005.

In an encouraging act of collaboration, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced tonight that they will all begin using the same Sitemaps protocol to index sites around the web. Now based at Sitemaps.org, the system instructs web masters on how to install an XML file on their servers that all three engines can use to track updates to pages. This should make it easier to get your pages indexed in a simple and standardized way. People who use Google Sitemaps don’t need to change anything, those maps will now be indexed by Yahoo and Microsoft.
Source: TechCrunch

I’ve updated the xml-namespace definitions in the new beta version of my XML-Sitemap Generator for WordPress Plugin to the new sitemaps.org standard.

Yahoo has already updated their Site Explorer so you can submit your sitemap to YAHOO and Google. The guys from MSN are a bit slower and will do some internal tests on their own websites before they open the submission for everyone.

Get it while it’s hot!

This release contains several security fixes and performance issues so all WordPress users are recommended to upgrade.

More details are available at the WordPress Blog and the download page.

Social bookmark services are a good way to promote your website or blog. You can increase the number of bookmarks to your site with providing your visitors links which allow them to directly bookmark your site on their favourite bookmark service.

Below you can find a list of the most used ones, simply replace "[URL]" with the URL to your site or specific page and "[TITLE]" with the title of it. Some services have additional parameters, but they are pretty self-explanatory.
(Read on …)

If you use Firefox to edit a post, it may happen in some cases, especially on long posts and when switching between tabs, that the text gets truncated to an unspecified length. If you save this post, the cut content is lost forever.
(Read on …)

I hope for France that they will win the WorldCup, because Zidane (DE) played a really good tournament and is generally one of the coolest players. New target for Germany: Third place. Third place is even better than losing the final, because you are the last one who parties
(Read on …)

I’m happy to present you another Plugin for your WordPress Blog: The A9 SiteInfo Generator.

SiteInfo is an open standard which allows you to specify information that will be displayed in a toolbar menu. This allows the A9 toolbar (or other toolbars that want to use SiteInfo) to display a menu about your site, when a user is on your site.

(Read on …)

First places are not really surprising, but tenth place for USA after Denmark?

(Image was fitted for correct display)

See the full statistic on Google Trends

WordPress 2.0.3 is now available for download. If you are using my Google Sitemap Generator plugin, please update to speed up the generation process.

If you don’t want to update, you can apply this patch by hand. It will reduce the generation time significantly.

Netvibes, the AJAX desktop of my choice has been improved! The new "Netvibes ecosystem" gives you a tool to browser through all available modules, feeds, events and predefined tabs which contain specific feeds and modules of an special event or theme like the FIFA World Cup for example.

Two new modules for eBay and digg.com were also introduced, now you can keep track of the items you’re watching or bidding directly from your Netvibes frontpage.

And finally they added an developer page with easy examples how to build your own modules. Netvibes rocks!
(Read on …)

Eine Seite, die man sich unbedingt anschauen sollte bevor man an einer UNI oder FH studieren geht ist MeinProf.de:

(Read on …)

I’m sorry if you couldn’t reach this site in the last weeks, but my hosting provider experienced several down times. I’m currently hosted at Alturo, which is member of United Internet (1and1, Schlund + Partner). A half year ago, all was fine but in the last months the service became very unreliable. Downtimes are frequent and they block search engine crawlers because these bots would “endanger the normal operations”, as an Alturo technician told me.

(Read on …)