Once you have written your post, instead of hitting the save or publish button, click the edit button next to publish immediately.

This will open up other options (see image below).  Select the month, date, and time when you’d like your post published, and press the publish button.

Don’t make the common mistake of pressing save.   While save seems to make more sense, it is in fact the incorrect button to press. Hit publish instead, and on the time and date you’ve set, WordPress will automatically publish your post.

See?  Easy!

Not long ago, we put together a basic list of Firefox keyboard shortcuts. Today, we thought we’d give you 22 useful and basic IE keyboard shortcuts to print up or bookmark.

1. Select location bar: Alt+D
2. Select search bar: Ctrl+E
3. Open search result in new tab: Alt+Enter
4. Full screen on/off: F11
5. Go to your default homepage: Alt+Home
6. Go back a page: Alt+Left Arrow or Backspace
7. Go forward a page: Alt+Right Arrow, or Shift+Backspace
8. Select an entire page: (ready to copy and paste) Ctrl+A
9. Copy selected text: Ctrl+C
10. Paste to new location: Ctrl+V
11. Refresh page: F5
12. Refresh page and cache: Ctrl+F5
13. Stop downloading page: Esc
14. Open New Tab: Ctrl+T
15. Switch to next tab: Ctrl+Tab
16. Switch to previous tab: Ctrl+Shift+Tab
17. View Page Source: Alt+V+C
18. Find specific words on a page: Ctrl+F
19. Print Page: Ctrl+P
20. Save Page: Ctrl+S
21. Zoom in (Increase text size): Ctrl++
22. Zoom out (Decrease text size): Ctrl+-

Photo Credit: ieteam

If you’ve ever wanted to differentiate internal links from external links on your blog, there is a fairly simple way of doing it, and all it requires is a few lines of text added to your stylesheet.

In this post, we’ll show you how to do it.

Why differentiate between internal and external links?

Today, most people scan, they don’t read the full text of a blog. By representing your external links visually, visitors can see - at a glance - that you’ve given them quick access to relevant and related content that is not solely on your site. This is significant because the easier you make it for your visitors; the more information you supply, the more likely they are to subscribe to your RSS feed, or return to your site next time around.

How to differentiate between internal and external links on your blog

You won’t need to change anything on your existing posts; you’ll just need to make a few small changes to your style sheet.

This change will automatically update every post you have ever written.

Step 1: Copy the ‘external’ Image File

You need to copy the image file, external.gif, to the images sub-folder within your current WordPress theme folder.

Step 2: Add ‘external’ Image to Links

To create links that appear within posts as:

Add the following to your style sheet:

a
{
  background: url(images/external.gif) no-repeat right top;
  padding-right: 12px;
}

The right padding value of 12 pixels ensures that the image does not overlap the text of the link.

Step 3: Differentiate Between Relative and Absolute Links

A handy feature of CSS is that you can apply a style not only to a HTML tag, but optionally based on the contents of any of the HTML tag’s attributes.

For example, to apply the above style to only those link references which contain “http:”, you modify the style sheet entries as follows:

a[href^="http:"]
{
  background: url(images/external.gif) no-repeat right top;
  padding-right: 12px;
}

But this is only useful, if links to other posts are relative and not absolute links. An example of a relative link is ‘<a href=”another-post”>…</a>‘; whereas, an absolute link is ‘<a href=”http://blog.example.com/another-post”>…</a>‘.

Step 4: Exclude Absolute Links to Your Blog or Web Site

Now WordPress always uses absolute links. So to ensure that any link to your own blog or Web site does not have the external image applied, you follow the above style with entries which undo this change. The entries are specific to domain name of the blog or Web site.

For BlogWell, all our links start with http://blog-well.com. You will need to replace “http://blog-well.com” in the entries below with the domain name of your blog or Web site:

a[href^="http:"]
{
  background: url(images/external.gif) no-repeat right top;
  padding-right: 12px;
}
a[href^=http://blog-well.com]
{
  background: none;
  padding-right: 0px;
} 

Step 5: Add a Class to Exclude the ‘external’ Image

Sometimes you may want some links which go outside of your blog or Web site to not have the external image applied. You can do this on a case by case basis by using a link class of ‘noexternallink’. Within your post you would write the link as:

<a class='noexternallink' href='http://example.com'>Example</a>

And the style sheet would contain:

a[href^="http:"]
{
  background: url(images/external.gif) no-repeat right top;
  padding-right: 12px;
}
a.noexternallink[href^="http:"],
a[href^=http://blog-well.com]
{
  background: none;
  padding-right: 0px;
}

Note than ‘a.noexternallink[href^="http:"]‘ and ‘a[href^="http://blog-well.com"]‘ are separated by a comma. This is very important, since it ensures that the background of none and right padding of 0 pixels are applied to both ‘a.noexternallink[href^="http:"]‘ and ‘a[href^="http://blog-well.com"]‘. If you forget the comma, then it will only be applied, should ‘a[href^="http://blog-well.com"]‘ follow a ‘a.noexternallink[href^="http:"]‘.

Step 6: Exclude ‘external’ Image from Header and Footer Items

Within BlogWell’s theme we did not want any links within the header or footer to use the external image. Our theme uses the DIV HTML tag to identify the header and footer, and use the ID values of ‘header’ and ‘footer’ for each respectively.

<div id='header'>
...
</div>
...
<div id='footer'>
...
</div>

Without having to change all the links within the header and footer to use the ‘noexternallink’ class for links, we can easily prevent any links within the header and footer DIVs by using the following:

a[href^="http:"]
{
  background: url(images/external.gif) no-repeat right top;
  padding-right: 12px;
}
#header a[href^="http:"],
#footer a[href^="http:"],
a.noexternallink[href^="http:"],
a[href^=http://blog-well.com]
{
  background: none;
  padding-right: 0px;
}

Step 7: Exclude ‘external’ Image from Sidebar Items

If you didn’t want the external image to be applied to any links within any of the sidebars, you can do the following:

a[href^="http:"]
{
  background: url(images/external.gif) no-repeat right top;
  padding-right: 12px;
}
#header a[href^="http:"],
#footer a[href^="http:"],
#sidebar a[href^="http:"],
a.noexternallink[href^="http:"],
a[href^=http://blog-well.com]
{
  background: none;
  padding-right: 0px;
}

Step 8: Include Both Normal and Secure HTTP Links

If you use Secure HTTP, then your links will start with “https:”. To handle either standard HTTP (http://) or Secure HTTP (https://), then the above style sheet entries would be:

a[href^="http:"], a[href^="https:"]
{
  background: url(images/external.gif) no-repeat right top;
  padding-right: 12px;
}
#header a[href^="http:"], #header a[href^="https:"],
#footer a[href^="http:"], #footer a[href^="https:"],
#sidebar a[href^="http:"], #sidebar a[href^="https:"],
a.noexternallink[href^="http:"], a.noexternallink[href^="https:"]
a[href^="http://blog-well.com"], a[href^=https://blog-well.com]
{
  background: none;
  padding-right: 0px;
}

Step 9: Review Padding Styles for Existing Links in Your Theme

A word or caution, as now links within the blog or Web Site will have a right padding of 0 pixels. If your theme explicitly sets the right padding for some items, then you will need to mark these settings as important which will ensure that value is used instead of the new value of 0 which is set in the above style sheet entries.

For example, BlogWell’s menu in the header, uses links which have a right padding of 20 pixels. So after adding the above entries to our theme’s style sheet, our menu appeared as:

The style entry which sets the menu’s right padding is:

#topnav ul li a
{
  padding-right: 20px;
}

CSS allows style sheet attributes to be marked as important, which means they will not be overridden by other style sheet entries. We can use the “!important” tag to ensure that the right padding of 20 pixels is used rather than it be overridden by the 0 pixel padding of our external link entries.

#topnav ul li a
{
  padding-right: 20px !important;
}

Our menu is now restored to its correct state:

Step 10: Review

To highlight external links within your blog or Web site do the following:

1) Copy external.gif to the images sub-folder of your current WordPress’ theme folder.

2) Add the following lines to your style sheet:

a[href^="http:"], a[href^="https:"]
{
  background: url(images/external.gif) no-repeat right top;
  padding-right: 12px;
}
#header a[href^="http:"], #header a[href^="https:"],
#footer a[href^="http:"], #footer a[href^="https:"],
#sidebar a[href^="http:"], #sidebar a[href^="https:"],
a.noexternallink[href^="http:"], a.noexternallink[href^="https:"]
a[href^="http://blog-well.com"], a[href^=https://blog-well.com]
{
  background: none;
  padding-right: 0px;
}

3) Review your style sheet to see if any entries explicitly set the right padding value, in which case you may need to mark them with the “!important” tag.

A Final Word on Browsers

Should the link wrap around to a new line, Mozilla Firefox will display the external image correctly, following the end of the link on the new line.

However, Microsoft Internet Explorer will display the external image incorrectly at the end of the first line without any margin so it overlaps the text.

If you’ve ever needed the “Hello World” program in other languages, try this. It has 366 coding languages and 58 human ones.

Move over TinyURL, here comes TinyPaste

TinyPaste takes in long strings of text and converts them to short URLs. Mark walks you through what it does and how to use it. Screenshots included.

30+ Must have Updated Firefox 3 extensions

Now that you’ve updated to Firefox 3, check out these updated exensions; you may find something you don’t know about.

Undelete My Files

If you’ve ever deleted a file and realized just a second too late, undelete my files can help you recover them. Easy to use, free and comes with a file wiper, an option to permanently delete files without recovery too.

Two alternative solutions for site analytics

You might be using Google Analytics, but it’s always useful to have other analytics packages. Samuel walks you through Piwik and Visitorville.

Top 3 tools to find out how a blog performs over time

Tad gives us three great tools (two I’d never seen before), that help you determine how your blog is seen in the blogosphere.

16 Things to Look for in a Website Health Check

Glen tells you what to look out for when examining your sites SEO health

Free online seminar for webmasters from Google - July 8

Three Google teams join forces to bring you a free online seminar. If you want to know anything about webmaster tools, analytics, or optimization, sign up here.

7 elements to make your blog look great

It’s all about structure, balance, color, small details, clarity and emphasis, remarkability and functionality. Michael tells you why these elements matter.

Thank your visitors when they comment

If you’ve ever wanted to send an automated e-mail to new commenters, read Matt’s post and get it right. Do it wrong, and risk alienating your audience.

Developing tactical knowledge on social media websites

In this three part strategy aimed at DIY marketers, Maki defines the tactics to help you be more effective with social media marketing

The Word of Mouth Manual

Dave Balter, from the agency BzzAgent, offers you his book ($45 on Amazon) as a free download. (PDF)

Poll Results and a social media case study

Mark shows you how Sea World and Kami Huyse created a social media campaign that drove 200K Visitors to the park in two months

5 Ways to market your business with little or no money

Drew answers the question “How do you market your business if you don’t have a lot of money?” with five simple tips.

E-mail checklist

If you’re a fan of e-mail marketing, read this check list before you hit the send button.

According to the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, cybersquatting, on a basic level, is using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit.

From the ACPA report to congress ( PDF):

Registration by another person as a domain name for the purposes of profiting from the sale or transfer of the domain name

The moral of this story; pay on time and don’t let them squat your name.

Here’s what happened.

We’ve got two kids, so we thought we’d get a domain name for each. The plan was not to do anything with them until our little people are old enough to choose whether they wanted to use them.

Originally we paid Go Daddy their standard domain name registration fee (about 8 bucks a pop) and let the domains just sit.

In all fairness, when the renewal came up this year, Go Daddy sent us a reminder. Life got in the way, we forgot, no big drama.

They give you a 30 day grace period.

After the grace period had expired (by a few days), we logged into Go Daddy and tried to renew the domains - but it wasn’t an available option. We could not repurchase them, because the domain names were already in use.

According to Whois, we were listed as the domain owners.

So we contacted Go Daddy support with the ‘what gives’ question.

Their reply was that the domain names were in a 30 day redemption period and “your [credit] card will be charged 90.19(USD) per domain” to renew.

A 941% premium.

Click here if you want to read the entire e-mail.

While we admit we were remiss in not registering on time, it just doesn’t seem right.

Who would want the domain names of our children except those wanting to make a buck on it?

We ended up forgoing the original domain names and purchased new domains (that the kids chose) at $10 a year.

It just seems that the fair thing would be to put the names back into the pool of available domain names. It will be interesting to see what happens at the end of the ‘redemption period.’

Does that make Go Daddy the king of cybersquatters? It ain’t valuable until someone wants it.

Lesson: Don’t let your domain name expire.

PS. Go Daddy hosts this blog; wish us luck.

Recent and Related posts on the Web about Go Daddy:

From Tom Espiner, ZD Net: Caught in the Go Daddy Red Tape

From Prof. Marc Randazza: Is Godaddy a Mass Cybersqatter?