The updating article at WordPress suggest that you should simply overwrite the files on server which is not a bad way, but if you want to decrease the downtime of your site the below method will help you. The downtime occurred with the following method is just for some seconds which is simply unnoticeable. Another misconception with some people is they don’t know that WordPress stores most of the settings in the database. Even the plugin settings are also stored in the database itself. The only thing we have to care is about the “wp-content” folder which contains the themes and plugin’s and the “wp-config.php” file which is used by WordPress to locate the database.

The effective way of updating is not by replacing the current files on server but by creating a temporary new directory & then uploading all the files (except config.php & the wp-content folder) to the newly created directory. Here are the step by step instruction on how to do it without worrying about the loss of data. We are assuming that the WordPress files are stored in the folder named “wordpress” on the server currently.

IMPORTANT: IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER FOLDER OR FILES THAT YOU HAVE CREATED MANUALLY NEEDS SPECIAL CARE AS METIONED BELOW IN 5TH STEP IN BOLD LETTERS.

• Download & extract the latest version of WordPress.
• Now rename the folder where you have just extracted the files with any name like “wordpress-new“.
• Open “wordpress-new” folder and delete “wp-content” folder & “wp-config.php” file from it.
• Now upload the folder “wordpress-new” to the server adjacent to, where “wordpress” folder is located.
• Copy or Move “wp-content” folder, “wp-config.php” file and “.htaccess” file (if present) from “wordpress” to “wordpress-new“. (Also if you have created any files or folders manually, copy or move. This is very important, do not take it lightly.)

By this time your site is up & is ready to be updated. Your site will now go down as soon as you will follow the next step. But this downtime will last just for few seconds. Your site will be up again when you complete the last step.

• Rename the folder “wordpress” to “wordpress-old“.
• Again rename the folder “wordpress-new” to “wordpress“.
• Now go the update link of your blog “http://www.example.com/(path-to-wordpress)/wp-admin/update.php” (Replace example.com with your domain and (path-to-wordpress) with the correct path to you blog where “wordpress” folder is located.

By this time your WordPress has been updated and your site should run properly. You may backup “wordpress-old” folder, so that if something goes wrong you can get it back.

Advantages of this method over directly over-writing all the files:

• Less Downtime of blog: The downtime period of blog is just for few seconds, whereas when over-writing the files it could last for some heavy minutes.
• Deletion of junk: Sometimes the files are not only added but also deleted in new release. Overwriting adds the new files but it does not deletes the files which have been deleted from the new version.
• Less time consumption: In over-writing the files have to be deleted and then the new files are uploaded, while in this method the file does not have to be deleted thus consuming less time.
• Provides Backup: This method keeps files of both old and new version thus providing backup, if something goes wrong you can easily restore your blog within seconds and try again.

Related: Four ways to Blog Offline & their comparison.

Here is the 11 step process with an image flowchart that will easily let you change your name in Gmail/Gtalk. (Click on the image at right to enlarge it.)

1. Sign in to you Google Account.
2. Go to “My Account” Page.
3. Click on Edit Link.
4. Enter your First name & last name here.
5. Click on “Save”.
6. Now open Gmail.
7. Click on settings.
8. Then go to the accounts tab.
9. Click on edit info.
10. Now you can either select the name you just changed in the above step or you can type a new name you want to use for Gmail/Gtalk.
11. Click on “Save”.

That’s it. Your (new) name will appear in Gtalk & will also be attached when you will compose an email.

NOTE: You cannot have different names in gtalk and gmail through a same account.

For Example, If you think that you can have 3 hours of battery backup from 6-cell battery playing Fifa on your system, then you should change your thinking. Gaming with battery performance makes no sense. It requires whole computer running at its full performance or it may disrupt your gaming experience.

Following some simple steps will let you manage some extra time from your notebook’s battery. Here are some ways to fetch maximum juice out of your notebook’s battery:

1. Decrease the Screen Brightness: Dimming the screen brightness can be really helpful while you are hungry for more power.

2. Use low resolution: Low resolution means less graphics usage, thus saving a lot of power.

3. Do not use optical drives: Optical drives are the best battery juice drinkers. An optical drive such as a CD or DVD drive uses a laser to read data from the disks, which extracts maximum juice from your battery. So simply avoid using these drives and the main point “never think about writing to a disk in this condition”. It may drain your complete battery within few minutes.

4. Plug out USB sticks, pen drives or USB devices: USB devices such as pen drives use your laptops battery to power themselves. If these are kept plugged-in even when they are not in use, they will also act as slow lecher for your battery.

5. Avoid Multi-tasking: Multi-tasking means running two or more programs at once. Its good that your Operating System supports multi-tasking, but its not that good when your PC is at battery mode. Multi-tasking puts a lot of load on the Processor, thus consuming a lot of power.

6. Do not play 3D games or use 3D software: If you are gaming stud then forget about mobility. 3D games utilizes the maximum system sources. While the game is running it requires processor to work at full speed, continuously spinning of the Hard Drive & Optical Drive, thus squeezing up a lot of battery power.

7. Get lots of RAM: RAM or Random Access Memory rates have got cheaper in the past years. However the virtual memory helps the low-RAM models to work much better but it also uses the Hard Disk after every few minutes, leading to battery loss. Thus it is recommended to have more RAM than Virtual Memory for saving the battery power.

8. Setup your OS to get maximum juice from your Battery: Most of the OS are deigned with various power profiles such Power Saver, High Performance, Balanced, etc. And these profiles are smart enough to save some amount of your battery. So tune your power profile to a Power Saving mode.

9. Hibernation or Sleep Mode can save your day: If you are in place where PC is not needed for some minutes but you have quickly to resume your work when you get back, Sleep mode or Hibernation can save your time as well as power. Rather than restarting simply just put your PC to Sleep mode or in Hibernation.

10. Close the programs not in use by you: There are some programs which by default start up when the computer starts like messengers, anti-virus, updating programs, etc. These programs continuously uses a lot of computer sources draining up the battery. So its better to close them.

11. Defrag your Hard Disk regularly: Defragging the hard disk keeps it organized and also speeds it up. The better the hard disk performs, the less power it consumes.

12. Keep it Cool: The cooler is your PC, the better it will work. There are many air winds on notebooks, make sure that you don’t block them while keeping the notebook on your laps. Let air easily pass through them. Also make sure your computer’s fans are working properly.

13. Lower the Graphic Performance: New notebook models comes with an option to adjust the graphic card’s performance. Lower the performance, so the graphic card and processor will use minimum system sources.

14. Use your charged battery weekly: If you have a habit of always connecting the power cable, its good. But it is also necessary to use the juice from a charged battery to keep it healthy. So it is recommended that you should use the battery power once a week.

15. Avoid Bluetooth or Wi-fi connections: Most of the laptops today have a single switch for Bluetooth and Wi-fi. Thus when you switch on the Wi-fi or Bluetooth, the other thing automatically gets activated wasting up your power. Thus disabling the one which you don’t want to use can also help you saving the power.

16. Turn off the Aero Graphics (Vista Only): If you are using the Microsoft Windows Vista, you might be enjoying its Aero (Transparency) effect. It looks good but it don’t acts as a good practice while we are talking about Battery Saving. Turning it off can get you a little more time for your other tasks.

17. Avoid Installations & Restarting: Restarting the computer is not considered as a good habit when you are in need of more battery. Restarting waists the time and also the battery power, as the computer needs to shut down all the windows shell files and then start them again. Thus it is not considered a good practice.

18. Keep it clean: Do you remember when was the last time you took your battery out from its chamber from the notebook? Well check now that is there any dust in that place. Keeping the battery connecting points clean can also help you in achieving the above target.

19. Say NO to auto-save & spell-check: Imagine you are working on a document in MS Office. You love its auto-save & spell-check feature. But did you ever thought that these features forced the hard disk to spin again & again in every few minutes. This consumes power each time the Hard disk has to spin to auto-save the data. Also spell-check causes the processor to work continuously as you are typing. Thus turning off these two features can help you a lot.

20. Disconnect an extra USB mouse or disable the touch-pad: Many notebook users have an external USB mouse. It is recommended to use only one thing for controlling pointer, either the mouse or the touch-pad.

Got some more points? Do leave a comment below I’l add them in this list!

*TIP: Virtual memory does not speed up your computer but it allows to run more applications at once. This means you can run multiple applications but it all goes slowly. More is explained below with a video tutorial which teaches you How to increase virtual memory of a computer.

What is virtual memory and how does it actually works?
Many of you might be knowing about RAM (Random Access memory). It holds the data of the currently running applications but a if it is of very low size you cannot perform multiple task easily at a time. Virtual Memory is just like a file on your hard disk. Now what the Virtual Memory actually does is obtains the data from CPU and stores it in itself. The work of CPU here is to check that if any part of RAM that has not been used since some time it transfers the data to Virtual Memory, thus cleaning the space on RAM for other applications.

Animation Source: Howstuffworks

However writing the data to hard disk is much slower than writing data to RAM. Thus what virtual memory will actually do is it will allow you to run more applications but it will not offer you speed. You may feel the slowness while switching the application, as the data has to be again fetched from Virtual Memory into the RAM for further use.

Well you actually don’t need to understand all the above for increasing Virtual Memory of your system but I mentioned this because its good to have knowledge of what you are actually doing.

Increasing the virtual memory.
So let’s begin with increasing the virtual memory of your computer. Follow the simple steps below but if you still can’t understand what is happening just watch the video attached to this post.

• Right click on the computer and select properties.
• Click on Advanced system settings.
• Under performance section click “Settings”.
• Now select the Advanced Tab.
• Under the “Virtual Memory” section click on “Change”.
• Now uncheck the box yelling “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives”.
• Now select the Hard drive which you want to use for virtual memory.
• Select the “Custom Size” radio button.
• Specify the initial size.
• Specify the Maximum size.
• Remember you can specify as much as you want. 1024-2048 should be enough for any system.
• Click on “Set” & then “OK”.
• System will notify that you need to restart. Click “OK”.
• Save all your work & close all the windows as the system will now restart.
• Now click on “Apply” & then again on “OK”.
• Now system will ask you to restart now. Click on “Restart Now”.

Still can’t understand how to do it watch this video.

Some Precautions & Notes:

• This tutorial only applies to Windows Operating System.
• By default windows is smart enough to adjust the Virtual Memory of your system. Use this tutorial if you require extra memory.
• When specifying the initial and maximum size, allot the space according to your disk size. Generally 1024-2048 is enough for any system.

WordPress recently started support for tag which Windows Live Write adopted very quickly.

So all you have to do is to just update your copy of WordPress to the latest version. Here ia the complete way of making your Windows Live Writer support tag for your WordPress.

1. Download & update your WordPress to the latest version available. (Must be 2.3.1 or higher)
2. After your WordPress is updated, open windows live writer. Go to your weblog settings & update your template style.
3. Now you will see a field name as “Keywords” in the more section.
4. Enter your tags there (separate multiple tags with commas: cats, pet food, dogs).

Its the time when you are beating your head because you haven’t created any backup of your files on it. You connect it to a PC or a mac but iTunes is requesting to restore your iPod which means loss of your important data. Well, before restoring or formatting your iPod, do consider reading this article. This method will not erase any data on your iPod.

Difference between a Corrupted iPod & a Hanged iPod:
Before we get started, it is very important to know th difference between a Hanged iPod & a Corrupted iPod. An iPod gets hanged up when it has been working since hours or it has not been safely ejected from a computer or a corrupted mp3 file has been played on it. While iPod corruption is mainly caused by a corrupted mp3 file or not ejecting the iPod safely from computer.

How would I know that my iPod is corrupted or hanged up?
Its simple, if your iPod is hanged it will just not react, not even switching it on or off is possible. But if your iPod is corrupted it will be not be totally frozen up but it be will continuously restarting itself or it may act very unusual. However, if you connect either a hanged or corrupted iPod to a mac or a PC, iTunes will always show it as a corrupted iPod & will ask you to restore it.

How to repair a hanged iPod?
Well repairing a hanged iPod is very simple & easy. Its just a one step process. Unplug the iPod from a PC, mac or an iPod charger. Then just press the Center & the Menu button simultaneously for 10 seconds. Yes that’s it The magic combination key. Well there is no magic here, its just a simple trick to restart an iPod.

Well a hanged iPod can be repaired by this way but if your iPod is corrupted, then you are in trouble! But don’t worry there is still some hope!

How to repair a corrupted iPod?
Note: Chances are very low that your iPod data can be safely recovered from a corrupted iPod!
In this case, first try connecting your iPod to a Mac or PC. If windows or Mac OS is able to detect & read data from your drive (It will be available in My Computer & windows will show it as a Removable Drive). Then simply copy all folders & files into a folder on your PC hard drive (Remember: Don’t forget to copy all hidden files & folders).

Now restore your iPod using iTunes & also if an upgrade is available for your iPod so upgrade it. Now when your iPod has been restored or formatted. Copy the hidden folder back to iPod (Note: Do not copy the corrupted files back to your iPod as it may again corrupt your iPod) & your iPod is ready.

But if the drive is not detected, take your iPod to a your nearest recovery center.

UPDATE: If you don’t have any important data on your ipod & your ipod is corrupted then simply format your ipod with Windows Format utility & then connect it to latest version of iTunes. Let the iTunes restore or update your iPod. Your ipod will be ready by this time with new firmware files.

Sometimes, iTunes cannot restore or update the iPod. In this condition you should opt for the following measures:

1. Update iTunes to the latest version and attempt to restore your iPod.
2. Try connecting your iPod to a different USB port and restore.
3. Remove any third-party USB devices you have connected to your computer (it is not necessary to remove your keyboard or mouse).
4. If you use Windows, re-register .dll files as described in article #304996.
5. For Windows users, update or reinstall your Windows USB drivers.
6. Try connecting your iPod to another computer and then try restoring or formating your iPod.

Note: If you have an iPod shuffle you may need to use the iPod Reset Utility to restore the iPod. © Yogtec’s Digital Technology

This error is caused due to Windows Installer is not able process the Visual Basic script embedded inside apple installation package. Apple blame Microsoft for this error. Following the below procedure activated the VB script. Following are the procedure to solve this problem in some popular versions of Windows.

Windows XP

You may resolve this issue by installing the latest VBScript engine from Microsoft.

If the VBScript is installed, it might not be registered within Windows XP. To re-enable the VBScript engine, follow these steps:

1. On the Start menu, click Run.
2. In the “Open” field, enter the following command and click OK.
   regsvr32 vbscript.dll
3. A message should appear stating that the “DllRegisterServer in C:\WINDOWS\system32\vbscript.dll succeeded.”
4. Click OK and try installing iTunes or QuickTime again.

Note that the user needs to be logged in as the administrator or is a user with admin privileges for the step above.

Windows Vista

1. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
2. Click Accessories.
3. Right-click Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator from the shortcut menu.
4. When the User Account Control dialog appears, click Continue.
5. At the command prompt type the following:
   regsvr32 vbscript.dll
6. Press Enter on your keyboard.
7. A message should appear stating “DllRegisterServer in vbscript.dll succeeded.”
8. Click OK and try installing iTunes or QuickTime again.

The above tutorial was taken from Apple Inc. support center.

© Yogtec | Digital Technology

If you are using Windows (Windows 2000 or later) then this trick is quite useful to you. This small cool simple trick cleans your RAM in just milliseconds. You just need to create a shortcut to run a command. So let’s start:

1. Right click anywhere on your desktop.
2. Point over “New”, then select “Shortcut”.
3. Copy the below line (as it is):

   %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

4. Paste it there & click “Next”.
5. Give it a cool simple name like Clear Memory.
6. That’s it, run it every time your computer goes slow. Enjoy!

Now you don’t need to restart your computer every time. Just run this shortcut & your RAM will be cleared.

Note: This hack only works on Windows (Windows 2000 or later).

© Yogtec | Digital Technology

There are some options you can opt for:-

1. Install Windows Xp with your current installation of Windows Vista (Will dramatically slow down both your Operating Systems – Not Recommended).
2. Wait till your software’s publisher launch a newer version compatible with Windows Vista. You may try mailing the publisher and ask if he is going to release a compatible version in the near future.
3. Or install Microsoft Virtual Pc.

After hearing this problem from thousands of Genuine vista users, Microsoft launched the Virtual Pc.

What is Virtual Pc?
Virtual Pc is a software capable of running multiple operating systems at a time. You may switch between the operating systems as just you switch any two softwares.
How to do it?
We are assuming that you need to install a software that previously run on Windows Xp, so we are going to install Windows Xp in it.

Things Required:

• A Genuine Windows Xp CD with serial.
• Virtual Pc (Download Link)

Minimum Configuration Recommended for smooth performance:

• 1.6 Ghz Processor
• 512 MB RAM or higher recommended
• 60 GB hard disk.

The step-by-step method:
Setting Up the Virtual PC:

1. Download and install the Virtual Pc from Microsoft’s website.
2. Start the Virtual Pc.
3. Go to File Menu and click on “New Virtual Machine Wizard”.
4. Click “Next”
5. Chose “Create a Virtual Machine” and click on “Next”.
6. Enter the Name “WinXp” and click “Next”
7. Now Select “Windows Xp” from the dropdown list and click “Next”
8. Now adjust the RAM as per your needs and click next.
9. Now select a “A new Virtual Hard Disk” and click “Next”
10. Choose the location of Disk File and Press “Next”
11. Click “Finish”

Now your new virtual computer is ready to go.

Installing Windows:

1. Run Virtual Pc
2. Insert your Genuine Windows Xp Disk inside your drive.
3. Select “WinXp” and click on “Start”
4. Now the Windows Xp installation will start. Follow the instructions coming up on screen. Take help from your computer vendor. (Warning: Take special care during installation of windows. Ask for help from your computer vendor.)
5. The new window in which installation is running may try to capture your mouse. To release your mouse from the window Press ‘Right Alt’.
6. Now your windows is ready to go and you may install your old software and run it properly.

Now when you are running Windows Xp inside Windows Vista, you will face a problem of capturing of your mouse. To solve this problem you need to install “Virtual Pc Addictions”.

Installing Virtual Pc Addictions:

1. Start Windows Xp through Virtual Pc.
2. Go to file and click on “Install Virtual Pc Addictions”
3. A new installation window will open inside Windows Xp
4. Follow the simple instructions there
5. After installing “Virtual Pc Addictions” you will be able to switch your mouse between the two OS and your mouse will not be captured.

Now when you are done here are some common question that may arise in your mind.

Will Running multiple OS may slow my computer?
Yes when you will be running Virtual Pc it may slow down Windows Vista a bit. Its better if you work only in the original operating system (Windows Vista).

Creating Virtual Hard disk will eat up my Original Hard disk space?
Yes, it depends on your usage with the virtual OS. The more amount of softwares you install in the Virtual OS, more the space will be consumed on your original hard disk.

I can’t find the folder I created in Virtual OS (Windows Xp), in that of my original OS (Windows Vista)?
All the files and folders created by you in the Virtual OS (Windows Xp) are in that single vhd file you created i.e. the virtual hard disk, You cannot access them through Vista until Virtual Pc Addictions is installed.

Some important points to remember:

• Treat the two OS as two entirely different computers.
• Take special care during installation of Windows. You may ask help from your computer vendor.
• After you have completed the above process, if you want to share files between two OS you will have to share your drives as you do it in two different PC’s.

© Yogtec | Digital Technology