You would have come across many websites that uses the same sidebar in all its pages. For example in Wordpress, you would have noticed that the same sidebar content is displayed in the following pages.

1. Page.php
2. Single.php
3. Index.php
4. Search.php
5. Category.php etc

But it is not a good methodology to display the same content in sidebar over and over again. The reader must be exposed to a variety of good articles in your website, to do this you got to display more.

Another case that you justify the use of different content sidebar is that , the height of the index page will be very less than that of the single page. In that case you can see a lot of white space being left blank in the sidebar. We can actually capitalize this free space and turn it into an assert for us. Every amount of space that you leave blank can actually be modified into something very useful, provided you don’t bring down the look of the theme.

There are two ways of getting this problem solved.

Using a Different Sidebar for single.php

A simple solution, isn’t it. Just make a copy of the file “sidebar.php” and save it in some other name say “sidebar_single.php” make the changes in the file, add new contents that you would want. Now navigate to your single.php file and in the sidebar calling function, replace “sidebar.php” with “sidebar_single.php”.

Requirement:

This method will only work if the single.php uses the “INCLUDE” function to call the sidebar. However for themes that doesn’t use include method and calls the function directly, you got to follow the other method.

Single Sidebar

Using a IF condition in sidebar.php

In this method, one common sidebar php file is used for all the pages, however we decide what content should be displayed by introducing a “IF” condition. This will be the syntax for the if Condition.

<?php  if (is_single( ))

{ //Statements here }

?>

Example

Say you want display 10 posts from a particular category only on the “single” page. Then you got to use the following code syntax.

<?php if (is_single( ))
{     ?>
<div id=”sidebar_box”><h3>Our Best</h3> <div> <ul>
<?php $my_query = new WP_Query(“cat=180&showposts=10″);
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();?>
<li><a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</ul></div></div>
<?php } ?>

Here I have specified my category ID as 180 and Number of posts as 10, you should modify the code according to the category you want to display.

Finding the Category ID in Wordpress

To find the category, since browse to Dashboard , Posts-> Categories and they move your mouse to the category text displayed in the right, that will show you the category ID, in the status bar.

DashBoard Category Option

Status Bar Showing the Category ID

Note: Please do feel free to comment in case you face any problem adding this feature.

Today I have collected a list of sites that could be tell you “if a website is really down” or “website doesn’t load just for you”. Out of the below listed websites my favorite is “DownForEveryoneOrJustMe”. Although the other websites cannot be under-estimated, some of them have really cool interfaces. Rather than installing softwares like Pingdom to check for availability of a website, using these online services are more precise methods.

DownForEveryoneOrJustMe

Uff, pretty long name isn’t it, but you don’t need to remember it, because whenever you search for websites to check downtime, this site is going to be in the top of search result. This is such a popular and widely used service to check website availability. Check out the site here.

Down for Everyone or Just me

Results

DownOrJustForMe

Yet another same kind of service with almost the same name. Down Or Just For Me, although is not the most visited site, it still preferred by some of the people. The site looks almost like a clone of the previous site but with a background and a flash button. The site however has another advantage, it doesn’t redirect you to another page to show the result, it displays in the same page. Check out the site here.

Down Or Just For Me

IsThatSiteDown

Apart from just a single website downtime checker, this site has added a new but not so interesting feature. You can check the availability of popular sites in one button click , the sites included in that one click check are Youtube, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Twitter, Ask, Wordpress, Blogger and Rapidshare. Check out the site here.

IsThatSiteDown

is that site down

One Click Check

CheckSite.us

Another clean and simple interface service to check your website downtime, not much features included in it, but the advantage is that it does not navigate to a new page to show the results, loved the Ajax effect. Check out the site here.

CheckSite.us

Are you still using Microsoft Office to create Flow charts or Rational Rose to make UML Diagrams, well learn to do it online for a change. Gliffy.com has now combined all the features required for Interface designing in their web-application together. And that means you could generate interfaces online without using any softwares.

The best part is that they provide you free 30 days trial of Premium Service, but who cares as long as you can create any number of accounts .   But I’m sure for people in designing area, this is a must visit website, that you cannot afford to miss.

Gliffy Online Interface Generator

Features of Gliffy

Gliffy has a wide range of designer choices. Here are some of the controls you can find on Gliffy, I have displayed them as image for a better understanding.

FlowChart controls

Structure Editor

UML Editor

Size & Shape Editor

Size Editor

The Size Editor allows you to modify the dimensions of the components , such as the height, width and the position. The features could be either specified this way or we can simply drag and use your mouse controls to change them.  Apart from these features, Gliffy also allows the user to export his work to various formats  and to print them.

Visit Gliffy.com Here

OK GO is a pop band who made something very innovative for their new music video which is being already watched by millions of people over the web and around the world  in the past few days, they worked really hard and finally did pull it out with the help of a group of very talented engineers after a long hard retakes and repositioning the things.

The video run for nearly 4 minuets and it’s a continuous shot without any break in the middle where objects are rolled trowed and launched across the room which involves accuracy and precision to pull the kind of stuff like those.

The builders were from Syyn Labs, a Los Angeles-based arts and technology collective ,famous for entertaining science and tech projects that involve crowds of people, at a monthly gathering called Mindshare LA.

It was a really time consuming project and see for your self why 6 million people have already watched this video in so little time.

A few days back, March the 2nd to be accurate, Apple filed a lawsuit against HTC for infringing on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. This now is one of the biggest problems among touch screens mobiles that everything looks the same. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. District Court in Delaware on 2^nd of March.

Statement Made by Steve Jobs

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it”. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.” said the CEO of Apple – Steve Jobs.

Since the release of Apple mobile in 2007, Apple stood out to be one of the best from the rest in the mobile industry by selling Over 40 million iPhones worldwide. In the past few years and now, Other Mobile Makers are trying to surpass them. This  might be the only reason for Apple to file a case on HTC and to make a statement about their dominance…and also the 20 apple patents related to their model..(oops)

Steve Jobs , CEO of Apple

Vs

Peter Chou , CEO of HTC

Windows by default imposes a delay period when the users navigate through the start menu. You have have experience a delay while pointing to “All Programs” (Program Files) in Start Menu. This is only due to the default delay. However this delay can be removed by editing an entry in the Windows Registry. Simply follow the below steps to change the delay in navigation.

Speed Up Start Menu Using Registry

1. Open “Run” command (Start Menu -> Run) or Press (Windows Key + R) .
   

   Registy Editor

2. Enter “regedit” in the Textbox and press “Enter” key. This will open the Windows Registry Editor.
3. Now in the Left Side Panel , Open the Hive “HKEY_CURRENT_USER“, then select the option “Control Panel” and then choose “Desktop“.
4. Now in the right side panel check if there exists any key by the name “MenuShowDelay”. If it exists then double click on that key and chage the value to “0″ and Skip to Step 7.
5. Incase the key does not exists then in the Menu Bar choose “Edit -> New -> String value”.
6. A  new string value will be added, Name the value as “MenuShowDelay” , double click on the value to change it to “0″.
   

   Speed up Start Menu with Registry Editor

7. Close the Registry Editor, the changes will now take place, in some computer you got to restart for the changes to take place.

This is applicable to all the version of Windows higher than Windows XP.

Hi all, this is Neo , the Co-Editor of ByteChip. This week we has crossed another milestone. This is the 200th post on ByteChip. We are on the sixth month of Blogging, since then we could achieve this mark. However Ramkumar felt the number is less and hereforth he is seriously going to work on it. Nevertheless we hope you have  enjoyed our articles and we will continue to deliver to the best we could.

ByteChip DashBoard

The above image shows our dashboard, you could see that our comments is also reaching that 2k mark.  While Im writing this article, the rest of the team of ByteChip is editing the old articles to be SEO friendly. These days we get a huge traffic from Search Engines, and we thought we could optimize the old posts too. Talking about the theme, I guess everyone are satisfied with our new theme, We have made many modifications to it , inorder to improve our site loading time. Also the font-size has been optimized for better viewing, Incase if you have any suggestion to be made for the theme or on our posting, You are most welcome, we would be glad to hear your suggestions , feedbacks and implement them on ByteChip.

Posts

iPad Launch Date and Prices

Sony Vaio E Series VPC EB16

Sony Vaio E Series VPC EB14

Sony Vaio E Series VPC EB12

Sony Vaio E Series VPC EB1AGG BI

Review GrooveShark – Free Online Songs | Radio

Wordpress Thread Comment

Block Websites using DNS

Monthly Statistics February 2010

Find IFSC code of a Bank

Top Commentators

1. TechChunks (http://www.TechChunks.com)
2. Pubudu Kodikara (http://www.TechHamlet.com)
3. Anish K.S  (http://www.TechnicsToday.com)
4. NavaPavan (http://www.NavaPavan.com)
5. Rohit Sane (http://www.techfreakstuff.com)

Like Our posts ? Do Subscribe to our Feeds .

Apple’s much awaited and finally much criticized product iPad will now be available for sale in United States from April 3rd onwards. The Wifi with 3G model is however expected to hit the market by the end of April .  Inspite of the criticism by others, iPad will be a sure hit.

Meanwhile Sony has planned to develop an alternative for iPad. The date of completion of their project is not officially been announced. But by that time they could release the product, atleast a million copies of iPad will be sold out.

Prices of Ipad Wifi without 3G

Prices of Ipad Wifi with 3G

iPad

iPad

Features & Specification of iPad: Click here.

Also Check out Sony Dash , Personal Internet Viewer -  one amongst the latest product of Sony, which starts at 199 USD, almost the price of an iPod Touch. Click here for more details

Sony Dash - Personal Internet Viewer