PHPExcelReader comes with two files oleread.inc and reader.php. We will need to include reader.php in order to use the package. For the sake of “simplicity”, I have made some changes in example file and data. Grab it here:

Dowload PHPExcelReader.zip

Sample Excel Spreadsheet

Take a look at example.php, code is pretty much straight forward. As I said before, in order to use the package we need to include reader.php into our code.
require_once('excel/reader.php');
Next, create a new object from the class Spreadsheet_Excel_Reader and give the excel file which you like to read.

$xls = new Spreadsheet_Excel_Reader();
$xls->read('indiastamps_yearsets.xls');

All the rows and columns can be accessed through array variable sheets. We use two for loops to access each and every element of the sheet0.
$xls->sheets[0]['cells'][$row][$column]

Result

If you are Microsoft Excel 2007 user, be sure about saving file in 1997-2003 .xls format else it will not work. Thanks for reading.

So, I searched for related plugin, but didn’t quite get the exact thing I want. Then decide to make one new on my own. This is my first try on wordpress plugin, so I want to share it here, hope folks found it usefull.

Firstly, Download the CurrentStatus plugin from here. Unpack it and upload the directory currentstatus to your wordpress plugin directory (wp-contents/plugin/). Activate the plugin from admin panel of your blog. Now you can see another option added on your settings options i.e. CurrentStatus

Now you have to add a little code somewhere in your wordpress theme, where you would like to display your status. As I display on my sidebar, open sidebar.php for editing. Add the following code, where you want to display your status.
<?php echo CurrentStatus_GetCurrentStatus(); ?>
That’s all, We’re done now. To change the Status and Mood, click on the CurrentStatus under Settings in your admin panel. You will see admin panel of the CurrentStatus Plugin.

Enter your status in text field and choose any mood from the list of 155 different moods. You can also edit the structure of how your status will be inserted. Noted that %STATUS% is replaced by status and %MOOD% is replaced by mood selected, remaining code as it is inserted, where we add our code in sidebar.php. At the end, don’t forget to hit “Update” button to apply changes.

Webmasters and Bloggers are always interested to see whom visiting there site, where they came from, etc. There are some free tools on web to track your visitors. Google Analytics and Statcounter are two most popular and accurate tools for visitor tracking. They extract information like region, city, country, referral, ISP, etc from an IP address and provide us processed information in form of graphical components like chart, graphs and pie.

If you are interested to make such tool or you want to use it in your own way, here is the procedure to do it.

In this tutorial, I’ll be assuming that you have little knowledge of PHP.
First of all, download the latest IP-to-Country CSV format database from here. CSV file consist of 5 fields begin IP number, ending IP number, 2-digit country code, 3-digit country code and country name. Eg.
"33996344","33996351","GB","GBR","UNITED KINGDOM"
"50331648","69956103","US","USA","UNITED STATES"
"69956104","69956111","BM","BMU","BERMUDA"
The range of record in which IP number will lies, that record will contain the other information like country name. Now, What is an IP number ? Is this same as the IP address. No, IP number is a number which is extracted from the IP address using a following formula, lets have a example if we have an IP address a.b.c.d, formula would be:
$ip_number = a x 16777216 + b x 65536 + c x 256 + d;

Well, we have discussed how it will work, now we will get to real stuff Lets! code it!

Download IP Locator 1.0, IP Locator is a small package, which allows programmer to use only just one function i.e. GetField(); for all the required operations.

Firstly include csv.php in your code:
require_once ('csv.php');

Below code shows three different ways of using GetField() function:
$two_digit_code = GetField('twodigitcode');
$three_digit_code = GetField('threedigitcode');
$country = GetField('country');
An example index.php is included to package, which shows the use of IP Locator in detail. Also noted that CSV database is split into 7 different files, for the faster processing and reduce the server load. Package contain the IP-to-Country database from http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/ and the flags from www.ip2location.com.

Note: IPLocator v2.0 is available which now detects city, country, latitude, longitude, browser, OS etc and locate the user location in Google Maps. See the demo here. If you wish to buy this, contact me hireitgeek@gmail.com.