WordPress

5 FREE WordPress Plugins Every Blogger Needs to Have

March 30, 2011 By Miranda Surgery 5 Comments

Blog publishing has become a labyrinth of content structure, templating systems and plug-ins. Maintaining a good blog with optimal potential requires a focused and practical plan. Plugins are essential. There are a good amount of safe, free plugins to download and utilize.

1. Swat Your Spam

Akismet. This is the most popular free anti-spam/comment plug-ins. Downloading is free however there is a minimal charge for commercial based blogs. In addition, it offers a library option in a variety of languages. With Akismet, the algorithm code that is usually based on the home website is on the Akismet server. It sends the comment back to the host website and determines whether it is spam or legitimate. It will hold content for fifteen days, just in case, and then delete it. Installation requires a WordPress blog which entails signing up for a WordPress.com API key account. After this, install the Akismet plugin into the WordPress plugin directory. It is important to follow the spam folder compiled by Akismet in the first few weeks or so of use. This way you can train it to recognize comments that may otherwise be considered spam and missed.

2. Keyword Tracker

SEO Rank Reporter is an excellent free plugin that will track keywords in your site. Every three days it will show an easy to follow Google ranking graph. As your ranking fluctuates Rank Reporter will send you emails alerting you of top rank changes.

3. Platinum SEO Pack

This plugin will utilize the titles of your blogs for search engine optimization by routinely generating Meta tags. In addition, duplicate information on your site is immediately brought to your attention.

4. SEO Content Control

A plugin that acts like a personal secretary is found in SEO Content Control. It finds content that you may have forgotten to tag, describe and/or categorize and offers ways to develop more optimal choices thus potentially increasing your search engine rankings.

5. Keyword Density Checker

By compiling keyword densities, Keyword Density Checker can create an overview of the density usage of used keywords and key phrases. Meta keyword suggestions are also offered plus prevention of content language and word filter usage.

Take note that because of continuing upgrades offered for WordPress plugins it is probably best to save your current plugins in the WordPress database. When you do this you can go back and decide the specific actions your plugin will take when the upgrade is applied.

About the Author: Miranda S. is a surgical tech by day and blogger by night. She loves looking for unique ways to improve her blogs (and the blogs of others) without spending a ton of cash!

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: akismet, keywords, plugins, seo, WordPress

WordPress Web Design Tips

January 1, 2011 By CDT 1 Comment

Our little shop is primarily a WordPress web shop. We design custom WordPress websites that are search engine friendly and easily editable by the client. Here are some tips for WordPress web design.

Do not modify core files in WordPress.
It might be the easy way to do something, but it will be over written when WordPress is updated. It won’t seem like such an easy fix when you have to do it again. You should be using a plugin instead. Plugins are the best way to add functionality to a WordPress site. If you can’t find a plugin to do the job you need done, build one.

Modify the child themes, not the parent themes.
That is what child themes are for. Create your child theme and keep your modifications to your own child theme files. Parent themes are updated occasionally and you will lose your changes.

Use one javascript library.
Find a suitable javascript library and stick to it. jQuery is good. Mixing javascript is bad. Finding pre-existing scripts on the web to incorporate in your design is a good way to learn. If the comments in those scripts in any way contain the phrase “I don’t care,” ditch the script. Learn from it if you can, but do not waste time trying to make it work.

Keep your code clean.

Delete extra styles in the CSS.
Remove unused PHP from the functions file.
Remove old analytics code if it is no longer needed.
Delete unused or unnecessary plugins.
Consolidate your javascript and CSS whenever possible.
Clean up files while you are working and make sure all files are organized and clean before the site goes live.
Comment your code clearly.

Do cross browser checks as you work.
It’s far better to frequently check as many browsers as possible as you work than to try to fix many things at the end. All too often, fixing one thing means breaking something else.

Validate code. Validate code. Validate code.

Pay attention to the details.
As Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said: “God is in the details.” The details will make or break a design. It’s okay to be a perfectionist.

Test everything.
Never publish anything without testing it first. Test in multiple browsers and platforms. Have your friends test it. Have others in the shop test it. Make sure all forms work. Make sure it works as it should before publishing live content.

Written by Shanna Cramer, owner of The Web Shoppe in Fargo, ND. Twitter Facebook

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: Web Design, WordPress

Add a clickable header in Hybrid

July 25, 2010 By CDT 1 Comment

I use Justin Tadlock’s Hybrid theme framework often. It’s clean, SEO friendly and easy to customize through child themes. Child themes are custom theme files built on the hybrid framework. Hybrid is based on php hooks, so most of the modifications need to be done through hooks.

A clickable logo is something that almost every business website needs. Here is a quick and easy function to add a clickable logo to your header div.

Make sure you are working in your child theme files.

Open functions.php in your child theme folder. If you do not have a functions.php, create one.

Add the code between the backticks (`):

`
< ? php (remove spaces)
/* clickable logo header ///////////////////////////////////// */
function clickable_logo() {
?>
<a href=”http://thewebshoppe.net”><img src=”http://locationOfYourImage.com/logo.png” width=”554px” height=”83px” /></a>
< ? php (remove spaces)
}
add_action ('hybrid_header', 'clickable_logo');
?>
`

The comment line has to go after the opening php tag. If it is outside the tag, it will write above the opening html tag and throw IE7/8 into quirks mode. All sorts of ugly will happen. The first php names the function clickable_logo.

Use standard html to add the logo. Make sure you replace the above values with your own.

The final php action hook will put the logo into the header.

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: child theme, clickable, customize, hybrid, logo, php, theme, WordPress

I learned something today

July 12, 2009 By CDT Leave a Comment

I have a new server now, so I am in the process of transferring all of my sites and my customer’s sites from the old hosting account to the new server. The old Dreamweaver sites all went smoothly as expected. The newer WordPress sites on the other hand, have been a little more challenging.

What I learned is there is a proper order for transferring WordPress sites to a new hosting account. It goes like this:

- Clean up existing Blog
- Use EXPORT tool from old wordpress
- Apply for new hosting (transfer existing domain)
- Propagate DNS nameservers
- Fresh install of WordPress (via Fantastico/Simplescripts/Independent) on new hosting
- Adjust permalinks on new hosting
- Use IMPORT tool in new wordpress
- Transfer via FTP images from wp_content/uploads
- Upload/Transfer current theme to new hosting
- Install new plugins to new hosting
- If necessary, meddle with .htaccess on new hosting

Thanks to Pigduck over at wordpress.org for that information.

Even if you do everything right and in the correct order, sometimes the themes cannot transfer correctly. Notice Custom Design Tool’s new design? It’s not the only site that is looking a tad bare today. This is my own custom child theme based on the Hybrid Theme framework.

Another thing I learned is that if you and tech support are having communication problems of any sort, get off the line with tech support immediately. It is just not worth the headache to try to work through it. Actually a dental implant procedure would be less stressful than a difficult tech support call.

Filed Under: Web Design Tagged With: hosting, transfer, Web Design, WordPress

4 WordPress Tips to Optimize Performance

June 2, 2009 By CDT Leave a Comment

WordPress comes ready to use as soon as it installs. However in order to properly leverage the power of WordPress you need to customize WordPress so that it works and performs at its peak. Here are a few WordPress tips that should help you get off to a flying start.

Remove the version number

By default WordPress adds the version number to the header of your blog. The information in your header might prove to be a goldmine for a hacker who are trying to take down or take over your blog since you are using an older version of WordPress which is not as secure as the latest version. All you need to do to remove this is to add this line: <?php remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’); ?> to the functions.php file which is located in your themes folder.

Prevent snooping in your WordPress files:

With the default options people can easily browse through your WordPress folder and files using explorer view within their web browsers. In order to prevent this you just need to add the following line of code: Options All –Indexes to your .htaccess file that can be found the main worpress directory.

Filter out spammers:

Spammers love to include .html code in their comments so that they can some how attract people to their comments. Even if you aren’t targeted by spammers it’s always a good idea to reduce the load on your blog especially as a result of spam comments. The best way to disable html code in the comments box is to add the following line of code in your functions.php file: add_filter( ‘pre_comment_content’, ‘wp_specialchars’ );.

Speed up sitemap creation:

This tip is for those who use the XML sitemaps plug-in. usually its set to “rebuild sitemap if you change the content of your blog”, you need to change that to “enable manual sitemap building via GET request. The reason you should do this is because in auto mode every time you make a post its going to take a very long time for your post to process because your entire sitemap is going to be redone from the very beginning. For very large blogs it can even take up to half an hour.

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: performance, speed, Tips, WordPress

5 FREE WordPress Plugins Every Blogger Needs to Have

1. Swat Your Spam

2. Keyword Tracker

3. Platinum SEO Pack

4. SEO Content Control

5. Keyword Density Checker

WordPress Web Design Tips

Add a clickable header in Hybrid

I learned something today

4 WordPress Tips to Optimize Performance

Remove the version number

Prevent snooping in your WordPress files:

Filter out spammers:

Speed up sitemap creation:

Tweets from @designerrss

Links

The Web Shoppe

5 FREE WordPress Plugins Every Blogger Needs to Have

1. Swat Your Spam

2. Keyword Tracker

3. Platinum SEO Pack

4. SEO Content Control

5. Keyword Density Checker

WordPress Web Design Tips

Add a clickable header in Hybrid

I learned something today

4 WordPress Tips to Optimize Performance

Remove the version number

Prevent snooping in your WordPress files:

Filter out spammers:

Speed up sitemap creation:

Tweets from @designerrss

Links

Popular Posts

The Web Shoppe