Archive for the ‘WordPress Tips’ Category
by Darnell Clayton on December 21st, 2010
When it comes to blogging many users quickly master the art creating content, utilizing social networking or even monetizing ones site.
However one item often neglected by new bloggers is pages (or rather the creation of them).
Unlike blog posts which are frequently updated and more “newsy,” pages are for the most part edited infrequently and usually receive far more attention from readers than the authors themselves.
While bloggers are only limited by their imagination as far as what types of pages they should create as well as how many, here are 3 page types every blogger should consider have regardless how long one has been blogging.
Note: While these tips can be applied to blog platforms of all types, the second one is geared more towards WordPress users as you will read in the explanation below. Read More
Categories: WordPress Tips
Tags: pages, wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on December 14th, 2010
No, I’m not referring to using Blogger (aka Blog*Spot) as your backup, as you should already be using a dedicated service designed to backup your blog.
Rather I am referring to using Blogger to host a replica of your site online (technically referred to as a mirror site by professional geeks) just in case your blog site goes under due to heavy traffic, hackers or (worse) a renegade plugin that is not up to date.
While the idea of using Blogger as an online backup may not suite everyone (as you will see from the reasons below), certain bloggers sporting WordPress users may need to consider creating a subdomain (or even leaving the “.blogspot” on) if your site falls underneath these criteria. Read More
Categories: WordPress Tips
Tags: Blogger, wordpress
by Franky Branckaute on November 24th, 2010
In this WPShout entry Angela Giese provides the code to use and retrieve the number of your Twitter followers without being hit by the Twitter API restrictions, which popular bloggers can suffer from. This work around is mainly aimed at popular sites not using the Twitter widget.
Once you have added the code to your functions.php you can easily implement the number of Twitter followers anywhere in your theme or design.
Read the tutorial, completely with copiable code, at WPShout.
Categories: Linking, WordPress Tips, WordPress Tutorials
Tags: Tutorials, twitter, wordpress, WordPress Tutorials
by Darnell Clayton on November 23rd, 2010
I know what you’re thinking: “Why would I need a Tumblr blog when I’m already using the greatest web platform known to geek-kind?”
While I won’t dispute your blog or convince you to embrace Tumblr as your primary platform, refusing to create a complimentary Tumblr blog could cost you in the future (literally).
Despite the fact that WordPress will be embracing many Tumblr like features in the future, here are 3 reasons why you should seriously consider opening a Tumblr blog to compliment your WordPress wonder. Read More
Categories: WordPress Tips
Tags: Tumblr, wordpress
by Franky Branckaute on November 10th, 2010
Great entry by Justin Tadlock, of Hybrid Theme fame, on the correct way to integrate sidebar into WordPress themes. Also contains a very detailed explanation of the term sidebar and its possible uses in WordPress Themes.
A must read for anyone who want to develop themes for WordPress: Read Justin’s entry here.
Categories: Linking, WordPress Tips, WordPress Tutorials
Tags: justin Tadlock, Must Read, Sidebars, Themes, wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on November 10th, 2010
One of the joys of blogging upon WordPress is the fact that there are thousands of excellent plugins and themes you can utilize upon your blog, giving you the ability to easily customize your site without having to dig too deeply into the code.
Unfortunately it seems that in their excitement to configure a blog to their liking, many users forget that many of the changes they are making behind the scenes are appearing live upon the site, which can confuse many of their readers (especially if your blog breaks).
While one should always seek out for new ways to improve the appearance and functionality of your blog, users might want to consider establishing a sand box (aka beta site) where they can test out new features “live” without damaging the appearance or functionality of their site. Read More
Categories: WordPress Tips
Tags: wordpress
by Jonathan Bailey on October 27th, 2010
If you blog long enough, it is bound to happen to you, even if you aren’t aware. Someone will take your content and republish it on their site, sometimes with a link, sometimes without, sometimes the full work, sometimes just a snippet. There are a million ways your content can appear on other sites, some ways legitimately and other ways less so, but they are all interesting lessons in how your readers interact with your work and, in some cases, problems you have to address.
Because, while most content reuse is fairly harmless. Some uses, especially by plagiarists and spammers, can have a negative impact on your site. This makes it important to know both how to track your content, what your rights are regarding your work, when is a good idea to step in and, most importantly, what you can do if you find that you need to.
Unfortunately, the issues are far more complex than what we can discuss in a single column, but we can definitely give a good overview of the situation and what you can expect.
Read More
Categories: Blogging Resources, Blogging Sense, Blogging Tips, Blogging: How To, WordPress Tips
Tags: Blogging Pitfalls
by Jonathan Bailey on September 29th, 2010
Imagine sitting down to your computer one morning and opening up your blog. However, instead of finding your homepage your admin panel staring back at you, you instead see a bright red warning screen telling you that malware has been detected on the site and you are advised not to enter.
The realization quickly sinks in that, if you are seeing that error, so is everyone else trying to visit your site. You begin to hurry and try to figure out what happened but quickly realize that your site has been compromised and, if you’re even able to log in, you have a very big mess to clean up. Worst of all, when you’re done, you have to apply for reconsideration with Google and other security companies and then wait 12 hours or more for the warning to clear off.
It’s a painful process and, in the best of circumstances it can ruin an entire day and, in the worst, it can destroy an otherwise healthy site.
Still, it is an all-too-common occurrence on the Web. Bloggers learn too late that their sites are vulnerable and are left to clean up the mess an attacker leaves behind. That mess could be as simple as adding malware to the site, inserting spam links into the theme or defacing the site but in some extreme cases, it can go as far as to delete everything the blogger has done.
To help keep you, your visitors and your site safe(r) from hackers, you need to make sure your server is secure. Fortunately, it isn’t very complicated but failure to spend the time and energy today can be very costly tomorrow. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tips
Tags: Backups, blogging, Blogging Pitfalls, cracking, hacking, hardening, malware, Security, spam, wordpress
by Cassie Emelia on August 19th, 2010
If you want to grow your blog’s audience and you use WordPress.org as your blogging application, then you need to try the five WordPress plugins listed below. They’re easy to use, free, and can have a significant impact on the number of visitors to your blog.
The more great content people are exposed to on your blog, the higher the chances are that they’ll find something they like causing them to return to your blog again, share your content with their own online connections, and ultimately, drive additional traffic to your blog. YAARP is a great plugin for automatically including a list of related posts at the end of each of your blog posts. The Link Within widget is another alternative.
Read More
Categories: WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tips
Tags: increase blog traffic, organic blog traffic, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tips
by Susan Gunelius on July 29th, 2010
As a follow up to Jonathan Bailey’s great post yesterday, Blogging Pitfalls: Becoming a Spammer, I wanted to talk about comment spam a bit more. Bloggers are often inundated with comment spam, which can get so bad that they might even reconsider moderating comments.
Unfortunately, there are some forms of comment spam that have gotten out of control over the past year or so, and bloggers need to be aware of these spam tactics, try to identify them, and mark those comments as spam using their comment spam detection tool (for example, Akismet). Identifying comments as spam helps your spam tool better identify them in the future, so hopefully, they won’t get through to your moderation queue anymore.
But how do you know if a comment is spam if it’s not the usual link-filled or gibberish spam comment that can be identified with a cursory glance? That’s the problem with these newer forms of comment spam — they often look like legitimate comments, until you take a closer look at them. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips, WordPress Tips
Tags: blog spam, Blogging Tips, comment spam, fight spam
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