A couple of Twitter questions posted to @weblogtooltips (are you following us yet?) about publishing posts in the future with plugins make me think that some users of WordPress might not know about the cool features that are built right into the admin panel. (yes, WordPress does that) As the screenshot to the left shows, the publish box in WordPress holds a couple of hidden gems that might not immiediately be apparent. You can do one of two things with the fantastic post you just wrote (beside just posting it outright): You can make your post public and make it a sticky on the front page or you can choose to password protect it or make it completely invisible to people that are not logged in to your blog. This option is available on your “Add New Post” page under the Publish box. You have to click on “Edit” next […]
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‘WordPress FAQs’ Category
No software is perfect no matter how perfectly it is written, as there are external factors that may interfere with its working and cause problems, likewise with WordPress, which is always tested thoroughly before releasing them to general public, there may be areas of problems for users.
[Continue Reading...]A neat way to spice up your WordPress search page is to highlight search terms within your search results. I’ve seen some tutorials on the net on how to do this, but I haven’t found one that highlights both title and post content and is a drop-in modification for WordPress. Today I will bring you this drop-in hack for highlighting search terms on your WordPress blog. Installation 1. Copy and paste the following code into your theme’s functions.php file: function hls_set_query() { $query = attribute_escape(get_search_query()); if(strlen($query) > 0){ echo ‘ <script type=”text/javascript”> var hls_query = “‘.$query.'”; </script> ‘; } } function hls_init_jquery() { wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery’); } add_action(‘init’, ‘hls_init_jquery’); add_action(‘wp_print_scripts’, ‘hls_set_query’); If you are having issues with copy-paste from this blog, here is a link to the same code in a txt file: Code to insert into functions.php 2. Copy and paste the following code into your theme’s header.php file (just before […]
[Continue Reading...]Let me start off by saying that this post will not talk about how to get sponsors, how to determine prizes, or how to determine rules for a blog contest. This post will talk about how to tweak your WordPress blog to solve the biggest problem in running a blog contest to gain RSS subscribers. Problem The issue here is that there is no easy way to track if each contestant has actually subscribed to your RSS feed. Without the ability to confirm RSS subscription, anybody can just claim that they have subscribed to your feed and get a free entry into the contest. Solution A known solution to this problem is to include a special contest code into your RSS feed and not have this code visible on your website. That way each contestant will be forced to grab the code from your feed and submit the code via […]
[Continue Reading...]Even though WordPress works pretty well out of the box, there is still a number of optimization tips that can be accomplished to make WordPress function that much better. Vladimir Prelovac has done an excellent job describing ten optimization tips that you can use on your own WordPress installation. The tips and techniques range from optimizing database tables to implementing caching. There should be at least one or two tips within this article that everyone can implement on their own blog. Here is a sample for you to chew on: Tip #1: If you are expecting a Digg Front Page you are likely to exceed your current limit of maximum concurrent MySQL connections which is among the prime reasons a site failing a Digg traffic spike. You can prepare by increasing this number to about 250 using this line in the config file. max_connections = 250 Check out the full […]
[Continue Reading...]Tutorial: Creating Custom Write Panels in WordPress.: A fantastic, detailed and quite useful tutorial on creating custom write panels for the WordPress Write Post page. I had written something similar for the WordPress Jobs site and it turned out to be a fantastic tool to quickly get to and add/modify Custom Fields in posts. Custom write panels are most useful for customized installations of WordPress and could be used to add many different types of information into a post both easily and quickly. The image below shows a couple of examples of custom panels and I am sure there are hundreds more. This tutorial makes use of Custom Fields in WordPress using the various functions that help manage Custom Fields (I keep typing customer), and is a shining example of how useful and flexible Custom Fields can be in developing a full CMS with WordPress. Since the final code is […]
[Continue Reading...]Several plugins provide users with template tags like functions to include plugin output into themes, the most common way of including plugin code into themes looks like this: <h2>Section Header</h2> <?php plugin_template_tag_function(); ?> Though the above code is absolutely right, PHP errors will occur if you disable the plugin and do not remove the template tag from the theme. There is a much better way of including template tags in your themes, which ensures that PHP errors do not occur when you disable plugins and do not remove them from your themes: <?php if ( function_exists(‘plugin_template_tag_function’) ) : ?> <h2>Section Header</h2> <?php plugin_template_tag_function(); ?> <?php endif; ?> The if condition in the above code ensures that the function you want to use is registered, before the code is executed. This extra check will ensure that your theme will load without PHP errors, even if the plugin has been disabled. If […]
[Continue Reading...]Reader John writes in: How does one use paging with an offset? Doing so breaks the navigation controls. The problem with using an offset in a query is that WordPress ignores any reference to paging. In other words, you can use an offset and paging, but not both together. This can be solved by tapping into the post_limits filter. Step 1: Add the ‘my_post_limit’ Function The my_post_limit function is what the post_limits filter will use to update the standard loop query. We’ll use the function to use paging and offsets together. This function should be placed in your theme’s functions.php file. function my_post_limit($limit) { global $paged, $myOffset; if (empty($paged)) { $paged = 1; } $postperpage = intval(get_option('posts_per_page')); $pgstrt = ((intval($paged) -1) * $postperpage) + $myOffset . ', '; $limit = 'LIMIT '.$pgstrt.$postperpage; return $limit; } //end function my_post_limit Step 2: Add the Filter Reference <?php add_filter('post_limits', 'my_post_limit'); ?> <div id="recent"> […]
[Continue Reading...]About the Author
- Mark Ghosh
An avid fan of business, education, technology and finance. I lead a lean, highly focussed and capable team of Java Back End developers and Front End developers through a maze of complex software wizardry to fulfill the web maintenance needs of a large chemical manufacturer. As per Myers-Briggs Personality Types, I am an ESTJ. I pride in a project completed on time and according to plan. My hobbies include all kinds of technology, anything that I can taste and anything that goes fast or flies in the air. I like to read business books and comics in my spare time.
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9 Ways to Make Your WordPress Blog “Smart”
Many of you might be confused by the title and the term “smart”. To me a “smart” blog is a blog that behaves differently depending on its visitors’ behavior and characteristics. A simple example of this is a blog that displays a list of today’s most popular posts on the sidebar. The list changes based on visitors’ behavior so to this is definitely a smart blog feature. There are plenty of WordPress plugins out there that do this for you automatically (e.g. Top 10), but that is not the point. The point here is that having the ability to morph your blog per visitor activity can assist you in meeting your conversion goals (whatever they may be). A list of popular posts is quite a simple feature, so let me take you to another level by showing you more ways to make your blog smart. List of “Smart” Features to […]
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