You may be wondering why anyone would want to do this. Think about it, you probably have hundreds of articles that you wrote years ago and when those same articles appear on Google search engine results, the dates appear next to the description. You might think that this is great, users searching the web should be able to see when an article originally published, but research shows that users discriminate against older content just because it is old. An article that may be valuable despite its age would be subject to a user completely ignoring it and would click on the newer article, just because it was newer. As you can see in the image above, the search results page lists the post date for the article followed by the description. Do not confuse the intent here, if you are running a news site or writing about topics whose value […]
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Posts Tagged ‘WordPress Hack’
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...]Well there are two links that showcase 11 and 10 fixes and hacks respectively. Most Desired WordPress Hacks: 11 Common Requests and Fixes: Noupe lists 11 commonly requested WordPress hacks and elegant fixes for them. They include avoiding duplicate content, having category specific menus, sidebar login boxes, most wanted categories etc. 10 WordPress Hacks to make Your Life Easy: Jai lists another 10 hacks to play with. His hack tutorials include adding gravatars to comments, Twitter, image gallery, author bio etc. Some of these are just tutorials on how features work within WordPress and how to incorporate them into existing themes while others are all our modifications of code in themes and in various other places. None of them look too difficult and some of them can be accomplished with plugins. However, all of them are worth checking out.
[Continue Reading...]With all of the recent discussion regarding trackbacks and pingbacks on Weblog Tools Collection, I thought I’d mention several ways one can deal with trackbacks and pingbacks in the context of a WordPress theme. The topics I will be covering in this article are on separating trackbacks/pingbacks from regular comments, and also how to remove trackbacks and pingbacks from a WordPress theme completely. Separating Trackbacks/Pingbacks From Comments I know what you’re thinking: numerous posts have already been written on how to separate trackbacks from comments. But what I present here is an actual separation using the “functions.php” feature for WordPress themes along with the regular “comments.php“. Both should be located in your theme directory. Figure 1: Theme Directory Setup Modifying the functions.php File The “functions.php” file is a lifesaver for any theme developer or tinkerer wishing to add custom code or functions to themes. The code in the “functions.php” file […]
[Continue Reading...]WordPress as a Membership Directory: After the recent tutorial on setting up WordPress as a Contact Manager, Chris Cagle has written up a tutorial on WP Designer on how to use WordPress as a Membership Directory. He has setup a Membership Directory for Pittsburgh Designers and uses his experience from that project to outline the steps, plugins and code required to set this up for yourself. Beside the annoying CSS bug that puts a text box in the middle of every page, the setup looks nice, highly versatile and very useful for both designers (in this case) and future clients. I really like the Members Directory and the ability to display detailed contact information and portfolio of every designer. Even the signup is automated (and modified to suit the need) and relatively painless. I am curious to know what they plan to do about possible spammers posing as designers, but […]
[Continue Reading...]WP Contact Manager: The versatility of WordPress continues to amaze me. Design Canopy has released a theme/set of instructions for WordPress that would allow you to run a WordPress install as a taggable, searchable contact manager that can be made into a Members Only system and display related contacts. Now mind you, it is not a stand alone theme, needs extra plugins to be downloaded and installed and they outline detailed instructions on how to set it up. However, the setup looks relatively easy and the results are definitely pretty cool. I would have liked to see a Prologue like custom posting interface for logged in users but that could be an easy add on or plugin once the thing is set up.
[Continue Reading...]Mobile Phone Optimized WordPress: Thanks to a tip from Amit, I found a quick and painless way to optimize a WordPress blog (or any blog with a feed for that matter) for use with a mobile phone. The trick is to use Google’s excellent mobile news readers to display your blog. The resulting content is not only lightning fast, it is also well formatted and relatively easy to navigate. To see for yourself, craft the following URI in your browser. http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/[Your Feed URI] This is the optimized mobile version of Weblog Tools Collection. Once you have the feed, just create a link on your blog for readers to follow and/or bookmark. Of note is the excellent WordPress Mobile plugin from Alex for those who like a one stop shop.
[Continue Reading...]Giving each WordPress post a thumbnail, and display the thumbnail on the home page: Interesting tutorial on creating thumbnails for each post on your blog and using Custom Fields to add and display them on your front page. A word of warning: the process is hand crafted and labor intensive. Think of them as SnapShots for your WordPress posts, hosted on your own blog. I think this could be a very cool plugin that automagically builds thumbnails for your posts and stores them on your blog. Then a custom function that behaves like “recent posts” could display thumbnails of your posts on the front page. I see this feature being really useful for those who post a lot of multimedia such as videos and pictures. Thanks HackWordPress [EDIT] Also, check out another Custom Fields thumbnail tutorial.
[Continue Reading...]About the Author
- Gilberto Perera
Gilbert is a Microsoft MVP, a full-time blogger, and technology aficionado. When Gilbert is away from his bike and his iPad, he's busy writing technology how-to's from his home-office in Miami, Florida on the latest programs and gadgets he can get his hands on. He's locally known as "the computer guy" and has spent the last 12 years helping family, friends, and GilsMethod.com visitors with their computer questions and problems. He was awarded the 2009 MVP award from Microsoft for his contributions in forums and blogs and is enjoying the new addition to his family.
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How to Track RSS Subscribers in a Blog Contest
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 […]
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