How to add meta tags to your blog’s front page and posts in WordPress

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Meta tags like the description and keywords tags are what search engines use to identify the content of a page on your site. The description tag is the most important meta tag because it is displayed to search engine users on result pages. For example, when I search the term ‘blog’ in Google, the first result looks like this:

The text that reads: “Blogger is a free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts with the world. Blogger makes it simple to post text, photos and video …” is actually the meta description tag for Google Blogger’s frontpage.

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Tags: blog seo
Posted in Blog Marketing, WordPress Blogging | 3 Comments »

What is Akismet?

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

So, you’ve just installed WordPress and you are wondering what that little inactive plugin named Akismet is doing in your installed plugins list. You’ve probably already guessed that the WordPress developers would not include a plugin, with the version of WordPress you installed, unless it added some kick-ass functionality to your blog.

A beautiful can of whoop-ass, courtesy of spreadthewhoop.com.

You’ve guessed right. Activating the Akismet plugin is like opening a can of whoop-ass on spammers and, once activated, you will never have to deal with faux comments again.

Comments that are filtered through Akismet are processed in an underground colony of gnomes that specialize in identifying spam … just kidding of course, but it does seem that way. Akismet filters comments by using data collected by WordPress bloggers. The comments are sent to the Akismet web service and literally undergo hundreds of tests before they are approved as comments and posted on your blog.

You don’t need to worry about Akismet catching comments that are actually not spam — it rarely happens — and when it does, you can always approve the comment[s] manually after clicking the spam link on your dashboard. If a comment gets approved that is spam, you can mark it as spam and Akismet will learn and adopt from its mistakes … that’s the kind of technology that could lead to Akismet becoming the next SkyNet.

So what does the word ‘Akismet’ mean?

Akismet is actually a contraction of Automattic (the corporation that develops WordPress) and Kismet as chosen by Matt Mullenweg’s (the founding developer of WordPress) little sister. Kismet is “the magnetic attractive force that actualizes the playing out of karma; often used in the positive sense,” according to Akismet’s website.

Looking for cheap web hosting for your WordPress blog? Check out glowhost for a good balance of quality and economical web hosting.

Tags: plugins
Posted in WordPress Blogging | 4 Comments »

How to get WordPress to stop removing your break tags

Monday, February 15th, 2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachklein/ / CC BY 2.0

Oh the joy of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors. They make all of the difficult things involved in editing an HTML/PHP page easy but they make all of the easy things impossible. One such easy-thing-turned-impossible is the ability to insert <br> tags to create line breaks.

It seems the WordPress developers did not think the average blogger wise enough to use discretion with <br> tags. The TinyMCE editor that comes with WordPress, at its default setting, will automatically remove <br> and <p> tags (that are empty). Although this may simplify the editing process, it proves to be a major pain in the ass for users who may need the <br> tag to push text further down a post so it doesn’t align horizontally with an image or if they just plain like to see giant spaces between their paragraphs (who doesn’t?).

To remove this wonderful feature in WordPress, you will need to download the TinyMCE Advanced Plugin. This amazing little plugin is the best thing since Akismet (the WordPress equivalent of sliced bread). With the plugin, you will be able to:

• Deactivate the removal of <br> and <p> tags after saving in TinyMCE
• Change the button arrangement of your buttons in TinyMCE
• Add over 20 buttons onto your TinyMCE editor that did not exist before
• Imports all CSS classes from the main theme’s stylesheet and add them to a drop-down list
• Do search and replace editing
• Add inline CSS styles to your elements
• And more

The TincyMCE Advanced Plugin for WordPress Screenshot

That said, TinyMCE Advanced is a must-have plugin for the adept blogger.

Tags: html, plugins
Posted in WordPress Blogging | No Comments »

The Custom Post Background WordPress Plugin

Monday, February 15th, 2010

->> Download Version 1.2.0.0

This plugin was designed by a college buddy named David Sherret who lives over on DavidSherret.com. He may or may not be open to suggestions for changing the plugin.

The Custom Post Background plugin for WordPress adds a great deal of visual customization ability to your blog posts and page appearances. It allows you to easily change the background of individual blog posts/pages using CSS or an image URL (with or without a x/y/both repeat).

At the main menu, CPB lists all of your pages/posts and displays any background settings that are set. For any page, clicking on the edit button will open up a sub-menu with fields where you can then make your background customizations.

As you can see, you can change the background with CSS/URL of image to apply to only the background of the post, only on the background of the home/main page, or both pages.

The ”Color” field option allows you to quickly make background changes using the background-color CSS code. You can enter any color (such as “red,” “blue,” “green”) or enter a hex value, like: #A9A7A7. You can also change the whole page background (not just the post background) of any individual post with the ”Display as page background on post page” option.

Tags: wordpress plugins
Posted in WordPress Blogging | 112 Comments »

Seeing a blank white screen on your WordPress blog?

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

Problem: The admin control panel nor any pages on your blog cannot be accessed. All that appears is a blank white page. The problem is common for WordPress bloggers who have just recently made edits to essential php files or have too many plugins running in the background, causing PHP to malfunction.

Solutions:

• Check your themes functions.php file. This file is a frequent contributor to the infamous white screen of death problem. Check for a blank code after the ?> character — this extra space can screw up your entire blog. If you don’t know what your functions.php file should look like, download your theme again and re-upload the functions.php file.
• Try changing the WordPress theme to default. If your blog works in the default theme, then you should re-install the theme you had been using.
• Try deactivating all your plugins by changing the name of the plugin folder, wp-content/plugins, to something different. If WordPress works after that, than you know you need to get rid of some plugins or try the below step.
• Define the memory usage for PHP. You can do this by adding: define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’); to your wp-config.php file. If the problem is memory related, this should fix it. Try higher values if 64M does not work.

If none of the above solutions work, it might be a good idea to re-install WordPress or contact your host.

Posted in WordPress Blogging | 1 Comment »

Why use self-hosting for your WordPress blog?

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

One of the greatest features of WordPress, the world’s most popular blogging content managment system (CMS), is the option to host your blog for free at WordPress.org.

For many bloggers, this option is quite viable, but for many others free hosting with WordPress.org can severly limit the blogging experience

Below is a list of drawbacks for hosting your blog at WordPress.org.

• No unique domain name. Instead you are able to choose a WordPress.org subdomain.
• No ability to place ads in your site. WordPress states this in their support section.
• No easy FTP access, making it more difficult to upload files to your blog directory.
• No Automated, Scraper or Affiliate blogs. WordPress.org expresses a great disdain for these types of blogs and reserves the right to drop them.
• No Search Engine Optimization blogs. Meaning blogs that go wild with SEO tactics are frowned upon, and run the risk of being dropped.
• No Warez posting on your blog. Quite a drawback if you are into digital pirating.

In short, it’s best not to host your blog with WordPress.org if you are looking to blog for money. Installing WordPress on your own domain is incredibly easy and with the highly affordable price of domains and hosting, there should be nothing stopping the commited blogger from taking that route. However, free hosting at WordPress.org addresses basic blogging needs, and is great for people that are just looking to get a feel for blogging. Check out free domain registration and web hosting reviews.

Tags: hosting
Posted in WordPress Blogging | No Comments »

WordPress 2.8 visual editor buttons not displaying

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Sometimes the WordPress 2.8 upgrade does not successfully over-write the latest version of the tinyMCE javascript file located at wp-includes/js/tinymce. Because of this, your visual editor buttons may not appear or may not be working when you go to edit a blog post.

The first thing you want to try is resetting your browser, and logging back in to WordPress.

If that does not work, simply find the ‘tinymce’ file located at wp-includes/js/tinymce in the unzipped folder of your WordPress 2.8 download, and replace it with the file in your blog’s online file directory (wp-includes/jc/tinymce).

When you are finished, your button display on the page that you use to edit a blog post or create a new one should look like this:

Tags: wordpress help
Posted in WordPress Blogging | No Comments »