Smart Blog TipsWordpress Tips

WordPress 2.8.1 Beta out and not so smooth upgrade to 2.8 by Us

Jayant — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:39:31 +0000

Today we tried to upgrade to WordPress 2.8 and faced few issues. Let is a short post describing the same. By the way, WordPress 2.8.1 Beta is available for download.

Earlier today, Smart Blog Tips was upgraded to WordPress 2.8. Sad thing is the transition was not smooth. First of all the PHP Memory Limit bug stinged us. After increasing the allotted Memory to 64MB, we could manage to do the automatic update. However, the problem was not over yet. The theme compatibility crept up. Related post was shown twice on the page bottom. Few plugins refuse to load. And over all the experience was patchy. Thank goodness we have our data backed up, so incase if anything gets lost, preparation was there for a fresh install.

Finally things are back up with couple of hour’s downtime. And this hit the analytics stats pretty bad. But since it was sunday, and the activity on this blog is lowest on Sundays, we hope not many visitor were disappointed. There are few issues still but then atleast we got up and running for the moment.

WordPress 2.8.1 Beta is available to download. This is like a Service Pack release, where few bugs that poped up in version 2.8 are taken care of. Here are the major bug this update resolves:

get_categories() function and incompatibility with certain themes
Reduced Dashboard Memory Usage
In case of a failed upgrade, accidental file deletion is avoided
Fixed certain issues with Rich Text Editor Loading
Beefed up security for plugins that do not provide xplicit permission checks

Links:

Remember this is a Beta release. To use it at your own risk. Have a nice Day..!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

4 Essential Plugins for WordPress Image SEO

Jayant — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:17:11 +0000

4 very essential plugins for Image Search Engins Optimization in WordPress. This will help search engine understand the images on your blog better and help you get more rankings.

Image optimization is always neglected. Either images are totally writtern off or some other ways are found to do away with less of the images. Search Engines does not have images. It is just that we as blogger tend to over do things by stuffing our blogs with loads and loads of images, some of which can easily be done without. The point to not ehere is that, since images take up more bandwidth, use them judiciously.

Another aspect of Image optimization is that everything is concentrated with Image Size. Image size is not the only attribute which the Search Engiens go after. Using an image when appropriate with proper optimization including proper description goes a long way to increase the SEO factor on your blog. Here we present WordPress Plugins which help optimizing Images from SEO point of view.

WP Smush It..!!

WP Smush It..!! is a cool plugin which uses the Smush It API from Yahoo and process all your images in the background and optimizes them. The conversion process is loseless, meaning the image quality is not sacrificed during the process. Most importantly, it does all this without interfering the blog posting in any way. It also have the ability to optimize your existing images from the Media Library Tab in the Admin Panel.

Link:

SEO Friendly Images

Its a common practice to forget updating the Title tag for images as we are much focussed towards our Content. SEO Friendly Images provides a very simple way to auto update the tags for the Images. It does so based on the Image File name and the Post Title. You can do the selection from its settings page.

Link:

Cleaner Gallery

Developed by the popular author of Hybrid Theme, Cleaner Gallery takes care of any invalid XHTML code that WordPress generated when using the short code. Apart from that, it also integrates many Lightbox type scripts and adds loads of extra features.

Link:

cSprites

cSprites combines all images in your content into one single images and display only part of it in the post content as needed. It in short apply the CSS Sprites formula to the WordPress Post Content. Doing this will reduce the HTTP request, make your pages load faster and make copying your iamge files a bit difficult. Moreover it also automatically generates ALT and TITLE tag based on your Post categories, image names, post title etc.

Link:

Plugin Download Page

Plugin Description Page

These are only a handful of plugins used by me at som point of the other. Do share via comments any more plugins which you find useful. Have a nice Day..!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

WordPress 2.8 final version released. Upgrade time..!!

Jayant — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:12:16 +0000

Final version of popular Blog application WordPress 2.8 was released to the general public. Only couple of days back teh RC (Release Candidate) was reelased for deployment.

Its upgrade time for all folks running their blogs on WordPress platform. WordPress earlier today released the final verison of their WordPress 2.8. Wodpress 2.8 does not bring drastic changes in the presentation and layout but there are many changes under the hood. Hopefully these changes will not break majority of the themes. Most prominent changes in this version are:

Theme Browser
Reworked Admin Layout
Updated Admin Schemas
Revamped Widget Areas
Updated Falsh Uploader

Links:

I am looking forward to see if anyone is experiencing any major issues with this version of WordPress while running on a live environment. If no issues are found, then I will upgrade it myself ASAP. Let me know if you faced any issues w.r.t. the same. Have a nice Day..!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Difference between Google News Sitemap vs. XML Sitemap

Jayant — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:07:33 +0000

Google News sitemap is different from the XML sitemap you create for your Blog in wordpress. Thankfully creating sitemap for Google News is simple enough.

Google News Search is not same as Google Search or any other Search Engine for that matter. It is a special News based Search Engine which focus on bringing News items instead fo Regular Web Pages. With so many news sites popping up and diminishing demarkation between Websites and News Based sites, there is a need to draw the line.

A regular XML sitemap would not work for Search Engine submission like Google News simply because, the requirements and the target audience are different. Here are the top differences between an Regular XML Sitemap and Google News Sitemap

News Sitemaps are updated every time you Post/Edit or Publish a post/article. Regular XML sitemap update frequency comparitively less.
News Sitemaps contains only latest articles while Regular XML Sitemap contains an exhaustive list of articles.
They both cannot be used in lieu of the other.
Additional fields such as Timestamp or the Article Publication Date is absolutely necessary for News Sitemaps. It tells the Search Engine the date at which the Article first appeared on the site.

Links:

Now that you are aware of teh difference between a Regular XML Sitemap needed by Websites/Blogs and the News Sitemap needed by Google News and other similiar provider,

Have a nice Day..!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How to Ping Google Blog Search with WordPress

Jayant — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:25:30 +0000

By pinging Google Blog Search you can quickly add your latest Blog Content to Google’s index. Learn Manual and Automatic way of pinging your WordPress Blog to Google.

Manually Pinging Google Blog Search Engine

This is a straight forward method to notify Google everytime your Blog is updated. Head over to the following Webpage and fill in your Blog URL or RSS Feed link. Google Bots (Spiders or Crawlers) will identify your Blog and index the latest content. However this is a time consuming process. If you have a WordPress Blog then follow the Automatic Method.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping

Automatically Ping Google Blog Search Engine

If you have a WordPress Blog, you can add the following URL in your Settings -> Writing ->Update Services. The default service here would be “http://rpc.pingomatic.com/”. Add another line the following URL and save your Settings. From now everytime you update your Blog, Google Blog Search would be ping automatically.

I would also recommend to add “http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping” which is the Ping Service from Technorati Blog Authority Site.

Share your Tips with us via comments. Have a nice Day..!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How to recover WordPress Admin Password

Jayant — Sun, 03 May 2009 08:14:23 +0000

What would you do when you lost your WordPress Admin Password and the password recovery options is not sending you the correct password? Pay $100 to a developer or simple Follow the steps and do it for free.

Image Credit

Method 1 – Using PHP MyAdmin

1. Open you Cpanel or other custom Web Hosting Backend, open PHP MyAdmin

2. In the list of Databases, click the WordPress Database

3. Click on the table called “wp_users”

4. On the next screen, click browse on “user_login” and find ID asociate with your login

5. Go back to “wp_users” table

6. On “user_pass” field click browse and find ID associated with your login. Click Edit.

7. Next to the ID number type in your new password (its case sensitive)

8. Once done, click dropdown menu and selected MD5 from menu

9. That’s it. Done. Make sure MD5 and password correctly.

Method 2 – Emergency Password Reset Script

1. Download the file. Click Here.

2. Copy the “emergency.php” to your Domain root. Do not upload using WordPress Admin Panel. Try FTP or File Manager.

3. Login to “http://www.domain-name.com/emergency.php”

4. Type the Admin Username and Password

5. It will send the email and reset the Password.

6. DELETE the Script. REMEMBER to do it.

* It worked with WordPress 2.6 but have not tested it on version 2.7

Useful Links

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How to add Nofollow Attribute to Tag Cloud in WordPress

Jayant — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:44:10 +0000

No follow attribute is becoming a very important element for SEO. It have gained importance not only to external links but more so with respect to internal links also. Internal Linking as you know it is the structure of linking to different pages and posts of your site. It basically defines your site’s navigational system and data organization.

Tag Cloud forms a very important part of Blog Navigation and Internal Linking system. Imagine this, displaying Tag Cloud on a blog page places about 40 something links to other internal tag pages. Now imagine the aspect of link juice dilution when these are marked as “do-follow” vs. “no-follow” links. Too much link juice gets leaked by this way. WordPress by default does not have “no-follow” attribute added to the Tag Cloud.

Download the Plugin here
Upload it to your WordPress/wp-content/plugins Directory
Activate it and you are done. This little plug in will save lot of link juice wastage

Have a nice Day..!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How to remove Category Base from WordPress Permalinks

Jayant — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:03:44 +0000

Having good Permalink Structure is very important for your Blog with respect to SEO. WordPress does nice by providing a Permalinks Section from the Settings Page in the Admin Panel.

But sometimes some bloggers do not want to have any category base in their Permalinks structure. WordPress does not allows you to do it. Here is how you can get it done.

WP No Category Base Plug-in

If you are using WordPress 2.7, Go to Plug-ins –> Add New –> Search for “WP No Category Base”, install it and activate it.

If you are using previous version of WordPress, Upload the “no-category-base.php” to the “/wp-content/plugins/”, and Activate it from the Plug-ins Menu

This plug-in does not have any Settings Page. Just activate it to use and de-activate when you don’t need it.

Precautions

Remember to have no Post Slug equal to your Category Slug. In case you have same slug for both then the page will get the priority and the category page will never show up.

Best Permalinks URL Structure for your WordPress Blog

Jayant — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 04:55:27 +0000

WordPress by default is very SEO friendly. Its only Bloggers who make it difficult for Search engine Spiders or Crawlers to understand the blog by loading in more and more stuff in the name of features and add-on value items. In this post we will look at the most simple and the very first change you should make in your WordPress Blog to make it geared towards Search Engines.

Permalinks

Permalinks (short for Permanent Links) are permanent URLs for your individual Blog Post, Category Pages, Tag Pages, Archives and typically any page in a WordPress CMS. It is the string called URL you see in your Address Bar of the Web Browser while visiting the page.

Types of Permalinks

WordPress classify Permalinks into 4 Types. Let’s take a look into each of them:

1. Ugly Permalinks: These are the ones where the Permalinks use PostID in the structure. The advantage is you can refer to it by just remembering the PostID. The main disadvantage is, the Permalink itself does not tell anything about the Post or its content.

Ex: www.smartblogtips.com/?p=4125 or www.smartblogtips.com/2008/?p=4125

2. Pretty Permalinks: Here mod_rewrite is used to make your Permalinks eligible for humans, by redirecting it to the corresponding PostID. The good thing about this one is that now you can actually have a Permalink that speaks what the Blog Post is about.

Ex: www.smartblogtips.com/this-post-will-tell-you-about-permalinks

3. Hackable Permalinks: Similar to Pretty Permalinks, Hackable Permalinks consists of levels in the URL where it can be broken down by user to navigate to a different portion in the site.

Ex: www.smartblgotips.com/2008/03/i-told-you-this-is-nice-info (If I remove the last string i get www.smartblogtips.com/2008/03 which takes me to the monthly archives for Year 2008 Month March)

4. Almost Pretty: Similar to Pretty Permalinks in every way, but it inserts index.php between the Site URL and Permalink.

Ex: www.smartblogtips.com/index.php/2008/03/i-dont-like-it

Permalinks Settings

Settings to change Permalinks can be found at (WordPress ver 2.5 and above)

WordPress Admin Panel –> Settings -> Permalinks Panel

Here you can choose from the few given structures, make your own or return to default structure. Here comes the fun part. You can use the Custom Option to define your won Permalink Structure. For this you need to use what is called as Structure Tags. Let’s take a look.

Structure Tags

As you can see Pretty Permalinks and Almost Pretty Permalinks can be modified to produce customized Permalinks. You have many options to choose from, and then mix and match to create your own customized structure.

%year% – Year of the post, 4 digits, Ex: 2009
%monthnum% – Month of the year, 2 digits Ex: 02
%day% – Day of the month, Ex: 29
%hour% – Hour of the day, Ex: 10
%minute% – Minute of the hour, Ex: 48
%second% – Second of the minute, Ex: 25
%postname% – Post Slug (editable lower case hyphened field. By default “Permalink Post by TJ” will become “permalink-post-by-tj”)
%post_id% – The unique ID # of the post, Ex: 1243
%category% – Category Slug field. Nested sub-categories appear as nested directories in the URL.
%tag% – Tag Slug Field.
%author% – Author Name.

Best Permalink Structure for Users and Search Engine

There are few Permalink Structure which qualify as useful from Search Engine’s point of view and also are easy on the eyes for Humans. They are as follows

1. /%postname%

This is the one I like the most and use on all my blogs. It results in short URL, is straight to the point and good for Search Engine Spiders/Crawlers by displaying keywords in the link structure. It is not Hackable, meaning you cannot navigate to any other portion of the site. Also it may interfere with accessing some of site’s links.

Ex: If I have a TinyURL Script located at www.smartblogtips.com/TinyURL and have already written a post with slug “tinyurl”, both location would have a common URL and hence the conflict.

2. /%year%/%postname% OR /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%

This is the most widely acknowledge structure. It is Pretty, Informative and Hackable. By removing the post details you can actually land to yearly or monthly archives. Also it tells Search Engine about the year of the post in addition to the keywords in title.

4. /%category%/%postname% OR /%tag%/%postname%

This is the best match from Search Engine point of view. It is the best you can get. However it has two serious defects. First, if you change your Category Slug or Tag Slug, it will directly affect your Search Engine Rankings. Second, it would become pretty useless where you have more than one category or tag. In case you are wondering, it will show the lowest ID category/tag among the selected ones.

Note: You can copy these Permalink Structure and paste into your WordPress Settings -> Permalinks -> Custom field.

As you can see I am using the first structure. Which one are you using? Let us know via comments.

Have a nice Day..!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Add Google Reader Shared Items to your WordPress Blog

Jayant — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 02:44:37 +0000

I have recently posted a tip on “How to post your Google Reader Shared Items on you Twitter Account”. Here, in this post we will see how can we add our Google Reader Shared Items on our WordPress Blogs.

Step 1: Identify your Unique Google Reader ID. You can find it between two “%2F” characters, in the address bar, when you click on “Your Stuff” in the Navigation Pane. You can do the same in the Options Panel of the following WordPress Plug-in.

Step 2: Download “Google Reader Shared” WordPress Plug-in and activate it.

Step 3: Update your Google Reader ID and validate it. Alternatively you can Enter your Google Account details and get your Google Reader ID.

Step 4: Set up the Plug-in. You can set up the number of Topics to display, Should Content Synopsis be displayed, and how long the Content should be. Also you can control Hyperlink Behavior and share your Google Notes.

Getting the Best out of Google Reader Shared Items

Tip 1: Decide what you want to share. Do not blindly share everything you like.

Tip 2: Best option would be to share on interesting Post related to your Niche.

Tip 3: Although you can post Content along with Share Items, I would advise to not do the same. It would make your Sidebar more cluttered and take up valuable space.

Got more tips? Share with us via Comments.

Have a nice day..!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.