Smart Blog TipsWordpress Plugins

Write Connected Posts using Series WordPress Plugin

Jayant — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:37:29 +0000

If you want to write Connected Posts, like a large multipost review, a series of post on a topic, then this WordPress plugin by Justin Tadlock will help you.

Justin Tadlock is a well known personality in the WordPress Arena. He is the developer of the Hybrid Theme Framework. In his spare time he keeps creating awesome Wordpres plugins. WordPress Series Plugin is developed for users to easily link posts together. This is great help if you are writing several post spanning the a similiar topic.

Features:

List your Series Post via Widget
A content specific list of post in the Widget
Template tags for use anywhere in your Theme
Short codes for Post Editor

Links:

Remember that this plug in is only for WordPress 2.8. Upgrade and use it. Have a nice day..!!

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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..!!

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How to create Google News Sitemap for WordPress Blog

Jayant — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:10:59 +0000

News Site based on wordpress have a challenge to create a Sitemap which is compatible with Google News. Learn how this can be quickly overcome using a simple plugin.

Requirements for Google News Sitemap

Google News aggregates data from all news based sites and displays on its News Search Results. For aggregating data from by Google, it requires News based sites to generate a Sitemap crafted specially for Google News and other News based Search Engines.

Here are the requirements for a proper Sitemap accepted by Google News:

The site must be verified in Google Webmasters
Permalinks shoud not have any Session Ids in them
Sitemap should have URLs from last 3 days
Each URL should have a timestamp / article publication date
Maximum links allowed in Sitemap is 1000. For large sites, the sitemap should be broken into multiple ones and managed via a Sitemap Index File.

Google News Sitemap Generator Plugin

This requirement seems very difficult to generate manually. However there is a nice WordPress Plugin called Google News Sitemap Generator which takes care of the whole Sitemap generation process with just a button click.

Install the plugin Google News Sitemap Generator and activate it.
Move the file google-news-sitemap.xml to teh root directory of your site. Make sure the sitemap file is writable (CHMOD to 777)
Now everytime you Save/Edit/Publish a post, the sitemap gets rebuild.
Submit your Site to Google News

Links:

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Moderate WordPress Comments from your Desktop

Jayant — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:17:46 +0000

Moderator is an Adobe AIR runtime based application that lets you moderate your WordPress Comments from your Desktop itself.

If you like me are addicted to WordPress and Blogging, and keep checking your Blog few times a day just to find if someone has left a new comment or send some feedback, then This application would be a bliss for you.

Moderator is an Adobe AIR Desktop Client, which lets you moderate your WordPress Comments right from your Desktop in real time. You don’t even need a Web Browser.

How to install Moderator:

Download Adobe AIR Runtime 1.1
Install the Moderator WordPress Plugin found here and activate it from your Admin Panel.
Now you have to download the Moderator Desktop Client. You can do this from the Moderator Plugin Settings Page or you can get it from here.
You are done. Start the Client and fill in your WordPress Login Credentials. It then opens a screen as shown below. You can now delete, accept or spam your comments right from your Desktop.

Links:

Remember to backup your WordPress before you try this plugin. Have a nice Day..!!

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Optimize/Compress images in WordPress using Smush It plugin

Jayant — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:14:38 +0000

Smush It..!! WordPress Plugin optimizes images by applying proper compression ratio and removing unnecessary details without compromizing on the Image Quality.

One SEO parameter often overlooked by Bloggers in terms of optimizing load times is the Image Size. It does not matter if you are a photo blogger or just a normal blogger adding some needed images on you blog page, the important thing is “If you can reduce filesize of your Webpage by optimizing, then you should do it”.

Smush It for WordPress is a plugin that does exactly that. It offers a very nice way of optimizing images used on your WordPress Blog by using the Smush It API. I highly recommend this plugin for all WordPress Users.

Smush It Plugin Features

Smush It Plugin optimizes image files in Loseless way, meaning their is no loss in the image quality while converting them. Here is what Smush It does:

Remove Meta Data from image files
Optimize Jpeg Conversion for Web
Converting GIFs to PNGg where noticable gain would be achieved
Stripping non used Colors from image

Installation and Usage

I hope you are on WordPress 2.7.1 version now (if not, then please upgrade for your own good). Install the plugin from “Add New” option under “Plugins Tab” in WordPress Admin Area. Search for the plugin, install and activate it. You are done..!!

New Images

Any new image you add to the Post and Pages would be automatically optimized by WP Shush It by working behind the scenes. You do not have to do anything manually. Great..!!

Existing Images

You can also optimize the existing images on your WordPress Blog. Just select the image from the Media Library and press the Smush It now

Links:

Download Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-smushit/

Plugin Page: http://smush.it/

So start Smushing..!! Have a nice day..!!

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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

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Widget Logic for WordPress: Most Powerful Widget

Jayant — Sun, 03 May 2009 06:24:50 +0000

Ever wonder how differently you can design your Blog with Widgets, when you have the option of choosing which one is displayed where? Widget Logic for WordPress helps you achieve exactly the same. Take full control of your WordPress Widgets.

Widget Logic gives every plug in an extra field called Widget Logic. This field lets you control how your Widgets appear on the Sidebar.

Image Credit

Consider This Example

On Smart Blog Tips, I wanted to Show List of Popular Post on Front Page. But when the visitor is on a single post or page, I wanted to also display list of Recent Post available to him. Here are the screenies of them. It can be done using Widget Logic in seconds.

Front Page with only Popular Post displayed

Single Page with both Popular Post and Recent Post dsiplayed

Widget Logic option in Recent Post Widget

Widget Logic Installation and Resources

Installation is straight forward like any other plug-in. Go to the Admin Panel –> under Plug ins Tab click “Add New” then type “Widget Logic” and install it. Alternatively you can grab the plug in from below

There is a lot of things this plug in can do. At the moment I will let you figure it out. But I am planning to write post on how to overcome different problems using this simple yet wonderful plug in.

Have a nice Day..!!

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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.