WordPress Ann Arbor: WP Tips and Tricks

As Many WordPress Tips and Tricks that I can fit in a 30 minute talk

Presentation for WordPress Ann Arbor. Feb 23, 2011 Twitter Hash-tag #wpa2Declan O’Neillwww.cake.ie

Block all WordPress Core files from compliant search engines

Add the following code to your a robots.txt file.

User-agent: *

Disallow: /wp-*

Disallow: *.php

- user agent: (*) is used to target all compliant search engines.

- /wp-*: restricts all core files

- *.php: restricts all files ending with .php

See: http://www.cake.ie/dev/wpa2/robots.txt

TAC (Theme Authenticity Checker)

Scan all of your theme files for potentially malicious or unwanted code.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tac/

Hat Tip: WPMU

Fix Broken / Outdated Links

Broken Link Checker

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/

For offline link-checking analysis, check out Xenu’s Link Sleuth

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

WordPress Updates

** Back up First!

Plugin - http://www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/

Creating and Using Custom Menus

Dashboard > Appearance > Menus

Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets >

Enable MultiSite

Page Specific Custom Headers

Example: http://www.cake.ie/dev/wpa2/?page_id=62

Just create a banner image that is 940 x 198 pixels. Then follow the on-screen prompts to choose the image from your computer and upload it or choose it from one of the images already in your Media Library.

Once the image has successfully been uploaded, look underneath the sizing options, and click “Use as featured image”. Don’t forget to click Update on your post/page to save your changes.

Using WordPress as a CMS

Dashboard > Settings > Reading

Front page displays: Static Page

- Select Default Front page - Usually “Home”

- Select Default Homepage - Usually “News” or “Blog” or whatever you want to call it

Change the Default Size of the Page Header Image (Twenty Ten Theme)

Dashboard > Appearance > Editor

Open “Theme Functions” (functions.php)

Find the following code:

Change 198 to the new preferred height - click “Update File”

Change The Default Navigation Background Color (Twenty Ten Theme)

Dashboard > Appearance > Editor

Open “Stylesheet” (style.css) - Find this code

Change #000 to your color of choice.

Default

White / #fff

Color to Hex Converter - http://www.colorschemer.com/online.htmlGet Hex Color from an Image - http://kuler.adobe.com/#create/fromanimage (Requires Flash)

Default URLs vs. “Pretty” Permalinks

Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks

** Pick one Permalink setting and Stick with it.

Permalink Types: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

Comments

Dashboard > Settings > Discussion:

- Users must be registered and logged in to comment

- Automatically close comments on articles older than (90) days

- E-mail me whenever anyone posts a comment

- Before a comment appears: An administrator must always approve the comment.

- Comment Blacklist

Duplicate Content Issues(One Post - many different views)

Blog Post: http://website.com/blog/i-like-cheese/

Category view: http://website.com/blog/category/food/

Tag view: http://website.com/blog/tag/cow/

Tag view: http://website.com/blog/tag/camembert/

Tag view: http://website.com/blog/tag/parmesan/

Daily archive view: http://website.com/blog/2011/02/23/

Monthly archive view: http://website.com/blog/2011/02/

Yearly archive view: http://website.com/blog/2011/

Author archive view: http://website.com/blog/author/your-name/

Duplicate Content Issues [cont…]

- Use robots.txt directives – to block Categories / Tags or Archives

- Use Canonical Meta Tags – to specify the original URL.

- Use Excerpts for Posts – Only display Post teasers on Archive pages.

WordPress (Version 3.1)http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.1

Whats New?-

- Admin Bar

- Streamlined Writing Interface

- Post Formats : http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Formats

- Exporter/Importer Overhaul

- Custom Content Type Improvements: http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Types

- Advanced Queries

- Refreshed Blue Admin Color Scheme