Category: WordPress

I’ve looked at hundreds of WordPress themes, and I have to say, Crimson Sunrise is the most technically advanced I’ve seen yet.

– If you add pages, it adds tabs to the top.
– It comes with built in functions for doing things you’d normally have to hunt the Codex for
– It Looks GREAT

You can see it in action here: “read all the info”

Either way, I think I’ve found my new favourite theme for WordPress.

3K2 is a GREAT customization of the WordPress theme, K2.

Why is it so great? Well, the “3” in 3K2 is for the 3 column layout that is used. I downloaded and installed K2, but I’m a 3-column kinda guy, so I didn’t really feel the urge to use it.

But now, with the 3K2 theme, there’s a good chance I will.

As I mentioned in my article entitled “WordPress SEO – SE Friendly URLs“, search engines also take the URL of a web page into consideration. And, one thing that a lot of people miss out on is the naming of the Categories.

One of my blogs gets most of it’s visitors landing on the main page of each category. You can see what I mean by “Main Page” if you click the “Money” link on the left of this page. This is because the Category names are also keyword rich.

So, this tip is just a quick reminder to also choose your category names carefully. Don’t go naming your categories irrelevant names. Think of all the little things that will help with your blog’s Search Engine Optimization.

If you are looking for a free theme for your WordPress installation, I FULLY recommend “Shaded Grey” from WP Themes.info.

This is probably the slickest looking theme I have seen for WordPress. It is only a 2 column theme, and I do like 3 columns, but I will definitely have to use this theme on one of my blogs.

Useless Knowledge Rant: I changed the icons on one of the programs I use everyday in the office the other day, and a colleague of mine asked “Why Bother???”. Well the User Interface is such a key issue with me. Things HAVE to look cool. Why tell you this?!? Go take a look a look at the theme above and see for yourself…

Here is another “hot topic” on SEO for your blog (and, of course, any other website you might be working on). The ProBlogger site has an article on this as well, which you can view here: “Optimizing your Title Tag for SEO on 3 Different Platforms”

But I think I should have it on this site as well, to have all my WordPress tips in one place…

The main reason you would want to optimize your page’s TITLE is because Google also looks at it for clues and keywords to the content of your site. You also have to remember a KEY point: It is your page’s TITLE that is shown on Search Engine results, and if it stands out, it is more likely to get clicked.

So, how do you go about doing this? You will need to edit your WordPress “Header” template for this. Here is a quick guide on doing this:

1. Log into the Admin console of your WordPress installation
2. Click on “Presentation”
3. Click on “Theme Editor”
4. On the right, select the template for your Header section, most likely named something like “header.php”

It is always a good idea to keep a copy of the original template in case you make any mistakes…

Now, you just need to find the code where it has your TITLE tags, and remove anything between them. Then, you can just paste the required code between your TITLE tags, so that it looks like this:

   <title>
      <?php
         if(is_home()) {
            bloginfo(‘title’);
            echo ‘ » ‘;
            bloginfo(‘description’);
         } else{
            wp_title(”);
            echo ‘ » ‘;
            bloginfo(‘name’);
         }
      ?>
   </title>

This will give you the Title of your Blog and it’s description on your homepage.
For example, on this blog it’s: “Easy Money » Getting paid to do the things you enjoy”

And on all your other pages, like your Category/Archive pages or single Post pages, it will be the Post/Category Title and the name of your blog.
For example, for this post, it’s: “WordPress SEO – Page Title Optimization » Easy Money

A good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technique for ANY website is for a site to be easily “navigable” by the Search Engine’s bots. This means having a lot of links to the pages in your site. Not only is this a good thing for Search Engines, but it’s also a VERY good thing for your HUMAN readers too.

One thing that I have noticed is missing from a lot of free WordPress templates is a “Recent Posts” list. I think having this is EXTREMELY important. Here’s why:

1 – It gives a list of links to other pages in your blog. Remember, search engines like links.

2 – It gives readers a nice list of other posts that they might find interesting.
For example, if a reader lands on a page on your site via a Search Engine, let’s say Google, and they read what they came for, how would they know that there might be other info that they MIGHT like to read? Other than your absolute skill in writing in the current post. 😉 But, if there’s a readily available list of other topics you’ve discussed on your website, it will make life a lot easier (and possibly even enjoyable) for your readers.

So, if you have a WordPress Template that doesn’t have this “Recent Posts” list, here is the code that will give it to you:

<ul>
<?php get_archives(‘postbypost’,’9′,’html’,’&raquo;&nbsp;’,”); ?>
</ul>

As you can see, we have the “command” get_archives() with 5 parameters. Here is what they do:

1. ‘postbypost’ – This tells WordPress to give you a list of Posts, as opposed to Archives (for example, January, February).
2. ‘9’ – This can be any number, and signifies how many posts to return
3. ‘html’ – This tells WordPress to return the list in <li></li> list tags. As you can see, I’ve placed these between <ul></ul> tags to generate an Unordered List
4. ‘&raquo;&nbsp;’ – This parameter can be any text that you want to appear before your link. It can even include HTML tags, like <br /> for example. I like to use the ‘»’ character. (Here I am using the HTML code for this character with a space).
5. ” – As with parameter 4, this is any text that you want to appear AFTER your post link. You can leave this paramter out if you don’t need it. (Leave it blank or just not put it in at all).

Ok, so the title of this post is a mouthful, but this plugin makes installing the Performancing Metrics code onto your WordPress blog a breeze. (You can read about my thoughts on Performancing Metrics in this post). Because it’s a plugin, standard install procedures apply:

1 – Download pmetrics.php from “here”
2 – Copy it into your WordPress plugins directory – “wp-content/plugins”
3 – In the “Plugins” section of WordPress Admin, activate the plugin

And you’re A for Away… Of course, ensure you have signed up for a Performance Metrics account at Performancing.com

You can also keep up with the development on this plugin at the developer’s blog “here”

WordPress SEO – Search Engine Optimization – is a key factor in getting your blog into the Search Engine results listing. There are a few things that can be done to aid this. The most important, in my mind, is creating a Search Engine friendly URL.

A SE Friendly URL is one that contains proper words, as opposed to parameters in the URL.

For example:

Creating AdSense Ads

As opposed to:

AdSense_Channels_Step3.jpg

How to change this in WordPress:

1 – Log into the Admin Console for your installation of WordPress
2 – Click on “Options” at the top, and then “Permalinks” under that
3 – Modify your settings here. I use the “Data and Name based” option, which gives me an example URL of:

http://www.makingeasymoney.co.za/2006/03/18/sample-post/

I fully recommend doing this, and this is always one of the VERY first things I change when setting up my WordPress installation.

In the words of the WordPress Codex:

“Plugins are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress. The core of WordPress is designed to be lean, to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat. Plugins offer custom functions and features so that each user can tailor their site to their specific needs”

There are a LOT of WordPress plugins out there. Some ad a very small feature to WordPress, others add a major feature. Here is a list of the WordPress plugins I use, what they do and why I use them.

Akismet

What: Akismet is a plugin that helps defeat comment spam. This is when a person/website leaves a comment on your blog solely for the purpose of leaving a link to their website.

Why: At one stage, on my other blog, I was receiving about 15 spam comments a day. I installed this plugin, and all my spam is being trapped. I would FULLY recommend this plugin

Feedburner Feed Replacement

What: This WordPress Plugin directs your RSS feeds to a service called “FeedBurner“.

Why: This enables you to track your readers that come via your feeds. Statistics are very useful when trying to see what works and what doesn’t work

Google Sitemaps

What: This plugin automatically creates a sitemap.xml file, and informs Google Sitemaps of it being updated.

Why: Notifying Google of updates to your site helps them index your new pages quicker. Being updated by a search engine is a definite plus as readers will probably start finding you via the search engine.

UPDATE: The “Inside AdSense” blog has posted an article on why Google SiteMaps are beneficial. I’ll be writing more about this later as well…
WordPress Database Backup

What: On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

Why: Apart from the obvious need for backing up often in case of issues, one of the first steps during a WordPress upgrade is to back up your Database. This WordPress plugin makes this job REALLY easy.

Here are a couple of links to other posts about people’s favourite plugins. Hope you enjoy:

The Top Ten WordPress Plugins

Favorite WordPress Plugins