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Automate Your WordPress Backup With Simple Shell Scripting & CRON

Posted on 06 May 2011. Tags: Automate, Backup, Simple, Wordpress

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/cron-scripting.png" alt="wordpress site backup" />Last time we talked about WordPress backups, I showed you how incredibly easy it was to backup your entire title="How To Backup Your Website Through SSH Command Line" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/backup-website-ssh-command-line/">database and files though SSH with only a few commands. This time, I’m going to show how to automate those commands, giving you fresh backups of your entire site every week, with very little effort. This will also serve as a great introduction to both shell scripting and CRON if you’ve never touched them before – the key to learning such vast topics is to start straight off by using them to do something useful for you.

Recap: Backup everything

We covered this last time, but a quick recap on the two commands needed to backup your database and and files, assuming you’ve already logged in and moved yourself to the website directory (read the first tutorial if you don’t understand). Make sure you do them in this order, so that your file backup includes the database file you output in the first command:

mysqldump --add-drop-table -u username -p databasename > databasebackup.sql
tar -cf backupfile.tar .

Replace the italicised items with either your database and username details, or the filenames you wish to output to.

Automation Step One: Scripting

For now, we’re going to make a new script that simply runs the commands you learnt for backup, with a few alterations to include the password too (since this will be automated, you won’t be able to type in the password everytime). When we’re finished, you should be left with just one command to run that will perform two commands for you!

It’s also about time you learnt how to edit text files through the command line as well, as you can’t rely on FTP and GUI’s all the time. You can use a simple text-based editor called vi to do this.

To start the app and create your first script, type:

vi mybackupscript.sh

If the file doesnt exist already, it will be created and you’ll be shown a rather daunting screen similar to this:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/vi1.png" alt="wordpress site backup" width="500" height="279" />

vi has two modes – edit and command mode. To get into edit mode, press i. Then you can begin typing. You’ll know it worked, because the bottom left will turn to –INSERT–

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/vi2.png" alt="wordpress site backup" width="500" height="17" />

Start by typing out the following:

#!/bin/sh
mysqldump --add-drop-table -uusername -ppassword tablename > dbbackup.sql
tar -cf backup.tar .

Notice that this time, we are including the password in the command. Also notice that when we use the -p switch to specify the password, we then put the password immediately after it with no space between them. If you’d prefer, you can write the command like this instead, but functionally there is no difference:

#!/bin/sh
mysqldump --add-drop-table --user=username --password=password tablename > dbbackup.sql
tar -cf backup.tar .

Now we need to save it. Press ESC once to get out of edit mode and into command mode of the text editor. Type:

:write

and press enter, then

:quit

and enter again.

So by now you will have figured out that any commands you give must be preceded by a colon. That’s all with vi for now.

Back on the command line, go ahead and make your new script executable by typing in the following:

chmod 744 mybackupscript.sh

And finally, test it out with:

./mybackupscript.sh

Obviously, depending on the size of your site and speed of your server, it may take a while. At the end of it, you can list the files and should find a backup.tar. On my virtual private server it took about 5 seconds to create the 100MB WordPress site backup.

Automation Step Two: CRON

CRON is a task scheduler for Linux. We won’t be covering it in-depth here, but I’ll give you what you need to run your backup script every week. We’ve also covered title="How To Set Up A Cron Job To Automate Your Domains & Databases" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/cron-job/">how to run CRON jobs from your GUI based website control panel. To add a task to the CRON scheduler, you simply add a line to the “crontab”. Edit this by typing:

crontab -e

This will open up the CRON file in your text editor, most likely vi again. If you’ve never added anything before, it’s also likely to be blank. No worries. Add these lines:

00 4 * * 0 /httpdocs/mybackupscript.sh

The format this command follows is a little difficult, but goes like this:

minute hour day-of-the-month month day-of-the-week

A * in the pattern ignores that item. So in the example above, we are going to run our backup script at 00 minutes 4 hours, every 0 (Sunday) of the week.

Here are some other examples to help you understand:

01 * * * * echo "This command is run at one min past every hour"
17 8 * * * echo "This command is run daily at 8:17 am"
17 20 * * * echo "This command is run daily at 8:17 pm"
00 4 * * 0 echo "This command is run at 4 am every Sunday"
* 4 * * Sun echo "So is this"
42 4 1 * * echo "This command is run 4:42 am every 1st of the month"
01 * 19 07 * echo "This command is run hourly on the 19th of July"

Once you’ve entered that, save the file by pressing ESC, then typing :write followed by :quit. A shortcut version of this is to just type :wq , which will both write the file and quit. It’s handy, but if you’re anything like me you forget these little shortcuts.

That’s it! You’ll now have an up to date copy of your database and entire site in the root, called backup.tar (or whatever you chose to name it). You might want to learn a little more scripting to add the date on the end of the filename and avoid overwriting the same one each time, but that’s up to you to discover. I hope you can see how powerful the command line actually is now! />
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More articles about: href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/automate/" title="automate" rel="tag">automate, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/backup/" title="backup" rel="tag">backup, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/blogging/" title="blogging" rel="tag">blogging, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/blogging-tips/" title="blogging tips" rel="tag">blogging tips, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/blogging-tools/" title="blogging tools" rel="tag">blogging tools, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/productivity/" title="productivity" rel="tag">productivity, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/scripts/" title="scripts" rel="tag">scripts, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/wordpress/" title="wordpress" rel="tag">wordpress />

2 New WordPress Plugins You Should Try & Understanding The Theme Structure

Posted on 15 April 2011. Tags: Plugins, Should, Structure, Theme, Understanding, Wordpress

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/wordpress-logo-300x300.png" alt="new wordpress plugins" />In the first article of what I hope will become a regular feature, I’ll be highlighting some new WordPress plugins, themes, and features of WordPress that you can make use of in your own class="vt-p" title="The Various Forms Of Website Hosting Explained [Technology Explained]" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/website-hosting-technology-explained/">self-hosted WordPress blog. This week I’ll be a taking a look at a superior alternative to the often praised class="vt-p" title="3 WordPress Plug-Ins To Automate & Improve Your Blog SEO" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-wordpress-plug-ins-to-automate-improve-your-blog-seo/">All-In-One SEO; a plugin that gives you the power of a WordPress publishing system but allows you to output static HTML files for hosts that don’t support PHP; as well as showing you how to make sense of some of the template files contained in your theme directory.

Theme Structure & Templates

Before you read this, take a look into your WordPress theme directory and see what files it contains – notably, anything ending in .php

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ftp.png" alt="new wordpress plugins" />

Over the years, the WordPress publishing system has developed a strong foundation for templates that allows designers to make themes that are as simple or as complex as needed. The simplest theme may only include a single index.php file, which is the absolute bare minimum. Every page on your site would then be displayed using that single default template.

The way WordPress works is that each time a page is requested, it will search for an appropriate template file for the type of content being displayed – if none is found, it will then continue to generalise the template it’s looking for until finally it just gives up and uses index.php

The key to customizing your wordpress theme then, is to understand the hierarchy through which WordPress will search. You can find the class="vt-p" href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy">full hierarchy diagram on the WordPress codex site, but here’s a cut-down version I made earlier.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/hierarchy-mini.png" alt="wordpress plugins" width="580" height="154" />

For example, when a user views the archives on your site for category X posts, WordPress will first try to use a template called category-x.php, which is specific to only X category. If it can’t find one, it will generalise to category.php, which is for any category archives view. Failing that, it moves on to an even more generalised archive.php (which might also used to display monthly archives, tag archives or author archives). Most themes will include at least an archive.php, but if not WordPress will just use index.php.

So how does this help us? Well, if you already have an archive template, but you wish to customize the way your “funny pictures” category is displayed for example, all you need to do is copy the archives.php to a new file called category-funny-pictures.php, and adjust accordingly.

In the next article, I’ll show you exactly how you can create a special page for your “family pictures” category that includes a thumbnail of the photo.

class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/static-html-output-plugin">Static HTML Output

The truth is that WordPress is – hands-down – the easiest (free) content publishing system on the Internet. In less than 5 minutes you can have it installed, easily change the look and feel, and be loading content in. There is no other system currently available that gives you that much power with such a refined user interface and as wide-ranging open-source development community around it.

However, not all of us can run PHP files or have access to a database server, so in that case, your only option is to use a WYSIWYG application like Dreamweaver to produce HTML files, or hand-code them. Well, no longer. What this plugin allows you do is use an class="vt-p" title="How To Install A Windows Web Server On Your PC With XAMPP" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/install-windows-web-server-pc-xampp/">offline installation of WordPress, or one running on a development domain somewhere, then output the entire site to static HTML files for you to simply upload!

Why would you do this? Well, for one, you can host the site anywhere without a database – such as your Apple Mobile.me webspace. Secondly, you get a huge speed boost as the site no longer needs to access the database or parse the PHP scripts on the server side.

The only downside is that you will lose the interactivity of your blog, such as the built-in WordPress commenting system (which relies upon a database to update the page with new comments). The plugin author suggests using a third party comments provider such as Disqus to get around this though, but be prepared for a little theme editing.

class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-ultimate">SEO Ultimate

For a long time, All-In-One was the reigning king of WordPress SEO plugins, but its day has come. class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-ultimate/">SEO Ultimate is absolutely full to the brim, feature packed with lots of SEO-related modules – but the best part is that you can deactivate any modules you don’t need by using the simple control panel.

So besides the obvious meta keywords / title rewriting, what does this plugin offer?

404 monitor – essential if you’ve moved your blog, or are getting a lot of incorrect inbound links, this module will allow you to know exactly where and why the 404 errors are occurring so you can take the appropriate 301 action.
Slug optimizer – which keeps your pretty URLs to a minimum by removing useless words like “a” and “the” from them.
Competition researcher - a powerful tool for anyone hoping to get into a niche market, this module lets you investigate URLs or keywords to find how much competition there is.
Automatic Deep-Linking – If you find yourself constantly linking certain keywords back to some of your best articles, let this tool do the linking for you. Just specify the keywords you want linked, the URL and like magic it will be applied site-wide.
Link masking – if you’re running a successful affiliate program, but afraid of being penalised for it, then you’ll love this. With this module you can hide your affiliate links to look like http://yourdomain.com/out/url for example.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/seo-ultimate-screenshot-1.png" alt="new wordpress plugins" width="480" height="357" />

That’s all of the new WordPress plugins for now, folks. Stay tuned as next week I’ll take a look at some fabulous new themes for you to customize, and show you exactly how to put that elusive featured post thumbnail image into a custom category archives view. Comments, suggestions and feedback to the comments section below, please!

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How To Add Rich Snippets for Reviews To Your WordPress Blog

Posted on 21 March 2011. Tags: Blog, Reviews, Rich, Snippets, Wordpress

review snippets I wrote a few weeks ago about how Google was changing search results dramatically by including more and more semantic information – or what Google likes to refer to as Rich Snippets.

Most recently, this was in the form of recipe meta-data, such as ingredients or cooking time. If you’re running a WordPress blog based around reviews of anything then adding semantic markup is easy.

However, you may find your chosen blog theme is throwing a few errors, so let’s take a look at a suitable plugin and how to deal with some of the errors you might see.

GD StarRatings:

If you do any kind of reviews on your blog, GDStarRatings is an absolute must-have plugin, and I’ve been using it right from the start on my iPad Board Games site to allow readers to rate games they’ve played.

review snippets

This plugin has been around along time and the developers were thoughtful enough to include Rich Snippet markup since last year. Unlike the new Recipe micro-format, the markup and rules for reviews has long been established, so the plugin itself produces well formatted review code without any Google validation errors.

Let’s take a quick look at installing and getting the plugin set up, as it can be a little daunting with all the options available to you. First, let’s download it from within the WordPress interface.

rich snippet review

After activation, by default the plugin adds a rating block, a thumbs-up bloc, and comment ratings.

rich snippet review

Let’s disable some of those that we don’t need. Expand the new ratings section on your admin sidebar, and click on Settings. Start by disabling the “thumbs-up” ratings by clicking on the green thumbs-up icon next to the word article (check out the screenshot). Deselect all the options for Auto-insert ratings code, and that should remove them.

rich snippet review

I went ahead and did the same for all other auto-inserted ratings blocks except for the main article star rating which is the only one I want.

Testing With Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool:

Head over to the Google rich snippets testing tool here, and enter the URL of one of your reviews.

how to add blog snippets to a website

After running through the testing tool, you may find some more errors as I did, but these will be related to your individual theme rather than the ratings plugin. For instance, on my theme I found that even such simple semantic information such as “entry-title” wasn’t being added. To fix these, you will need to know a little HTML.

Warning: Missing required field “entry-title”.

Warning: Missing required field “updated”.

Warning: Missing required hCard “author”.

Open up the theme folder of your blog, located at wp-content/themes/(name of theme) if you’re going through FTP, or from the WordPress admin screen, expand the Appearance sidebar item and go to Editor.

Open up single.php in your favorite text editor, or just click on the single.php to the left of the editor screen from within WordPress.

First up, Google told us we were missing an entry-title. Hit Find in your browser or editor and look for the_title(). Your can see it’s surrounded by an H2 tag, and in my case with the class=”post_title” applied to it.

how to add blog snippets to a website

We want to add the entry-title class to it too, so in my case I simply added that into the class definition of the H2:

Just below that, Google tells us we are also missing something about when the post was updated. I already have a class=”date” definition, so I simply add “updated” into that one too:

how to add blog snippets to a website

Finally, I’m missing the author information. For now I’ll add it just after the published date. If you already have some code for the_author() somewhere, just surround it with the same span tags as I’ve added below. This tells Google who the author is, their name, and encloses the whole thing in a vcard.

Now, checking the page again I see all the errors have been fixed.

review snippets

As a final step, I’m going to submit my site for Google to start drawing rich snippets from – it won’t necessarily happen automatically, so you need to fill out the form here and Google will consider you for inclusion.

Recipes in WordPress?

There are also a few plugins for adding recipe microformats, however at the time of writing Google had updated their microformat style and neither plugin produced valid results. If you are publishing recipes on your blog, I’d suggest you keep an eye on both hRecipe and RecipeSEO plugins, which I’m sure will be updated soon to reflect the recent format changes.

Conclusion and further reading:

Adding reviews or recipes Rich Snippet data is easy with GDStarRatings, but if your theme isn’t already compatible for the additional author and post meta-data needed, then you may find Google is unwilling to list your site. If you’re getting the same errors as I did, then follow the code tutorial carefully and be sure to make a backup the file in case you make a typo. Next week I’ll begin a series of articles looking in depth at creating a wordpress theme and the structure of themes so you can edit your own a little more, but for now if you’re still getting Rich Snippet errors then feel free to ask a question on the Q&A forum, or post in the comments below, and I’ll do my best to fix them for you.

The microformats wiki is a great of technical info
A Blog Not Unlimited is a more practical tutorial on how to use microformats
This blog post from 2007 explains a little more about adding microformats to your wordpress, and was invaluable while I was trying to figure this out.
We covered some great places to start learning code last year.
Look at good HTML coding examples here

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3 Ways The W3 Total Cache Plugin Can Speed Up Your WordPress Blog

Posted on 13 March 2011. Tags: Blog, Cache, plugin, Speed, Total, WAYS, Wordpress

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/w3tc-speed.jpg" alt="speed up wordpress" />Self-hosted WordPress is a fantastic system, no doubt about it. It is simply the best choice for anyone from beginner bloggers to large corporations to run a simple yet extensible content publishing system. But with a few plugins installed, a elaborate theme with lots of stylesheets, some Javascript jQuery effects – well, it can become a little bloated resulting in a slow load time.

The problem is compounded if you’re using shared hosting, and you may find your blog has a total load time of around 10 seconds or more. Not only is this obviously a bad experience for users, but Google will penalize your site for being slow too.In fact, a 2006 study showed that most users will give up after 4 seconds, and that was 4 years ago!

id="more-67063"> /> The W3 Total Cache Plugin is here to help, so let me explain what it can do to speed up your WordPress blog.

Note: This article only related to self hosted WordPress press installs, whether that’s on a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-7-easy-and-free-web-hosting-services/">shared host, a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/website-hosting-technology-explained/">dedicated private host, or on your href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/build-linux-web-server-computer-part-1/">own home server.

How Do I Know If My Page Is Slow?

Firstly, simply visiting the page in your own browser is not a good test because most of the objects will be cached locally and hence the loading will seem quicker than it really is. To find out the real page load time of your site, you’ll need to use a special testing tool. You can do this quickly online by typing in the URL of your site at href="http://tools.pingdom.com">tools.pingdom.com

The tool will attempt to load your page without any caching, and will record how long and what elements exactly it has to load. You’ll get a nice graph which can highlight any particular slow elements.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/pingdom.png" alt="speed up wordpress" width="580" height="266" />

When it’s finished, scroll down the bottom of the page and look for the grey summary box. Curiously, my page has slowed down to about 13 seconds total, which is shockingly appalling! Next week, I’ll go through a step by step install process as it can get a little tricky, as well as show you the results.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/load-times.png" alt="speed up wordpress" width="418" height="440" />

What Does W3 Total Cache Do?

1. Caching Pages & Database Queries:

WordPress is a dynamic system. What that means is that everytime a page is viewed, WordPress will run to the database, fetch some data (like your latest blog posts, comments etc), play around with it to produce a page according to your theme layout, then serve it back up to the reader. All that takes a lot of effort and happens for every single page on your blog, even though for most part the content doesn’t change. Instead of going back to the database and recreating the whole page everytime, W3TC will keep a fully made copy of that page in memory, and send that straight to user instead. If a new comment has been added, it’ll make sure that gets displayed too so your posts are always up to date.

2. Minify Your Javascript & CSS:

Some more complex WordPress themes can use up 10 separate CSS files, a lot of which is repeated or unneeded code. Plugins also come with own their own CSS files if they display some kind of output to the user. Again, for every page load the browser must send a separate request for each of these files, and even if they are quite small, the overhead time involved with requesting a file and beginning the transfer really adds up.

The wonderful process of minification takes all those files, and squeezes them into one compact, efficient CSS file that covers all the style elements you need. Don’t worry, when you come to edit the files they’ll look exactly the same to you – but the W3TC plugin will make one new file and serve that to readers instead. The same goes for Javascript files

3. Optimize Your Browser Cache Settings:

Browsers generally don’t automatically know what files can be cached locally on a users computer, and most websites don’t include the relevant information that tells the browser something is ok to cache and for how long. That’s where W3TC comes in, as it will make sure the correct settings are being sent to the users browser so that their local cache is used effectively, reducing the number of files that need to be sent to them each time.

Conclusion

MakeUseOf uses W3TC as just one of the ways we try to optimize the page and make it as fast as possible for you, the readers. Without it, we honestly wouldn’t be able to serve the amount of pages we do as the server would cripple over and burn all the time. But W3TC can help every WordPress system large or small to run more efficiently, and your readers and Google will thank you for it. If you’re following my advice last week on how to make your blog popular, the next logical step is to be able to cope with that popularity by optimizing your site. Keep your eye on the site as I walk you through a complete install of the W3TC plugin next week.

If you’re feeling a little confused about the whole idea of caching to speed up WordPress right now, then be sure to ask us in the comments or post a question to our ever growing and vibrant questions and answers community. Let us know if you use a different plugin also, and how you’d rate it. If you missed my last post where I showed you href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-strategies-wordpress-blog-popular/">8 useful strategies for making your blog popular, be sure to check that out too.

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Two Awesome SEO WordPress Plugins That Help With Internal Links

Posted on 10 November 2010. Tags: Awesome, Help, Internal, LINKS, Plugins, Wordpress

class="align-left" style="border: 0px none; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 5px; float: right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/links.jpg" alt="wordpress seo plugin" width="300" height="225" />When you have your own blog or website, there are a list of things that you should always try to do in order to fully “optimize” your site.

Opinions vary, but there is definitely a basic core list that most SEO experts agree upon. Within that core, internal links are towards the top of the list.

A while back I wrote an article on class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/search-engine-optimization-mistakes-that-will-destroy-your-website/">SEO mistakes that could ruin your website, as well as a class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-common-seo-mistakes-that-can-destroy-your-website-part-ii/">part two. Karl also previously covered three useful class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-wordpress-plug-ins-to-automate-improve-your-blog-seo/">WordPress plug-ins that can help with SEO. There are a couple more WordPress plug-ins I want to cover that focus on improving your internal linking strategy.

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Automatic Internal Links

The first WordPress plugin is called class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-automatic-links/">SEO Smart Links. The beauty of this plugin is that it removes at least one of those SEO tasks on your checklist of things to do for every one of your blog posts. Now you don’t have to worry about going through and adding internal links to your other relevant blog posts, because instead they’ll be automatically inserted into your posts for you.

Setting up the two plugins that I’m covering in this article is no different than any other WordPress plugin. Just upload the folders into the plugin directory using your favorite FTP client.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57702" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/seolinks1.jpg" alt="wordpress seo plugin" width="575" height="278" />

Go into the Plugins area of your WordPress admin settings and activate the plugin.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57703" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/seolinks2.jpg" alt="" width="575" height="194" />

Once it’s activated, you’ll find the SEO Smart Links options under the Settings menu. At the top of the settings are the following options.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57704" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/seolinks3.jpg" alt="wordpress seo tips" width="500" height="459" />

The first section is where you select whether you want the internal links inserted into only posts, only pages, or both. The bottom section under “Target” is what areas of your blog you want the plugin to link to. A bit further down the page you come to the next set of options.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57705" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/seolinks4.jpg" alt="wordpress seo tips" width="575" height="496" />

If you have a decent server and the load time of your main page isn’t an issue, go ahead and deselect “Process only single posts and pages.” However, since load time affects your SEO it’s usually best to leave this checked. This plugin will also embed links into your RSS feed (pretty sweet feature).

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57706" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/seolinks5.jpg" alt="wordpress seo tips" width="575" height="415" />

Finally, the best part of the settings area, and the place where you’ll likely come back to often, is the “Custom Keywords” section. Here is where you can manually configure certain keywords to always link to specific pages on your site. This is an excellent way to make certain pages ranks highly on specific keywords, when you have multiple pages on your blog linking back to that page using the same phrase.

Make sure to enable “prevent duplicate links” (duplicates are a no-no). Don’t set max links too high, as the last thing you want to do is spam the reader (or the search engine bot) with too many links.

Here is an example of a blog post where the phrase “top secret” is now linked to another post automatically.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57707" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/seolinks6.jpg" alt="seo plugin" width="476" height="330" />

Best Related Posts

The next excellent SEO WordPress plugin is class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/best-related-posts/">Best Related Posts. Install this plugin the same as the one above. When you go to the options under your WordPress settings area, all you’ll see are text fields where you can customize the appearance of the related posts list on your page. To actually install list on your page, copy the code “<?php boposts_show();?>” shown at the top of the page.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57709" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/seolinks71.jpg" alt="seo plugin" width="469" height="451" />

You’ll need to edit the file single.php in your theme, and add the code into it just after your post, in the location where you want it to show up. Don’t let the code scare you – as you can see I’ve placed it underneath the list of tags for the article.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57710" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/seolinks8.jpg" alt="seo plugin" width="450" height="253" />

Once the file is saved, here’s what the related posts looks like.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57711" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/seolinks9.jpg" alt="wordpress seo plugin" width="471" height="396" />

style="text-align: left;">What I love about it is that the links are graphical – and users are far more likely to click on pictures than simple text links – thereby increasing your PVPV (page views per visit). A small excerpt from each post is also included – giving your reader some insight into the article, enticing them to click the link.

Optimizing your blog or website doesn’t have to be a nightmare, and you don’t have to be a guru to use these plugins. The automatic internal links and best related posts plugins actually make it so you don’t even have to remember details – they’re finished for you automatically!

style="text-align: left;">With these plugins, you’ll notice changes in your blog traffic almost immediately. Just give them a try and see for yourself, and make sure to come back and let us know how it went!

style="text-align: left;">Do you know of any other cool SEO WordPress plugins for linking? Share them in the comments section below.

Image credit: class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1093356">miki kucevic />
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Create Beautiful Slideshows On Your WordPress Blog Using SlideDeck

Posted on 21 October 2010. Tags: Beautiful, Blog, Create, SlideDeck, Slideshows', using, Wordpress

style="border: 0px none;margin-left:20px;float:right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/00-SlideDeck.jpg" alt="create slideshows"/>There are literary millions of blogs out there. If you own one and you don’t want yours to be just another face in the crowd, you need to make an extra effort to let it stand out. While content might be the king, appearance is definitely the queen.

One of the ways to beautify the way you present information on your blog is to create slideshows. And if you want to build a quick and easy, but beautiful and functional slideshow for your blog, you should check out href="http://www.slidedeck.com/">SlideDeck

id="more-56575">

It’s Just A Plugin Away

SlideDeck is available as a jQuery for any websites, and a plugin for self-hosted href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/wordpress/">WordPress blogs. Both are available in free Lite and paid Pro versions. In this article, we are going to discuss the free WP plugin.

We’ll start at the search and install routine. I just love how the latest version of WordPress has eliminated all the fuss of installing new plugins and integrated the whole process inside the admin area. Click “Add New” sidebar menu under Plugins.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/01a-SlideDeck-Install-Plugins.jpg" border="0" alt="create slideshows" width="171" height="194" />

Perform a search for “SlideDeck” and click on the “Install Now” link from the result.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/01b-SlideDeck-Search-Plugin.jpg" border="0" alt="make my own slideshow" width="580" height="270" />

After the installation process is done, click the “Activate Plugin” link.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/01c-SlideDeck-Plugin-Installed-1.jpg" border="0" alt="make my own slideshow" width="580" height="200" />

And now you are ready for the fun part.

Let Them Slide, Baby

To create a slideshow, scroll down to the lower part of the sidebar menu and expand the “SlideDeck” section. Then click on “Add New“.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/02a-SlideDeck-Settings.jpg" border="0" alt="make my own slideshow" width="170" height="220" />

The “Add New SlideDeck” page will open. The first thing that you have to do is to give the new SlideDeck a name.

Then you can start creating slides – one slide at a time. The process is similar to writing a blog post: add a title, write the post and insert image(s) and other multimedia objects. When you are finished with one slide, move on to the next one.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/03a-Add-SlideDeck.jpg" border="0" alt="slideshow makerg" width="580" height="300" />

During my experiment with the plugin, I found that inserting images does not work as well as it should be. I could upload the images, but they wouldn’t show up at the post. So, my trick is to use the image code from one of the regular blog posts in the HTML mode and change the image URL with the image that I want.

On the right side, you will find the SlideDeck Options. There are few tweaks here, but the most important one would be choosing a skin. From all of the available skins, my personal favorite is the default one.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/03b-SlideDeck-Options.jpg" border="0" alt="slideshow maker" width="300" height="400" />

You can easily re-order the slides by dragging and dropping them. You could also add more slides if you wanted to.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/03c-Re-order-Slides.jpg" border="0" alt="slideshow maker" width="300" height="230" />

Slides can be inserted into posts or pages easily, but if you want to insert it as part of your theme, copy the code snippet and insert it using theme editor.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/03d-Code-Snippets.jpg" border="0" alt="03d Code Snippets.jpg" width="300" height="230" />

After clicking the “Save” button, a notification bar will appear. If you want to directly insert the code into your post, use the shortcut link on the bar.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/03e-New-SlideDeck-Created.jpg" border="0" alt="03e New SlideDeck Created.jpg" width="580" height="100" />

Inserting The Slide

To insert the slide into a post or a page, create a new post (or page) and write the content. Next, point the cursor to the place where you want the slide to appear and click the “Insert SlideDeck” button from the “SlideDeck“menu in the right sidebar.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/04a-Insert-SlideDeck.jpg" border="0" alt="04a Insert SlideDeck.jpg" width="300" height="270" />

Alternatively, you could also use the “SlideDeck” button in the toolbar. But please note that this button only appears when you are editing in the “Visual” mode.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/04b-Embed-SlideDeck.jpg" border="0" alt="04b Embed SlideDeck.jpg" width="470" height="310" />

You will be asked to choose which slide that you want to insert and the dimensions of the slide.

When you are done with your editing, click the “Publish” button.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/04c-Publish-Post.jpg" border="0" alt="04c Publish Post.jpg" width="300" height="210" />

And this is what the slide looks like with the standard skin. Visitors can click on the numbers and the content will “slide” open. It’s also possible to navigate using the left and right arrows on the keyboard.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/03g-Slide-Result.jpg" border="0" alt="03g Slide Result.jpg" width="580" height="420" />

A Smart Way To Slide

There’s another type of slides that you can build. This slide will be dynamic in terms of the content and will always be updated according to the categories that you choose.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/05a-Add-Smart-SlideDeck.jpg" border="0" alt="05a Add Smart SlideDeck.jpg" width="580" height="320" />

After naming the new SlideDeck and choosing how many slides in the sites, choose what kind of post you want to show. The available options are: “Recent Posts“, “Featured Post” and “Popular Posts.”

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/05b-Add-Smart-SlideDeck-2.jpg" border="0" alt="05b Add Smart SlideDeck 2.jpg" width="580" height="260" />

The last step would be to choose the “Navigation Type“.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/05c-Add-Smart-SlideDeck-3-Nav.jpg" border="0" alt="05c Add Smart SlideDeck 3 - Nav.jpg" width="580" height="196" />

After saving the SlideDeck, you can apply it to your theme using the “Theme Code Snippet“.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/05d-New-Smart-SlideDeck.jpg" border="0" alt="05d New Smart SlideDeck.jpg" width="580" height="100" />

To see how the SlideDeck would look like, use the “Preview” button.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/05e-Preview-Smart-SlideDeck.jpg" border="0" alt="create slideshows" width="580" height="455" />

By far, SlideDeck is one of the coolest WordPress plugins that I’ve ever encountered. You can use it for almost any purpose, ranging from a simple photo slideshow, tutorial, to a multi-dimensional slideshows for product presentation.

And since it’s difficult to really “get” the concept unless you’ve tried it first hand, I suggest you to do just that. Then after that, share your thoughts about the SlideDeck applications using the comment section below. />
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Insert a Template Into Every WordPress Post With In-Post Template

Posted on 13 October 2010. Tags: Every, InPost, Insert, into, Post, Template, Wordpress

class="align-left" style="border: 0px none;margin-left:20px;margin-top:5px;float:right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/blog.jpg" alt="wordpress templates" width="300" height="180" />As many bloggers out there probably know, it can be very annoying to try and create updates on your blog that are perfectly formatted or that include certain elements (like pictures or ads) into every post. Sometimes, when you’re tired and trying to get something written to your blog as quickly as possible, it’s very easy to forget those formatting issues.

I started my quest for a solution because in all of my blogs I always insert a Google Ad and a picture immediately following the “more” marker. This is a technique that a lot of bloggers use in order to break up the text of any blog entry. Some people insert their own banner image that might promote another part of the website, while others place ads or just imagery to spruce up the post.

id="more-55020"> /> The problem is that once you find a perfect format for formatting each post, you’d have to remember to type in that code or insert the picture every time you write a new entry. Not long ago, I wrote about pre-formatting blog posts using the Firefox plugin class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/scribefire-write-quick-preformatted-blog-posts/">Scribefire – but sometimes I like to edit directly in WordPress. Thankfully, I discovered an awesome WordPress template plugin called class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/in-post-template/">In-Post Template, which will automatically inserts template information into the post for you.

Setting Up The In-Post Template Plug-In

There’s nothing complicated about setting up the In-Post template. Like most other WordPress plugins, all you have to do is FTP the plug-in folder into your WordPress “plugins” folder. Next, go into the plugins area in your WordPress admin panel and activate the In-Post Template plugin.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55014" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/inpost2.jpg" alt="wordpress templates" width="468" height="294" />

Under settings, click on “In-Post Template,” and you’ll see a very simple form to fill out. There are just two text fields and one drop-down box.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55015" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/inpost3.jpg" alt="wordpress page template" width="466" height="367" />

style="text-align: left;">Before we get into the template configuration, I’d like to show you what sort of thing you have to do if you don’t have a template in order to incorporate ads, pictures or anything else into every post you write. Here, I add an image on the right and an ad on the left directly after the “more” marker. With ads, you have to do it after so that your main blog page isn’t filled with 10 or more Google Ads (Google has a limit on the number of in-page ads).

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/inpost5.jpg" alt="wordpress page template" width="376" height="287" />

style="text-align: left;">Instead of typing this code into every single post, you can place it into the “In-post Content” inside the In-Post Template settings. If you don’t use the “more” marker on your blog, the In-Post template still lets you add formatting at the beginning or end of your post.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55016" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/inpost4.jpg" alt="wordpress page template" width="555" height="400" />

For example, if you want to append a bio to every post, just change “Ignore” to “After Post” and type in the information that you’d like appended to every blog post. Now that I’m using the In-Post template, I don’t have to worry about copying and pasting all of that code. I just place the “more” marker and it all gets inserted automatically.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55018" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/inpost6.jpg" alt="wordpress template" width="416" height="354" />

Here’s the final post with the content automatically inserted. You can do this for your own banners, a preface for every post, a bio at the end of every post – or any other content you are sick of pasting into your blog entries to keep things formatted and consistent.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55019" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/inpost7.jpg" alt="wordpress templates" width="420" height="343" />

style="text-align: left;">The pros of this WordPress template plugin is that it’s one of the easiest I’ve ever seen. There’s virtually no setup – you just add your content and tell the plugin where to place it. The cons of the plugin are that you can’t do all three at once – you can either use the more marker to insert content in the middle of your post, or insert content at the beginning or end. You can’t do all three.

Beyond that, I’ve found the plug-in invaluable for my own needs, and for anyone that needs to insert one section of content into every blog post, this little tool will really save a lot of time.

style="text-align: left;">Have you ever tried the In-Post Template and do you like it? Do you know of any other helpful WordPress template plugins? Share your insight in the comments section below.

Image credit: class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1162226">Svilen Milev />
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Give Your WordPress Blog Lightning Fast Speeds With W3 Total Cache

Posted on 06 October 2010. Tags: Blog, Cache, Fast, Give, Lightning, speeds, Total, Wordpress

class="align-left" style="border: 0px none; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 5px; float: right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/0-aws-intro.png" alt="speed up wordpress blog" width="210" height="236" />You’ve undoubtedly seen a ‘Top 10 WordPress Plugins’ post before. It’s pretty much required reading if you have a new WordPress blog, and everyone seems to be writing them these days. We’re guilty of this as well, having written class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/search/?cx=009717636731598800244:qhe4rh7wuxs&cof=FORID:11&q=wordpress+plugins&sa=">our share of plugin articles over the years.

One plugin I’ve seen on a lot of these lists is class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/">WP Super Cache, a caching engine designed to produce static HTML pages and load your blog faster. WP Super Cache is a good plugin, don’t get me wrong, but is it really the fastest?

If you’re really looking to speed up your WordPress blog, I recommend you check out the class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/">W3 Total Cache plugin.

id="more-54894"> /> In this article, I’ll educate you about this plugin and show you what you can do to give your blog a blazing fast speed.

What’s All The Hype About?

Before I show you how to set up this plugin, I figured I should give you a little more incentive to check it out. According to the class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/">plugin page, W3 Total Cache is:

the fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin. W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.

It boasts a significant improvement (at least 10x) in overall site performance, as well as “instant” second page views.

Don’t know what a CDN is? Read on and I’ll show you how to set all this up.

Getting Started With W3 Total Cache

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, head over to the settings page.

On the General Settings page, you should see a few messages at the top of the screen. One may ask you to ‘empty page cache’. Go ahead and do that and make sure you disable/uninstall any other caching plugins (like WP Super Cache) for the time being.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/1-aws-general.png" alt="speed up your WordPress blog" width="460" height="170" />

W3 Total Cache’s default settings are fine to start with. Go ahead and check the box under General to turn caching on.

You should already see an increase in speed just from using W3 Total Cache, but to throw your site into warp drive, I’ll show you how to set up a CDN.

Why Use A CDN?

If you are hosting your own WordPress blog, chances are you are renting server space from somewhere. Regardless of what hosting provider you are using, your server is probably in another state/country. Add that to the fact that it’s a shared server (probably a busy one) and sometimes it can take a while to load all of your files (images, etc.).

A content delivery network allows you to eliminate this delay. A CDN will use a server close to you to deliver your content when called upon. It’s this efficiency that allows your website to load faster.

Setting Up Amazon CloudFront

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/2-aws-generalcdn.png" alt="" width="567" height="221" />

Still on the General Settings page, scroll down until you see the Content Delivery Network settings. Check the Enable box, and under CDN Type select Amazon CloudFront. Save your changes and you should now see a bunch of new messages at the top of the screen.

Go to the CDN Settings page from the drop-down menu at the top and scroll down to the Configuration section. To fill in this information, you’re going to have to input some data from Amazon.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/3-aws-awsmain.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="326" />

Head over to the Amazon class="vt-p" href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">web services page and click Sign Up for Amazon S3. Then, head over to the class="vt-p" href="http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/">CloudFront page and sign up for that as well.

[Note]: Technically Amazon S3 and CloudFront are not free, but they’re awfully close. It costs roughly 15 cents per GB of monthly bandwidth transfer, which most of us won’t come close to using. Not a bad way to make use of the change you find in your couch.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/4-aws-scredentials.png" alt="" width="580" height="350" />

Once you’ve signed up, head to the Account tab and select Security Credentials.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/5-aws-scredentials2.png" alt="" width="580" height="275" />

You’ll want to copy your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key and paste them into their respective WordPress fields.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/6-aws-mngconsole.png" alt="" width="318" height="123" />

Now, you can scroll up to the top of the Amazon web services screen and click on the Sign in to the AWS Management Console link. This will take you to your management page.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/7-aws-createbucket.png" alt="" width="240" height="146" />

Click on the Amazon S3 tab and select Create Bucket. Name your bucket (preferably something short) and go back and enter in that name in the Bucket field of WordPress.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/8-aws-createdist.png" alt="" width="580" height="483" />

In the management console, select the Amazon CloudFront tab. Click Create Distribution, select your bucket under Origin, and click Create. When the State column goes from ‘InProgress’ to ‘Deployed’ (takes a few minutes) we’re ready to move on.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/9-aws-domain.png" alt="" width="423" height="235" />

See where it says Domain Name? Copy what’s in front of .cloudfront.net and paste it into the hostname field in WordPress. Click Test CloudFront upload and save your changes to make sure everything checks out.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/10-aws-export.png" alt="speed up your WordPress blog" />

Finally, head to the top of your WordPress screen and click on export your media library. Click Start and it will upload your existing media files to your CloudFront account. When finished, go through the other buttons and do the same thing.

[Note]: You only have to do this once, when you first install the plugin. Everything you upload to your media folder from here on out will automatically get copied over to your CloudFront account.

Conclusion

The first time you visit your website after setting up W3 Total Cache it should load at normal speed or even slower than usual. Don’t be alarmed, as this is normal. Click refresh and see how much it speeds up your WordPress blog!

What do you think of this plugin? Let us know in the comments below. />
/>Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out href="http://www.facebook.com/makeuseof">MakeUseOf page on Facebook. Over 24,000 fans already! />
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How To Create Multiple Columns In WordPress Pages & Posts

Posted on 02 September 2010. Tags: Columns, Create, Multiple, Pages, Posts, Wordpress

class="align-left" style="border: 0px none; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 5px; float: right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wordpress-logo1.png" alt="" width="200" height="188" />If you blog using class="vt-p" href="http://makeuseof.com/tags/wordpress">WordPress as your blogging software, you will know that it offers a lot of flexibility in design. You can run a blog, class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-non-blog-wordpress-themes/">run a normal website, and even a class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/install-buddypress-social-network-wordpress-30/">create a social networking site. You can also run a newspaper or magazine site using WordPress.

There are specific elements that make a site more magazine-isque (if that’s a word). Some of which have to do with the layout of the front page. Another characteristic of a magazine that you can now implement on your WordPress magazine site is that of multiple columns of text in pages and posts.

id="more-52193"> /> If you have ever read a magazine, you will know what I mean. A normal WordPress site will typically have only one column of content text much like any blog. If you read a magazine, you’ll notice how there can be multiple columns like in the screenshot below:

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/multiple-columns_screenshot.jpg" alt="" width="440" height="500" />

Now with the proper plugin you can do this with WordPress in posts and pages. The plugin is called “Magazine Columns” and it can be found in the class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/magazine-columns/">WordPress plugin directory ( class="vt-p" href="http://bavotasan.com/downloads/magazine-columns-wordpress-plugin/">author’s blog post). We know though, that for plugins found on WordPress, we can just install them via our WordPress dashboard. If you search for “magazine columns” it should come up as first on the list. Make sure the author is “c.bavota” for this particular plugin.

After installing the plugin, all you have to do to create multiple columns in pages and posts is to insert “<!–column–>” where you want to begin the next column (up to 5 columns):

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/multiple-columns_html.png" alt="" width="409" height="277" />

You’ll also notice that there are added buttons in the HTML tab for easier implementation. Using the “start columns” and “stop columns” buttons, you can easily have text before and after columns. The result could look like this:

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/multiple-columns_start-and-stop.png" alt="" width="570" height="317" />

Here’s a full screenshot of how my BloggerDoggie theme looks with multiple columns:

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/multiple-columns_preview.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="368" />

You may be asking, “And that’s all there is to it?” Yes. Really.

Another cool part of this whole topic is that there is actually more than one plugin that does this for you. Similar plugins to try are:

class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-post-columns/">WP Post Columns – If you visit the author’s class="vt-p" href="http://www.samburdge.co.uk/plugins/wp-post-columns-plugin-2">plugin homepage, you’ll see that there are quite a few options via short codes. This could be a positive or a negative depending on how easy you want the process to be.
class="vt-p" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-columnize/">WP Columnize – This plugin also has buttons in the HTML tab. With them you can highlight the text and just hit the appropriate button. Check out the author’s class="vt-p" href="http://darrinb.com/notes/2008/wp-columnize-a-wordpress-plugin-for-creating-columns-in-posts/">plugin homepage.

Whichever plugin you use, you’ll find you have quite a bit more flexibility. Using WordPress for other anything other than blogging becomes a bit easier. I know you can mess around with tables in HTML but why would you if a plugin can do it for you?

Do you use columns in WordPress to make it less like a blog? What method do you use?

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How To Install A BuddyPress Social Network On WordPress 3.0

Posted on 01 September 2010. Tags: BuddyPress, Install, Network, Social, Wordpress

class="align-left" style="border: 0px none; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 5px; float: right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/buddypress-logo.gif" alt="wordpress plugin buddypress" />Have you ever felt like running your very own social networking site? I know I have. Have I actually got up and done it? Not yet. But with WordPress 3.0 it is now easy to set one up.

A while back Damien wrote an article about class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-build-a-social-networking-site-using-wordpress/">how to install and run your very own social network using WordPress. At the time you had to download and install WordPress MU (or WordPress Multi User) in order to install BuddyPress and therefore to have your own social network.

id="more-52057"> />

classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="580" height="434" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> name="flashvars" value="guid=fft9IGgw" /> name="src" value="http://s0.videopress.com/player.swf?v=1.02" /> name="wmode" value="transparent" /> name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="434" src="http://s0.videopress.com/player.swf?v=1.02" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" flashvars="guid=fft9IGgw">

Since the advent of WordPress 3.0, regular WordPress and WordPress MU has now been merged together. In other words, if you have upgraded your blog to WordPress 3.0, you have the features of MU built right in. You just have to class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/turn-wordpress-blog-blog-network-wordpress-30/">activate them.

This is good news for someone who wants to use BuddyPress because they don’t have to download and install WordPress MU. Check out how easy it is now to install BuddyPress now that we have WordPress 3.0.

1. Activate Networking Abilities Of WordPress 3.0.

It’s kind of a mystery to me why the multi-site abilities of WordPress 3.0 are hidden behind a few hacks but they are. WordPress 3.0 does not act like MU right out of the box. Check out this article about class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/turn-wordpress-blog-blog-network-wordpress-30/">how to turn your WordPress blog into a blog network using WordPress 3.0. Do what’s outlined there and you’ll be ready to move on to the next step.

2. Install The BuddyPress Plugin

Installing the BuddyPress plugin (it’s actually a group of plugins packed together) is as easy as installing any WordPress plugin. Just head to the plugins section of the Admin screen and search for Buddypress.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/buddypress_plugininstall.png" alt="wordpress plugin buddypress" width="546" height="167" />

Just make sure it is the correct plugin and you’re good to go.

3. Activate A BuddyPress Compatible WordPress Theme

After installing the proper plugin, you’ll probably get a message saying: “You’ll need to activate a BuddyPress compatible theme to take advantage of all of the features. We’ve bundled a default theme, but you can always install some other compatible themes or upgrade your existing WordPress theme.”

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/buddypress_thememessage.png" alt="installing buddypress" width="498" height="99" />

If you don’t have one downloaded already, click the “install some other compatible themes” link. For the time being I chose to use the default theme.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/buddypress_defaulttheme.png" alt="installing buddypress" width="580" height="247" />

style="text-align: left;">That’s all there really is to setting up BuddyPress on WordPress 3.0. It’s as easy as enabling networking, installing a plugin and installing a compatible theme. From here it’s up to you to find a niche and users to use this tool. Take some time and become familiar with some of the features before you get too many users asking for help. Check out these features:

1. Activity Streams – See What Everyone Is Up To

style="text-align: left;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/buddypress_activitystream.png" alt="installing buddypress" width="523" height="341" />

style="text-align: left;">You can view the activity streams of individuals, groups or even the whole site.

2. Extended Profiles – “About Me” Pages For Users

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/buddypress_profile.png" alt="buddypress" width="499" height="424" />

You have control over what fields users can fill in to describe themselves. They can upload an avatar too.

3. Private Messaging

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/buddypress_privatemessaging.png" alt="wordpress plugin buddypress" width="327" height="154" />

Private messaging is like an internal email system. Send messages to other users that only they can see (image from the class="vt-p" href="http://buddypress.org/">BuddyPress homepage).

There’s also other features common to social networking like friend connecting, blogging, and discussion forums. Check these out at the class="vt-p" href="http://buddypress.org/">BuddyPress homepage. Also try out the test site by going to class="vt-p" href="http://testbp.org">testbp.org and signing up for an account.

style="text-align: left;">Is BuddyPress the only way to create your own social networking site? No. There are what Damien called “3rd party social network providers.” Check out class="vt-p" href="http://www.groupsite.com">Groupsite to create a free network without having to handle all of the installation and setting up. As we know, there are pluses and minuses to both but your needs may dictate which direction you choose to go in.

style="text-align: left;">Do you run a social networking site? What do you use to do it? We want to know.

/>Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to target="_blank" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/share-share-share-spread-word/">share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.

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10+ Resources For Free Professional WordPress Themes

Posted on 28 August 2010. Tags: Free, Professional, Resources, Themes, Wordpress

class="align-left" style="border: 0px none; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 5px; float: right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/wordpress.jpg" alt="new free wordpress themes" />There are countless resources for finding free WordPress themes, from WordPress’ very own repository, to professional designers who release themes for download on their sites. A handful of these designers have been generous enough to contribute their time and talent to bring us new, free, premium-like WordPress themes, alongside their paid themes.

The following list features some of the best WordPress designers, with free portfolio, magazine and minimalist themes, amongst many others, available for download.

id="more-51796">

class="vt-p" href="http://www.woothemes.com/themes/free/">Woo Themes

Woo Themes have some of the best premium themes out there, and every now and then they generously release a theme for free. One of their best free themes of all times is class="vt-p" href="http://www.woothemes.com/2009/02/irresistible/">Irresistible, which is perfect for those of you looking for a lifestreaming WordPress theme. Their other free themes include magazine themes, and straightforward minimalist blogs.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Woo.jpg" alt="new free wordpress themes" width="580" height="361" />

class="vt-p" href="http://graphpaperpress.com/">Graph Paper Press

Graph Paper Press has a small collection of free WordPress themes, which are the perfect choice for those of you looking for a stunning portfolio theme. They do, however, require that you sign up to download their themes, which is really no price at all to pay for the freemium themes you’ll get in return.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/GPP.jpg" alt="best wordpress themes" width="580" height="464" />

class="vt-p" href="http://www.press75.com/">Press 75

Press 75 releases one new, free WordPress themes theme every now and then. With Press 75, you should get it while you can, because they don’t keep their free themes up indefinitely. At the moment, you can snag the theme, class="vt-p" href="http://www.press75.com/themes/seven-five-theme-demo/">theSevenFive, a minimalist lifestream theme with native support for Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm, Delicious, and many more services that you can filter straight into your blog.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Press75.jpg" alt="best wordpress themes" width="580" height="386" />

class="vt-p" href="frogsthemes.com">FrogsThemes

FrogsThemes showcases some of the best in portfolio WordPress themes, and they always have a couple of free themes on display. At the moment, the popular class="vt-p" href="http://www.frogsthemes.com/wordpress-portfolio-themes/simplefolio/">SimpleFolio and class="vt-p" href="http://www.frogsthemes.com/wordpress-portfolio-themes/foliogrid/">FolioGrid are available for download.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/FT.jpg" alt="best wordpress themes" width="580" height="255" />

class="vt-p" href="http://templatic.com">Templatic

Templatic has an impressive collection of free themes on offer on their site. They are behind the Twitter inspired class="vt-p" href="http://templatic.com/freethemes/free-livetwit-theme-quick-wordpress-site-to-display-live-tweets-on-any-topic-user">LiveTwit, and the private team collaboration blog, class="vt-p" href="http://templatic.com/news/gtd-%E2%80%93-private-blog-theme-for-teams-to-collaborate">GTD.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Templatic.jpg" alt="wordpress themes free" width="580" height="559" />

class="vt-p" href="http://www.moonthemes.com/">Moon Themes

Moon Themes only has one theme available, but it comes with two different home page layouts, and ten different colour schemes. class="vt-p" href="http://www.moonthemes.com/features/">Eye Gaze is a great magazine theme that can be adapted to suit your personal needs.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/MoonThemes.jpg" alt="wordpress themes free" width="580" height="332" />

class="vt-p" href="http://www.theme-junkie.com">Theme Junkie

Theme Junkie provide premium themes, and have thrown in a couple for free. Both free themes, class="vt-p" href="http://www.theme-junkie.com/themes/channel/">Channel and class="vt-p" href="http://www.theme-junkie.com/themes/fashionpress/">Fashion Press are the perfect magazine themes with inbuilt ad management, stat management and Feedburner support.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ThemeJunkie.jpg" alt="wordpress themes free" width="580" height="260" />

class="vt-p" href="http://themeshift.com">ThemeShift

ThemeShift have several themes on offer, and their free theme, class="vt-p" href="http://themeshift.com/destyle">deStyle is a clean, magazine style theme includes a Twitter/Flickr badge and ad management.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ThemeShift.jpg" alt="premium wordpress themes" width="580" height="312" />

class="vt-p" href="http://shakenandstirredweb.com">Shaken & Stirred

Shaken & Stirred released their first free theme, class="vt-p" href="http://shakenandstirredweb.com/331/introducing-our-first-free-wordpress-theme-shaken-grid">Shaken Grid, a great portfolio theme for designers, photographers and artists to showcase their work. The theme comes in two colour schemes – white and black.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/SS1.jpg" alt="premium wordpress themes" width="455" height="350" />

class="vt-p" href="http://www.paddsolutions.com">Padd Solutions

Padd Solutions have a stunning collection of freemium WordPress themes available for downloading, with sliding featured posts, automatically generated thumbnails, and ad management amongst just some of the features included. And if you don’t want to miss out on their newest themes, sign up for their newsletter to get them delivered straight to your inbox.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Padd.png" alt="premium wordpress themes" width="580" height="188" />

class="vt-p" href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com">Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine is a great resource for all things WordPress related, with the occasional free theme featured, such as class="vt-p" href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/08/agregado-a-free-wordpress-theme/"> Agregado, class="vt-p" href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/10/free-wordpress-theme-paper-wall/">Paper Wall and class="vt-p" href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/04/download-gallery-a-free-wordpress-theme/">Gallery. They also put together an annual mammoth list of free themes, and the class="vt-p" href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/08/19/100-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes-for-2010/">2010 list is already out.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/SmashingMag.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="489" />

If none of these themes are exactly what you are looking for, you can always look for the ideal theme using the WordPress theme search engine, class="vt-p" href="http://www.seekwp.com/">SeekWP.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/seekwp.png" alt="new free wordpress themes" width="580" height="319" />

Where do you get your free premium-like WordPress themes? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/9080929@N05/3361413196/">Koka Sexton />
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WordTwit – Slick WordPress Plugin For Twitter Integration

Posted on 30 July 2010. Tags: integration, plugin, Slick, Twitter, Wordpress, WordTwit

wordpress twitter post If you’ve ever used WordPress and you are a Twitter user, you probably already knew that there are WordPress plugins that allow for automatic tweeting of new blog posts. They’re really handy because they offer a hands-off ability to enable you to not worry about publicizing your articles.

That’s all fine and good, but what if there was a plugin that did more? Take a look at WordTwit and you’ll see how the integration of many different options and tools can make your blog’s connection to Twitter that much more productive.

With WordTwit installed whenever you publish new content from WordPress, Twitter will automatically be updated with a brief description of your new content along with a link back to it, bringing additional traffic and visitors to your website.

Installing the plugin is as easy as any other plugin in the WordPress dashboard. Just search for WordTwit and make sure it is the one created by BraveNewCode. Setting it up is easy also. Under the Settings section look for WordTwit.

Choose A URL Shortening Service

One cool feature of WordTwit is the ability to choose what URL shortening service you wish to use. This allows you the blogger to choose the same service you have been using. As for me, I love using HootSuite and the Ow.Ly shortening service so I am glad WordTwit offers this.

Sign In & Authorize The Use Of Your Twitter Account

wordpress twitter post

This is a common occurrence with programs that interact with Twitter. All you have to do is click the “Sign in with Twitter” button and authorize it. I noticed that upon doing this, the URL shortening service box went back to the default so make sure, once again, you choose the service that you want.

Edit The Text Of The Tweet To Be Tweeted

Another cool feature that WordTwit offers is the ability to change the text of the tweet to be sent out. You can put whatever you want and use [title] where you want the title to appear and [link] where you want the link to appear.

Modify The Options For Tags & Categories

With WordTwit you can actually choose which categories and tags you want to include or exclude. Enter the categories and tags separated by commas and decide whether you want to include them or exclude them. Of course you can also choose to leave this option blank to have all posts tweeted about.

There Are Also Advanced Options

There are a few advanced options that you may or may not choose to make use of. First, there is the option to include tags for UTM (look it up) for the purposes of statistics tracking. Also, there is an option for enabling the Tweet Queue for failed tweets (still experimental).

Overall, WordTwit is a simple to use yet flexible plugin allowing the blogger to use Twitter effortlessly with his blog.

wordpress twitter post

Remember that as a member of the Twitter community, if all you do is post links to your blog posts that you probably won’t build much of a following. There are more sources out there that can help you learn how to use Twitter properly. You wouldn’t want to be annoying, would you?

There are two really good sources that may help. The first is MakeUseOf’s Twitter Guide which is an awesome introduction to Twitter. Then there is a blog called Twitip (a review) run by Darren Rowse that offers all kinds of advice about using Twitter to the fullest.

What tools or plugins do you recommend for integrating a blog with Twitter?

Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras.

Publisha – A Universal Blogging and Publishing Alternative To WordPress

Posted on 17 July 2010. Tags: Alternative, Blogging, Publisha, Publishing, Universal, Wordpress

alternative to wordpress There is no right way to go about something. Especially when we’re talking about digital and print publications. Don’t believe me? Go to a magazine store and pick up a couple of random issues.

For a while, WordPress has been the go-to guy for blogging. This status quo is frequently challenged by fresh alternatives. One of those alternatives is Publisha.

In short, Publisha allows you to easily set up your own blog, with a minimum of technical knowledge and maintenance. It comes packed with a number of interesting features, and allows you to easily reach to though demographics on Facebook and the iPhone/iPad as well.

Publisha

On a mighty superficial level, Publisha might be considered an alternative to WordPress. At the very least, they’ve got the same goal; to help you reach other people. To do so, Publisha also helps you set up your own blog. This blog is hosted on their own servers, and people can find you via your free subdomain, e.g. this-is-an-example.publisha.com. Of course, you can also link the blog to your own subdomain.

blogging alternatives

Articles are written in the built-in WYSIWYG editor. The tool is simple, but sufficient, and will grant all but the most needy a good place to write. This, too, feels very familiar to an ex-WordPress user. Of course, such a thing can be expected; there likely won’t be a new blogging tool that hasn’t been influenced by WordPress.

Apart from the usual; organizing your written word by category, you can also create ‘issues’. These issues are in fact compilations of articles, much like print magazines. Categories and Issues can be used indiscriminately, and are overlapping concepts.

alternative to wordpress

There are currently up to eight available website templates. These can be set up in a handful of clicks and don’t require anything in the way of configuration. More advanced users can also use raw HTML and CSS to style their blogs.

Although Publisha isn’t as customizable with plugins like WordPress, it comes precooked with a number of exciting features, including Analytics and revenue configuration (adverts).

Earn Revenue From Your Website

Revenue can be earned via a number of advertising networks, including Dastardly, NikeAgency, Ur-Ban.com. Custom advertisers can also be added. Sadly, Publisha doesn’t have a pre-built ad network ready, although such a feature is said to arrive in the near future.

To earn revenue money, you need to create your own campaign, enter your advertising network’s details, and specify the size and location of the ad.

The price of Publisha translates itself to 30% of your revenue income. Other pricing plans have a fixed monthly fee, but allow you to retain a bigger part of your revenue. More an that below.

Publish on Facebook and iPhone

Publisha advertises itself as a multi-platform publishing system. That’s because their service isn’t limited to ‘ordinary’ blogs. They also allow you to easily reach the Facebook and mobile demographic, specifically the iPhone and iPad.

Your Facebook fan page can feature an extra tab, displaying your latest articles. This is not just a feed overview; users can browse your Facebook blog-counterpart and read the full articles.

blogging alternatives

You can also request for your writing to be published via the Publisha iPhone/iPad application. Although not all publications might be approved, there are no special requirements stated, except that you have already written at least three articles.

Additional Pricing

Basic Publisha usage doesn’t require a monthly fee. However, it has a few restrictions. There’s a cap of 10GB bandwidth, although you can purchase extra for $2 per GB without upgrading your plan. 80% of the ad slots are kept by you, and 70% of the revenue goes to your own pockets.

alternative to wordpress

The professional and enterprise plans are a bit pricy with a respective monthly fee of $50 and $250, but they increase the monthly bandwidth and allow you to keep a bigger part of the site revenue. Obviously, this is only profitable (and advisable) for popular publications with big readership numbers and income.

What are your own thoughts on Publisha? A good alternative for WordPress? Tell us why (or why not) in the comments section below!

Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!

How to Install WordPress 2.7, 2.8, or 2.9 through Cpanel

Posted on 14 July 2010. Tags: Cpanel, Install, Through, Wordpress

How to Install WordPress 2.7, 2.8, or 2.9 through Cpanel

Posted in WindowsComments (25)

Add Loads of Features to the Default WordPress Editor with CKEditor

Posted on 14 July 2010. Tags: CKEditor, default, editor, Features, loads, Wordpress

ckeditor wordpress plugin If you blog, you’ll understand perfectly that writing using a web editor – like blogging – is totally different from writing using an ordinary word processor, like what most people do at work. Even though today’s blogging platforms have already provided users with a visual editor and regular people without extensive HTML knowledge can write content for the web easily, the default editing features are limited. A blogging platform’s built-in editor has far less features than the simplest desktop text editor.

Meet CKEditor (previously known as FCKEditor), the web-based WYSIWYG text editor which promises to bring common editing features found on desktop editing applications like Microsoft Word and OpenOffice to the web. And for WordPress users, the power of CKEditor is brought to the WP editor in the form of Dean’s FCKEditor for WordPress plugin.

Activating The Advanced CKEditor WordPress Plugin

Just like any other WordPress plugins, you can easily install the FCKEditor via the WordPress Plugins menu. All you have to do is click the “Add New” button, enter ‘FCKEditor’ into the search field, and click the “Install Now” link from the search result.

ckeditor wordpress plugin

After the installation process is done, activate the plugin by clicking the “Activate Plugin” link.

01b Plugin Install - Activate.png

And what exactly will happen by activating the plugin? To give you a better picture, let’s compare the look of WordPress editor with and without FCKEditor. This is the default editor:

02a Add New Post - Without FCK Editor.png

And below, the CKEditor WordPress editor plugin is integrated into the blogging platform. The WordPress editor is transformed into a full-featured word processor with advanced editing features that you won’t find in the original editor.

02b Add New Post - With FCKEditor-1.png

But the transformation is not limited to the blogging editor but also in the comment section of the blog posts. Armed with this ability, visitors can leave more than just simple plain text comments.

02c Comment Field.png

Getting Familiar With The Editor

For those who might feel a little bit overwhelmed by all of the colorful buttons and want a distraction-free writing environment, you can hide those buttons by clicking the small arrow button at the right corner of the writing area.

02f Hiding The Toolbar.png

And for those hardcore web coders who can’t sleep well before a little dose of “a href”s or “div style”s (you know who you are), you can still access the HTML editor by clicking on the “Source” button – the first button on the top left corner of the editor.

02g Source View.png

There’s also the “Smileys” button that will give you a bunch of smileys that you can insert into your writing.

Surely, there are tons of other features that you get from FCKEditor such as the ability to change the font color on the fly, create subscripts and superscripts, insert flash elements, change font type, size, style, and more. If you want to know which button is related to which feature, just hover your mouse pointer above one of the buttons and FCKEditor will gladly tell you.

02i Editing Result.jpg

Messing With The Settings

If you want to dig a little bit deeper into FCKEditor, you can go to “Settings – FCKEditor” menu from the WordPress sidebar.

03a Settings.png

Inside, you will find several options that you can ‘tweak’, such as the skin and built-in spell checker from the “Common Options“.

03b Common Options.png

Or the height of the editor and the ability to choose which buttons should appear on the editor’s toolbar from “Post/Page Editor options“. If you use several buttons regularly and never touch the others, you can delete the unused buttons simply by deleting their names from the “Set the toolbar buttons” field.

ckeditor wordpress plugin

The similar thing goes for “Comment Editor Options“. You can activate/deactivate FCKEditor for the blog comment section, set the editor’s height, and decide which buttons should appear in the comment editor.

03d Comment Editor Options.png

The last option is “Upload Options” where you can define what kind of files are allowed to be uploaded to the blog. The ability to define accepted file extensions opens up some other possibilities, such as using the blog server’s storage as an “emergency” file storage.

03e Upload Options.png

Please remember to click the “Update Options” button after your modification to save all the changes.

Desktop Word Processor On Your Blog

Using FCKEditor plugin for WordPress is like doing blogging via a desktop word processor that you use everyday. Having the familiar look and functionalities can surely help you boost your productivity while blogging (not to mention having an alternative online word processor that you can use anytime and anywhere as long as you have access to internet).

Have you tried CKEditor? What’s your opinion about it? Do you know other alternatives? Please share using the comment below.

Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.

What Is oEmbed & How Does It Make Using WordPress Easier? [Technology Explained]

Posted on 29 June 2010. Tags: Easier, explained, oEmbed, Technology, using, Wordpress

oembed wordpress If you have been using Facebook for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed that when you post a link to a YouTube video, Facebook embeds the video into your update for you. It also works on several other types of links such as MP3 files. I post links to recordings sometimes and this comes in handy.

Ever since version 2.9, WordPress has given users the ability to link from several services (such as Flickr and YouTube) and have the content automatically embedded without you having to grab a bunch of code. WordPress uses the oEmbed protocol to accomplish this. You might be asking “so what is this oEmbed thing all about and how does it help a WordPress user like me?”

What Is oEmbed for WordPress?

oEmbed has been described several different ways. The WordPress Codex describes it this way:

…a protocol for site A (such as your blog) to ask site B (such as YouTube) for the HTML needed to embed content (such as a video) from site B.

oEmbed’s homepage also gives a description:

oEmbed is a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third party sites. The simple API allows a website to display embedded content (such as photos or videos) when a user posts a link to that resource, without having to parse the resource directly.

So basically, oEmbed makes it possible for a webpage (ie. a WordPress site) to turn a link into embedded media simply by sending a request to the originator of the media content (such as YouTube or Flickr) for the embed code.

OK, so what does all that mean to me as a WordPress user?

How Does oEmbed Work With WordPress?

If you remember my example at the beginning about how Facebook handles YouTube links, you will know how YouTube links work in WordPress 2.9 and later. You used to have to stop what you were doing, find the video to be embedded, and then find the embed code to paste into the HTML version of the post you were working on.

This process worked fine but now things are easier because of oEmbed. Now, just grab the link. There are two ways of using the link. Allow me to demonstrate how it works using my own WordPress site.

Grab the link from the YouTube page.

oembed wordpress

Paste the link on its own line.

embed content from another site

This is what you’ll see.

embed content from another site

Or you can use a short code and type something similar to this and have some flexibility with formatting:

embed content from another site

This example would look like this:

oembed wordpress

In basic terms that is what oEmbed is and how it works with WordPress. WordPress does not allow use of just any old URL with oEmbed for security reasons. There is a list of accepted sites on the WordPress Codex page about embeds. It should also be mentioned that you can add more sites. This process should be left for another article to cover.

WordPress seems to be on a never ending journey to make our lives easier. This embedding ability is just another small example. What WordPress feature do you like that makes your life easier? Have you tried oEmbed?

Tag Archive | "Wordpress"

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