WordPress Expert » Tips

Tip for Plugin Developers: Inline Changelogs

John Lamansky — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:51:12 +0000

Recently, the Dev4Press and Weblog Tools Collection blogs made posts about integrating plugin changelogs into the Plugins dashboard. This functionality was something I was already doing in the SEO Ultimate plugin, so I thought I’d share my technique for doing this. (My method is different because it’s simpler and it integrates directly into WordPress’s update [...]

Don’t Let Google Truncate Your Blog Post Titles!

John Lamansky — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:00:32 +0000

Even if you have a catchy blog post title, it might not generate many clickthroughs in search engine result pages if it’s truncated with the familiar ellipsis in the SERPs. Here are two tips to avoid this: Show the Post Title First — The default WordPress theme shows the name of the blog before the title [...]

4 Steps for Spring-Cleaning Your WordPress Blog

John Lamansky — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:00:32 +0000

It’s spring here in the northern hemisphere — why not incorporate your WordPress blog into your spring-cleaning routine? Here are some ideas: Go to your Plugins page and look for plugins you aren’t using. If you temporarily aren’t using a plugin, just deactivate it. Or, uninstall the plugin completely. Find and fix those lingering 404 dust-bunnies. Optimize your database [...]

7 Tips for the WordPress “Write Post” Page

John Lamansky — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:00:13 +0000

Here are 7 useful tips related to WordPress’s “Write Post” page. Change a Post’s URL — If you’re using Pretty Permalinks, you can open the “Post Slug” section of the “Write Post” page and type in the text that you’d like to appear in the post’s URL. Among other things, this can be useful for shortening [...]

How to Include Code in WordPress Posts

John Lamansky — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:00:38 +0000

If you’ve ever tried to insert code into a WordPress post, one of the following has probably happened to you: Your HTML code was rendered as such. WordPress stripped the code from the post entirely. WordPress turned "straight quotes" into “curly quotes” — not good if you want your users copying/pasting code from your blog! Here’s how to get [...]

How to Turn Off WordPress’s Visual Editor

John Lamansky — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:00:06 +0000

Don’t like WordPress’s visual editor? Turn it off: In WordPress 2.5, click your username in the top-right-hand corner of your WordPress admin. In earlier 2.x versions, click “My Profile” in the same area. Uncheck “Use the visual editor when writing” under “Personal Options.” Click “Update Profile.” And that’s it!

Is Your WordPress Theme Plugin-Friendly?

John Lamansky — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:26:29 +0000

Did you know that the correct functioning of some plugins is dependent the “plugin-friendliness” of your WordPress theme? The themes that come default with WordPress are okay. But if you’re using a theme designed by someone else, you might want to inspect it to make sure. First go to the “Theme Editor” tab under the Design or [...]

How to Embed XHTML-Compliant Flash

John Lamansky — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:15:52 +0000

According to Macromedia, the typical method of embedding Flash on a website is using the following HTML, replacing “myFlashMovie.swf” with the filename: Not only is this messy-looking, it’s invalid XHTML, since the element isn’t part of the XHTML specification. Often [...]

How to Publish Posts in the Future

John Lamansky — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:30:17 +0000

Setting posts to auto-publish at a specified date in the future is a simple WordPress trick to help you “work ahead” with your blog, which is great for those times when you’re in the blogging mood. Here are the steps: First you’ll need a post you want to future-publish. Login to your WordPress admin. Go to [...]

7 Tips for Choosing a WordPress Theme

John Lamansky — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:17:43 +0000

Doing some WordPress theme-hunting? Here’s a checklist of things to look for in a good WordPress theme that’ll hopefully help you narrow down the choices: #7 — Does It Use Header Tags Correctly? An SEO fine point: see tip #14 from my WordPress SEO post. #6 — Does it Have Valid Code? If possible, validate a default setup of [...]