WordPress Expert

WordPress Tweaks 1.8

John Lamansky — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:10:23 +0000

Version 1.8 of the WordPress Tweaks plugin has been released! Here are the changes for this version:

Added the “Automatically scroll to the post editor” tweak (based on the WriteScroll plugin)
Removed unnecessary JavaScript HTTP calls (hat tip to user Doug)
Removed unused code
Added a POT file to the plugin distribution
Fixed a WordPress 2.6 compatibility bug (reported by user Chris)
Other minor enhancements

Learn more about WordPress Tweaks or download the latest version here!

Top 3 Underrated WordPress Plugins

John Lamansky — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:00:38 +0000

There are a ton of WordPress plugins out there, so it’s no surprise that many are lost in the crowd. Here are three great plugins that I think deserve more attention (inspired by this post from a year ago):

Broken Link Checker — Automatically checks your posts for broken links and images and reports its findings in the dashboard. Its AJAX capabilities even allow you to fix the offending links without editing the posts!
WP-Project — This plugin adds lightweight project management to WordPress. If you want the ability to track clients, projects, and tasks from within your blog, this plugin is for you.
WP SEO Master — The WordPress SEO arena is usually dominated by plugins like All in One SEO Pack, but this plugin provides some unique functionality, including keyword autolinking and comprehensive noindex/nofollow options.

What’s on your top list of cool plugins that aren’t mentioned that often? Let us know in the comments!

This would also make a cool blog meme: if WordPress-using bloggers could post a list of plugins that they think should have more limelight, we could promote plugin authors’ works and help each other discover some cool plugins.

I’ll tag the following bloggers: Kyle at Hack WordPress, Richard at WP Project (not to be confused with the plugin listed above), and Ian at ThemeShaper. If others would like to participate, feel free to do so! (If you don’t blog about WordPress, perhaps you could discuss plugins related to your niche.) Just post your list on your blog, link to this post if you want to register a pingback, and then tag additional bloggers.

WordPress 2.6 Beta 1 Released

John Lamansky — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:02:35 +0000

Beta 1 of WordPress 2.6 has been released! If you want to test it safely, you should be able to do so as soon as the WordPress 2.6 demo site is updated.

Update: Robert posted a comment pointing out an alternate demo site.

WordPress 2.6 Now Expected in Early July

John Lamansky — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:38:06 +0000

WordPress 2.6 was previously slated for an August 2008 release, but the WordPress Trac Roadmap has recently been updated with the following information on the WordPress 2.6 release date:

July 7 stretch with July 14 fallback

That’s pretty terse, but I’d interpret it to mean “we’ll try to get it done July 7; it would be a stretch though, so we’ll have July 14 as a fallback.”

Considering the new release date is only 2 weeks away, and the Trac only shows 12% progress on WordPress 2.6 so far, I’d say it’s likely that many changes previously planned for 2.6 will be bumped to version 2.7.

WordPress 2.6 Features - Update 5

John Lamansky — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:59:30 +0000

Yep, there’s another update on the WordPress 2.6 features list! Two new security-related features this time.

WordPress 2.6 Features

John Lamansky — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:45:44 +0000

Originally published on April 24, 2008. Updated on May 5, 20, 22, June 16, and June 20.

WordPress 2.6 may not be due until August 2008, but already I’ve managed to compile a list of features and enhancements that we’ll likely be seeing in this next major WordPress release. (I’ll continue to update this post as we approach the release date.)

NEW (June 20): Admin SSL support — The WordPress 2.6 admin should be able to be visited via either HTTP (normal connection) or HTTPS (encrypted connection), with the option to make admin HTTPS mandatory. [via]
NEW (June 20): Remote publishing disabled by default — Having the main avenue of attack for WordPress blogs be disabled by default will be great for WordPress security. [via]
NEW (June 16): Theme preview — Theme preview functionality would allow you to see what a new theme would look like on your blog before you activate it.
NEW (June 16): Theme paging — For those of you with a ton of WordPress themes (more than 15), you’ll be able to page through them in the administration. This should be especially useful for WordPress MU blogs that have large theme collections.
NEW (May 22): Ability to move wp-config.php — In WordPress 2.6, you’ll be able to move wp-config.php one directory level below the public root. Perhaps this could also allow multiple WordPress installations to share the same config file?
NEW (May 20): Google Gears support — Now integrated into the WordPress trunk (current working version), this feature will allow Google Gears users to experience a faster admin interface, and possibly manage their WordPress blogs while offline (how cool would that be?).
NEW (May 5): Identicons — In WordPress 2.6 you’ll have the ability to select a default Gravatar for those who don’t have one.
Post Revisions — Wiki-style revisions management for blog posts: a cool new power-feature, just announced on the WordPress Development Updates blog.
Shift-Click Checkbox Selection — In WordPress 2.6, you should be able to select a range of checkboxes in the category, comment, tag, post, page, and media administration sections by checking the “start” checkbox, holding the Shift key, and then checking the “end” checkbox… Gmail style.
Post Word Count — A WordPress.com feature that might be making its way into WordPress 2.6.
“Press This” Bookmarklet — The bookmarklet (which existed in WordPress 2.3 and prior but was removed in WordPress 2.5) has returned, new and improved.

Thoughts? Ideas? Add a comment below!

The Ultimate PageRank Sculpting Guide for WordPress SEO

John Lamansky — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:00:40 +0000

PageRank sculpting is an SEO tactic that involves adding the nofollow attribute to links for which PageRank flow is not necessary.

PageRank sculpting is important because it helps stop your pages from giving away their PageRank unnecessarily. It is particularly beneficial for WordPress blogs, since they have a multitude of taxonomy/archive pages that can pull PageRank from the rest of your site.

This tactic of using nofollow on internal links is entirely approved by Google, as stated in their webmaster documentation:

Search engine robots can’t sign in or register as a member on your forum, so there’s no reason to invite Googlebot to follow “register here” or “sign in” links. Using nofollow on these links enables Googlebot to crawl other pages you’d prefer to see in Google’s index. However, a solid information architecture — intuitive navigation, user- and search-engine-friendly URLs, and so on — is likely to be a far more productive use of resources than focusing on crawl prioritization via nofollowed links.

So while PageRank sculpting can help your search engine rankings (by better indicating to Google what pages you’d like to see rank well), you shouldn’t spend a lot of time on it unless you have other WordPress SEO basics covered.

To begin, you’ll need to download and install the following 3 plugins:

If you’re a Firefox user, the nofollow-highlighting functionality of the SearchStatus or NoDoFollow extensions will also be useful.

Got those 3 WordPress plugins installed, and a Firefox extension if you want it? Good; now we’ll take a thorough look at where your PageRank may be leaking unnecessarily.

Pages — There are some pages (such as your Contact page) that you probably wouldn’t want ranking in the search engines. Why send PageRank to them? We’ll use the WP SEO Master plugin for this one. Go to the “WP SEO Master” section, click “Nofollow” in the submenu, ensure the “Enable Nofollow Module” box is checked, and then click the “Pages” tab. From there, you can specify nofollow options for each individual page.
Sidebar category links — If you show your categories list in your sidebar, they’re pulling PageRank from your entire site. We want our posts to rank more than we do our categories. Just go to the “Nofollow” section in “WP SEO Master,” check off “Nofollow Category Links,” and click “Update Options.”
Sidebar tag cloud links — Tags are even worse than categories because there are usually a lot more of them! We’ll need to use my WordPress Tweaks plugin to fix this leak. Go to Settings > Tweaks, go to the “Nofollow” section, check off “Add to tag cloud links,” and click “Update Options.”
Meta links — Two pages that really don’t need PageRank are your “Register” and “Login” pages. (Why would you want your login form showing up in search results?) You can achieve this with either WordPress Tweaks or the Robots Meta plugin. In WordPress Tweaks, go to Settings > Tweaks, then check off “Add to the ‘Register’ and ‘Login’ links” under “Nofollow.” For Robots Meta, go to Plugins > Robots Meta, then check off “Nofollow login and registration links” under “Internal nofollow settings.”
Blogroll links — Blogroll links are sitewide, and on top of that usually point to external websites. To nofollow these, go to WP SEO Master > Nofollow and check off “Nofollow Blogroll Links.”
Other sidebar links — There are usually other sidebar links that can be nofollow’d, such as links to your RSS feed. If you use widgets, go to Design > Widgets and search your text widgets for links to which to add nofollow. If you don’t use widgets, go to Design > Theme Editor > Sidebar and do the same.
Footer links — You can also go to Design > Theme Editor > Footer and nofollow links like www.wordpress.org (it already has a whoppin’ PageRank 9, after all).
Secondary post links — By default, WordPress links to each post two or three times every time it’s shown. You really only need to pass PageRank to your posts once. To do so with the WordPress Tweaks plugin, go to Settings > Tweaks, go to the “Nofollow” section, and check off “Add to post comment links” and “Add to ‘Read more’ links.” (Robots Meta also has similar functionality for the former.)
Post links on the homepage — We really want our site to rank well, but at the same time we probably want links in our posts to carry credit. Robots Meta provides a good compromise: “Nofollow outbound links on the frontpage,” found under the “Internal nofollow settings” section.
Category/tag links for posts — Robots Meta also provides the following settings to further stop PageRank flow to your taxonomy pages: “Nofollow category listings on pages,” “Nofollow category listings on single posts,” and “Nofollow the links to your tag pages.” These settings apply to the category/tag links that appear alongside your posts (usually at the bottom). Note that if you want your categories and tags to have any PageRank at all, you should choose either this approach or the sidebar approach (tips 2 and 3), but not both methods.
Comment permalinks — If you have a lot of comments, it may be helpful to go to Design > Theme Editor > Comments and add nofollow to your comment permalinks, the beginning of which look similar to:

Miscellaneous links — Also check the rest of your template for other possible nofollow candidates, like link-based social media widgets. This is where those Firefox extensions can come in handy. Note that you don’t need to worry about JavaScript-generated links, and that some links created by plugins (like related posts lists) can’t be nofollow’d unless the plugin gives you the option or you edit the plugin code yourself.

And while we’re add it, we can stop giving juice to the PageRank monster thanks to the Wikipedia Nofollow plugin.

As detailed as this list may be, unfortunately there are still links that we aren’t yet able to nofollow without modifying the core WordPress code:

Links to date-based (e.g. monthly) archives
Next/previous post links (usually found before and/or after the post content on single post pages)
Post pagination links (like “Older posts” and “Newer posts,” etc.)

These links are out of the reach of plugins, so to speak. However, I’ve pushed to have that changed in WordPress 2.5.2, and lo and behold, WordPress 2.5.2 will indeed allow plugins to add nofollow to items #1 and #2. (The Trac ticket for #3 is still pending; if you have a WordPress.org username, express your support!)

I hope this guide assisted you in better controlling the PageRank flow of your WordPress blog! If you have additional ideas or pointers, feel free to submit a comment! Enjoy!

How to Nofollow a Link

John Lamansky — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:00:16 +0000

Adding “nofollow” to links can increase your blog’s rankings by decreasing unnecessary PageRank flow. Here’s how to do it.

First of all, here’s what the HTML code for a link might look like:

WordPress Expert

The link, when rendered, would look like this:

WordPress Expert

To add nofollow, you would change it to this:

WordPress Expert

You may be able to find links to manually nofollow by going to your Theme Editor (under Design) and scanning the sidebar and footer files. You should nofollow links to any page for which you don’t care about the ranking. For example, you may want to nofollow links to your RSS feed, since there isn’t much point in that appearing in a standard web search.

WordPress Tweaks 1.7

John Lamansky — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:17:49 +0000

Version 1.7 of the WordPress Tweaks plugin features the following under-the-hood changes:

Internationalization support for all strings
Nonce support for the administration interface to guard against unauthorized changes
Other minor enhancements and fixes

For those who aren’t familiar with WordPress Tweaks, it is a multi-purpose plugin specializing in simple toggle-on/off changes. It adds many useful settings pertaining to comments, posts, SEO, security, the administration back-end, and much more.

Learn more or download the latest version

Wordpress 2.6 Features - Update 4

John Lamansky — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:53:17 +0000

Just a quick note to RSS readers that the WordPress 2.6 features list post has received a fourth update. New potential WordPress 2.6 features include WordPress auto-upgrade, theme preview, and more.