Running a blog for a while you eventually come to a desire to change something in your theme. Show tags as well as categories, change the format the date is displayed in, these and alike small changes can easily be done with WordPress tags. A template tag is a php code that tells WordPress to “do” or “get” something, but you do not have to be a coder to use Templates tags.
These tags are extremely simple to use and very well documented at wordpress.org. Basically, if you want your title to be shown put “”, and you will get the task done.
Read carefully the documentation at the link above, it is clearly explained there. The most used template tags are:
- the_title() - outputs the title
- the_permalink - outputs the posts permalink, used with “the_title” usually
- the_content() - displays the post body
- the_category() - displays the categories you put the post in
- the_tags() - shows the tags of the post
- the_author - outputs the name of the post author
- the_author_url - outputs the link to the author’s page, usually used in a link with “the_author”
There are many more of them listed and explained at the wordpress.org. So go ahead and make your blog template more personal.
And in conclusion I have a little announcement here:
WordPress is participating in the Google Summer of Code for the third year in a raw and encourages college students to apply. There are 3 days left for you to roll in, the deadline is April 3, 2009. Check out WordPress Codex GSoC2009 page for more info and FAQ. There also are some projects suggested. To apply go to the Google Summer of Code application site.
So, what tags do you use?
Archive for March, 2009
WordPress template tags and a small announcement
March 31st, 2009Plugins to back up your WordPress blog.
March 26th, 2009
We put a lot of our time and effort in our blogs, if you’ve been running one for a while you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Your blog becomes your primer interest, your biggest passion and the first thing you think about in the morning. And loosing even one single letter from your work becomes really painful. That’s why the theme of my today’s post should be of the greatest interest for you. Backing up your WordPress powered blog.
Well, there actually are few WordPress plugins to help you do the task.
Wordpress Database Backup
Simple plugin that allows you to schedule automatic daily, weekly or monthly database backups, which can be emailed to you or added to your FTP. There is a drawback of this plugin - it doesn’t give you a simple way to restore your database from the backup.
WP-DB Manager
This plugin gives you a comfortable database management right from your admin panel. Being more complicated than Wordpress Database Backup WP-DB Manager has more features, ‘restore from backup’ feature is among them.
As you see, these two plugins provide back up only for your database. But what about everything else: your precious themes, plugins, images?
Well, there is the WordPress Backup plugin that manages all these valuable elements of your blog and emails the back ups to you.
All mentioned plugins nicely work together and I suggest using them all for more safety.
Are there any other tools you use to back up you blogs?
WordPress for iPhone and iPod touch Version 1.2
March 24th, 2009Great news for Apple fans - the new version of WordPress for iPhone and iPod touch is now available at the iTunes App store.
The bugs of the old version have been fixed in this new edition and some more incredible features have been added.
Here are some new features of version 1.2
- Landscape mode.
This great feature enables you to use an extra wide keyboard, you can now easily write the full-length blog post right from your iPod.
- Comment moderation
You are now able to moderate your blog comments without any inconveniences, like constantly logging in. The feature is available only for WordPress.org 2.7+ or WordPress.com blogs
- Editing and creating pages
Well, you are now able to create pages and edit them from your iPhone or iPod touch.
- Photo resizing
Enable the feature and all the images attached to the post won’t be larger than 640×480. Nice feature to save space and time of publishing.
- Link creation help
A nice feature that asks if you want to create a link each time you write something like “www.” or “http”. I found it to be very useful.
You can get yourself the 1.2 version at iTunes App store for free.
So, do you like the new features of WordPress for iPhone?
Promote your WP blog with WordPress directories.
March 19th, 2009You’ve launched your WordPress blog, filled it with numerous seo-oriented plugins, wrote brilliant content and still your blog statistics show you are not as popular as you wish to be? Well, it’s time to promote. Let the world notice you. How?
There are numerous ways, one of them is adding your blog to various blog directories. Directories are great for link building, search engines love them 
Start with the blog directories that include only WordPress powered blogs. Here’s the short list for you:
WordPress Showcase
The Showcase is held by WordPress itself, thus it’s probably the most authoritative directory, at least search engines consider it to be. Being the most powerful WordPress Showcase is quite picky. Make your blog unique and exceptional and you’ll be listed.
We Love WP
We Love WP showcases Wordpress powered websites and blogs with original designs or originally redesigned free or premium themes.
WP Count
Another powerful showcase of WordPress blogs. You can submit your new or redesigned blog.
These are not as authoritative as the above ones, but also very good directories:
Wordpress Garden
A nice showcase of websites build with WordPress. Though not very often updated.
Wordpress Blog Directory
A big archive of WordPress sites and blogs divided into thematic categories.
Wordpress-Directory
Another directory with thematic categorization.
Do you know more WP directories? Please share in comments.
FlashMint Giveaway - Win 5 Professional Flash Templates
March 18th, 2009Well, this is my entry about FlashMint Giveaway - Win 5 Professional Flash Templates
Anyone willing to win should only comment on the blog which template and why they prefer and to make a post about the contest to double the chances of winning
Although the winners will be selected randomly, I feel I might be the one to win one of the beautiful Flash Animated WordPress Themes Not sure which one 
More info at the content page
Make your WordPress a time machine.
March 17th, 2009
Imagine you have to go somewhere for a period of time. Say, on a vacation you’ve been dreaming about for years. And what? Leave your blog without updates and your precious readers without your brilliant every day posts? No way, you say.
You can of course forget about going anywhere and stay at home, updating your blog, or you can take a lap-top and work from where you are going, but what is the pleasure in working on a vacation? WordPress is way smarter than that, you have a better option.
You can set the date of publishing a post into any date in future. Your blog will update itself and post your content at the time you specified.
How do you do that? Simple as follows:
When posting an article you can see a Post Timestamp section in the bottom right of the page. It displays the time and date you opened the posting page of your blog, if you change the date (click Edit Timestamp) you can set the date when your post will appear for any time in the future.
Now finish your post, select the time and date you would like the text to see the world and click Publish. No, it won’t appear at your blog right away! Check yourself, it isn’t there.
You can still edit the post that is to be published with a future Timestamp under Manage Posts, changing smth and clicking Save won’t effect the Timestamp at all.
So, go ahead! To the vacation you longed for so long!
By the way, where would you go for a vacation?
Increase traffic with WordPress Plugins
March 12th, 2009Everyone who creates a blog does it with the hope to become popular, here are some WordPress plugins that will help you increase the number of visitors.
Usually a person searching Google won’t go further than two first pages of the search results, to be successful and have more visitors you have to be at those first pages. So you need to make your weblog SEO friendly. This plugin dynamically optimizes titles for search engines and generates meta tags. Help people find your blog and improve your page ratings.
Post Ratings
Post Ratings plugin adds an AJAX rating system to your blog posts and pages. In this way you’ll get a feedback from your visitors. Seeing what posts and pages they like more you’ll be able to target your posts and make your visitors happy and your traffic increased.
There is quite a number of plugins that allow your visitors to submit your posts to social sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and others. These social bookmarking sites appear to be great in bringing traffic.
It’s easier to give your visitors what they want when you know what they like. StatPress-plugin gathers the info about your visitors, search keywords, browsers, feeds etc. Shows preferred pages, categories and posts. Seeing keywords that your visitors used to get to you via the search engines is also very fruitful. You can use all this info to understand you visitors and their likes and dislikes as a result giving them what they want and becoming popular.
These were some useful plugins I can suggest for bringing your blog more traffic. What plugins do you use?
Make your blog more protected
March 10th, 2009Ensuring your WordPress blog security is one of the main things to mind when keeping a successful web presence.
Below are some fruitful tips fro you on how to make you precious blog more protected.
1. First of all regularly update your WordPress. Older versions are hacked easier and therefore more frequently.
2. Make sure all your plugins are updated to their latest versions.
3. Delete “Admin” User. To make it harder for the hackers create a new user with administrative rights, give the user a nickname. Than log out and log back as the new user you’ve just created and delete the “admin” user.
4. Make sure your password is strong. Use digits, letters and special characters.
5. Check if your WordPress database errors are turned off. In the latest versions of WordPress they are turned off by default.
6. Create a .htaccess file in “wp-admin/”. To do it paste the following to a new text file
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
Now save the file as .htaccess and upload it to your “wp-admin/” folder.
7. Make your plugins hidden. If you do not know if they are hidden or not go to http://myblog.com/wp-content/plugins. If you see a 404 error there, they’re hidden. If you see them listed you have to hide them. To do that open the .htaccess file you’ve just uploaded to your “wp-admin/” folder and replace the contents with the followin
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# Prevents directory listing
Options -Indexes
# END WordPress
8. Don’t forget to backup regularly.
These were some simple yet rather fruitful security tips to make your WordPress powered blog a bit more protected.
Simple Ways To Hasten Your Wordpress Site
March 5th, 2009If you have noticed that your self-hosted Wordpress site runs slowly there is something to be done against it. The reasons may be different and so are the methods of their elimination. Too large files loading, too much traffic receipt and improper coding - all these may cause problems you need to solve.
The first and most important thing to do is to check whether you use the latest Wordpress version. New releases provide certain improvements that are responsible for your site better operating and imply fixed bugs that could prevent some functions from proper working. That is why you should update your Worpdress site each time new version releases as it will be certainly better than the old one. The same thing happens with plugins as they have to be upgraded with every release. But don’t overload your site with too many plugins because it can also slow its running. You better disable or delete unnecessary plugins you don’t use for them not to prevent your Wordpress from running properly and smoothly.
Another method of speeding up your self-hosted Worpdress site implies code improving. There are several methods of cleaning up your code in order to make your site load quicker.
1. Using of shorthand CSS which will be good both for the site and for web browser you use.
2. Reducing spaces within your code. Whitespaces are meant for easier code perception but using them in-plenty may have a negative impact on your site loading.
3. Changing amount of header.php file codes to external scripts.
Be attentive with PHP and database queries and try to decrease them as till your browser has a lot of queries to deal with your site won’t load quickly.
Taking into account these simple tips will help you to accelerate your self-hosted Wordpress website improving its work and making it more favourable.
3 Ways To Make Your Blog Work For You
March 4th, 2009Dodn’t you know that a blog could bring you not only a pleasure of everyday writing but also certain earnings? Then familiarize with several simple methods for making money from your own blog.
1.Creating Products
When your blog becomes a rather popular place and has a number of regular viewers you can get involved in selling some kinds of products created by yourself. This means that you will have to manage orders and provide customers support but instead you will be the only owner of the income. Besides you can make inquieries from time to time asking your readers directly what they would like to see among items being sold.
After you have decided on your products think of the way you are going to present your small online business. Don’t forget that your readers are your main customers so try to make your commerce mutually beneficial.
2. Affiliation
If you don’t want to accept responsibility of an online seller you can get involved in selling affiliate products. There is nothing difficult being an affiliate as all business issues are already solved by someone else and your only task is to make money from something that is already created and managed. Besides, an income you get from affiliate programs is not that bad so it’s worth involving.
3. Adverts
This mode tends to be the easiest one among listed although the less profitable as well. You place advertisments within your blog and just wait till the readers click on them. The more clicks - the more money you get but practically nothing depends on you. Nevertheless this method of making money via your blog is very popular among web masters and allows you getting some income with minimum effort.