Planetaki Planet balkhis

How to: Related Posts with Thumbnails in WordPress without Plugins

2010-02-08T21:07:10+00:00

Related posts can be easily displayed with plugins, but did you ever wonder how you could display related posts with a Thumbnail without using a Plugin? In this article, we will share two different algorithm which you can use to generate related posts with thumbnails and avoid using any plugin.

Note: We will utilize the built-in WordPress Post Thumbnail Function. So it is best if you implement this.

Example

Additional Sources:

Creating a Mini Plugin to Show Related Posts via Functions.php

Query Function and Template Tags for WordPress

How to: Related Posts with Thumbnails in WordPress without Plugins is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Change the Category Base Prefix in WordPress

2010-02-02T21:11:06+00:00

We got several requests asking the same question: How to modify the category base prefix in WordPress? Well there is a very easy way to change the category base prefix, but there is no real solution to completely remove this prefix. In this article we will show you how to change the category base prefix in WordPress, and we will also touch base on a possible way that will allow you to remove the category prefix entirely.

What is a Category Base Prefix?

In your URL structure, you will see something like this http://yoursite.com/category/wordpress

That word category is the base prefix that all WordPress blogs will have as long as they are not using the default permalink structure.

How to Change / Modify the Category Base Prefix?

It is really easy to change that prefix to anything you like. For examples then your URL would look like yourdomain.com/articles/wordpress

First you would need to go in your WP-Admin Panel and go to Settings » Permalinks

There you would see an Optional box which allows you to change the category base prefix and the tag base prefix. (Example Below)

Simply add the text that you like, and you are done. This way is guaranteed to work because it is a hard-coded option within WordPress.

How to Remove Category Base Prefix in WordPress

There is no bug free way to get this done. For those who want no problems with their site, we recommend that you do not even try this because it can lead to problems. There is a plugin that allows you to completely get rid of the prefix, so it would be yourdomain.com/wordpress rather than yourdomain.com/category/wordpress. This plugin is called Top Level Directories.

Known Issues:

This plugin will not work if you have a permalink structure like %postname or %category%/%postname% and there is currently no workaround.

If you add a suffix to your permalink structure (such as .html) you can fix this issue. For example, try %category%/%postname%.html – This is not ideal, but there is no good solution for this issue.

For now we suggest that you stick with a modified base prefix if necessary. All we can do is hope that WordPress adds this feature in the future versions.

No related posts.

The Best Way to Get Retweets, Just Ask!

2010-02-02T04:45:39+00:00

Ask and you shall receive! Does that phrase sound familiar. Yup twitter works just like that. I have seen many different retweet guides on the web, but this is the simplest and by far the most effective technique in my books. The best way to get retweets is by simply asking.

Here let me give you an example:

Take this article that we wrote at WPBeginner – 55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks (has 944 tweets)

This was the example text I wrote 6 days ago when I first tweeted it:

55+ Most Wanted #WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks – http://bit.ly/7EfP1W (Pls RT)

You see the magic word at the end. Pls RT, got the article tweeted many times. Now because it was a quality article, it took off and people started retweeting it left and right. I cannot emphasize enough how important the content really is.

But I did not just stop there. I have some very close friends on twitter which everyone should. There is no way that you can follow 3000 people. I have a group of 40 friends that I really keep track of and chat with. I sent out messages to each of them asking them to retweet this. It got retweeted more times.

Again, all I am doing is just ASKING. It really depends on how you ask because some of these top guys get hundreds of requests daily, so you have to be smart. Don’t make your article spammy, always ask nicely, and acknowledge them in your tweets. You absolutely CANNOT go ask someone you do not have a previous relationship with. If you do you will just come off as a spammer.

Use twitter the right way and you will have plenty of friends that actually know you, and you actually know them.

But all to all, it is a really simple formula.

Quality Content + Ask = Tons of Retweets

My Presentation at WordCamp Atlanta on WordPress Security

2010-01-28T14:36:39+00:00

So if you haven’t notice, I was not blogging at Balkhis for a while. Yeah, I keep saying that I will blog and I barely do it anymore here. The sole reason for that is lack of balance. I am still trying to find balance between school, clients, social media profiles, and sites. I didn’t even get a chance to update you guys about the presentation that I gave earlier this month at WordCamp Atlanta 2010.

WordCamps are just events for WordPress users. I have been attending a lot of WordCamps lately. Since Novemeber, I have been to three WordCamps and I spoke at Atlanta. I will be attending WordCamp Miami and I am a confirmed speaker there as well.

So you guys are probably wondering how was my speaking experience. First thing I will say is that it was pretty cool. I consulted with many clients, talked with some known names, but I have never really stood in front a lot of people at a conference and gave a presentation. I was giving a presentation on WordCamp Security and as soon as I looked up, I saw one of the lead developers of WordPress sitting in front of me. Yup, it was Mark Jacquith.

Have you ever had a feeling when you are trying to explain something to somebody and all of the sudden you see the person who actually built that something. Well its not very comfortable when you see someone in front of you who probably knows a lot more about this script than you do because he is the lead developer. Anyways, I have talked with Mark on my past events so it was not that big of a deal. I stood there and gave a pretty decent presentation.

You can check out the presentation slides below:

Protecting WordPress from the Inside Out

View more presentations from Syed Balkhi.

Now till that day there was something I was doing wrong. Removing WordPress version number. I knew many security tricks but I didn’t know that WordPress also sends out the version number in the feeds. So now if you remove it in the header its ok, but if someone really wants to get it they can just go to the feeds and get it.

After talking with Mark, I wrote an article on WPBeginner how to correctly remove WordPress Version Number.

I hope you guys like the presentation. It was scaled for a beginner session, but there are a lot of stuff that you can use, so definitely go through this presentation.

Use CSS Sprites to Beautify your WordPress Post Dates

2010-01-28T12:18:52+00:00

Ever wonder how to super style your blog’s post date? I am going to show you how to do this using CSS sprites in about 18 minutes.

Editorial Note: This post is geared toward theme designers. Prior knowledge of CSS and WordPress is recommended.

What you will need:

A graphics program (I use Adobe Photoshop CS4)
A simple text editor

What you will accomplish in this tutorial:

The dates on your blog’s posts will be super styled using CSS Sprites

Let’s get started…

Step #1

Fire up your graphics program. You can download a PSD or PNG template to help with the layout of all of the dates in our Sprite.

Step #2

Basically you want to create a grid using months, days, and years. As you can see, my grid has the months in one column then the days in two columns and finally the years vertically in a column. Once you get your dates on the “grid” you can save the file. Hint: Make sure your text is equally spaced from top to bottom and from left to right. This makes the math easier when each date has the same white space.

Step #3

On to the coding… Don’t worry it’s really easy, especially if you are using my PNG or have used the PSD file (It includes guidelines to keep your “grid” nice and neat plus you can then cut and paste the CSS code in this step directly into your themes’ stylesheet without any math.)

The CSS is as follows:

/*Date Sprite */
.postdate {
position: relative;
width: 66px;
height: 60px;
float: left;
}
.month, .day, .year {
position: absolute;
text-indent: -1000em;
background-image: url(images/date_img.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
.month { top: 10px; left: 0; width: 33px; height: 30px;}
.day { top: 30px; left: 0; width: 33px; height: 30px;}
.year { bottom: 0; right: 13px; width: 20px; height: 60px;}

.m-01 { background-position: 0 0px;}
.m-02 { background-position: 0 -30px;}
.m-03 { background-position: 0 -62px;}
.m-04 { background-position: 0 -94px;}
.m-05 { background-position: 0 -125px;}
.m-06 { background-position: 0 -155px;}
.m-07 { background-position: 0 -185px;}
.m-08 { background-position: 0 -217px;}
.m-09 { background-position: 0 -248px;}
.m-10 { background-position: 0 -279px;}
.m-11 { background-position: 0 -310px;}
.m-12 { background-position: 0 -341px;}

.d-01 { background-position: -51px 0;}
.d-02 { background-position: -51px -27px;}
.d-03 { background-position: -51px -57px;}
.d-04 { background-position: -51px -91px;}
.d-05 { background-position: -51px -122px;}
.d-06 { background-position: -51px -151px;}
.d-07 { background-position: -51px -185px;}
.d-08 { background-position: -51px -214px;}
.d-09 { background-position: -51px -249px;}
.d-10 { background-position: -51px -275px;}
.d-11 { background-position: -51px -309px;}
.d-12 { background-position: -51px -338px;}
.d-13 { background-position: -51px -373px;}
.d-14 { background-position: -51px -404px;}
.d-15 { background-position: -51px -436px;}
.d-16 { background-position: -51px -462px;}
.d-17 { background-position: -100px -0px;}
.d-18 { background-position: -100px -27px;}
.d-19 { background-position: -100px -57px;}
.d-20 { background-position: -100px -91px;}
.d-21 { background-position: -100px -122px;}
.d-22 { background-position: -100px -151px;}
.d-23 { background-position: -100px -185px;}
.d-24 { background-position: -100px -214px;}
.d-25 { background-position: -100px -249px;}
.d-26 { background-position: -100px -275px;}
.d-27 { background-position: -100px -309px;}
.d-28 { background-position: -100px -338px;}
.d-29 { background-position: -100px -373px;}
.d-30 { background-position: -100px -404px;}
.d-31 { background-position: -100px -436;}

.y-2009 { background-position: -150px 0;}
.y-2010 { background-position: -150px -60px;}
.y-2011 { background-position: -150px -120px;}
.y-2012 { background-position: -150px -180;}
.y-2013 { background-position: -150px -240px;}
.y-2014 { background-position: -150px -300px;}

Explanation:

.postdate – Sets the width and height of the entire date. In this case we are going to make our date fit into a box 66px by 60px.

.month, .day, .year – Sets the width and height of the individual elements that make up our whole date Sprite. Our months and days are 33px wide by 30px high. The years are 33px wide by 60px high. When you put these elements together they make a box 66px wide by 60px high. It also attaches the graphic we made in step #1 so we can position it for each individual element in the Sprite.

.m-01 through .m-12 – You guessed it! These are our months. This part of the CSS positions our graphic to display the months. As you can see I set the image to move on an X Y axis based on where it appears on the image. The easiest way to figure out where the top left corner (0,0) of each month, day, or year is on the larger image is to open up Photoshop and select the Marquee tool. Select from the top left down and over to the right to just above the top left corner of you month, day or year and note where your pointer is using the info panel’s stats.

.d-01 through .d-31 – Is used for exactly the same thing as .m-01 – .m-12 except their used for the days rather than the months.

.y-2009 through .y-2014 – Same as above only we use them for the years.

Step #4

Open up the loop in WordPress. The loop in WordPress is the page(s) that display(s) your blog posts. This is usually the index.php page. Dates show up on other pages too but this tutorial only replaces the dates in the main loop. If you got to this section of the tutorial you are intelligent enough to seek and replace the other instances of dates in your theme in other files such as single.php, page.php, archives.php etc.

Search for something along this line in your loop:

<?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?>

Replace with these lines:

<div class="postdate">
<div class="month m-<?php the_time(‘m’) ?>"><?php the_time(‘M’) ?></div>
<div class="day d-<?php the_time(‘d’) ?>"><?php the_time(‘d’) ?></div>
<div class="year y-<?php the_time(‘Y’) ?>"><?php the_time(‘Y’) ?></div>
</div>

Step #5

Upload your image, CSS, and your themes’ loop (index.php). Hit refresh on your blog (make sure you are on the page that posts are shown on) and Voila! You just super styled your dates using CSS sprites.

Todd Santoro is the Principal and Sr. Designer at his company ToddSantoro.com Designs. Todd has been working on the web for 11 years and excels in UI and graphic design. He loves paying attention to details and developing on the Wordpress framework. You can follow him on Twitter.

No related posts.

How to Add Content and Completely Manipulate Your WordPress RSS Feeds

2010-01-28T12:18:52+00:00

A while back we shared how you can control your WordPress RSS Footer with a use of a famous plugin called RSS Footer by Joost. While the plugin is great, but it is very limited. You can only add text to the footer, and it is always the same text displayed on each post’s footer. What if you want to display different text for each post in your RSS post? What if you want specific posts to have a different title in RSS Feeds? What if you want to display a specific custom field in your RSS Feeds? Well this is why we present you this article which will show you how to add any type of content in your WordPress RSS Feeds. This hack will put you in control of your WordPress RSS Feeds and you can manipulate it in anyway you want.

Note: This hack is not for beginners. Only users who feel comfortable with editing functions.php file and have some knowledge of php should try this. Beginner users should either use the plugin mentioned in the article above, or consult professionals like us to do it for you.

1. Add a Custom Field to your WordPress RSS Footer

In this first example, we will show you how you can use custom field to display specific text/object in your WordPress RSS Feed. This trick will allow you to show different text, advertisement, image, or anything else for each post. First open your functions.php and paste the following codes in the php tags:

function wpbeginner_postrss($content) {
global $wp_query;
$postid = $wp_query->post->ID;
$coolcustom = get_post_meta($postid, 'coolcustom', true);
if(is_feed()) {
if($coolcustom !== '') {
$content = $content."<br /><br /><div>".$coolcustom."</div>\n";
}
else {
$content = $content;
}
}
return $content;
}
add_filter('the_excerpt_rss', 'wpbeginner_postrss');
add_filter('the_content', 'wpbeginner_postrss');

Now most of you are wondering how this code is functioning. So here is an explanation. We create a function called wpbeginner_postrss which runs a global wp_query to search in each post if a custom field called “coolcustom” is defined. If Cool Custom is defined then it shows the value after the post content. If there is no custom field defined, then the function by default shows just the post content and nothing else. We use the variable $content to display content. We are using if(is_feed) function and adding the custom text or other content to the main post content itself which you can see by the second filter. But it will only be displayed in the RSS Feeds due to our user of if(is_feed) function. By doing it this way, we avoid all the compatibility issues.

Some of you will say but you just did what RSS footer plugin does with a function. Yes and NO. Yes we are adding the code at the footer of the post, but this text is not the same exact text for each post. It is different because you specify different text for each post via custom fields. This trick will be very handy to comply with the new FTC guidelines for blogs that have all different type of posts.

2. Adding Additional Text to Post Titles in RSS

Does your blog have guest posts, sponsored posts, and review posts? Well if you do then you will find this very useful. Some bloggers have custom styling to display each different type of post, so their users can distinguish between them. But when these posts go in a reader, all the stylings are gone. That is when this trick comes in handy. In this trick we will add any text either before or after the title.

For example if your title was “Commercial WordPress Theme – StudioPress” and it was a sponsored post, then you can change it to “Sponsored Post: Commercial WordPress Theme – StudioPress”. Same if someone wrote a guest post etc.

To accomplish this, open your functions.php file and add the following code in there:

function wpbeginner_titlerss($content) {
global $wp_query;
$postid = $wp_query->post->ID;
$gpost = get_post_meta($postid, 'guest_post', true);
$spost = get_post_meta($postid, 'sponsored_post', true);

if($gpost !== '') {
$content = 'Guest Post: '.$content;
}
elseif ($spost !== ''){
$content = 'Sponsored Post: '.$content;
}
else {
$content = $content;
}
return $content;
}
add_filter('the_title_rss', 'wpbeginner_titlerss');

Explanation for the code:

We are using the function called wpbeginner_titlerss which runs a global wp_query to search in each post if it contains either $gpost or $spost. These two elements are basically looking for two specific custom fields called “guest_post” or “sponsored_post”. If anyone has these custom fields added with a value true, then the code will add it in the text. If not then you will just see the normal title. You can see first the code looks for if $gpost is true, if that is not true whether $spost is true. If that is not also not defined, then it displays normal content. But if either one of them was true, then it displays the different text you specify here. We are using $content string to display the post title.

Now that was just displaying custom fields in the title. Do you want to display Category name on each title? Well then you should simply paste the following code in your functions.php file:

function wpbeginner_cattitlerss($content) {
$postcat = "";
foreach((get_the_category()) as $cat) {
$postcat .= ' ('.$cat->cat_name . ')';
}
$content = $content.$postcat;
return $content;
}
add_filter('the_title_rss', 'wpbeginner_cattitlerss');

Explanation: We are using the function wpbgeinner_cattitlerss to get the category ID for each post and then displaying that right next to the title. So if the title is “Get Contact Form 7″ now it would be “Get Contact Form 7 [Plugins]“. You can see that there is no if then variable in this code. We use $content for the main title and $postcat variable to define the category name. You rearrange that if you like.

3. Add Same Text on all Posts in RSS

If you just want to add the same text then you might as well use the plugin called RSS Footer by Joost because it is easier. But if you want to do it yourself this is how you do it. Open your functions.php file add the following code:

function wpbeginner_postrss($content) {
if(is_feed()){
$content = 'This post was written by Syed Balkhi '.$content.'Check out WPBeginner';
}
return $content;
}
add_filter('the_excerpt_rss', 'wpbeginner_postrss');
add_filter('the_content', 'wpbeginner_postrss');

Explanation: We are calling a function wpbeginner_postrss to add in each post a content before the post saying This Post was written by Syed Balkhi and after the content Check out WPBeginner. But we add the function if(is_feed), so it will only be displayed in RSS Feeds.

This would be very helpful if you wanted to sell ads on specific posts in RSS, add custom FTC guidelines or just wanted to have more control over your RSS Feeds.

Source: We used Joost’s RSS Footer plugin for a lot of guidance in writing this tutorial. The title RSS hack part we got from a French tutorial site and we added our own variables and gave it the ability to be custom titles per custom field.

Must Read: 55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

2010-01-27T04:36:05+00:00

There are times when you come across a feature in a blog, and you just start thinking to yourself: How can I get this in my WordPress blog/site as well. Everybody have experienced this feeling. Sometimes you know you want it, and don’t know where to look for, or even what to look for. In this article we will be sharing some of the most wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks that you will definitely find useful.

55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

2010-01-25T23:52:50+00:00

These tutorials are classified under various skills level. For some tutorials, you will need to know basic HTML and some WordPress Knowledge. Use the link below as one of your resources:

WordPress Theme Cheat Sheet for Beginners

1. How to use a Custom Page as a Home Page in WordPress

This is one of the most wanted hacks that users want to know how to accomplish. First you need to learn how to create a custom page. You will need to duplicate your page.php or create a brand new .php file and add the following code at the very top:

<?php /* Template Name: WPBeginnerT1 */ ?>

You can change the template name. Change any styling, that you want in that page. Go to your WordPress admin panel and create a new page and select this template.

Once you have published this page go to Settings » Reading in your admin panel.

And select your page to be the homepage. Now you have yourself a Custom Home Page.

2. How to Create a Page that Displays Random Posts

Have you ever been to a site and saw this cool feature? They have a link in their top navigation to something like Stumbe! or Read Random Articles, or some other creative text. When you click on that link, it takes you to a page that displays one random page. Each time you refresh, you are delivered with a new post. Well this trick is just for you then.

You would need to follow the trick #1 in this article to create a custom page template. And simply paste this code in there:

<?php
query_posts(array('orderby' => 'rand', 'showposts' => 1));
if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<h1><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>

<?php the_content(); ?>

<?php endwhile;
endif; ?>

This is a simple WordPress Loop that is running a query to display random posts and the number 1 in there is telling WordPress to only show 1 post. You can change that number, but most of the time people do it one post a time.

We have a Quick Reading Page on our site as well, so you can see this trick in action.

3. How to Display any External RSS Feed on Your Site

Have you seen other bloggers who display their other blog’s feed on their site. You want to do it too for extra promotion and traffic. Well here is the tutorial for you. Simply paste the following code in anywhere in your theme:

<?php include_once(ABSPATH.WPINC.'/feed.php');
$rss = fetch_feed('http://feeds.feedburner.com/wpbeginner');
$maxitems = $rss->get_item_quantity(5);
$rss_items = $rss->get_items(0, $maxitems);
?>
<ul>
<?php if ($maxitems == 0) echo '<li>No items.</li>';
else
// Loop through each feed item and display each item as a hyperlink.
foreach ( $rss_items as $item ) : ?>
<li>
<a href='<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>'
title='<?php echo 'Posted '.$item->get_date('j F Y | g:i a'); ?>'>
<?php echo $item->get_title(); ?></a>
</li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

4. How to Display Relative Dates in WordPress

Have you ever seen this in blog posts and comments and wondered how did this blogger manage to do this? Actually it is pretty easy.

You would need to download a plugin called WP-Relative Date

Once you have downloaded and activated the plugin, look in your single.php, index.php, and page.php for this code:

<?php the_date(); ?>

Replace it with:

<?php relative_post_the_date(); ?>

5. Allow Users to Submit News on Your Site

This trick is being adapted by many top sites to keep a useful resource section in their sidebar which is maintained mostly by site’s audience. Did you want to know how you could do that?

First you will need to download a plugin called TDO Mini Forms and follow directions.

6. Link to External Links from Your Post Title

Did you see other sites link to external posts from their post title? Well that is because it is completely useless to create a new post where inside you are going to tell users to go to another site to read it. You are wasting your user’s time. This trick will allow you to link to external links from your post title in WordPress.

First open your functions.php file and add the following codes in there:

function print_post_title() {
global $post;
$thePostID = $post->ID;
$post_id = get_post($thePostID);
$title = $post_id->post_title;
$perm = get_permalink($post_id);
$post_keys = array(); $post_val = array();
$post_keys = get_post_custom_keys($thePostID);

if (!empty($post_keys)) {
foreach ($post_keys as $pkey) {
if ($pkey=='url1' || $pkey=='title_url' || $pkey=='url_title') {
$post_val = get_post_custom_values($pkey);
}
}
if (empty($post_val)) {
$link = $perm;
} else {
$link = $post_val[0];
}
} else {
$link = $perm;
}
echo '<h2><a href="'.$link.'" rel="bookmark" title="'.$title.'">'.$title.'</a></h2>';
}

These codes must be placed in php tags.

Then open your index.php and find the following code:

<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

And replace it with:

<?php print_post_title(); ?>

This can also be accomplished by a use of a plugin called Page Links To.

7. Use WordPress as a Free Email Newsletter Service

Did you see other sites using Email Newsletter services? Well you can make your WordPress work this way as well. Simply follow this tutorial.

8. Display any Number of Posts in a Loop

Did you ever want to display a different number of posts on different pages. For example on your category pages, you want to display 10 posts which you can control from your Admin panel, but another page you want to show only 5 posts. Well this tutorial is just for you.

Open a Template file where you want to display an x number of recent posts:

// if everything is in place and ready, let’s start the loop

// to display ‘n’ number of posts, we need to execute the loop ‘n’ number of times
// so we define a numerical variable called ‘$count’ and set its value to zero
// with each iteration of the loop, the value of ‘$count’ will increase by one
// after the value of ‘$count’ reaches the specified number, the loop will stop
// *USER: change the ‘n’ to the number of posts that you would like to display

if ($count == "n") { break; }
else { ?>

// for CSS styling and layout purposes, we wrap the post content in a div
// we then display the entire post content via the ‘the_content()’ function
// *USER: change to ‘‘ to display post excerpts instead

// here, we continue with the limiting of the number of displayed posts
// each iteration of the loop increases the value of ‘$count’ by one
// the final two lines complete the loop and close the if statement

Source

9. Highlight Author’s Comment

Have you ever seen this on blogs where author’s comments are distinguished from other comments? Well this is a simple and easy trick.

First you need to open your style.css in your template folder and add the following:

.authorstyle { background-color: #B3FFCC !important; }

Then you need to open your comments.php which is also located in your themes folder and find the code that looks some what like this:

<li <?php echo $oddcomment; ?>id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>"></li>

Replace it with:

<li class="<?php if ($comment->user_id == 1) $oddcomment = "authorstyle"; echo $oddcomment; ?>"></li>

Note you must change 1 to the user id of the author. Once you do this, your blog comments will have a different background for the author’s comment compared to the rest.

Thanks to Matt Cutts for this tutorial.

10. Create Thumbnails for Each Post and Display Them

This technique utilizes the new feature added in WordPress 2.9 to add Thumbnails to each post and you can display them anywhere in the loop.

11. Display Feedburner Subscriber Count as Text

Have you ever been to a site that is not using Feedburner button and is still showing subscriber count? Well they are probably using the trick we are about to share. Most designers use this trick to have custom styling and avoid the annoying feedburner button.

Simply copy and paste this code anywhere you like most likely sidebar.php

<?php
//get cool feedburner count
$whaturl="http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=your feedburner id";

//Initialize the Curl session
$ch = curl_init();

//Set curl to return the data instead of printing it to the browser.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

//Set the URL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $whaturl);

//Execute the fetch
$data = curl_exec($ch);

//Close the connection
curl_close($ch);
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data);
$fb = $xml->feed->entry['circulation'];
echo $fb;
//end get cool feedburner count
?>

You can wrap it around in styling to make it look like however you want.

12. Display Twitter Follower Count as Text

There are users who absolutely hate buttons like Feedburner buttons or Twittercounter buttons. Are you one of them? Do you want to display your twitter count as text, so it blends in to your new custom design? Well then this hack is just for you.

First you would need to create a file twitter.php and paste the following code in there:

<?php
$tw = get_option("twitterfollowerscount");
if ($tw['lastcheck'] < ( mktime() %u2013 3600 ) )
{
$xml=file_get_contents('http://twitter.com/users/show.xml?screen_name=wpbeginner');
if (preg_match('/followers_count>(.*)</',$xml,$match)!=0) {
$tw['count'] = $match[1];
}
$tw['lastcheck'] = mktime();
update_option("twitterfollowerscount",$tw);
}
echo $tw['count'];
?>

Make sure to replace wpbeginner with your twitter name.

Then Simply place this code anywhere you want to display this:

<?php include("twitter.php"); ?>

Source

13. Create Your Own Private Twitter Site using WordPress

14. Control When Your Posts are Available via RSS

There are times when you publish a post and suddenly find an error. You can go back in the admin panel and change it, but it is already published in the feeds. With this hack, you can put a delay of as many minutes as you like, so you can double check the post live.

Simply open your functions.php and add the following code in there:

function publish_later_on_feed($where) {
global $wpdb;

if ( is_feed() ) {
// timestamp in WP-format
$now = gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s');

// value for wait; device
$wait = '10'; // integer

// http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_timestampdiff
$device = 'MINUTE'; //MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR

// add SQL-sytax to default $where
$where .= " AND TIMESTAMPDIFF($device, $wpdb->posts.post_date_gmt, '$now') > $wait ";
}
return $where;
}

add_filter('posts_where', 'publish_later_on_feed');

Change the time from 10 minutes to whatever you like.

15. Allow Multiple Authors to be Associated with One Post

If you run a multi-author blog and have a post coming up that more than one author has contributed to, you can use this trick. This trick is being used by many top multi-author blogs.

Simply Download a Plugin called Co-Authors or Co-Authors Plus

16. Change the Default Gravatar Button

The default mystery man is really annoying for most users. Plus if you have one more chance of branding your blog, then why not do it. Changing your default gravatar lets you brand your blog more. With this snippet below you can change your default gravatar.

First you need to open your functions.php which is located in your template folder. If you don’t have one then create one and insert the following code:

add_filter( 'avatar_defaults', 'newgravatar' );

function newgravatar ($avatar_defaults) {
$myavatar = get_bloginfo('template_directory') . '/images/gravataricon.gif';
$avatar_defaults[$myavatar] = "WPBeginner";
return $avatar_defaults;
}

In the code the image is being extracted from the theme directory and it is called gravataricon.gif obviously you will change it to your image name. Where it says WPBeginner, that is the name of the avatar of how it will show in your admin panel options area.

Head over to your admin panel and click Settings > Discussion and change the icon, and now you have a branded comment area with your logo.

17. Display Random Header Images in WordPress

Most blog designs get boring if they have a huge header picture and it is static. This is when this tutorial comes in to make your header images dynamic because it rotates on each visit. You can select as many images as you want to rotate randomly. It brings life to a blog.

First you need to name your images in this format:

headerimage_1.gif
headerimage_2.gif
headerimage_3.gif

You must separate the name with an underscore. You can change the headerimage text to himage or anything you like.

Once you have done that paste the following code in your header.php where you would like the images to be displayed or in any other file.

<img src="http://path_to_images/headerimage_<?php echo(rand(1,3)); ?>.gif"
width="image_width" height="image_height" alt="image_alt_text" />

Make sure that you change the number 3 if you decide to do more than 3 images. This code is not exclusive for WordPress, it will work with any php based platform.

18. Only Display Certain Categories in a Menu

In many cases, users only want to display certain categories in their navigation menu at the top of the page. There are limited spots, that can only be filled by top categories, but if you use the default wp_list_categories code, it will show all categories. This is why this hack below comes in very handy when you want to create a navigation menu and only display certain categories.

<ul class="navmenubar" style="float:left; width:730px;">
<?php wp_list_categories('orderby=name&include=7,9,19,16,1,5,17,23'); ?>
</ul>

Note, you can also change the ‘include’ text to ‘exclude’ and show all categories and exclude those that you don’t want displayed. The numbers displayed in the code are the category IDs. Remember since WordPress shows categories in a list format, you will need to edit the CSS in order to make it work.

19. How set an Expiration Date for Your Posts

This hack comes becomes very useful when you are running a contest because you might be posting information such as clues or hints that you don’t want to stay up for ever. Instead of manually removing the article, you can just make it expire automatically. It also works if you have a product that you are offering a discount on. You posted it on your blog, but you don’t want that discount to stay on your blog after its over. So you can remove it automatically with this code.

All you need to do is replace your WordPress Loop with this code:

<?php
if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
$expirationtime = get_post_custom_values('expiration');
if (is_array($expirationtime)) {
$expirestring = implode($expirationtime);
}

$secondsbetween = strtotime($expirestring)-time();
if ( $secondsbetween > 0 ) {
// For example…
the_title();
the_excerpt();
}
endwhile;
endif;
?>

Once you have done that, you can use custom fields when writing a post to set an expiration date. Make sure you select the key “expiration” and use the the following date format: mm/dd/yyyy 00:00:00

Now this hack does not remove or unpublish the article instead it just excludes the article from being displayed in the loop.

20. Delete Posts Revisions from Your Database

WordPress has a lot of good features and one of them is Post Revisions. This was included in WordPress 2.6, even though this is a good feature, it can cause some problems. One of them is increase the size of your database. Depending on how long it takes you to write a post, you might have as many as fifty post revisions. Now you can manually delete them, or you can run a simple query which we will show you in this post and get rid of all these useless revisions.

First thing you need to do is login to your phpMyAdmin and select your WordPress Database.

Click on the SQL Button and enter the following query:

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision";

In this code basically we looked up a table wp_posts and removed every post that had a post_type revision associated with it. Now depending on the size of your database, this may save you a lot of space.

21. Create a Membership Directory using WordPress

The end result is a moderated directory that allows members to enter information about themselves. Live Example.

22. Create a Peel Away Effect in WordPress

Have you arrived at a site where you see this page peel effect that some bloggers have. They are advertising their recent ebook, or some other product, and you want to do the same. Well then Hongkiat Blog has a great tutorial about this. The tutorial eliminates the use of plugin, but if you want an alternative option. Page Peel Plugin can get you the same functionality with a lot less work.

23. Custom CSS Stylesheet for Individual Posts

There are sites that use custom stylesheet for individual posts. Do you want to know how you can do it also? It is very simple. This is accomplished by the use of Custom Fields.

First you will need to open your header.php and insert this code somewhere in between <head></head> codes.

<?php if (is_single()) {
$customstyle = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'customstyle', true);
if (!empty($customstyle)) { ?>
<style type="text/css">
<?php echo $customstyle; ?>
<style>
<?php }
} ?>

Once you have done that you can add a custom field in each post with the name customstyle and add the css codes in there.

For example if you want the a certain image to have border you can add:

#coolimageclass{border: 5px solid #ccc;}

Use the format above and you now have custom CSS for your single posts.

24. Easily Add Custom Header, Footer, or Sidebar on Different Categories

Did you ever come across a site that is using different header or sidebar for some categories? Well this is how you can accomplish that as well.

To call a particular header, you will need to open your index.php and replace your normal header code with this one:

<?php if (is_category('Blogging')) {
get_header('blogging');
} else {
get_header();
} ?>

This code above is basically telling WordPress that if someone opens the category called “Blogging” then WordPress needs to display a file called header-blogging.php if it exist. If it does not exist, or if the category is not blogging, then WordPress displays the default header file.

To get a separate sidebar for each all you need to do is add the following code:

<?php if (is_category('Blogging')) {
get_sidebar('blogging');
} else {
get_sidebar();
} ?>

The code above will look for sidebar-blogging.php to replace the default footer file if the category is Blogging.

To get a separate footer for each category all you need to do is add the following code:

<?php if (is_category('Blogging')) {
get_footer('blogging');
} else {
get_footer();
} ?>

The code above will look for footer-blogging.php to replace the default footer file if the category is Blogging.

25. Create a Custom Login Page Design for WordPress

Do you have a multi-author site, or a community site powered by WordPress? Do you want to rebrand the login page design? Then this tutorial is just right for you.

26. Place Content Only in your RSS Feeds

Do you have a lot of RSS Subscribers? Well then maybe you want to monetize it just like tons of other users who are doing it. The plugin called RSS Footer lets you add content to your RSS Feeds. You can style it however you like.

27. Disable HTML in WordPress Comments

Did you ever see in your SPAM folder, how many comments have tons of HTML codes which is basically links. That is how most spammers add links. But you can disable HTML in WordPress Comments to be functional. So if someone uses the strong code, it will not bold the text etc.

All you have to do is simply open your functions.php and add the following code:

// This will occur when the comment is posted
function plc_comment_post( $incoming_comment ) {

// convert everything in a comment to display literally
$incoming_comment['comment_content'] = htmlspecialchars($incoming_comment['comment_content']);

// the one exception is single quotes, which cannot be #039; because WordPress marks it as spam
$incoming_comment['comment_content'] = str_replace( "'", ''', $incoming_comment['comment_content'] );

return( $incoming_comment );
}

// This will occur before a comment is displayed
function plc_comment_display( $comment_to_display ) {

// Put the single quotes back in
$comment_to_display = str_replace( ''', "'", $comment_to_display );

return $comment_to_display;

Source – The original author also offers a plugin that you can download from his site.

28. Add Digg Buttons in Your Posts using Custom Fields

Doesn’t it get annoying posting digg buttons on your articles every time. But you don’t want to display them on every page by default because some articles are not digg worthy. Well this solution would be very helpful then. In this plugin, you will add the codes in your single.php once, and in each article that you want to display the button, you will just have to enable it using the custom field.

First open your single.php and find a code that looks like this:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

Replace it with:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();
// check for digg button for single page
$digg = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'Digg', $single = true);
?>

Now you need to add the following code within the loop anywhere you like:

<?php // if there's a single page digg button
if($digg !== '') { ?>
<script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<?php } // end if statement
// if there's not a digg button
else { echo ''; } ?>

You may wrap it around with any styling that you want. Save the single.php and upload it to your theme folder.

Now when writing a post if you want to add a digg post simply add a custom field like shown in the screen shot below:

Whenever you specify this custom field, WordPress will display a digg button on your post.

29. Display Latest Sticky Posts in WordPress

Assuming that you have already created a custom page template and/or already have The Loop ready, paste the following code before the loop.

<?php
/* Get all sticky posts */
$sticky = get_option( 'sticky_posts' );

/* Sort the stickies with the newest ones at the top */
rsort( $sticky );

/* Get the 5 newest stickies (change 5 for a different number) */
$sticky = array_slice( $sticky, 0, 5 );

/* Query sticky posts */
query_posts( array( 'post__in' => $sticky, 'caller_get_posts' => 1 ) );
?>

This code can very well be used in featured slider, or any other advanced feature that you would like to display on your site. This snippet is mostly geared toward a WordPress site that has a custom homepage or a magazine style look.

The credit to this code goes to Justin Tadlock and partially to Nathan Rice for coming up with the array slice solution.

30. Display a Retweet Button On Your Site

With Twitter getting so much exposure, as a blogger you should already be using it to your advantage. Power of twitter is like no other because it is word of mouth advertising. To make this easier on your readers, what you can do is place a prominent retweet button, so they can retweet the article with one click. Not only just that, but you should make it the way so you can track the retweets as well. That is where tweetmeme widget comes in.

In this tutorial we will have you create a button that will link to the text in the following format:

RT @yoursitename Title of the Post – Link

Add the following code in the template file of your choosing most likely single.php

For the Large Button:

<script type="text/javascript">
tweetmeme_source = 'wpbeginner';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"> </script>

For the Compact Button:

<script type='text/javascript'>
tweetmeme_style = "compact";
tweetmeme_source = 'wpbeginner';
</script>

Remember to change the source to your twitter account name, this way you will not only promote your account to get more followers, but your article will be promoted as well.

31. Display Categories in a Drop Down Menu

Some blogs have a lot of categories which they can’t display in their sidebar. Or some bloggers do not want to take up a lot of space displaying categories. This option allows them to have a select menu, dropdown menu, for categories. See WordPress Codex for details.

<form action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/" method="get">
<?php
$select = wp_dropdown_categories('show_option_none=Select Category&show_count=1&orderby=name&echo=0&selected=6');
$select = preg_replace("#<select([^>]*)>#", "<select$1 onchange='return this.form.submit()'>", $select);
echo $select;
?>
<noscript><input type="submit" value="View" /></noscript>
</form>

32. Show Category Icons

Pictures make a site more lively which is a given which is why blogger might want to associate pictures with their category. This plugin lets you associate a specific icon of your choice to a designated category. You can use this plugin to list categories by icon with or without names, and much more.

Download this Plugin

33. Display the most Recent Post from a Specific Category

Did you see sites with a magazine style theme who are displaying posts from a specific category. Sometimes only the most recent post. Well you can do this too easily.

<?php
query_posts('showposts=1&cat=3');
while(have_posts()) : the_post();
?>
<ul>
<li><h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>

<ul><li><?php the_content(); ?></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Add the above code anywhere you like in the template. Make sure you change the category ID and you can change the number of posts displayed as well if you want.

34. Future Post Calendar

This plugin adds a simple month-by-month calendar that shows all the months you have future posts for (and the current month no matter what), it highlights the days you have posts for, and as an added bonus if you click a day the Post Timestamp boxes change to that day, month and year.

35. Modify Excerpt Length and More Tags

WordPress lets you display Excerpts, but up until version 2.9 you could not control the excerpt length. With the following code, you can increase the length from default 55 words to as many words as you like. Open your functions.php file and add the follwowing codes in there:

// Changing excerpt length
function new_excerpt_length($length) {
return 100;
}
add_filter('excerpt_length', 'new_excerpt_length');

// Changing excerpt more
function new_excerpt_more($more) {
return '%u2026';
}
add_filter('excerpt_more', 'new_excerpt_more');

Change the 100 word limit to the count that you desire.

36. Display Author’s Twitter and Facebook Information on their Profile Page

WordPress has fields for fields for author contacts, but it has not been updated in ages. So by default you do not have an ability to add author’s twitter or facebook. With this hack you can add this information on their profile page.

First open your functions.php and paste the following code:

<?php
function my_new_contactmethods( $contactmethods ) {
// Add Twitter
$contactmethods['twitter'] = 'Twitter';
//add Facebook
$contactmethods['facebook'] = 'Facebook';

return $contactmethods;
}
add_filter('user_contactmethods','my_new_contactmethods',10,1);
?>

The above code will add two extra fields on your user-edit page named twitter and Facebook. You can display the code with the following code in your author.php file.

<?php echo $curauth->twitter; ?>

Source: Joost De Valk

37. Create a Contributors Page that lists Author with Avatars and Other Details

Do you run a multi-author blog? Do you want to create a content-rich contributors page. This tutorial is just for you.

38. Display Twitter Avatars in Comments

You probably have seen many sites using gravatars in comments because that is built-in. But there are some sites that are using twitter avatars, and if you are wondering how they are doing it then this trick will help you.

Download the Plugin and follow this article for the instructions.

39. Create a Business Directory using WordPress

This plugin lets you create a business/web directory which allows users to submit their links or other information.

40. Create a SIMILE Timeline using WordPress

41. Display Breadcrumb Navigation in WordPress

Have you seen sites that have a breadcrumb like ebay? Did you want to do it on your site? If you do then this plugin is just right for you. It has plenty of SEO advantage and it is extremely helpful to users.

42. Create Your Own Facebook Application for Your WordPress Site

Did you ever want to utilize the power of Facebook by creating your own Application? Well WordPress lets you create an application for your blog. Follow this tutorial and utilize the power of facebook.

43. Display Most Recent Comments with Gravatars

Have you seen sites that display most recent comments in their sidebar with user gravatars. Well this can be done easily with these codes. Simply paste the following code anywhere you want to display the most recent comments.

<?php
$query = "SELECT * from $wpdb->comments WHERE comment_approved= '1'
ORDER BY comment_date DESC LIMIT 0 ,5";
$comments = $wpdb->get_results($query);

if ($comments) {
echo '<ul>';
foreach ($comments as $comment) {
$url = '<a href="'. get_permalink($comment->comment_post_ID).'#comment-'.$comment->comment_ID .'" title="'.$comment->comment_author .' | '.get_the_title($comment->comment_post_ID).'">';
echo '<li>';
echo '<div class="img">';
echo $url;
echo get_avatar( $comment->comment_author_email, $img_w);
echo '</a></div>';

echo '<div class="txt">Par: ';
echo $url;
echo $comment->comment_author;
echo '</a></div>';
echo '</li>';
}
echo '</ul>';
}
?>

To get more or less than 5 comments, change the number 5 on line 2.

Source: WPRecipes

44. Greet Each User with Appropriate Message

If you like to read blogs, then you must have seen this on at least one blog. You can select to display a specific message to different users depending on the source they arrived at your blog. So for example, if someone comes to your blog via twitter, this plugin will show them a different text.

Download this Plugin: WP Greet Box

45. Display Different Social Media Submit Buttons

Many if not all blogs has some type of social media integration on their site. Most sites though have different social media sites button on their single pages, so they can get more votes. There are many plugins that can add this feature in your WordPress Blog. But this can also be done manually. Anyone who is curious should use this social media theme guide as a reference.

46. Digg/Bury Blog Comments

Did you ever wish that there was some type of voting system on your blog comments. Well this plugin has just what you want. It allows users to vote up or vote down the comment.

47. Redirect Your User’s Attention

Have you been to a WordPress site where you make your first comment and you are redirected to another page? If not, then you are at one right now. We redirect our first commentators to a Thank You Page. But this Plugin can be used for the sake of advertisement also if you want your users to know about your new product. Simply Download a plugin called Comment Redirect.

48. Add Twitter ID Field in WordPress Comment Form

Many top sites including Mashable and Techcrunch are doing this. They have an additional twitter field in their comment forms. So users can put their twitter profile if they want to. This can be done in 5 easy steps if you follow the tutorial by clicking on the hack title.

49. Display Guest Author’s Name via Custom Field

Many Blogs are now having guest posts on their site. Some of these guest authors are one-time only authors, so there is no point in creating a separate profile for them just so you can display their name in the post. The smarter way to do this is by using the following code.

Open you single.php, or page.php in your template and add the following code where you display the author name:

<?php $author = get_post_meta($post->ID, "guest-author", true);
if ($author != "") {
echo $author;
} else {
the_author();
} ?>

This code will look for the custom field called guest-author if it is found, then it will display that name, otherwise it will display the_author function meaning the person who actually published it meaning you.

Note: You might have to remove the original the_author function before you place this.

Source: WPRecipes

50. Display Most Recent Tweet in WordPress

Twitter is getting very famous among bloggers. Many bloggers are now displaying their most recent tweet on their blog. If you want to display your most recent tweet on your blog simply place this code where you want to display it in your WordPress theme.

<?php
$username = "TwitterUsername"; // Your twitter username.
$prefix = ""; // Prefix – some text you want displayed before your latest tweet.
$suffix = ""; // Suffix – some text you want display after your latest tweet.
$feed = "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=from:" . $username . "&rpp=1";

function parse_feed($feed) {
$stepOne = explode("<content type=\"html\">", $feed);
$stepTwo = explode("</content>", $stepOne[1]);
$tweet = $stepTwo[0];
$tweet = str_replace("<", "<", $tweet);
$tweet = str_replace(">", ">", $tweet);
return $tweet;
}

$twitterFeed = file_get_contents($feed);
echo stripslashes($prefix) . parse_feed($twitterFeed) . stripslashes($suffix);
?>

Make sure to change the username in the first line.

51. Improve Your WordPress SEO

This is a detailed guide that will help you improve your WordPress SEO. We compiled it a while back and it has received many positive reviews from users.

52. Add Email This Article Option to Your WordPress Posts

Have you seen a site that gives you an option to email the article to your friend. If you have read a newspaper online, then you have. WordPress has a similar feature for the posts. You can add it by simply enabling a plugin called Email This.

Once you have installed and updated the settings to your desire, simiply add this code in your single.php inside the loop.

<?php if(function_exists('wp_email')) { email_link(); } ?>

This code will put a printer icon / link to every post page.

53. Create a Resourceful 404 Page Design

The above tutorial lists some of the elements that you should have in a 404 page design.

54. Improve Typography in WordPress

Have you ever wished that you can have rounded quotes, show elipses, your hyphens don’t get mixed up, well this is your lucky day because it can be done with a plugin called WP-Typography.

55. Create a jQuery Carousel in WordPress

A great tutorial that shows you how to display your WordPress posts in a Carousel.

We hoped that you enjoyed this long and resourceful article. If you like it please retweet, and share it with your friends on Facebook.

Best WordPress Tutorials of 2009

The Right Way to Remove WordPress Version Number

2010-01-25T20:01:49+00:00

By default WordPress leaves it’s footprints on your site for the sake of tracking. That is how we know that WordPress is the World’s largest Blogging platform. But sometimes this footprint might be a security leak on your site if you are not running the most updated version of WordPress. Because you are providing the hacker with the useful information by telling them which version you are running.

If you are running the most up to date version of WordPress, which we recommend you do, then you do not have to worry about this tutorial at all. But if for some reason you are not, then it is in your best interest to follow this tutorial.

There are many ways to get rid of the WordPress version number from your header. But there is only one correct way to do this.

Some sites will recommend that you open your header.php file and get rid of this code:

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress <?php bloginfo('version'); ?>" />

Or others will recommend that you open your functions.php and add the following function:

remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');

But both of these ways are offering you an incomplete solution. These ways will simply remove the WordPress version number from your head area. So if someone views your website source, they will not be able to see the version.

But a smart hacker who knows about WordPress will simply go to your RSS Feeds, and they will find your version number there because neither of the above codes will remove that number.

In order for you to completely remove your WordPress version number from both your head file and RSS feeds, you will need to add the following function to your functions.php file:

function wpbeginner_remove_version() {
return '';
}
add_filter('the_generator', 'wpbeginner_remove_version');

By adding this version, you will remove the WordPress version number from all different areas on your site. Above is the right way to remove WordPress Version number.

Note: We still recommend that you update to the latest version of WordPress because that is the only guaranteed way to keep your blog protected.

How to Add Post Thumbnails in WordPress

2010-01-23T17:47:34+00:00

Post Thumbnails are getting more popular every day. Many magazine themes associate an image with a specific post which they later display on either homepage or on the post page. We display a thumbnail with our posts on both the post page and the category page. In older versions, this functionality was obtained with the use of custom-field method which was not very user friendly. Thanks to WordPress Core Developers along with many notable features in WordPress 2.9, this function was also added to the core.

You will see an option like this in the sidebar of your Write Post Panel in WordPress Dashboard. Even though this functionality is added to the core, not every user will see this option in the sidebar of their write post panel. This is one of those functions that can be enabled only if the theme supports it. Older free themes might not support it, so you would need to ask the developer to update, or you can do it yourself by following this tutorial.

First you will need to open your functions.php file in your themes folder and paste the following code:

add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );

This code will enable theme support for both posts and pages. So now you will be able to see an option in your dashboard. But it will not display in your themes because we have not added the code in the theme yet.

You can display the thumbnail anywhere inside the Loop by using this code:

<?php the_post_thumbnail(); ?>

That was the basic function, but if you want to get more advanced such as specifying post thumbnail size then you will just need to open your functions.php file and paste the code like this:

add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
set_post_thumbnail_size( 50, 50, true );

The dimensions are set in this order: width x height and these are pixels.

This is broken down version of the full functionality of this feature. We tried to keep it simple, so every one can follow it. If you want more information on this functionality then check out:

Mark Jaquith’s Article on Post Thumbnails
WordPress Codex

No related posts.

How to Display Post Excerpts in WordPress Themes

2010-01-17T15:50:34+00:00

Some of our users wanted us to post a tutorial on how to display Post Excerpts in WordPress Themes. This is a very simple tutorial that anyone can implement and take advantage of this built-in feature. The benefit of implementing this tutorial is that it decreases page load time and it increases the pageview count.

How does it Decrease Page Load Time?

If you write long posts like best practices of contact forms or must have iphone apps for bloggers which has a lot of images, then having them load on one page can significantly impact your page load time. By adding this technique, you can simply show a mini description of the article and let user view the post on single post page.

How does it Increase Page View count?

Sometimes users just read the post on the category page if you don’t use the excerpt. By adding it this way, they will go to the original post. That is 2 page views instead of 1. It also encourages users to make a comment on the post because comment form is also on this page and they don’t need to load a separate page to make a comment.

Tutorial

Open your index.php file, archive.php file, and category.php file. Now some of you might not have all these files in your template, so just open the ones that you do have.

Find the following code:

<?php the_content(); ?>

And replace it with:

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

Now you can write custom excerpts for your posts from your WordPress admin panel and have it displayed in your theme.

If you do not write a custom excerpt, then WordPress automatically takes the first 55 words from your post and put them in an excerpt with elipses and display it. You can change the word limit starting from WordPress 2.9. If you want to change the word limit open your functions.php file and add the following function:

// Changing excerpt length
function new_excerpt_length($length) {
return 100;
}
add_filter('excerpt_length', 'new_excerpt_length');

// Changing excerpt more
function new_excerpt_more($more) {
return '%u2026';
}
add_filter('excerpt_more', 'new_excerpt_more');

If you want to see this code working live, just click on any of our categories from the navigation menu and you will see that we do not display full posts.

No related posts.

I Have a Bone to Pick

2010-01-16T04:00:28+00:00

As you all know, I am a big car guy and I have test driven a wide variety of cars and I generally critique cars – whether I like them or dislike them – even if I own them.

Now before I start talking about the image above, I just want to clarify that I own a Toyota and I actually like the Scion lineup. The problem that I have is I wonder, I really really wonder why Toyota — or better said, the designers of the xB decided that it might be better to design the car with only one reverse light as you can see from the image above.

As you probably know, most cars have two lights that turn on when you switch to reverse. Well, in the Scion xB you’d think something was wrong when only one light would turn on – which is on the lowest left hand corner. I just think its a really weird set up and its sort of a design flaw in my opinion.

Honestly, I don’t even own an xB and as a consumer I feel that I’m getting jipped off! I just thought it would be interesting today to talk about some things that interest me personally – it might not be a big deal but I still think its something I should get off my chest!

I hope you liked this short post and I just wanted to see what your opinions would be about this – do you think there is a specific reason why there is only one reverse light? or is that just something that needs to be fixed? I just want to see if anyone else thinks this is as weird as I do. Have a good weekend!

Adding a Custom Dashboard Logo in WordPress for Branding

2010-01-17T12:44:50+00:00

When creating themes for clients, you might want to provide them with some administrative branding. The first and easiest way to do that is by replacing the WordPress logo with your Custom Logo in the admin dashboard.

First you would need to create an image that has the dimensions of 30px wide and 31px tall. This image would need to be transparent either .gif or .png. The image matte color must match the background color which has the hex value of #464646.

Save that image in your theme’s image folder (/wp-content/themes/theme-name/images) and name it whatever you like. In this example we will be naming it custom-logo.gif.

Now open your functions.php file located in your themes folder and add the following function in there:

//hook the administrative header output
add_action('admin_head', 'my_custom_logo');

function my_custom_logo() {
echo '
<style type="text/css">
#header-logo { background-image: url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/custom-logo.gif) !important; }
</style>
';
}

By adding this function, you are telling WordPress to add a function my_custom_logo in the field admin_head. This function will replace the original WordPress ‘W’ with your custom logo.

This is how it would look:

This trick is from Jacob Goldman’s Article on Smashing Magazine

No related posts.

How to Display an Author List with Avatars in WordPress Contributors Page

2010-01-15T14:44:59+00:00

While working on a client’s website, we realized that the built-in function for listing authors was not enough. We showed you how to display all authors from your site, but that method was only good if you want a simple list to display in your sidebar. If you want to create a more content-rich and useful contributors page, then that function is useless.

In this article we will show you how you can create a contributors page which will display a list of authors with avatars or userphoto and any other information that you like. This tutorial is an intermediate level tutorial.

First thing you need to do is create a custom page using this template.

Then you will need to open functions.php file in your themes folder and add the following code:

function contributors() {
global $wpdb;

$authors = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, user_nicename from $wpdb->users ORDER BY display_name");

foreach($authors as $author) {
echo "<li>";
echo "<a href=\"".get_bloginfo('url')."/?author=";
echo $author->ID;
echo "\">";
echo get_avatar($author->ID);
echo "</a>";
echo '<div>';
echo "<a href=\"".get_bloginfo('url')."/?author=";
echo $author->ID;
echo "\">";
the_author_meta('display_name', $author->ID);
echo "</a>";
echo "</div>";
echo "</li>";
}
}

By adding this function you are telling WordPress to create a function that will display author’s name, and author’s avatar. You can change the avatar to userphoto plugin setting by simply changing the following line:

echo get_avatar($author->ID);

and replacing it with:

echo userphoto($author->ID);

You can add more features to this function such as displaying author URL and other information from the profile by following the structure used.

You would also need to add the following lines to your CSS file:

#authorlist li {
clear: left;
float: left;
margin: 0 0 5px 0;
}

#authorlist img.photo {
width: 40px;
height: 40px;
float: left;
}

#authorlist div.authname {
margin: 20px 0 0 10px;
float: left;
}

Once you are done adding the function, now you would need to call it in your page-template. Open the contributors.php file or whatever you name the file. Follow the same page template as your page.php and in the loop, just add this function instead of displaying the content:

<div id="authorlist"><ul><?php contributors(); ?></ul></div>

This will provide you with a more content-rich contributors page. This trick is excellent for Multi-Author blogs.

Now here is an example of how we used it:

If you want to have a contributors page with information like displayed in the example above, you will need to make a few changes to the original function. We have an example code that will get you exactly everything displayed in the image above.

function contributors() {
global $wpdb;

$authors = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, user_nicename from $wpdb->users WHERE display_name <> 'admin' ORDER BY display_name");

foreach ($authors as $author ) {

echo "<li>";
echo "<a href=\"".get_bloginfo('url')."/author/";
the_author_meta('user_nicename', $author->ID);
echo "/\">";
echo get_avatar($author->ID);
echo "</a>";
echo '<div>';
echo "<a href=\"".get_bloginfo('url')."/author/";
the_author_meta('user_nicename', $author->ID);
echo "/\">";
the_author_meta('display_name', $author->ID);
echo "</a>";
echo "<br />";
echo "Website: <a href=\"";
the_author_meta('user_url', $author->ID);
echo "/\" target='_blank'>";
the_author_meta('user_url', $author->ID);
echo "</a>";
echo "<br />";
echo "Twitter: <a href=\"http://twitter.com/";
the_author_meta('twitter', $author->ID);
echo "\" target='_blank'>";
the_author_meta('twitter', $author->ID);
echo "</a>";
echo "<br />";
echo "<a href=\"".get_bloginfo('url')."/author/";
the_author_meta('user_nicename', $author->ID);
echo "/\">Visit ";
the_author_meta('display_name', $author->ID);
echo "'s Profile Page";
echo "</a>";
echo "</div>";
echo "</li>";
}
}

This code is utilizing User Photo plugin. The twitter field is being displayed using the trick we mentioned in the article How to Display Author’s Twitter and Facebook in the Profile page.

The CSS for example would look like:

#authorlist ul{
list-style: none;
width: 600px;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
#authorlist li {
margin: 0 0 5px 0;
list-style: none;
height: 90px;
padding: 15px 0 15px 0;
border-bottom: 1px solid #ececec;
}

#authorlist img.photo {
width: 80px;
height: 80px;
float: left;
margin: 0 15px 0 0;
padding: 3px;
border: 1px solid #ececec;
}

#authorlist div.authname {
margin: 20px 0 0 10px;
}

You can display more information if you like by using the advanced code as your guide.

Source of this Function

No related posts.

Shopping Around with UrbanStone

2010-01-14T01:23:26+00:00

Recently, I came across a very interesting review request that was actually through Twitter. Interestingly enough, the website is called UrbanStone.co.uk which offers its readers a variety of shopping deals and allows them to compare shopping prices – much like some of the website we use here in the States.

The way the website works is quite interesting, it pulls prices of an item that you select and runs it through a variety of websites to make sure that the price you pay, is indeed the lowest price possible. For example, if I am looking for a Nintendo Wii I can just type in the search box and it brings up a variety of results.

What was interesting was that the results showed not only the one color of the Wii but the other color as a separate item – just in case my search was not as specific. Also, it provides reviews of the product that you may be looking for which is powered through Epinions.com which means that all you have to do to find the best prices and any related reviews is go to one website. The prices for the Wii ranged from 140 pounds to 400 pounds but was found in over 58 stores. Upon clicking the item you get a little description of what you will be purchasing, from what website the item will be purchased and its related price.

You can look up everything from electronics such as blu-ray players to home appliances such as freezers. If you’re like me then you’d probably want to make sure that instead of spending your money frivolously, taking the time to do the research can lead to tremendous savings and this website is just one more way to do just that. Overall, the website is well laid out and quite easy to use and for those in the UK, this might be just another way to find the best prices and reviews for products you want to purchase!

Is Anyone Satisfied with BuyBlogReviews?

2010-01-04T17:33:55+00:00

I have been receiving quite a bit of emails from BuyBlogReviews recently and I’m actually surprised as to what has happened. I did use BuyBlogReviews a few times and have received one or two payments from them but more recently I have been sticking with Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe mainly because the offers are more geared towards my blog and the advertisers they have are usually high quality if you pick them well or if they come find you.

Whats my problem you ask?
Heres the problem I have and I think its something that you’ll agree with. I am signed onto a few websites – Buy Blog Reviews, Sponsored Reviews, Review Me and Pay Per Post but the most emails I receive are from BBR. About 90% of them are about an opportunity being added and usually the opportunity pays around $2 or $3. I think that adding opportunities at that price point for some blogs, and letting them know about them, is sort of like looking down upon them. Im not saying I’m too good for that, but being at that price level its too low for most bloggers to be willing to accept it and write 200 words about something.

Buy Blog Reviews
I just logged into the BBR system today because they keep sending me emails checking whether im still active and sure enough, lots of opportunities under $4 for things like credit cards, gambling and medical treatments. I just think that having a lot of offers about that kind of stuff doesnt mean that you’re connecting to your bloggers. I just thought it was sort of pointless. I decided that it was time to check on Pay Per Post.

Pay Per Post
I logged into the PPP system today and as expected, it looks a lot like Sponsored Tweets and the majority of opportunities were $3 or lower and the ones that were at $20 or higher level were for lipo treatments, casinos and other adult websites. I’m not really sure where most of the quality opportunities are. I understand that PPP is probably relying on advertisers finding bloggers and thats fine, but I looked at Sponsored Reviews next. They had tons of opportunities that have been in the system.

Sponsored Reviews & ReviewMe
The problem with SponsoredReviews is that their advertisers sometimes never reply back or reply back with a really low counteroffer but they also have a lot of the lipo, casinos and adult type offers but they also have lots of other offers. I’d say its about 40% of those types of offers and 60% good offers. As far as ReviewMe is concerned, they also have offers but its generally mixed. Very rarely do I find the medical type offers and I dont think ive even seen a lot of adult offers. Problem with ReviewMe is that there aren’t that many to pick from most of the time.

Why am I picking on BBR?
Basically, what I’m saying is that, its easy to have tons of offers and none of them be of any use. Sponsored Reviews has lots of everything but it can be a while before you hear back from an advertiser. ReviewMe has more quality offers but there aren’t many to pick from and PPP and BBR have offers but their payout is too low to even consider. What makes this post focused on BBR is the fact that I receive lots of emails about offers being added to the system even though the offers are really not quality at all.

I want to know your thoughts if you use BBR or if you are a member and you get tons of emails from them. I think it would be nice to know that im not the only one receiving all these emails!

Happy New Year and My Resolutions

2010-01-02T01:52:53+00:00

2009 has been a big year and it is now that time, the time when I post what I wish to accomplish in the year to come.

1. Redesign Uzzz Productions
The past year has been filled with projects, but surprisingly the company that launched it all has been neglected. In 2010 I will implement a new design on the Uzzz site that will not only update the site but show off some tricks I have picked up over the past year.

2. Redesign some aspects of WPBeginner
Launching WPBeginner and watching it grow over the past few months has been incredibly rewarding. It has also shown me the tweaks that need to be made to the nuts and bolts of the site’s design.

3. Broaden WPBeginner’s reach
In 2010, WPBeginner will be tweaked to add more features, services, and freebies for it’s users. This will probably take most of 2010 to complete, but it will be well worth it.

4. Increase social media presence
This goal pretty much speaks for itself. Not only do I plan to organically grow through sites like Twitter and Facebook, but I look forward to the new social networks that 2010 will bring.

5. Attend and speak at more conferences and events
This year brought me to New York City for my first Wordcamp. In a week I will be speaking at Wordcamp Atlanta and spreading the word about increasing Wordpress security. I hope this year bring me more opportunities such as these to network and meet more of you in person.

6. Have Fun
With Balkhis, WPBeginner, Uzzz Productions, and school, it is hard to find a moment to just relax and have fun. My final resolution is take time to myself and enjoy some off time. In the spirit of this resolution, I am blogging from Tennessee, in my first vacation of 2010. Lets hope this year brings more chances for times like these.

I hope 2010 is a successful and enjoyable year for all.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T17:49:34+00:00

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to 2010 and I hope all of you had a wonderful start to the new year and for those of you who celebrated a little beyond what you could handle – I hope you made it home safe and had a good time nonetheless. So, whats so important about the new year? Am I going to tell you that this year is going to be different? No, I probably wont. The only reason is because the year is not going to be any different if you dont try or want for it to be different.

Stay Motivated!
What I’m getting at, is that yes its a new year and yes, you probably have a lot of goals but, if you aren’t motivated or don’t try to achieve your goals then nothing will be different this year. You have to stay motivated and maintain the initiative to bring change about. It is you who can change your future and you can do it this year if you put your mind to it.

Do What Ian Says
I’m going to keep this post short but basically I wasn’t going to tell you what some others have told you. You can change your entire year if you start off on the right foot. This morning, I received an email from Ian Fernando and he said exactly what I’m saying in this post. Ian’s email stated the following:

“I hope you have your whiteboard ready with new goals which you will tackle and be persistent throughout the year and not just for the month of January. ”

He couldn’t be more right. You are the decider for your life and you can set your goals but you have to run after them – nothing comes to you! Make sure you do your part this year and stay focused and everything will pan out for you if you did all the right things. Stay persistent, motivated and maintain your initiative – dont give up! Happy New Year everyone!

How to Make Sticky Posts in WordPress

2010-01-01T15:42:42+00:00

We have written about how to display recent sticky posts in WordPress, but we never covered how to make sticky posts which was our shortcoming because one of our users asked us this question. Making Sticky Posts in WordPress is really easy.

First you would need to login to your WP-Admin Panel, and open up the post page. Look towards the right hand sidebar where you will see a Publish box. Look at the (Visibility: Public) field and click edit. Check the box to make the post Sticky and publish it. If you want to make an older post sticky, follow the same steps and just click save.

How to Add an Author’s Photo in WordPress

2009-12-31T12:39:55+00:00

WordPress has many useful plugins to increase author and user interaction. Having a good author profile page is one of them. One of the most important part of the author page is author’s profile photo, so users can associate a picture with them. User Photo plugin allows a user to associate a profile photo with their account through their “Your Profile” page. Admins may add a user profile photo by accessing the “Edit User” page. Uploaded images are resized to fit the dimensions specified on the options page. A thumbnail image correspondingly is also generated. User photos may be displayed within a post or a comment to help identify the author. To see the documentations on how to implement this plugin, see the WordPress Plugin page.

User Photo

No related posts.

New Years Resolutions

2009-12-31T07:06:33+00:00

Every time around this year people make fake promises to themselves about the upcoming new year – resolutions. I’m just kidding.. As you all know the New Year is just hours away and we look upon the past year and think about some things that we would do differently or we would have liked to do differently.

For many, this is a time to decide to quit smoking, work harder, lose weight, etc. But how many of these resolutions actually come true. I mean, honestly, how many people even remember their resolutions after the first week or two of January have passed by? Not many, I’d imagine.

Well, either way, I think it would be a great idea to actually write out a few good resolution ideas and maybe some of you guys can chime in and tell me what you feel. These are just random suggestions dealing with life, your career, etc, so dont take these personally – these are merely for fun and entertainment. Also, I am doing the first 4 as what we should do more vs. what we should do less and the last is something we should try and maintain.

1) Learn More – Being a student, this sounds like a funny first thought, but think about it. The economy is kind of suffering and the competition for new jobs and even existing jobs is high so if you learn more, you will become more qualified to either retain your job or you may be one of the lucky few who actually receives a promotion. If you’re in the job market, then it will show your employers how motivated you are to learn and this will eventually help you get that job you’ve always wanted.

2) Worry Less – Some of the most enjoyable moments in life can be ruined or forgotten because you worry too much and carry too much stress on your shoulders. I know its easier said than done but staying positive an

3) Earn More – I think this is probably the most important for us MMO bloggers but earning more money should not be more important than improving yourself through learning and enjoying the moments of life more by worrying less and thats why this is third on the list. You have to realize that money isn’t everything however, having more money in the future years will only be another way to prove to oneself that you can do what you dream and you can make things happen if you really want them. Trying to earn more isn’t only about the money but about the feeling of achieving success.

4) Waste Less – With poverty being so prevalent, it is our duty as human being who have the basic necessities in life to try and waste as little as possible – whether its food, money, or anything else. There are people who starve every day around the world and the less we waste, the more they will have. The less money we spend on food that we won’t eat or finish completely, that money could go to a better place. We have to realize that our actions have an effect on such people and we can help reduce that by reducing the impact our lifestyles have on people who are less fortunate than us.

5) Maintain health and happiness – When I say maintain, my assumption is that you are already healthy and happy or striving to achieve a little more of both. In this sense, it is important to keep our health in mind and always remember that our health is very important – no matter what the cost may be. Remaining healthy will result in a more prosperous future. In addition, its important to stay happy and look at the brighter side of things as it will always help in making any situation better.

I hope these resolutions are ones that you can relate with. These are just a few of my suggestions however it would be nice to see what you have in mind for the upcoming New Year!

Lets Reduce Our Energy Impact

2010-01-04T23:25:03+00:00

With things regarding the economy not seeing an upward trend lately, lots of people have been seeing how they can reduce costs and recently, I received a review request from Enigin PLC which is actually an energy saving association that exists to promote the ethos of cost-effective and considered energy saving strategies. They wish to facilitate the exchange of information to help build up a knowledge base to provide information to other individuals who may be interested in contributing to help the environment and reduce the effects of climate change.

Eingin basically endorses the aims and ethos of the ESA and really hopes to look into the future with a more fuel efficient and cost-effective viewpoint. They want to help humans realize their impact on the world around them and help them reduce it by offering them a way to do so. Basically, Eingin is hoping to reduce our impact on the world and do it in a way where we can raise awareness as well. They even have a link to Wrigleys Eingin blog which was a good link and a good read as well. So now I ask you guys, why would anyone not want to partake in something like this?

They have some good resources on the website, a membership program as well as lots of great news so we should all do our part and atleast take a look at Eingin with the hopes of creating a positive impact in the coming year!

How to Display a Category only if it has Posts in WordPress

2009-12-31T00:05:20+00:00

This snippet that we are sharing in this article is helpful in very custom designs. By default you can use wp_list_categories function to display categories, and it only displays categories if it has posts. Sometimes when you are customizing WordPress, you might need to use it this way. When we were working on a client’s project, we found a need for this snippet, therefore we are sharing it for anyone else who can use it.

<?php if (get_category('17')->category_count > 0) echo get_category('17')->cat_name; ?>

In the method above we are specifying the category ID for very specific category if you want to check, but you can do this with all categories also. Just paste the snippet below where you want it.

<?php foreach (get_categories() as $category){
if ($category->count > 0){
echo $category->cat_name;
}
} ?>

Now how would you use it? Well sometimes you have a category with a specific name, but you want to display the link with a different anchor text, and you only want to display it if it has posts, this way can be handy. So for instance in your navigation menu, you can enter something like this:

<?php if (get_category('17')->category_count > 0) echo "<a href=\"".get_bloginfo('home')."/category/news/\">Blog</a>"; ?>

This will check if category 17 has any posts, if it does, then it will display the navigation menu item called Blog, otherwise it would not.

It’s very simple and easy, but for those new developers it can be helpful.

How to Display Author’s Twitter and Facebook on the Profile Page

2009-12-29T14:54:47+00:00

By default WordPress allow to display author’s website, email, and a few other useless IM contacts, but it is missing important social media networks like Facebook, and Twitter. In this tutorial, we will show you how you can add author’s twitter, facebook, linkedin, or any other contact info on the profile page.

First thing you need to do is open your functions.php in your template folder and add the following codes:

<?php
function my_new_contactmethods( $contactmethods ) {
// Add Twitter
$contactmethods['twitter'] = 'Twitter';
//add Facebook
$contactmethods['facebook'] = 'Facebook';

return $contactmethods;
}
add_filter('user_contactmethods','my_new_contactmethods',10,1);
?>

You can follow the methods and add any other field that you want. Once you add this function, user profile page in the admin panel will look like this:

Add the information there. Now you will need to display it in your template through author.php file. You should check out our tutorial on How to Add an Author Profile Page in WordPress and for further documentation also look at WordPress Codex page for Author Templating.

All you have to do is paste the following code in your template file:

<?php echo $curauth->twitter; ?>

You can change the name of the field to what you like. This way you can display it in your author.php file. You may modify it to your liking. For example use this as links and so on.

If you have any questions feel free to write it in the comments, and we will answer them.

Note: This tutorial will work in WP 2.9+ thanks to Joost De Valk

Most Notable Features in WordPress 2.9

Is Being Creative Useful?

2009-12-29T06:21:18+00:00

Im sure many of you who read my blog have been blogging for a while and maybe haven’t seen results or the complete opposite. When you sit down one day and think about you, you wonder, whats the difference between me and the other guy who is actually doing quite well?

The answer is simple, if not pretty obvious – they attract more readers. Does that mean they write better or they’re more creative or their blog looks better? Who really knows – but when it all boils down, you have to know that you have to be creative. You have to try and use the resources you have in the best possible ways to achieve the results youre looking for.

Back in the day, I started wondering whether being creative in general was useful to being a good blogger and if so, how do we use our creativity to get more readers. The answer is simple and here are a few ways you can use your creativity.

1) Videos – get creative in the blogging business by using videos to enhance your posts. I’ve always said you can bring your blog posts to life by using videos instead of actual words. Staying away from fancy effects may be good but depends what youre doing. A lot of the fade in/fade out and transitions can affect you negatively but if you do some interesting video effects then it might actually help you but do remember that it would result in taking more time to put out videos.

2) Pictures – people love pictures and adding pictures to your post like I did to this one can really help attract and keep visitors on your page when they first visit the page. Pictures can also be used as graphs or to tell a story so you can use pictures to get creative. However, this does require you to sort of know how to use photo editing software such as Photoshop but hopefully you already know your way around that a little at least.

3) Humor – Humor is a big part of everything and some people are great at it and others arent. You have to see what youre good at and use it to your advantage so if humor is not your thing or your jokes just dont work then dont do it! Find something youre good at and try to use it to your advantange. I have done a few things with humor and they’ve turned out okay but nothing spectacular. ImWithJoe.com is a perfect example of using humor to attract readers. Do what you have to do, but humor is a good place to start – thats if youre good!

Theres a lot more creative tips but to keep from having long posts like I once did I’m going to stop here and try to pick up after the New Years post! Hope you all have a good week and a great New Years!

Planetaki Planet balkhis

How to: Related Posts with Thumbnails in WordPress without Plugins

Related Posts by Tags

Related Posts by Category

Example

How to Change the Category Base Prefix in WordPress

How to Change / Modify the Category Base Prefix?

How to Remove Category Base Prefix in WordPress

The Best Way to Get Retweets, Just Ask!

My Presentation at WordCamp Atlanta on WordPress Security

Use CSS Sprites to Beautify your WordPress Post Dates

Step #1

Step #2

Step #3

Explanation:

Step #4

Step #5

How to Add Content and Completely Manipulate Your WordPress RSS Feeds

1. Add a Custom Field to your WordPress RSS Footer

2. Adding Additional Text to Post Titles in RSS

3. Add Same Text on all Posts in RSS

Must Read: 55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

1. How to use a Custom Page as a Home Page in WordPress

2. How to Create a Page that Displays Random Posts

3. How to Display any External RSS Feed on Your Site

4. How to Display Relative Dates in WordPress

5. Allow Users to Submit News on Your Site

6. Link to External Links from Your Post Title

7. Use WordPress as a Free Email Newsletter Service

8. Display any Number of Posts in a Loop

9. Highlight Author’s Comment

10. Create Thumbnails for Each Post and Display Them

11. Display Feedburner Subscriber Count as Text

12. Display Twitter Follower Count as Text

13. Create Your Own Private Twitter Site using WordPress

14. Control When Your Posts are Available via RSS

15. Allow Multiple Authors to be Associated with One Post

16. Change the Default Gravatar Button

17. Display Random Header Images in WordPress

18. Only Display Certain Categories in a Menu

19. How set an Expiration Date for Your Posts

20. Delete Posts Revisions from Your Database

21. Create a Membership Directory using WordPress

22. Create a Peel Away Effect in WordPress

23. Custom CSS Stylesheet for Individual Posts

24. Easily Add Custom Header, Footer, or Sidebar on Different Categories

25. Create a Custom Login Page Design for WordPress

26. Place Content Only in your RSS Feeds

27. Disable HTML in WordPress Comments

28. Add Digg Buttons in Your Posts using Custom Fields

29. Display Latest Sticky Posts in WordPress

30. Display a Retweet Button On Your Site

31. Display Categories in a Drop Down Menu

32. Show Category Icons

33. Display the most Recent Post from a Specific Category

34. Future Post Calendar

35. Modify Excerpt Length and More Tags

36. Display Author’s Twitter and Facebook Information on their Profile Page

37. Create a Contributors Page that lists Author with Avatars and Other Details

38. Display Twitter Avatars in Comments

39. Create a Business Directory using WordPress

40. Create a SIMILE Timeline using WordPress

41. Display Breadcrumb Navigation in WordPress

42. Create Your Own Facebook Application for Your WordPress Site

43. Display Most Recent Comments with Gravatars

44. Greet Each User with Appropriate Message

45. Display Different Social Media Submit Buttons

46. Digg/Bury Blog Comments

47. Redirect Your User’s Attention

48. Add Twitter ID Field in WordPress Comment Form

49. Display Guest Author’s Name via Custom Field

50. Display Most Recent Tweet in WordPress

51. Improve Your WordPress SEO

52. Add Email This Article Option to Your WordPress Posts

53. Create a Resourceful 404 Page Design

54. Improve Typography in WordPress

55. Create a jQuery Carousel in WordPress

The Right Way to Remove WordPress Version Number

How to Add Post Thumbnails in WordPress