WordPress 3.1 Goes Live

Posted by admin | Posted on 24-02-2011

Category : Releases

Tags: , , , ,

The team at WordPress released version 3.1, code name “Reinhardt”, yesterday, bringing a host of new and updated features.

WordPress 3.0 was released back in June 2010, along with its own set of new functions and features. The 3.1 release cycle was originally expected to be completed before the end of 2010, but bugs and various changes pushed that date back.

Here are some of the new features that excite me the most:

The Admin Bar

WordPress.com users are probably familiar with the admin bar that appears atop every WordPress.com-hosted site when they are logged into their accounts. The menu provides quick access to various tools and lets users quickly create new blog posts or access back-end features.

The WordPress.org admin bar will only work when users are logged into their own sites. When they are, visiting the site will display an admin bar that will then provide easy access to comments, the dashboard and other assorted tools. If you don’t like it or won’t use it, there is the option to turn the bar off in the dashboard’s “Users” panel.

Post Formats

Not to be confused with the similar sounding Custom Post Types, Post Formats can be used by theme authors to customize the way a WordPress post is presented on the web. Post Formats is not a required feature, but it is something that theme designers can implement to better show off certain content types.

Post Formats are especially useful for users who want to create a Tumblr-like experience on their WordPress blog. That means that users can designate a post as an aside, link, video, image, quote, status, audio, chat or gallery. That designation can then help a theme determine how content should be displayed.

That means that a post formatted as a quote might display a quote in a big italicized font, whereas a video post has a custom width.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is a new feature in WordPress 3.1 that makes it easier for publishers to find and link back to previously published content. WordPress’s internal linking tool makes the process of finding and linking to content much faster. Simply click on the link button in the writing panel and enter in a word or phrase. Related entries will show up and clicking on an entry will fill the link field with the correct URL.

For sites with lots of content, we can see this feature being very useful.

WordPress 3.0.5 Release

Posted by admin | Posted on 08-02-2011

Category : Releases

Tags: , , ,

On February 7, 2010, WordPress 3.0.5 was released to the public. This is a security update for all previous WordPress versions.

Summary of fixes, updates and enhancements:

  • Fix XSS bug: Properly encode title used in Quick/Bulk Edit, and offer additional saniziation to various fields. Affects users of the Author or Contributor role.
  • Fix XSS bug: Preserve tag escaping in the tags meta box. Affects users of the Author or Contributor role.
  • Fix potential information disclosure of posts through the media uploader. Affects users of the Author role.
  • Enhancement: Force HTML filtering on comment text in the admin.
  • Enhancement: Harden check_admin_referer() when called without arguments, which plugins should avoid.
  • Update the license to GPLv2 (or later) and update copyright information for the KSES library.

Problems Uploading Images

Posted by admin | Posted on 24-01-2011

Category : Tips

Tags: , , , , , ,

I’ve installed WordPress hundreds of times. In most cases, I’ve installed the software on one of only a handful of web hosts. In the last week, however, I’ve installed WordPress for two clients, both with their own hosting accounts, and in both cases, when I tried to use the image upload tool, I got the following error:

Unable to create directory /var/www/vhosts/domain/httpdocs/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

After a cursory search of Google, I discovered a lot of people have been having the same problem, so allow me to provide the solution.

When you download WordPress from wordpress.org, there is no uploads directory within wp-content. So after you upload WordPress to the hosting account, navigate to the wp-content folder and manually create a directory called uploads.

In most cases, this will solve your problem. In my case, it fixed one of the two installations I was working on.

If you are still having problems after that, change the file permissions on the uploads directory to 777 (full read, write and execute permissions to all users). You can generally do this by changing the properties of the remote folder using your FTP client.

By default, WordPress tries to categorize your uploads into subdirectories. In the example above, it tried to create two subdirectories – one for the year (2011) and one for the month (01). If WordPress doesn’t have permission to create those directories, then the upload will fail.

Finally, if this does not solve the problem (and it’s generally best not to have any folders with the permissions 777 as it is a security risk), you can tell WordPress not to bother categorizing your uploads. You can do this from the Settings > Media section of the WordPress Dashboard.

Under the Uploading Files heading, you can uncheck the box which says “Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders”. From here, you can also declare where you want your uploads to be stored. You will see that the default is wp-content/uploads which begs the question, why isn’t that directory set up by default?

Always Use Permalinks

Posted by admin | Posted on 26-08-2010

Category : Basics

Tags: , ,

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your blog posts, as well as categories and other lists of blog postings and pages. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to link to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change – hence permalink.

By default, your WordPress installation uses “Ugly” permalinks. The default looks like:

http://example.com/?p=N

Using mod_rewrite or lighttpd, you can produce much nicer permalinks. There are many different formats, but the most common, and most versatile looks like:

http://example.com/category/post-name/

http://example.com/year/month/day/post-name

One of the main reasons to use Permalinks in this way is to create search engine friendly URLs. That is, an address without variables in the URL, and containing relevant keywords.

To change your Permalink settings, go to the Settings menu and select “Permalinks”. For an informal “blog”, choose the month and name option. However, if you are developing an professional authority site, I suggest using the custom “category/postname” structure:

WordPress Trick 1: Create a Custom Home Page

Posted by admin | Posted on 18-08-2010

Category : Tricks

Tags: , , ,

Often, a website’s Home Page is a little different from the rest of the site. Whether it’s additional navigation, banner ads, or a feature image, you will need to be able to work outside WordPress’s default template. Here’s how you do it:

First, duplicate your theme’s page.php file. You can do this by downloading the file using your FTP program and renaming it. Call it homepage.php for example. Before you upload it again, open the file in a text editor and add the following code:

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

Give the template a name – in the above example, it’s WPBeginnerT1 – and then upload the file into the same folder as the original page.php file. This is your new home page template. Make any required HTML or styling changes to this file.

Now, in your WordPress Dashboard, go to the Pages section and create a new page. In the Page Attributes, choose your newly created template.

Publish the page. If you still want a blog on your site somewhere, create a blank page for it using the Default WordPress template.

Now go to the Settings » Reading section in the WordPress Dashboard. From here, you can choose the two pages you just created as the Static pages for both your Front page and Posts (blog) page:

Now you have yourself a custom home page!

Note, you don’t need to create a new template for a static home page – if you are happy with the default wordpress template (ie, the standard page), you can just use that.

Pro Tip 1: Page Comments

Posted by admin | Posted on 16-08-2010

Category : Tips

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

WordPress blogs encourage participation from their readers; instead of just reading a post, you have the opportunity to comment on it. It’s part of the Web 2.0 revolution – websites no longer need to be glorified brochures. It’s an enormously powerful part of WordPress and you should encourage people to leave comments on your blog posts.

However, you don’t need to allow comments on your Pages. Think about it; do you need a comment box on your “Contact Us” page? Your “About Me” page? If you think you do, well, you can stop reading now. :) But if you do think it’s a little unnecessary, you might be surprised to find that, by default, comments are switched on for all posts and pages.

For my first Pro Tip for this blog, I suggest you switch off comments (and trackbacks and pingbacks) for your WordPress pages.

Edit one of your pages, then scroll down to the bottom of the web page; not to the bottom of the dialog box containing your page content, but the bottom of the WordPress interface page. You will see a box called “Discussion”; in it, there is the option to “Allow comments” and “Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this page.” By default, these options are checked, allowing both. I suggest you switch both off.

Not only are comments unnecessary on your pages, they also detract from the information on the page; they end up looking messy. Remembering to switch off comments for your pages keeps your blog looking clean, and ensures any discussions take place where they should, on your posts.

Posts vs Pages

Posted by admin | Posted on 15-08-2010

Category : Basics

Tags: , , ,

When you want to publish information on your WordPress blog, you have two options: posts and pages. The interface look very similar for both, so what’s the difference?

In general terms, a post would contain information that is relevant now, and a page would contain information that will be always relevant. This is simply the nature of the “blog”. Posts are displayed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent on the front page, and the oldest deep in the archive.

So, using this blog as an example, when WordPress releases a new update, I might write a post about it, explaining what that update is and how it is beneficial to WordPress users. However, information like contact details and web hosting resources might be placed into a page, as that information would be just a relevant today as it would be in a year from now. The same cannot be said about the update, because in a year from now, there are likely to have been a number of new updates, making the one I wrote about today far less relevant.

That said, there is no need to write only pages. (“Hey! Everything I write is relevant! Forget posts, I’d better only make pages…”) If you plan out a page and post category structure when you first set out, all your content will be easily accessible by your readers. We’ll talk more about that a little later.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

Posted by admin | Posted on 13-08-2010

Category : Basics

Tags: , , , , , ,

WordPress is quickly becoming the most popular blogging software on the Internet. But did you know WordPress is available in two forms:

WordPress.com is provided by WordPress for people to set up a blog absolutely free. Your blog is hosted and installed for you, so it’s great for the beginner blogger. But it does have limitations.

Alternatively, WordPress.org provides the source code for WordPress, allowing you to download and install it anywhere you like. This means you need to provide your own hosting account, but gives you complete control over your blog.

So which is better?

Well of course it depends on you requirements.

If you want to set up a blog quickly and easily, and you don’t want to spend any money, obviously WordPress.com is the option for you. But before you go off and sign up, I want you to think long-term. In the future, do you want to:

  • Make money from the traffic to your blog
  • Use a premium theme to make your blog look professional
  • Extend the functionality of WordPress with plugins
  • Brand your blog, removing all reference to WordPress
  • Start a mailing list or forum on your blog

If you think you might want to do any of those things in the future, you need to make a very important decision before you get started.

The problem is that the free WordPress.com blog sets you up a URL like http://username.wordpress.com, where you can choose your username. You might work hard on that blog, getting lots of visitors each month and building a community of followers. But then, if you decide you want to monetize your blog, for example, by adding Google Adsense to it, you will need to move your blog to your own web host. That in itself isn’t a problem, but you cannot take your WordPress.com URL with you. Which means, you lose visitors, you lose your ranking in the search engines, and you pretty much have to start from scratch.

On the other hand, WordPress.org gives you complete control from day one. Sure, there is some cost involved from day one, and it takes a little longer to get the site up and running, but the most important aspect is that you are installing WordPress on your own domain. So no matter what happens in future, the URL of your website won’t change. You could change web hosts, or even stop using WordPress altogether, and your URL will be the same!

WordPress.com does provide a domain mapping service, allowing you to map a domain to your free WordPress.com account, but this service isn’t free; it costs about $10 per year, or $15 if you register the domain via WordPress.com.

To give you an idea of what it would cost to set up a WordPress.org site, domain registration costs approximately $10 per year, and a hosting account costs anywhere upwards from $30 per year. WordPress.org recommends the web host Blue Host, which costs $6.95 per month.

This blog will concentrate more on WordPress.org than the free WordPress.com sites, because one of the best things about running a website is making a passive income from it. You could easily offset (if not cover entirely) the cost of a hosting account simply by installing Google Adsense ads on your site.

I would recommend you go with WordPress.org in almost every situation, unless you are a teenager wanting to blog about the ins and outs of teenage life. And even then…

Check out our Resources page for more information about web hosts and domain registration. Also, if you missed it, here’s a link to my article about Installing WordPress.

Installing WordPress

1

Posted by admin | Posted on 12-08-2010

Category : Basics

Tags: , , , , , ,

These days, installing WordPress is a simple procedure. In the past, you had to update the configuration file manually, which meant you had to have a basic knowledge of PHP programming. Nowadays, at worst, you just need to manually create the database; at best, your web host can do it for you!

Assuming you already have a domain name, a web hosting account and you’re ready to go, let’s start with a best case scenario.

If your hosting account comes with cPanel or WHM, chances are it also comes with programs like Fantastico or Simple Scripts. These are commercial script libraries that automate the installation of web applications to a website. Simply go to the Fantastico / Simple Scripts page and choose the WordPress option, then follow the prompts. You could literally have WordPress installed in about 30 seconds!

If these options aren’t available to you, don’t fret – installation is still quite simple.

First, download and extract the latest version of the software from WordPress.org, then upload the files to your hosting account using your favorite FTP program.

Next, you’ll need to create a MySQL database with a username and password. If you’ve never done this before, it’s surprisingly easy.

Go to the MySQL Databases page and create a new database, simply by giving it a name. Often, your web host will append a prefix to the name you’ve chosen. Note this new database name for use later. Next, create a new user, simply by giving it a name and password. Again, your web host may append a prefix to the name you’ve chosen. Finally, you need to add the user to the database.

Finally, go to the web address where you uploaded the WordPress files. The software will run, and you will be asked for your database details. And that’s it! The software automatically updates the configuration file and your new blog is ready to use.

For detailed instructions, check out the WordPress installation documentation.

Into WordPress?

Posted by admin | Posted on 11-08-2010

Category : Uncategorized

Tags: , , ,

WordPress is awesome! But you probably already know that.

If you didn’t, let me explain: WordPress is an advanced FREE blogging tool that provides a rich set of features. It is very powerful, it is easily customizable, and it can extend its functionality. If you want a presence online, you need look no further.

Since I first installed it in 2007, I’ve built hundreds of websites, and in most cases I used WordPress. Whether as a blog as it was originally designed, or as a content management system, it more than caters to the average webmaster.

I absolutely love it! So I decided to start a WordPress blog and let you guys know why it’s so good, how best to use it, and even let you in on some of the professional tricks I’ve learned over the years. Whether you’re a beginner or already well versed in it’s use, you’re going to find something useful on my site.

So, are you into WordPress? If you’re online, you should be.