Category: Advanced

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Two finds of the day: Another WP theme finder and best WP shortcodes

Here’s another WordPress theme finder, that’s not as visual as WP Candy’s but nevertheless may be useful for some. It’s called QualiThemes. We like it as it includes both free and commercial themes and you can rate them. Our nitpicks: the original theme developer doesn’t get listed on the page and the drop down menus to filter the themes could use some visual work and spacing.

Qualithemes

We also noticed there’s a huge list of awesome WPshortcodes at WordPress Answers by Stack Exchange including: delay RSS posts, add excerpts to pages, customize the order of the admin menu navigation, and profile the database performance.

Get it: QualiThemes | WordPress Answers

 

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Why I heart Genesis

Editor’s note: This week we have a friend and guest writer: Lori Berkowitz from Bee Dragon give us some insight as to why she thinks the Studio Press’ Genesis framework is the greatest thing since sliced bread. We reviewed Genesis from earlier this week from a content creator’s perspective, so here’s a coder’s perspective.

From a developer’s point of view, I have a huge crush on Genesis! I have become somewhat of a “Genevangelist”. The amount of time Genesis has saved me in the past year is incredible. I can build custom page templates in minutes and that is just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve been working with it for a little over a year now and have built quite a few sites using child themes, either completely custom or built from one of the child themes.

Genesis provides a lot of hooks, some filters, some shortcodes, and other handy developer friendly features, but my favorite function is genesis(); It allows you to make a page template by adding whatever hooks, functions, html, etc. that you want the page to have, followed by genesis(); The genesis() function will completely render the appropriate page type and follow whatever instructions you gave it in the rest of the file. For example, a page template for a custom post type could look like this:

php // Template Name: Template Name Here
remove_action('genesis_loop', 'genesis_do_loop');
add_action('genesis_loop', 'custom_loop');
function custom_loop() {
global $paged;
$args = array('post_type' => 'PostType'); // any wp_query args can go here
genesis_custom_loop( $args );
}
genesis();

If you are interested, I have been collecting Gensis snippets here.
The source link on some snippets leads to other sites with lots of useful Genesis info and tips.

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Improve search results for your visitors

We have reviewed WordPress plugins that help return better search results for your WordPress site like the Relevanssi plugin. But how about helping your users fix their spelling in the search box before they hit “submit” – like Google or major search engines do?

We just noticed this relatively new plugin called “Proper Spell.” We haven’t tried it yet but it’s supposed to auto suggest the correct spelling while the user is typing in something into your search box. It requires a bit of intermediate knowledge as you’ll need to plugin a code

Get it: Proper Spell

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Quick Tip: Add a smooth call to action button anywhere

Here’s a time saver, if you want to add a nice looking “call to action” (CTA) button like “Signup” or “Download” to your site. Normally that would require a lot of steps: design it in Photoshop, upload a graphic into the media library, and then insert it into your post. And then link it up. Wow, that’s a lot of steps and time.

Well there’s a WordPress plugin to speed that process up a lot – try WP CSS Button plugin and use their short code almost anywhere on the site to display a button like this:
[CSSBUTTON target=”http://startupsinsider.net” color=”FF8A00″ textcolor=”ffffff”]Signup[/CSSBUTTON]
Once the plugin is installed and activated, you simply insert this shortcode in your post editor:

[CSSBUTTON target="http://startupsinsider.net" color="FF8A00" textcolor="ffffff"]Signup[/CSSBUTTON]

You can also replace the hex button text/background color and hyperlink with anything you’d like. And here’s a tip from us, if your site shows an underlining effect on the left/right side, insert this code to the bottom of your theme’s CSS file to hide it.
.button_col a { border-bottom: none; }

Once you make the 2-3 min. investment in time, adding nice looking buttons could take just seconds!

Get it: WP CSS Button plugin

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My Obsession: Speeding up WordPress

In the past few months, I’ve been obsessed almost daily with speeding up my litany of WordPress sites. Having relevant, well written content plus a fast site is a way to get readers to keep coming back and search engines now take content plus speed into account.

I’ve tried quite a few plugins and services. Some of them were easy to use and some were not so easy to use. I also wanted to distill a ton of information and experience into a practical and do-able mini tutorial.

I’ll work on a more definitive full featured article but in lieu of that, here’s the combination of tools that speed up WordPress sites in my experience. You can follow these in gradual steps to crank up the speed of your WP site. One assumption is that you’re hosting your site on a decent, tier 1 web hosting company like Media Temple. None of these plugins will speed up your WordPress site if the foundation is not solid – if your web host is slow. But that’s anther discussion.

WP Super Cache
The best plugin to start with is WP Super Cache for most people. WP Super Cache (WP SC) is relatively easy with a simple on/off switch. Most of the defaults settings will work out of the box for everyone. Just install the plugin, then activate, and click the “on” button.

What’s the downside of a cache plugin? Sometimes if you make changes to your site, it will take a few forced refreshes on your web browser to see the updates. Or you’ll need to delete the cache in WP SC settings or turn it off temporarily.

Just in case, you didn’t know these caching plugins create temporary “static” HTML versions of your web pages so the server doesn’t have to generate these pages “dynamically” like WordPress normally does. Serving up a static HTML page is usually much faster than serving up normal WordPress page.

An alternative I’ve tried is W3 Total Cache (W3 TC) plugin – it has a whole kitchen sink approach which can be really confusing for new users. Plus I can never stop complaining that the labels used for on/off/preview modes are confusing for most people.

WP Super Cache doesn’t have the whole kitchen sink like W3 TC but that’s where the next plugin (Autoptimize) supplements WP SC.

Autoptimze
I wrote about Autoptimize a few days ago. It optimizes and compresses your HTML, CSS, and Javascript code. It works well with most plugins but it may once in awhile make your home page slightly look a little weird (images may be offset by a few pixels). But it’s easy to turn on or off. There’s only a handful of settings, so you can’t really hurt anything. Plus Autoptimize works in tandem with WP Super Cache according to the plugin developer! So this combo does the work of W3 Total Cache without the confusing UI.

Content Delivery Network
What’s a CDN (Content Delivery Network)? In simple terms, it’s a paid service that automatically downloads all your images, CSS, and javascript files into their “system.” The CDN system comprises of web servers at multiple, strategic geographical locations.

Once you signup with a CDN provider, their system will automatically copy commonly used images, CSS, and JS files onto their CDN servers. Then using a WordPress plugin like WP Super Cache, that plugin will automatically switch over the source of image, CSS, and javascript sources to the fastest CDN server closest to you.

Both WP Super Cache and Autoptimize plugins have CDN support but I recommend you use the CDN support in WP Super Cache . I noticed that Autoptimize seems to have a bug with sourcing PHP files for the CDN.

Now this is where the hard part comes. Which CDN provider do you signup with? I looked at using Amazon’s Cloudfront but the pricing and setup instructions gave me a headache. After some research, I’d found a WordPress knowledgeable/savy CDN service called WP CDN. Once you’re signed up, they’ll send you instructions on the server names you paste into either plugin.

The WP CDN people were extremely helpful and answered all my crazy questions very responsively. Plus it starts at only $6/month with no setup fees up to 5 domains, so you can’t really go wrong.

All in all, I’ve seen the combination of these three tools speed up my WordPress sites by an average of 2-3 seconds on long blog pages like StartupInsider.net or even this site.

Get it: WP Super Cache | Autoptimize | WP CDN

Related posts: WP Super Cache | Autoptimize

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Plugin of the week: Autoptimize to speed up your WP site

One of the best ways to get new visitors to your website and to keep them coming back is to make sure your site loads up quickly. Most experts recommend having your home page load in about 2-3 seconds. If your site is taking more than 5 seconds for the average user, then you have a problem. One of the first steps is to get educated with Yahoo’s Y!Slow tutorials.

Next you can take advantage of some WordPress plugins to help speed up your page. We did a quick review of the popular W3 Total Cache a few weeks ago and overall we liked it. It seemed to have shaved off 1-2 seconds from our home page. The problem with W3 Total Cache is that  there are a ton of options and some of the “on” or “off” switches are labeled in a confusing way.

So if you’re looking for something simpler but possibly as effective give Autoptimize a try. Autoptimize’s features are not as extensive as seen by their control panel but nevertheless it has the important features like HTML code, CSS, and Javascript optimization and compression.

We’ve been using it for the past few weeks and think it works really well. We recently did some performance testing with a clone copy of this site on a fresh WordPress installation and noticed that Autoptimizer does make a difference and shaved off 1 second versus not having it installed.

Autoptimize also supports off loading content to a CDN but we haven’t tried it yet but we are going to jump into that water very soon to help speed up our own sites.

Neither Autoptimize nor W3 Total Cache are a magic bullet to solve your WordPress performance problems – especially if your web hosting company has server capacity and/or slow connection issues. But installing the Autoptimize plugin is an almost no-brainer way to squeeze some speed out of your WordPress server.

Get it: Autoptimize

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Google to fight webspam and improve search engine results

One of the toughest challenges running a web site is to get traffic and attention to your site. As we keep emphasizing, relevant content is the way to get visitors to your site. But what if other people are cheating at using important keywords and sending visitors to low quality spam farm websites? You know the ones with that lead visitors on an endless click spree with pop up windows and signup prompts.

Once Google was the king of clean and relevant results but now these days, Google search results are filled with spam sites which are designed to trick the user into looking counterfeit goods or other nefarious activities. These sites trick Google into thinking they’re relevant with various methods. Fortunately, in a recent official blog posting, Google’s anti-spam team is responding and employing un-disclosed changes to turn back the tide to show relevant content, spam free websites.

So while Google is doing their job, you should keep writing relevant content for your website as much as possible. Use a combination of creating relevant content, Scribe wordpress plugin, and sending out Twitter tweets will drive traffic to your website. You can use tools like PixelPipe to speed things up but there is no substitution for hard work.

Further reading:
How Organized Spam is Taking Control of Google’s Search Results
This article has detailed examples and analysis of spam sites results as of January 2011.

Via: Google Changes Algorithm To Penalize Site Scrapers

Reprinted from StartupInsider.net

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Replace your login with an Ajax plugin

Once in a while you run into a WordPress plugin that just blows you away. I think Login with Ajax is one of those.

On the surface it works as a widget that shows a user/password login field on your sidebar area. It will also show a user’s gravatar photo if they’re already logged in along with logout button.

The interesting stuff is the extended functionality with membership-like login role redirection rules, in other words depending on the user’s role it can redirect them to specific pages.

login-with-ajax.jpg

The plugin also supports re-writing the standard welcome email that’s sent to newly registered users. The developers, netweblogic, should get some thanks from the WordPress community for this excellent plugin.

Get it: Login with Ajax

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A few more thoughts on Mars Edit 3

I bought Mars Edit 3 a few weeks ago and wrote a quick review. So time for an update! Here are some things that I really think make it an indispensible tool.

My favorite is that it’s easy to use to cross post from one blog to another. Simply open an existing post to edit, then from the drop down menu select a new blog site and click on publish. You will loose the existing categories and need to re-define them (understandable) but the tags will stay in-tact.

I also realize this maybe a good offline back up tool for your content especially if you increase the number of posts for it to sync. Update: Just noticed the dialog box to increase the post limit has a performance warning. I’ve asked the developer for clarification.

So four things that I wish it would have are…

I wish Mars Edit had the ability to schedule posts to publish on a future date.
Update: I was informed by the developer that you can actually do this. First, open up the selected post to edit and once open, go to drop down menu for “Post”, select “Edit Date” to specify the future date to publish on. It’s too bad this feature is kind of hidden away and not part of the post editor window.

marsedit-edit-date.jpg

Secondly,  it’d be nice to be able to set line spacing aka leading in the editor. The default font is a bit too small for me but it can be increased but I don’t see a way to increase the leading.

Thirdly, I wish the keyboard shortcut to define a link was not so complicated, a simple Apple + l (for link) would be nice. And why not also allow a right click to assign a link?

And one last feature wish would be for a way to change the author attribution when editing a post.

Other than these relatively minor issues, I readily recommend Mars Edit for writing if you’re on the Mac.

Get it: Mars Edit 3

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Envato now offering Paid WordPress plugins

We ran across paid WordPress plugins now at Envato’s Code Canyon.

Some of the more interesting ones are an S3 backup tool, Cufon font custom replacement, an Ajax based WP admin login lightbox, an FAQ manager, and an internal page linker (that maybe come useless with WP 3.1 coming soon).

We’ve noticed that a handful of similar plugins can be acquired for free at WordPress.org’s plugin library.

For example, their mobile phone theme switcher ($25!) definitely has a handful of free and solid alternatives at WordPress.org. Update: The theme switcher includes 8 themes. Compare with WordPress Mobile Pack (free) and draw your own conclusions.

An advantage of buying a plugin would be if you needed almost guaranteed developer support and more detailed documentation.

Skimming through the various plugin support messages, it seems like most of the Code Canyon developers are being responsive to their customers. So if you’re on a mission critical project, this maybe a viable alternative, after all, we get what we pay for.

Get it: Envato Code Canyon WordPress plugins