First Steps On A Fresh WordPress Install
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As I'm sure most of you do too, I'm now managing a good handful of sites which are running WordPress. I've now got a solid routine going when it comes to getting WordPress up and running and in this post, I thought I'd share it with you.
(read more)Affiliate Marketing For WordPress
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In recent weeks I've been trying to diversify WPShout's income -- you'll notice that Shout now sports some links in the sidebar pointing to WooThemes and WPWebHost, both using affiliate links to do so. There are a couple of ways I'm now handling my affiliate marketing through my WordPress Dashboard and this post will run down the different ways I'm now doing this.
(read more)Why WordPress?
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Nearly two years ago now, I asked a number of members of the WordPress community why they used WordPress. Over those last two years WordPress has changed vastly and thus it's time to update that post with the reasons I still use WordPress in 2011.
(read more)Email Newsletters For WordPress
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As you may have seen in last week's competition post, I recently created an email newsletter for WPShout. You may have also noticed I ended up using MailChimp instead of a built-into-WordPress solution. This post shows the how I did it.
(read more)Optimize WordPress For Heavy Traffic
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Following on from Faster WordPress, which went up on Shout a couple of weeks ago, this post explores how to optimise WordPress for high traffic. We'll take high traffic in a small blog context -- 1,000 or so visits in a day, but exactly the same techniques apply to much larger traffic blogs. The average WordPress theme isn't optimised. Whilst it may claim to be or may in fact be to an extent, the nature of WordPress themes means they have to be able to fit in any situation and so they are never going to be as well optimised as a theme which has been designed specifically for a single purpose. I'm not saying don't use an off-the-shelf theme, just you'll need to customise it in order to get the best performance out of it. This post shows how to make your site faster.
(read more)WPShout Hacked (But Everything’s Fine Now)
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As you may have heard, on Friday evening I got what was to be the first of a couple of emails from some very helpful people telling me that there was a big message up from Google saying that WPShout contained viruses, spyware, the lot! I took a look for myself and sure enough, WPShout had been hacked somehow. This isn't good. I'm fairly happy with my security; there are lots of little tips and tricks I use that make the site harder to hack than most, leaving me with the impression most hackers just wouldn't bother and move on to the thousands more WordPress blogs without the extra layer of security. I was wrong, evidently.
(read more)A Guide For Selling WordPress Themes
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Recently there's been a lot of (mis) information around about "how to start your own premium WordPress themes site". They make all make it sound fairly easy: just make a design, hack it into a WordPress theme, buckle on a zillion theme options using the old Woo options panel and you have yourself a wonderful theme that'll make you rich. Not so, this tutorial explains some of the things to look out for when building a premium theme.
(read more)Better iPhone WordPress Themes
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Your iPhone optimised WordPress theme doesn't have to be the single column look we often see; there's no reason at all why you can't just slightly simplify your theme and still give iPhone users a decent experience when visiting your site. That's what we'll be doing in today's post, using just CSS.
(read more)Backup Solutions For WordPress
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Backing up your blog is something you'll probably only start doing once you've lost everything. That's probably not the best idea. In this post we'll look at the various options available -- the plugins, services and manual ways of backing up your blog.
(read more)Drop Caps For WordPress
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Drop caps are a really simple way of making your posts just that bit more interesting. They're easy to do too - in this post we'll find out how we can use a mixture of CSS3 and plugins in order to spark up posts with minimum effort.
(read more)You Don’t Need A Plugin For Everything
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I've recently being developing a new design for my first ever WordPress powered site, Nometet.com. The design is looking a bit shabby at the moment, that's the kind way of putting it! I digress though. The new design is what I'd call advanced WordPress. It's got things like a background that is automatically resized (ie the background-image), a choice of three post templates, a fancy review section which holds the score and things like blockquotes that change depending on which category you're in.
(read more)Basics Of WordPress Theme Design
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The basics of WordPress theme design looks at the fundamental knowledge you need to start creating your own WordPress themes from scratch.
(read more)More WordPress Books Reviewed
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The WordPress 2.7 Cookbook and WordPress 2.8 Theme Design are reviewed, following on from the look at Digging into WordPress and Rockstar WordPress Designer.
(read more)WordPress Books Reviewed
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As someone who is quite well versed in the reviewing world, I thought it'd be nice to do some reviews of WordPress books. In this post I'll look at Digging into WordPress and How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer.
(read more)The Death of the Boring Blog Post – Easily Add Columns to Any WordPress Post
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Easily put your post's content into columns using just the WordPress text editor and a CSS grid.
(read more)Move Your wp-content Area
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A really easy way to change the directory where your images are uploaded to in WordPress.
(read more)10 WordPress Plugins That Every WordPress Blog Needs
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Ten of the best, brilliant, WordPress plugins that every WordPress blog needs. A great addition to any WordPress blog.
(read more)A Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Theme Development: Day 5
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The final instalment of [wp]'s series on WordPress theme development, today we're looking at the final theme files: the home.php, archive.php and functions.php files.
(read more)A Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Theme Development: Day 4
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Day 4 of [bg], looking at the file that handles posts: the single.php file.
(read more)A Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Theme Development: Day 3
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Day 3 of the 'Beginner's Guide to WordPress Theme Development' gets underway with creating the header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php files.
(read more)A Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Theme Development: Day 2
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The second day of "An Introduction to WordPress Theme Development" looks at the basis of any WordPress theme - the index.php file and the style.css file.
(read more)How to: add the ReTweet.com button to WordPress
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A very easy how to: add the ReTweet.com button to your WordPress theme.
(read more)Display Random Adverts in WordPress with Custom Fields
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In this post a slightly obscure use of the_loop and custom fields!
(read more)Three Months of Blogging: Some Lessons
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A look at the first three months of the site, and what all bloggers can learn from it.
(read more)Optimise your WordPress installation
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A super quick tip on optimising your WordPress installation.
(read more)Customising Your WordPress Login Page
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I've already touched on this subject, but this week we're going to be expanding on it: customising your WordPress login page. A fifteen minute screencast that explains all.
(read more)Using WordPress as a CMS
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A couple of years ago if I'd said WordPress would make a great CMS, you'd have probably thought I was totally mad! These day however, when you need a simple CMS WordPress is a brilliant option. In this post I'm going to show you how to make your WordPress CMS even better with some simple bits of code and some not so simple plugins.
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