(This is part 4 of a 5 part series, click here to see the whole series)
There are many calendar plugins in the WordPress repository, but this one is my favorite for a few reasons. It has an intuitive admin interface, multiple ways to display your calendar, includes a sidebar widget, and also a child plugin compatible with EventBrite.
This plugin makes it easy to add Google Maps to your WordPress site. I love its AJAX interface and its ability to make it easy to generate directions to your point of business/event.
A very robust image gallery plugin that has more features than you can imagine. A few of my favorite features: Different slideshow types, bulk image edit, and watermarks. In addition, with another plugin, you can allow your users to upload images to galleries and make it easy for your users to share images.
This simple plugin makes it easy to add audio files to be played on your WordPress site. Next time you add audio to a post/page, the audio view will have a [Audio Player] option to insert into the content.
SEO, SEO, oh, SEO. In reality there are too many WordPress SEO plugins to go through, but some stand out. This plugin has a crap load of SEO features, but I mainly use it for its WYSIWYG Google Search results feature. At the bottom of each post is a tool to customize how your post will look in search engine results. Brilliant.
With more and more mobile devices, its only a matter of time (if it hasn’t happened already) that someone will view your WordPress site with a mobile device. This plugin will render your site in a very user friendly and digestible format for smaller screens.
Looking for reviews and/or ratings on your WordPress content? This plugin is by far the most feature intensive plugin. It gives you so many options and formats for ratings. Just look at some of the plugin’s screenshots, better yet, install the plugin and explore yourself.
This is a simple plugin that will automatically apply a light box to all photos you link in your site. It’s a “subtle, but nice touch feature” for sites that have images (yes, this site is using this plugin).
It can sometimes be difficult creating a table of content that not only looks great, but is easy to maintain. This plugin does this, and some. On top of having a very flexible interface for creating tables it also has the capabilities to allow the user to search and sort the table’s content.
Here’s a nice finishing touch to your WordPress site, customize your login page. Instead of the standard WordPress logo login page, spruce it up with this plugin. It also has a widget to add login to your site’s sidebar!
(This is part 3 of a 5 part series, click here to see the whole series)
If you want a post to be on the front page above all other posts, you can make it sticky. To do this, go the the post’s edit page. Under the Publish panel, click [edit] to the right of Visibility and check the box “Stick this post to the front page”.
You can password protect a posts individually. To do this, go the post’s edit page. Under the Publish panel, click [edit] to the right of Visibility and click the radio box “Password protected” and type a password to view this page. When someone tries to go to this page they’ll be prompted with a password to access.
Many times you may find yourself writing multiple posts at once, yet it’s best to moderate the frequency of your publishing. This has multiple benefits. To do this, go the the post’s edit page. Under the Publish panel, click [edit] to the right of Publish and set a time in the future for when the post will go live.
It’s best to make your images larger than they need to be on the page. This means if you took a photo with your digital camera, you should resize it before uploading it to WordPress. Here’s a great Windows add-on for this: http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/
You don’t have to upload the same image again if you’ve already uploaded it. From the post edit page, click the [Add an image] icon. Click on the Media Library tab at the top and select an uploaded image.
Sometimes even proofreading your content multiple times isn’t enough for mistakes to slip. Use After The Deadline plugin to not only check your spelling, but also check your grammar. You can install it by itself or as the JetPack package (recommended).
When copying and pasting content from Microsoft Word, many times you’ll get unwanted characters and formatting in your WordPress. If you’re writing your posts in Microsoft Word before posting to WordPress you should be using the Import from Microsoft Word functionality of the TinyMCE editor.
New to WordPress 3.1 is the ability to search your old posts and add them as a link to a new post. From the post edit page, click the link icon in the TinyMCE editor and click [Or link to existing content]. Here you can search your old posts, click on the post to link and then [Add link].
Researching content for your posts can be painstaking and long. Using the Insights plugin you can easily embed images from Flickr, videos from Youtube, search Wikipedia and more, without ever leaving your blog post. Install the Insights plugin to do this.
Too many times people write their content like white papers or press releases. The easier users can digest your posts, the more likely they’ll read more of your content and share it. This topic is big and important, so here’s a place to start and a place to explore more.
(This is part 2 of a 5 part series, click here to see the whole series)
Don’t allow hackers to find your WordPress, hide them. Here’s a simple trick to help hide WordPress files to the public: http://ox.no/posts/hiding-wordpress-installation-files
It’s important to use secure passwords for your WordPress sites (this includes your database password when installing WordPress). Here’s a great site for creating passwords: http://www.safepasswd.com
Even the most secure passwords can sometimes be found. It’s good to update your passwords regularly. Make it a habit to add a monthly reminder into your calendar to update your site’s password.
If you’re going to use a password management tool, I highly recommend LastPass for its YubiKey support. Like most password management tools, all your passwords are protecting under 1 master password. If that one password is found all of your sites maybe compromised. LastPass offers a 2 step authentication which requires a USB key along side your master password to access your vault. To see more: https://lastpass.com/support_screencasts.php?feature=yubikey1
By default, to login to WordPress you can just put ‘/wp-admin’ at the end of a WordPress powered site to get to the login page. Use the Stealth Login plugin to change the login URL to something like ‘domain.com/mylogin’.
To protect yourself from brute force login attempts, make it harder by limiting the number of login attempts to your site with this plugin: Limit Login Attempts
If someone does happen to somehow compromise your site by adding, deleting, or changing a file get a email immediately with this plugin: WordPress File Monitor
WordPress is constantly being updated, many times to fix vulnerabilities. It’s best to have the latest version. See: Updating WordPress
Its possible that plugins, themes, and even posts can open up vulnerabilities in your install. So if you’ve recently done some changes to your WordPress install, you may want to run a security scan before walking away. Here’s a plugin to do so: WP Security Scan
To reiterate, don’t use ‘admin’ as your username, don’t user ‘wp_’ as your database prefix, and don’t create the ‘wp-config.php’ file manually.
Even the most secure site can get hacked. It’s good practice to backup your sites database. If all other security measures fail, you can retrieve your database (posts, pages, comments, plugin/theme configurations) from a backup. Use a plugin to get database backups emailed to you regularly: WP-DB-Backup
Start here: http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked
At WordPress Ann Arbor‘s March meetup John Pratt and I decided to team up and go over a collection of things every WordPress user should know. The idea is to build a base of good practices that all WordPress users new and old can follow. This joint effort will cover 10 different topics, each with 10 different tools/tips. So a total of 100 useful things. John and I did 50 things each and presented it at WordPress A2′s March 2011 meetup.
Over the next 5 days each of us will post our 10 things live. As the posts go live, I’ll update this post with links. So feel free to book mark this page as a table of contents to our content. Get ready to enjoy 20 new WordPress things a day for the next 5 days!
Here are the 10 topics over 5 days:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Read all before installing!
(This is part 1 of a 5 part series, click here to see the whole series)
WordPress is really easy to install. After you have your webhost here’s the quick and dirty on getting WordPress installed. (WordPress shows 5 steps, but you really only need to follow 4, I’ll explain this below.)
Here’s a video to show you all of these steps for 1and1 webhosting:
Some webhosts offer automated solutions making it even easier to install. This method can be typically be done through your webhost’s admin panel.
Here are few videos showing how to do with multiple webhosts and their automated method:
WordPress’ recommended ways to install: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress
For some videos: http://wordpress.tv/category/how-to/installation-how-to/
I know it says this on the WordPress install page (Step 3), but with newer version of WordPress, setting the database credentials can be done through the easy browser-based install. Using the browser install helps prevent errors on modifying PHP code in an important install file.
This is a security thing, by default, WordPress has its first user’s name ‘admin’ (pre WP 3.0). Change it to something custom to you. It’ll make it harder for potential hackers to get into your site.
Again, another security precaution. This is a WordPress default, change it to something custom to the site. Relating to the previous tip, by changing default values on install you’re eliminating the most common possibility a hacker would use when trying to access your site.
Extending 6., by changing your database prefix you can easily install multiple WordPress sites to the same database. Next time you are installing WordPress on the same webhost of an existing install, use the same database credentials. When asked to set the database prefix give it something different than your previous install. You can repeat this multiple times. (It’s not always ideal to install multiple sites on the same database, i.e. – shared web hosts with small databases, heavily trafficked sites.)
It’s good practice to setup WordPress on your computer locally. When the site is ready to “go live” you can move the files to your webhost. What this means is you would setup a server on your computer and install WordPress to that. Then you would be able to edit and test your site locally without the fear of destroying the live site.
Here’s the 3 step process
Use WordPress’ multisite feature to manage multiple sites under one install. If you have multiple WordPress sites it can easily become overwhelming to remember to update all your sites, plugins, themes, etc.) With WordPress multisite you can create a super-admin which would allow you to upgrade WordPress once and push it to all of your WordPress installs. This can also be done with your plugins and themes. Using multisite will allow you to create all your users in one location. Setting up a network of sites is a bit more advanced, but here’s some links to helping you do this:
If you’re sites have different domains (i.e. – this.com, that.com more.com) you’ll need to setup domain mapping with this plugin:
Activating WordPress Multisite (vide0)
Here’s a comprehensive FAQ that covers the many facets of installing WordPress: http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_Installation
See the many other ways to install WordPress: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Installation_Techniques
If all else falls search and/or submit your question to the WordPress forums: http://wordpress.org/support/
(You’d be surprised to see how fast you’ll get a response back, I know because I’ve battled others to be the first to help someone out!)
