E.Share » WordPress Plugins

WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast – Video Review

Leland — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:00:06 +0000

Yoast, who you might know from the SEO community or from the various WordPress plugins he’s developed, has now created a WordPress SEO plugin.

I recently had the chance to try it out. You can follow along in my video screencast below, as well as further thoughts later in the post.

A true “all-in-one” solution?

Currently on Theme Lab, I use a few different SEO plugins including All-In-One SEO Pack, XML Sitemaps, RSS Footers (also by Yoast). I’ve also used plugins like Yoast Breadcrumbs on other sites.

Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin combines all of these features into a single plugin making it much more of an all-in-one solution than other SEO plugins available on the market today.

It even has features like cleaning up the portion of a document (which I went over in the video). I went over how to remove this code manually in a previous tutorial: Remove Unnecessary Code from wp_head

Best of all, you can import and export all of your settings which can be transferred to other sites easily. With plugins like SEO Data Transporter from StudioPress, you can import SEO settings from pretty much every popular SEO plugin or theme framework to be compatible with Yoast’s WordPress SEO.

Conclusion

I’d recommend WordPress SEO by Yoast as a must have plugin. On more recent site developments, I’ve tried to stop using as many plugins which included cutting out plugins like All-In-One SEO Pack in favor of storing meta tags and custom titles hard coded into custom fields.

With all of the WordPress SEO plugin’s useful features covering many aspects of SEO, you really can’t afford not to use it. I plan on switching to the WordPress SEO plugin on Theme Lab in the future.

What do you think of the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast? If you currently use another SEO plugin or theme framework, would you consider switching?

Want More Retweets? Use the Official Tweet Button

Leland — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:31:51 +0000

A little over a month ago, I recommended to use the TweetMeme WordPress plugin to get more retweets on your posts.

A few days ago, Twitter announced their own button for retweeting. Several methods of integrating the official Tweet button in your WordPress sites have already emerged.

WordPress Plugins

The first Twitter button WordPress plugin I came across was from Blogsessive.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the options integrate all of the options you’d expect from a Twitter button WordPress plugin, with no extraneous features. You can download it from the post linked to above.

After this a few others popped up on the WordPress.org plugin directory:

Twitter Button by Svilen Popov
TweetButton by David R. Davis, Jr.

The Manual Way

Twitter has provided a number of ways to include the Tweet button on your own pages. The most straightforward option is through this customizable form where you can define the type of button, a custom URL, the tweet text, language, and recommended Twitter users.

Let’s take a look at the code that is produced after I input a few sample values.

Tweet

Let’s go through this line by line.

First Line: Basically just opens the link and adds a CSS class.
Second line: data-url is used to input a link, probably the permalink of your post.
Third line: data-text is used for the tweet text, probably the title of your post.
Fourth line: data-count is used to define which type of button: vertical, horizontal, or none
Fifth line: data-via is used in the @mention in the tweet, probably your own Twitter account.
Sixth line: data-related allows you to define another Twitter account with a custom description.
Last line: Basically just closes the link and adds an obligatory line of javascript.

I’d recommend playing around with the button code generator to get a better feel of all the different options.

Inserting into WordPress

Let’s revisit the above code and insert some dynamic WordPress template tags into it for the permalink and title.

Tweet

This code can be inserted into pretty much any template file you want, including index.php for the main index, single.php for individual blog posts, page.php for static pages, and more.

For styling purposes, you’ll probably want to place the code above and use something like the following CSS code to style it.

.twitter-share-button { float: right; margin-left: 10px; display: inline-block; }

More Advanced Usage

For more advanced usage of the Twitter button, have a look at this page on the Twitter developers site. Twitter actually allows you to “build your own Tweet button” (see the bottom of the page) which makes it a lot more customizable than the TweetMeme button.

Conclusion

For some more information on the tweet button, there is a good article entitled 7 Reasons Not to Use the New Tweet Button by Andy Beard. In the comments, a Twitter developer responds to the reasons.

You’ll also noticed I have not myself switched to the official Twitter button and am still using the TweetMeme button. The reason why I haven’t switched is because I don’t see any pressing need to switch to the official version yet, the TweetMeme still works fine.

If you’ve noticed on Twitter, I have been tweeting a lot about the tweet button. After tweeting the link to this post about getting more retweets with the official Twitter tweet button, that will probably be my last tweet on the tweet matter.

Want More Retweets? Use the TweetMeme WordPress Plugin

Leland — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:11:29 +0000

I installed the TweetMeme WordPress plugin the other day, and I’m pleased with the results.

Not only was it really easy to install and configure, but I’ve noticed several people actually using the button to retweet my posts. You can see it in action in the top right corner of this post.

In this WordPress plugin review, I’ll go over installing the TweetMeme plugin and give an overview of the options. And there’s a screencast too! All after the jump.

How to Install TweetMeme for WordPress

You can install TweetMeme for WordPress just like any other plugin. Also since it’s available in the WordPress.org plugin repository, you have the option of installing it automatically via your WordPress admin panel.

After installing and activating, you should see a new “TweetMeme” menu in the sidebar of your WordPress dashboard. The settings page should look something like this.

TweetMeme Plugin Settings

Check out the screencast below.

Display: I set all of these except on pages, since I really don’t see a need to have a retweet button on my pages (like Contact, About, etc.).
Position: For both normal and RSS position, I have it set to display before. This basically places the button at the top of the post where most people will see it.
Styling: I use float: right; margin-left: 10px; to display it on the right side of my posts. The opposite would be float: left; margin-right: 10px;
Type: I use the normal-sized widget, mostly because I think the compact one is too small.
Source: Set this to your own Twitter account. Mine is @themelab if you didn’t already know.

Everything else is pretty much up to your preferences, like your URL shortener of choice (mine is bit.ly).

Advanced TweetMeme Plugin Usage

If you want to manually place the TweetMeme button in your theme, you have to first select “Manual” under the display settings so it doesn’t automatically display anywhere. Then insert the following code within the loop.

Remember the function_exists part is so there’s no fatal error in the event that the TweetMeme plugin is disabled for whatever reason.

Conclusion

If you want more retweets, you have to make it easy for your visitors to do so. The TweetMeme button a recognizable way to encourage this. I wish I set it up a lot earlier since I’m already noticing an increase in my retweets all thanks to this simple button.

By the way, something big is happening in three days. Long time followers of the blog might have a slight idea of what might be going on.

BackupBuddy WordPress Plugin – Video Review + Giveaway!

Leland — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:21:01 +0000

A new premium WordPress plugin store launched the other day called PluginBuddy, the same people behind iThemes. Their latest plugin is called BackupBuddy which describes itself as an “all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration”.

You can check out my quick video tour below where I go through all the menus and take a (surprisingly) quick database backup of Theme Lab.

Features

Backs up your entire WordPress install (including all files) or just the database
Use the restore feature to quickly reinstall a previously made backup
Migrate a full WordPress site to a new web host
Backup scheduling, includes email and FTP options

The Giveaway + How to Enter

Cory Miller of PluginBuddy was kind enough to donate one single use license ($25 value) and one developer license ($150 value) for a couple of lucky Theme Lab readers.

To enter, we’ll use similar rules to our last giveaway.

Tweet a link back to this post saying you just entered the contest to win a BackupBuddy license, along with @themelab (my Twitter username). If you need a short URL, use this: http://www.themelab.com/1671. For example: I just entered a contest at @themelab to win a copy of the BackupBuddy plugin – http://www.themelab.com/1671
Post a comment here with the permalink of the tweet you just made. It should be in a similar format to this: http://twitter.com/themelab/status/10079435298
That’s it!

Please, only one entry per person. If I catch you trying to cheat, you’ll be disqualified.

On Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 12:00 PM EST this content will be closed to new entries, and I’ll pick two winners at random.

You’ll be contacted through the e-mail address you leave in your comment, so please leave a valid email address, otherwise I’ll have to bother you on Twitter.

Conclusion

You should already know the importance of backing up your WordPress site, and while there are other free backup plugins on the market, nothing quite comes close to this one, plus it’s actively developed and supported.

If you’re not feeling lucky, you can go ahead and purchase BackupBuddy now. Otherwise, go ahead and make your tweet, and enter the contest below. Please only comment unless you’re entering the contest. Good luck!

How to Hide the WordPress Stats Smiley the Right Way

Leland — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:35:36 +0000

For anyone who uses the WordPress.com stats plugin, you’ll notice it inserts a small smiley image in your footer. This image needs to be loaded to track the stats.

Some people might think this little smiley face is “cute”. The rest of you will find the smiley image unsightly (and possibly evil looking) and will look for ways to remove it. This post will go over:

First of all, what not to do when hiding the smiley
How to properly hide it, with some extra absolute position goodness for certain layouts
If you’d rather not hide it, how to easily center the smiley image

What Not to Do

Don’t ever use display:none to hide the WP Stats Smiley.

First of all, I want to go over the one thing you shouldn’t do when attempting to hide the WP Stats Smiley, and that’s use: display:none. Yeah, I said that twice, but I was just making sure you didn’t miss it.

Yeah, that’s the same code you can use to get a CSS Killswitch effect, but it’s definitely not something you want to be using to not display an image, which needs to be loaded to accurately display stats.

What to do instead

According to this post, the developer recommends to use the following code to your stylesheet (i.e. style.css) if you wish to hide the smiley:

img#wpstats{width:0px;height:0px;overflow:hidden}

Something similar to the above code would be the following:

img#wpstats{visibility:hidden}

The difference between visibility:hidden and display:none is visibility:hidden will still take up space in the design, while display:none will not (and remember, you can’t use display:none unless you want your stat tracking to be borked).

On certain layouts, there is a small problem with this code taking up space below the footer, so I’ve thought of a more creative solution.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about, notice the smiley in the lower left corner which is causing the footer layout to break.

With the two above examples, the image, while not visible, would still take up space in the layout causing that light gray bar (which is the background color) to appear in the footer.

Absolute Positioning

A combination of absolute positioning plus the code above is a good way to eliminate this issue. You could try something like this:

img#wpstats{position:absolute;top:0;width:0px;height:0px;overflow:hidden}

Centering the Image

Depending on your layout, instead of hiding it, it may look somewhat better if the smiley image was centered. You can easily do this with the following snippet of code.

img#wpstats{display:block;margin: 0 auto}

Explanation:

Sets the image to display as block (instead of inline, by default).
Sets the left and right margins to automatic to effectively center the now block image.

You can use this CSS to properly center pretty much any “img” tag without using additional markup.

Conclusion

By the way, if you use the WP Stats Smiley Remover plugin, don’t. Because all it does it add the “display:none” CSS to your header. The exact thing you’re not supposed to do.

Hope you liked the WordPress/CSS tip. Like the last one, I know this was relatively simple. I can do more advanced ones, so if you have any requests for quick CSS tips like this, let me know in the comments.

WordPress Smiley Spam Technique

Spectacu.la Releases Threaded Comments Plugin

Leland — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:57:04 +0000

Spectacu.la, a WordPress theme club, has just announced the release of their free threaded comments plugin for WordPress. Basically what this plugin does is replace your theme’s comments template with a new one, generated by the plugin.

In addition to that, you also get pagination and jQuery based roll up of subordinate comments. For those who remember the old Theme Lab which used Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin, it’s kind of like that, except neater.

The plugin should work on almost any theme, even if it normally doesn’t support threaded comments, provided it uses the comments_template() call.

Pictured above is the light and dark styles of the comments which are included in the plugin. Read on to check out my screencast which demonstrates these two styles on a really old theme that wasn’t originally designed to support threaded comments.

This can be useful to to theme developers who would rather make use of this comments template instead of designing their own, or at least use their own styles to sculpt the comments form to their liking with the built-in comment stylesheets disabled.

Let me know what you think of this plugin in the comments. Would you consider using this plugin on your sites? Here’s the link again.

To WordPress Plugin Authors – Add Changelogs

Leland — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:01:32 +0000

The lack of changelogs in a lot of WordPress plugins is something that’s bothered me for a while, and I wasn’t the only one. I’m very wary of upgrading plugins, and when I see that a plugin needs to be upgraded in my WordPress dashboard, I’d like to know exactly what’s being changed. It might be a major security fix, it might be a minor bug, it might not be a necessary update at all. Changelogs give this information to end users about changes from version to version.

Well, there’s some good news for all of you who like to check out the changelogs before upgrading plugins, but it’ll require some action on behalf of the plugin authors. There is now a standardized way of adding changelog information to the plugin’s readme.txt file. To plugin authors wondering how to do this, read this post on Peter Westwood’s blog. This information will then be displayed on a dedicated “Changelog” tab on the plugin’s page on the WordPress.org plugin repository.

I know themes aren’t usually updated as often as plugins are, but I’m wondering if it would be difficult to implement something similar for WordPress themes hosted in the official theme directory. Anyone have any thoughts about changelogs for themes too?