We have discussed plenty of tricks to secure WordPress, and enabling SSL encryption for your login session is yet another useful way to secure your blog.

If you are not aware, while using SSL encryption, all your data are encrypted before they are transmitted over the web. The encrypted data format data format makes it very difficult to be read by the other users.

To enable the SSL Security to your WordPress blog, you will need to have a SSL Certificate (consult your web host if you don’t have one) and then you can follow the below procedure to make it work with your blog.

• At first, Open your site directory either using cPanel File Manager or the FTP. I would recommend to use the File Manager instead of FTP.
• Once you reach the files directory of your WordPress installation, open the wp-config.php file.
• This is the WordPress configuration files and it is the most important in the whole WordPress system. After the file is opened, add the below code and save the file. You can add the code anywhere in the file, there’s no certain place for it.

/* Enable SSL Encryption */
define(‘FORCE_SSL_LOGIN’, true);
define(‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true);

• From then on, your WordPress site Admin area will always load with the SSL Encryption. If your site domain is http://www.mydomain.com, it will load the admin area of the same with https://www.mydomain.com/wp-admin.

There are so many advantages of using the SSL for your site. The above process will force WordPress to use SSL encryption for the Administration area. It is not necessary to enable SSL encryption for the frontend (unless you are running a blog shop) since all the confidential information, like the Username and Passwords are used only in the Admin area, not anywhere else.

Image Credit: Reevoo.com

Here’s how you can establish authorship in WordPress.

Note: The following solution is just one of the many ways to establish the authorship of your content. If you have a better, easier way, feel free to use it.

For single author blog

1. Make sure you have an About page that describes who you are and what your blog is about. At the end of the content (of the About page), insert the following link:

<a href="http://your-google-profile-url" rel="me">Follow me on Google +</a>

Remember to replace the http://your-google-profile-url with your Google Profile URL.

Note: The Google Profile URL is of the format: https://plus.google.com/1234567890987654321.

Next, go to the theme editor and open your functions.php file. Insert the following code at the end of the file:

add_filter('the_content', 'add_author_link');
function add_author_link($content)
{	if(is_single())    	
		$content .= '<p>This article is written by <a href="http://link-to-your-about-page" rel="author">'.get_the_author_meta('display_name').'</a></p>';
 
	return $content;	
}

Save the changes.

What the above code does is to insert a sentence at the end of your article with a link to your About page.

For multi-authors blog

1. Get all your authors to update the Jabber/Google Talk field in the Profile section with their Google Profile URL.

2. Open the functions.php file and insert the following code:

add_filter('the_content', 'add_author_link');
function add_author_link($content)
{	if(is_single())    	
	{	$content .= '<p>Follow this author at <a href="'.get_the_author_meta('jabber').'" rel="author">Google+</a></p>';
	}
	return $content;	
}

The above code will grab the Google Profile URL from the author’s Jabber/Gtalk field and insert the link to the end of the content.

That’s it.

It will take 1-2 weeks for Google to show your profile picture in the search results. Meanwhile you can use the Rich Snippet Test Tool to see how your page looks like in the search results.

Whatever the reasons, rather than relying on plugins, a better alternative is to use a cron job in your server and schedule it to backup your database everyday.

Note: The following instruction can be used to backup any database. The only requirement is that you are using a Linux server to host your files.

Here is how you do it:

1. Login to your web host control panel. If you are using cPanel, look for a Cron Job icon.

2. You can set the time and frequency to backup the database. Under the command field, copy and paste the following command:

mysqldump --opt -Q -u dbusername --password=dbpassword dbname | gzip > /path-to-store-the-backup-file/db_backup.sql.gz

• Replace dbusername with the database user
• Replace dbpassword with the database user password
• Replace dbname with the database that you are backing up
• Replace the path-to-store-the-backup-file to the file path in your server where you want to save the backup

Note: In some server, you might need to put a pair of single quote around the dbpassword for it to work. For example:

mysqldump --opt -Q -u dbusername --password='dbpassword' dbname | gzip > /path-to-store-the-backup-file/db_backup.sql.gz

Email yourself the database

Storing the database on your server could take up plenty of storage space. One way you can do is to email the backup file to yourself.

1. Download this php script.

2. Extract the zip file and open the backup.php with a text editor.

3. Change the database detail:

$dbhost = "localhost"; // usually localhost
$dbuser = "dbuser"; //enter your database username here
$dbpass = "dbpass"; //enter your database password here
$dbname = "dbname"; // enter your database name here
$sendto = "Send To <sendto@email.com>"; //the email address to send the database to
$sendfrom = "Send From <sendfrom@email.com>";
$sendsubject = "Daily Database Backup"; //the subject of the email
$bodyofemail = "Here is the daily backup of my database.";

4. Save the file. Upload the whole folder to your server. Note: The folder includes a .htaccess file to prevent any access from the browser. If you want to access from the browser, remove the .htaccess file.

5. In the cron job section of the cPanel, enter the following command:

php -q /path-to-the-php-script-folder/backup.php

That’s it.

One of the way to change it is to directly edit the wp-admin.css file under the “wp-admin -> css” folder. This is not a good solution because the next time you upgrade your WordPress, your files will be overwritten.

The best way is to insert a small function to your functions.php.

Open your functions.php file in your Themes folder.

Add the following code to the end of the file:

add_action( 'admin_head-post.php', 'fix_html_editor_font' );
add_action( 'admin_head-post-new.php', 'fix_html_editor_font' );
 
function fix_html_editor_font() { ?>
    <style type="text/css">
        #editorcontainer #content, #wp_mce_fullscreen {
            font-family: Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica;
        }
    </style>
<?php }

You can change the font-family to the one you like. I personally prefer the Tahoma and Verdana font family.

Save and upload the functions.php file back to the server. This is the result:

That’s it.

The working behind the Tweet and Get It plugin is simple. First, you create a high-value product to be given away. Next, you create a Tweet and Get it button which is linked indirectly to your download page. When your visitors click the button, they have to first follow your Twitter account and send a tweet before they are redirected to the download page.

1. Install and activate the Tweet and Get It plugin.

2. Go to “Tweet and Get It -> Make Your button” section. Here’s where you can create download button for your free product.

You have to enter your Twitter account, the tweet you want the visitor to send in exchange for the product and upload the product (or insert in the download URL if the file is not hosted in your server). Lastly, enter the name of the button.

3. Click the “Create your button” button. It will then generate the shortcode for the button. Copy the shortcode and paste it to the product giveaway article. This is what you will see in the front page.

When your reader click the button, he/she will be brought to the Twitter authorization page where they have to grant authorization to the Tweet and Get It app. After that, the following screen will appear and they have to click OK (to send the tweet and follow your Twitter account) to proceed.

Lastly, the download button will appear where they can download your file.

Conclusion

One thing that I like about this Tweet and Get It plugin is that from the start to the end, it only takes you 5 minutes to set it up and there is totally no coding knowledge required. If you are looking to increase your Twitter followers count, this is a very useful plugin that you can consider.

Tweet and Get It

1. Google Authenticator

The Google Authenticator plugin makes use of the Google Authenticator mobile app to provide a two-factor authentication login to your WordPress site.

Note: Before activating Google Authenticator, make sure that you have enabled two-factor authentication in your Google account and installed the Google Authenticator app in your Android, iPhone or Blackberry phone.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, go to the “Users -> Your Profile” section and you should see the Google Authenticator settings.

Check the box beside “Active” and save the changes. Next time you login, it will prompt you to enter the secret key. If you failed to enter the correct code, you will not be able to login.

Google Authenticator

2. One Time Password

One Time Password allows you to login to your WordPress without using your real password. It generates a list of passwords that you can use to login to your site. These passwords are valid only for a single session, so even when the password is stolen, others won’t be able to login to your site. This is particularly useful if you are travelling but need to login to your site in a cybercafe.

Once installed and activated, go to the One Time Password section to generate your password list. Enter a passphrase and click the “Generate” button.

Print out the generated password list and bring it with you wherever you go.

When you need to login, it will show a sequence number. You just have to match the sequence number with your password list and enter the password accordingly.

One Time Password

3. WP Login Security

WP Login Security works via the IP address. It first requires administrators to register or whitelist their IP address. Next, it will detect the IP address whenever the administrator logins. If the IP address is not recognized, it will send an email to the administrator with a link that contains a one-time key.

A good thing about this plugin is that there is little or no configurations required. You just activate it and it is good to go.

WP Login security

4. Login Lockdown

We have mentioned Login Lockdown before in our previous post on WordPress security. We are going to mention it again here because it is truly a useful plugin. What it does is to records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range.

Login Lockdown

5. WP Firewall 2

This plugin is not directly related to the login field, but it protects your site by investigating web requests to identify malicious attack. It is able to stop the attack before it causes damage to your database.

After activating, you can find the configuration options under the Firewall section. The default options are often good enough for everyone and you seldom have to make any changes.

WordPress Firewall 2

The above mentioned methods are only some of the ways to protect your WordPress site, don’t forget to check out:

• 11 Ways To Secure Your WordPress Blog
• How to Increase Your Website Security And Performance With CloudFlare
• How To Connect To Your WordPress Account Via Secure FTP

What’s the implication of the +1 button? Is it just another button?

On the surface, the +1 button is just another button for you to embed on your site. However, it is one important button that you want to have on your site, since it can potentially affect your search engine result. If you have a relatively unknown blog and you have plenty of people +1′d a particular post, that post could potentially score well in Google search and bring you tons and tons of traffic. Unless you don’t depend on Google for traffic (anyone who said No will be lying), you got to pay attention to this +1 button.

Implement +1 button to your website

The implementation button is simple. You just need to insert two line of codes to your HTML or theme file.

1. Insert the following javascript code to your <head> tag

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

2. Insert the following tag to the place where you want the button to appear.

<g:plusone></g:plusone>

That ‘s it.

For WordPress

As of this post, there are no plugins for adding the +1 button yet (but I am sure it will be available very soon). To add the +1 button, in your themes folder, open the header.php file. Insert the javascript code to the <head> tag

Open your single.php or index.php, and place the <g:plusone></g:plusone> to the place where you want it to appear.

Parameter

There are several parameters that you can use.

Size of the button: The default is “standard“, which is 24px tall. You can choose “small” (15px), “medium” (20px) or “tall” (60px).

Include count: The default is set to “true”. You can turn it off if you don’t want the +1′d count to appear.

URL (href): By default, the button will grab the URL of the existing page, but you can specify your own URL with the parameter href="your-url-here".

Points to note when adding the +1 button

1. +1 is a public action, so you should add the button only to public, crawlable pages on your site. If you have a password protected page, or a members only forum, do not use this button. Once you add the button, Google may crawl or recrawl the page, and store the page title and other content, in response to a +1 button impression or click.

2. You can include multiple +1 button on a page, but it is best to add the URL parameter to the code so it can identify the correct link for each button.

3. The +1 button is available in 40 languages. The default is English. If your site is not in English, do go to the Google +1 site to grab the code in your specified language.

For more info, check out the Google +1 button site and the FAQ site

1. Conditional Widgets

As its name implies, Conditional Widgets is a plugin that allows you to define a conditional rule for each and every widget.

After you have downloaded and activated it, go to your Widgets page and add the widgets you want as per normal. What is different now is that within each widget, there is an option for you to configure when the widget should appear in the blog (refer to the screenshot below).

You can get it to show/hide on the Home page, certain categories, or even certain pages. It also supports sub-categories and sub-pages. You just need to define the rule for the parent category/page and their sub-categories and sub-pages will follow suit.

One thing though, it does not allow you to configure on a per-post basis.

2. Widget Logic

Widget Logic is less intuitive than Conditional Widget, but it gives you the flexibility to define where the widget should appear. Widget Logic make use of the WordPress conditional tags to determine where the widget should appear. For example, if you want the widget to appear on a post with post id 46, you place the conditional tag is_single(46) in the Widget Logic field.

Widget Logic

3. Section Widgets

The way that Section Widgets works is slightly different from the above two, but it is also the most powerful among the three. Other than the conditional logic, Section Widgets also allows you to create a tabbed sidebar without having to write a single code.

After the installation, go to “Themes -> Section Widget“. This is where you can customize the look and feel of the tabbed interface. It comes with 25 UI themes for you to choose. If none of them caught your eyes, you can even define your own style.

In the Widget section, instead of adding a conditional logic to each and every widget, you will have to add the “Section” widget to the respective sidebar in order for it to appear. Each Section widget comes with two part. The upper part is where you define the condition (which page/category to appear) and the lower part is the HTML code to display.

To add a tabbed widget, drag and drop the “Section (tabbed)” widget to the respective sidebar. Similarly, the top section is where you define the logic and the bottom is where you create tabs and add content to it.

While Section Widget is very powerful, it does have one caveat – it doesn’t integrate with other widgets. If you have a custom widget (say the custom menu) that you want to show conditionally on your blog, you won’t be able to do that with Section Widget.

Section widget

Which method do you use to add conditional widgets to your WordPress site?

A good plugin with the merge tag functionality is Term Management Tools. With this plugin, you can manage your terms (category and tags) easily.

Cleaning up your tags in WordPress

1. Install and activate the Term Management Tools plugin in your WordPress dashboard.

2. Go to your Post Tag list (Posts -> Post Tags).

3. The default view is to show 20 tags per page. If you have plenty of tags, it is going to take up a lot of your time switching between each page. What you can do is to increase the number of tags shown per page. Click the “Screen Options” button at the top of the page. Enter the number of tags you want it to show per page. The maximum number you can enter is 999.

4. Go through the list of tags and put a check beside the tags that have 0 post. At the top (or bottom), click on the dropdown menu and select “Delete”. Click Apply. This will delete the unused tags.

5. Next, go through the list again. For those similar or duplicate tags that you have created, put a check beside them and select “Merge” from the dropdown menu. An input field will appear for you to enter the tag name that you want to merge the two (or more) tags into.

6. If your tag list is long, it will take a long time for you to finish cleaning up your tags, but I assure you it is well worth the effort. Nothing is worst than a messed up and bulky database. Once you have completed the clean up, deactivate the plugin. You have no use for it anymore.

7. Lastly, optimize your database and do a full database backup (using the WP DB Manager plugin).

8. That’s it.

You might also want to check out other ways to clean up your WordPress blog.

What the difference between LIKE and SEND button?

When you click on the LIKE button, it will be posted to your wall and publicly announce that you LIKE a particular piece of content, be it your friend’s status update, an article, a fan page, or even a site.

When you click on the SEND button, a dialog box will appear and you can enter your Facebook friends’ names and type a personal message. The content will then be sent to your friend’s Facebook Inbox.

Adding the SEND button to your WordPress site

In order to add the SEND button, you must be using the Facebook’s XFBML code in your site. The iFrame version does not work at all. If you have not added the XFBML code, follow the instruction here to implement it to your site.

Next, copy the following code and paste it to your theme file (must be within the loop) where you want the SEND button to appear:

<div id="fb-root"></div><script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script><fb:send href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" font="arial"></fb:send>

To get the SEND button to show up beside the LIKE button, replace the existing LIKE button code with this code:

<div id="fb-root"></div><script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#appId=12345678&amp;xfbml=1"></script><fb:like href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" send="true" width="450" show_faces="false" font="arial"></fb:like>

Remember to replace appId=12345678 with your own Facebook appID.

Alternative method: via plugins

If you have difficulty understanding the method above, the best way to implement the Facebook SEND button is via a plugin.

1. Install the Facebook Send Button WordPress Plugin.

2. Activate the plugin

That’s it. This is a simple plugin that automatically add the SEND button to your single post/page. No configuration required.

Other plugins you can use include: Facebook Like Button for Dummies, Facebook Send Button By Teknoblogo.com, Facebook Like and Send (2 in 1)

What’s your view on the Facebook’s SEND button? Is it adding more value to your site?

Why is there a need for a faster site?

Rather than discussing the benefits, let’s talk about the disadvantages. A slow loading site can affect the user experience of your visitors. Most people don’t wait more than 10 seconds for the site to load. If your web page does not load up in 3 seconds, they will leave.

Additionally, a slow landing page can also impact your conversion rate and also ranking in Google search. If you want to have a high ranking (in Google search results), you got to have a fast loading site.

Adding the Analytics Site Speed tracking feature manually

The new site speed tracking feature tracks your site loading speed and allows you to find out which page is fast/slow, how does it varies across geographies or browsers.

If you are using WordPress and you Google Analytics code was added manually, you just have to insert one more line of code to implement the site speed tracking feature.

Open your theme file where you place the Google Analytics code (most probably is the header.php). Insert the code

_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);

under the line

 _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

The resulting code will be:

<script type="text/javascript">
 var _gaq = _gaq || [];
 _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
 _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
 _gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);
 (function() {
   var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
   ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
   var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
 })();
</script>

Save and replace the file in the server. That’s it.

Adding the Analytics Site Speed tracking feature using Plugins

If you are using a plugin to add your Google Analytics code, most of them (as of this post) are not updated to include this new feature yet. You can either wait out for the developer to add the feature or disable the plugin and add the code manually.

To add the code manually, you just have to go to Appearance -> Editor and load the header.php file. Add the Google Analytics code (with the site speed tracking feature) just before the </head> tag.

Viewing Your Site Speed Analytic

The site speed tracking feature is disabled by default. Once you have added the code, it will take several hours to show up on your Google Analytics page. Go to My Site -> Reports -> Content. You should see a new entry “Site Speed” under the Content section.

Upon first launching the application, you will be presented with a login screen where you are allowed to enter the credentials for your blog.

Note: There are two version of WordPress. The first is WordPress.com, which is a service similar to Blogger and hosts blogs for individuals free of charge. The second is WordPress.org, which is for individuals hosting their own blog on their own servers. The Android app can connect to either version of WordPress.

After you have entered your blogs credentials, the application will display all available blogs in a list. It should be mentioned that the Android application is capable of connecting to more than one blog at a time. This particular feature is convenient, as it allows you to post to any number of blogs you owned or involved in.

Selecting a blog from the list will bring you to the blog control screen. At the top of the screen, you have four available options: comments, posts, pages and stats. The comments feature allows you to approve comments ( or delete them ) while on the run. The Post and Pages feature allows you to create posts and pages from your mobile phone. Although this feature isn’t necessarily ideal for intense editing, it is a nice feature if you need to make minor adjustments to your site while away from the office.

Apart from these basic editing features, the application also integrates with communication services on your mobile device. Selecting a post, for instance, will give you the option of sharing the posts via URL, SMS, Gmail, or even Twitter. This particular feature makes the application an ideal platform to share your thoughts while on the move.

Note: The stats feature works only with the WordPress.com version of WordPress. As mentioned previously, this is the freely available and pre-hosted web service that anyone can sign up for. This particular feature is not compatible with WordPress.org, the self-hosted version of WordPress.

In addition to the editing and sharing functions, the application comes with its own notification settings. This setting alerts you to any recent comments that a blog visitor may have posted to your site. All things considered, this is a handy feature to have. If you’re a business owner using WordPress as your main site, this function will allow you to connect with your clients or readers almost as quickly as they can post.

Some may argue that the WordPress app is too sparse in its list of features, and to some extent, it is. The application is primarily designed to make quick edits, approve comments, and be alerted of activities that are occurring on your blog or site. All in all, the application performs its intended functions admirably well and can serve you or your webmaster needs.

Here are 4 useful techniques you can use to customize and bring out the best of the WP Admin Bar.

1. Remove existing links from WP Admin Bar

1. Navigate to your theme folder and open the functions.php file with a text editor.

2. paste the following code to the end of the file:

add_action( 'wp_before_admin_bar_render', 'remove_admin_bar_links' );
function remove_admin_bar_links() {
        global $wp_admin_bar;
        $wp_admin_bar->remove_menu('comments');
}

The code above will remove the “COMMENTS” link from the Admin Bar. It works by using the functions $wp_admin_bar->remove_menu(ID). By providing the ID of the links that you want to remove (in this case, the ID is COMMENTS), you can remove any links from the Admin Bar.

Here are some of the ID that will be useful to you:

• my-account-with-avatar / my-account: Links to your account. The ID depends upon if you have avatar enabled or not.
• my-blogs: My Sites menu. For network mode only
• edit: Post/Page edit link
• new-content: Add New menu
• comments: Comments link
• appearance: Appearance menu
• updates: Updates link
• get-shortlink: Shortlink to a page

2. Adding custom links to the WP Admin Bar

To add your own links to the Admin bar, append the following code to your functions.php.

add_action( 'wp_before_admin_bar_render', 'add_admin_bar_links' );
function add_admin_bar_links() {
        global $wp_admin_bar;
       $wp_admin_bar->add_menu( array( 
		'id' => 'Google', 
		'title' => __('Google'),  
		'href' => 'http://google.com' 
	));
}

The example above add “Google.com” as a link in the Admin Bar. You can, of course, customize it to your liking. Things that you need to take note is the ‘id’, ‘title’ and ‘href’

id: the identifier for the link
title: the name that appear on the Admin Bar
href: the url the link is pointing to.

You can also create a submenu with the code below:

add_action( 'wp_before_admin_bar_render', 'add_admin_bar_links' );
function add_admin_bar_links() {
        global $wp_admin_bar;
       $wp_admin_bar->add_menu( array( 
		'id' => 'Google', 
		'title' => __('Google'),  
		'href' => 'http://google.com' 
	));
       $wp_admin_bar->add_menu( array( 
		'parent'=>'Google',
		'id' => 'GoogleAnalytics', 
		'title' => __('Google Analytics'),  
		'href' => 'http://google.com/analytics' 
	));
}

This is how it looks like:

3. Show the login form if user is not logged in

By default, the Admin Bar will only appear for logged-in users. If, however, you want to make the admin bar visible for everyone and make it show the login form if the user is not logged in, you can use the WordPress Admin Bar Improved to enable this functionality.

4. Disable the Admin Bar totally

Some of you might dislike the admin bar and wish to remove it totally. Here’s how you can do so.

1. Login to your WordPress dashboard and go to your profile tab.

2. Under the “Show Admin Bar” section, uncheck the option “when viewing site” and “in dashboard“. Save the changes.

If you are managing a multi-authors blog (or in network mode) and you want to disable the Admin Bar for all your authors, in your functions.php file, copy and paste the following code;

add_filter( 'show_admin_bar', '__return_false' );

This will disable the Admin Bar sitewide.

What other tricks do you use to customize the WP Admin Bar?

Now if you are keen to implement the Facebook comment system in your site, here’s how you can do so:

Static site

If you are running a static website, adding the Facebook comment system is easy.

1. Go to Facebook comments social plugin page.

2. Enter the URL of your site, number of comments to show and the width of the comments. Click the “Get Code” button.

3. Copy the code and paste it to your site where you want the comment to appear.

4. Next, still in your site, paste the following code to anywhere between the <head> and </head> tag

<meta property="fb:app_id" content="{YOUR_FACEBOOK_USER_ID}">

Replace the “{YOUR_FACEBOOK_USER_ID}” with your own Facebook ID. This will allow you to moderate the comments.

5. Lastly, paste the following code to just before the <body> tag.

<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script>

That’s it for implementing Facebook comment on static website.

WordPress

The easiest way to implement Facebook Comment in your WordPress site is via plugin. One of the more promising plugin is Facebook Comments for WordPress.

1. Download, install and active Facebook Comments For WordPress.

2. Before you can use it, you need to register a Facebook application and obtain the app id. Go to http://www.facebook.com/developers/createapp.php and register a new app. Once you have registered the app, copy the Application ID and Application Secret.

3. Back to your WordPress dashboard, go to the Facebook Comments settings page and paste the Application ID and Application Secret into the first two fields.

4. From here on, you can configure the plugin to your liking. The default language for comments is set to “Afrikaan”, so make sure you change that in the settings before you make it live. Once done, click the “Update Option” button.

Go to your blog and you should see the commenting system in action. If you are using other commenting system like Disqus or IntenseDebate, remember to deactivate them, else you will see two comment system in your blog.

Now, a quick poll, how many of you will switch to Facebook comments system?

One of the most common way to customize your blog is to use themes. If you are a WordPress user, you should be familiar in the concept of themes. But even though there are literary thousands of free themes out there, using them will not really help you to stand out – as everybody is doing the same thing. A quick calculation will tell us that in average one theme is used by more than tens of thousands blogs.

That’s why customizable themes is the solution. During my quest to find a good customized WordPress theme, I found Platform, a theme that can be easily customized by dragging and dropping the elements.

Customizing The Look

Let’s start by downloading and installing the theme. Go to the admin area of your WordPress blog and choose “Themes” from the sidebar menu, then continue with “Install New Theme” tab. Do a search and click the “Install” link.

Confirm the installation by clicking the “Install Now” button.

After you have activated the theme, you’ll see a new item appear in the sidebar menu. Clicking it will open the “Platform Theme Options” and its own list of customization items.

The first option that you can find is the access to “View Site“, “Docs” and “Forum“. Anytime you need help on using the theme, you can visit the Docs and/or Forum links.

Now let’s explore the theme’s menu. First the “Global Options.“. This is the place to customize your blog’s header image and favicon. All that you have to do is to upload the image that you want to use. While there is no restriction on the header image, the favicon that you want to use must be in “.ico” or “.png” format and the size is 16×16 pixels.

Here are where your header image and favicon will appear on your blog.

Other than the two items mentioned above, Global Settings will also give you access to set: Twitter Integration (requires Twitter for WordPress plugin), and Page Content & Body background color.

Next is the “Template Setup“. Here is the place to set what elements that you want to show in each template. You can drag and drop the items that you want to the “Displayed Page Content Area Sections” on the left, and the ones that you don’t want to the “Available/Disabled Sections” on the right.

There are many templates that you can customize. Each comes with its own elements. So take your time and go through these templates and items one by one.

Go to the “Layout Editor” to choose what kind of layout you want your blog to be. You can also set the dimension of each area of the layout simply by dragging the borders of by writing down the dimension in the available fields below the layout editor.

Further Customization

Since there are too many customizable items that you can tinker with, the best way to get familiar with Platform is to install and play with it yourself. For example, you can choose to show or hide the “News/Blog RSS Icon” from the “Header And Nav” menu.

Or to select the content layout for post pages from “Blog And Post” menu.

And also set the text for social links and choose which social network icons that you want to show/hide at your blog footer.

Or to add custom scripts to your blog, such as Google Analytics script.

The customization process could be a little bit overwhelming, but never forget to save your changes. The save buttons are available at the top and the bottom of the page.

Restore, Export And Import Settings

One of the best features of Platform theme is its ability to export the customization that you’ve made to be used in another blog. So, you only have to tweak the theme once, export the setting and import it to your other blogs if you want to.

Have you tried Platform? Or do you use other customizable WordPress themes? Please share your experience in customizing your blogs using the comment below.

That’s why in the environment where you can’t really put a face to the name, trust is a very valuable currency. And that’s why the concept of word of mouth recommendation from friends that we know and trust is very powerful. Add some social networks to the mixture and the effect would be multiplied. That’s the idea behind TAF4Free.

Recommendation With Some Social Twist

TAF4Free (Tell A Friend For Free) is a web tool from SocialTwist which will allow you – as a web owner – to provide an easy way for your visitor to tell their friends about your site(s). TAF4Free allows your readers to contact people in their social networks as well as send emails to contacts in their address book.

But before you can use the tool, you need to sign up with SocialTwist. Signing up will allow you to change the configuration, view usage statistic, create and customize more widgets.

This sign up process also serves as the place where you can customize the aspects of your Tell A Friend campaign such as the size of TAF button, widget theme and the button usage. For example, I planned to use the TAF method for my WordPress blog, so I selected “Blog” from the drop down list.

Further customization appeared after I chose “Blog“. I selected “WordPress Engine Plugin“.

After finished with the setting up process, I clicked on the “Get Code” button. You can check or uncheck the first and third option boxes, but make sure that the second one is checked before you click the button.

Installing The WordPress Plugin

After I hit the “Get Code“, a download button appeared. I clicked this “Get It Now” button and the WordPress plugin was downloaded to my hard drive.

To install the plugin, go to the “Plugin – Install Plugins – Upload” menu from your WordPress admin area. Then click the “Choose File” button, locate the downloaded plugin, and click “Install now“.

The final step would be to activate the plugin. You can do this directly after installing it or later on from the plugin page.

Another Point Of View

So far we have seen the process from web owner point of view. Now let’s switch our perspective and see things from the visitor’s side. For example, you visit your friend’s blog and you want to share an article that you read to your other friends.

If the blog owner use TAF4Free, you will find the button at the end of the article. Hover your mouse over it and a list of available sharing methods will pop up. Click at the one that you want to use.

A pop up window will appear focusing to your choice of sharing method. Then you can continue with the sharing process. For example, if you choose “Facebook“, all you have to do is click on the “Share” button, fill in your login data, and the word is out.

Or if you choose “GMail“, you can fill in your user name and password before picking people up from your address book and sending them link to the article that you want to share.

TAF4Free makes it easy for visitors to switch between different sharing methods, so all they have left to do is finding worth sharing materials and share them.

Content Is Really The King

But everything goes back to the quality of your content. No matter how easy the sharing method is, nothing is going to work if you have no good quality content that people want to share.

If you give your reader top notch materials, the combination of your good content and TAF4Free will surely help you to spread the word about your website to the world. If one person recommends your web to some of his/her friends, and these friends do the same, you’ll have viral marketing working for you. Then you can stop worrying about getting readers to your site and focus on creating great materials.

What do you think about TAF4Free? Would you use it to help you spread the buzz about your site? Do you know other similar alternatives? Please share your thoughts using the comment below.

Image credit: See-ming Lee

Do you know that the WordPress administration area can be customized according to your needs? You can hide the features you never use, change the logo in your WordPress login screen and do a lot more creative things right inside your WordPress blog’s backend.

There are some advantages of customizing WordPress’s admin section. First, you can remove the features that are not at all required and get rid of unnecessary UI clutter. Second, you can handle permissions and access of sections more easily, if you have more than one user associated with the blog (multi-authored blogs are a good example).

Here are some useful WordPress plugins which can be used to customize your WordPress’s blog’s backend:

Ozh Admin Menu

The problem with WordPress’s default navigation structure is that the links are not quickly accessible. You have to click through the small arrow beside each section to expand it and then click the link of the page you want to go to.

If you prefer simple things and want a minimalist navigation in WordPress admin area, install the Ozh Admin menu WordPress plugin. This plugin changes WordPress navigation structure such that all admin links are available in a neat horizontal drop down menu. Saves a lot of screen space !

Adminimize

If you are the administrator of a multi-authored blog, there are some sections which you may want to hide from specific users or authors. For example: You might want to hide the Post URL slug in the Write Post panel for all authors. The Adminimize plugin let’s you completely customize which sections, widgets and panels are available to specific users of your blog.

There are 5 different roles available e.g Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber. You can select the required checkbox against any link of the WordPress admin area and choose to hide or show it to that specific user role. Should you create new roles later, the selection checkbox for that specific user role will appear in the Adminimize option panel.

Overall, this is a great plugin to customize which functions are available to different users of your blog.

Admin Quick Menu

The Admin Quick Menu plugin lets you add external links within your WordPress dashboard. You can define a set of custom URL’s which you want to access without having to leave your WordPress blog’s backend. Typical examples may be Google Analytics, Google Webmaster tools, Feedburner, Twitter and so on.

The best thing regarding this plugin is that you can choose which user levels have the ability to access the custom external links. For example: You can choose to let only the administrator have access to the external links, pretty handy when you want to keep an eye on external services directly within your WordPress administration area.

Pre Publish Reminder

The Pre publish reminder plugin adds a sleek reminder column in WordPress “Write Post” panel. This can be used to notify blog authors about important points, notes that they should follow before publishing an article. You can always edit the reminders and format the reminders from “Manage reminders” section of WordPress admin area

Disable Specific Dashboard Widgets

The first thing which users notice after logging in to WordPress admin area are the dashboard widgets. Although, a user can hide a widget from “Screen options” but you can use the following functions to completely remove dashboard widgets within WordPress admin area:

function remove_dashboard_widgets(){

global$wp_meta_boxes;

unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_plugins']);

unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_recent_comments']);

unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_primary']);

unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_incoming_links']);

unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_right_now']);

unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_secondary']);

}

add_action(‘wp_dashboard_setup’, ‘remove_dashboard_widgets’);

Just paste the above code in your theme’s function.php file and the dashboard widgets will be hidden from all users of your blog. You can refer to WordPress’s official documentation article for more information.

Replace The WordPress logo With your own

If you want more branding options, it’s a good idea to replace the WordPress logo with a custom logo of your site. Simply paste the following code in your theme’s functions.php file:

add_action(‘admin_head’, ‘my_custom_logo’);

function my_custom_logo() {

echo ‘<style type="text/css">

#header-logo { background-image:url(‘.get_bloginfo(‘template_directory’).’/images/custom-logo.gif)!important; }

</style>’;

}

Remember to save your custom logo image in the theme’s image folder e.g wp-content/themes/theme-name/images and name it it custom-logo.gif.

Further reading on WordPress customizations:

• 11 ways to secure your WordPress blog
• 8 ways to improve your WordPress blog’s loading time
• 9 Plugins which new WordPress users must install on their blogs

Do let us know your favorite WordPress admin customization in the comments section.

Image credit: [lee]

W3 Total Cache is one great solution to speed up your WordPress site, but it requires plenty of technical configuration that might put new WP users off. For those who want a turnkey solution, here are some of them that can achieve the same effect without you having to do much tweaking.

1. Cheating With The Codes

One of the major problems that can hog down your page load is the code mess – especially in the absent of a plugin called WP-Minify. Once enabled, this plugin will combine and compress JS and CSS files to improve page load time.

Here’s a quote of the developer’s explanation on how the plugin works:

WP Minify grabs JS/CSS files in your generated WordPress page and passes that list to the Minify engine. The Minify engine then returns a consolidated, minified, and compressed script or style for WP Minify to reference in the WordPress header.

The more CSS codes/Java Scripts that you use, the more saving that you can get. You can also exclude some files from the process – if you really know what you are doing. But please note that this plugin is not for the faint of heart. Playing with codes always comes with some risk.

2. Cache the whole site

Another way that you can do to speed up the loading time of your pages/sites is to make the process go to a shorter route. You can do this by creating caches of your pages.

Usually, after a visitor make a page request (read: opening a page), the request will be accepted by the server, then the server will load the data from the database, and back to the server before the client finally get the data (read: the page loaded). The length of these process will result in waiting time for the visitor and bandwidth usage for the web owner.

But if you use caching plugin like WP Super Cache or Quick Cache, the route will be shortened into: visitor request – server – back to visitor, because all the data has already been cached and there’s no need to visit the database to fetch them.

Since WP Super Cache has been discussed many times before, let’s look at the alternative: Quick Cache.

The disadvantage is that visitor will not always get the latest version of the page, but that won’t be a problem unless the page is always updated each and every second (which is rarely happened). The advantage of this method is a huge saving on bandwidth and server resource, so much that this is a favorite way for blog master to survive from Digg attack.

Again, this one is also not for the faint hearted as there are so much settings that one should go through. Beginners are advised not to go beyond the “Easy” step.

3. Flirting With The Image Files

And the major bloat to every blog is images. Most blogger will just link videos from video hosting sites like YouTube, but images are commonly uploaded to the blog server. Ten images of 100 Kb on a page equals to 1 Mb of loading size.

That’s why it’s highly advisable to always reduce the size of every image that you want to upload to your blog. There are many image manipulator that you can use to achieve this such as SmushIt – part of YSlow Firefox addon, ImageOptim for Mac, and Photoshop.

But even the reduced-size images still eat up bandwidth. Here’s the part where Dropbox comes to the rescue. Instead of uploading images directly to your blog server, you could put your images in your Dropbox public folder and link the post to that image. This method means more work but worth the hassle, because it will decrease bandwidth use and improve loading time. Plus, if you have to move your blog to another host later, you will save a lot of headache as you don’t have to move your images.

As I’ve mentioned before, these are only few of the many ways that you can use to lighten the load and speed up your WordPress blog. Also check out our other article on speeding up your WordPress blog. If you know other methods, please share them using the comment below.

Image credit: Nathan Eal Photography

For those who are using WordPress, After the Deadline is a great spell checker plugin that checks your content for spelling and grammar mistakes. It is easy to use, and comes at no charge.

After the Deadline does not load the whole dictionary to your server. Instead, it sends your content back to their server, validate it and send it back to your server. Everything is done in AJAX, so you won’t notice the differences.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you will see a new “ABC” button at your post editor toolbar.

At any point of time, you can click on the button to get it to check your content for any spelling/grammar errors. Any spelling mistake will be underlined in red while a grammar mistake will be marked with green.

To correct the mistake, you just have to click on the word/phrase and a pop-up will appear, showing a list of word suggestion. You can then select from the correct entry or just select “Ignore Suggestion” to ignore it. For word like “MakeTechEasier” that is not in the dictionary, you can select “Ignore Always” to add it to the library so that it won’t bother you for the same word the next time.

Settings

Unlike other plugins that come with a dedicated Settings page, there is no Settings page for After the Deadline plugin. Instead, you will have to go to your profile settings to configure the proofread option.

Options you can configure include whether to automatically proofread content when a post/page is first published or when a post/page is updated. You can also get it to proofread various grammar and style rules such as technical jargon, or redundant phrases.

Support for various platforms

While this article is about the WordPress plugin, After the Deadline also comes in various forms, including a bookmarklet, Google Chrome addon, Firefox extension, Intense Debate comment system, bbPress plugin and even the popular Open Office extension. The bottom line is, as long as you have a text field to type on, you will have a mean to spell-check.

Trying it out before installing

If you are not sure if this is useful to you, you can always head over to the After the Deadline website and try out the demo. You just have to type in the text field and click “Check Writing” when you are done. This will give you a good feel of how it works and you can then decide if you want to install the plugin/extension.

Overall, After the Deadline is a useful plugin that works well and doesn’t take up much resources. If you have not installed it, grab it now.

After the Deadline

Here’s a quick and simple way to configure your WordPress to automatically clear the trash on a regular basis:

1. Using a FTP application (such as Filezilla), download the wp-config.php file from your server.

2. Open the wp-config.php file with a text editor and insert the following code to the end of the file:

define(‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, X );

where ‘X’ is the interval (in days) the trash will auto-empty itself.

For example, if you want the trash to auto-empty itself every 7 days, the code will be

define(‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, 7 );

Disable the trash feature

In some cases, you might want to disable the trash feature altogether. You can do this by setting the number of day to 0. The code become:

define(‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, 0 );

That’s it.