How To Blog

How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks

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WordPress's default behavior for permalinks is to create a URL that looks something like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?p=2

where p is the post id.

If you care at all about the search engines indexing your blog, and you should if you want anyone to read it :), you'll want to use a little SEO (search engine optimization) trick by having nice, neat URLs that describe your post.

In my case, I wanted my individual post archives to be in the root of my domain, as search engines like Google devalue a page the deeper it is into the site. I also wanted the link title be the posts name, so that my permalinks will look like this: http://www.yoursite.com/this-is-my-posts-title.htm

To do it:

- log into WordPress, and then click on 'Options'. Next click the sub-category under options entitled "Permalink"

- the page you're on will now describe all the fields you can use to create your permalink. I only cared about the post name so in the edit box just underneath where it says, "Use the template tags above to create a virtual site structure:" I typed the following:

/%postname%.htm

- at this point you should click the button to Update Permalink Structure.

Now you will need to modify your .htaccess file to do some mod-rewriting. Sounds hard, but WordPress makes it easy. First of all, if you don't know what it is, an .htaccess file is simply a text file that can contain instructions for the webserver. If you have an .htaccess file already, then you will need to edit it to add the code that WordPress provides for you (see below). If you don't have an .htaccess file, you'll need to create a text file using any text editor (notepad will do) that simply has the contents (again, see below) that WordPress tells you paste in. Those directions will be specific to the linking structure you choose, but if you go the route I went, then WordPress will have you add the following lines to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^category/(.*)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /wp-feed.php?category_name=$1&feed=$2 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^category/?(.*) /index.php?category_name=$1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^author/(.*)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /wp-feed.php?author_name=$1&feed=$2 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^author/?(.*) /index.php?author_name=$1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-z-]+).htm([0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?name=$1&page=$2 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-z-]+).htm/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /wp-feed.php?name=$1&feed=$2 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-z-]+).htm/trackback/?$ /wp-trackback.php?name=$1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ /wp-feed.php?feed=$1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^comments/feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ /wp-feed.php?feed=$1&withcomments=1 [QSA]

So now, my first WordPress post on my Tool Reviews Site can be found at http://www.toolreviews.biz/porter-cable-cffn250n-finish-brad-nailer-combo-kit.htm (btw - that post is more of a placeholder while evaluating WordPress than anything else..)

Templates for WordPress - Gemini layout, Trident layout, and The Vesuvius layout now available for download

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[UPDATE FOR WORDPRESS 1.5+ users: check out my comprehensive list of over 615+ WordPress 1.5+ themes ]

Apparently some of the most popular templates for use with WordPress 1.2 (Gemini layout, Trident layout, and The Vesuvius layout) recently became unavailable from their original sources. Craig at NuclearMoose had been kind enough to make these WordPress templates available once again for free download to the WordPress community. (Thanks Craig!!!!)

Updated 11/7/2004: NuclearMoose site no more?

Looks like Craig's taken his site down (I'll miss it!!), so I'm uploading the templates here in the spirit of honoring Craig's initial intent -- to keep these awesome templates freely available to the WordPress community.

Download gemini.zip (4.1K)

Download trident.zip (4.1K)

Download vesuvius.zip (4.3K)

NOTE - these templates are for WordPress 1.2. 

If you've upgraded to Strayhorn, the latest version of WordPress (1.5), check out my comprehensive list of over 286+ WordPress 1.5 themes that I found by hunting around the blogosphere

Tutorial on modifying WordPress templates - understanding the code and customizing the templates to meet your needs

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Found a great tutorial that explains wp-layout.css to help you better understand what each piece of CSS (cascading style sheets) is doing to the layout of your WordPress pages so you can best redesign and customize the look and feel of your sites by modifying the WordPress templates to meet your specific needs.

In addition to the tutorial, NuclearMoose provides the following tips:

- SAVE YOUR ORIGINAL FILE(S) BEFORE EXPERIMENTING.

- Border, margin and padding sides are defined like this: TOP, RIGHT, BOTTOM, LEFT

- a, a:visited, a:hover, a:active -- should be defined in that order.

- When adding padding AND margin, don't forget that you need to account for total amount of space: margin: 5px; padding: 5px; = 10px all the way around.

- Experiment with everything.- SAVE YOUR ORIGINAL FILE(S) BEFORE EXPERIMENTING.

- It's good practice to ALWAYS define a generic font like monospaced, serif, sans-serif.

- It's also good to ALWAYS define a background and foreground colour in your BODY selector.

-Don't overdo the font-family lists -- it will slow down load time as the system attempts to find and load ALL the fonts listed.

-You don't "have to" end each line with a semi-colon, but you're crazy if you don't!

-Have fun! Don't be afraid to dive in and muck about.

SAVE YOUR ORIGINAL FILE(S) BEFORE EXPERIMENTING.

There's also a good reminder that the WordPress Support forums are a tremendous resource for help and information.

Building your home with WordPress - how the basic structure of a WordPress site works

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There's a great article for total beginners who need some help in understanding how the basic structure of a WordPress site works by comparing your website to a house. It's got some great tips to help you wrap your mind around how to structure your site, etc, and is well worth reading when trying to plan out your sites design and navigational features (always good to do BEFORE making your site, a rule I often forget to follow..)

WordPress plug-ins for creating static pages and eliminating comment and trackback spam

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Creating Static Pages using WordPress

WordPress creates dynamic pages on the fly, using PHP, which means that it takes a WHOLE lot less time to publish your pages/site with WordPress than it does with MovableType. However, some have said that the dynamic pages create an additional load on the server (hey, but so does the process of publishing using MT), and others want static pages as they are more easily cached. According to Jeff Minard, a plugin for WordPress called "WP-Statictize", will make "WP will create static versions of pages on the fly and essentially act like MT by creating static pages, just in a slightly different (note: better ;-) ) way."

Fighting comment and TrackBack spam with a WordPress Plugin

Craig from nuclear moose candy said, "If you use WordPess in combination with Kitten's Spam tool plugins, you get fantastic comment spam moderation. I can delete a comment, flag it as spam, add the IP, email address, and some keywords to the spam words list with a single click of the button. The tool is intelligent enough to delete duplicates from the spam words list, as well. Additionally, Kitten created a "retrospaminator" which will go back through all of you old comments looking for any you may have missed.

Note - his site has a lot of great WordPress tips on it which I'm gonna go check out right now!

Need help with your blog? Try BlogBarter!

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Just came across this cool site called BlogBarter.com. It's main purpose is to pair non-techie people with those who have the skills to get the job done -- but on a barter system. So instead of paying someone to help you out with some tweaks you might need for your blog, you can trade for it -- whether it be baking them cookies, sending them some homemade soaps, or buying them something from their amazon wishlist. Kind of a cool idea. When I've more time, I'll explore it even further - but for now, just know that this resource is there for you.

Blogging for Dollars - How to Make Serious Money off of your Blog

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If you're going to put a lot of time into your blog, you might as well make some money off of it - and people are – to the tune of five figures a month!

You can make serious money with your blog by joining Google's Adsense program, which serves up text ads based on the content on your site. If visitors to your blogs click those google ads, you'll make some cash which can quickly add up to quite a large amount.  People everywhere are now hyping programs on how to quit your job and make money from adsense while working from home.  There’s a reason for the hype — making a living from adsense isn’t just a fantasy.  People can and do blog for a living.

If you have a blog you can sell advertising on it very easily at blogads.com

You can also use affiliate programs to advertise products that relate to your blog (like if your blog is all about Madonna, you can link to places that sell her CDs, etc).

Here's an article on Blogging for Dollars

Here's what the folks at Google have to say about using Adsense to make money with your weblog

Here's a post from a blogger who added adsense to his weblog in an attempt to cover the costs of his TypePad account, only to discover he was earning a second income from his blog!

This last article is a little dated, but still worth checking out: Blogonomics: making a living from blogging

Creating a Private Blog

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What if you want to create a blog that wasn't available to the general public?

I've been poking around in MovableType and WordPress, but haven't yet discovered how to make your blog private on those platforms -- I'd imagine you could password protect a directory by modifying the .htaccess files, but I'd like to see ability to make a blog private incorporated into the blog tools interface.

This is where TypePad excels. Simply create a new blog, and 1) mark it as private (which only stops them from listing your blog on the 'Recently updated blogs" lists ) and make sure the boxes for notifying third party services when you update your blog are unchecked AND then 2) go into the Control Panel and click the link that says "Password Protect a Site" and then enter the shared username and password that you will provide to only those you want to access your blog -- this allows you to limit access to your blog, or part of your blog, so that only you or those you choose can read your posts.

In Blogger, go to Settings | Basic, and make sure to pick "No" from the dropdown box entitled "Add your Blog to our listings". Note that A Public blog appears in your Blogger Profile. If you select "No" they will not show your blog anywhere on Blogger.com, but it will still be available on the Internet. As such, if you host your Blogger blog on their free hosting site, BlogSpot, from what I can tell you will not be able to keep your blog private or prevent it from being spidered and indexed by the search engines. If you're very careful not to link to it from any external site, theres a chance it will never be found..but you've no guarantee of preventing unwanted eyes from reading your private blog. If you host your blog on your own ISP or web hosting provider and FTP your blogger pages to them, it's conceivable that you could password protect the directory, again by modifying the .htaccess file.

Again, not having yet installed b2evolution or blosxom, I can't comment on those platforms. However, I checked out blosxom's website and it appears that they have several Blosxom plugins that you can use to password protect your site.

So, at this point, it would appear that TypePad is the only blogging software I have tested that allows you to make all or part of a blog private from within the TypePad control panel.

Comprehensive list of ping services that you can use to let the world know when you've updated your blog

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Update Ping Services
You can copy and paste these URIs into your blog service ping options screen (in WordPress, you do it by choosing Options > Writing > Update Services) with each URI on its own line.  In MovableType you can add these URI's to the list of where to ping by going to your configuration settings for notifications.

While TypePad doesn't officially support customizing pings, there is a workaround, albeit a bit tedious - simply paste the list of URI's into the box entitled "Send a TrackBack to these addresses" in the edit post screen (yes, this means you need to do this for each and every post you create).   If you don't see the field for sending trackbacks, make sure you're using the advanced or custom post editor by clicking the link on the create/edit post page entitled, "Customize the display of this page" (it's below the preview and save buttons).

Not surprisingly, Blogger doesn't support customizing of pings and since they don't support trackbacks either, I haven't figured out a way to get this working on Blogger.  I don't yet have b2evolution or Blosxom blogs installed yet, so I've no idea whether they support pings or allow you to customize them..

Anyhow, here's my comprehensive list of ping services to ping to tell them that you've updated your blog:

 

 

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping/

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1 http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

WordPress lets you have Sub-Categories

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I just started creating my categories for my Tool Reviews site (Power Tools, Hand Tools, Lawn and Garden Tools, etc) and discovered that you can create sub-=categories off of a parent category. Now that's cool (and something I haven't encountered in the other blogging tools I've tried - blogger, movabletype (update: MT 3 has subcategories), and typepad). And I'm sure it makes things even better for the search engines to figure out what you're writing about.