WordPress

Recently, I created a website for a small professional association of EFT practioners (EFT as in Emotional Freedom Techniques).  They wanted a website where they could easily enter their professional information and contact details, and of course, where potential clients could find them.

I decided that WordPress would best fit this brief, as it is so easy, even for newbies, to enter information.  But this was my first multi-author WordPress install, and it took some experimenting to find the most suitable plugins, so I thought I’d share them here.

First of all, I had to create an author page template.  I copied the archve.php, renamed the copy author.php, and then modified it, after taking a look at this article: Creating Author Pages.  With a couple of minor modifications, I had the author’s profile description showing up at the top of each author page.

Yes, WordPress 2.1 has been out for a few days, and there have been some significant changes. What that means is that your templates and some of your plugins might not work.

So I suggest you wait a few weeks, until other people have worked out the bugs, and updated the templates and plugins.

Meanwhile, if you’re using WordPress 2.0 plus, but missed WordPress 2.0.7 , the last and most secure of the 2.0.7 series, you can download it from the WordPress Release Archives

Yes, a couple more ping plugins: RSS AutoSubmit, and Pingfix. I’ll add them to the main ping plugins post, with more details there.

OK, I admit it, I love WordPress, cos I love finding more ways to tweak it. As I sort through the ways to improve my wordpress setup, I’ll be recording them here.

Now about plugins for plugins. Yes, its a strange category, but I do use a small number of plugins just to support other plugins.

First there’s WP-Cron. Some plugins need it in order to function - if so, in it goes!

Then there’s Activate-All. Once this plugin is activated, every other plugin will be as well. In fact, you can’t deactivate a plugin unless you deactivate this one first. This plugin saves time if you’re installing lots of blogs, or just have lots of plugins.

Word Press Off-Page SEO no 1 - Give Good Pings

Off-page SEO is about getting links, and one big advantage of blogs like WordPress is that they can ping.

A ping is the way WordPress automatically notifies certain blog and RSS directories (or ‘update services’) that your blog has been updated, creating a short-term link to your blog in the process. Now don’t ask me about the technology behind how it pings, just the thought makes my eyes glaze over.

All I need to know is that I must have at least one of these directories listed under ‘Update Services’ on the Options>Writing page in WordPress admin. And to make it easier, WordPress already comes with Pingomatic listed, which pings several update services every time you post.