A Beginner’s Adventure with WordPress – Karlene Petitt

wordpress-basics

Today was first day of WordPress class. What I learned — there is so much to learn! Especially for those of us who defaulted to blogspot in the beginning because it was easy. But nothing in life is free, and the cost of easy is the price we pay for lack of functionality. Time to [...]

WordPress Automatic Install and Upgrade Errors

wordpress-automatic-updates

My friend and colleague Karlene Petitt is just about to undertake a short ‘WordPress Introduction’ course. She had a list of requirements from her tutor with essential criteria being that the user should be able to apply themes, plugins and core upgrades using the built in WordPress upgrade functionality. I’ve just installed two default WordPress [...]

Blogger.net.au and the iSnare WordPress Plugin

wordpress-automation-robot-isnare

On April 27, 2008, I set up Blogger.net.au and wrote about the purpose of the site on InterNoetics (formerly martinetics.com). The post was oriented around turnkey-style websites and the ‘myth’ that they made money. It’s funny reading back on what I wrote back then because – although my opinion hasn’t changed in any drastic way [...]

Google Chart WordPress Shortcode

google-charts

Google charts are awesome. I use them on about a dozen sites to visually represent all kinds of data. If you don’t know what Google Charts are, it’s worth checking out the massive resources available on the Google Chart Tools website. Google describes their service as “… [the] perfect way to visualize data on your [...]

Website Snapshots with WordPress Shortcode

screenshot

WordPress.com uses a nifty little tool to take screenshots of Commercial Themes. If you right click on a few of the screenshots on that page you’ll see that they have consistent URL form. The following shortcode makes use of the functionality on WordPress.com by rendering a screenshot of any webpage in your blog post. I [...]

Post for People living in YOU – Visitor Geographic information in WordPress Titles

Geo Data in WordPress titles and posts

Did my headline get your attention? The title should have rendered the city you’re in (or one you’re near) based on your geographic location. I’ve tested geographic based headlines on three sites for the last month with click-through-rates increasing by much as 600% – although it averaged about 300% on most days. That’s a massive [...]

Find and Replace Words in a WordPress Post

find-replace

This PHP function will search for a particular string of text in a WordPress post and replace it with alternative text of any kind. If you’re just getting into the affiliate business, this is a great way of instantly monetising your blog via specific keywords. If you’ve ever written about Thesis, you could, via the [...]

Prevent WordPress Pages from appearing in Search Results

wp-search

Michael Harvey of New York, USA, asks: “I’ve set up private WordPress pages that I’m only giving to friends and family. However, when people use the WordPress search function, these private pages appear in search results. Do you know a fix?” I use the same functionality on my own site(s). I have countless private pages [...]

JW Player and WordPress Shortcode

video-icon

One of the websites I’m working on at the moment is heavily orientated around video. In company with at least one other gentleman, we’ll be posting tutorials, reviews and classroom-style lectures for individuals undertaking flight training. When you’re investing so much into a website with such a heavy focus on video, it’s important to use [...]

Sharebar Plugin for WordPress… and how to add Google+

social-media

In the process of writing up a post about a bunch of WordPress plugins that I use and recommend, I decided to write about the Sharebar plugin in isolation of the others simply because (apart from the fact that it’s awesome), by default, it excludes some important social networks that deserve inclusion. What is sharebar? [...]

Pirate Day – WordPress Shortcode

pirate

Talk Like a Pirate Day originated on June 6, 1995 when John Baur and Mark Summers of Albany, Oregan, started talking – for no particular reason – in pirate slang. They liked it. June 6 is the anniversary of World War II’s D-Day, so the pair settled on September 19 as a global celebration of [...]