Wordpress rich text editor shortcuts

Now, it you want to learn the WordPress rich text editor keyboard shortcuts all you have to do is press the help button (on the second row on buttons in the Visual window). In the popup window that appears go to the hot-keys tab where the list of available shortcuts are displayed. There are two categories of shortcuts:

Shortcuts that are combination of CTRL + Letter:

Shortcuts that are combination of ALT + SHIFT + Letter:

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What is a CMS?

That’s a legitimate question for beginners so let’s see it from a webmaster point of view. A CMS is a software platform (piece of software) that once installed on a website allows you to manage content on that site: publish content, edit it, delete it, move it. A more complex CMS allows for customization of the way content is presented to the user and add functions like comments, social media sharing, user accounts, forum etc. Other functionality can be added via plugins.

What makes wordpress suitable for your website?

Let’s see now the reasons wordpress is the best choice now for building a blog or a content site.

• It’s in constant development and evolves with any new version adding more functionality (see here how wordpress evolved). Also bugs are quickly solved by a dedicated development team
• Everyone uses WordPress so you get support easy because there are a lot of experts in WordPress. A lot of plugins are available to extend its functionality
• Easy to manage content because of the refined interface which allows for mass moderation of comments, bulk edit and such
• Customizable templates which are easy to modify if you know HTML and PHP. Also wordpress core files are left unmodified so upgrades are always easy, especially since automatic update was introduced. Also by using advanced wordpress functions you can make your site look like a magazine with ease.
• A lot of plugins to make your website a shopping site, download center or online publication. Your imagination is the limit here.
• Advanced post editing allows for text formatting and media inserts (pictures, movies, slideshows etc). Most of the media can be edited (basic actions) from the wordpress admin

These I believe are the most important motives to use wordpress or switch to it if you want to build your business online for cheap. If you think I’ve missed something let me know.

WordPress can be downloaded for FREE here

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What WP-Optimize does

There are a few action you can perform with WP-Optimize and those actions are:

• remove post revisions: in the latest WordPress versions almost all changes you make to posts are saved so you can later revert to any of those revisions if something happens
• clean marked Spam comments: it’s pretty self explanatory and cleans a serious portion of the database if selected
• clean unapproved comments: what’s the point of keeping them, right?
• optimize database tables: this is one of the most important functions as greatly reduces your database tables size using MySQL commands, so it’s pretty safe

WP-Optimize options page

How do you install and use WP-Optimize

Installation is easy. Download the plugin from here. Copy it to your Plugins directory on server, activate from admin and that’s it.

To use it go to the Dashboard tab in admin on the left sidebar and select WP-Optimize. Here you select one or more of the four options and hit go. Wait a few seconds and you’ll see a report showing how much space you’ve freed.

WP-Optimize provisionary report

Important: always backup your database before optimizing in. If things go wrong you have to be covered.

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Google custom search is still in beta

In this post I’ll treat the case of integrating the Google Custom search engine in WordPress, the most used free software platform for blogging.

What do you need?

• A blog running a self hosted version of WordPress. Sorry guy, but no wordpress.com domains.
• An HTML editor (I use Notepad ++)
• FTP client (I use FileZilla)
• An AdSense account
• Some time and a few HTML/CSS knowledge

Steps required to integrate custom search in WordPress

First, you have to sign in to your Google AdSense account and create a new ad slot for the custom search results ads: Adsense Setup – AdSense for Search. Once you get here select “Single page” to have all options on one page. I’ll explain to you what every field means:

• Search type: specifies where to search, the Internet or only your site
• Selected sites: put here every site URL you wish to search, one per each line
• Optional Keywords: if there’ any word combination you wish to add to the string of chars the used inputs in the Custom Search field here’s the place to mention them
• Site language: self explanatory, is the language your blog uses
• Your site encoding: go to your blog, right click on a free space, select “View Source” and look for “charset”. Select in the Adsense drop down list the encoding your website uses
• Country or territory for Google domain: to better list localized search results Google needs to know the region of your website’s visitors, where most of them come from
• Custom channel: give a name to the ad channel to better track its results in your Adsense reports
• Safe Search: specify if you want adult content to be omitted from displayed results
• Look and Feel: choose from a few themes available for the search box
• Text Box Length: specify the size of the search box as it will appear on your site
• Opening of search results page: here you’ll specify how the search results page will look like. Options are in the same page, in new windows (easiest to implement), or in a dedicated page on your site. For the last option you have to create a page on your blog (page, not post) and give it a name that you’ll specify in this Adsense wizard. Mine is called “search”, so the URL is http://www.johnpopes.com/search. Also enter the width of the search results area so that it will fit your theme layout.
• Ad location: where should google display ads on your search results page. Depending on what you choose the aforementioned Width of the results area has a bigger minimum value.
• The Palettes: here you’ll change the colors of the search results. Every change is reflected in a sample box on the left.
• Agree with the special terms
• Enter a name for this particular search unit and hit “Submit and Get Code”

The long Adsense setup wizard (click for large image)

Now you’re presented with two codes (if you chose to display results in the same page or in another page on your blog, not in a new window. Now the input box code goes in your theme. Mine was searchform.php. The second one goes into the page template (here is more info on how to create a WordPress page template) I’ve created starting with page.php and replaced the part with the_content(). Use this template when creating the page that will you’re your results (see the “Opening of search results page” step). Remember that those file names in your WordPress theme may be different, but also look for the code that displays your normal search box and create a new template for pages, where you replace the content with the provided code by Adsense.

Custom search results on my blog

If you want to change the look of the Custom Search you have to log back in Google Adsense and hit Adsense Setup – Manage Ads and Edit on your Custom Search module. That’s it. If you get stuck at one step or need more clarification don’t hesitate to post a comment below and I’ll help you.

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That’s why it’s important to backup the blog’s database, but usually people don’t do that because they’re lazy or don’t remember to do so. Don’t despair, as there are plugins that can do the job for you. In this post I’m going to show you the most popular database backup plugin for Wordress (the most used blogging platform), named WordPress Database Backup.

How to use WordPress Database Backup

The plugin installs like any other WordPress plugin: copy the directory in the archive to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder on server, activate it in WordPress Admin and the configure it in the Tools – Backup section.

You have the options to select which supplemental database tables to be stored in the backup file, besides the default ones and the backup destination: server, computer or email address. Those are the options for manual backup. There’s also an option for automated backup where you specify an email address, the tables to be stored and the periodicity of the WordPress Database Backup.

Database Backup plugin automatization settings

I’ve also made a short video explaining how the backup process works in the WordPress admin:

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Typical XML Parsing Error

Manual fix for XML Parsing Error

Check the files mentioned in the error returned by your browser when accessing your blog or just some URLs on your blog and scan that file for spaces or breaks in the mentioned line and column. This is a painful method, as usually the error lies in a page generated from another PHP file. Finding which PHP files generates the page with the error can be hard to do. That’s why I recommend the automatic fix.

Automatic fixing with “Fix RSS Feed” WordPress plugin

The “Fix RSS Feed” WordPress plugin checks the files on your WordPress installation and removes any spaces or breaks it finds in PHP files. If you don’t have enough rights set up on the FTP where your site lies you have to manually change the files, but at least the plugin shows you which files are affected.

The plugin can be downloaded from here. You have to copy it in your Plugins folder, activate it, run the checker and then press the Fix button. It can’t get any easier that this.

I hope this piece of info helped you, as I’m now waiting for my RSS feed to get fixed.

LATER EDIT:

Very important thing, always check that the XML parsing problem is not caused by spaces outside the <?php and ?> delimiters. Check for those spaces in your rss generating PHP files and in your functions.php from your current theme directoy (change the WordPress theme to its default and if the problem persists it not your theme that’s causing the error). For me it was the functions.php that generated the RSS XML parsing error.

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And what’s beautiful about it is that everyone can enjoy it, even if they don’t own a hosting plan or a domain name, by creating a free account on WordPress.com, with a few limitations of course.

Wordpress Logo

So, let’s see what WordPress has managed to add in past years. It’s not a complete list so feel free to remind me the changes that matter most to you.

• The admin interface evolved a lot, making common tasks very easy: editing, writing, changing settings. The admin windows order can even be tweaked to your convenience
• post tags and tag cloud
• nested and paged comments
• theme widgets and multiple sidebars
• advanced post editor with functions for text editing and media manager (pictures, animations and audio)
• page and category templates
• theme editor directly from admin pages
• auto updater for the WordPress files
• manual updater for plugins and new plugin notifier
• impost and export for blog posts

Those are the most important changes WordPress undergone in the past years, but there are also a lot of small changes that make WordPress one of the most flexible blogging platforms on the web today.

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What I want to do with this post is make a list of  websites that offer Free or Premium (paid) themes for WordPress, the most used blogging platform in the world. Even if ‘free’ sounds good I recommend you choose a paid theme (that will be used by few blogs) or pay someone to make a custom theme that best suits your blogs’ target audience.

Free themes directories for WordPress

Let’s see what are the best free WordPress themes websites around the web:

• WordPress.org website – the official website of WordPress offers some good themes to choose from. Unfortunately the new version offers few sorting options so you’ll have to browse each page
• Topwpthemes.com - you can sort theme by number of columns, adsense ready, fixed width, widget ready and so on.
• Bestwpthemes.com – it’s not a collection of themes but a collection of articles that point to themes by different criteria: best themes for small businesses, best themes for freelancers and so on. It also has premium paid themes
• Themespreview.com – a themes directory with nice previews, many sorting options and user ratings

Paid premium WordPress themes directories

Here’s where you should look if you’re planning to get some income from your blog. A premium WordPress themes guaranties that you won’t find if on your neighbor’s blog. Let’s see some websites that offer this kind of service:

• Premiumwp.com – this is the place for themes that will change the look of WordPress so bad that users won’t know that you use a free CMS platform
• Woothemes.com – as the name says, here you’ll find themes that will make you say “woo, that looks nice”. You can buy one theme at a time or signup for membership
• Dailywptheme.com – a collection of themes from various providers with a few sorting options

What I didn’t find

…is a website which offers extensive sorting options. Many times I know what I’m looking for: for example a simple theme, two column, light colors, widget ready, WordPress 2.8+ compatible and without needing any plugins. When you know what you’re looking for is hard to filter all the themes around without proper tools.

What websites do you use when you look for a WordPress theme and why?

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Easy you say: use the retrieve password by email function provided by WordPress! This should always work, but there are some situations when it doesn’t: your email account cannot be accessed for some reason, you changed the username and don’t remember which is it, you gaved admin rights to a guest blogger and it changed your password (that’s a really silly thing to do).

So, let’s see the “magic” method I’ve thought of. First you have to have access to your SQL database, with admin rights. Now let’s see the steps:

1. Create another WordPress blog (on a subdomain of the original blog, on shared hosting account or even on your local PC)
2. Create an account and set a password
3. Login to that blog’s SQL database (you can use PHP MyAdmin)
4. Browse the wp_users table and look for the user_pass field corresponding to the admin user. You won’t recognize the password you typed as it’s encrypted.
5. Copy the string
6. Login to the SQL database (usually your host provides access to PHP MyAdmin) of the blog you’ve lost the password
7. Browse the wp_users table and change the user_pass original field to the copied value at Step 5 (at this step you’ll also see the username/usernames accounts of the blog)
   
8. Go back to your blog and login with the username to which you’ve changed the password (use the clead password, not the encrypted string).

The wizard above can also be applied to any website that uses MySQL to store users and passwords, provided that you duplicate the platform (so that the passwords are encrypted the same way).

If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me.

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Some weblogs, like JohnPope’s did that from start, but that didn’t happen with all my weblogs. That’s when you realize that it would be nice to have a plugin that automatically redirects your old feed to the current Feedburner one.

Well, you don’t have to hold your breath anymore. Just grab the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin from here, copy it in your wordpress plugin FTP folder and then activate it from your management plugins page. The options for FeedSmith are located in Options -> FeedBurner FeedSmith. Here you have to enter the Feedburner RSS URLS and the one for comments if you’ve switched them to Feedburner too.

The result may amaze you. My romanian blog, Ionutpopa.ro got from 44 to 169 subscribers in just one day.

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First let’s see the requirements:

• A host which provides the storage space, an Apache with PHP support server and MySQL databases (I use Dreamhost but the connection is pretty slow as I’m located in Romania, not USA, where the host is)
• The latest WordPress version. (currently 2.3, which can be downloaded here).
• A text editor (you need to modify some files). Use something that doesn’t inserts spaces and other junk chars (don’t use Notepad, I use Dreamweaver).
• A FTP client. You need it to upload the WordPress files
• A domain name. Usually the host allows you to buy one, but you can use a registrar like GoDaddy.

Now let’s get started. First enter your Control Panel, on the shared hosting environment. Here you have to set up a FTP user (here you access the storage space. The FTP address is provided by your host), a directory on your space where the website will be hosted, a MySQL host, an MySQL user, a database which allows the previously created user to access it.

I can’t tell you how to do those settings as the Control Panel differs from hosting to hosting, but usually is pretty self explanatory, as you don’t need and programming and networking skills.

Now, once we have all the above let’s see how to start up your blog. First connect to your FTP account (you need the FTP client, FTP address and FTP user). Navigate to the website’s directory and copy there the content of the WordPress directory inside the archive you’ve downloaded from here.

Now rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and edit it with your favorite text editor. The file will tell your WordPress blog the settings to your database. Let’s check step by step what you have to write. In 99% of the cases you only have to fill the bold italic part.

_____
// ** MySQL settings ** //
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere’ );   // The name of the database
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘usernamehere’);     // Your MySQL username
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourpasswordhere’); // …and password
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);    // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value
define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
define(‘DB_COLLATE’, ”);

// You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique prefix. Let the default "wp_" if you don’t want to host more than one blog in the same database
$table_prefix  = ‘wp_’;   // Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!
___

Now you’re ready, almost. Open a web browser and go to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php. Now you only have to name your blog and create your admin account. Once you’ve done that login in your admin panel at http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/. Here you can customize your weblog.

To add more themes upload them via FTP to the /wp-content/themes/ starting from your website root directory. Plugins go to /wp-content/plugins/.

That’s it. If you encounter problems don’t hesitate to ask me. I may be able to help you. Also bear in mind that some hosts, like Dreamhost, have one-click installs, that can set up your blog automatically. This small tutorial is not in vain, as you need the above data when you want to customize your blog in greater detail, to make it even more individualistic than a common weblog.

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