How to Blog - 4/8 Design & Tweaks February 26, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Productivity, Technology, Blogging , 7 comments
Step 4 takes the design perspective into account. If you want your blog to stand out from the rest, you need to start experimenting and tweaking with your php files. The best and most common step is to simply toggle between your offline blog, the files in your wp-content folder and the WordPress codex. Additionally, it’s best to change the permalink structure for better search engine optimization.
When you look at some of the most beautiful and practical WordPress themes, take for instance the Phoenix theme by Nick La, you might get inspired to follow the same path and create your own WordPress theme in the end - all from scratch simply by trial and error learning of how css templates work.
Changing Permalinks
When you’ve installed your blog, you’ll find that the links to your posts come out numerically as a ?p=1 which doesn’t tell what your articles are about. This is why you need to go into the permalinks panel found under the options tab in the WordPress main interface. Choose the “Custom, specify below” tab, enter /%postname%/ in the blank field and press the update button. This way, your post urls will include the title of your posts, which makes more sense to the GoogleBot when indexing your content.
I found that this step was as simple as that on WordPress 2.1, but you might also get a warning message saying that you have to update your .htaccess file. This requires a bit more tweaking then to get it right, but the guys over at Tubetorial give you the fix.
Favicon
A favicon is the small pic located on the browser tabs that go along with the blog’s urls. This is a way for your blog to stand out more - and it doesn’t take much of your time. You can find premade favicons from the web, but to have one that matches with your blog design, just create a 16×16 bmp or png file on paint as I did. You then need to use a separate icon converting program to save it as an .ico file that the browser understands. I suggest @icon sushi. Next, put/upload the favicon.ico to the blog’s root directory and see if it works. If not, then add the following code under the head tag in the header.php file and it should do the trick. (Add the tags)
link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://www.yourblog.com/favicon.ico”
link rel=”icon” href=”http://www.ourblog.com/favicon.ico”
Style.css & php files
When you start playing around with these files, you’ll be glad you’ve got yourself an offline version of your blog. When it comes to altering these, it’s all up to your own taste of how much you want to change - as well as learn in the process. For the past two weeks I’ve been working on a new project (which has taken away time to update on this blog) and it’s been an invaluable experience. DIY is cheap and you gradually learn the ins and outs of what’s possible to do, but on the downside, it takes a lot of time compared to paying someone else to do the job for you.
Your first blog may never reach perfection, but it’s all about gaining the knowledge and experience to eventually reach more optimal results, so stick to figuring out at least the basics of the code that creates the blog you see in order to grasp the future possibilities. I’m in a bit of a crossroad at the moment on where I should focus my effort, but I’ll keep you all updated on a reasonable frequency.
Checklist for step 4 - design & tweaks
- Permalinks - Change the structure for better SEO
- Favicon - Create one to stand out more
- CSS & PHP - Familiarize yourself to the basics (and beyond)
- Insert images or videos - interactive content can spice up your blog.
In the fifth step of this “tutorial” (Friday, March 2nd), we’ll be tapping into utilities provided by Google to get more out of your blog’s performance.
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(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
How to Blog - 3/8 Plugins February 19, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Productivity, Technology, Blogging , 11 comments
The third step is to use appropriate and effective plugins on your blog. This is neither a top list nor a required list where you need to use them all. It serves more of as an introduction to plugins that show what kind of functionality and accessibility your blog may lack if not used. There’s a lot of variation to be found when you want a certain kind of key functionality to your blog - the differences are then found in the instalment, use and appearance. WordPress comes with a few plugins to start with and Akismet is a plugin that you should definitely use.
All links are to the plugin homepages and they all come with guides on how to install and use them, so there’s no point that I retype what’s already found documented elsewhere. The standard deal is to download and extract the files to the plugin directory. Then you just go to the plugins menu in your administration panel and activate the plugins. But it’s always recommended that you first read the instructions found on each plugin homepage or the install or read me file that comes with the plugin. Some are more tricky to install than just to activate and some add their sub-menu to the options panel where you do the plugin tweaking.
Adsense-Deluxe
I like this plugin not only because it automates the insertion of Google AdSense ads, but also because you can use it to automate any code you want to add to a post with a simpler maneuver. It adds a sub-menu to the options menu where you name a new code block and enter the full code in a box. The plugin then generates a tag that you insert in the post.
Brian’s Threaded Comments
This plugin adds the option of replying to a single comment so that it’s clear to whom you’re responding as it boxes in the previous comment in yours. I didn’t get this plugin to work, but there’s another plugin for the job as well, called the Quoter that is presented later on.
Category Replacement Widget
The Category replacement widget lets you change the category view in the sidebar into a drop down bar as presented in the sidebar of my blog. You need the sidebar widget plugin to use this.
Clean Archives Reloaded
This plugin is found in action on the Archives page and includes the dates and comment counts automatically. Since the latest WordPress upgrade, it also includes the pages you create, but this should be fixed in the next plugin update.
Comment Karma
If you want to add the option of voting a + or a - to other people’s comments, this plugin comes in handy. It’s a bit tricky to install, but works fine when you get the hang of it.
Contact Form ][
This plugin displays the contact form found in the page and may need some fine tuning to get it to show up as you want it to. This way you’re less prone to get spam mail since your e-mail address remains hidden.
Count_posts
Count_posts is a really simple plugin. It displays the total amount of posts you’ve published, as shown at the bottom of the Archives page. It just displays the number, so you’re free to add any text you want just by typing it out on the page.
Digg This
Digg This displays a similar button on your post that can be found on the Digg website to the left of the link headlines. It won’t show up until at least two people have dugg your entry and the plugin generates an e-mail to you notifying that this has happened. The downside is that you can’t really test if the plugin works or how it shows up until you’ve got dugg. Here’s what it looks like. You can also enter the code in the index.php file instead of the suggested post.php.
Drop-down Archive Widget
This plugin shows up the same way as the category replacement widget as found on the sidebar, but it doesn’t require you to have the sidebar widget plugin to use it.
Feedburner Feed Replacement
You need to have a Feedburner feed to use this plugin. It’s a simple install and it boosts your feed count number because it taps into many sources that feedburner statistics doesn’t automatically count in, like Firefox Live Bookmarks.
Google Sitemaps
This plugin is part of the Google utilities entry I’ll post next week. It generates an XML sitemap of your blog so that Google can index it for better targeting.
MyAvatars
A simple plugin that checks if a comment poster is registered to MyBlogLog and then places their picture/avatar in the comment box.
Quoter
Quoter functions like the quote button in forum posts. A blog reader can also highlight a text from your entry and by the click of a link, quote the text and reply to it in the comments. It’s a bit tougher to install than most plugins, but I got it to function properly. I might install it on this blog.
Related Entries
This plugin is found in action at the bottom of this post, below the ad banner. It’s a great plugin since it gives the reader some place to go after reading a blog entry. You can’t keep all new readers, but this plugin helps a bit.
Sidebar Widgets
This is a pretty basic plugin as it enables the widgetizing of your sidebar. It comes with its own menu where you drag, drop and order your widgets as you want to them to be displayed.
Subscribe To Comments
Subscribe to comments simply adds the check box way down where a reader enters a comment. It adds a stickiness to the blog as it sends an e-mail whenever someone else has replied to a user’s comment.
Ultimate Tag Warrior
I personally don’t use this plugin, but it’s great to add tags to your posts. There are a few other plugins that go hand in hand with it too.
WP-PostRatings
This is the rating plugin I use for people to vote on my posts and also to display them on each of the four pages in an descending order. It’s a nifty plugin, but don’t rely on people using it actively because only a very small fraction will. It took me over two months to get my first rating, and now I’m at 68.
WP-PostViews
The WP-PostViews plugin is only visible to the blog admin. It shows how many times a post has been viewed when you go in to edit/manage a post. It comes in handy if you want to see which posts fare well on your blog.
WP Category Posts
I’m using this plugin in the Categories page, but it requires you to manually enter each category to the page to make it display as it does there. The post count is automatic though.
I’m happy to include more plugins that anyone suggests, and although I’m not an expert at using them, I’ll do my best in helping out how to get them to work if the plugin homepages don’t provide sufficient info. There’s no checklist for this step. Just try installing any plugins in your offline blog that seem interesting and delete the ones that you don’t end up using to avoid clutter. There are lots of plugins to be found at the WordPress plugin database link directory.
In the fourth step of this “tutorial” (Friday, February the 23rd), we’ll be changing permalinks for better search engine optimization, looking into css and html tweaking and how to add more media rich content to spice up the blog appearance.
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