Wordpress 2.5 Has Landed

The moment all Wordpress users been waiting for. After RC1 and RC2, the official copy is finally here. Grab yourself a copy of the latest Wordpress over at wordpress.org. In conjunction with the launch of Wordpress 2.5, the Wordpress site has too been revamp. Nicely done.

Hongkiat.com has been successfully upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. Everything were smooth, plugins all working so far. Make sure you keep a backup of the database and physical Wordpress files before you upgrade. Also to be on the safe side, deactivate plugins too.

You’ve Installed Wordpress, So What’s Next?

You’ve heard how good Wordpress is in terms of expandability, customization and you decided to give it a try. Installing a basic copy of Wordpress won’t take too long; but if you are looking for more stability, traffics, search engine optimization, etc, here’s few of my recommendation – The things you should do after installing Wordpress.

1. Get WordPress.com API Key, Activate Akismet

   

   Where: Settings -> Akismet Configuration

   In short, Akismet is a plugin (comes with Wordpress) that will intelligently get rid of all the unnecessary comment and trackback spams. In order for Akismet to work, you’ll need a Wordpress.com API Key. The key is free, but you’ll need to request for one and apply it on the Akismet plugin.

   Sign up with Wordpress, get Akismet Key.

2. Implement Permalinks

   

   Where: Settings -> Permalinks

   Referring to the image above, ‘Default’ is each how your blog post URL will look like. The ‘?=’ and numeric blog post ID does not make any sense to the search engine, so it’s better to change them to something more readable. Personally I’ll suggest Custom Structure and insert ‘/%postname%/‘. Here’s how your blog post URL will look like:

   http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/2008/06/25/sample-post/

3. Burn your feed with Feedburner

   

   Feedburner combines all different type of feeds into one, so your subscribers can subscribe to one regardless of it’s type. Feedburner also comes with a chiklet, allowing you to show off subscribers figures as well as promote subscription.

   Sign up with Feedburner

4. Read/Subscribe to WLTC

   

   weblogtoolscollection.com (WLTC) is where you should keep an eye on if you are particular about your Wordpress blog. These guys have the latest updates in terms of themes, plugins, tips and Wordpress News. There’s perhaps no where better to get everything about Wordpress on one website.

   Visit WLTC | Subscribe WLTC

5. Plugin – Related Content

   

   Related content plugin plays important role in helping you as the blogger, recommending what your readers should also be reading apart of the article they are on. You probably don’t need it now, but it’ll comes in handy when there’s more blog post. A plugin worth mention.

   Download Wordpress Related Content plugin

6. Plugin – Google XML Sitemap

   This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

   Download Google XML Sitemap

7. Add blog to Google Webmasters Tool

   Google Webmasters is a free Google service that allows you to:

   • Manage, view site statistics
   • Bot crawling activity
   • Diagnose site
   • Submit Sitemap
   • Monitor Google indexing

   In short, it allows you to manage the ‘health’ of your blog.

   Go to Google Webmaster Tool

8. Add About/Contact Page

   This allow your readers to understand more about who’s behind the writing. It helps increase trust worthy of a site.

30+ (More) Most Wanted Wordpress Tips, Tricks and Hacks

Most of the Wordpress blogs look more or less similar these days, to stand uniquely out from the rest, you have got to tweak it. And by tweaking, we mean really getting your hands dirty down on the blog theme and PHP codes. We’ve previously showcased more than 40 Wordpress tricks and hacks you can perform on your blog but we quickly realized there are still a lot of impressive Wordpress tricks, hacks and plugins out there that we thought are really great.

So as a sequel, here’s another 30+ Wordpress tricks and hack. If you are wondering how some bloggers add those cool functions, mods or displays on their Wordpress blog, be sure to run through our list. You might just find the solution in here.

More Wordpress related articles we’ve previously written:

• Most Wanted Wordpress tricks and hacks
• 49 Most downloaded Wordpress themes
• Wordpress themes for Video Blogging
• 16 Wordpress premium themes that don’t suck
• 20 Desktop blogging clients
• You’ve Installed Wordpress, So What’s Next?

Full list after jump.

1. Apple Flashy Accordion Sidebar

   Use the Accordion plugin in jQuery UI to create an Apple-alike Wordpress sidebar.

   

2. Adding Tabs to Sidebar

   Creating tabs on Wordpress sidebar with Yahoo! UI Library

   

3. Sidebar With Dynamic Contents

   Every blog visitor has different habits, but many tend to ignore sidebars because they are always the same. Mixing things up and keeping the contents of the sidebar relevant to the post can make them a bit more likely to be noticed.

4. Allow Users To Submit Blog Post

   This plugin allows you to add highly customisable forms to your website that allows non-registered users and/or subscribers (also configurable) to submit posts.

   

5. Paginated Comments

   Give you the ability to break your comments into a number of search engine optimized pages.

   

6. Image Caption

   Extracts the title or alt attribute from images within your blog post and generates a neat caption directly underneath those images. Supports custom CSS styling for captions.

   

7. Random Redirect

   Allows you to create a link to yourblog.example.com/?random which will redirect someone to a random post on your blog, in a StumbleUpon-like fashion.

8. Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress

   Easily integrates the Google Syntax Highlighter by Alex Gorbatchev into WordPress. Image below show how codes look like in Wordpress with Google Syntax Highlighter.

   

9. Facelift Image Replacement (FLIR) for Wordpress

   FLIR allows you to convert text and title into images (better display quality) on the fly without hassle. Now this FLIR Wordpress plugin make things even easier for bloggers.

10. del.icio.us for WordPress

    del.icio.us for WordPress displays your latest del.icio.us bookmarks in your WordPress blog.

11. Create Your Own PopURLs Within Wordpress

    Like the way how PopURL display contents? Now you can create similar inside Wordpress.

    

12. Exclude certain categories from being displayed

    2 ways to hide posts from certain categories to be displayed on the blog. You can either put this code inside the loop

    or you can use Advanced Category Excluder.

13. Another Date Image Hack

14. Create a calendar view of your article post date.

    

15. Styling Individual Posts

    Styling one post a little different from the rest with the use of the_ID.

16. How To Avoid Duplicate Posts

    Duplicated contents are pretty bad and they somehow affects how search engine weights your site. Here’s how you can avoid getting duplicated contents on your blog.

17. Wordpress ‘Page Redirect‘ template

    This template lets you specify a single URL as the page content, then as the page loads, the template automatically redirects the page to this new location, and that includes category or any tag pages you specify.

18. Delicious Save Buttons

    Add badges that encourage people to bookmark your website or blog

19. DesignFloat Buttons, Website & Blog Integration

    Give your website or blog visitors the option to submit your stories to Design Float and “Float” them

    

    

    Read here for more.

20. StumbleUpon Buttons & Tools

    Add a Stumble It! button to your site to make it easy for your visitors to submit your content to StumbleUpon.

    

21. Dynamic Highlight Menu

    This allows you to theme/style and control the currently selected menu tab in CSS by adding a class="current" on it.

    
    >Gallery
    >About
    >Submit
    
    

    Line 2:

    If Home, or Category, or Archive, or Search or Single page is selected, class="current" will be included in

22. Line 3,4:

    If Page with page slug about or submit is highlighted, class="current" is added.

    If you are looking at putting categories as menu tabs, here’s how to make the menu dynamic:

    
    >CSS
    >Showcase
    
    

    Line 2,3

    If category with category slug of css or showcase, class="current" is added.

23. DZone Buttons

    Let your website’s users vote for our links on DZone without leaving your site.

    

    

    More on DZone Buttons, Tools and Widgets

24. Reddit Buttons

    Similar to the rest, place a reddit button on your site to promote blog post.

    

    

    

    Source.

25. Archive that works

    Noura of Noupe.com shows various ways you can style your Wordpress Archive page. Techniques and guides includes:

    • Listing all Posts
    • Display monthly or Yearly Archive
    • Archives Ordered By Category

    Read this entry.

26. Add Breadcrumbs to Your WordPress Blog

    Breadcrumb trails are a good supplementary navigation system that aid in site usability. This plugin allows you to add breadcrumbs to your theme.

    

27. Landing Sites / Pages

    When visitors is referred to your site from a search engine, they are definitely looking for something specific – often they just roughly check the page they land on and then closes the window if what they are looking for isn’t there. Why not help them by showing them related posts to their search on your blog?

28. WordPress Exploit Scanner

    This WordPress plugin searches the files on your site for a few known strings sometimes used by hackers, and lists them with code fragments taken from the files. It also makes a few checks of the database, looking at the active_plugins blog option, the comments table, and the posts table.

29. Buy Me a Beer

    Allows your readers to donate money to you via PayPal. Not something new, but worth knowing.

    

30. Display Feedburner Subscriber Count In Text

    How to display feedburner subscriber count in text instead of using chiklets.

    

31. Notifixious – Notify Users via IM

    This plugin allows you to notify your readers on their Instant Messaging (AIM, MSN, GTalk, ICQ…), Email or SMS when you publish new posts.

32. Installing Xampp and WordPress

    Guide to setup Xampp and run Wordpress locally on your machine. You can also install plugins, upgrade to the latest nightly and virtually anything else confident in the knowledge that if it goes wrong, there is no impact on your actual site.

    

33. Create an Ajax-based Auto-completing Search Field

    Why not helping your visitors to find what they’re looking for on your blog, by using a cool auto-completion on your search field?

    

More Resources

• WordPress Theme Hacks | Web Designer Wall
• 4 Simple Ways To Speed Up WordPress | WPCandy
• Reset your lost WordPress administrator password | village-idiot
• Optimize Your WordPress Title | hackwordpress.com
• Huge Compilation of WordPress Code | hackwordpress.com
• Backing Up WordPress | Lorelle
• Buttons, Bows and Badges for Your Blog | Lorelle
• Optimizing Wordpress and LAMP to survive the Digg effect | vallery.net
• 5 Golden Tips For WordPress Performance Optimization | taragana