WordPress can be used in so many ways. Whether you need a standard blog platform or an easy way to do an old fashioned website, WordPress can deliver. Between the wealth of WordPress Themes, Plugins and Widgets available you can mix and match the tools to quickly create a website or blog. It is also a great way to Park a domain while you are developing the site, you can setup a home page, with enough information to get indexed in the search engines so that when the site goes live it is already indexed for the main topic.

And to clarify, I am talking about self hosted WordPress, not hosting on WordPress.com. Using WordPress.com to host a blog is certainly an easy way to get started. Personally I just can not see giving away an opportunity to build your own site and credibility in the search engines and social networks. Yes, that means there is a cost, but the cost is so low these days, if you are gonna step out and create something, make it yours.

Here a few links to tutorials and information on How To Use WordPress.

WordPress Tutorial – How to Install and Manage WordPress http://bit.ly/6qPO58 – Source http://www.siteground.com

Getting Started with WordPress « WordPress Codex http://bit.ly/5EZhRR – Source http://codex.wordpress.org

How to use WordPress as a Truly Customized CMS http://bit.ly/81U26Y – Source http://www.idesignstudios.com

Convert Static HTML Site to WordPress Easily http://bit.ly/8RKj34 – Source http://www.cybercoded.net

The one thing you need before you start is a copy of WordPress 2.7+ so you can copy some code. Just a little side tip here. Even though most of my sites and clients have one button install of WordPress, I keep a copy of each version that is released on a thumb drive with my other web stuff so I always have it handy. I also sync that thumb drive up to a hard drive in my office for backup!

Here are the steps to take to convert your comments to threaded comments as they appear here on my site.

• Copy \wp-content\themes\default\comments.php from WordPress 2.7+
• Copy \wp-content\themes\default\comments-popup.php from WordPress 2.7+
• Copy code from \wp-content\themes\default\header.php, and place in your header file.  <?php if ( is_singular() ) wp_enqueue_script( ‘comment-reply’ ); ?>
• Copy the Updated styling code from this great article by Chris Harrison

Turn off  ”says” :

That’s it, about a 5 minute process to convert to WP Threaded Comments on a WordPress blog. Pretty painless too. Big thanks to Chris Harrison for his excellent post on styling Threaded comments!

There is a very simple way to handle this issue.

Yes, there are plugins available that handle all kinds of issues with ads, however, I just wanted an easy way of dealing with it, so here is what I came up with.

Two lines of code and using Custom Fields does the trick,

First I wrap my ads on the single page with this code.

<?php
if (get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘ads’, true)) {
?>

AD CODE HERE

<?php
}
?>

This will cause ads to only show when there is a custom field named “ads” with a value of anything but 0. And once you have inserted the custom field you never have to add it again, just apply a value, and since this is a simple boolean expression, any value except 0 will cause the ads to display.

Examples:

No Ad : Weekly CyberCoder Tweets for 2008-11-30

With Ad : Online Residual Income

You could go the other way and have the default show the ad, or include a couple statements to change the ad location, color or anything else you could think of. This is just a simple solution for a specific need and I hope it helps someone.

If you want more options using basically the same technique I would highly recommend this tutorial, How To Automatically Disable Ads On Selected Posts In WordPress.

The first theme is just an Empty WordPress Theme. This may seem a little silly, but you would be surprised at how many people want this to learn from.

The second theme is a Minimal WordPress Theme that may not be the most beautiful theme you can find, but it is very functional and does very well on Niche sites where the primary focus is driving traffic from search engines and converting that traffic into income.

To catch this bug before it causes an unexpected problem you should check each plugin immediately after running an upgrade. Simply click the Edit button next to Deactivate, scroll to the very bottom of the file and make sure there is no whitespace at the end of the file. If there is whitespace, simply delete it, and save the plugin. See example images

If you do not check your plugins this bug can become a real pain. The main reason is that once it occurs you have no idea if it is in the WordPress PHP, Plugins or Theme files.

Reference Link : Search › xml parsing error

This post is being accomplished using the Post via Email options in WordPress 2.51

I am toying with lots of ideas where this could be very beneficial and I
plan on writing up a detailed post on how to set this up easily on a
Wordpress blog.

The first upgrade was to a very small blog with only 2 plugins, the second was to a larger blog that had several plugins installed. Both upgrades went smooth as silk.

The WordPress 2.5 dashboard and layout are totally different from anything WordPress has released before and it will take some getting used to. I did use the upgrade automatically option on a couple of the plugins and everything worked as expected.

One new feature I really like is the Tag management. As an example I had a tag that should have had a word capitalized that was not. I was able to modify the tag display with a couple clicks and then verify that it was corrected in my tag cloud.

So far WordPress 2.5 looks great and I will follow up with more data as I upgrade the rest of my blogs.

Based on the WordPress Template Hierarchy it is very easy to create an individual page for a tag. If you look at a Tag Cloud on a site you will notice that there are always tags that get mentioned more than others. These tags should represent the most popular topics for a site and taking advantage of the WordPress Tag Template can result in a focused marketing campaign for these given tags.

The WordPress Tag Template flows like this :

1. tag-slug.php
2. tag.php
3. archive.php
4. index.php

The first template is the key here. If you have a tag you would like to create a custom page for you can copy your tag.php to a new file named tag-slug.php and then modify that page to fit that tag.

Here is an example:

On MusicRamble.com we focus on Classic Rock music. The general tag page lists excerpts from articles for the given tag. Examples of the basic tag pages are George Harrison and Steve Winwood. If you compare those two pages you will notice they are basically the same design.

Now look at Eric Clapton. Notice the sidebars, they have been customized specifically for Eric Clapton. The left sidebar is loaded with products related specifically to Clapton. This has resulted in an increase of Amazon sales for Eric Clapton.

Here is how it was accomplished.

1. Copied the tag.php to tag-eric-clapton.php
2. Removed the call to the sidebars, get_sidebar()
3. Copied the contents of the sidebar.php file
4. Placed the copied code where the previous call to get_sidebars() was.
5. Moved all items in left sidebar to right sidebar
6. Placed the product links in the left sidebar.

The resulting custom tag page shows up in the file list on the WordPress -> Presentation -> Theme Editor menu so it is easy to work on. At any point if we decided not to use this page, all we have to do is delete it and the default tag.php will once again be used for this tag.

Are you getting the most out the WordPress Tag Template?

So here it is. CyberCoder Basic WordPress Theme (Zip File)

If you have any interest in learning to create new WordPress Themes I would highly recommend downloading this theme to play with. It is about as basic as you can possibly make a theme. One of the best ways to learn is to try a few things and see what happens. If you have the ability to setup a sub domain it makes it very easy to experiment with things like this.

I host on Dreamhost which allows me to have unlimited sites. Doing it this way allowed me to purchase and setup a couple domains just for the learning experience and I have never seen a better way to learn. And if you want to sign-up with Dreamhost use the Promo Code (CYBER30HOSTING) without parenthesis for $30 off of the One Year plan.

This Basic WordPress Theme has very little styling with a single sidebar on the right hand side. As usual I have set it up to be fluid width, which is just my personal preference. If you would like to see what it looks like I have it installed on CyberCoded.net as a test site.

Feel free to drop me a comment either here or on CyberCoded and let me know what you think.

So, how hard would this be?

It took about an hour to get it the way I wanted it. I am alternating the background color and the Adsense ads on each tag page. A good example is the Google Tag Page since it has a lot of posts.

Here is a summary of how I did this:

Create a loop counter. Right before the Loop begins set a variable to zero.

<?php
$x=0;
if (have_posts()) : ?>

At this point I would want the Background Color to change, insert code to test for an even number post, and if this is true, add an inline CSS style for the background that would override the stylesheet.

<?php if ($odd = $x%2){?>
<div style=”background-color:#404040;padding:10px 0px 10px 10px;”>
<?php }?>

Then, where the background color should return to the original state, run the same test for the even numbered post and close the div tag set by the Inline Style.

<?php if( $odd = $x%2 ){?>
</div>
<?php }?>

The final step is to add 1 to the counter for each post, which is done at the end of the loop.

<?php
$x++;
endwhile; ?>

Not sure if anyone else likes this style, but it sure seems to make the excerpts easier to read for me. Please let me know what you think ?