Website Managers

Archive for May, 2009

Each WordPress blog should be unique so it is set apart from all the others. There are literally thousands of WordPress themes available, both free and paid. What sets them apart is the the creativity you put into them. Graphics, colors and the photos you use all define what will ultimately be your unique blog.

WordPress themes used to take me 3 days to build. Lead capture pages took me several hours. Both required hard coding the changes, creating or modifying graphics, adjusting the style sheets and anything else the client wanted on their site. The Website Managers blog took me 3 days to code all the changes and get the graphics just right.

Lately I stumbled on Artisteer Theme Generator. After installing the program, looking through all the options and building a test template, I saw that all the manual coding was no longer necessary. Sure there may be some things that can use minor tweaks, like certian areas in the style sheet, but the bulk of the design is mostly point and click.

There are some areas that need improving, because when I chose certain colors or other options, the display converted to having no layout design at all. Clicking the undo button brought everything back into shape so I could choose another option, which turned out better for the site anyway. You can see my first live design at Stock Market Masters.

Using the Artisteer Theme Generator, you can design both blogs and lead capture pages. Each one takes me about an hour from start to finish.

It has been a long time since I got excited about a program and this one impressed me with how it has most of the controls I need to make unique designs, including using my own graphics. Keep in mind that Artisteer Theme Generator will design the template, not multiple pages. Once you design the template and put it on your site, activate it on your blog and the entire site will switch to the new theme. For static HTML sites, export the design to HTML and use a copy of it to design the other pages.

For blogs, there will still be some areas, such as footer links, to edit. Your widgets will all remain in place though, so there will be nothing to adjust in the sidebars.

You can also design templates for Joomla! and Drupal sites. Take a look at your own site, think about how often you wished you could find a better design, then go get the Artisteer Theme Generator and make one you will be happy with. Keep in mind that if you download the free trial, the words, “Free Trial” will be plastered all over the background and graphics. Upgrade to the full version and make a fully functional design for your site.

If you are wondering about whether I am going to change the design on this blog, the answer is not yet. I am happy with this one – so far. It is unique and has a lot of my own work in it. Go create a design that you can be proud of using Artisteer Theme Generator.

Watch Me Create a WordPress Theme in 8 Minutes!

The Wordpress Post Emailer (Post Announce) plugin by Worldwide Creations will allow you to notify users who subscribe to your blog when a new article is posted. The default method of adding it to your blog is not user friendly because it requires you to edit the PHP files.

The original instructions are:
1. Upload the post-announce.php file to your plugins directory.
2. Activate Plugin.
3. Change the settings in Options->Post Email Settings.
4. Somewhere in your template (i.e. sidebar.php) add this:

There is another way to do the last step though, using the Widgets in your WordPress Dashboard. Since most widgets will not execute PHP, you can use the form below as a text widget in your sidebar.

Remember to change the items in [square brackets] to yours and the message to entice visitors to subscribe.

<form action="http://[YOUR_URL]/wp-content/plugins/post-announce.php"
method="post">
<span style="font-size:9pt">Be the first to know when new
[ARTICLES, TIPS, ETC] are added.
[You can also use the RSS Feeds.] </span>
Email: <input name="EMAIL" type="text" />
<input name="action" type="hidden" value="subscribe" />
<input type="submit" value="Add Me!" />
</form>

Note that Post Announce is no longer supported. When you visit Worldwide Creations the link to download WordPress Post Emailer links to a plugin called Post Pinger, that updates the RSS feeds instead. You can still get Post Announce here, including the minor modifications we made and additional instructions.

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Jim Hutchinson has studied WordPress from both the user and technical angles and now teaches others how to build their website presence using WordPress. Visit Website Managers for more information on Blog Training
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Copyright © 2009 Website Managers, LLC. You may reprint this article providing that this copyright notice and resource links all remain intact.

One thing that bothers me when writing in WordPress is I am interrupted every 60 seconds while the software makes a backup copy of what I have done so far. On a fast connection you will barely notice it, if at all. There are times however, that something along the way slows things down for a while. That can happen anywhere and when it does, the delay disrupts my train of thought.

Other times when I am writing and see that I missed a valuable piece of information, I open a new browser tab and research the issue at hand. While I am gone, WordPress continues to save the document every minute. Each time it makes a copy, a new entry is made in the database. If you write frequently, you will eventually have hundreds or thousands of backup copies.

Having revisions is a good idea sometimes when you are doing things like forms, image alignments, or something out of the ordinary. You can save revisions by clicking the Save Draft button. Then you can have a list to reference in case something goes wrong.

There is no clear way of turning the autosave feature off, so I went hunting for answers. What I found were some good resources and options to turn the autosave off.

Some people will tell you to edit the post-new.php file inside the wp-admin folder and remove the line, wp_enqueue_script(‘autosave’); However, editing any file in that folder is not a good idea since it will be replaced when you update the WordPress core files.

Instead, there are teo methods to eaily stop WordPress from repeatedly saving your work. The first one is by editing the wp_settings.php file with a text editor. Be very careful with this option, since messing anything up in here will cause errors on your blog. Always keep a backup copy of your files before making changes so you can quickly and easily switch back if there are any unwanted issues.

Disable Autosave

1. Edit wp_settings.php
2. Search for: define( ‘AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL’, 60 );
3. Change to: define( ‘AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL’, 9999999 );

Disable Revisions

1. Edit wp_settings.php
2. Search for: $default_constants = array( ‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’ => true );
3. Change to: $default_constants = array( ‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’ => false );

Read comments posted by others on WordPress Support

Disable Autosave and Revisions using a plugin from Exper Chaotic Flow

Once you upload and activate it, nothing else needs to be done, since the confusing part is done for you. Sure it is another plugin to your growing list, but one that can be very useful.

Have you found another solution? Let us know.

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Jim Hutchinson has studied WordPress from both the user and technical angles and now teaches others how to build their website presence using WordPress. Visit Website Managers for more information on Blog Training
__________
Copyright © 2009 Website Managers, LLC. You may reprint this article providing that this copyright notice and resource links all remain intact.

Interlinking your blog can be the key to getting more people to read more of your posts, but it is time consuming and tedious to do it by hand. SEO Smart Links does this for you automatically when you tell it what words or phrases to link to what URLs. It also allows you to set “nofollow” and “open in window” commands for the links.

SEO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog. SEO Smart links allows you to set up your own keywords and set of matching URLs. It also lets you to set nofollow attribute and open links in new window.

Once you upload and activate SEO Smart Links, go into the settings and select your options. You will see a box to put your list of words and phrases that you want linked. You can combine multiple words and phrases on one line so they all lead to the same destination.

Adding the links is easy. Here is an example entry: word1,word2,phrase1,URL
For best results, avoid putting spaces before and after the words and URLs. If you already use the sh-autolink plugin, which only replaces single words, deactivate it and use SEO Smart Links exclusively.

I am very happy with this plugin, since adding, editing and removing links is so easy. Many others are posting their comments and getting help from both the author and other users by placing comments on the SEO Smart Links blog.