function donate_shortcode( $atts ) {
extract(shortcode_atts(array(
'text' => 'Make a donation',
'account' => 'REPLACE ME',
'for' => '',
), $atts));

global $post;

if (!$for) $for = str_replace(" "," ",$post->post_title);

return '<a class="donateLink" href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&amp;business='.$account.'&amp;item_name=Donation for '.$for.'">'.$text.'</a>';

}
add_shortcode('donate', 'donate_shortcode');

You can replace the text with your own and also replace the account section with your PayPal email address. Now when you’re writing a page or post, you can add the shortcode:

[donate]

You’ll get a link automatically added to your post, as shown below:

Source: ThemeForest.net

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Set Up Your Membership Site in Minutes!

Let’s start with a simple example of building a site that offers downloads for users who purchase a subscription. This process is the same, whether you’re using WordPress single user, Multisite or BuddyPress. This process is also very similar for creating a members-only support area for your clients or customers to access, or a members-only news site. When you’re using the Membership plugin to build a simple members site, everything you need for customizing it should be available through the drag and drop dashboard interface.

Step 1: Download and Install Membership Lite

Activate the plugin. When you go to the Membership menus you’ll notice that it is deactivated by default. You’ll want to leave it this way until you’ve configured your options.

Step 2: Create a Membership Level for Access to Content

Go to Membership >> Edit Levels and create a new one for your members-only content.

Depending on where the content is that you want to restrict, you’ll basically just drag and drop rules into the Positive rules section.

You may discover that you need to organize your content a little bit. If you have downloads located in posts only, make sure that they all share a set category, such as “downloads” or “members.” Another option is to put the content you want to restrict only on certain pages. You could also restrict an entire menu of downloads, so that a whole row of menu items are available for members who have access to downloads.

The most secure way to restrict downloadable content to members would be to drag and drop downloads into the positive rules and create restricted groups within your media library. First go to Membership >> Edit Options and scroll down to Downloads/Media Protection. Add as many groups names as you wish and click save. Now, each item in the media library will have a dropdown box containing the groups you’ve created. Assign the item to a “Protected content group” and they will not be available to normal users. Go back to your membership level and make sure all these groups are checked.

If you already have a lot of content, then organizing it may take the most time. If your content is already well-categorized, paged, grouped, etc, then assigning the positive rules should only take you a minute or two to complete.

Step 3: Activate the Membership Level You Created

This step is fairly easy to miss, but very necessary. Go to Edit Levels and activate the level you created, as shown below:

Step 4: Assign the Stranger Level in Membership >> Edit Options Panel

The stranger level refers to a visitor to your website who is either not logged in or does not have an active membership or subscription to your website. You’ll need to create a level for strangers or they will not have access to any content whatsoever.

Step 5: Create a New Subscription

Go to Edit Subscriptions and create a new one. Drag and drop your membership level into the subscription and then set the mode, period, and price. Click save!

Step 6: Add Subscriptions to Your Registration Page

You can do this by using the shortcode included with the plugin and assigning the page where you place it. That way, you’ll be able to get users assigned to the correct subscription at registration. In this case, the Membership plugin will handle your registration form.

Step 7: Make Sure to Enable the Membership Plugin in the Membership Dashboard

This turns everything on so that you can smoothly incorporate your membership options after all of your settings have been customized for your website.

Making the Most of the Membership Plugin:

1. Create a “No Access” page, which you can set for the users to see if they have not purchased a membership. Consider this page a powerful sales opportunity to present the option of membership.

2. Make sure to set up a strong Registration page. When you use the shortcode to add subscriptions to the registration page, you will have the opportunity to further sell your memberships on this page.

As you can see, it’s fairly easy to set up a simple membership site. You can probably do it in under ten minutes. What takes the most time is figuring out how you want to structure your content access, given the unlimited number of options available with this plugin!

For more information on the specifics of these steps, please refer to the Membership plugin installation guide. Professional support is available for this powerful plugin when you purchase the Pro version, as well as unlimited membership and subscription levels, and a large number of BuddyPress integration options.

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A new plugin called Get Post Image is packed full of special effects that you can use in your WordPress theme, including thumbnailing, formatting, masks, and logo insertion, and many more advanced features. Get Post Image is a wrapper for Get The Image WordPress plugin and phpThumb library. It’s easy one to overlook in the repository, because it has a simple name and no screenshots. However, if you visit the plugin’s homepage, you can see all of the exciting options it offers.

Some of the most impressive features include automatic saturation, brightness, and color adjustments, horizontal and vertical flipping, rounded corners, drop shadows, rotation and watermarking.

For example, let’s say you want to have all of your theme’s post thumbnails be rounded, you can add this using a simple tag:

<?php get_post_image ('w=200&amp;zc=1&amp;fltr[]=ric|100|100'); ?>

You can actually display images of any shape by creating a mask and referencing it in your tag, which would result in something like this:

Create a Shape Mask

The end result

<?php get_post_image ('w=200&amp;zc=1&amp;fltr[]=mask|'.STYLESHEETPATH.'/images/camel-logo-bw.png&amp;f=png'); ?>

How to Get Special Effects on Post Images

Step 1: Download and install Get The Image Plugin

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-the-image

Step 2: Download and install Get Post Image Plugin

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-post-image/

Step 3: Add the Tags to Your Theme

This plugin works mainly around the get_post_image() function and it must be used inside the loop.

Depending on what kind of effects you want to use, you’ll need to grab a tag similar to the examples in this post or create your own. You can see example tags at the plugin’s homepage. There are also many more examples on phpThumb Demo page. Use your imagination to make your WordPress theme stand out and have fun!

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Why allow users to authenticate with Google?

A quick look at the overall numbers will demonstrate the benefits of including Google login options on your site:

Many Google users are already logged into Google services when they visit your site, so when they see the friendly Google icon, logging in feels convenient. This causes the user to be far more likely to comment and interact with your content.

Depending on what kind of site you have, you may find that your visitors prefer to log in with one 3rd party service over another. This is an important consideration. For example, in general the numbers seem to show that if you’re running a news media site, then Yahoo or Facebook login options might server you better.

If you’re not sure how your visitors would prefer to log in, you might consider offering a poll. Based on the results you receive, you’ll be able to select a plugin accordingly. Most general WordPress sites will benefit from following the steps below, to let users authenticate with their Google IDs.

Step 1: Install the FriendConnect Login Plugin and configure it at Settings >> FriendConnect Login

You can download this plugin from the WordPress repository. You’ll need to get a Google Connect Site ID, if you don’t already have one. Paste that into your settings and check the boxes that suite your site’s needs. I recommend not using the plugin’s default CSS, as the wrapper included with it may mess up your theme.

Step 2: Add Buttons to your theme as necessary.

The FriendConnect Login plugin comes with a template tag that you can add wherever you want to place the Google login button:

<?php if (function_exists('gfc_profile')) {gfc_profile();} ?>

Add it to your sidebar.php, comments.php, header.php or wherever you want to show the login button. The FriendConnect Login plugin provides you with a conditional logout snippet as well, that will distinguish user type and generate logout and profile links appropriately. You can find that code in the installation instructions, as well as the dashboard settings.

This plugin’s compatibility with BuddyPress is a bit spotty right now. Yes, it works to authenticate users and create a new account. However, avatars are not carried over and the username created is a very long number, which is problematic in BuddyPress. I wouldn’t recommend this plugin for use with BuddyPress in its current state but if the username issue can get sorted out, it may be a decent addition to your site.

The FriendConnect Login plugin will help you to get more comments and interaction with your blog posts. Plus, you’ll keep the Google junkies happy. Win win.

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What is Google Places?

Formerly known as Google Local Business Center, the new Place Pages help people who are searching to make more informed decisions about where to go.  Google lists everything  from restaurants and hotels to dry cleaners and bike shops, as well as non-business places like museums, schools and parks.

Place Pages connect people to information from the best sources across the web, displaying photos, reviews and essential facts, as well as real-time updates and offers from business owners.

Step 1: Go to Google Places and click “List Your Business”

If you have more than 10 business listings you can add them quickly using the bulk upload feature. They make this as easy as possible for you.

Step 2: Check to see if your business has already been picked up by Google Places.

Simply type in your phone number on the first registration screen and see if it matches correctly with your business number and location. If it matches, then you can go ahead and edit your existing listing. If not, you’ll want to create a new listing and make sure you’re signed in with the Google account that you want to use.

Step 3: Follow the steps that Google guides you through.

Enter all of your basic information, add categories that apply to your business, hours operation, payment options, photos, videos, and any additional details you want potential customers to know about.

Step 4: Get your listing verified.

Google will call you to verify your listing, so have your phone handy. Otherwise you can verify via SMS or postcard. It shouldn’t take more than 12 hours for your listing to appear. Now you can track how your business listing is performing on Google with a personalized dashboard within Google Places. It includes data about how many times people have found your business on Google.

Want more free ways to promote your business and boost your SEO? Check out our tutorial series:

• This Just In: New Google XML Sitemap Plugin Supports WordPress Multisite
• Discover Your Hidden Market by Analyzing Google Top Search Queries
• The Quick Start Guide to Using Google Webmaster Tools With WordPress

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Here’s how you can customize your WordPress login with your own logo in under a minute. Simply add this to your theme’s functions.php file:

function my_custom_login_logo() {
echo '<style type="text/css">
h1 a { background-image:url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/logo.png) !important; }
</style>';
}
add_action('login_head', 'my_custom_login_logo');

Replace the logo.png with your filename and make sure to drop the file in your theme’s images directory.

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add_custom_background();

Save that and you’ll get Backgrounds added to the Dashboard >> Appearance menu, as shown here.

This will allow you or others using the theme to easily upload a background image and/or set a background color through the WordPress dashboard:

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add_custom_background();

Save that and you’ll get Backgrounds added to the Dashboard >> Appearance menu, as shown here.

This will allow you or others using the theme to easily upload a background image and/or set a background color through the WordPress dashboard:

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• The total number of Google Web Search queries that returned pages from your site results over the given period.
• The top search queries that returned pages from your site.
• Impressions: The number of times pages from your site were viewed in search results.
• Clicks: The number of times your site’s listing was clicked in search results for a particular query.
• CTR (clickthrough rate): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click to your site.

3 Steps to Maximize Your Google Search Query Traffic and Increase Your Clickthrough Rate

If you don’t have access to Google Webmaster Tools, it’s very easy to set up. Follow our Quick Start Guide to Using Google Webmaster Tools With WordPress and you can activate the free service in under two minutes. Make sure you’re also hooked up to Google Analytics. You’ll now have access to information that will help you to discover what people are looking for when they find your website.

Step 1. Use Google Webmaster Tools to find out what queries are resulting in traffic to your website.

Immediately when you sign into your account you will see your top search queries in the dashboard. Click on “more” just underneath the queries to see a full detailed graph. You’ll be able to sort your traffic by country, date, and search types.

Make note of the impressions (number of times your page is viewed in search results) vs. clicks (number of times your page was clicked for that query).

Step 2. Sift the Data for Valuable Information.

Don’t worry. You won’t need to be an SEO expert to analyze this data. Here’s what a sample looks like:

So, let’s say you’ve got 4600 impressions due to people searching for “lollipop candy” and a 3% clickthrough rate. That’s great if you’re a candy supplier, but it’s not so hot if you’re an investment banking firm who happened to use a lollipop image in a blog post. You can disregard that information, even though it’s brought you a bit of traffic.

Focus on the queries that are the most relevant to your industry, even if they’re not exactly what you’ve determined to be your main focus. For example, you’re operating a store that sells bags, shoes, and other accessories but you’re getting loads of traffic from the query “matching eyeshadow”. If you can find a way to relate this to your industry, then you may have found a small gold mine.

Step 3: Actively promote products and content related to your most relevant top search queries.

• Write more content to establish your business as an industry expert. If your site is getting tons of search queries from terms that your’re not currently focusing on, it may be time to change your focus. Give that hidden market a reason to stay, click through and buy your brand by focusing more on offering what your users are going to your site to find.
• Feature products that are relevant to what people are searching for. There is only so much real estate on your front page but a good look at your queries will tell you exactly what is driving buyers to your catalog of products and services.
• Consider adding new products that may be accessories to your main product line. If your site has solid search engine positioning and a decent clickthrough rate for items related to your main line, it may be profitable to expand your offerings into related areas.

Conclusion:

Google’s top search query results can help you to formulate an aggressive strategy to increase your clickthroughs and bump up your sales with a few tweaks. A thoughtful combination of content creation, product selection and placement will not only improve your traffic but should also make your site more focused and keep you competitive. Reconsider your site’s focus and your social media strategy. Is your content descriptive of the top queries that are leading potential customers to your website? Or is there a possibility that your top sales demographic may be lurking just beneath the surface? Take a little time today to check out your top search queries and see if you can’t find a hidden market just waiting to be tapped.

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Step 1: Check with your host to make sure that your account fulfills the technical requirements for a Multisite network.

If your account is not equipped to run multisite, then your host may have disabled the functionality from running, which will result in errors. Check with your host to see if you need to upgrade your account.

Step 2: Inspect your wp-config.php file.

Check wp-config.php for the following:

• correct database details
• SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL constant
• MULTISITE constant
• $base variable
• table prefix

If you have any code after this line, then it needs to be moved up above the “stop editing line”:

require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');

Step 3: Check your database.

Check to make sure that all of the extra network tables have been created:

• wp_blogs
• wp_blog_versions
• wp_registration_log
• wp_signups
• wp_site
• wp_sitemeta

For a complete overview and description of all Multisite database tables, check out the breakdown in the WordPress codex.

Another unusual reason that site creation might stop working on your network is that the location of the database server may have changed. In that case you’ll need to update your wp-config.php file. After covering all these bases, then you’re sure to hit the forums with the full knowledge that you’ve done a thorough check through all the usual suspects.

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