Daily Tip: Create Your Own Social Bookmarking Site With WordPress

The surest way to build a community around your WordPress blog is to allow as much input from your readers as possible. Make them feel like they’re part of the process – not just members of the audience.

Stuck for ideas on how to make your blog more interactive and user-focused? How about letting readers submit their own content and vote on the stuff the like?

With a couple of plugins, you can quite easily transform your blog into a mini-social bookmarking site, in the style of Digg or Reddit. You’ll need two basic components to put this into action:

1. Front end posting

You need to make it as simple as possible for people to submit content to your site. This means front end posting: allowing your readers to contribute to your blog without having access to your dashboard.

Check out this list of 8 WordPress plugins that enable front end posting, and decide which one best suits your own requirements.

2. Post voting

The second ingredient in your social bookmarking experiment is post voting functionality. You need to give your readers the ability to rate content on your site.

The Post Voting Plugin from WPMU DEV adds a sleek ‘thumbs up/thumbs down’ voting button to your blog posts.

You can also add a ‘top voted articles’ widget to your WordPress site, which allows readers to see the most popular content, as chosen by your audience.

On the back end, you can view a range of voting statistics and see how different posts have fared in the long term.

Get content and get votes – that’s really all you need to create your own little piece of the social bookmarking movement.

Have you implemented something like this on your own WordPress site? If so, we’d love to hear about it. Leave us a comment below.

_{Images credits: Community and Vote from Bigstockphoto.}

Daily Tip: Protect Your WordPress Site With The AntiVirus Plugin

Falling victim to a malicious WordPress attack can really spoil your day.

Keeping your site safe and secure is of paramount importance, especially if you’re starting to get greater amounts of traffic.

Just like you run an antivirus program on your computer to keep it safe, you can install a plugin that performs the same task on your WordPress installation.

For a basic low-maintenance solution, check out the AntiVirus for WordPress plugin, written by Sergej Müller.

The plugin offers a one-click scanning option, which checks all of your template files for malware and viruses, and alerts you if anything suspicious is discovered. There’s also an automatic daily scan function, which allows you to ‘set and forget’.

There are plenty of security plugins available for WordPress – check out the Plugin Directory if you’re looking for an alternative solution. For further info, have a read of these important tips on securing your WordPress site.

Are you using an antivirus plugin on your WordPress site? Let us know about your experiences.

_{Image credit: Virus Alert from Bigstockphoto.}

Automatically Send a Thank You Email to Your Site’s Commenters

 Interaction is the Name of the Game

Interaction is pretty much the name of the game on the web. You want people to interact with you, and you especially want them to interact with your content – reading it, sharing it, blogging about it, commenting on it, etc.

I doubt there are many who would disagree with that. But sometimes it’s easy to forget that interaction is a two way street. The more you interact with your visitors, the more they will interact with you.

One way that may help this process of interaction is to automate parts of it where possible. And this exactly what the Thank Me Later plugin does.

Thank Me Later lets you automatically send an email to anyone who has left a comment on your blog. And while this idea might seem like a half step in the direction of spam, the plugin’s useful options allow you to control things such as when the message goes out, what’s in it, how often a message can go out to the same user, and whether you will send messages to users that are not logged in or not. You can also automatically include an opt out link.

Take a look at a few of the plugin’s options:

Tips for Using this Plugin

While the main idea behind the plugin in is to ostensibly say thank you, the ability to control the message lets you include whatever you would like in the email.

Here are a few possibilities:

1. Include a few links to some of your more popular content.
2. Include links to bonus material not available to most users. Let them know they are receiving this because they left a comment.
3. Include discount / sales info. (Again, possibly not publicly available to others.)
4. Ask them to follow you in social media spaces such as Facebook and Twitter.
5. Ask them to provide feedback on other topics. Remember, these are people who have already  voluntarily engaged with your site. They are more likely to give you feedback than your overall user base.

You can find the Thank Me Later plugin here.

Photo: Thank You Post It Note from Bigstock

Daily Tip: Search WordPress Blogs With Ease

Have you ever come across a popular WordPress blog that still uses the standard WordPress search widget? If you have, then you have no doubt been frustrated by the results.

For those of you who don’t know, the standard search widget in WordPress returns any post that features your keyword, in reverse chronological order. It also displays the first 55 words in the post, as opposed to an excerpt highlighting the term you are searching for.

If you are trying to find something specific that was published a year ago, you may have to trawl through pages of results before you find what you want – despite it being the most relevant result. And if you are simply entering a search term in the hope that you will be presented with the most relevant content, you’re out of luck.

Google To The Rescue

Luckily, there is a very simple way of getting around this – our old friend Google.

Simply head over to everyone’s favorite search engine and type the following into the search box:

inurl:http://www.theblog.com/ + search term

Let me give you an example of this in action. I am a big fan of the Smart Passive Income blog, and the fact that such a popular blog still uses the standard WordPress search widget is a bit gob-smacking. Seriously – consider my gob well and truly smacked.

Pat (the owner of the blog) published an extremely popular post about a year ago: THE Backlinking Strategy That Works. If all were good in the world, a search on the term “backlinking” in his blog would return that post near to or at the top of the results. Let’s see:

Not in the top 3 results. Not on the first page actually. I eventually found it half way down page 4. Not only that, the top three results have very little to teach you about backlinking. In terms of increasing engagement by returning relevant search results, this blog is failing in a big way.

Now let’s use our clever little search query in Google to see what we get.

inurl:http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/ + backlinking

Ta da! What I would consider the most relevant result is second in Google’s rankings.

This method is obviously also great if a blog doesn’t have a search box at all (I’m looking at you, Social Triggers).

What About YOUR Blog’s Search?

Are you still using the dreaded standard WordPress search? It’s time for a change! Stay tuned for an in-depth guide on your best options.

Creative commons image courtesy of dullhunk

4 More Things You Should Remove From WordPress

First up, a big thank you to everyone who weighed in on the discussion on our last article and offered suggestions on things that can/should be removed from WordPress. There were some interesting ideas thrown about, so I thought we’d follow this up with a sequel.

So on with the show. Here are four more things that you can remove from WordPress – for a cleaner, faster and healthier website.

1. Post revisions

When you’re writing a page or post, WordPress automatically saves revisions of your work, so you can access a previous version of your content if necessary.

Some people make heavy use of WordPress revisions, but a majority of bloggers and site owners have no need for them at all.

You can free up a lot of space on your WordPress database by getting rid of old revisions and controlling the number of new ones that get created. The easiest way to do this with the Revision Control plugin or something similar.

2. The theme editor submenu

This one is particularly important if you’re a WordPress developer who creates self-managed websites for non-WP folk. The last thing you want is an unsuspecting client stumbling into the theme editor and accidentally destroying the site you’ve built for them.

The easiest way to avoid this scenario is to simply remove the theme editor from the dashboard altogether.

This is a topic we’ve covered previously at WPMU. Check out this article for instructions on how it’s done.

3. Unnecessary code

Depending on what you’re using your WordPress site for, you don’t necessarily need all of the code that is included by default.

Unnecessary code can clutter your WordPress site and drag down your page loading times. So it’s a good idea to clean house once in awhile and get rid of anything you don’t actually need for your site to work properly.

You can check out a couple of interesting articles here and here for suggestions on removing unnecessary code from WordPress.

4. Comments on pages

If you’re using WordPress as a CMS, for a small business website or something like that, it’s usually a good idea to disable comments on the static pages of your site. You don’t really want site visitors leaving comments on your ‘About Us’ or ‘Contact Us’ pages – it looks pretty weird.

Most people want to disable comments on static pages but keep them on blog posts. To do this, you’ll need to get into the page.php file of your WordPress theme. Find the following line of code, and delete it:

<?php comments_template(); ?>

This removes the comments option from the static pages of your WordPress site.

Are we missing something?

If you’ve got any more suggestions for slimming down WordPress that weren’t included in this article or the previous one, please leave a comment below and let us know.

_{Image credits: Stack of Documents, Male Comment Icon, Blue glowing source code and Delete Button from Bigstockphoto.}

WordPress Quiz: Style Sheets, Inactive Widgets, Child Themes

Quiz Questions 1-3

1. What is the file name of the main style sheet in a WordPress theme?

2. How can you remove a widget but save the settings of the widget for future use?

3. What is a child theme?

SEE ANSWERS BELOW

1. What is the file name of the main style sheet in a WordPress theme?

Answer: style.css

(Appearance >> Editor >> style.css)

(Difficulty – Easy: 2/10)

2. How can you remove a widget but save the settings on the widget for future use?

Answer: Drag it into the Inactive Widgets section at the bottom of the Widgets page.

Difficulty – Medium: 6/10

3. What is a child theme?

Answer: From the WordPress Codex Child Theme Page: “A WordPress child theme is a theme that inherits the functionality of another theme, called the parent theme, and allows you to modify, or add to, the functionality of that parent theme.”

Difficulty – Medium/Hard: 7.5/10

(Photo: Educational theme: portrait of an attractive teacher from Bigstock. Thanks to theilr for the image.)

Top 22 WordPress Plugins – As Chosen By You

I don’t know about you, but I am a complete sucker for plugins. I just can’t help myself. I generally use far too many. And whilst plugins are enormously useful and can make our WordPress sites do all sorts of clever things, we all know that you should generally keep the number of plugins you use to as few a number as possible.

I tend to subscribe to the mantra that “if you can do it without a plugin, don’t use a plugin”. At the end of the day, site speed should be a big priority for any blogger, and keeping the number of plugins you use in check can help that.

With that thought in mind, I recently asked a question over at the WPMU DEV Facebook page. If you haven’t already “liked” us, be sure to head over there and get involved! That question was:

If you could only use one WordPress plugin, which would it be, and why?

And now for your delectation, I present to you (in no particular order) the full list.

1. BuddyPress

Chosen by Rob Vitalsine Kennedy

Where would so many of us be without one of the most popular plugins in WordPress history? BuddyPress allows you to build a social network on your WordPress blog from scratch. Not only that, it is completely free and open source. If you are at all interested in establishing some sort of community-based blog, BuddyPress is your best option, every time.

2. MarketPress

Chosen by Gary Wilmot & Montez Smith

eCommerce for your WordPress blog. ’nuff said. Check out this video for the full scoop:

3. Akismet

Chosen by Yatin Mulay and Tom Hermans

Many WordPress experts consider this to be the ultimate in spam protection – so much so, that it comes bundled with WordPress as standard. It attracts its share of controversy (here and here), and there are good alternatives (here and here), but Akismet remains the daddy, and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

4. W3 Total Cache

Chosen by Tomas Wantom

Not a particularly exciting plugin, but no less invaluable for that fact. W3 Total Cache, in a nutshell, makes your WordPress site load faster.

5. Contact Form 7

Chosen by Sean Vosler

The first of two contact form plugins on the list, Contact Form 7 is a completely free, one stop shop solution for your WordPress blog. I liked it enough to feature it alongside one other plugin in a recent post.

6. Gravity Forms

Chosen by Andrew Brown, Marc Saxe, Mohamed Hamad & Vincent Wondra

If you’re big on contact forms, you can’t do better than Gravity Forms. It’s not free, but once you install it, you’ll understand why.

7. All In One SEO Pack

Chosen by Wayne Latham

I’m not going to get drawn into a debate about which WordPress SEO plugin is the best, but there is no doubting the popularity of All In One SEO Pack. If your theme leaves little to be desired when it comes to SEO functionality, you won’t go wrong with this plugin.

8 – 10. Widget Logic, Display Widgets & Dynamic Widgets

Chosen by Steve Goerger, Alison Neale & Joanne Libby

In my opinion, the functionality of these plugins is definitely on the “should come bundled with WordPress as standard” list. What Widget Logic, Display Widgets, Dynamic Widgets do is simple yet effective – they allow you to choose on which pages widgets should appear.

11. Shopp

Chosen by Chris Kruse

The second (and last) eCommerce plugin on the list, this is an alternative to MarketPress, should that plugin not take your fancy.

12. Event Espresso

Chosen by Henry Lugo

This one is a little out of left field, but Event Espresso is a fully-featured event registration and ticketing solution for your WordPress blog. If you actually have a need for it, you can’t go wrong.

13 – 14. Shortcode Exec PHP & Exec PHP

Chosen by Timothy Russell & Steve Goerger

I have consolidated these two plugins under one title because I just can’t get that excited about what they do. That does not detract however from their usefulness – both plugins allow you to execute PHP code on your WordPress blog’s posts, pages, widgets, and so on.

For those struggling to choose between the two, Shortcode Exec PHP has less ratings and downloads, but is completely up to date. Exec PHP, despite having excellent ratings and hundreds of thousands of downloads, hasn’t been updated since 2009.

15. Pro Sites

Chosen by Mark De Scande

If you are looking into setting up your own blogging network, you can’t go wrong by using Pro Sites.

16. Hello Dolly

Chosen by Adam Broetje

A tongue in cheek suggestion, methinks? Hello Dolly is a completely useless plugin bundled as standard with WordPress, as you no doubt know.

17. Reset WordPress

Chosen by Marc Almedia

One for the developers out there. Reset WordPress, as you would imagine, completely resets your WordPress blog’s database to its default settings.

18. Portfolio Slideshow Pro

Chosen by Andrew Brown

This plugin allows you to add sexy image slideshows to your WordPress blog. If you’re not ready to shell out, do not fret – there is a free version.

19. Ultimate Facebook

Chosen by Alex Naula

Comprehensive WordPress + Facebook integration. Check out this video for the lowdown:

20. AVH Extended Categories Widgets

Chosen by Nick Corrieri

Another vote for “should be bundled with WordPress as standard”, this plugin gives you extended customization options for your categories widget (as you might expect).

21. Spectacu.la Page Widget

Chosen by Joanne Libby

This is a good’un. With Spectacu.la Page Widget, you can create a normal WordPress page and then output the content to a widget.

22. WP-Optimize

Chosen by Kamarul Aznam Amir

For those who don’t want to faff around with phpMyAdmin, this plugin allows you to optimize and clean up your WordPress site’s database.

What’s Missing?

Now I can’t take the blame, because you picked the list, not me! But there are definitely some notable plugins missing from the list. So let’s continue the list in the comments section – what are your favorite WordPress plugins?

Creative Commons images courtesy of Joelk75 and Biladay

Daily Tip: Monitor Your WordPress Stats From Your iPhone

Are you one of those narcissistic bloggers who has to check their stats every 15 minutes to see how popular they are? (Let’s be honest, we all are).

If you own an iPhone, you may be interested in the WordPress Mobile Statistics app for iOS.

This free app allows you to check the data from your WordPress.com stats plugin (now a part of the Jetpack plugin), saving you the hassle of accessing your full WordPress site from your mobile.

Before you can connect the app to your WordPress account, you’ll need to install the Jetpack plugin, if you’re not already using it.

You need to provide your Akismet API key to use this app (although it’s no longer required to use Jetpack). If you don’t have an API key, you can register for one here. Or if you’ve already got a key that you’ve misplaced, you can retrieve it here.

The app also needs your blog ID, which you can find by following these instructions:

• Go to your ‘Site Stats’ in the top left corner of the WordPress dashboard
• On your stats screen, click on either ‘Referrers’ or ‘Top Posts & Pages’
• Look at your address bar and find the ‘blog=1234567′ text at the end of the URL. That number sequence is the Blog ID you need to use the app.

Once you’ve entered your API key and Blog ID, the app should connect to your WordPress.com-powered stats, and allow you to check your blog’s performance on the go.

Are you using the WordPress Mobile Statistics app on your iPhone? User reviews are always welcome – please leave a comment and let us know what you think about it.

_{Image credit: Use a Smartphone from Bigstockphoto.}

15 Lessons Learned From Organizing a WordCamp

I bet you didn’t know that I organized the first WordCamp in Sweden, in all of Scandinavia in fact, last year. WordCamp Stockholm 2010 was a nice little affair that featured an all night hack at a museum, a lot of awesome talks, and a live talkshow, among other things. I was pretty happy with how it turned out in the end, but things could have ended badly. When I – we really, it was a team effort  – tackle that beast again (which I will), it’ll be knowing this.

1. People tend to promise to do a lot, then fail deliver. A no brainer really, people talk, but this hit our event pretty hard and in the end we ended up doing everything ourselves.
2. Sponsors aren’t just bags of money. I knew this already of course, but with an event like this you really need to devote time and energy to your sponsors to make sure that everything gets done right, both by them and by the WordPress community.
3. Organizing an event with over 100 participants takes a lot of time and energy. ‘Nuff said.
4. When the caterer tells you that a cupcake is enough to keep the visitors sustained between lunch and dinner, know that he’s a lying bag of shit and should be spanked for it.
5. Museums are cool.
6. Museums housing the original Pirate Bay server, sporting a space exhibit, and having an entire hall dedicated to old machines are even cooler.
7. Unfortunately, just because it is a technical museum, that doesn’t mean they know jack about modern technology such as wifi networks and whatnot, and you need your internet fix in this business.
8. It is a good idea to print out the conference schedule and make it available, something that gets crucial when there’s no reliable internet for looking it up online between talks. Pro tip: Print the schedule on the back of the badge.
9. Logo contests can result in a pretty wicked logo.
10. When hacking all night long, make sure there are ample night snacks, not just sugar and candy.
11. Whisky with friends is nice. Whisky with friends of WordPress is even nicer.
12. Shared playlists are fun and dandy, but a lot of people have really bad taste in music. Especially late at night, I might add. But that’s OK, I went to bed to be able to manage the workshops the day after.
13. Speaking of workshops, when the key players in said workshops are tired after a night of hacking, things might get a bit lax.
14. When the event is over, the applause has died down, make sure you don’t have to clean up.
15. Did I mention that events like these are really hard work?

And no, you’re not allowed to make money organizing WordCamps. If you’re looking for the next big commercial conference around WordPress, call it something else. We did it for the Swedish WordPress community.

Did we make all these mistakes and assumptions? Of course not, but some of these things happened and that obviously affected the outcome of the event. We had a blast though.

I still consider WordCamp Stockholm 2010 to be the best Swedish WordCamp ever! That must mean we did something right, right? Right.

Space image by Malin Jonsson (CC), stage image by David Hall (CC)

Attention Web Geeks: Here’s Your Early Christmas Present

This is a bit of fun for the festive season.

24ways is an online advent calendar for anyone interested in web design and development. For each day of December leading up to Christmas, the site will deliver a new tidbit of useful web wisdom.

First up on the menu is a tutorial on creating custom font stacks with the unicode-range. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

They’ve been running this site every year since 2005, so you can browse through the archives at your leisure. Enjoy!

_{Image credit: Santa Claus from Bigstockphoto.}

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