46 Best WordPress Tips and Tutorials of June 2011

XML Sitemap in the WordPress SEO plugin

by Joost de Valk
There have been some questions after the release last weekend of the new XML sitemaps implementation in WordPress SEO. Let me try to address most of those questions in one post as well as explain the ideas behind it.

Custom Post Type Snippets to make you smile

by Joost de Valk
So it’s friday, I’ve been coding all day and I thought I’d share some of the cool snippets I’ve come across and/or developed today. I’ve mostly been working with Custom Post Types and Taxonomies, so let me share some of that goodness.

Archive SEO: archive by topic, not by date

by Joost de Valk
Archives like this are, in my humble opinion, stupid and bad for your SEO. Let me explain why you should base your archives on topics and not on dates.

Social Buttons: Adding them to your site & Tracking them

by Joost de Valk
First of all I’m glad to see all of you noticing my social buttons section so much. Second, I’d love to share with you how I built this, because I actually made it load nice and fast too and would love for you to have that.

How to Integrate BuddyPress with WordPress Multi-site Seamlessly

by Kayla Knight
In today’s article, we’re going to look into how to transform a standard WordPress installation into a social network, by first installing WPMU, and then integrating it with Buddypress.

How to Get Rid of Unwanted WordPress Categories

by Briley Kenney
Unfortunately when using categories like so, they still show up on the blog or website in question. Because these extra categories end up being indexed, it leads to a very fragmented category listing. It also leads to unwanted categories displaying directly on the WordPress blog or website.

How To Publish RSS Exclusive Posts

by Briley Kenney
In an effort to boost RSS readers and subscribers it might be beneficial to sometimes release an RSS exclusive post that doesn’t show up on a blogs home page or in regularly scheduled postings.

Using Multidimensional Arrays with wp_localize_script

by Zack Tollman
Recently, I was working on a plugin that uses a custom post type to create Markers for Google Maps. Since interaction with Google Maps requires use of javascript, I needed to find a way to send post data and postmeta for the posts to be used in javascript to create Google Map Markers.

Plugin to Remove Comments Completely from WordPress

by Frank
Sure, you can just leave out the comment form while you creating a theme and disable the comment options in your backend. But this is not the best way for everyone. In such a case, I turn the comments off completely, making sure that the posts can not have that option and also remove the fields for the comments in the backend.

Publish Your Posts Later On Your Website

by Frank
I explained quite a while ago about publishing a feed with a certain delay. Of course you can do this also for your frontend. Thus, the content will be published to the reader only after a certain period of time. A little script as an example will show you how.

Load Next WordPress Posts With AJAX

by Michael Martin
Today, we’re going to replace the standard “Older Posts” links on your blog. Our plugin will create a button to instantly load the next page of posts, without reloading the page (Similar to what Twitter used to do at the bottom of profiles)

Validate Forms in WordPress with jQuery

by Michael Martin
This article will teach you how to add validation to your WordPress comment forms, using jQuery.

How to Embed PDF, Spreadsheet, and others in WordPress Blog Posts

by WPBeginner
In this article, we will show you how you can embed PDFs, Microsoft Word Documents, PowerPoint slides, Excel Spreadsheets, and other elements in your WordPress blog by using a plugin called Google Doc Embedder.

How to Add a Free LiveChat option in your WordPress Blog

by Tushar Tajane
I know, this is nothing new to many Internet users because thousands of websites selling products or services are already using live chat widget to be able to talk to their potential customers.

How to Add the Official Twitter Follow Button in WordPress

by WPBeginner
You are probably wondering what the heck is this twitter follow button? What is different in the Twitter follow button, and the smart follow button? Don’t worry, in this article we will cover what is the twitter follow button, and how you can add it in your WordPress site.

How to Add Tooltip in Your WordPress Posts and Pages

by WPBeginner
In this article, we will show you how to add tooltips to your WordPress posts and pages using WordPress ToolTip Plugin.

How to Add an Admin User to the WordPress Database via MySQL

by WPBeginner
In this article, we will show you a step by step guide on how to create an admin user in WordPress Database via MySQL.

How To Build A Media Site On WordPress (Part 1)

by Jonathan Wold
With the introduction of WordPress 3.1, several new features were added that make using WordPress to manage media even more practical and in this tutorial, we’re going to dive in and show you how.

How To Build A Media Site On WordPress (Part 2)

by Jonathan Wold
In part one of this two part series, we learned how to setup custom post types and custom taxonomies. We also learned how to build a template to check for and display media attached to custom posts. Now, we’ll learn how to use custom taxonomy templates to organize and relate our media. Let’s get started!

Developing Your First WordPress Theme: Day 1 of 3

by Dan Walker
Themes are a huge part of what makes WordPress as popular as it is, and in this three-part series we’ll take you through a step-by-step process that results in a completed, functioning WordPress theme. No prior knowledge required, this is the perfect place to start if you’re completely new to WordPress!

Developing Your First WordPress Theme: Day 2 of 3

by Dan Walker
Themes are a huge part of what makes WordPress as popular as it is, and in this three-part series we’ll take you through a step-by-step process that results in a completed, functioning WordPress theme. In part two, we delve into coding the bulk of our theme!

Creating a Tabbed Widget for Custom Post Types

by Brian McCulloh
This tutorial offers one solution by showing you how to create a custom, tabbed widget that grabs your latest articles from multiple custom post types, and as a bonus, shows you how to display star ratings next to each post!

8 Tips for Creating WordPress Themes That Sell

by Andy Wilkerson
Knowing what makes one theme sell better than another can be difficult, but remembering a few basic rules can make a big difference in your total sales.

How To: Change the Logo on your WordPress Login Page

by Dave Clements
By default, the login page to your admin area has the WordPress logo above the login form. But you can very easily change that to any image of your choice. This is perfect for branding your login page, particularly if you’re providing a site for a client, or you have a multi-author blog.

Controlling Your Clients WordPress Experience

by Alex Vasquez
My scenario generally falls within this area: I want to give my clients a little more than what the Editor Role allows, but far less than what the Admin role provides.
WordPress has great plugins to help manage such situations, but none of them alone seem to do the trick. Here are the plugins I’ve looked at.

10 things You can do Today to Improve Your WordPress blog

by Oli
Is your blog perfect? In this post Im going to round up 10 things you can do today.

Basic Steps to Set-Up a WordPress Blog Quickly & Efficiently

by Smair
Installing the WordPress platform is a lot easier than it seems. There are no long and tedious installation steps, and quite frankly, is the easiest to set-up.

Creating Additional Pages for Your WordPress Theme

by April
What happens when you need to switch it up? When one page needs a sidebar and another is full-width? Various different sidebars? WordPress allows you to change your page templates on every page using what they call “Page Attributes”.

WordPress Plugins: How to Know if You Have Too Many

by Sarah Gooding
Do I have too many plugins on my WordPress site? Unfortunately, this is not really a yes or no question. In fact, it’s not even the right question. The question you want to ask yourself is, “Am I using high quality plugins?”

Daily Tip: What to Do if a Plugin Kills Your WordPress Site

by Sarah Gooding
Here’s a quick emergency tip for those rare times when you install a new WordPress plugin or upgrade an existing plugin and it breaks your site: Rename the plugin folder.

Your Complete Guide to Troubleshooting WordPress

by Siobhan
I wrote a while back about how to find your error logs for WordPress. We’ve just had a great post on the WPMU DEV support forums adding even more. I’ve decided to combine it, along with my post and with an older post by Sarah to put together your one-stop troubleshooting guide for WordPress.

Quickly Clone and Migrate WordPress Sites with the Duplicator Plugin

by Sarah Gooding
Cloning a WordPress site for use in another location can be sometimes be a fairly involved process, requiring the use of an FTP client, phpMyAdmin, and multiple file edits. I’m excited about the Duplicator plugin, because it reduces this process to three easy steps:

101 Essential Free WordPress Resources for Building Your WordPress Website

by Siobhan
Having a whole collection of resources in one place is always a great resource in itself – especially when it’s categorized into neat little groups so that you can easily find what you need.

Daily Tip: Recommended FTP Settings for Transferring WordPress Files

by Sarah Gooding
Have you downloaded or uploaded WordPress files and found that they appear different after the transfer?

How to Highlight the Current Page when Using WordPress Navigation Menus

by Sarah Gooding
Today we’re going to walk through a basic styling tip for highlighting the current page. This is a helpful little CSS tweak that makes your website easier to navigate.

Building Your WordPress Website with iPad in Mind

by Siobhan
This week I am doing it the other way. How can you make your website look good on an iPad?

How to Resolve WordPress Custom Post Type 404 Error Issues

by Word Impressed
WordPress 3.0′s Custom Post Types are undoubtedly a valuable feature. They allow you to extend the platform like never before, but also can occasionally cause some problems when developing; most commonly 404 issues.

Detecting Lightboxed Pages in WordPress Admin

by alexking
When you want inject something into the WordPress admin, you might not think to account for pages that load inside lightboxes (plugin updates, media upload, etc.). Generally, you don’t want to add your JS/CSS/etc. to these pages.

So really, don’t use just /%postname%/ as your permalink structure

by Chris Coyier
Here’s the really short version: I used /%postname%/ as my permalink structure on CSS-Tricks for a long time. I have lots of Pages. My site went down. I changed my permalink structure to begin with a number. Now it’s fine.

Secure uploads, upgrade and other directories with .htaccess

by Jeff Star
It sucks, but a lot of plugins require certain directories to be set at CHMOD 777 for its file permissions. Of course, you should not use any plugin that requires 777 directories, but if you absolutely must, you can help protect the folder by adding a thin slice of htaccess.

Removing menu pages from the WordPress admin

by Justin Tadlock
Note that this tutorial only shows you how to remove items from the WordPress administration menu. It does not block access to menu pages via direct URL. It’s great for hiding things, but it should not be used as a way to secure specific admin screens. For that, you’ll need to work with the capability system.

Custom background fix for theme developers

by Justin Tadlock
If you’re a theme developer and like to use WordPress’ add_custom_background() function in your themes, you’ve probably noticed a small problem before with the way this is handled. If you haven’t noticed, you may be in for a surprise after reading this tutorial and testing your theme.

Install and upgrade functions for plugins and themes

by Justin Tadlock
The trick I will show you in this tutorial is a bit of an oldie, but it gets the job done. It will give you a simple method for both setting up options and upgrading options when a user installs or updates the theme/plugin.

How to Display an Admin Notice For Required Theme Plugins

by Jason Schuller
he problem is that when you require 3rd party plugins for your themes to function properly, you will run into several end users who simply do not read the setup or usage instructions. In those cases, don’t be surprised if you get overwhelmed with support related questions regarding the installation of 3rd party plugins.

Quick-tip: Add Screencast Tutorials to Your Dashboard Widgets

by Rich Staats
Most recently, I have introduced client specific screen-cast tutorials that walk users through the custom functionality of their site. It’s super easy to implement, and your clients will absolutely love you for it.

An In-Depth Look at the Dashboard Widgets API

by Sawyer Hollenshead
This presents an opportunity to greet them with useful information regarding their theme, as well as an opportunity to attract recurring customers, whether it’s through displaying your blog’s RSS feed to them, a donation link, or displaying the recent posts from a custom post type in your theme. This is all possible using WordPress’s Dashboard Widgets API.

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Want to be emailed when new comments are added?