It’s my party and I’ll blog if I want to
If you’ll be in San Francisco on Tuesday of next week, May 27, founder Matt Mullenweg is inviting you to a party.
A WordPress birthday party!
Yep, WordPress is celebrating a birthday. 5 years! WordPress has come a long way since this WordPress announcement, 5 years ago.
If deactivating a plugin breaks your blog
Do you know what to do if after you’ve deactivated a plugin, you’re presented with the dreaded “Fatal error: Call to undefined function”?
Many of us have experienced the panic of getting our site back online quickly, after a plugin deactivation has brought it to it’s knees. You can avoid these panic stricken moments by being prepared. Know up front what causes this and how to avoid it.
Fatal error: Call to undefined function
If it’s too late and you were not able to avoid it,
there’s still hope…
John, at WordPress Expert, tells us what to do if plugin deactivation has broken your blog. Follow these simple steps to get your blog back up and running, hopefully before anyone notices.
Then, to avoid future frustrations, take note of the very best tip John mentions: Prevent WordPress plugins from breaking your blog in the first place.
Creating a featured articles section
Several of my readers have asked how I created the “Featured Articles” section you see in the sidebar. To avoid repeatedly answering the same question, I’ll now be able to point them to this post.
Creating a Featured Articles section for your WordPress blog involves 3 basic steps:
- Create a new category called Featured.
- Place the code (provided below) into sidebar.php.
- Style the Featured section to match the rest of your sidebar.
Featured Articles code
Place the following code in the preferred location of your sidebar—or anywhere else you may want to display your Featured Articles:
<ul>
<?php query_posts('category_name=Featured&showposts=5'); while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li>
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
</li>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</ul>
How you can contribute to WordPress
Are you a WordPress user, fan, or blogger? Want to give back to the WordPress community to show your appreciation, but don’t know how? Well, I’ve got news for you!
24 Ways To Contribute To WordPress. A list compiled by Weblog Tools Collection with something in it for everyone, from the casual user to the seasoned pro.
If you’ve been using the free, personal publishing platform known as WordPress, you can now show your gratitude, and support WordPress by contributing to the community.
Some of the ideas presented are:
- Participate in the WordPress Forum
- Blog about WordPress
- Purchase products through the WordPress Store
- Create plugins, themes or forums.
- Contribute to the WordPress Codex
- Leave WordPress credits inside of themes
- Create a WordPress podcast
- Create Gravatars for the WordPress Community
Go ahead, show your appreciation—it doesn’t take a lot of effort, and you’ll be glad you did.
How to optimize your title tags
According to Mark Jaquith, a WordPress lead developer, the default handling of title tags in WordPress is not optimal. And, he say’s, Google’s Matt Cutts has confirmed, there is a better way from an SEO standpoint.
Title: the most important element of a quality Web page
In an earlier post, I discussed modifying your permalink structure for better search engine optimization. Today I want to touch on a similar modification, but this time we’ll optimize title tags.
The title tag has been—and probably will always be—one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings.
I’m a MyBlogLog lagger
I‘ve never really paid much attention to MyBlogLog, and with the new built-in Gravatar support in WordPress 2.5, I figured I’d continue to avoid MyBlogLog. Not for any reason other than I had no real need, I guess.
Lately though, I’ve been noticing more MyBlogLog widgets as I peruse the Net, reading my favorite WordPress blogs. Some have peaked my interest, so I finally decided to check it out.
Tuesday I joined the MyBlogLog community. Wednesday I dropped the Recent Visitors widget onto my sidebar. Right away I was able to see the most recent visitors to my blog. You know, the ones who also have MyBlogLog accounts. Kinda neat.
Without leaving a comment, or any such thing, my visitor’s BlogLog avatar now shows in the sidebar, simply by visiting my blog. Yeah, I know, I’ve been living under a rock for the last couple years.
MyBlogLog offers some nifty features worth checking out, if you’re like me and haven’t done so yet.
They’ve got some handy widgets, if you’re into that sort of thing. Some of the widgets I’ve checked out include the one pictured here, the Recent Visitors widget and Top Links.
I’m not sure how far I’ll go with this or if I’ll find much use in it, but I’ll run with it for awhile.
If you’re a MyBlogLogger, what do you find most useful with MyBlogLog? Please let me know in the comments area below if you have a unique use or if your blogging just can’t do without the benefits of MyBlogLog, and why.
Join my community at MyBloglog. If you blog about WordPress, I’ll add you to my Resources List.
