Andrew Benton

Wordpress 2.4: What I Hope to See

Dec 31 at 3:03pm by Andrew Benton

So, its been announced that Wordpress 2.4 will be released on January 24th. While it seems that they just released 2.3, and even more recently released a critical security update, here are some things I’m really, really hoping for in Wordpress 2.4. Read the rest of this entry »

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How to Transfer Your Wordpress Install to A New Host

Dec 19 at 8:08am by Andrew Benton

So, for whatever reason, be it Digg effect, the fact your girlfriend doesn’t like the name, or  you just can’t stand the service, you decide you’re going to switch webhosts.  Or, for that matter, going to switch your Wordpress install to another domain/subdomain.  While for inter-domain transfers you could probably get away by just moving the directory (carefully), when you switch to a new host, the question becomes, “How do I save all my stuff?”

Well, that’s where the awesome export/import feature comes in with Wordpress.  Here in easy to follow steps is how to backup and restore your wordpress install:

1. Login to Admin Panel, then go to Manage > Export … Select all in the drop down menu to get all authors posts
2. Click Download Export File, save it locally.
3. Once you have setup your new hosting service, do a fresh install of Wordpress (I’d make sure it’s the same version).
4. Login to the Admin Panel and go to Manage > Import, choose Wordpress.
5. Click ‘Browse’ and choose the file (XML) that you currently have saved from Step 2.

The only thing this doesn’t cover, unfortunately, is themes and plug-ins, but those are as easy as uploading and re-activating.

Backing Up Themes/Plugins
The easiest way to do this would just to get on FTP and copy the folders.  They are located in ‘wp-content/themes’ and ‘wp-content/plugins’ respectfull.

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Wordpress - Ad Under First Post Only (Adsense)

Dec 6 at 8:08pm by Andrew Benton

A popular thing to do is to add an Ad (adsense) immediately following the first post on the homepage of a blog. Here is a quick and simple way to do this:

Open index.php under “Presentation > Theme Editor”, it will be titled ‘Main Index Template’

Find this line:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

Immediately above that, paste this:

<?php
$postnum = 1;
$showadsense1 = 1;
?>

That’s part one of the code - the value.

Staying in index.php, scroll down to this part:

<p class=”postmetadata”>Posted in <?php the_category(’, ‘) ?> | <?php edit_post_link(’Edit’, ”, ‘ | ‘); ?> <?php comments_popup_link(’No Comments »’, ‘1 Comment »’, ‘% Comments »’); ?></p>
</div>
<-Put the below code right here
<?php endwhile; ?>

Into that area between the ending of the div and the endwhile statement place this:

<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense1) {
echo ‘
Your adsense code goes here
‘;
} ?>

<?php $postnum++; ?>

Thats all you have to do! I’ll cover more in-depth ways of inserting ads later this weekend.

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Designing a New Wordpress Theme, Part I — The Beginning

Dec 4 at 10:10am by Andrew Benton

So, while I love this theme by bloggingpro, it disgruntles me that its not a design of my own. With that said, I am officially beginning a redesign of this blog, with full advertising, readability, and user-friendliness. I’m doing this for a number of reasons, mainly because I want my blog to have my design. Also, I wanted more control over layout, content areas, and advertising space. With my design, I think I can better optimize the space given to each, and also, it has a fresh new minimalistic approach which I’ve seemed to be really into lately.

So, I figured as a learning experience for both myself and my readers, I would document every step I take from design to implementation, to launch, and then share the theme with the world. Not a new idea of course, but I’ve rarely seen designers document their every step to theme creation, talk about issues involved with such an undertaking, and so on.

So, check back tomorrow for Part II, covering the initial Photoshop design, considerations for ads, content, etc, and much more. I hope this series sparks some creativity in my readers, and hey, if you do/don’t like what I’m doing, let me know, you could very well change the refresh!

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5 Wordpress Plugins You Can’t Live Without

Nov 16 at 10:10am by Andrew Benton

Wordpress is an extremely powerful CMS. It lets practically anyone with access to an internet connection post their thoughts, dreams, and ideas. Wordpress has revolutionized and pushed the blogosphere to new depths and continues to push the envelope on seamlessness with external social networks.

While out-of-the-box (while it doesn’t really come in a box) Wordpress is great by itself, you can make both the writers, as well as the readers experience infinitely better by installing just a few plugins. Below is a list of what I think are the cream of the crop in Wordpress plugins. Feel free to hop on the conversation and add your input, suggestions, etc.

1. Akismet - View Plugin Website
   This is by far an absolute essential, so much so that it comes pre-installed in Wordpress now. Akismet helps filter out spam from your comments, and helps your site appear more constantly clean, with great comments being the only ones allowed.
2. Adsense Manager - View Plugin Website - View Authors Website
   This one is another essential for me. Adsense manager allows you to manage adsense campaigns on your blog by allowing you to save custom configurations of Google ads to use on your page. Basically, once installed, you create ads, in which you can change size, colors, types, etc. Once you create them, you easily insert them into your templates and posts by selecting them in the post editor or by including a short piece of code into you template where you want your ad to be displayed.
3. All in One SEO Pack - View Plugin Website
   This plugin provides automatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your Wordpress blog. It basically saves you hours of work optimizing your website for search engines. A fear key features:
   • Rewrites title for optimization
   • Generates meta keywords from your categories, built in tag-generators, etc
   • Auto-generates meta descriptions for each post, making posts more directly findable by search engine searches
4. Google XML Sitemaps - View Plugin Website
   This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. Absolutely positively a necessity if you are serious about getting listed on Google and Yahoo searches.
5. Social Bookmarking Reloaded - View Plugin Website
   Social Bookmarking Reloaded adds a list of graphical icons at the bottom of every post that lets your readers submit your articles to popular social sites like Digg, Reddit, Facebook, etc. It can really help build the community of your site. You can customize the appearance of this plugin and select from a huge list of social bookmarking sites.

So, there you have it, my essential 5 Wordpress plugins that I can’t live without. I’m sure there are a few more I’ll add to that list in the near future. Do you think I’m missing any? Let me know.

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