Category: Wordpress Hacks

How To Create A Child Theme in WordPress

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A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that produce the graphical interface for a wordpress website. You can find plenty of free or premium themes on internet. A good premium theme providers will aggressively

  • Update their themes with new features and functionality
  • Add more security features or bug Fixes
  • Update any browser compatibility issue
  • Keep up with the latest WordPress enhancements.

Whenever a new version of your WordPress theme is released, WordPress dashboard will notify you to update your theme to the latest version. WordPress experts always recommend you to update yo themes to your theme to latest version.

But when you update your theme, you’ll lose all the tweaks you made to it. How can you update a WordPress Theme without losing customization? WordPress is providing an easy mechanism to solve this issue. It is parent theme child themes combination.

What is a Parent Theme?
A parent theme is a complete theme which includes all of the required WordPress template files. Any theme in your /wp-content/themes/ folder is considered as parent theme.
What is a Child Theme?
A child theme is simply a theme that inherits the functionality and looks of another theme – the parent. Read More

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How do I move WordPress from a sub directory to the root directory

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Most website creators using WordPress today to create website. You can easily build and manage your  site with WordPress. When you convert your  your existing business website(.html / .php/ .aspx files)  to wordpress, it’s a good idea to set up a blog and test a new version in a subfolder (example.com/WordPress) so that it does not affect their main domain.  Once completed, you can move the new site over to the root directory for the domain.

This tutorial assumes you have already created, tested your site in a subfolder called “wordpress”. Refer following articles if you need help on how to install wordpress.

  1. How To Install WordPress on the Best WordPress Hosting Providers
  2. How to install a WordPress blog in 1and1?
  3. How To Install WordPress Using Fantastico

Now let us see how to move your site to root.

Step1: Change site URL

  1. Log into your WordPress Admin, go to  Settings -> General.
  2. Change WordPress address (URI) from (example.com/WordPress to example.com)
  3. Change Site Address address (URL) from (example.com/WordPress to example.com)

Step2: Physically move the files from a sub folder to your main folder

Before moving the wordpress files to root, take a backup of your site in root folder. After you have made your backup, it is time to move your WordPress to the primary folder. You can use the cPanel File manager, an FTP program, Shell using SSH, or  HTML editor like DreamWeaver.

Moving Files Using Cpanel

  1. Log into your cPanel  dashboard.
  2. From the main cPanel area, look for the Files category and then click on the File Manager tool.
  3. Once inside the File Manager, you will want to navigate to the folder you have the WordPress site in. (For example, a folder named WordPress.)
  4. You will see a list of all the WordPress files and folders in the right hand panel. Highlight them all and click on the Move File icon from the menu toolbar across the top of the page.
  5. A popup will appear so you can enter the destination folder. Continuing with our WordPress folder example, it should show as public_html/WordPress. Remove the /WordPress from the destination path so that it simply displays as public_html. Click the Move Files button.
  6. This will move the files up to the public_html folder. You should now see the same files as you have in your WordPress folder.
  7. You can now delete the old WordPress folder.

Moving Files Using FTP

Open your FTP program. Select files from “WordPress ” folder.Drag files to root folder.

Your site is ready now.

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How to Split a long WordPress Post into Multiple Pages – post pagination

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You wrote a very long post and have some issues with load times on your posts, it is better to split that long WordPress post into multiple pages. Reading long posts can be hectic or boring for users. This can increase the bounce rate of your site. So for better presentation and readability, divide along post into several pages. This also will improve the look and feel of your site and increase the number of page views on your site.

Dividing your posts into two or more pages is simple in WordPress.

split-post

  • In the post editor, click on “Text” tab to switch to “Text” editor mode.
  • Add the following tag wherever you want to split your post.

    <!–nextpage–>

    You can add this tag anywhere you want as many times as you want.

  • Save your post.
  • Now you can see post pagination.split-post2

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How to Use WordPress Widgets

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WordPress Widgets are independent content blocks designed to provide  specific function. Widget is a simple and easy-to-use way to arrange the various elements of your sidebar content  or any widgetized areas of your theme. Widgets enable non-technical users to customize your theme without having to change any code.

There are so many different widgets available. WordPress by default comes with several widgets that can be seen on on the WordPress Administration Appearance > Widgets panel. See a list of Top wordpress sidebars widgets. Note: You can install new ones by searching the WordPress Plugins Directory. See how to install worpress plugin.

How to use Widgets

To use/display widgets, you need to add widget areas into your Theme. Most WordPress themes are widget ready. It would always be a good idea to select a theme that is Widget Ready. If  theme is not widget ready, you can widgetize just about every part of your theme. See how to widgetize your theme.

  1. Go to Appearance > Widgets. Here you can see available widgets and widget ready areas in your theme.
    Widget areas
    Widget areas

    If  theme is not widget ready, you can widgetize just about every part of your theme. See how to widgetize your theme.

  2. Choose a Widget and either drag it to the sidebar where you wish it to appear
    drag widget
    drag widget

    Or click the widget, (select a destination sidebar if your theme has more than one) and click the Add Widget button.

    Add Widget
    Add Widget
  3. Preview the site. You can see the new addition there.
  4. To arrange the Widgets within the sidebar or Widget area, click and drag it into place.

    Drag to re-arrange
    Drag to re-arrange
  5. To customize the Widget features, click the down arrow in the upper right corner to expand the Widget’s interface.

    Edit widget options
    Edit widget options
  6. To save the Widget’s customization, click Save.

    Edit widget options
    Edit widget options
  7. To remove the Widget, click  Delete link in the configuration options as show above.

How to add Widget area to your theme

You can widgetize just about every part of your theme. See how to widgetize your theme. Widget can be added to the header, footer, and elsewhere in the WordPress design and structure. There are 2 main parts to  add widget area in your theme:

  1. Register the widget area in functions.php
  2. Insert widget area in the WordPress Theme

#1: Register widget area

Open the functions.php file from the WordPress Theme Editor . Add the following block of code. In this code, we are registering one sidebar. We have given a name(e.g.’Home right sidebar’) to identify them on Widgets screen and  id(e.g.’home_right_1′) is used to call it in theme file to display.

<?php
/**
 * Register our sidebars and widgetized areas.
 *
 */
function wpl_theme_widgets_init() {

	register_sidebar( array(
		'name'          => 'Home right sidebar',
		'id'            => 'home_right_1',
		'before_widget' => '<div>',
		'after_widget'  => '</div>',
		'before_title'  => '<h2 class="rounded">',
		'after_title'   => '</h2>',
	) );

}
add_action( 'widgets_init', 'wpl_theme_widgets_init' );
?>
New widget
New widget

After registering Dynamic Sidebars, New widget area appears in Appearance » Widgets screen. Users can drag and drop widgets into these sidebars.
#2: Insert widget area in the WordPress Theme

You need to  insert the following block of code in your template like sidebar.php /footer.php or any other template file where you want to display the widget.

<div id="home_right_1">
<?php
if(is_active_sidebar('home_right_1')){
dynamic_sidebar('home_right_1');
}
?>
</div>

In this example code, we have used sidebar id(‘home_right_1) to call the sidebar. Change the sidebar id to display another sidebar.

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5 ways to do remote publishing in wordpress

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Have you ever thought how cool it would be to have the ability to write WordPress posts without having to go on-line and login to your dashboard? This is a question that pops up often especially among WordPress owners who have to write multiple blogs. It would also be great to have a local back up of your posts or having to upload photos faster. In this article we will examine different ways to login remotely and perform admin functions.

A major Pre-requisite

To manage any aspect of WordPress remotely, there is a fancy API called XML-RPC that MUST be turned on. All Weblogs (Blogging software that run on your local machine) post to your blog via XML-RPC.

According to the official WordPress Site , XML-RPC functionality is turned on by default since WordPress 3.5. However if you are still attached to older stable versions you can still enjoy the functionality of XML-RPC. To enable this, simply login to your site’s dashboard, go to Settings > Writing > #remote publishing and check the checkbox. Now you have the green light to work remotely.

1.    Your favourite Email Client

post-by-mail-cover

Indeed it’s that simple! Your email client whether in your desktop or mobile device can write posts to your WordPress site. All that is needed is a unique email on your wordpress site that will Serve as a recipient of post content. WordPress will frequently check that email address via POP protocol for new messages. For every email message, the Subject is assumed to be the post title while the body is assumed to be the content for the title.

The built-in WordPress functionality to post via email is deprecated and will be removed in future wordpress versions. But all hope is not lost thanks to good old plugin methods. There are 3 popular plugins that achieve this:

We may not review all these plugins in this article since there are other remote publishing techniques that am dying to tell you about. For now lets use Post by Mail in Jetpack as a case study. After installing it go to Profile > Your Profile page, and enable Post by Email. A unique email address will be generated and this will serve as the recipient where you will send the post.

CAUTION: Let this recipient email remain private. Don’t CC anyone else when writing to the unique email.

Now let’s go to your favourite Email client (Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail) and send a post to the unique email address. You can add other aspects of the post using shortcodes in the body. Assume we are writing this article from an email client. Here’s what we would have:

New Picture
Screen shot

 

2.    Windows Live Writer for Windows users

This is a great app that comes as a feature of Windows live essentials. In addition to the post writing functionalities that are readily available in Microsoft word, one can crop and resize images and attach maps from virtual Earth. There is even a custom Custom WordPress sidebar for easy navigation to your dashboard.

What do you need to run Windows Live writer?

  • Any 32 or 64-bit version of Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
  • Processor:6 GHz or higher with SSE2 support.
  • Memory: 1 GB of RAM or higher.(You are better off with at least 2GB)
  • Resolution: 1024 × 576
  • A fast and reliable Internet connection: Don’t blame this application when you find it hanging frequently. It has to synchronize with your site server constantly so ensure your internet connection is nothing short of ‘good’.

Here is a detailed user guide to using Windows Live writer. If you like it you can download it here. But what if you’r not a Windows user?

3.    Gnomeblog

gnome-blogThis is desktop blogging application for Linux and Unix that connects seamlessly with WordPress based sites. It comes with an easy and quick to use interface to write posts. As the name suggests it works on Gnome based linux flavours (Ubuntu and the likes). It has a WYSIWYG styled text support with Spell checking linked to the dictionaries in your linux box. Oh! And the drag and drop support for images is relatively faster than other Weblog clients. You can crop, caption and resize them just as you want the article to appear on your website. Head over to the official site and grab it for free.

4.    SmartxBlog

smartx-blog-win-macWe haven’t forgotten you Mac users! SmartxBlog is to you, what GnomeBlog is to Linux fanatics. In addition, you can preview the articles in a browser before publishing them. I like the fact that you can also add multiple castegories, tags and even create an RSS feed. SmartXBlog has built-in Image Editor so you don’t have to bother using third party Image Editors. Think of this app as a local wordpress version that syncs to your live site.

To enjoy all these features make sure you have Adobe AIR runtime installed on your computer. Then head over to http://smartxblog.com/ and download the app. You will get a 30 days trial period after which you part with $9.9 for a 5-user licence and lifetime updates. There is a windows version too.

5.    WordPress app By Automattic for Android and IOS

wordpress-android-loginWordPress is now mobile thanks to this great app. You can now leave your laptop when going on holiday. With a tablet or smart phone you can now write posts and publish them instantly. You can even login to multiple WordPress sites you own and approve and reply to comments on your articles. It may seem abit confusing that the whole power of your dashboard has been brought down to an app. Even the icons that you are used to have changed. However after using it several times you get the hang of it.

Well, that  covers most of the devices. Hopefully by now you can do remote publishing in wordpree.But just in case you don’t find an app for your Operating System check out this list. Have fun and remember: The security of your devices will determine the security of your wordpress site.

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Your WordPress Account Can Get Hacked Easily Over Wi-Fi Connection

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If you are used to logging in to your WordPress account in a public Wi-Fi network like at malls or from your local coffee shop, anyone on the same connection can sniff your WordPress credentials. Anyone who knows how to use FireSheep can gain access to your WordPress account.

This was discovered by Yan Zhu, a staff technologist at Electronic Frontier Foundation who works for Frontier Foundation on the HTTPS Everywhere and Privacy Badger extensions.

The cookie, called “wordpress_logged_in’ is what WordPress.com use to determine if the user is logged in or not. If this is set, then WordPress won’t bother to ask user credentials until this cookie expires.

 

Read the rest of the news here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2158771/wordpress-com-vulnerable-to-account-hijacking.html

 

 

 

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Change Permalinks Without Breaking Your WordPress Site

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Changing the permalink structure of your site is always a pain in the neck. Before you do that, you have to be sure that you want to make this change because it can have a huge impact in your site’s SEO. This can also cause a lot of errors and broken links if handled incorrectly.

However, with a simple plan and the right tools, you can carry out these task without any issues.

Permalinks are a part of a website that comes after your domain name and point to a specific post and page to your site. When set correctly, it allows your readers to have a clear understanding on what your post is about and also helps visitors find your page faster.

In this post, we’ll show you how to change permalinks to your site without damaging it.

Read the rest of the news here:  http://www.wpexplorer.com/change-permalinks-wordpress/

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How to Remove Numbers from WordPress URLs

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WordPress use post IDs instead of a keyword text URL. This is bad for SEO as your links won’t be related to any keyword that you are targeting. Oftentimes, WordPress will add -2 in front of your post, category, or tag URLs which looks ugly for end users. Although WordPress has a built-in support for SEO-friendly structure by opening Settings >> Permalinks in the admin area then choose the URL structure of your site. There are also a number of optios available like setting up permalinks or using a custom slug. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to remove numbers in WordPress URLS : http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-remove-numbers-from-wordpress-urls/

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