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Top 10 Most Important Changes of WordPress in 2011

Lucian Apostol — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:11:56 +0000

WordPress has change a lot lately. Maybe the most important changes were made back in 2010, when WordPress was updated to 3.0. The change of the prefix came with some crucial changes: custom menus, a new theme and merge with MU. Despite the regulat users that use wordpress only to power a very simple blogs, these changes are not that much, but for those who want to use it for more complex websites, this changes were crucial.

That was the point where wordpress turned from the best blogging platform to the best content management system. I’ve used wordpress to build complex websites before 3.0 a lot, but most of the work I was done was in the template files. After 3.0, non-coder users can do much more changes to the look and feel of the website only from the administration panel.

Now, let’s get back to 2011. In this year 3 wordpress major versions were released ( 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 ). They aimed to bring WordPress CMS to a higher standard where more things can be accomplished without much coding intervention. Let’s see which are the biggest changes of WordPress in 2010.

10. Full screen editor

WordPress 3.2 came with some nice features to enhance writing experiences. By default, most of the post editing elements are hidden ( custom meta, comment options, change history, etc ), so it is easier for new users to figure out what they have to do in order to publish a post, but the most important change for user Experience was the adding of the full screen feature of the text editor, so there are not any distraction when writing a great post.

9. Drop Support for old versions of PHP, MySQL and Internet Explorer.

Reading this, some will think that this is a bad change. What will do users that host their website on old servers? The versions of PHP and MySQL that are not supported are very very old ( somewhere around year 2000 ). You can’t stop progress only because some guy there have a hosting server brought back in 1998 and still want to run wordpress on it. From my experience, if there is someone who don’t want to waste 1 day to move to a new hosting he is not willing to fire his old programmer who still uses non-css, html templates.

It happened to me to have a client who had all his websites on a old server. I contacted the server administrator and they told me they won’t upgrade because there might be some users that have old websites and they might stop running. I suggested to the client to move on, and he did so. If you care so much about your old and out-dated users, then you will miss all new users ( probably today they are out of business ).

As for the Internet Explorer 6, the first thing that goes in our minds is: “so, users with Internet Explorer 6 can’t access our websites ?”. This is not the case. The admin interface may face difficulties when ran on IE6, but normal users will still be able to access your website. In worst case scenario, they won’t be able to use advanced features provided by some advanced plugins. If you still want to use IE6 to access admin panel ( despite it has no logic ), then you can still use older version of wordpress.

In my opinion, altough this may have no impact in most cases, it is a big step forward.

8. jQuery upgrade.

For those who are not aware, jQuery is the most used javascript library that empower website administrators to easily create sliders, accordions, pop-up boxes, lightboxes and many other nice features. You can find out more about jquery here. The same things can be accomplished by writing simple javascript, but you will have to write much more, and jquery gives you all already done.

The main problem with using jquery elements is that you need to have the proper version. The backward compatibility is good, but not great, and this preventets WordPress to change jquery versions often. What we’ve done, as programmers, to use the newest features of jquery was to load another version of jquery. It worked but the users had to load the both versions, meaning higher loading times. So this, like the previous point, is a big step forward.

7. Admin bar.

Since WordPress 3.1 and admin bar was available when a logged in user browse the frontend of the website. I reckon that I’ve not used this feature. As a developer it is important to see in any moment how users are seeing your website, and normal users can’t see the admin bar.

For very active bloggers can be a great tool because they don’t have to enter the admin panel anytime they want to see if there are new comments. Fewer clicks, better experience.

6. Widgets are saved when the theme is changed.

It happened few times to me, to receive desperate calls from friends who were working on wordpress to tell me that all their widgets dissapeared. When I was asking what they’ve done they said that they tried to see how other theme was looking on the website. Bad move. They should have saved the widgets before they changed the theme, but no one told them to do this. WIdgets are theme dependend, when you change a theme, the sidebars are changed so widgets are lost.

From wordpress 3.3, the widgets are now automatically saved when you change a theme, and you can see them at “inactive widgets”.

5. Internal Linking

I really want to say that I was thinking at such featuer long before it was added in WordPress 3.1. I planned to do create a plugin to add this feature, but what I came up with was very complicated to use ( altough I came up with an option to link to external pages too ). However, this is a great tool to interlink your articles in a page.

Internet linking is very important for any blog. While they read an article, they should get references to other posts so they can make a complete idea of what you are trying to say, or what you are trying to promote.

4. Post formats.

This is one of the best features in added in recent WordPress updates. It may have not great impact on end non-coder users that are using a simple theme, but for developers it is like a gold mine. When a post is added, there is an option to select post format. In the theme it is specified what layout should be used for every post format. It is for common use, for example, you want to have on your site simple text posts, image posts, and product posts, and you want them to be shown different.

You can also find some themes that are already coded to support different layouts for different post formats. Add much more flexibility for theme makers.

3. Admin redesign.

In wordpress 3.2 release, the admin interface was redesigned for a better look and feel. Maybe this will be forgotten next year, but the change affected of all us, in a good way. The admin design was changed so you can access some areas of the admin dashboard faster.

More, in WordPress 3.3 there was another change in the admin panel menu. Now when you hover a menu category, the respective menu links will be displayed and you don’t have to click twice to change permalinks ( for example ). These are small changes with big impact.

2. Drag and Drop uploader.

If you are using Gmail you already know what I am talking about. How much time you lose when you click the “browse” button, then effectively browse trough your whole computer until you get to the directory where your image was saved. Such a waste. Now, with wordpress 3.3, you can simply drag and drop a file from your desktop, or explorer window to wordpress admin panel.

This is a real time saver. You know how important images are for every post, but it is the part of the post creation that I hate the most. First I have to download the image, then search for it in my computer, etc. Now, I download it, and then drag it to wordpress.

1. Twenty Eleven and Theme Framework.

WordPress guys promised that they will release a new theme every year. It is good but in terms of design, there are not many changes from twenttyten. It should be a simple theme where every theme developer should start from. And if they’ve done a very simple theme, there is not much to do to improve the simpliness every year.

Although there are not much changes on the graphic side, there are many changes on the backside. The theme comes with advanced settings so you can make basic changes from the admin panel. You can change the header image, the sidebar position, and some other minor things. I am anxious to see what they will come with next years and how many things can we change only from the administration panel.

A great thing is that if every theme creator will start from this one he will bring all this functionality to his theme. From my point of view, in future all themes will have this options added. More, they created twentyten to work more as a “theme framework”. This means that anyone can create child themes based on twenty ten. This will prevent replicating all files in twentyten, but those which are really needed In most cases you can do all changes you want only from the style.css file. If you can do this, then you can build a child theme that will consist only in a css file that will take advantage of all options that twenty eleven has, but with an unique design. If you want other html changes, you can create those files too and they will be used from the child theme instead of the parent one.

NextGEN Gallery

Alexandru — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:57:24 +0000

NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a slideshow option. Before this plugin was created, the creator I studied all the existing image and gallery plugins for WordPress. Some of them are really good and well designed, but the gap the creator filled was a simple administration system at the back end which can also handle multiple galleries.

Features

Templates : You can add custom templates for your theme.
Media RSS feed : Add the Cooliris Effect to your gallery
Role settings : Each gallery has a author
AJAX based thumbnail generator : No more server limitation during the batch process
Copy/Move : Copy or move images between galleries
Sortable Albums : Create your own sets of images
Upload or pictures via a zip-file (Not in Safe-mode)
Watermark function : You can add a watermark image or text
JavaScript Effect : Use any available popular image effect : Shutter, Thickbox, Lightbox or Highslide
Multiple CSS Stylesheet : Use a nice shadow effect for your thumbnails with your own CSS file
Slideshow : Full integrated slideshow as jQuery or Flash solution
TinyMCE : Button integration for easy adding the gallery tags
Sidebar Widget : Show a slideshow, random or recent picture at your sidebar
Language support : Translated in more than 30 languages
Translation downloader : Download with one click the new translation file
Upload tab integration : You have access to all pictures via the upload tab
Tag support for images : Append related images to your post, create a image tag-cloud
Meta data support : Import EXIF, IPTC or XMP meta data
Sort images feature
Support for XML Sitemaps : Add Images to your sitemaps with the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin

WordPress Back-Ups

Alexandru — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:49:57 +0000

This is a guide to help you make the all-important back-ups for WordPress.

Your WordPress database contains every post, every comment and every link you have on your blog. If your database gets erased or corrupted, you stand to lose everything you have written. There are many reasons why this could happen and not all are things you can control. But what you can do is back up your data. After all, it is important. Right?

Below are instructions to back up your WordPress Site and your WordPress Database as well as resources for automatic WordPress backup. In addition, support is provided online at the WordPress Support Forum to help you through the process.

Making backups is essential because problems inevitably occur and you need to be in a position to take action when disaster strikes. Spending a few minutes to make an easy, convenient backup of your database will allow you to spend even more time being creative and productive with your website.

Back up your WordPress database regularly, and always before an upgrade or move to a new location. The following information will help you back up your WordPress database using various popular server software packages. For detailed information, contact your website host for more information on the program, control panel, and resources they provide.

Accessing phpMyAdmin

While familiarity with phpMyAdmin is not necessary to back up your WordPress database, these instructions should take you step-by-step through the process of finding phpMyAdmin on your server and then you can follow the instructions below as a simple and easy backup or for more detailed instructions see Backing Up Your Database.

cPanel

On your main control panel for cPanel, look for the MySQL logo and click the link to MySQL Databases. On the next page, look for phpMyAdmin link and click it to access your phpMyAdmin.

cPanel Access Databases

cPanel Access to phpMyAdmin

Direct Admin

From Your Account page, look for MySQL Management and click it to access phpMyAdmin.

Direct Admin Access Databases

Direct Admin Access to phpMyAdmin

Ensim

Look for the MySQL Admin logo and click the link. Under Configuration choose MySQL Administration Tool.

Plesk

Click the button for Databases. Then choose the link to the WordPress database you setup during the WordPress installation. Then click on the button for phpMyAdmin.

vDeck

From the main control panel, click Host Manager, then click Databases. In the next window, click Admin. Another window will popup taking you to the phpMyAdmin login screen.

Ferozo

Login to your Ferozo Control Panel by using your credentials. Once inside, go to the “Base de Datos” (“Data Base”) menu and then click on “Acceso phpMyAdmin” (“Access phpMyAdmin”). A new window will open displaying the phpMyAdmin login screen.

WordPress versus Joomla

Alexandru — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:56:12 +0000

When you’re looking forward to creating a website, you will probably try some of the content management systems. Two of the most popular among them are WordPress and Joomla. In this post I will try to explain some of the major advantages and disadvantages of these two systems.

I would like to start with WordPress, which is one of the easiest to use systems available today in the internet. Although, many people think that WordPress can be used for blogging only, you can easily configure it to work in many other ways too. Furthermore, to install that content management system on a server is really easy. That way you will allow people, who do not have any knowledge in web development to create their website in just a matter of hours. Furthermore, you will not have to develop additional scripts to get the comments of other visitors, because they are already built in it. On the other hand, WordPress do not provide suitable workspace for developers, because when you try to make some modifications in it, for example to create a shopping cart, the whole system is likely to crash. Finally, when you try to upgrade your existing system, you will usually end up having a lot more bugs than you used to.

Joomla on the other hand is one of the best content management systems for designers, web developers and administrators. That system allows all its users to create great looking websites and also it is really easy for use, by beginners. Furthermore, there are many developers, who create tools, which rapidly improve the performance of Joomla. If you are a developer, you can choose that system, because it offers large capacity for customization and development. However, when you take a look at the user interface of that system, you will find that actually is not so easy for use by people, who do not have any idea of web development and also it is far from user friendly.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the choice between those systems depends on the purpose of your website and also on your knowledge of web development and design. In addition, when you compare the simplicity of both those systems, you will notice that working with WordPress is a lot easier, so there are many beginners, who choose it instead of Joomla. When you take a particular project, you should check exactly what are the requirements of your client, before you choose any of these content management systems.

Excessive Copyright

Alexandru — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:43:06 +0000

Now whenever you create something important or good, naturally you want that something to be recognized by people as being YOURS. That is when you place a copyright or something similar in it.

I am not against that. Personally, I encourage it. Take pride in your work and let the others know it belongs to YOU.

However, don’t place copyrights that will crash everything if you touch it.

As I said before, this copyright thing is very useful and good (most of the times).

However, in some cases, that copyright is more encrypted than the Matrix. I mean, if you have a small website, with no real public use at all, do you even care if there is a copyright or not ? So, naturally, you delete it, not really knowing if it mattered or not. After you delete you realize your website has stopped working. You then see it had some encrypted things that nobody could understand, and upon decrypting them you find a certain hidden DIE around there.

What’s the point to all that ?!?

I mean, I myself have encountered on several occasions encrypted text WITHIN an encrypted text (Inception got nothing on that).

My point being, if it’s not really that important, don’t make it sound as important as the Holy Grail or something …

And if it is as important as you think and it really shouldn’t be deleted, MAKE IT UN-DELETABLE.

WordPress 3.2 has been released

Lucian Apostol — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:53:23 +0000

The latest version of WordPress was recently released. Despite there are not so great new features, like we were used in previous versions of wordpress, the improvements were great in terms of speed and design.

The admin interface is now faster and lighter, which will improve the writing and management experience. Another great fact is the new default theme, “twenty twelve” which is now HTML5 validated. Another great thing is the possibility to write a post in full screen mode. If you ever felt that your writing box is too small, now you can have it on the whole screen.

The wordpress development team has great plans. To get advantage of new features that they can use, they are dropping support for older versions of php, mysql and IE6. Altough this may not be seen good by conservators, they can still use the older version of wordpress if they want to stay with older versions of PHP, or to provide support for older browsers. It was announced a year ago that the support for PHP4 and MySQL4 will be dropped, and there is no surprise that this happened. A bigger impact will have the drop of support for IE6, while developers can upgrade the servers, they have no control on what browsers their users are using, and some may be concerned that they will lose visitors. According to ie6countdown ( a project started by microsoft ), only 2% of web users are using Internet Explorer 6 in United states. The world-wide percent is 10%, but this is mainly because in China the percent is 33% and 10% in India.

How to show posts from a specific category anywhere on your website

Lucian Apostol — Fri, 06 May 2011 09:02:14 +0000

Often and often I’m asked by my clients for better ways to organize the information on their blogs. The classic listing of recent posts and some widgets in the sidebar just don’t make it. Readers want better organized information. The best way to provide it is to arrange posts in categories in a smart way, and then list them separated on your website.

You can achieve this in a simple way directly editing the template file your want. Even if it is index.php, or page.php, single.php, sdebar.php, you can list posts from a category from its category ID. First of all, look in your wordpress admin panel and get the ID of the category you want to display your posts.

Once you have the ID, change the followiing code accordingly and add it anywhere you want in your template files.

$cat_id = '12'; // Your category ID $posts = get_posts('cat='. $cat_id .'&numberposts=5'); foreach($posts as $article) { echo $article->post_title; echo $article->post_content; }

Here is a list with $article object variables:

ID
post_author
post_date
post_date_gmt
post_content
post_title
post_category
post_excerpt
post_status
comment_status
ping_status
post_password
post_name
to_ping
pinged
post_modified
post_modified_gmt
post_content_filtered
post_parent
guid
menu_order
post_type
post_mime_type
comment_count

How to use WordPress in SEO for a Good Traffic Flow

Brian Chadwick — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:08:10 +0000

For the guys who are well verse with WordPress also need to be well aware of the Search Engine Optimization. Both the SEO and the WordPress are big things and can easily bring you the bigger results once you get them going well together. It is something surprising that the people who know how to use the WordPress do not have any know-how with the SEO. It is a big disadvantage and in fact a loss of the opportunity because these both tools can help you get the results at a faster pace and the excellent performance.

Getting a good training of Search Engine Optimization is quite essential once somebody gets expertise at WordPress. This requires the expert to exercise the skills at apex so that the resultant product could go high. It is good to advise you to go for the WordPress training along with the SEO training and ignoring the same can put your career at risk. As you go for the both of the amazing tools together, you would come to know of the endless possibilities that are retained with them and you are all set to pocket the most of the benefits of the online worlds.

Every body out there is looking to make money online with the help of the blogs and the websites by promoting the same through different SEO techniques. These techniques go a long way in helping you guide the traffic to your website or blog in a way that amazes the internet world. First of all what you need to go for is the SEO training because you can’t get the best results without understanding what SEO is and how it works. The better understanding you have, the more affluent traffic is expected out of your limited resources and the time devoted to your work.

What SEO is in fact and how it works must be established in mind primarily. The SEO is the abbreviation that stands for the famous internet term “Search Engine Optimization’ and any person looking to go for developing his or her own blog or website must be expert at it. Although, you may also get information and the assistance from different companies providing the SEO services but they are using the BlackHat methods mostly which is never recommended for a long term working of the ideas. You can use these services only for the short term traffic. For the purpose of getting the long term and the consistent traffic, you need to do your own SEO while using the legitimate as well as the WhiteHat methods.

There is a very good combination for the WordPress and the SEO while these are used together with each other and the results expected out of them are far better than the expectations of getting only the clicks, viewers, the traffic and the money ultimately.

Here are some tips that can be followed while using the WordPress in connection with the SEO:
The very first thing that must be observed is the hosting of the blog and the same must be on your own blog on the specific domain that you own. Moreover, it must be taken into account the purpose of the development of the website or the blog. The WordPress is not a good option to go for a business or other professional blog but it goes really fine with the fun and the entertainment blog.

After you are done with the hosting of your domain, there is the next step to go for the tag lines as well as the titles. The keyword you are going to target is necessarily required to be in the titles used in the website as it helps the Search Engines in diverting the traffic to your blog. Moreover, the tag line used must be intelligible as well as easy comprehensible as it helps the search engines as well. If you have a business that is already established and well known then it goes better with using the business name in the website.

One of the mostly ignored step is the checking the SEO settings for the blog as it can be said to be the most important step. Your privacy settings must be designed in a way that you could be able to keep an eye on the visitors of your website.

It must be ensured that you have not blocked the search engines. Let the search engines search you if you are running a business or professional blog. It might be suggested to block the same in case of personal blogs.
One of the best SEO plugins for the WordPress is the all in one SEO package that would let you enjoy more customized way of promoting your blog. Never forget to enable the Akismet plugin as it plays a very crucial role in fighting against the spams. Moreover, the Google XML Sitemap is also a very good plugin for the better SEO practice. In order to control the robots, you may go for installing the Meta Plugin.

WordPress 3.1 is finally released

Lucian Apostol — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:48:10 +0000

After a long period of waiting, testing, adding and cutting features, many release candidates, the WordPress 3.1 version, codename Reinhardt was officially released. The name comes from the jazz singer Django Reinhardt.

With the new release, wordpress developers promise that WordPress is now more of a CMS than ever before.

Among the features added I can point out: internal linking, improved admin navigation and edit post page redesign.

Here is the official announcement.

You can download the new version from the WordPress.org official website or to directly upgrade withing your administration panel.

There was a little problem with the name, the first choice for the name was “Django”, the first name of the same jazz singer, but some complaints appeared from Django project, which is a programming framework. More details about the incident here.

3 Reasons why I choose WordPress

Lucian Apostol — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:01:04 +0000

A lot of people are asking me what content management system I recommend and I always say WordPress. It is my choose and I will stick with it, but there are some people that ask me why I choose WordPress.

It is not a simple question because there are a lot of advantages that makes me to use WordPress but I don’t have time to tell something about each advantage, and I have to think if what I say worth something to the person who listen. I want to tell to people that ask me the most important advantages of WordPress. I want to be short and clear, this is what makes a message powerful.

Here is my list of top 3 mai reason why I choose WordPress and stick with it.

Community.

The community around a product is very important. If it is too small then a lot of problems will occur. The themes, plugins and tutorials are developed by community. If there is no community there are no themes, no plugins and no tutorials, you have to learn and make everything from scratch, which is not such a good idea today when you also need speed when doing things.

A lot of frameworks and platforms were developed in the past years, some of them with impressive communities around, but from all of them I can point out that the WordPress Community is the greatest. I bet that there are more wordpress templates than simple html templates. You can find a plugin for everything you may thing of. It is also true that you need to tweak the things a little bit, but you can have 90% of the work done before you really start to work.

Ease of use.

WordPress is easy to be used by anyone who knows how to use the computer at a moderate level. It is so easy that I can practically learn someone to use the administration panel in a matter of minutes. The menu, the fields are self explanatory and most people will figure out for themselves what they have to do. It is enough to say: “Go to administration panel and add a new post” and any normal person can do it without more questions.

Simple to code.

The way things are managed in the wordpress code are so smart that someone who see it for the first time can know where to change things, assuming that he knows some php. You can practically output a lot of things with a simple calls to already build functions.

The themes and plugins are very easy to be modified and changed due to the actions and template tags system built in wordpress that let’s you to easy add things where you want. I know that this way of thinking will let a plugin to do a lot of damage to your wordpress website, but you should only install plugins your really trust.