Here is an example of the code you can use. Download wp-analytics here. Just upload the script to your plugins directory, and activate the plugin in the plugin admin. If you are using Google Analytics, all you need to do is replace “UA-XXXXXX-X” with your site code. But it will work with any tracking script, just replace the Google script with your own. Also you can use this same code to add any code you wanted to the footer.

However, the theming system is not as simple as WordPress. I had added a Google Analytics script to my themes. But when I upgraded to 1.0, I lost all my tracking scripts.

The best way around this, I thought, is to create an analytics plugin. It turns out, it is very easy, especially if you have experience creating plugins with WordPress. The bbPress footer template has a hook for adding code to the footer. You just have to create the code that will add your tracking script to the footer of every page. That is it.

Here is an example of the code you can use. Download bbpress-analytics here. Just upload the script to your bb-plugins directory, and activate the plugin in the plugin admin. If you are using Google Analytics, all you need to do is replace “UA-XXXXXX-X” with your site code. But it will work with any tracking script, just replace the Google script with your own. Also you can use this same code to add any code you wanted to the footer.

I just implemented open registration on this site. You should be able to login or register from the sidebar. I also launched Kempwire Forums. The forums are mainly for support of my WordPress plugins, and the site registration is mainly for the forums. If you register on the site, you can use the same login for the forum and vice versa.

For support of plugins, I am leaving comments open on the plugin pages for now, but I appreciate it if all discussion will be added to the forums. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

Now, that custom themes no longer work, I decided to modify the default theme. It is not that hard to modify default views in Elgg, if you know what you are doing, but in doing this, I realized a fundamental problem with the default theme. The default theme should be a plugin rather than part of the core files. Because it is not, if you want to modify the default theme at all, you have to create a plugin.

Let’s say that you want to add Google analytics to your template. Unless you want to modify the core files, which you shouldn’t, you have to create a plugin. This should be much easier. Compare with Wordpress. Wordpress comes with a default theme. To make changes, it is easy to modify, add a new one or make your own. It is not easy to do this in Elgg.

Another problem is that a custom theme is the same as a plugin, so when you are looking at your list of plugins, it is hard to tell which ones are themes. Also there is no preview for themes, not even a thumbnail.

So for the next version of Elgg, I would break out the default theme as a plugin. Then I would separate the themes from the plugins in the backend. This will make it much easier to customize your themes in Elgg.

To do this, you need to add a couple of things to your theme. First open up header.php in your theme, and add this line in between the head tags, preferably right before the wp_head function.

<?php if ( is_singular() ) wp_enqueue_script( 'comment-reply' ); ?>

This adds the javascript required for threaded comments to any page or post where you have comments enabled, but not on the index or archive pages.

Next open up comments.php in your theme and make sure this code is in there.

<ol class="commentlist">
<?php wp_list_comments(); ?>
</ol>

This code should replace your comments loop. To see an example of this, see comments.php in the default theme in 2.7. Once this is done, you need to activate threaded comments. Go to “Discussion” under “Settings” in your WordPress admin, and check the box that says “enable threaded comments.”

Another important step is the CSS. You need to style your comments properly for the threaded comments to be as functional as possible. For an example, again check out the CSS from the default theme in 2.7. You also need to be aware of how many levels your comments will be nested in your CSS. WordPress allows you to set this in your backend. The default is 5. With those steps, you should be good to go.

The wp_list_comments is an important function for other reasons. It also gives you the ability to sort comments, add gravatars, add CSS hooks for even and odd comments and author comments. So even if you don’t want threaded comments, it is an important function to have in your theme, especially if you are developing themes for public release.

Update: It turns out following the instructions above didn’t work for me. You still need the js file in your header, but there are more changes to comments.php than I thought. The easiest thing to do is to just copy the comments.php file from the default theme in 2.7 to your theme and modify that file to your liking. This finally got threaded comments working for me.

I found a solution to this problem with MacPorts. The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system.

With MacPorts, it’s easy to install Apache and PHP into an environment you control. MacPorts makes it easy to add libraries to configure your installation however you want. It also makes it easy to update the software whenever you need to. I recommend using this to install your own dev environment on your Mac. Here is a good tutorial for installing Apache and PHP with MacPorts.

Note: the shortcut apache2ctl didn’t work for me because I am using .bash_profile on my machine instead of .profile which MacPorts installs. If you have this problem, you need to add a line of code to .bash_profile. Add the line below to .bash_profile and the shortcut apache2ctl should work.

alias apache2ctl='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl'

The latest version gives you the ability to add rel=”nofollow” to any page link from the wp_list_pages function or Pages widget.

The Ultimate Noindex Nofollow Tool is here, and you can download the Ultimate Noindex Nofollow Tool here. I hope you find it useful. Let me know of any problems or questions.

It’s called the Ultimate Noindex Nofollow Tool. It combines the Nofollow Archives, Nofollow Categories and the Noindex Login plugins. You can now add the “noindex” robots meta tag to archives, categories, search pages, tags, author pages, login, admin pages or any other page you choose. Also, you can add the rel=”nofollow” tag to archive links or category links. The next version, which I am working on now, will have the ability to add rel=”nofollow” to any page link from the wp_list_pages function.

If you care about WordPress SEO, you should be using this plugin or a similar one. I’m working on a WordPress SEO post, where I will detail what you should do and how you can use this plugin to improve your WordPress SEO.

The Ultimate Noindex Nofollow Tool is here, and you can download the Ultimate Noindex Nofollow Tool here. I hope you find it useful. Let me know of any problems or questions.

With WordPress, you can display authors in your sidebar, but there is not really a way to display profiles for registered users. So I ended up writing another plugin to handle this. The WordPress Users plugin creates a directory of user profiles on any page you specify on your site. Each user gets their own profile page that displays the date they joined and recent comments. It has support for Gravatars and permalinks. User links are nofollowed. You can also tell search engines to noindex, follow the directory pages. Also, there are plenty of hooks to style it yourself with your theme CSS file.

The WordPress Users page is here, and you can download the WordPress Users plugin here. I hope you find it useful. Let me know of any problems or questions.

The Noindex Login page is here, and you can download the WordPress Noindex Login plugin here.