WordPress for Beginners

How to Exclude Latest Post from the WordPress Post Loop

Editorial Staff — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:38:30 +0000

Excluding latest posts from the loop and/or offset posts in the loop is one of the things that comes in handy when editing or designing themes. In this article we will show you how you can use the offset parameter in wp_query function to exclude latest posts from the WordPress post loop.

First you will need to find the loop that you are working with. Then you will need to add the following parameter:

query_posts('posts_per_page=5&offset=1');

This query is telling the loop to only display 5 posts which follow the most recent post (1). The important part in this code is “offset” and this magic word is doing the whole thing.

Your loop code should look like:

query_posts('posts_per_page=6&offset=1');
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
?>

This should be it. If you have any questions feel free to ask via comments.

Source: WP Codex

How to Exclude Latest Post from the WordPress Post Loop is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

MadBlogger Free WordPress Theme by WordPress Madness

Editorial Staff — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:51:30 +0000

Federico Moreno of WordPress Madness have submitted his free theme to be published on WPBeginner. MAD Blogger is a free WordPress theme bloggers, and/or photographers. This design features a clean look with smooth shadowing to improve the readability of blog content.

(Click on the Image for Live Demo)

Features

3 color schemes (blue, purple and orange) – Or add your own with 5 lines of CSS codes
Multiple Sidebar Support
MadPanel (Theme Options Panel) with plenty of options to play with.
Dynamic Auto-sizing Thumbnails

Download Now

Note to Designers: You can also submit your free WordPress themes for us to review and share with WPBeginner’s audience. Use our Make a Suggestion form.

MadBlogger Free WordPress Theme by WordPress Madness is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Exclude Sticky Posts from the Loop in WordPress

Editorial Staff — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:30:26 +0000

Sticky posts is one of the cool features that WordPress has, but sometimes you do not want to have sticky posts in your loop. In this article, we will show you how to completely exclude sticky posts from the loop in WordPress, and we will also show you how you can take away the sticky feature of the post, so it still shows in their natural order.

How to take away the Sticky Ability of the Post

When you are displaying most recent posts in a tab, you do not want the sticky posts to stay sticky. If you do not remove the sticky features, the recent posts area would be useless as all of your sticky posts will crowd this area. This is when query_posts feature comes in handy.

To do this you will need to change your loop to something like this:

query_posts('caller_get_posts=1');
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
?>

Completely exclude Sticky posts from the Loop

If you are using Sticky posts in a slider, then sometimes you might want to completely exclude your sticky posts from the loop. All what you have to do is edit your custom loop to match with this:

query_posts(array("post__not_in" =>get_option("sticky_posts")));
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
?>

This code will not display any sticky posts in the post loop.

Source: WP Codex

How to Exclude Sticky Posts from the Loop in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Manage Your Ads in WordPress with OIO Publisher (Review)

Editorial Staff — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:06:05 +0000

When it comes to controlling ad space on WordPress blogs, there are few options out there. In this article we will be sharing a highly reputed commercial Ad Manager plugin known as OIO Publisher. The goal of this plugin is to maximize your revenue, save you time, and keep you in control of your ad space.

What Can You Do with OIO Publisher?

OIO Publisher allows you to place ad spots throughout your web site in the zones that you like, and then go out there and sell those ads. It allows you to pick what size ads you want, and how much should they cost. It also integrates with several payment options such as PayPal and 2Checkout.

This plugin is full with features. You get to set zones and in each zone you can choose how many ads will be displayed. You have an option to make the ads rotate. You can offer buyers the opportunity to buy several months of advertising at a discount pricing or you can do monthly subscription. All of this is and much more can be done through the straight forward administration panel.

There is a default banner that reads Advertise here. When a buyer clicks on one of your Advertise Here links, they will be taken to your sales page. This page will be generated by this plugin. Here the users can fill out their information, upload their advertisement image, and choose the payment method. Once they submit an ad, it waits for your approval before it is published on the site. Once you’ve approved the advertisement, OIO Publisher will run the ad for the period that you were paid for, and it will email out statistics on how the ad is doing to the buyer. If your sponsor subscribed for month to month payment, OIO Publisher checks with paypal or their payment method to see if the payment was made. If the subscription was cancelled, it will notify you, and automatically remove the ad from the site.

Screenshot for the Payment Form

Screenshot for Advertiser Report

There are also options for offering pay-per-post, digital downloads, and affiliate programs. All at rates you set in the administrative panel.

Our Opinion

OIO Publisher is a great product that will put you in control. It is very easy to implement and use, but this product does not guarantee that you will have plenty of advertisers. You will still have to do the hard work in order to get advertisers to purchase the ads from your site.

The downside of OIO Publisher when compared to services like BuySellAds is that these services have a huge advertising base, and they can drive advertisers to your sites. Even though OIO Publisher have a marketplace section on their website, it is no where near as powerful as BuySellAds. You will still have to do a lot of work to get advertisers to your site.

The plus side of using OIO Publisher is that you get to keep 100% of the profits from selling the ad spots whereas on services like BuySellAds, there is a middle man fee that you pay.

Cost of this Plugin: $47 ($10 OFF Coupon for WPBeginner Users)

This is a one-time fee, and you can use this plugin on as many domains as you want (as long as you own them). You will also get outstanding support from OIO Publisher team when needed for this one-time fee.

Manage Your Ads in WordPress with OIO Publisher (Review) is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Which Blogging Platform Should You Use? (Infographic)

Editorial Staff — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:09:44 +0000

When starting a blog, this question comes to the mind of every blogger. Which blogging platform is the best? Which one should they use? If you are on WPBeginner, you will see us recommending everyone to use Self Hosted WordPress.org platform. But many users think that our views are biased, therefore we asked Darren Rowse from Problogger for his permission to use the data from the poll he ran on his site.

We took the results from Darren’s Poll about What Blog Platform Do You Use? and displayed it in our infographic to present a more convincing argument. As of now, there are a total of 3476 bloggers who participated in this poll, and you can see the results in our Infograph.

WordPress.org got the majority of the votes and WordPress.com was on third place in user choice. If you need help distinguishing between the two platforms see our infograph about Self Hosted WordPress vs. Free WordPress.com.

Our pick in the Best Platform is ofcourse WordPress.org, and we have mentioned a few reasons why you should use WordPress. But if the reasons in the infographic is not enough for you, then you should check out our fully detailed post about Why You Should Use WordPress.

Feel free to post a comment below about which platform do you use, and why you use it.

Once again, all thanks goes to Darren Rowse of Problogger for letting us use his data to create this interactive graphic for our users.

Which Blogging Platform Should You Use? (Infographic) is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Guerrilla v2: Free WordPress Theme by Giant Themes

Editorial Staff — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:54:58 +0000

Mike Smith of Giant Themes have submitted his free theme to be published on WPBeginner. Guerrilla v2 is a simple WordPress blog style theme with custom back-end features to make your theme-editing easier.

(Click on the Image for Live Demo)

Features

Logo changer: add your logo url & the size of the logo
Stylesheet Changer: the three styles are built into a drop down for you
Google analytics: add your code into the box and it’s automatically added into your site
Timthumb options: Activate timthumb’s image resizer and also choose the width/height
RSS Feed options: add your feed url and feedreader name to get the rss box to show up and allow email sign ups
Twitter options: Add your twitter name, choose how many tweets to show & choose the twitter section title
Advertisements: 300×250 in the sidebar, 300×250 on single post pages, 468×60 on the single post pages (and under the first post on every page), 125×125 ad block in the sidebar

Download Now

Note to Designers: You can also submit your free WordPress themes for us to review and share with WPBeginner’s audience. Use our Make a Suggestion form.

Guerrilla v2: Free WordPress Theme by Giant Themes is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Display Custom Fields Outside The Loop in WordPress

Editorial Staff — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:17:23 +0000

There will be times that you need to display post-specific content for example a different sidebar for a specific post. Usually post specific contents are added via a custom field which can only be displayed inside a post loop. In this article we will show you how you can display custom fields outside the loop. This tutorial will allow you to expand the possibilities of what you can do with WordPress.

The code will look like this:

global $wp_query;
$postid = $wp_query->post->ID;
echo get_post_meta($postid, 'Your-Custom-Field', true);
wp_reset_query();
?>

You will need to make sure that you change the part where it says “Your-Custom-Field”.

This code is just the basic code. You can play around with it and use all the query_post arguments to fit your needs. You can even display another post’s custom fields on a single page of a different post.

In this (Example) at Uzzz, we are displaying the custom fields of a specific portfolio post, into the single post of a related testimonial post.

This snippet is very useful for theme developers. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comment or via email.

How to Display Custom Fields Outside The Loop in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Most Wanted Twitter Hacks and Plugins for WordPress

Editorial Staff — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:23:07 +0000

Twitter has grown exponentially over the past year, and it is one of the fastest growing social networks at the moment. It is an extremely powerful marketing and promotion tool that no active blogger can ignore. Twitter has the power to make your articles go viral, and the “Twitter Effect” is something that most bloggers want. In this article, we will share some of the most wanted and extremely useful twitter hacks and plugins that will allow you to maximize your benefits from twitter.

Note: These hacks are for all user levels. Some knowledge of PHP / HTML will be required for some of the hacks. We will try to provide alternative plugins for each hack that we share to make it easy for beginners.

Display a Retweet Button with a Counter

If you have visited an active blog, then you have seen a retweet button on their site. Majority of the time, it will be from a service known as Tweetmeme.

Snippet

One way to get this button on your site is by placing the following code in your single.php template (At a location where you want to put it).

The above code will output a big button like you see on the left hand side of this post. Make sure that you change the source to your twitter account. It is essential that you do this because it will help you get more exposure.

If you do not like the big retweet button, you can display a compact twitter button, which you can see at the end of this post. Simply paste the following code:

Note: Don’t forget to change the source from wpbeginner to your username in the above code.

Plugin

Tweetmeme also offers a plugin that you can download. The plugin will allow you display these buttons within your posts. You will have an option to pick:

The display size (compact or large)
Pick the Source of this tweet (Your Username)
Where you want to place the button in the post

Display Twitter Follower Count as Text

There are users who absolutely hate buttons like Feedburner buttons or Twittercounter buttons. Are you one of them? Do you want to display your twitter count as text, so it blends in to your new custom design? Well then this hack is just for you.

Snippet

Paste the following code any where you want to display the count:

$tw = get_option("twitterfollowerscount");
if ($tw['lastcheck'] < ( mktime() – 3600 ) )
{
$xml=file_get_contents('http://twitter.com/users/show.xml?screen_name=wpbeginner');
if (preg_match('/followers_count>(.*) $tw['count'] = $match[1];
}
$tw['lastcheck'] = mktime();
update_option("twitterfollowerscount",$tw);
}
echo $tw['count'];
?>

Make sure to replace wpbeginner with your twitter name.

Explanation of this code: This code will open the XML file for the username that you specify. It will look for the node followers_count, and then it will display that count on your site. Best part about this code is that it will display cached results, so it will keep the load time to the minimum.

This code was written by Rarst (@rarst)

Plugin

For those users who do not feel comfortable modifying the theme files, you can use a plugin called “Subscribers Text Counter“. This plugin will let you display the follower count in widgets, or on posts/pages. This plugin also utilizes the caching system, so it is a good solution.

Display Your Recent Tweets

It is great to give a community sense to a site by displaying recent tweets in the sidebar or on a separate page. Many blogs often display their most recent tweets in their site. This section will show you various different ways to display your recent Tweets.

Snippet

There are numerous codes on the web that will let you display recent tweets from your twitter account without a plugin. Almost all of those codes have some shortfall. Below we will share one of the snippets that will allow you to display your recent tweets with caching.

Paste the codes below, wherever you like to display the recent tweets:

Download the Code File

You must change the username from “wpbeginner” to your username. You can find this towards the very end of this code where it reads parse_cache_feed(wpbeginner, 1). The number in front represents the number of tweets that will be displayed. You can change the number to the amount that you like, but we recommend that you keep it to a minimum because this code is utilizing the Search API.

Known Issues: This snippet is using the Search API, so if your account is removed from twitter search (ofcourse by twitter), then this snippet will not display any results. Also the search API only displays tweets that were posted within the last 7 days.

For those users who are flagged from the search by twitter, we recommend that you contact them and ask why that is the case. In the meantime, you may use a JavaScript solution that will display your tweets from your feed.

Place the following code in your footer.php right above tag.

Remember to change the username from wpbeginner to your username. Also you can change the count from 5 to whatever you like.

Then add the following HTML tags any where you want to display the recent tweets.

You would need to edit the CSS file for proper styling.

Known Issues: This plugin does not have caching, so the scripts will be loaded every time the page loads.

Source: Twitter

Plugin

If you are one of the users who do not want to modify their theme files, there is an alternative plugin that you can use.

Alex King’s Twitter Tool

This plugin will let you display recent tweets from your account. It will store your tweets in the database to limit the API queries. Tweets are archived every 10 minutes.

Note: there are way too many plugins that do this, to list them all here.

Display Recent Tweets from Multiple Accounts

Display recent tweets from Multiple accounts come can be useful to increase community interaction when you have a multi-author blog. You can spend hours on the web trying to find a good solution, but below are two best solutions that we found.

Tweet!

Tweet is an unobtrusive JavaScript plugin for jQuery that lets you put twitter on your website. This is a great snippet that loads the tweets using JSON. For the download and directions, you should visit the official page.

Known Issues: This script utilizes the Search API which has it’s limits. Your search query has a character limit set to 140 characters. So in short, you will be able to get a maximum of 6 – 8 users depending on the length of their username.

Tweet Blender

Tweet Blender plugin allows you to display multiple user’s tweet. This plugin actually displays the tweets from user’s feeds, so it does not rely on the Search API. But the more names you put, the longer it will take to load.

Known Issues: None that we know of.

Integrate Twitter Conversations About Your Posts

People are talking about your posts, and their convesation is not limited to the comments in your post. A lot of that conversation is happening on Twitter. Why not bring this conversation right back to your blog?

Tweetback plugin imports those tweets about your posts as comments. You can display them in between the other comments on your blog, or display them separately.

You can also add widgets to your site that shows the “Most Tweeted Posts” and “Recently Tweeted Posts” with the use of a plugin called Tweet Stats . You must have the plugin (Tweetback that we mentioned above in order for this plugin to work).

Take your Blog communication to Twitter

Above we showed you how you can integrate twitter conversations about your blog posts into your comments. In this trick, you will give the user an ability to post the comment on your site, and then also have their conversation on twitter.

Commentwitter

This plugin will add a twitter login area below the comments, so users have an option to post their comment to twitter.

Display a Special Welcome Message for Your Twitter Users

There are some sites that display a special welcome message to their twitter users. This increase their chances of getting more followers and more retweets for that post.

Simply place the following code in your single.php file where you want the welcome message to be displayed.

if (strpos("twitter.com",$_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER])==0) {
echo "Welcome, Twitter User! If you enjoy this post, don't hesitate to retweet it to your followers";
}
?>

Display Your Twitter Friends on Your Site

You have seen the Facebook Fan page widget, Google Connect widget, and Mybloglog widget. All three of these display the friends/fans pictures. You can do that with twitter as well.

Twitter Friends Widget

This plugin displays your Twitter friends/followers in your sidebar in the same way that they appear on your Twitter homepage.

Twitter Profile Field in Comments

Top tech sites are already doing this. If you go to Mashable or Tech Crunch, then you will see that they have an additional field below the Website URL for Twitter profile. There is a plugin that will let you do that fairly easily.

Twitter Link Comments

This plugin will add an extra field to your comment form so a user can add their Twitter username. A user configured ‘follow me’ link is then displayed along with their details on all their comments. The extra field and ‘follow me’ link can be configured using the settings page without ever needing to modify any template files. (unless you want to)

While these are some of the Most Wanted Twitter Hacks and Plugins, this list is definitely not the end of what you can do with twitter and WordPress. Infact there are 662 Results in the WordPress Plugin Directory when one runs the query for Twitter. There is also a list that we used as our source 107 Twitter Plugins for WordPress.

If you liked this post, then please retweet it, so others can also take advantage of this useful article. Also don’t forget to follow us on twitter.

Most Wanted Twitter Hacks and Plugins for WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

An Automated Way of Taking Website Screenshot in WordPress

Editorial Staff — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:48:49 +0000

We were visiting one of our favorite sites (Binary Moon) and noticed this extremely cool service that WordPress has. Most people do not even know that WordPress has an option which lets you take screenshots of any website.

Ben at Binary Moon noticed that WordPress was using this feature of their Commercial Themes Page. He decided to contact Matt Mullenweg and asked his permission to implement this feature on his site. Then he kindly wrote a plugin that can be used by any WordPress user to implement this feature on their site.

Example:

http://s.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/http%3A%2F%2Fwpbeginner.com%2F?w=520

You can generate a dynamic screenshot for each site and specify the width as well.

Ben is using this on his site called WP Vote. We think this concept would be great for a gallery type site.

Download BM Shots Plugin

Usage is explained on the plugin page above, but if you have any further questions feel free to ask it here.

An Automated Way of Taking Website Screenshot in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Install and Setup WP Super Cache for Beginners

Editorial Staff — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:27:50 +0000

WP Super Cache is one of the must have plugins for every WordPress site. A lot of our users asked us to do a tutorial that shows how to setup WP Super Cache plugin step by step. Because we have this plugin included in our Recommended WordPress Plugins list, we think that it is necessary for us to show everyone how to take advantage of this extremely useful plugin.

This plugin makes a copy of your web page on the server and by doing so it speeds up page load time and reduces the resource consumption. It is essential that you have this plugin just incase if your site hits the Front Page of a social media network such as digg or stumbleupon, without this plugin, your server will most likely crash.

What we will be doing in this tutorial?

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WP Super Cache Plugin. Then we will walk you through the process of setting it up which will include updating the .htaccess files and selecting the right settings. Many beginners are afraid to install this plugin because it is a some what complicated setup. But we assure you that after reading this guide, you will feel very comfortable installing this plugin on more than one site.

1. Installing WP Super Cache

We will use the built-in plugin installer to install the plugin. So you should login to your WP-Admin Panel. Click on the Plugin Tabs » Add New. Then type the plugin name “WP Super Cache”.

You will see the results. It will most likely be the first plugin on the list. It is created by Donncha O Caoimh. Click on the Install link. You will see a screen like below. Click on Install Plugin and then Activate the Plugin.

2. Setup Permalinks

A custom url or permalink structure is required for this plugin to work correctly. We recommend that you change your permalinks anyways to make it more SEO Friendly. Follow our tutorial – SEO Friendly URL Structure for WordPress.

3. Turn WP Super Cache On

You will need to visit Settings » WP Super Cache page, and turn it on.

4. Update .htaccess

After you turn WP Super Cache on as shown in Step 3, you need to scroll down on the WP Super Cache option page screen until you see the Mod Rewrite Rules Section. It looks like this:

Then scroll down a little bit more and click on Update Now

You will be able to update this only if your web host has correct folder/file permissions setup. If you are using any of our recommended web hosts for WordPress, then you should be able to do this without any problem.

Once you have finished all these 4 steps, WP Super Cache is setup completely for your site.

If you have any other issues or need additional help feel free to post your questions in the comments below. But before you do that make sure that you have read through the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about this plugin.

How to Install and Setup WP Super Cache for Beginners is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.