John Nasta » posts

Advanced Customizing of Atahualpa WordPress Theme

John Nasta — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:43:03 +0000

Atahualpa from Bytes For All just might be the most impressive free WordPress theme available to date.

Much like the Thesis theme from DIY Themes, you get a complete back-end interface for customizing the theme. However, Thesis starts at $87 for the Personal license, and Atahualpa is free.

The most important thing to know about how to customize Atahualpa is that you can create your own PHP templates for pages such as multi-post archives (including category & tag pages), search results, single posts, etc. People are often confused by the fact that the theme does not come with templates such as archive.php, search.php, single.php and others that you might expect, but what is not entirely obvious is that you can create these templates and upload them, and WordPress will automatically use them.

Take for instance one of the most popular questions asked about customizing Atahualpa in the BFA Forum. How do I get Atahualpa to display full posts on archive pages instead of post excerpts? The answer is diabolically simple. Just download the index.php file from Atahualpa and save it as archive.php. Remove the part of the template that calls in The WordPress Loop:

The output can be edited at Atahualpa Theme Options -> Style & edit the Center column */ bfa_center_content($bfa_ata['content_inside_loop']); ?>

and replace it with loop code from the archive.php of a theme that displays full posts on the archive pages, such as the WordPress Default theme:

>

				


				

				

					

				


				'); ?> Posted in  |

You can edit this code as well. One thing you might want to do is replace

with

so that the body text will follow the styling guidelines set by Atahualpa.

If you don’t want to display the time & date above the post, simply move or remove . If you don’t want the meta data to appear below your posts, simply remove that whole paragraph.

If you are familiar with WordPress coding, then you know that is what displays the full post content.

When you are finished editing, just upload your new file and WordPress will recognize and use it.

This also applies to using plugins that require you to add a piece of PHP code to one of your template files that Atahualpa does not come with. If the template doesn’t exist, just create it, upload it, and WordPress will use it.

Diabolically simple, yet not obvious…

This article copyright © John Nasta 2010 – All Rights Reserved

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Excluding Your Web Site From Search Engines

John Nasta — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:03:12 +0000

People often write about how to increase your search engine ranking by using noindex and nofollow meta tags to avoid indexing of links & pages that lead to duplicate content, and robots.txt files to invite the search engines in, but what if you don’t want your site indexed at all? This is useful for private organizations and anyone who does not want their site indexed for any reason.

Noindex is fairly self explanatory. Simply put, a noindex tag tells the search engines not to index this page.

Nofollow is a similar tag. It tells the search engines not to follow any of the links on the page.

That’s just the beginning…

By adding this code to <head> section of all of your pages:

<meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />

you can tell the search engines not to do either of the above.

You can also create a plain text file called robots.txt containing this code:

User-agent: * Disallow: /

Upload it to the root directory of your site. This will tell all “user agents” (a.k.a. search engines) to disallow indexing of all pages in the root directory as well as any directory within it.

So, what happens if you found this article too late and your site has already been indexed. How can you get it de-listed?

There are two answers…

The first is to upload the robots.txt file as described above. The next time your site is crawled, it will be removed from the index.

If you want your site removed from Google, and you can’t wait until the next time it’s crawled, sumbit a Google Urgent Removal Request. Google says that this process will take 3 to 5 business days.

Is there more to the story? Of course there is!

You can also use this tag in the <head> section of your pages:

<meta name="robots" content="noodp,noydir,noarchive" />

noodp – Prevents all search engines from using the DMOZ description for your site in the search results.

noydir – Prevents Yahoo! from using the Yahoo! directory description for your site in the search results.

noarchive – Prevents sites like archive.org and Google from putting copies of your pages into their archive or cache.

What about WordPress sites? You may have already noticed that you can click Settings > Privacy and choose the “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors” option. This will add noindex and nofollow tags to all of your site’s pages EXCEPT the Login and Forgot Password pages. A nice way to add these tags to those pages is to use the Robots Meta plugin by Joost de Valk. This plugin actually does more than just that. Read the instructions for a better understanding of the plugin’s features.

So, now your site is not being indexed, but people can still link to it from other sites or manually type in the URL. What can you do about that?

WordPress users have the option of marking their pages and posts Private, which means that only those subscribers whose Role allows them to see those pages and posts can access them. There’s also the User Access Manager plugin that allows you to assign which subscribers can read selected pages and/or posts. You can even assign people who are not subscribed and/or logged in by IP address or IP range.

Static sites can be password protected by putting a .htaccess file in the folder. If you don’t know how to create a .htaccess file, most commercial web hosts will do this for you via your Plesk or Control Panel interface.

Who would have thought that there’s as much involved in keeping people out of your site as there is in getting them to find it and come in?

This article copyright © John Nasta 2009 – All Rights Reserved

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WordPress Plugins – Caveats for Emptors

John Nasta — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 23:27:29 +0000

Here’s a list of WordPress plugins that didn’t work out for me and why. Keep in mind that these plugins may have been updated since this writing and the very issues presented here may since have been fixed. Also remember that sometimes a plugin doesn’t work because of a conflict with another plugin, so these things might not happen to you…

Event Calendar 3 by Alex Tingle – This plugin was putting all event posts into the Uncategorized category by default. The category checkbox was grayed out and could not be unchecked.

Registered Users Only by Viper007Bond – This plugin caused users who had already logged in (including myself) to get kicked back to the login screen when clicking links within the site. Also, a user who I have never met said that he went to my login screen and my user name was pre-filled in the dialog box. He couldn’t have made this up because my user name is not even a real word, yet he knew what it was.

Role Manager – This a great plugin that works perfectly. Just be aware that changing the roles and capabilities may cause conflicts with other plugins that reference the roles. Also keep in mind that deactivating this plugin does not undo whatever changes you’ve made with it, and some changes can’t be undone. Use with extreme caution.

Weasel’s Login Redirect by Andy Moore – This plugin requires the Role Manager plugin (see above) or it will not work. Modifying the roles can cause conflicts with other plugins that reference the roles such as WordPress Users, Profiler, and Subscribe 2. Therefore I do not recomment using it. Instead, I highly recommend Peter’s Login Redirect, as it does not require any other plugins to work, does not require modifying any roles, and lets you assign multiple redirects (i.e. by Username, Role, Specific Admin capability, or by All Other Users who do not meet the aforementioned criteria).

WordPress Users by Jonathan Kemp – This a great plugin that works perfectly. Just be aware that you may have to add a class to your CSS to get the user listing to display the way you want it to.

WP Hashcash by ecb29, donncha – As far as I (and apparently other people as well) can tell, this plugin marks every comment as spam, thus defeating its own purpose.

This will be a cumulative list. I will update it as things come up. Hopefully it will not turn out to be a long list.

This article copyright © John Nasta 2009 – All Rights Reserved

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WordPress Plugins – User Access Manager vs. Role Manager

John Nasta — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:01:43 +0000

Do you want to control access to your pages & posts or your admin features? There are plugins to fulfill these desires, but they come with some caveats…

If you just want to control access to your pages & posts, the way to go is User Access Manager. This allows you to set up posts and pages that are only accessible by selected users. This is a great way to organize group projects or pages for individual clients, employees, etc.

What’s the caveat? Older versions of User Access Manager create a .htaccess file in your Media Library folder (wp-content/uploads) to control who has access to the contents of the media folders. The result is that media in your posts/pages appear to be broken. Deactivating those versions will not remove the .htaccess files. The simple answer is to make sure that you are using the latest version of the plugin, which gives you options to lock those files or not, and will automatically delete the .htaccess files when you deactivate it (special thanks to Alex – the plugin’s author – for that update).

If you want to control which roles have access to which admin features, then the way to go is Role Manager. This plugin allows you to see and modify all of the default roles and their associated capabilities. You can also create your own custom roles and capabilities, or assign new capabilities created by other plugins to the desired role(s).

What’s the caveat? The Role Manager plugin can interfere with other plugins that reference the user roles. For example, plugins like Profiler and WP Users allow you to check off which roles are to be displayed. If those roles have been modified, they are not recognized by these plugins and will not display. Also, like the User Access Manager, you can’t simply deactivate the Role Manager plugin and reset everything to the way it was before. Deactivating the plugin will leave the sites roles and capabilities however you last set them. So, you may want to make a note of what the default roles and capabilities are before you change them.

As people try to squeeze more advanced features out of a stock WordPress installation, they may find themselves in a situation that is difficult to get out of. What’s the answer? Start a development blog. This can be used as a “sandbox” where you can try things without fear of “blowing up” your production blog. After all, WordPress is free. You can go into Settings > Privacy and mark your development blog private to hide it from search engines. You can also use plugins to hide your experimental pages and posts or prevent people from accessing the site without a login.

This article copyright © John Nasta 2009 – All Rights Reserved

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WordPress CMS – User Access Levels

John Nasta — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:21:08 +0000

The more I use WordPress the more I like it.

Recently I’ve been asked to do two web sites that have multiple access levels. One is for a graphic designer who wants a public site as well as things only her clients can see and things only her employees can see. The other is a private club that wants to give a very small amount of information to the public, and also wants separate access to information for two levels of membership. In both cases I used WordPress.

For the private club, I used the Role Manager plugin to create a Subscriber level that has access to pages marked Private, and another that has access to pages and posts marked Private. Thereby I created two levels of private access. See my article titled “Caveats for Emptors” for warnings about using the Role Manager plugin. You may prefer to use the User Access Manager plugin instead. I used it on the graphic designer’s site and will probably never use the Role Manager again.

To augment that, I added Peter’s Login Redirect plugin to both sites. This plugin allows you to redirect users to any page on the site by user name, role, numeric admin level, or “anyone else” (i.e. anyone not defined by the preceding criteria). The really nice thing about this plugin is not terribly obvious. If you have created a page or post that you only want one person or a defined group to see, you can send them there directly. Note that by default, links to pages marked Private will not appear in your WP navigation, and category links will only appear if there is at least one public post in the category. So, now you have a way of “hiding” information within your site. You could (for example) give your employees access to a category that contains protected posts about several projects and your clients a direct route to a specific page where their project is posted. Search the WordPress plugins directory for the words login redirect and you will find similar plugins that may better suit your specific purposes. Beware of Weasel’s Login Redirect as it requires the Role Manager plugin to work.

Finally in both cases I used the Hide dashboard plugin and removed the Meta links from the sidebar so that Subscriber-level visitors won’t mess with the login profiles.

Thanks WordPress!

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WordPress – Avoiding Microsoft code in posts & pages

John Nasta — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:08:58 +0000

Those of you who like to copy & paste your posts from Microsoft Word have probably noticed that doing so carries font & formatting information into your blog along with the text.

This can cause unexpected formatting problems, especially when inserting the “More” tag, changing themes, or when your content is reproduced in RSS readers or elsewhere.

The best way to avoid this is to copy & paste your post in as plain text. In the “Edit” and “Add New” screens for both posts and pages, make sure you have Visual mode selected. In Visual mode you will see a row of icons for formatting your text. The farthest icon to the right is called “the kitchen sink”. Click that icon and a second row of icons appears. One of them is a clipboard with the letter T on it. That is the one for posting as plain text. That’s the one to use. To the right of that icon is a clipboard with a W on it. That one is for pasting from MS Word. It removes most of the Microsoft code but not all of it, and therefore I don’t recommend it.

If you need more text formatting options than your two rows of icons offer, download the TinyMCE Advanced plugin, which will give you icons for creating tables and other advanced formatting features.

So, you have a bunch of posts with all sorts of formatting code in them from Microsoft. How do you get rid of the “junk code”? Just highlight the entire post, and use the icon to the right of the “paste from Word” icon. It looks like a white eraser and if you hover your mouse over it, you’ll see that it says “Remove formatting”. Works like a charm! Switch from Visual to HTML mode and you’ll see that all the Microsoft code is gone.

If you generally don’t like the way a font displays within your theme, adjust it in the stylesheet, not within the post or page.

Keep it clean and simple!

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WordPress – the “More” tag

John Nasta — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:55:40 +0000

A few clients have asked me how to make only a short version of a post appear on the default posts page, and have the user click to read the rest of the post. This allows your posts to be closer together on the home page, which means less scrolling for the reader. It also prevents duplicated content and thereby keeps you off of Google’s Supplemental Index, which helps your search engine ranking.

The answer is to use the “Insert More Tag” icon, which is immediately to the left of the spell check icon when you add or edit a post in Visual mode (it looks like two sheets of paper separated by a horizontal dotted line), and the button with the word “more” on it in Visual mode. All you have to do is click the icon while your cursor is in the spot where you want the break. In order to avoid having your More tag appear in the wrong part of your code always insert it in HTML mode rather than in Visual mode. If you want it between paragraphs for example, make sure it is between your end paragraph tag and the next begin paragraph tag. If the paragraph tags are not showing, make sure you have a line break, then the tag, and then another line break.

Simple!

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Blogging – To page or to post?

John Nasta — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:56:59 +0000

So, you’ve got your blog up and running, and now it’s time to understand the difference between pages and posts.

In terms of your site’s navigation, Pages stay in the same place all the time. Some themes make the links to Pages more prominent than other themes. Pages do no go out as part of your RSS feed. Links to your Pages are on every page of your blog. So, the Pages feature is best used for permanent information and/or information that you want to always be readily accessible.

Posts are typically displayed in the order of newest first. As you add more posts, the older ones are moved off of the main page of your blog. After that, they have to be reached by a third-party search engine (Google, Yahoo, etc.), searching within the blog, or by clicking links to Archives or Categories. Assigning Posts to categories is a way of aggregating certain types of content within the blog, making similar information easier to find. Posts do go out as part of your RSS feed. Posts are better suited for current news and events.

One more thing to keep in mind is that with WordPress (and presumably other blogs as well) you can choose whether the main page of your blog shows the most recent posts or one of your pages.

That’s about it!

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