Wordpress

Whats New in wordpress 3.5 – Elvin

WordPress, has released new version wordpress 3.5, the 80th version of WordPress. it brings with it some changes to help maintain its dominant position as the CMS of choice for bloggers and developers all over the world.

There are some obvious changes that we will all notice immediately and then there are some that maybe not everyone will notice, it is however shaping up to be a great release. Let’s take a look at some of what’s new!

lets discuss what Removed, Modified

Removed

  1. Links
    The “Links” Manager will be disabled by default on new WordPress installs. For upgrades from a previous version to WordPress 3.5 will keep the menu in place.
    If you want to keep the links then add plugin.
  2. Remote Publishing
    Atom is gone as of 3.5 and if you are using it you will need to use a 3rd party plugin.
  3. Privacy
    The link Privacy is removed in wordpress 3.5 previously it was under
    Settings->Privacy
    Now it was available as a single tick box under
    Settings->Reading page.
  4. Media Uploads
    Media Uploads Folder can no longer in Settings->Media
    if you want option then edit the functions.php

Modified

  1. Now the default theme with WordPress 3.5 is responsive
  2. My admin dash board looks much better.
  3. All the buttons now have a familiar rounded square look much like Twitter Bootstrap.
  4. TinyMCE has been updated to 3.5.7 and now also supports HTML5 tags
  5. jQuery gets updated to 1.8.3. jQuery UI is now 1.9.2. now you can use protocol-relative links when enqueuing scripts and styles.
  6. In the post or page editor the “HTML” tab has been renamed “Text”.
  7. Media:One of the single biggest changes in WordPress 3.5 is the way media is handled. The media library has had a much needed overhaul, when you edit an image you now get an edit screen more like the edit post screen.
  8. Better image quality for automatically resized images.
  9. Add Media : modal box with a much clearer workflow on how to upload, edit and insert your images. You can add Featured images from within the Add Media screen now and insert a gallery directly as well. No more uploading, saving, moving tabs and hoping it might appear. It was much more like Facebook or Flickr.

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Wordpress

Why I love WordPress

It’s no secret that WordPress is the #1 blogging platform.  If you’re still sweet on Blogger, here’s why you should reconsider.

Benefits and Limitations of WordPress i will explain those in my next post.

1. Themes

Where Blogger has a few ways you can change the layout of your blog, only WordPress has thousands of themes to choose from.  In just a few short keystrokes, you can select a free or premium theme and get exactly what you want for your blog layout.

2. Plugins

If there’s something you want your blog to do, chances are, there’s a plugin for that.  From adding completely customizable forms to your blog, to creating a membership site, to adding a shopping cart, WordPress is infinitely flexible and amazingly efficient.  Whether you’re a food blogger who wants a killer recipe layout or a photographer who needs a gallery to showcase your work, Plugins allow you to expand your blog to be exactly what you need.

3. SEO

If you want Google to point new readers your way, WordPress has built-in search engine optimization (SEO) tools.  And there are free plugins to make optimizing your blog a no-brainer.

4. Autonomy

With Blogger, you’re beholden to the Google powers-that-be…from everything to your blog’s loading time to how (and if!) readers view your blog.  (Remember that Blogger blackout in May 2011?)  With self-hosted WordPress, you’re in charge.  You own your domain, you control your web hosting, and you don’t have to worry about being dropped from the search engines if Blogger suddenly decides your blog = spam.  (yes, unfortunately, that happens.)  Oh, yeah – and you own your own content, too.

5. Comment Management

If you’ve been dissatisfied with Blogger’s commenting system in the past, you may have turned to an external service like IntenseDebate to customize your comment fields.  With WordPress, that capability is built in.  You can choose from dozens of options to regulate how your comments are submitted, approved and displayed – without a third party service.

6. Opportunity

If your blog is self-hosted, you’re wide open to new possibilities.  You can write unlimited content with unlimited images (depending on your hosting service), have multiple blogs on the same domain, add user forums or Paypal buttons – or sell your blog if things are really going your way. :)

It’s widely known that the folks at Blogger frown upon using Blogspot.com to make money.  With WordPress, you’re free to build a great blog, attract more readers, and ultimately make money doing what you love.

And if you don’t want to make money from your blog, you’re still free to make it as pretty – and awesome – as you like.

7. Professional Appeal

Let’s face it: if you’re a Blogspot blogger, you’re blogging for free.  And that’s a definite plus if you’re operating on a tight budget.  But if you have as little as $10/month to put toward hosting (remember: the WordPress software is free!), you’ll have a lot more credibility when it comes to attracting new sponsors – and new readers – for your blog.

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Wordpress

Speed Up Your WordPress Site

WordPress is used by millions as an open-​​source blogging platform. Many use it to share their thoughts and experiences online. However, WordPress offers a lot more than just blogging tools; it’s actually a robust, customizable content management system, and a lot of businesses use WordPress to develop great business websites that promote companies, products, events, and much more. As with any site, speed is extremely important. Attention spans on the Internet are measured in milliseconds, and even search engines like Google reward site speed with better placement in search results (and penalize slow websites with a lower, less prominent listing in search results). Speed is important, and WordPress websites can be as fast as the any others. Here are ten easy ways to enhance your WordPress website with snappy page loads and increased site speed.

Remove Extra Plugins

The first big rule to making WordPress fast is to use as few plugins as possible. Every time you have to send a request, it adds to your load time. If you are a developer, try coding the functionality into your theme by hand. This might be difficult if you don’t know PHP, but if you’re familiar with building WordPress plugins, you can replace plugins with identical functionality programmed directly into your theme. If you’re not a PHP expert, you can still eliminate plugins by looking for a theme that already has the features that you need to begin with. There are literally thousands of themes out there, and you’re bound to find one that has exactly what you are looking for.

Use a Good Hosting Company

If you are a small business, then shared hosting isn’t a bad option. However, if you are planning on getting a huge amount of traffic, then you will want a dedicated hosting plan with a company that specialized in WordPress hosting such as WP Engine, or MediaTemple. There are others hosting companies dedicated to mainly WordPress out there, but those two are the main ones.

Use a Good Caching Plugin

you should always use a caching plugin to slice load times. W3 Total Cache is a common plugin that many WordPress administrators use. It’s easy to set up, and you have excellent control over browser and page caching, which will make your load times a fraction of what they used to be.

Minify JavaScript and CSS Files

This is another aspect handled by the W3 Total Cache plugin. This makes your script and CSS files as small as possible, reducing load times and speeding up your site. Before your minify any files, I’d suggest that you save copies of the expanded versions in case you need them later.

Optimize Your Images

This is an important one. Don’t upload full-​​size images that are 1400px by 900px when you are going to be placing them in a spot that is actually much smaller. You don’t need images that large if you aren’t using them at that size. Even if you are using them at that size, I would recommend reducing the size, because it takes longer to load large images. Reduce the size of your images to fit the area that you will be using them precisely. In Photoshop, you can optimize your images before you upload them to your site. Open your images in Photoshop, size them to fit the area that they will be placed, and then go to “File” > “Save For Web.” A dialog box will come up where you can optimize your images. Notice in the top-​​right corner you can check optimize, make decisions about quality, etc.

Maximize Your CSS Use

CSS has come a long way in the past few years, and aesthetics that used to require image files can now be achieved fairly easily with carefully-​​written CSS statements. If you’re still relying on images — even tiny ones — for gradients, shadows, rounded corners, you should consider rebuilding those visual aspects of your site with CSS. It’s not about the size of the images (some gradient slices and shadows are only one pixel wide or long), it’s about the number of requests that visiting browsers have to make for each and every page. Requesting one stylesheet is Make sure that you’ve made the most of recent CSS improvements, and clean your WordPress template of antiquated, image-​​based aesthetics.

Add an Expires Header

 

This is a little advanced, but every little bit helps. An expires header is used to reduce load times for your regular or repeat visitors. It specifies an exact time that has to pass before your visitors’ browsers have to reload files that don’t often change. A good example would be the CSS files on your site. You can determine the amount of time that it will take before your regular visitors need to reload these files, which will greatly reduce load times for them. You implement this technique by going into your .htaccess file and adding code similar to the example below.

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType text/​javascript A2592000
ExpiresByType text/​css A2592000
ExpiresByType image/​gif A2592000
ExpiresByType image/​png A2592000
ExpiresByType image/​jpg A2592000

The code above looks for the file type. So, for images, it looks for the image and then the file format of the image, such as gif, jpg, or png. The number proceeding the “A” at the end is the length of time that the setting lasts in seconds. The example above is a month, but you can change that at your own discretion.

Optimize Your Database

It is important to optimize your WordPress database. That is where all of the data for your site is stored. It’s a good idea to use a plugin for this one, as it makes the task of database management a snap. I use WP-​​DB Manager. It helps to get rid of the data that you don’t need, so that your database isn’t trying to process old, unwanted, or irrelevant data. The less work your site has to do, the faster it will load.

Get Rid of Old Post Revisions

This is a small thing that can tidy up your site. The WP-​​DB Manager plugin will handle this, but if you don’t want to use this plugin, you can go into WordPress manually and delete old post revisions permanently. This is a lot of extra work, but it can help reduce the load on your site, which will make your site much faster.

Cut Down on Homepage Posts

It is a good idea to cut down the number of posts shown on your home page (and every other page), because it greatly reduces load time. If you have post thumbnails, your site will have to load each one. Lower the number of posts on your homepage to around five. If someone is actually interested in seeing your older content, you get the benefit of extra pageviews when they decide to browse additional content. Many are tempted to offer huge amounts of information on their homepage, but sensibly offering just your newest or best content on your homepage is definitely a win-​​win.

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Wordpress

Deploy WordPress From Localhost To Your Web Server

There are times when you need to move WordPress around within your server, and times when you need to move WordPress from one server to another. You don’t need to re-install. WordPress is flexible enough to handle all of these situations.

Steps to Deploy WordPress From Localhost To Your Web Server

  1. Export your Database from the localhost using phpMyAdmin as a .zip
  2. Extract the zip locally somewhere for editing.
  3. Open the .sql file in editplus/notepad (or equivalent UTF-8 capable editor) and do a string search for localhost
  4. Find the string you need to replace, usually http://localhost/your-site depending on how you’ve setup your local server.
  5. Do a global string replace using the replacement string you found and replace it with your new domain, something like http://your-domain.com
  6. Save in UTF-8 format. You might want to save as a new file just in case you need to revert.
  7. Using phpMyAdmin on your destination web server create a database and import the new .sql file. With some cPanel hosts like Bluehost it’s easier to create using cPanel’s tools then edit in phpMyAdmin for importing the file. If all is okay you should now have your database setup.
  8. Using FileZilla (or equivalent FTP program) upload your website’s files to the web server.
  9. While the upload is happening, it’s time to create the wp-config.php file for your production instance, make a copy of the existing wp-config.php file in your WP root directory.
  10. Open and change the database value to the name of your web server’s database for your site. Also, change the username and password for the database as required.
  11. Save this as wp-config.production.php and upload to your web server.
  12. Once all uploading is complete, using FileZilla rename the existing wp-config.php file on your web server to wp-config.development.php and also rename wp-config.production.php to wp-config.php. Your new config file is now in effect.
  13. Before you get all happy and try to visit your website you need to login to the WordPress admin and navigate to the Permalink settings. Once there just click the save button (don’t change anything, just re-save it). This resets the permalinks to your new URLs so the links to pages and posts will work throughout your site.

 

In the next post i will explain how to upload from one server to another server.

 

And that’s all folks!

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Wordpress

Create a Page that Displays Random Posts

Hi WordPress has an inbuilt option to show the recent posts as an home page. but not the random posts
what if you want the same look on other pages ?
here we have solution for the problem.

How to Create a Page that Displays Random Posts Have you ever been to a site and saw this cool feature?
They have a link in their top navigation to something like Random! or Read Random Articles, or some other creative text.
When you click on that link, it takes you to a page that displays one random page.
Each time you refresh, you are delivered with a new post.

Well this trick is just for you then. You would need to follow the trick #1 in this article to create a custom page template.
And simply paste this code in there:

 

<?php
query_posts(array('orderby' => 'rand', 'showposts' => 1));
if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<h1><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>

<?php the_content(); ?>

<?php endwhile;
endif; ?>

 

This is a simple WordPress Loop that is running a query to display random posts and the number 1 in there is telling WordPress to only show 1 post.
You can change that number, but most of the time people do it one post a time.
We have a Quick Reading Page on our site as well, so you can see this trick in action.

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Wordpress

Benefits and Limitations of WordPress

Everyone wants to blog and with a host of popular free blog hosting solutions available, WordPress.com is a popular choice. However, everything that comes free has its limitations, and it is better to know the benefits and limitations before starting a WordPress.com blog.

With WordPress.com Blogs

First I will highlight the major limitations of the WordPress Blogs which might make you decide to install the downloadable version (wordpress.org) with your own paid domain name and own webhosting.

Disadvantages

  • No income – with hosted WordPress you cannot monetize your blog. All the advertisements are controlled and you are not allowed to display advertisements
  • Domain limitation – your domain will be like this: www.yourblogname.wordpress.com
  • Limited storage space – if you run out of space you will need
  • Limited Design – you will get to choose from themes, but you cant upload and edit
  • Check terms and conditions

 

Advantages

  • Free – you don’t have to pay for hosting and domain registration. All you need is an e-mail address.
  • Automatic Updates – Each time the new version becomes available, your blog will be automatically updated.
  • Easy to Use and Set-up – All you need to do is to create a WordPress account, choose your subdomain, theme and you are ready to go

With your Self hosted Blogs

A WordPress Blog that is hosted through your own domain ensures that your site is not only completely optimised for search engine ranking, but also provides the highest level of customisation and options to earn revenue.

With self hosted blog you gain more power and control of your own blog.

Advantages

  • Earn revenue – start selling your own products or promoting someone else’s products. You are allowed to add a shopping cart and any number of plug-ins for tracking, click-throughs, and other widgets that generate revenue.
  • Design – No limitation on themes. There are many free themes available and also customised or premium themes to make it more profesional.
  • Complete control – you can customise your blog/website as you wish. No limitation on the design. This will help you to differentiate your blog from others. You will have many more options as your online business evolves and grows.
  • Search Engine Optimisation – WordPress is Search Engine friendly and allows every single page to be indexed.
  • Own Domain Name – choose the right name for your blog/website, get recognised, brand yourself. Do your keywords research first.

Disadvantages

  • Not as easy to set up – you will need to download and install WordPress. This also depend on the type of Hosting you use.
  • Not automatically updated – WordPress is becoming more and more popular and it is updated regularly and so you will need to manually update the self-hosted blog with the new release
  • Cost – you will have to pay for hosting and domain renewal. With the professional blog, or if you wish to use it as a Website, you will need a professional to design you a unique theme.

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