May 9, 2009
If - like me - you're using WP to share code - PHP, HTML, javascript or whatever - you're probably getting very frustrated with seeing the quotes get messed up in the code you're posting. By default, WordPress turns straight quotes ' ' and " " into curly quotes ‘ ’ and “ ”. Which might be all very pretty if you're just writing text, but if you're posting code snippets,... Read more
May 5, 2009
So, you want an archive page: a single page like an index or site map for your blog, with all your individual post titles in a list, as well as links to monthly entries and category entries - click "blog archive" up there at the top if you want to see any example of what I mean. Archive pages can make it easy for readers to see at a glance how much your blog has to offer; they're also great to... Read more
May 5, 2009
Another Google-inspired quickie. 
If you have a theme that normally shows full posts on the front page and archive pages, sometimes you'll want to change that behaviour just for a single post: perhaps it's just too long for the front page, perhaps it's got material in it that you want to warn people about before it's suddenly in their face, perhaps a cliffhanger-style cut suits the style of... Read more
May 4, 2009
Here's an easy one (though judging by the number of Google searches that end up here, it's something lots of people are having problems with) - sign into your WordPress admin panel go to Settings > Reading look for the box that says "Blog pages show at most" change the number to the number you want This setting normally (depending on how your theme's set up) affects your home page,... Read more
May 3, 2009
I had a little argument with someone last week. WordPress is, they said, a pile of rubbish. They'd spent an hour typing up a post and WP refused to publish it! Or rather, it said it had published it, but it refused to show up on the front page except as a link in the sidebar. That sidebar link was the easy clue: what they'd written was a page, not a post. And their response, quite rightly, was... Read more
May 2, 2009
WordPress doesn't just publish the all-posts feed: in fact, it automatically publishes feeds to just about everything on your blog. Below are a few examples; I've included both the URL and the code to automatically generate the relevent link; after all, the feed's no use if your readers can't find it. URLs given assume you've set up pretty permalinks in Settings > Reading. Edit the bits in... Read more
May 2, 2009
What's a feed and why would I want one? A feed is, simply, another way for people to read your blog posts that doesn't require them to actually visit your site to do so. If you read a lot of blogs and news sites, clicking through to all of the websites to see if there's anything new can get tedious. Feeds allow your readers to "subscribe" to your blog: that is, add your feed to a feed reader -... Read more
April 29, 2009
Tools to hook up Twitter and WordPress - there are dozens of them, from tools to broadcast your blog posts to your Twitter followers, to - ah - tools to allow your blog readers to broadcast your blog posts to *their* Twitter followers. Here are a few of my favourite WordPress plugins for Twitter. Twitter Tools If you blog and Twitter, you need this. Twitter Tools can do a plethora of useful... Read more
April 28, 2009
Blogs traditionally have shown newest posts first: that ease of finding what's new is arguably what's made them so popular with both writers and readers. But there are times when you'll want to list posts in the other order: oldest first. If you're using WordPress as a content management system and building content in categories, your first post might be the most important, so you'll want it at... Read more
April 19, 2009
Today I want to take a quick look at WordPress users: how to change how your name appears next to your posts, and how to add new users to your blog (and make sure they can't do anything you don't want them to). If you've got a brand new install of WordPress, you've probably just got one user, and that user is probably called something like "admin". Which is all very well for signing into the... Read more