How to Add Subtitles to WordPress
February 19, 2009 – 11:53 am
In just 3 easy steps you can have attractive subtitles on your WordPress site.
- Go to the edit screen for the post or page where you want subtitles.
- Under the Custom Fields heading, enter a new custom field name. Type subtitle in the Name field. Type the subtitle text in the Value field. Add the custom field.
- Add the below code in your post or page template after the title code (or wherever you want it to appear) and save.
< ?php
{ $subtitle = get_post_meta
($post->ID, 'subtitle', $single = true);
if($subtitle !== '') echo $subtitle;} ?>
Voila!
Ingredients of a Bad Website
February 14, 2009 – 9:09 pm
Surely while surfing the internet you come across websites that make you sick. Here we present the first installment of “Ingredients of a Bad Website.”
- Excessive ads- This nonprofit can’t get hosting without the unprofessional ads? I would even volunteer to host them for free.
- Missing images- What is supposed to be in this box? A logo?
- Boring and repetitive text- Two blocks of text without any images scare away visitors. I actually read the text and saw that each paragraph essentially said the same thing
Honorable mention: The site is translated into Spanish underneath the English part. Would anyone know to look down there? Probably not.
Give your organization a professional face on the web. Hire an expert who has experience with user interface design, and knows how to draw visitors to a site.
Have you seen any bad websites lately?
10 WordPress Plugins to Grow Great Sites
July 28, 2008 – 12:56 pm
We run quite a few WordPress blogs, and these fantastic plugins manage to pop up on nearly all of them
- Akismet- It is hard to grow a site when you keep getting comment spam. Hardly anything gets through, and it is very simple to use.
- All in One SEO Pack- This optimizes like you wouldn’t believe. You can fix your titles, keywords, descriptions, block spiders, and more. I’ve been able to get great results with small sites.
- FeedBurner FeedSmith- You can manage your feed subscribers much more easily and utilize the great functions of FeedBurner.
- Google XML Sitemaps- A great boost to SEO. Google uses sitemaps to help them determine what information should be indexed. This plugin helps.
- Lighter Menus- Let’s face it, drop down menus are much faster to navigate, and you don’t need to waste time or space when working on your site. (This is not needed for WordPress 2.7 and above)
- Plugin Central- Easily install and update plugins from your dashboard. Since you don’t need to use ftp anymore, you can quickly manage plugins anywhere. I think it is still easier than WordPress 2.7’s autoupdate for plugins.
- Subscribe To Comments- Let people receive notification that someone responded to their comment. It may be useful to them, and may also bring them back to the site. Always encourage discussion.
- WassUp- Real time stats (OS, browser, host, referrer, location, top content, top searches) help you determine which content and marketing efforts are working, and give you immediate satisfaction when you have site visitors. Plus, there are great sort options.
- Wordpress Thread Comment- The site may be hard to understand, but setup is simple, and you get an attractive, useful implementation of threaded comments upon activation. WordPress 2.7 added threaded comments, but this is easier and better, in my opinion.
- WP-DBManager- You never know if something will go wrong with your database. Back it up and optimize it at least once a month.
Notable omissions:
- WP Super Cache- When your site becomes a hit, you will probably want to cache your pages so your server is not overrun. For sites with less traffic, a cache plugin can be annoying since you can not see updates to your site immediately.
- Post-Plugin Library- Great for a power user, it lets you use the connected Similar Posts, Recent Comments, and Random Comments. I was able to combine with the custom field to display an image with each similar post. However, it breaks many other plugins and can cause errors in WordPress. Update: These plugins are not buggy anymore, and are very powerful.
What other plugins do you use?
Research Twice as Fast
April 7, 2008 – 10:10 am
- If you want to find something on a website that does not have a search tool, use Google. Type site:www.thesite.com search terms and be amazed at the results.
- Viewing the source code of a page can often give you many answers. Example: If you hate e-mail forms (even though they help prevent spam), right clicking and viewing the source of the page will often help you find the e-mail address so you can contact them directly with your e-mail software of choice.
- Firefox has a great search tool that finds your term as you type it. It is much quicker than Internet Explorer’s search tool. Bonus: Firefox 3 uses much less memory, browses faster, and helps you bookmark items for easy retrieval later.
- Sit up straight to improve brain flow to your brain and be more alert (or lean back at 45 degrees for optimal spinal health)
- Wear ear plugs or headphones to block out distractions, and focus.
Search
Categories
Recent Comments
- vdb- Easily, the article is really the greatest on this worthy topic. I agree with your conclusions and will eagerly look forward to your upcoming updates. Just saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the exceptional lucidity in your writing. I will right away grab your rss feed to stay abreast of any updates. Genuine
- Steve- I was very disappointed when I saw the new canisters appearing on the shelves. I, too, bought the product as a nostalgic adult, hoping that some combination of the placebo effect and the actual vitamin contents would marginally bolster my health and justify its purchase over, say, Nesquik. Now it doesn't seem like vitamins hidden
- Gaëlle- Tx ! We don't need any plugin. It was just the snippet I was searching for. Custom fields are fantastic.
- Simone- How would I go about adding a subtitle to my Page title, so that it in the menu the Page title displays and underneath the subtitle displays?
- Sajid Latif- great article. Going to take your advice and use some of these.
