Share your WordPress tips for your chance to win an Elegant Themes Developer account

[chris]

We've been given some goodies from Elegant Themes who build beautiful, functional and affordable WordPress themes and plugins.

This week, we have a 1 year Developer subscription to give away to a DNTrade member.

All you need to do is share your BEST WordPress tips with DNTrade members below. The member who gets the most 'likes' by midnight next Sunday 14th April will win a 1 year Developer subscription at Elegant themes (valued at $89).

You can enter as many tips as you like (1 tip per post please), but we have some pretty picky members so I'm guessing only good tips will get likes.

We'd like to thank Elegant Themes for providing us with the freebies

Cheers,
Chris

 

[chris]

I thought I'd start the ball rolling with something I came across a few days ago.

It's a plugin called WP Widget Cache and helps speed up your site by caching the output of your widgets.

This can be very handy if you have lots of widgets and are looking for squeezing a little more performance out of your site. It also works with other caching plugins.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-widget-cache/

Cheers,
Chris

P.S. I'm not entering the comp, just helping get things started

 

[johno69]

Do NOT use admin or any variation of it as your username.

 

[aus11]

Backup your site regularly. (I use InfiniteWP.com)

 

[smee]

Use Drupal?

 

[BenWalker]

As you may know wordpress has regular updates and if you don’t keep up with them, your site can get infected very easily (As well as many other issues). Two products I’ve found very helpful are
-
Vaultpress - http://vaultpress.com/plans/ (Non affiliate Link)
Sucuri - http://sucuri.net/signup (Non affiliate Link)

If you are running any serious sites, I really recommend one or both of those options.

 

[FirstPageResults]

Learn and use WP Hooks:

WordPress hooks enable you to change how WordPress behaves without editing any core files.

Because you leave the WordPress files untouched, you can painlessly upgrade your blog with each new version of WordPress.

 

[helloworld]

Secure your wp admin area preventing hacks. The best way to secure your wordpress installation is to lock down wp-admin. Redirect plugins are unsecure.

Login to your FTP or file manager (make sure you have selected show hidden files). Edit the .htaccess file to look like below


AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Access Control”
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
# whitelist home IP address
allow from [put your IP here]
# whitelist work IP address
allow from [put your IP here]
allow from [put your IP here]
# IP while in Melbourne; delete when back
allow from [put your IP here]

This is the most secure way to block unwanted scripts. If your IP changes, you can login to ftp and update it. (BTW if you don't know your IP just google, what is my IP)

 

[helloworld]

Always install Wordpress via Cpanel auto installer. These include Installatron, Softculos and Fantastico. You can be notified via email when update to core is available.

If you're host has installatron, this is the best option. Comes with Auto backup and auto update.

 

[johno69]

Use Wordfence.

It does so many things that others are advising all in one plugin.

* Repair infected core, theme and plugin files
* Show you what has changed in your infected files
* Constantly scans your posts, pages, comments and plugins for malware URL’s
* Blocks unwanted access easily.
* Notifies you of any updates required (plugin/theme/core)

So many more things to list. It is the 1st thing I install on any new site.

 

[eBranding.com.au]

Tip: make the most of WordPress with awesome plugins.

My essential plugins list:

Akismet
Free
Incredibly effective at stopping spam comments.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/

BackupBuddy
Paid
The best backup plugin I've found. Can be used to migrate a WordPress site to a new server - this feature alone made it well worth buying for me.
http://ithemes.com/purchase/backupbuddy/

Contact Form 7
Free
Super easy and very good contact form.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/

Captcha
Free
Helps prevent spambot signups and emails.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/captcha/

Google XML Sitemaps
Free
Make it easier for Google (and other search engines) to index your blog and detect new content.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget
Free
Make it easy for visitors to share your awesome content.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/addthis/

Widget Logic
Free
Control where widgets appear and who can see them (E.g. only logged in users, only on the home page etc).
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic/​

 

[johno69]

Use a child theme.

I would go into it in detail but there's a great tutorial about it here: http://op111.net/53/

The idea is to create a child theme and make your edits in there, so you don't edit the core (Parent) theme and therefore can update without any headaches.

 

[Blue Wren]

I concur with most already mentioned here.

Change the default permalink settings.

An administrator must always approve a comment. [Turn on]

Install and set up two plugins by Automattic: Akismet, and Jetpack, and use its wide variety of settings.

Use TAGS on your Posts.

Create meaningful and key-worded categories.

 

[chris]

WP Greet Box

Target visitors based on the referrer. Mostly used for search traffic, but could come in handy for other uses.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-greet-box/

 

[ScottNugent]

So here is my little tip!

I setup a LOT of WordPress installations, both for clients, and myself. And time after time I experienced the same issue every time. Sure, I can quicken up the installation with Installatron, but I still find myself installing 6-10 separate "essential" plugins every time, manually.

Plugin Central
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/plugin-central/

This nifty little plugin means I only have to install 1 plugin, and upload a simple text file with multiple plugin names - and they're automatically downloaded and installed. For example, here is what I generally setup:

All in One SEO Pack
Contact Form 7
Google XML Sitemaps
W3 Total Cache
WordPress Database Backup
WP-PageNavi

That's all in a simple, line separated, plain text (.txt) file. Too easy if you ask me!

 

[chris]

So here is my little tip!

Plugin Central
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/plugin-central/

Nice tip, thanks Scott!

 

[johno69]

This nifty little plugin means I only have to install 1 plugin, and upload a simple text file with multiple plugin names - and they're automatically downloaded and installed.

I use InfiniteWP and it has the same ability. Add plugins as favourites, and install them all with a couple of clicks.

On a side note Scott, is you make the switch to Yoast SEO the sitemap is included as part of the package.

 

[johno69]

if you make the switch to Yoast

Fixed.

 

[Blue Wren]

I use InfiniteWP and it has the same ability. Add plugins as favourites, and install them all with a couple of clicks.

Really? Cool! I didn't know that. I'll have to investigate that. Would make site roll-outs even quicker.
Thanks Paul.

 

[johno69]

Really? Cool!

Yep