I would like to start off by saying how ridiculously cool WordPress is and how I use it every time to develop websites. One of the best features in WordPress is the ability to create custom post types and using these custom post types to create creative features within WordPress website. This blog post will show you how to create a portfolio custom post type and learn how to use custom post types efficiently in your next web project. So let’s get started…

What are custom post types?

Don’t be confused by the term “post” in the name. It is actually an extremely generic term and should not be considered the same thing as a blog post. If you prefer, you can replace it with “content” instead.

Custom post types don’t have any strict rules that define what they are. They can represent any type of content you want. For example, WordPress ships with several default post types.

• Blog Posts
• Pages
• Attachments
• Revisions
• Nav Menus (WordPress 3.0)

You should think of them as a way to create, edit, and store information in the same way as blog posts but with much more creative control.

One thing I would warn against is trying to separate your blog posts in this way. You have categories, tags, and custom taxonomies at your disposal if you’re just looking for a way to label them.

Creating custom post types

WordPress 2.9 introduced the register_post_type() function. It didn’t do a lot at the time, but WordPress 3.0 will make this a powerful tool.

To get the basic functionality of a custom post type working, we hardly have any code to input. Before you start, you at least need a few things: a name, two labels, and whether your post type will be public (you’ll likely want this).

You can either create a plugin file or use your theme’s functions.php file to add the code. I will assume at this point of the tutorial that you know how to work with at least one of those two things.

Let’s set up our Portfolio post type.

add_action('init', 'portfolio_register'); 
function portfolio_register() {
  register_post_type( 'my_portfolio',
    array(
	 'labels' => array(
	 'name' => _x('My Portfolio', 'post type general name'), 
         'singular_name' => _x('Portfolio Item', 'post type singular name'),
    ),
    'public' => true,
  ));
}

You’ll notice that there is not a lot going on there. We added two parameters: a post type name and an array of arguments. All of the possible arguments are detailed in the next section.

If all you’ll ever want to do is something as basic as having a title field and content textarea, you can skip over the next portion of this tutorial. But if you want to create a really customized solution then read below where I will break down the parameters within the register_post_type()

labels

The labels argument is an array of strings that represents your post type in the admin. Each string is a bit of text shown for particular function in the admin. By default, non-hierarchical post types will have text with “post” in them and hierarchical post types will have text with “page” in them.

It is particularly important that you make these strings translatable if you’re creating a plugin for public use.

This list is a set of general examples of when each string is used. However, each may be used in multiple places in the admin.

• name: The plural form of the name of your post type.
• singular_name: The singular form of the name of your post type.
• add_new: The menu item for adding a new post.
• add_new_item: The header shown when creating a new post.
• edit: The menu item for editing posts.
• edit_item: The header shown when editing a post.
• new_item: Shown in the favorites menu in the admin header.
• view: Used as text in a link to view the post.
• view_item: Shown alongside the permalink on the edit post screen.
• search_items: Button text for the search box on the edit posts screen.
• not_found: Text to display when no posts are found through search in the admin.
• not_found_in_trash: Text to display when no posts are in the trash.
• parent: Used as a label for a parent post on the edit posts screen. Only useful for hierarchical post types.

'labels' => array(
	'name' => __( 'Portfolio' ),
	'singular_name' => __( 'Portfolio' ),
	'add_new' => __( 'Add New' ),
	'add_new_item' => __( 'Add New Portfolio Item' ),
	'edit' => __( 'Edit' ),
	'edit_item' => __( 'Edit Portfolio Item' ),
	'new_item' => __( 'New Portfolio Item' ),
	'view' => __( 'View Portfolio' ),
	'view_item' => __( 'View Portfolio Item' ),
	'search_items' => __( 'Search Portfolio Items' ),
	'not_found' => __( 'No Portfolio Items found' ),
	'not_found_in_trash' => __( 'No Portfolio Items found in Trash' ),
	'parent' => __( 'Parent Portfolio' ),
),

public

The public argument is a kind of catchall argument for several other arguments and defaults to false. Depending on whether it’s set to true or false, it’ll automatically decide what other arguments should be unless they’re specifically defined. If you’re looking for finer control over the public arguments, there are three specific arguments you may set:

• show_ui: Whether to show the administration screens.
• publicly_queryable: Whether queries for this post type can be performed from the front end.
• exclude_from_search: Whether the posts should appear in search results.

'public' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'exclude_from_search' => false,

menu_position

By default, a new post type is added after the Comments menu item in the admin. But, you have to ability to move it to a position more suitable for you. Default WordPress menu items are set apart by integrals of 5. For example, using 20 will add your menu item after Pages.

'menu_position' => 20,

menu_icon

New post types will default to the Posts menu icon, but if you want to mix it up a bit or give your post type some separation from other elements, you can define a custom icon. You only have to input a a custom URL to an image file.

'menu_icon' => get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/images/article16.png',

hierarchical

The hierarchical argument allows you to choose whether you want your post type to be hierarchical. It defaults to false. If you set it to true, your posts will behave like pages in WordPress.

'hierarchical' => true,

query_var

The query_var argument allows you to control the query variable used to get posts of this type. For example, you could use it with the query_posts() function or WP_Query class. This will default to the name of your taxonomy.

'query_var' => true,

capability_type / capabilities

The capability_type argument is another catchall argument for several more specific arguments and defaults to post. It allows you to define a custom set of capabilities, which are permissions to edit, create, and read your custom post type.

If you just want to keep the same permissions you have with blog posts, leave this at the default. Otherwise, you can either set capability_type to something custom or define each specific capability in the capabilities array.

• edit_post: Whether someone can create and edit a specific post of this post type.
• edit_posts: Capability that allows editing posts of this post type.
• edit_others_posts: Capability that allows editing of others posts.
• publish_posts: Capability to grant publishing of these types of posts.
• read_post: Capability that controls reading of a specific post of this post type.
• read_private_posts: Capability to allow reading of private posts.
• delete_post: Capability that grants the privilege of deleting posts.

For most people that need control over these things, it’s easier to just change capability_type to something like portfolio. WordPress will automatically switch the other caps to follow this pattern. For example, the edit_post capability would become edit_portfolio. Of course, capability control means nothing without being able to choose who has the capabilities. So here is an example of some custom capabilities for our portfolio:

/* Global control over capabilities. */
'capability_type' => 'portfolio',
 
/* Specific control over capabilities. */
'capabilities' => array(
	'edit_post' => 'edit_portfolio',
	'edit_posts' => 'edit_portfolios',
	'edit_others_posts' => 'edit_others_portfolios',
	'publish_posts' => 'publish_portfolios',
	'read_post' => 'read_portfolio',
	'read_private_posts' => 'read_private_portfolios',
	'delete_post' => 'delete_portfolio',
),

supports

The supports argument allows you to define what meta boxes and other fields will appear on the screen when editing or creating a new post. This defaults to title and editor. There are several available options:

• title: Text input field to create a post title.
• editor: Content input box for writing.
• comments: Ability to turn comments on/off.
• trackbacks: Ability to turn trackbacks and pingbacks on/off.
• revisions: Allows revisions to be made of your post.
• author: Displays a select box for changing the post author.
• excerpt: A textarea for writing a custom excerpt.
• thumbnail: The thumbnail (featured image in 3.0) uploading box.
• custom-fields: Custom fields input area.
• page-attributes: The attributes box shown for pages. This is important for hierarchical post types, so you can select the parent post.

'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'excerpt', 'custom-fields', 'thumbnail' ),

rewrite

The rewrite argument allows you to define the permalink structure of your posts when viewing the single post. For example, you may want to have a structure like yoursite.com/portfolio/post-name. WordPress will set up a default structure based on your taxonomy name. The rewrite argument can be set to true, false, or an array of values. It takes two arguments:

• slug: The slug you’d like to prefix your posts with.
• with_front: Whether your post type should use the front base from your permalink settings (for example, if you prefixed your structure with /blog or /archives).

'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'portfolio', 'with_front' => false ),

taxonomies

If you have some preexisting taxonomies, you can allow posts of this type to also use those taxonomies. You just have to set an array of taxonomy names that you’d like for it to use. WordPress will handle all the administration features for you. There is more to taxonomies but that will be another blog post in the future.

'taxonomies' => array( 'post_tag', 'category '),

can_export

You can use the can_export argument to decide whether posts of your post type can be exportable via the WordPress export tool. By default, this is set to true.

'can_export' => true,

register_meta_box_cb

This feature will likely only be useful to developers. You can create a custom callback function that is called when the meta boxes for the post form are set up.

'register_meta_box_cb' => 'your_callback_function_name',

Putting It All Together

Now that you know about all the parameters and their meanings lets put some code together to create the portfolio and the fields required to add the images and build the portfolio items:

<?php
add_action('init', 'portfolio_register');
function portfolio_register() {
 
	$labels = array(
		'name' => _x('My Portfolio', 'post type general name'),
		'singular_name' => _x('Portfolio Item', 'post type singular name'),
		'add_new' => _x('Add New', 'portfolio item'),
		'add_new_item' => __('Add New Portfolio Item'),
		'edit_item' => __('Edit Portfolio Item'),
		'new_item' => __('New Portfolio Item'),
		'view_item' => __('View Portfolio Item'),
		'search_items' => __('Search Portfolio'),
		'not_found' =>  __('Nothing found'),
		'not_found_in_trash' => __('Nothing found in Trash')
	);
 
	$args = array(
		'labels' => $labels,
		'public' => true,
		'publicly_queryable' => true,
		'show_ui' => true,
		'query_var' => true,
		'menu_icon' => get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/images/article16.png',
		'rewrite' => true,
		'capability_type' => 'post',
		'hierarchical' => false,
		'menu_position' => null,
		'supports' => array('title','editor','thumbnail')
	  ); 
 
	register_post_type( 'myportfolio' , $args );
    flush_rewrite_rules();
}
register_taxonomy("myservices", array("myportfolio"), array("hierarchical" => true, "label" => "Services", "singular_label" => "Service", "rewrite" => true));
 
add_action("admin_init", "admin_init");
function admin_init(){
  add_meta_box("web_url-meta", "Website URL", "web_url", "myportfolio", "normal", "low");
}
function web_url(){
  global $post;
  $meta = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'web_url', true);
  ?>
  <p><input style="width:350px;" name="web_url" value="<?php echo $meta; ?>" /></p>
  <?php
}
 
add_action('save_post', 'save_details');
function save_details($post_id){
  global $post;
  if(isset($_POST['post_type']) && ($_POST['post_type'] == "myportfolio")) {
   $data = $_POST['web_url'];
   update_post_meta($post_id, 'web_url', $data);
  }
}
 
 
add_action("manage_posts_custom_column",  "myportfolio_custom_columns");
add_filter("manage_edit-myportfolio_columns", "myportfolio_edit_columns");
function myportfolio_edit_columns($columns){
  $columns = array(
    "cb" => "<input type=\"checkbox\" />",
    "title" => "Project Title",
    "description" => "Description",
    "web_url" => "Web URL",
    "myservices" => "Services",
  );
 
  return $columns;
}
function myportfolio_custom_columns($column){
  global $post;
 
  switch ($column) {
    case "description":
      the_excerpt();
      break;
    case "web_url":
      $custom = get_post_custom();
      echo $custom["web_url"][0];
      break;
    case "myservices":
      echo get_the_term_list($post->ID, 'myservices', '', ', ','');
      break;
  }
}
?>

Benzing Web Design Marketing

Again the developers of WordPress release another incredible update to their already incredible platform. WordPress 3.2 “Gershwin” was released yesterday July 4th 2011 with a bunch of exciting user interface changes, performance enhancements, tons of minor bug fixes and a new theme “Twenty Eleven”. As with their last release they have again named the release in honor of another incredible composer. Gershwin’s compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known. Among his best known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), as well as the opera, Porgy and Bess (1935). Learn more about George Gershwin on his wiki page here.

So here are the changes as listed on their official website:

• Refreshed Administative UI - Admin redesign
• New Default Theme “Twenty Eleven” - Uses the latest Theme Features
• Full Screen Editor - Distraction free writing experience
• Extended Admin Bar - More useful links to control the site

• Requirements Changes -
  • PHP 5.2.4 or greater (old requirement – since WordPress 2.5 was PHP 4.3 or greater)
  • MySQL 5.0.15 or greater (old requirement – since WordPress 2.9 was MySQL 4.1.2 or greater)

• Enhanced Browser Compatibility -
  • Drop Internet Explorer 6 support
  • Start End-of-life (EOL) cycle for Internet Explorer 7
  • Browse Happy notify users of out-of-date browser

• WordPress is Faster and Lighter -
  • Faster page loads — We’ve gone through the most commonly loaded pages in WP and done improvements to their load time
  • Faster Upgrades — The update system now support incremental upgrades so after 3.2 you’ll find upgrading faster than ever
  • Optimizations to WP_Filesystem — Updates over FTP are now much quicker and less error prone
  • Stream downloads to the filesystem — Improves update times and lowers the memory footprint
  • Performance improvements for wptexturize()
  • Remove PHP4 compatibility including timezone support
  • More efficient term intersection queries
  • Some optimizations in the HTML sanitizer (kses)
  • Speed optimizations for is_serialized_string()
  • Cache the Dashboard RSS Widgets HTML output to reduce unnecessary Ajax requests as well as the memory footprint
  • And many other improvements and tweaks

User Features

General

• Admin Bar: Add a Themes submenu under Appearance, for consistency
• Admin Bar: Add View Site/Dashboard links, ‘View X’ links in the admin, ‘View’ action link for terms, new custom taxonomy string: view_item, defaulting to ‘View Tag’ and View Category’
• Admin Bar: Support Edit link for Attachments
• Switch from “Panel/SubPanel” to “Screen” in inline documentation and Codex links
• Add collapse link to admin menu
• Help Tab text updates
• Favorites menu no longer exists
• New Freedoms (rights) and Credits links at bottom of admin screens
• Use monospaced font for HTML editor
• Validate the HTML in the admin area
• Make copying the PressThis bookmarklet code easier in WebKit browsers
• Move copyright notices to license.txt
• Refresh login form styles to match admin style

Dashboard

• Change View All Buttons into plain links
• Show full set of status links in recent comments box
• Drop “Change Theme” button
• Update core UI changes; “Update Automatically” changed to “Update Now”, first core update is now a primary button
• Core support for partial updates

Posts

• Change Menu Name from ‘Posts’ to ‘All Posts’
• Show the sticky posts checkbox (“Stick this post to the front page”) Only when author has ‘edit_others_posts‘ capability
• Updated styles for the Visual editor buttons
• Full screen editor experience called Distraction Free Writing – accessed via the Toggle Fullscreen mode tool in the Visual editor and fullscreen button in the HTML editor (Trac Ticket 17198)
• New sprite for the TinyMCE buttons
• Fix pagination when searching or filtering posts

Media

• Add ‘Add New’ button to edit media
• Update the blip.tv oEmbeds

Links

• Change Menu Name from ‘Links’ to ‘All Links’
• Add ‘Add New’ button to edit links

Pages

• Change Menu Name from ‘Pages’ to ‘All Pages’

Comments

• New comment bubble styling

Appearance

• New Default theme – TwentyEleven – based on Duster Theme (Trac Ticket 17198).
• Allow selecting previously uploader headers and randomly serving previously uploaded or default headers
• Denote images that are headers or backgrounds in the media ui
• Show hierarchy for pages and taxonomies in nav menus admin
• Introduce new is_multi_author() template tag to make it easier for themes to have different behaviour when a site has more than one author
• Be less specific about theme repo licenses (as they can vary in specifics). They are all compatible with the license WordPress uses

Plugins

• Allow plugins to disable screen options with filter
• Be less specific about plugin repo licenses (as they can vary in specifics). They are all compatible with the license WordPress uses

Tools

• Change Menu Name from ‘Tools’ to ‘Available Tools’
• Press This bookmarklet redesign
• UI refresh for Press This
• Export commentmeta

Users

• Change Menu Name from ‘Users’ to ‘All Users’
• Add ‘Add New’ button to edit users

Benzing Web Design Marketing

Today the WordPress team announced the release of version 3.1 which notes many improvements and enhancements from previous versions. Version 3.1 was also in honor of the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt who pioneered a new form of music called virtuoso jazz. He was also a composer and a Romani gypsy. WordPress continues to impress me with the upkeep and many plugins associated with the web blogging software.

For all of you who don’t know what WordPress is, it’s an open source Content Management System (CMS), often used as a blog publishing application, powered by PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 13% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites. It was first released on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg as a fork of b2/cafelog. As of February 2011, version 3.0 had been downloaded over 32.5 million times.

So let’s breakdown some of the major new features we should expect in version 3.1:

1. Exporter/Importer Overhaul – many under the hood changes including adding author information, better handling for taxonomies and terms, and proper support for navigation menus. I really look forward to this update as I have had a bear of a time exporting and importing wordpress sites from test to live status.
2. Custom Content Type Improvements – The theme system now supports archives for post types, in the form of the archive-type template. In the same way that posts are shown on their own archive with archive.php, custom post types will use archive-{posttype}.php if it’s available. So for the above example, you could create a archive-acme_product.php file and the product posts would be shown using that template. To learn more about post types in the article Post Types.
3. Streamlined Writing Interface – New users of WordPress will find the write screen much less cluttered than before, as more of the options are hidden by default. You can click on Screen Options in the top right to bring them back.
4. Admin Bar – Admins rejoice! We now have an admin bar with various links to useful admin screens. By default, the admin bar is displayed when a user is logged in and visiting the site and is not displayed in admin screens for single blog installs. For multisite installs, the admin bar is displayed both when visiting the site and in the admin screens.
5. Internal Linking – A well needed feature. Internal linking is now integrated. Click a button for an internal link and it allows you to search for a post or browse a list of existing content and select it for inclusion.
6. Advanced Queries – Now you can query your custom fields easier. This means developers can query multiple taxonomies and custom fields.
7. Post Formats – Now there is a new way for meta information to be used by themes to customize presentation of a post. A Post Format is a piece of meta information that can be used by a theme to customize its presentation of a post. The Post Formats feature provides a standardized list of formats that are available to all themes that support the feature. Themes are not required to support every format on the list. New formats cannot be introduced by themes nor even plugins. The standardization of this list provides both compatibility between numerous themes and an avenue for external blogging tools to access to this feature in a consistent fashion. Read more in the article Post Formats.
8. Refreshed Blue Admin Color Scheme -The admin interface has a fresh new look to its blue color scheme. The new look focuses on the content not the look and feel.

Now with these new features WordPress is better than ever and I am excited to start upgrading my existing clients to the new version. The main benefit of WordPress in my opinion is the simplicity and ease of use. Anyone with some simple training can get up and running with a full blogging platform in minutes.

At Benzing Technologies we focus on WordPress development and design. If you have any questions regarding this article or would like a quote for a WordPress website please contact us.

Benzing Web Design Marketing

With the recent release candidate of WordPress 3.0, the latest version in the most popular blogging platform online, the blogging team readies the new version with some seriously cool features. WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

WordPress 3.0 RC is their latest version of blogging software that has already changed the typography world. So…what’s an RC? An RC comes after beta and before the final launch. It means we think we’ve got everything done: all features finished, all bugs squashed, and all potential issues addressed. But, then, with over 20 million people using WordPress with a wide variety of configurations and hosting setups, it’s entirely possible that they’ve missed something.

So what’s new? well…

1. WordPress Merged with WordPress-MU
For all of you who don’t know what WordPress MU is. It’s a multi-user edition of WordPress. But wait…doesn’t WordPress already come with multi-user support? sort of. It does allow for multiple users but not multiple installations with multiple users which is what WordPress MU does very well. In the upcoming 3.0 release, WordPress MU will be merged into the WordPress Core. So, from now on, you will be able to run more than one site/blog from a single installation of WordPress.

2. Choose your own Username/Password
This is a feature that I have always wanted from WordPress. From version 3.0, whenever you install WordPress, you will be able to choose your own username and password. You will no longer have to accept “admin” for the username and a randomly generated password.

3. Custom Post Types
Until now, you could only add posts or pages to your WordPress blog. This feature will give you power to create content of any type that you want. For example, you can have Portfolio listings, Products, Catalogs, Library etc. This feature is not going to replace categories or Tags. You will still be able to use categories. Custom Post Types will allow a different way of sorting/displaying your content.

4. Better Menu Management
Another well thought out improvement is better menu management. The new menu system will have a drag and drop functionality that will combine Pages, Categories, and Links. It will also allow the ability of re-ordering, along with sub-menus, and hiding specific Pages or Categories from the menu altogether.

5. Custom Background Image Support
In Version 3.0, you will be able to manage your background image for the themes. You will be allowed to upload a background image and change its settings (positioning, repeat, attachment). I know for sure this will save some time for the theme designers.

6. A New Default Theme called 2010
Well this is a blessing and I am glad to say good riddance to the existing WordPress default theme. WordPress 3.0 will be packed with a brand new default theme called 2010. This theme will include Custom header, Custom Background, Clean Design, Multiple Widget Areas, Cascading Menus and a lot more. Overall, it will be a good base to build on for custom themes.

7. Custom Author Templates
Now you can create specific templates for every author of your blog. For example, you will be able to create a author-benzing.php or author-123.php, which will be called via the WordPress Template Hierarchy in connection to the author with their nicknames benzing or ID 123. Now it will be easy for an author to mark his/her own post or entry with his/her signature.

If you are interested in testing the newest version head on over to www.WordPress.org and download the Release Candidate and see for yourself. You can also view all of the new features here at their codex website.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on blogging
• Climate Shifts » Blog Archive » Blogging on climate change – a job …
• Blogging break…again « Mostly Economics
• Blogging Tools- Significant Guidepost For New Bloggers | Travel …
• Make Money From Blogs by Pro-blogging | Travel Plan Information
• Blogging the Humanities: brief recap « Pue's Occurrences
• The Beginning of Blogs and Blogging | Geo Blog
• Get Blog Jobs – Fun And Profitable If You Love Blogging | Internet …
• Blogging and How it Can Help Your Business | Travel Plan Information
• Blogging Basics with Students « Trails Optional
• The perils of Business Blogging | Celebrity news, photos, videos
• Hot Night Clubs

• Related Blogs on WordPress
• WordPress Call To Undefined Function get_currentuserinfo() PHP …

• Related Blogs on wordpress 3.0
• WordPress 3.0: Multisite Domain Mapping Tutorial » Otto on WordPress
• Setting up Custom Content Types in WordPress 3.0 – CogDogBlog
• WordPress 3.0 Shake Up | Irish Internet Entrepreneur – Smemon
• Building a Site with New WordPress 3.0 Content Types: Part 1 of …

Benzing Web Design Marketing

In this post, we will learn more about the aspect of a search engine optimization technique, called URL Canonicalization or URL Normalization. We will see why it is important and why being knowledgeable about it will reduce duplicate content issues.

Do you have the right content on the web, but have four different ways to access it? if you do, it could affect your search engine rankings. If your still confused let me explain. The web is compromised of billions of URL’s or Uniform Resource Locator’s. A URL is part of the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource (website) is available and the mechanism for retrieving it (http://,https://,smtp://,ftp://,etc.).

Now every URL has a structure when it is read by the web server. Let me show you an example below:

• http://www.blogsite.com/index.html
• http://www.blogsite.com/
• http://blogsite.com/

Each of these locations will go to the same page. This is due to improper canonicalization which is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard”, “normal”, or canonical form. Improper canonicalization can cause duplicate content and can affect your search engine rankings. This happens when the search engines index multiple versions of the same page and effectively divide the attributed link equity among the duplicates. Consolidating the worth of your pages by serving only a singular instance of each of them. Having the proper canonicalization is beneficial to you, your visitors, and your search engine rankings.

Google, Yahoo, and Bing all support canonicalization so why not provide it to them. There are several ways to do this but what I find the simplest is using htaccess files. However these only work on apache web servers. If you are unfamiliar with what web server you are using ask your web host provider. To first use htaccess files create one in the root of your website directory and name it exactly .htaccess do not forget the period (.) in the beginning and do not add any extensions to the end of it.

Before presenting a generalized, copy-&-paste version of this htaccess canonicalization solution, let’s examine the functionality involved with various directives.

• Choose WWW or Non-WWW form
• Use the Canonical URL Everywhere in the Domain
• Remove Default File Names From URLs
• Ensure a trailing slash at the end of all URLs

Now using your favorite text editor of choice edit the file and put the following code:

RewriteEngine On
# Remove index.php from root URL
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://domain.tld/ [R=301,L]
# Permanently redirect from www domain to non-www domain
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.tld$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld/$1 [R=301,L]

Of course you will need to replace “domain.tld” in the above example to your website domain. This will prevent search engines and visitors from linking to duplicate content since it will be automatically redirected to the proper structure. If you are using WordPress there is an even better way to do the same result while delivering dynamic content from your WordPress Blog. However, WordPress 2.3+ does provide a built-in URL canonicalization technique via PHP. Thus, if you are using WP 2.3+, you technically don’t need to use this method, though, if you prefer to handle URL rewriting at the server level, then you may indeed benefit from its use.

# Comprehensive URL Canonicalization for WordPress in Root
RedirectMatch permanent index.php/(.*) http://domain.tld/$1
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.tld$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]+/)*index\.(html|php)\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*)index\.(html|php)$ http://domain.tld/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /+[^\.]+$
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

If your WordPress blog is setup in the root directory then use the above example. If you have your blog in a subdirectory (www.domain.com/blog/) then see the code below.

# Comprehensive URL Canonicalization for WordPress in Subdirectory
RedirectMatch permanent index.php/(.*) http://domain.tld/subdirectory/$1
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.tld$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
RewriteBase /subdirectory/
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]+/)*index\.(html|php)\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*)index\.(html|php)$ http://domain.tld/subdirectory/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /+[^\.]+$
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /subdirectory/index.php [L]

So now you save and upload the htaccess file and it will help prevent duplicate content and provide search engines with better URL normalization. The canonicalization solution presented in this article is both comprehensive and effective. I have been using this technique on client websites since 2008 with great success. Since employing this method, I have virtually eliminated all opportunity for duplicate content to be served from my site and my clients websites. Of course, there are other duplicate content issues not associated with canonical URLs, but we will save that for another article.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on canonical rewrite
• Link Rewriting for SEO | SEO Consult – Certified Search Engine …
• Remove and Strip Query String (Session ID or Question Mark) From …
• Nitpicking Magento Custom URL Rewrite Management for 301 Redirects …
• Solving the Google Canonical Problem

• Related Blogs on htaccess canonicalization
• Guide to htaccess and mod_rewrite | Ashesh's blog
• .htaccess and SEO canonical issue | SeoblogR
• Remove and Strip Query String (Session ID or Question Mark) From …

• Related Blogs on url canonicalization
• Avoiding duplicate content: URL canonicalization | SEO Dragon
• SEO Audits: Six Major Components to Consider | Chicago Internet …
• Anyone know what a Canonical URL is with regards to SEO?
• URL Canonicalization – What – Why – How – www Vs non www | Jaydip …
• Ubuntu single sign on service launched
• Rockwall Pediatrics

Benzing Web Design Marketing

When it comes to web design management and blogging systems, WordPress wins my heart. In my last WordPress SEO post I noted the 12 Best SEO Plugins. Now I want to identify the 10 essential plugins you can’t be without if your running a WordPress Blog. We have done ton’s of research in finding these plugins and hope you find them as useful as we do every day.

1. Nofollow Case by Case – Nofollow Case by Case is a follow plugin for WordPress but allows you to selectively apply rel=”nofollow” to comment links and comment author links.
Download: Here

2. Ping Crawl – Every time you make a post on your blog it grabs similar posts from other blogs that allow pingbacks using the post tags. It then links to them at the bottom of the post as similar posts. It then executes the pingback on all the posts. You can specify how many posts to do per tag and that many will be done for each tag you use in your posts. Typically it has about an 80% success rate with each pingback and they are legit so the ones that fall into moderation tend to get approved. This creates quite a few deep links for each blog post you make and through time really helps with your link building. Especially for new blogs.
Download: Here

3. Redirection – Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors. This is very important to make sure your not loosing traffic due to 404 errors.
Download: Here

4. SEO Slugs -Removes common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from post slugs to improve your url SEO performance.
Download: Here

5. SEO Smart Links – SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.
Download: Here

6. SEO Ultimate – This all-in-one SEO plugin gives you control over titles, noindex, meta data, slugs, canonical tags, “more” links, 404 error tracking, and more. An all-in-one solution.
Download: Here

7. Smart 404 – Rescue your viewers from site errors! When content cannot be found, Smart 404 will use the current URL to attempt to find matching content, and redirect to it automatically. Smart 404 also supplies template tags which provide a list of suggestions, for use on a 404.php template page if matching content can’t be immediately discovered.
Download: Here

8. WP No Category Base – Removes ‘/category’ from your category permalinks.
Download: Here

9. Only Wire Autosubmitter – Autosubmits a excerpt of a posts to Onlywire when published. Only Wire is the best way to submit your blog to social bookmarking and social media websites. They currently support over 30 different social sites. Check them out http://www.onlywire.com.
Download: Here

10. Sitemap Generator – This plugin creates a sitemap for your WordPress powered site. This is not just another XML sitemap plugin, but rather a true sitemap generator which is highly customizable from its own options page in the WordPress admin panel. Some of its features include: support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items in, show comment counts and/or post dates, and much more.
Download: Here

If you have any suggestions to other essential seo plugins please feel free to comment on this post or contact us. Thanks.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on seo plugins
• WordPress UK » Blog Archive » SEO WordPress Plugins You Should Be …
• WordPress SEO plugin, Start – Part 1 | Alden Torres's blog
• Paid Premium SEO plugins For WordPress

• Related Blogs on wordpress seo
• WordPress UK » Blog Archive » SEO WordPress Plugins You Should Be …
• Pepperjam Network Blog – SEO / Blog Apps & Links Mentioned during …
• WordPress SEO plugin, Start – Part 1 | Alden Torres's blog

• Related Blogs on wp plugins
• - Hot WP Themes Edit Author Slug 0.1.4 « WordPress Plugins …
• - Hot WP Themes WordPress › PollDaddy Polls & Ratings « WordPress …
• - Hot WP Themes Orange County Web Design 10 WordPress Plugins That …
• WordPress Plugins » Blog Archive » WTS autoblog ALL IN ONE SERVICE …
• download Erin Brockovich (2000) | free movies review and share …
• download House of Sand and Fog (2003) | free movies review and …

Benzing Web Design Marketing

Now that WordPress has released its harding release 2.8.5 security is on my mind. I did some research to find 10 tips to secure WordPress and make it harder to break in. Below are some of the tips I found most useful.

1. Always change your WordPress database extension. Default is ‘wp_’ so change it to something like ‘gp_’ or ‘wordpress_’ on install.

2. Remove your admin user. By default the admin user is set to ‘admin’ changing this to another username makes it harder for hackers to guess your admin login.

3. Secure your .htaccess file. If you don’t know what a .htaccess file is click here. Use the code below to tighten security on your .htaccess file by limiting who can access it.

1
2
3
4
5

<files ~ “^.*.([Hh][Tt][Aa])”>
order allow,deny
deny from all
satisfy all
</files>

4. Secure your wp-config.php file. While not only setting permissions on this file to 444 using the following code in your .htaccess file can limit who accesses the file.

1
2
3
4

<files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

5. Set proper permissions. Different hosts will have different levels of security but for the most part the permissions should be:
Root install folder to read only (744)
Directories should have permissions of 755. NEVER 777
All files should have permissions of 644
If you do want to use the built-in editor, theme files should have permissions of 666. NEVER 777

6. Deny listing of your website directories in your .htaccess file. This will make sure no one can list all the files in your website folders. Adding the follow code below to your .htaccess file.

1

Options All -Indexes

7. Limit search engines to your ‘wp-’ directories in your robots.txt file. If you do not have a robots.txt file in your root folder create it with the following code below:

1
2

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-*

8. Drop the version string in your Meta Tags. This is in your template files in the header.php it should look like the code below. Remove it completely if it exists.

1
2

<meta content="WordPress &lt;?php bloginfo(’version’); ? /&gt;" name="generator">
</meta>

9. Always use a secure password. This is mostly the main reason people get hacked. I use the follow to generate passwords for my users. Password Generator

10. Backup regularly! this is vital to you being able to recover your data regardless of being hacked or having your files corrupted. Luckily WordPress has a plugin to do this easily. WordPress Backup Plugin

Now with this list you should have a darn good secure WordPress install. Now there are other things you can do to increase security but for a small business or blog site not ran by the government these should get you on the right track. Now just stay up to date! make sure you update your wordpress as they release new versions and update your plugins as needed also.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on secure wordpress
• Quick Start To A Secure WordPress Blog – WordPress Made Easy
• Rambam Becomes Israel's First Secure Emergency Room Built and …
• 15 rules to secure WordPress | Emmanuel GEORJON
• 6 New Tips To Secure Your WordPress Blog

• Related Blogs on secure wordpress install
• Secure your WordPress install by using WordPress 2.8.5
• How to install WordPress on H-Sphere – Cartika hosting
• Chap Secure Login WordPress Plugin | Free Premium WordPress Auto …
• Implementing a secure web server using CentOS, Apache, PHP, MySQL …
• AskApache Password Protect WordPress Plugin | Free Premium …

• Related Blogs on wordpress install
• Daiko's Video Widget WordPress Plugin | Free Premium WordPress …
• User Photo WordPress Plugin | Free Premium WordPress Auto Install …
• WordPress Expert – oDesk | GREYBLOGS
• Tiny Table WordPress Plugin | Free Premium WordPress Auto Install …
• New Shopping Cart Plugin With Themes WordPress Plugin | Free …
• Free Laptops

Benzing Web Design Marketing

Here I’ve compiled a list of WordPress plugins that I personally use and you should too, that is, if you want a spam-free, quick loading, easily manageable and search engine friendly web site. In my 3 years using WordPress, I’ve found these to be the most essential plugins that I start every project with. I do, however, have a larger list for my personal site. Enjoy!

Akismet

Who can? You have better things to do with your life than deal with the underbelly of the internet. Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.

Automated Keyword Generator

The keywords tag itself will be your title, tags, and category, so you don’t have to worry about the density as long as your post is matched and about the tag and category you have inputed in. The keywords have semi-blackhat SEO order, so it may make easier to you to show on top queries.

Contact Form 7

You need a simple contact form for your site? Oh, you need 7 different contact forms? All with customizeable html and output ttemplates? And it has to be easy to use? I know, it sounds too good to be true, but it is. This plugin can simplify any of your form needs, easily.

DB Cache

The fastest cache engine for WordPress, that produces cache of database queries with easy configuration.

Efficient Related Posts

There is a problem with related posts plugins, and Efficient Related Posts is fixing that by approaching the problem from a different direction and offering a very different solution. Basically, current related post plugins build the list of related posts on the fly when the user needs to view it. Since blogs tend to be viewed far more often than they are updated (often hundreds of times more often), these queries are run way more times than they need to be. This not only wastes CPU cycles, but if the queries are slow (which they will be if you have 1000s of posts and tags) then the user gets a poor experience from slow page loads.

Feedburner FeedSmith

Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.

Optimize DB

Let’s you optimize your WordPress database tables with one click. Click optimize on the right to start optimizing!

Post Gallery

Provides ability to add any number of additional images to each post

Related Websites

Simple Submit SEO

Displays submit buttons to Digg, del.icio.us, stumble upon, and buzz. Clean and simple interface. Requires wp_head hook in template to insert stylesheet for plugin.

WordPress 2 Ping.fm

Links and integrate your WordPress account to Ping.fm. Once linked, the plugin will update all your social networks every time you publish a post. You can customize the look of your pings, send custom pings, and set rules for which posts you want to notify your social networks about. This is la creme de la creme of social network plugins, created by people who just happen to specialize in communication and social networks. You will need a Ping.fm account and an application key to use this plugin, which you can get for free at http://ping.fm

WP Super Cache

Very fast caching plugin for WordPress

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on WordPress
• WordPress Call To Undefined Function get_currentuserinfo() PHP …

• Related Blogs on wordpress plugins
• WordPress Plugins | etbe – Russell Coker
• WP-Table Reloaded WordPress Plugin | Free Premium WordPress Auto …
• Introducing the FB Share Button WordPress Plugin for Facebook …
• Now Check WordPress Plugin Compatibility Before Upgrading | Blogging

Benzing Web Design Marketing

So you’ve freshly installed wordpress and you’re ready to put in the time and effort to make it a huge success.  A few steps go a very long way for the long term success of your blogging site.  Gathered from a variety of sources, here are the steps I now follow to optimize a fresh WordPress install:

1. Permalinks (Friendly URLs) – Not a plugin but adding the search engine friendly urls will help index your links with keywords people are searching for. Fortunately WordPress has built in permalinks under settings. I usually  choose the custom method and change it to /%category%/%postname%/

2. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update. You can get the plugin here.

3. All in One SEO Pack – Hand’s down this optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines. You can change each page or post title, metatags, and more. You can download it here.

4. SEO Friendly Images – This is a WordPress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

5. Ultimate Google Analytics -This plugin adds Google Analytics JavaScript to each page on your weblog without making any changes to your template. The plugin can also add tracking to outbound links, downloads from your own site and mailto: links. You can download it here.

6. Social Bookmarks -This plugin for WordPress adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts and/or pages that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites. You can download it here.

7. WP to Twitter – The WP-to-Twitter plugin posts a Twitter status update from your WordPress blog using the Cli.gs URL shortening service to provide a link back to your post from Twitter. You can download it here.

8. WordPress 2 Ping.fm – Links and integrate your WordPress account to Ping.fm. Once linked, the plugin will update all your social networks every time you publish a post. You can customize the look of your pings, send custom pings, and set rules for which posts you want to notify your social networks about. You can download it here.

9. PodPress – This plugin adds tons of features designed to make WordPress the ideal platform for hosting a podcast. You can download it here.

10. FeedBurner FeedSmith – The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well. You can download it here.

11. Robots Meta – This plugin provides many different optimization techniques to help in indexing specific pages or not indexing pages. Also can edit .htaccess file and robots.txt file. You can download it here.

12. Easy AdSense – This isnt much of an optimization plugin but it does work in sync with the rest of the plugins above. It provides a very easy way to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. You can download it here.

With these 12 plugins you should be on your way to a more optimized blog. I hope these plugins help you as much as thay have me. If you need help with your WordPress blog don’t hesitate to call us.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on wordpress plugins
• How to show Random posts without using any WordPress plugins
• Email Pending Posts – WordPress Plugin » Fayid.com

• Related Blogs on wordpress seo
• Matt Cutts Praises WordPress SEO in Presentation | The Blog Herald
• WordPress Plugins for SEO Rankings | R3ALISTIC World
• SEO Friendly WordPress Themes

Benzing Web Design Marketing