Website Design | Search Optimization | Social Media | Benzing Technologies » Wordpress http://www.benzingtech.com Your Technology Partner Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:24:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=7052 en hourly 1 WordPress 3.0 Countdown to New Features http://www.benzingtech.com/wordpress-30-countdown-features/ http://www.benzingtech.com/wordpress-30-countdown-features/#comments Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:03:42 +0000 Rusty http://www.benzingtech.com/?p=1612 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…

]]> 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

]]> http://www.benzingtech.com/wordpress-30-countdown-features/feed/ 5 Clarify Your Website Content In Search Engines with URL Normalization http://www.benzingtech.com/clarify-website-content-search-engines-url-normalization/ http://www.benzingtech.com/clarify-website-content-search-engines-url-normalization/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:26:06 +0000 Rusty http://www.benzingtech.com/?p=1499 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…

]]> 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

]]> http://www.benzingtech.com/clarify-website-content-search-engines-url-normalization/feed/ 2 10 Essential WordPress SEO Plugins http://www.benzingtech.com/10-essential-wordpress-seo-plugins/ http://www.benzingtech.com/10-essential-wordpress-seo-plugins/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:53:17 +0000 Rusty http://www.benzingtech.com/?p=1470 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…

]]> 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

]]> http://www.benzingtech.com/10-essential-wordpress-seo-plugins/feed/ 13 10 WordPress Install Security Tips http://www.benzingtech.com/10-secure-wordpress-install-tips/ http://www.benzingtech.com/10-secure-wordpress-install-tips/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:22:53 +0000 Rusty http://www.benzingtech.com/?p=1284 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…

]]> 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.

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<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.

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<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.

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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:

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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.

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<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

]]> http://www.benzingtech.com/10-secure-wordpress-install-tips/feed/ 1 13 Essential Wordpress Plugins http://www.benzingtech.com/13-essential-wordpress-plugins/ http://www.benzingtech.com/13-essential-wordpress-plugins/#comments Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:55:13 +0000 Rusty http://www.benzingtech.com/?p=880 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…

]]> 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

Add your posts to the Blog Traffic Exchange and add Links to related websites throughout the blogosphere.

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

]]> http://www.benzingtech.com/13-essential-wordpress-plugins/feed/ 5 12 Best WordPress SEO Plugins http://www.benzingtech.com/12-best-wordpress-seo-plugins/ http://www.benzingtech.com/12-best-wordpress-seo-plugins/#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:18:53 +0000 Rusty http://benzingtech.com/?p=597 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…

]]> 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

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