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How To Become A Top WordPress Professional

How To Become A Top WordPress Professional

By Jeffro on December 6, 2012

Siobhan McKeown who I’ve noticed has made a name for herself within the WordPress community over the past two years has published an excellent guide with all sorts of tips on how to become one of the top WordPress professionals. While she nails it on multiple levels, I have a tip or two of my own. First, it’s WordPress with a capital P, dangit. Secondly, make sure you use the correct WordPress logo or else you’ll look stupid within the WordPress community and serious players will fail to take you seriously. Last but not least, do not use the word WordPress within the domain name. For example, www.wordpressdevelopers.com. This is considered trademark infringement and is another way for no one within the WordPress community to take you seriously.

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Recovering From A Crashed WordPress Site

By Jeffro on January 31, 2012

Themefuse has a generally good checklist on things to do when a WordPress powered website crashes. While the article doesn’t contain any drastically new information, it’s still a good list of things to do to get your site back up and running as soon as possible if a crash were to occur.    ∞

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Four Common Sense Ways To Improve Security On Your WordPress Powered Site

Four Common Sense Ways To Improve Security On Your WordPress Powered Site

By Jeffro on October 10, 2011

Generally common sense material listed in the article but it’s always good to remind people about these techniques. As far as I’m concerned, just being in the know and having the awareness of what’s going on is half the battle.

On a final note, while website security can seem daunting and intimidating, it’s something that should be approached from a standpoint of keeping aware and in the know such that, if issues do arise on your website, you are able to calmly resolve the issue and get your website back to where it was, knowing full-well the scope of the security measures in place.

via – Four Ways To Improve Security On Your WordPress Site

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Quick Way To Find Out The Scheduled Time Of A Post

Quick Way To Find Out The Scheduled Time Of A Post

By Jeffro on October 5, 2011

Since publishing more content for WPTavern, I’ve become quite fond of the ability to schedule posts into the future. However, one gripe I’ve had is not being able to easily identify the time a post has been scheduled to be published. I was hoping that at some point in the future, on the All Posts administration panel that I would be able to see the time the post was going to go live under the term Scheduled, instead of having to go into the edit panel for the post to see the exact time. My mouse cursor must have been at the right place at the right time because I discovered tonight that if I hover my mouse cursor over the date the post has been scheduled, a tool-tip will appear that gives me the exact time.

See Exact Time For Post To Go Live

It’s little things like this that I really appreciate.

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How To Make The WordPress Search URL Pretty

By Jeffro on September 6, 2011

Frank from WPEngineer explains how to make pretty URLs for the WordPress search function. Also take a look in the comments on the post as Chuck Reynolds provides a snippet of code you can place in your htaccess file to accomplish the same thing.   ∞

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The Two Sides To Speaking At WordCamps

By Jeffro on April 22, 2011

When you are asked to speak at a WordCamp, realize that you are one in hundreds of people they could have asked. It’s humbling and ego-inflating, but it is also a responsibility. You aren’t talking to people who have no clue what you are talking about. You will be facing people who probably know more than you, so your job will be to help them see it in a new way, to open their minds to the possibilities, to spark their enthusiasm, and tap into the passion. It’s a tough job, so if they come calling, don’t take it for granted. It’s a privilege.

via What’s Involved for a Speaker at a WordCamp Event « Lorelle on WordPress.

-The Two Sides To Speaking At WordCamps

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100 Things To Know About WordPress

By Jeffro on April 9, 2011

100 Things You Need to Know About WordPress. JTPratt and Anthony Montalbano combine to provide 100 things all users need to know about WordPress. The list is broken down into 10 parts ranging from web hosting to WordPress resources. A good read for anyone relatively new to using the software.   ∞

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5 Tips To Create A Great Site About WordPress

5 Tips To Create A Great Site About WordPress

By Jeffro on September 28, 2010

I’ve been writing about WordPress since 2007 and since then, I’ve seen a number of websites about WordPress come and go. Like many of you, I’m a fan of all these different websites and enjoy reading their points of view. Some of them even have breaking stories from time to time. However, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before the RSS feed goes dormant, never to be heard from again. As a writer and reader of a site devoted to WordPress, here are a few tips.

Consistency – Something I’ve lacked recently but I enjoy sites that are consistently publishing something during the week. If it’s only one or two things during the week, it’s easy to forget about that website despite subscribing to their RSS feed. Consistency also retains the audience and gives them an expectation that there is always something new to participate in.

In-Depth Knowledge – There are a ton of people in the WordPress community that know what is going on amongst the various facets of the project, write about it. Link things together, talk about stuff in the past and mix it up with stuff in the current/future. Bring comments, track tickets, discussions together. The WordPress.org project is a spaghetti of stuff going on, do your best to try to give visitors the big picture without all the cruft.

Try Not To Do It Alone – I’ve learned that there is just too much going on for one man to write about. To truly have a great, successful site about WordPress, you’re going to need at least 3-4 knowledgeable writers. A good example of this in action right now is WPCandy.com which is one of the few WordPress centric sites that was buried 6 feet under and has been resurrected with new life. In fact, the new site is better than the old one before it and it seems like the site hasn’t lost a beat.

Curation Is A Good Thing – Something I do here on WPTavern.com is curate news and information. I use my RSS Feedreader as a cockpit with a window to the internet. From here, I can get a good idea as to what the topics and trends are within the world of WordPress. The best part about my feed reader is my subscriptions to the WordPress keyword in Google because it brings in posts from places and people I have never heard of. Occasionally, I’ll find a real gem in that crowd. People are busy and if you can link to useful items with brief descriptions, you’ll be thanked for saving them time.

Longevity – If you’re going to start a site about WordPress, at least stick to it for a year. This has been the biggest culprit of good sites I’ve seen disappear. They all seem to do a good job for the first three months, then things gradually die off and within 6 months of starting the site, it becomes another graveyard on the web. There is plenty of room for sites about WordPress with everything that goes on during a weekly basis. Give yourself the time needed to gain exposure and become a reliable stop for information within the community.

Follow those five tips and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a destination stop for the WordPress train. Do you have any tips or suggestions that you could lend?

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A Few Website Pet Peeves I Have

A Few Website Pet Peeves I Have

By Jeffro on August 17, 2010

It’s time I get a few things off my chest when it comes to browsing the web. I love browsing through my feed reader to get a grasp on the various news stories surrounding WordPress and my favorite subjects and in the course of a few months, I’ve developed just a few pet peeves that really urk me. In no particular order, here they are and if you can help it, please avoid them!

Permalinks – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across a great article only to discover that finding a simple URL to the post was a pain in the rear. When browsing posts in my feed reader, I typically see URLs filled with FeedBurners junk attached to them. Instead, I enjoy websites where the post title within the post acts as a permalink which is nice and clean for easy sharing.

Social Junk – Maybe I don’t get it, but I hate websites that have turned their comment section into a place to monitor social interaction. Instead of comments, I now see tweets, retweets, likes, etc. Everything is mixed together and it’s one big mess. Whatever happened to the days of seeing a great conversation take place within the comments section of a site and being able to easily participate in it? I salute those who have resisted the temptation to put that garbage within your comments section. However, I have no qualms of a smart comment form where reactions from specific services are tabbed based. For example, Comments Tab, Facebook Tab, Twitter Tab, etc. Having everything show up in the comment form is just a poor way to go about it.

I’ll Share It My Way – Of all the ways to share content, I’ve typically only used one method presented on a website and that was the old-fashioned, Email Story method. A long time ago, I used to hit the Digg button if it was displayed on the article I was reading but I haven’t had anything to do with Digg for a long time. Also, I’ve yet to read any articles of major websites providing an analysis of just how much their sharing buttons are used. Typically when I’m browsing through my feed reader, I have my preferred Twitter client opened so that if I find something interesting, I shorten the clean permalink and Tweet it, no buttons necessary. I’ll also send an email manually when I have Thunderbird open but I’ll look to see if the Email link is present within the article before I do that. If sharing buttons work for you to get more traffic, good on you but I tend to think that not many people use them.

WordPress.com Pop Up Links – While I don’t come across them all the time, those pop-ups that occur on various WordPress.com hosted sites are incredibly annoying. Not only that, but when you try to copy the URL, it adds that pop-ups URL stuff into it and in order to get the correct URL, you have to visit the linked site and grab it from there.

As for WPTavern.com, I’m sure some of you have the pet peeve that I don’t have any way to access the various categories that are written about on the site. It’s been like that for a while and I assure you, I’m looking into it. From playing around with the WordPress menu system, it doesn’t have an easy way to add a category drop down menu item to an existing menu. It’s either some categories, all categories, or nothing.

These are just a few of the pet peeves I have that get me all the time. Everyone has web site pet peeves so tell me, what’s yours?

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