Scotia Systems Blog » Wordpress

WordPress – No-Index Duplicate Content

admin — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 17:36:11 +0000

As a follow-up post on duplicate content on WordPress blogs – here’s an additional tip.

You can stop the search engines from indexing duplicate pages such as monthly/daily archives by using the following code snippet:

if(is_home() || is_single() || is_page() || is_category() || is_tag())
{
echo ‘’;
}
else
{
echo ‘’;
}

You can add or remove arguments in line 1 to include or exclude pages form being indexed.

The code should be inserted into the section of header.php.

WordPress – Adding Page Numbers to Meta Tags

admin — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 17:22:57 +0000

Here’s a quick tip for WordPress users. Identical title tags on pages are frowned upon by search engines, so ideally you want each title tag (and meta description) to be unique.

With WordPress you’ll find that your second page, third page etc all have the same title. You can fix this with the following PHP code:

By inserting the above into the title tag – if the page is the page 1, nothing will happen but for any other pages it will append “Page #".

You can use similar code in the Meta Description too to help make it unique.

New Features In WordPress 3.0

admin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:33:36 +0000

If you’re running a blog, chances are it is probably running on a version of WordPress. However, did you know that there’s a major new revision (3.0) due for release soon?

WordPress 3.0 is currently in Beta testing, and the full release is due on May 1st.

But what can you expect in this new release? Well here’s a quick run down of the new features.

Multi Site

This is quite a major change to the core functionality of WordPress, however it’s a feature which has been used for some time on the WordPress.com site for hosting multiple sites.

Version 3.0 merges this functionality so that anyone can host multiple WordPress blogs on their own machine.

New Theme

There’s a new default theme called twenty ten. This new theme, along with menu and post changes (see later) show how WordPress is become more of an all-round CMS tool rather than just a blogging platform. It’ll be interesting to see how these changes alter the CMS marketplace share of Joomla and Drupal.

WordPress also have a Twenty Ten Template Demo site up and running which you can play around with to see how the template works.

Improved Navigation Menus

The New version of WordPress will now include Woo Navigation menus as default. You can see how these are used in the sample twenty ten demo site mentioned above.

And here’s a demo which shows just how easy it is to add predefined pages and categories using Woo Navigation.

Custom Post Types

Another change which positions WordPress as a CMS is the inclusion of custom post types such as move, album, quote.

Instead of going into the details in this post – here is a good article which discusses custom post types in wordpress 3.0.

Change to Default Username

A simple change, but one which will harden the security on future WordPress sites. By default, on older installations of WordPress, the administrative account was always created as “admin”.

Although it’s possible to change this, many installs keep the default which makes hacking the site easier.

Now when installing WordPress you’re prompted to choose a name.

Summary

Well to me it looks like WordPress really wants to establish itself as a full blown CMS to compete with the likes of Joomla and Drupal.

I like the WordPress interface and how it can be customised, so I’m looking forward to implementing some test sites using 3.0.

I think this will bring the world of CMS development to many more people which can only be a good thing.

Bring on May 1st!

Further Screenshots of WordPress 3.0 are available at www.wpbeginner.com

Experimenting with doFollow Blog

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:34:20 +0000

I’ve just switched on the doFollow plugin for WordPress which means that all comments on this blog will provide valid links which the search engines will follow.

Using Akisment for spam protection appears to have stopped 99% of comment spam now, so hopefully adding the doFollow to the blog will lead to further real commenting!

Time will tell…. I’ll report back later with the results…

Blog update – now a Podcast with Odiogo!

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:46:23 +0000

Wow! I’ve just updated the Scotia Systems blog with a tool called Odiogo, and I have to say I’m really impressed!

Odiogo is a free service which hooks into your blog to create an instant podcast. Very slick!

And FREE!

If you have a blog – go to www.odiogo.com and sign up today!

Develop your own wordpress CSS themes

admin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:17:52 +0000

Found this website recently – good source for tutorials on developing wordpress themes in CSS:

http://www.wpdesigner.com/

WordPress – Directory Listing Denied

admin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:09:34 +0000

If you get this error after installing wordpress on IIS:

Directory Listing Denied
This Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed

Make sure that under the defaul document tab in IIS for your website you have “index.php” listed.

WordPress URL Rewrite on IIS

admin — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:32:31 +0000

Well, after 2 days trying to get this to work – I stumbled (googled) upon the following site:

http://www.binaryfortress.com/wordpress-url-rewrite/

Straightforward and simple! If you’re running WordPress on IIS and want to remove index.php from the URL – this is easiest way to do it.

Hope this saves you a couple of days of confusion!