Chasing the Walrus - A Blog Development

[4dm]

One more useful tool for bloger - free and easy top referrers script

[digifan]

Here's the url to the theme generator:
http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/

[walrus]

For Chasing the Walrus I wanted a very simple, basic theme but I wanted it to be unique and attractive. I chose the moony theme and with a little editing came up with this: Chasing the Walrus.

Note: you don't absolutely need to do any of the things below. Right or wrong, this is simply how I optimize my themes. You can either use what you like or throw it all out a quackery.

Now it's time to start editing the templates. The thing to remember from scratch is that some plug-ins require certain things get added into the script in order to make them work but you can't add them until after you enable the plug-in or your theme wont work. A sort of catch-22.

So I pre-edit the templates a little and then re-edit them as I get to specifics of certain plug-ins.

One of what I feel is a shortcoming of WordPress it that they really don't handle meta-tags well. Specificly, the title, description and keyword tags.

The Title Tag
When I'm on the index page, I want the blog title to appear but when I'm on a category, I want something like this "category name | blog title" and on a page this "page title | blog title". I can blame this on grandmascrotum since she first pointed it out but the damn >> WP likes to add bugs me as well. Especially since it gets added to the front side of the page title and category name. The little hack I found works wonders for taking this out.

You can find the details of the hack if your interested in this thread

I then edit the header.php template file like this:

<title><?php if (is_home()) {
bloginfo('name');
}else {
wp_title();
echo " | ";
bloginfo('name');
}?></title>

The Description Tag
There are four basic page displays with WordPress

1. The Index Page
2. The Single Post Page
3. The Category Page
4. basic WP Pages

and if your like me...the tags page

I have yet to find a single solution to having unique descriptions (or keywords for that matter) for all of these pages. WordPress Meta Tag Generator does a pretty good job with this for everything but category pages. With them it uses the same defaults it would use for the index page.

The thing that the plug-in does do that I haven't figured out how to do using template tags is set custom descriptions for WP pages.

For this theme, I'll use a combination of the two....WP template tags and Meta Tag Generator for descriptions. I'll use the Meta Tag Generator for WP pages and template tags for all the rest.

This is how I form my meta-description tag for my header file:

<meta name="Description" content="<?php if (is_single()) {
echo the_excerpt();}
elseif (is_category()) {
echo category_description();}
else
{
bloginfo('description');}
?>"/>

Notice for a single post, I'm using an excerpt from the post. I don't know if this is a WP2.1.x change or if I'm using excerpt in the header but you must add the excerpt in the optional excerpt field for this to work.

Category uses the category description field you can define when you create the category.

Everything else uses the blog description you set as your tagline.

Since I want different descriptions for pages but I don't want duplicate meta tags, I edit out the following line usually found right before </head>

<?php wp_head(); ?>

That is the what the meta tag generator will use to add it's meta tags. So obviously, I need a separate header and page templates for this.

I copy my header template and rename it headpage.php. Delete both the meta description and keyword lines and add

<?php wp_head(); ?>

back in right before </head>

Also, edit the page template file and change

<?php get_header(); ?>

to

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/headpage.php'); ?>

Once I enable Ultimate Tag Warrior, I'll be back to edit this some more.

Keywords
Since I rely heavily on Ultimate Tag Warrior, I wait to set this up until I enable the plug-in as well.

Other pre-install edits:
Let me add that I like to show the full posts on the index and single pages and excerpts on all the rest. To do this I edit category.php, archive.php. Simply find

<?php the_content() ?>

on these pages and replace it with

<?php the_excerpt() ?>

Next post, we'll setup the WP options and start enabling plug-ins and adopting the templates for the individual options.

[oast]

Originally Posted by walrus

Next post, we'll setup the WP options and start enabling plug-ins and adopting the templates for the individual options.

Looking forward to it!

Oh, BTW, the atiChaos Aggregator page is back up again if anyone else is interested

[Ms Naughty]

Walrus, thanks for posting this, I've just realised something awful.

I've been using Wordpress Meta Tag Generator from the very start and have dutifully written out unique descriptions for each post I've made.

But I've just checked the source code and guess what? The fucking plugin doesn't actually add my unique descriptions to my posts. It's just been adding the main blog description. So I've got about 300 pages on my site with exactly the same meta tag. No wonder Google hates me.

So I went to the original plugin page to see if I'd missed an instruction, but it's incredibly vague. Here's what it says:

"Using Meta Tag Generator

to generate meta tags on a per post or per page basis, use the key/value sets as:

* description – small description of the post or page
* keywords – keywords for post or page (also stacked with the default keywords assigned earlier)."

That's no use whatsoever.

Is there some kind of extra code that needs to go in the header for this plugin to work? Has anyone experienced any clashes with other plugins?

Someone has had the same problem but Wil's reply is "It's not my fault."

There's a possiblity that this plugin used to work with an older version but it's not happening now.

I also just had a go at adding your bit of description code into my header, but it excerpted the tags rather than the first paragraph and screwed up the layout.

What do I need to do to make the excerpt hack work properly? What's the "optional excerpt field"?

Walrus, you're a wonderful human being for helping me to discover this monumental stuff up. I'm just banging my head against the wall that I didn't discover it earlier. And now I don't know how to fix it.

Edit: I should add - when I go into "manage posts" the descriptions and keywords I added are there. They're in the database, but for some reason WP isn't pulling them out and putting them on the page with the rest of the content.

[walrus]

I've used this plug-in on 2.0.x WP blogs successfully so I'm going to have to believe that it is not 2.1.x compliant since, having read your post, I tested it on the new blog and it doesn't seem to work.

Guess I'll have to do some testing over the next week and see if I can find a meta tag generator that works with 2.1.x and pages.

Originally Posted by grandmascrotum

I also just had a go at adding your bit of description code into my header, but it excerpted the tags rather than the first paragraph and screwed up the layout.

What do I need to do to make the excerpt hack work properly? What's the "optional excerpt field"?

When your on your write post page...or when you edit your posts, below where you edit in your posts you have a small section for adding files, below that is optional excerpts, trackbacks, and custom fields (where you added your information for meta tag generator) Not sure but I'll try to attach a screen shot

[walrus]

Originally Posted by oast

Looking forward to it!

Oh, BTW, the atiChaos Aggregator page is back up again if anyone else is interested

Cool, if you check it out, let me know what you think. I'd love to find an easier way to add feeds to my sidebar and pages than what I'm doing now.

[Ms Naughty]

OK, here's a possible reason. The plugin is working on my other blog at Quirkysex.com and I didn't upgrade that one to 2.1.2. It's still 2.0.3. So perhaps the newest version of WP doesn't support this meta tag plugin.

There are some extra plugins I'm using on Ms Naughty: Sociable and Chicklet creator. I deactivated both and it made no difference. So it would appear to be the upgrade that's done it. I'm now going to do a bit of searching on the WP help site to see if I can find more info.

Edit: Well, there ya go. It's not listed here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/P...lity/2.1#L_-_O

I've found four other plugins that should add meta tags, but I don't know what it means for all my previous posts and their painstakingly-added descriptions. They might be useless now.

[walrus]

Damn you got this in while i was editing my previous post to explain the excerpt stuff.

[Ms Naughty]

Bing! All is solved!
This plugin works and it makes use of all my previously-entered descriptions and keywords.
http://www.g-loaded.eu/2006/01/05/ad...dpress-plugin/

Edit: Also found the optional excerpt thing, right in front of me. I'm used to just ignoring it. LOL

The next challenge is getting the plugin to list my description and keywords underneath the title, not under all that other stuff. Although I guess the important thing is that they're there.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by grandmascrotum

Bing! All is solved!
This plugin works and it makes use of all my previously-entered descriptions and keywords.
http://www.g-loaded.eu/2006/01/05/ad...dpress-plugin/

Edit: Also found the optional excerpt thing, right in front of me. I'm used to just ignoring it. LOL

The next challenge is getting the plugin to list my description and keywords underneath the title, not under all that other stuff. Although I guess the important thing is that they're there.

Well, I just learned a valuable lesson. Check for new plug-ins when you create your blogs. grandmascrotum's plug-in pretty much makes my whole post above unnecessary.

Glad you found something that worked with all the work you'd done.

While trying to help out, I found headspace2, which is probably what I'll use on my new blog. It also does everything I just wrote about.

Too bad none of these work with UTW tag pages.

[Ms Naughty]

LOL Walrus I think we've helped each other. I'm so glad you did your original post, it alerted me to a problem I didn't know I had.

My lesson learnt: check to make sure your plugins still work after an upgrade.

[zvaka]

Originally Posted by walrus

Feedburner plug-in - Redirects your RSS feed to your feedburner feed...

Not Found

The requested URL /feedburner/feedburnerplugin12.zip was not found on this server

[walrus]

Originally Posted by zvaka

Not Found

The requested URL /feedburner/feedburnerplugin12.zip was not found on this server

Just worked for me...you must have picked a bad time.

[zvaka]

what about direct link?
http://flagrantdisregard.com/feedbur...erplugin12.zip

still can't download this

[walrus]

Originally Posted by zvaka

what about direct link?
http://flagrantdisregard.com/feedbur...erplugin12.zip

still can't download this

Oops, your right. PM me your email address and I'll send it to you.

[jayeff]

Originally Posted by zvaka

The requested URL /feedburner/feedburnerplugin12.zip was not found on this server

Hope TW doesn't mind me jumping into his thread. That plugin has been taken over by FeedBurner themselves and is now available from http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/help/...ess_quickstart

They have renamed it to FeedSmith...

[walrus]

jayeff - thanks for the info...you learn something new everyday.

For the record, I actually don't consider this my thread. I started it because there were a lot of posts where people were looking for help and found the WP site difficult to follow (so do I) and I thought I could probably use some of my experience to help them out and perhaps add a few tips and tricks that I had learned along the way. I have hoped all along other experienced bloggers would be adding to it.

I know you have a lot of experience, more than myself, when it comes to themes so I do value your input...even if by chance I may happen to disagree.

[tsanko]

How can i make Social Bookmarks to put bookmarks on syndicated posts?

[walrus]

Originally Posted by tsanko

How can i make Social Bookmarks to put bookmarks on syndicated posts?

Use the Social Bookmark plug-in. It's simple to install and configure.

There are others, check the thread for alternatives.

[tsanko]

I use it. But it`s put bookmarks only on mine posts. If you want see...

[walrus]

In this post I am going to try to explain the use of categories and tags as well as using those tags as your meta keywords. Tags and keywords can be thought of interchangeably. Tags are the keywords that you use in your post. For clarity sake, when I refer to tags I will be referring to your posts keywords. From this point on if I use the term keyword, I will be referring to meta-keywords used in the head of your pages. Therefore, tags are for surfers and keywords are for search engines.

Since XXX Blog Maniac is a mature blog, I will use it rather than Chasing the Walrus simply because you can actually see things in action. But be warned, I'm not smart enough to follow my own advice most of the time. I have a tendency to blog about what's on my mind at the time and then try to make up for no porn terms by using tags to describe the action in the video.

I use categories as just that a means to categorize my posts. Since I consider XXX Blog Maniac as a general porn blog, my categories are quite similar to your typical blog directory or link list. But even if you are running a more niched blog, you can still find meaningful categories to use. If it were, say a amateur blog, then you could have categories like blonde, brunette, red-head, big boobs, little ones, etc.

On the other hand, tags should be used to describe the action in or specific point of the post. Most of you already know this but I found some simple things to think about when choosing tags and meta keywords on Simple SEO and am quoting from there:

# Try to figure out what someone would type into Google in order to find your site / identify what you have written about. This could be one word or a string of words (a phrase);

# Avoid using the same keyword repeatedly to describe all your content as it makes one post hard to distinguish from another. Repeating the same meta keyword several times may have its ranking decreased by a search engine trying to eliminate this practice;

# Avoid using ‘adult’ words or phrases unless your page is adult in nature. Doing otherwise may make search engines miscategorize your hard work or cause SE’s to not index your content at all;

# If you are competing in SE position, look at the meta tag keywords your competitors use. Maybe they have better identified the words or phrases people are using to search;

# Don’t use a competitors trademark, it could get you in trouble with the lawyers. For example, suppose you make shoes. Don’t put Nike in as your keywords because then you would be competing for them using their own name;
# Avoid using irrelevant words or phrases (the, is, click here, or, and);

# Ensure that whatever keywords or phrases you choose occur within the body of the page (the actual content). If the keywords don’t match the content, this could raise a flag in search engine algorithms;

# Don’t be afraid to go back and edit the keywords and tags of an old post;

Ever since I started using it, I've been a big fan of Ultimate Tag Warrior and last week while looking around for meta tag plugins for grandmascrotum (not that my help was needed) I found a plug-in that works hand in hand with UTW, Tags in the Head. I thought I'd use the rest of this post to cover how I set-up UTW and configure the new TIH plug-in.

Download the UTW plug-in, upload it to your wp-content/plugins folder per instructions. The plugin also comes with 4 template pages. I copy tag.php, tags.php and searchtags.php into my theme template. I discard header.php I described the usage for these template pages in my first post.

Go into your WP-Admin, click on plug-ins and enable UTW 3.14x. I do not enable the UTW 1.3 legacy or the UTW Archive. Then click on options / tags.

This is how I setup the plug-in for use on my blogs. It may not be the best and definitely is not the only way to do it.

Configuration:
URL Settings:

Use url rewriting for local tag urls - check

Base URL - /tag/

Include trailing slash on tag urls - check

Note: if you wanted to point your tags somewhere other than internally, such as to technorati for example, you would not check URL rewriting and set the base URL to technorati (http://www.technorati.com/tag/

Meta Keywords:

Include meta keywords - unchecked

Note: If you want the plug-in to automaticly add tags to your single posts and tag pages you would check this. Since I'm going to use tags in the head I'll un-check it.

Embedded Tags:

Use embedded tags - check

Note: this enables using a tagging method made popular by one of the earliest tagging plug-ins, Simple Tags. By simply surrounding your tag like such [tag]tag[/tag], UTW will pick that up as a tag and link it as such inside the post. Common blogger folklore has it that this is an effective means of SEO

Debugging:

Include debugging information - unchecked

Automatic Feed Tags:

Include local tag links in feeds - checked

Note: Adds linked tags to your RSS feed.

Primary Content Tags:
I leave all these settings at default

Secondary Content Tags:
I leave all these settings at default

Global Formatting Settings:
If your using a tag cloud either as a page or as another addition to your blog, these are used to format the look of the tag cloud. Otherwise you can ignore these and leave at the default.

Editing Options

Show existing tags on post editing page - dropdown

Note: This shows up on your post page and works in conjunction with how you setup your template. I like the dropdown menu as it seems easier to navigate if you have a long tag list.

Automatically add categories as tags - unchecked

Note: Since I use both category links and tags I leave this unchecked to help with duplicate content issues.

Click save and then click on the manage tags link. This is a page for managing your tags, check it out. The only thing I've ever used this for is sometimes screw up on tags in the post and end up with some really funky tags that I delete.

If this is an initial install or if you changed anything in URL settings go to Options / Permalinks and update your permalink structure.
Note: Anytime you have 404 problems with posts start with permalinks. Try updating them. If that doesn't solve your problem, delete .htaccess, add a blank .htaccess, chmod it to 666 and try again. This will solve 90% of your 404 problems.

Formatting single.php and index.php
The documentation for this is pretty good so check it out. If you have any questions feel free to post them and I'll be more than happy to answer them. I use "tags for the current post" and "related posts for the current post"

Also, tag clouds are not for everyone. If you need help with them let me know.

Tags in the Head
Upload the plugin and then go to plug-ins and activate. Go to options.tags in the head and setup your keywords for pages that don't have tags, the number of characters from you post to be used as the description on single pages and the meta description for the pages.

The weakness I see with this plug-in is with the way it uses categories so I will do my meta descriptions and meta keywords manually for these.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by tsanko

I use it. But it`s put bookmarks only on mine posts. If you want see...

If you use that plug-in then those same chicklets are a part of your feed. It's a function of the aggregator as to whether it reads them or not.

As you can see on my feed (its been run through feedburner) the chicklets are present.

Also if you look at XXX Blog Feeds, posts there from my blogs have the chicklet twice.

In short, the chicklets are in your feed, its a function of the feed reader as to whether they are displayed.

[walrus]

I guess the last thing to share here is my list of RSS Search Engines and Directories, Adult Blog Directories and porn related social bookmarking sites. You can download the XL spreadsheet here

Under the RSS Search Engines and Directories, I've listed them all. But not all accept porn so be sure and check the TOS.

As far as adult directories, with a new blog I like to submit it to the medium to small size directories. Ones with less than 20 submits in the category I like. You can get an initial surge by submitting to the larger directories but since most rank submissions by hits in you won't be able to sustain it. Submit to the smaller ones and get a much smaller amount daily but it will stay consistent while your trying to build your blog up. Then when your a little more established and getting some decent traffic you can submit to the large ones and reap a much greater benefit.

Porn Social bookmark sites are great for getting inbound links to posts.

This is by no means complete but I try.

[sirkakashi08]

nice post there!