While my workflow may or may not be like other web developers, this post is an attempt to give designers an insight into how the Web Mechanic works and how source materials can be best prepared for being made into a website. I believe that much of what I’ll cover will be applicable to website design in general.

Design File Formats

Most designers use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop and I can work with either. My preference is to work with Illustrator files (.ai) as the vector format allows me to take a graphic and import it to Photoshop where I can size it to exactly what I need and use Photoshop’s “Save for the Web” to save the image for the website.  It is extremely helpful if you group different areas individually. i.e. background, header, footer, menu, etc. and please label the groups!  Dropshadows should be done as a separate layer, rather than as an effect. This is because I probably be implementing the dropshadow on the website via css. Fonts should not be converted to outlines. (More about fonts in the Fonts section of this post) Files should be in RGB format and saved as a CS4 .ai file.  Yes, I am still a CS4 person. I’ve not opted into the Adobe “update every year” plan  (…not sure what’s going to happen with Adobe subscription-only model…)  If necessary, the file can be saved as an .eps file.

If you work with Photoshop, files should be layered. I can work with a flattened image, but it’s more difficult as I have to “chop out” the various design elements. Any “effects” (dropshadows, glow, bevel, etc.) should be effects and not flattened as many of the effects I can duplicate with css. Buttons should not be flattened (i.e. button and text on same layer) as I prefer to use a blank button image and superimpose text on it… Much better SEO-wise. Grouping  and labeling layers of areas like header, footer, background is greately appreciated. While Photoshop allows the designer to make a website design “exactly sized”, I prefer to work with a file that is two or three times too large. This allows me to take the design elements and reduce them to size I need with a minimum loss of quality. If you design your pages to be suitable for printing (i.e. 300dpi) that should work nicely. As with Illustrator, please save your files as CS4 layered .psd or .tif format and an sRGB colorspace.

Images

Images are important to most websites and there is always a competition between the quality of an image and the file size. Large file sizes can make a site run more slowly.

When it comes to the resolution of an image, on a website it doesn’t matter whether the image is 72 dpi or 300dpi. What is important is the size of the image in pixels. On a desktop or laptop 100 pixels roughly equals 1 inch (2.54 cm), so an image that is 300px x 200px will display in a browser approx. 3″ x 2″.  The exact display size will vary with the resolution and size of the display. i.e. desktop, iPad, etc. Here is a good article on image resolution.

If you will be using stock images or graphics embedded in your design, please provide copies of the originals as well. Images should be either the exact pixel dimensions needed on the site or much larger and I will resize them to the size that’s needed. Remember that when an image has to be made larger, image quality will suffer. Also remember that every time a .jpg image is saved in an editing, the quality of the image will degrade to some extent. Here is an article on jpg image deterioration.

Colorspace should be sRGB

“Too large” and 300dpi is good, so that any resizing is “down” to maintain image quality.

Stock photos should be at least 2x the size they will be used on the site (pixel dimensions- I don’t care about resolution) Roughly 100 px equals an inch on the screen.

Re Fonts:
Unless a font is installed onto a website, which may invoke a licensing fee, a browser can only display fonts that are on that computer.
So websites use what is called a “font stack”. Basically, the website offers a hierarchical list of fonts to display. If the first one isn’t on a particular computer, then try the second, and so on.

Note: There are ways of “embedding” fonts using Google fonts or Cufon, but I prefer to not use those because they can make the text appear to “flash” or flicker when a page loads.

One of the difficulties historically is that Apple OS’ and Windows don’t use all of the same fonts. So, it can be very likely that a Windows user will see Arial while a Mac user will see the same site with Helvetica or Helvetica Neue. (The exceptions are the people with Adobe PS, Illustrator, InDesign, etc. Adobe installs a range of fonts when those programs are installed)

There is some overlap between Win and Mac font usage and those fonts are what’s called “web safe”

WordPress natively uses the following web safe fonts.  The list shows the font name WordPress displays. After the equals sign is the font stack WordPress offers for for each font name.

Andale Mono=andale mono,times;
Arial=arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
Arial Black=arial black,avant garde;
Book Antiqua=book antiqua,palatino;
Comic Sans MS=comic sans ms,sans-serif;
Courier New=courier new,courier;
Georgia=georgia,palatino;
Helvetica=helvetica;
Impact=impact,chicago;
Symbol=symbol;
Tahoma=tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
Terminal=terminal,monaco;
Times New Roman=times new roman,times;
Trebuchet MS=trebuchet ms,geneva;
Verdana=verdana,geneva;
Webdings=webdings;
Wingdings=wingdings,zapf dingbats”,

So….

Illustrator is my preference as a medium for a design mockup.

I don’t know if this will be of interest or help but here’s pretty much how I do things.

I’ve found that I get the best quality images for the web by using the following workflow…

I’ll take an object in an Illustrator file and copy it. Open a “New” file in PS and paste the copied Illustrator into PS as a “smart object”. I can then resize to what’s needed for the website. If necessary (it happens ;-), I can add text and or effects in PS, if needed.
I save the file as a psd so that I have a modifiable (without loss) version both to archive and revisit if needed in the future (change color, size, etc.
I then make a png or jpg of the psd using “Save for the Web” so that I can get the optimal quality and file size.

The post Working with the Web Mechanic – A Guide for Graphic Designers appeared first on The Web Mechanic.

Well, it seems that a new vulnerability has been found and exploited in WordPress, I’m afraid.

A WP core file, XMLRPC.php, is used for pingbacks. A serious vulnerability was discovered almost a year ago and many sites were hacked because of it. I was under the impression that the problem was completely addressed and fixed in WordPress 3.5.1. (you *do* keep your WordPress up-to-date don’t you??) But evidently that’s not the case.

It’s come to my attention that there is another WordPress XMLRPC pingback vulnerability that is being taken advantage of and is being used for DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. The good news is that your WordPress site doesn’t actually get hacked in this exploit (to the best of my current knowledge) but the DoS could bring your site to a screaching halt or be used to DoS attack other sites and also make your hosting company very unhappy with you.

There are a number of ways to deal with the problem, but the quick and easy one is to install and activate the “Prevent XMLRPC” plugin. There are no settings that need to be made.

If you have a site that depends on pingbacks, or if you use a service like Windows Live Writer with your WordPress, the plugin will be a problem as it completely shuts off the XMLRPC function in WordPress. There are other ways of skinning the cat, but they start taking more technical expertise.

Here are a couple of links about this…
http://samsclass.info/125/proj11/wpbots120613.htm
http://www.incapsula.com/the-incapsula-blog/item/715-wordpress-security-alert-pingback-ddos

I strongly recommend installing the Prevent XMLRPC plugin ASAP!

The post WordPress XMLRPC pingback vulnerability appeared first on The Web Mechanic.

While WordPress 3.5 was released not too long ago, there were a number of issues that caused some people to have problems with their WordPress site. This release addresses those issues and also includes important security updates to the WordPress core. You can be assured that hackers will try to exploit WordPress sites that have not upgraded and have known vulnerabilities.

Remember that you should always backup your website (both files and database) before upgrading WordPress. While updating WordPress almost always works flawlessly, in the event something should go awry, having a backup will allow your site to be restored with a minimum of hassle.

Don’t forget to upgrade your WordPress themes and plugins as well. There have been some significant changes to the way WordPress does things and your old versions may not be compatible the new WordPress. Outdated WordPress themes and plugins can also pose a security risk.

In the case of themes, especially with older WordPress themes, you should do a little research before you update.  You want to be sure that your theme is compatible with the new versions when you upgrade WordPress. Also, remember that if your theme has had customizations made to it, updating can cause those customizations to be lost. Another good reason to backup before updating!

If you are worried about making the updates to your WordPress yourself, contact The Web Mechanic to take care of it for you!

From the wordpress.org website, here is what’s new in WordPress 3.5.1.

WordPress 3.5.1 is now available. Version 3.5.1 is the first maintenance release of 3.5, fixing 37 bugs. It is also a security release for all previous WordPress versions. For a full list of changes, consult the list of tickets and the changelog, which include:

• Editor: Prevent certain HTML elements from being unexpectedly removed or modified in rare cases.
• Media: Fix a collection of minor workflow and compatibility issues in the new media manager.
• Networks: Suggest proper rewrite rules when creating a new network.
• Prevent scheduled posts from being stripped of certain HTML, such as video embeds, when they are published.
• Work around some misconfigurations that may have caused some JavaScript in the WordPress admin area to fail.
• Suppress some warnings that could occur when a plugin misused the database or user APIs.

Additionally, a bug affecting Windows servers running IIS can prevent upgrading WordPress from 3.5 to 3.5.1. If you receive the error “Destination directory for file streaming does not exist or is not writable,” you will need to follow the steps outlined on the Codex.

WordPress 3.5.1 also addresses the following security issues:

• A server-side request forgery vulnerability and remote port scanning using pingbacks. This vulnerability, which could potentially be used to expose information and compromise a site, affects all previous WordPress versions. This was fixed by the WordPress security team. We’d like to thank security researchers Gennady Kovshenin and Ryan Dewhurst for reviewing our work.
• Two instances of cross-site scripting via shortcodes and post content. These issues were discovered by Jon Cave of the WordPress security team.
• A cross-site scripting vulnerability in the external library Plupload. Thanks to the Moxiecode team for working with us on this, and for releasing Plupload 1.5.5 to address this issue.

The post WordPress 3.5.1 has been released – Time to upgrade WordPress appeared first on The Web Mechanic.

Before Your WordPress Upgrade

First, you should always backup WordPress before upgrading. While automatic updating during your WordPress upgrade usually works flawlessly, should something go very wrong you’ll be able to restore your site. You should backup your database and your wp-content folder at least, if not all of your site.

I also recommend updating your plugins before upgrading WordPress itself. Sometimes an older plugin version may not be compatible with a new WordPress version and stop working. This shouldn’t be much of a problem, after all you DO keep your plugins and themes always up to date don’t you?

Speaking of themes, you should check that your theme is compatible with the new version of WordPress before upgrading WordPress. Some themes may not be well maintained and could break in some manner when used with a new version of WordPress. Do some research, check with the author or the folks you got the theme from. Better safe than sorry!

NOTE: When a theme is updated, WordPress removes all of the old theme files and uploads new ones. If your theme has been customized, you will lose all of those customizations! If you are unsure, before upgrading your theme, check with your web person, or if they are no longer available, check with a knowledgeable WordPress pro who can find out if your theme is safe to update.

Without further ado, here are some problems and solutions I have found when performing a WordPress upgrade to Version 3.5.

NOTE: Some of these will be (hopefully) corrected in WordPress 3.5.1.

Common WordPress 3.5 Upgrade Problems

Next: After updating to WordPress 3.5, I can no longer update plugins or save pages!

The post WordPress Upgrade to 3.5: Problems and Solutions appeared first on The Web Mechanic.

My wife, Casey, is a popular an active Business Consultant (Her site is www.wisewomanshining.com). Many of her clients use WordPress for their websites and are befuddled with just how to use the WordPress  Categories, Tags and Keywords to their best advantage for SEO purposes. Casey has come up with a “101” version for her clients and I am pleased to offer it to my Web Mechanic visitors.

Basic SEO with Categories, Tags and Keywords in WordPress

by Casey Dawes

Using categories, tags and keywords in your WordPress website or blog can be confusing. How do you distinguish between the three? What’s going to help your search engine optimization? What’s going to help your readers find what they’re looking for?

CATEGORIES

Categories should be limited. They’re a broad brush stroke to help your readers find information on a general topic. If you’re using “friendly” permalinks in your site’s posts or pages, category names can be part of the permalink name, although it’s not necessary. Category names should be between 2 and 5 words in length.

Let’s say you have a blog on cooking. Your categories might consist of:

• Baking Tips
• Grilling Tips
• Crock-Pot Recipes
• Main Dish Recipes
• Cakes and Breads

These are broad strokes that can entice people to your blog and let them know that they’ve reached the right place. On the other hand, if your reader is searching for restaurant recommendations, they’ll probably move on.

TAGS

Tags are similar in nature to keywords. There are varying opinions about their effectiveness in influencing search engines, particularly Google. Based on my reading, I believe it’s best to think of them as subsets of Categories. Limit the number of tags you use. By keeping the words short, you’ll be able to give your readers a quick way to zoom in on a topic that they want to research more, particularly if you use a “Tag Cloud.”

Continuing the above example, you could have tags that say:

• Pasta
• Beef
• Chicken
• Vegetarian
• Fish

Tags cross categories, so Beef tags could have posts from the Grilling Tips, Crock-Pot Recipes, and Main Dish Recipes categories.

KEYWORDS

Keywords and keyword phrases are important tools in search engine optimization. According to Google, Meta-Tags (a list of keywords that are invisible to the readers of your blogs, but visible to search engines) don’t carry much weight in their search algorithm; they appear to have more influence in some of the other search engines, such as Yahoo.

Keywords are the place to have your “long tail” phrases and words. Long-tail keywords and phrases are those that are esoteric—few people will search on any particular one, but having lots of ways for people to get to your blog will pay off in the long run.

Take time in defining your keywords for each specific post, even before you begin to write. Not only do your keywords need to go into the Keyword Section of your WordPress SEO by Yost WordPress plug-in (or other SEO plug-in of your choice), but it’s important that they go in blog titles, headings, link phrases and bolded words. If you know of frequent misspellings of your keywords, include those in the keyword section.

Also be aware that you don’t need to duplicate keywords. If you have “angel hair pasta,” as a keyword, you don’t need to add “pasta” as a keyword. Search engines can figure it out. Try to drive your keywords to phrases (“angel hair pasta” rather than “pasta), because detailed phrases have less competition.

To continue the example above, some keywords might be:

• Spaghetti carbonara
• Pasta primavera
• Angel hair pasta
• Best oregano for Italian dishes

Finally…

If you have a search function on your blog, both keywords and tags will be important for the usability of your blog for readers.

By defining the structure of your site with categories, tags and keywords, you’ll be able to improve your search engine optimization and the reader-friendliness of your blog.

The post Basic SEO with Categories Tags and Keywords in WordPress appeared first on The Web Mechanic.

Wordpress.org does a great job of eliminating potential entryways into the WordPress code with frequent updates. However, it is open-source code and is developed by hundreds if not thousands of people. (especially when you consider the myriad of themes and plugins available) Unfortunately, hackers work just as hard to find ways to exploit WordPress any way they can.

What can you do?

I have compiled a number of things that you can do proactively to help keep your WordpPress secure. Note: I said “help” keep your site secure. When it comes to websites and hackers, there is no guarantee that your site can’t be successfully attacked. But you can make your site unpalatable to attack and more secure.

Warning! The security measures below range from quick and easy to those demanding some “chops” in coding. It is possible to incorrectly implement some these steps and lock yourself out from your site with no way to correct your mistake. You could even damage your site yourself. I can take no responsibility for any problems you might have from applying these security measures.

That being said… we’ll start with the basic ones and get more complicated as we go on. Or you can have me install my Web Mechanic’s WordPress Security Package.

1. Always use the latest version of WordPress. As I mentioned, software security is an ongoing struggle and WordPress.org does a great job of addressing the latest threats. If you have concerns about being a “first adopter” of new versions, wait a few days or a week before updating. Be aware that updating may cause problems with your plugins or themes. You should back-up your WordPress before updating. See wordpress.orgfor details. 
2. Don’t use a simple, easy password. Did you know that the most commonly used passwords are “password” and “1234567”? Is that you? As reported by PCmag.com here are the 10 Most Common Passwords.You should use a strong password that incorporates numbers, upper and lower case letters and “special” characters like ! ” ? $ {9ab17e5d04732cf1619d8d14f9824e276b9a9ad35304128d83e4a45b6e08e46a} ^ & ) I know, I know, it’s going to be hard to remember. Write it down, have your browser memorize it… It’s better than giving carte blanche to your site! WordPress can generate a random strong password for you. In your Dashboard go to “Users” and select your account name (for most people it’s probably “admin”) and make sure that your email address is correct. Log out from WordPress and then instead of logging in again, click on “Lost Your Password?” Your WordPress will email a new, strong randomly generated password. 
3. Now that we have talked about your “admin” user account… Get rid of it!  Well, not totally. Add a new user with full administrator privileges.  Use a not totally obvious username and a strong password. Log out of WordPress and then login with your new username and password. Now you can go to the “Users” area and edit the “admin” user account. Most people leave the main username as “admin” … attackers know this!  Edit your “admin” user by changing its role from “administrator” to “subscriber”. Save the change. Now if a hacker tries to take over the standard “admin” account, they will have no privileges to change anything.
   Note!If you installed your WordPress site using Fantastico, you were probably already prompted to enter your own username and password during setup. Change your password to a strong one if you did not do so originally. 
4. In the Dashboard navigate to  Settings-General. Make sure that the “Membership-Anyone can register” checkbox is unchecked. Be sure that the “New User Default Role” is set to subscriber. 
5. This is a good time to add some login protection. Hackers will often try a brute force means of accessing your site by trying thousands of passwords in hopes of discovering the right one. The “Login Lockdown” plugin will, upon activation, deny login access for 60 minutes to anyone who tries 3 wrong passwords in 5 minutes. If you want to adjust these settings, you can modify them on the Login Lockdownconfiguration page. 
6. Here’s another plugin that can help keep the wolves at bay. It’s the WordPress Firewall 2 plugin. This plugin does a lot! It monitors your WordPress site for attacks, protects your plugins, and is a Swiss Army Knife of protection…  It is an updated version of the original Firewall plugin by SEOEgghead. You can read about its features at the original plugin homepage. 
7. Now this is where we start getting more geeky. In the root of your WordPress installation is a file called .htaccess. It can control a lot of things on your website. More than I can go into in this post. Anyway, you can add this following line into the .htaccess file using a text editor.
   [field name=prevent-dir-browse]

   Normally browsers can see into folders and report on and even access the files within. To prevent this random viewing website designers put an empty index.html file into each folder. WordPress has many, many folders – too many to make this practical. Making this addition to the .htaccess file denies folder will keep browsers (and people) out of folders where they have no need of access.

    

8. In the WordPress root there is a file named wp-config.php, it’s quite an important file and you don’t want someone to “accidentally” gain access to it as it contains the username and password for your mySQL database connection. We can deny access to it by adding a few more lines to the same .htaccess file that we mentioned in #7.
   [field name=protect-wpconfig]

    

9. This next tip I found is from Jeff Starr at the Perishable Press website.  Many recent attacks on WordPress have used very long request strings… Much longer than legitimate ones would be. The code below can be copied to make a php file that can be placed in your WP plugin folder. Further explanation may be found at his blog post “Protect WordPress Against Malicious URL Requests”
   [field name=bad-query-code]

   UPDATE: Instead of copying and pasting the above to make your own plugin, Jeff has uploaded it as a downloadable plugin on WordPress.org – Block Bad Queries (BBQ) Plugin

    

10. WordPress.org suggests replacing the “Secret Keys” in your wp-config.php file with your own secret ones. If you go to the WordPress Secret Key Generatora randomly set will be generated similar to these below (don’t use these.. they wouldn’t be very secret!)

    define('AUTH_KEY',        'N!3MZ9+>l-5)=K&+_j7mM+}ZK5UFvZQ E{=*Vzp0Eae+i^oXY]!)B@vFj?x;&y=c');
    define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY', 'OeX>dl;tuRc$w+ehD{2]k{9ab17e5d04732cf1619d8d14f9824e276b9a9ad35304128d83e4a45b6e08e46a}k{3uhH|L|8DNQu[/Np8_&qz_ rp7v+z6YODdjz9{9ab17e5d04732cf1619d8d14f9824e276b9a9ad35304128d83e4a45b6e08e46a}~s');
    define('LOGGED_IN_KEY',   'oOO1smvP?

    Just copy and then paste the secret keys over the ones in your wp-config.php file. Don’t worry about having to remember them, they are used by WordPress to encrypt information.

    UPDATE: I have found an easier way to do this with a downloadable plugin called the WordPress.org – Update Unique Keys Plugin. With this plugin you can periodically change and update your “Unique Keys” from within your WordPress Dashboard… Easy!

     

The post 10 Steps to WordPress Security Protection appeared first on The Web Mechanic.

CAUTION!

phpMyAdmin allows you to directly edit your WordPress database! You can totally and permanently ruin your WordPress installation and have to start it all over again. While I have attempted to make this tutorial easy-to-follow and and accomplish, I take no responsibility for any problems that may occur from your modification of your WordPress database.  If you are not comfortable with attempting to work on your WP database yourself, find someone technically competent to assist you in restoring your password.

WordPress Password Recovery

When you set up your web hosting, your webhost likely gave you the login and password to your account. Your account is the place where you set up your email addresses and the like. Most web hosting companies use CPanel as an interface. CPanel makes life much easier!

Anyway, you want to log onto your web hosting account and find phpMyAdmin and click it.

Here’s what it looks like in my CPanel…

Click on phpMyAdmin to open the program in your browser. If your phpMyAdmin is the current version (as of this writing), you should see this…

Click on your WordPress database.  You should see the following…

Scroll down to find the row named “wp_users” and click on the “Browse” icon. This will take you to the next screen…

Find the row for the “admin” user and click on the pencil icon to edit the admin password…

Locate the “user_pass” row in the field column. In the “Function” column of that row, click on the dropdown list and select “MD5”. Continue to the “Value” column. What you will see there is an encrypted version of the current password. To enable your WordPress password recovery, click on the encrypted version and remove it so that there is nothing in that box. Now, enter the WordPress password that you want to use for the “admin” account. Don’t worry that it isn’t encrypted, that will be taken care of automatically. Lastly, at the bottom of this last screen, be sure to clock on “Go” to save your change of password.

Congratulations! You should now be able to log into your WordPress with your new password!

Concerned about doing your own WordPress password recovery?  Contact the Web Mechanic and he’ll do it for you for less than $30!

The post Reset Your WordPress Admin Password via phpMyAdmin appeared first on The Web Mechanic.

Did you get a WordPress memory error something like “Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate …yadda yadda)”?  This is likely caused by “too much stuff” in your WordPress, like lots of WordPress plugins.

There are a few things to do to try to get past this.

1.) Deactivate most or all of your plugins and then try the automatic upgrade again. That should help most people.

If you are more technically inclined or have someone who can do this for you (like me! )…

2.) In your WordPress root find the “wp-settings.php” file and find this line (around line 13)  “define(’WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘32M’);”  and increase the memory size to something larger, like  “define(’WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘64M’);” . Now try upgrading again.

And if that doesn’t fix it so that you can upgrade… Try this!

3.) Find the “php.ini” for your site (this is not a WordPress file, but one from your webhost – you may need to ask them how to make the change, if it’s not readily available to you) and change it to something larger like this  “memory_limit = 128M.”

You should now be able to successfully upgrade your WordPress!

If you are still having problems fixing your WordPress memory error when upgrading, please contact me at ken@the-web-mechanic.com.  I also offer free WordPress support on “WordPress Wednesdays.”

The post Fix WordPress Memory Error When Upgrading appeared first on The Web Mechanic.

Until fairly recently, when you looked at the top of your browser, where you can type in the URLs of sites you want to visit, what you saw up there likely made sense. If you were on the site’s “About” page, at the end of the URL you probably saw … /about.html. If you were on the “Contact” page it said /contact.html. Made sense, didn’t it?

Nowadays what do you see? If its a WordPress site or blog, the end of the URL may say something like   …/post.php?post=447.  What did that mean? Websites all used to be what are called “static” websites. Once a page was up coded and on the web,  its name was there until it needed to change or was taken down. These days many websites and blogs are “dynamic” sites. This means that the content is not fixed and the page is generated on-the-fly as you click around to that page. From a website construction point of view, this makes life a lot easier. For instance – if a website has ten pages and has the same footer information on each page, you don’t have to make those entries on each of the ten pages, you can just write one “footer” file and then just have each page grab that information when it is accessed. (and then with something like WordPress just about everything is actively generated)

Anyway, those letters, numbers,?’s, etc. mean something to computers… but its mostly gibberish to you and me. The good news is that when WordPress was developed, they put in the capability to change that gobbeldy gook into something decipherable by humans. Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t come out of the box set to make use of this. Over on the left side of your Administrator panel, click on “Settings” and then “Permalinks”. At the top of the Permalink page, you’ll see a number of choices, including the one that has been pre-chosen for you. At the bottom of that list you’ll see “Custom”. In the space provided enter the following (without the quotes) “{9ab17e5d04732cf1619d8d14f9824e276b9a9ad35304128d83e4a45b6e08e46a}postname{9ab17e5d04732cf1619d8d14f9824e276b9a9ad35304128d83e4a45b6e08e46a}“. Now, when you write a post, the URL for it will show the name of the post as part of the URL. This makes it easier for people to remember and it will help the search engine robots navigate your site more readily.  (look up at the top of this site ↑) Those robots like English as much as we do!

What about those other options? They might be revalent to your site, especially if it is big.  Check out the WordPress Codex for more extensive Permalink information.

Now, one thing to keep in mind! If you have already made pages or posts in your WordPress, don’t go changing the Permalink setting willy-nilly! You can break your site! WordPress will have already cataloged your pages and posts, and if you change the Permalink setting, WordPress will lose track of the names it has already given them. Don’t worry, there are ways around it and I will have a post about how to change things in the middle of the stream.  If you need assistance on that before I get around to writing that post, drop me a line and I’ll fill you in)

Back: I have WordPress Installed-Now What?

The post WordPress 101 – Permalinks appeared first on The Web Mechanic.

Recently I thought my website (this website) was running a little slow… but it wasn’t anything that I was concerning myself about very much. Then yesterday, it slowed to a stop! I would try to access a page and my browser would just sit there trying to load the page. I didn’t think it was me, so I contacted my webhost service folks. They could see that there were a bunch of processes running that were gumming up the works. We both thought it was something spurious but also something to keep an eye on.

The next day I received a couple of “Tweets” telling me I was experiencing problems with WordPress–that my site was acting odd… The front page was fine, but everything else threw up an error page. Not good!

Well, being the Chief Wrench at the The Web Mechanic, it was time to get under the hood! To make a long story short, I discovered that a WordPress plug in was causing the error. The plugin, called “Tweet This” had, I thought, been running fine, but it had been throwing errors for some time I found out. It just hadn’t gotten to the point of taking my site down …until today. I deactivated “Tweet This” and presto! The Web Mechanic is back up and running!

I have used “Tweet This” in a number of my client’s websites without a problem. (I have now gone back to check.) It may be a conflict with a plugin that is on my site and not theirs. Hopefully, the “Tweet This” plugin author will soon be able to correct the problem!

My problem with a plugin highlights a strength and a weakness of WordPress and what you should consider when you experience problems with WordPress.

Because WordPress is both “open source” and modular in nature, plugins can and are made by many, many people. They don’t always get the rigorous testing that a commercial product might. If you add a new plugin to your WordPress, keep track of when you added it and note it anything seems “different” about your site. That information could prevent hours of troubleshooting down the line, should a problem with WordPress arise. The WordPress strength? Because it is robust and modular, once I removed the problem “Tweet This” plugin…

The Web Mechanic was back and working fine…immediately!

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