RSS is supposed to deliver your content as clean as possible, but there are however a few things you can do to optimize the output of your RSS. Here a few plugins that can help you out:

Align RSS Images

Align RSS Images is a simple plugin that scans your RSS feed and ensures that every image has the correct alignment and margin settings. This is useful if you want the images to appear correctly aligned not just on your site, but also in your RSS feed. Download Align RSS Images.

RSS Syndication Options

A plugin to let the administrator modify the RSS sy:updateperiod and sy:updatefrequency parameters in their RSS feed (see http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/). These parameters tell RSS aggregators how frequently they can expect changes to your blog, and should in theory affect crawl rates. Download RSS Syndication Options.

Ozh’ Better Feed

Your feed, on steroids : add a custom footer to RSS items with, for example, a copyright notice, a “Read More (400 words)” links, an “Add to del.icio.us” link, a list of related entries, or anything really (even custom PHP functions). Compatible with Feedburner or similar services. Download Ozh’ Better Feed.

Feed Delay

I think the title pretty much says it all but Feed Delay lets you stop a feed from immediately being published. Plus, you can also disable individual posts from appearing in feeds. Download Feed Delay.

Smart Youtube

What’s a YouTube plugin doing in this list you may ask? This plugin allows you to embed video’s in your feed. As explained on the plugin site: Smart Youtube is a WordPress Youtube Plugin that allows you to easily insert Youtube videos/playlists in your post, comments and in RSS feed.

The main purpose of the plugin is to correctly embed youtube videos into your blog post. The video will be shown in full in your RSS feed as well. Download Smart YouTube.

Extra Resources:

If you’d like to even optimize your feeds more there a dozens of hacks you can have a look at.

• How To Use RSS Feeds When You Use WordPress As a CMS.
• 10 Useful RSS Hacks
• WordPress tip : Fetch and display RSS feeds
• Adding a CSS StyleSheet to your RSS Feed
• WordPress hack: Display Posts Only to RSS Subscribers
• 9 Extremely Useful RSS Tricks and Snippets for WordPress

This article first appeared on BloggingPro: Optimizing Your WordPress RSS Feeds

How To: Serve Better RSS Feeds To Your Subscribers is a post from: ForSite Media

The Good

Building with child themes has a lot of powerful advantages. My favorite are:

• Development Speed: Having an already working theme as a parent theme, a theme that already has been looked at from a lot of different angels as to what it should be able to do, and already some basic styling in place makes it a lot easier to quickly make some changes via the child theme style sheet.
• Lots of options: Most Theme Frameworks I know have a lot of options built in. I’m not talking about having a lot of buttons and checkboxes added necessarily, but more-so a robust framework with lots of nifty PHP functions and CSS specificity options to configure.
• Great communities behind the frameworks Any of the three Theme Frameworks I mentioned earlier make working with their specific Parent Theme so great because there’s is a great community behind it, not afraid to share inventive solutions and best practices.
• Future Proof Working with a Parent Theme that is in constant state of development also makes it very easy to stay up to date and incorporate all the latest WordPress goodies. For example the stuff that WordPress 3.0 brings to the table.

The Bad

Like I said before, there are some disadvantages on using a Theme Frameworks such as:

• Bloat: When you’re only creating a small, pretty straight forward site, a lot of the theme functions added by the Parent Theme’s library could be considered bloat en thus not creating a lean and mean theme, which I know you all care about.
• Forced Direction When creating a child theme you sort of get dictated (and I use that term very loosely) to make heavy use of your functions.php and wrapping your head around filters and hooks can be daunting if diving into PHP isn’t your thing. It may seem redundant to duplicate and and all theme files into your child theme if that’s what you need to do.
• Learning Curve There is a bit of a learning curve when working with child theme for the first time. Your basic level of PHP and CSS won’t do, you need to step up and start learning.

Why Use Them Anyway?

For me personally, I’m all about options. I love working with a WordPress Theme Framework that allows me to have a very high level of control over how specific I want to be in what I want my theme to output. I don’t mind the learning, in fact I love learning, and when you know your way around the forums you’ll be able to either find what you were looking for or get a working answer of your fellow developers. Plus, having a Parent Theme that is continuously updated is big plus for me.

Have you ever worked with or considered working with child themes when developing on a theme? And if so, do you favor either Genesis, Thematic or Hybrid over the other (or any other WordPress Theme Framework for that matter)?

WordPress Frameworks, Have You Taken a Closer Look Yet? is a post from: ForSite Media

Backing up your software sounds like a chore to most of us out there, but I guarantee you you will thank yourself for doing it plus there a plenty of solutions to automate it.

Perhaps you’re not really sure when to backup and when not? Here’s just a few things you could be doing that in my opinion requires a backup first:

• Activating a plugin that uses the database to store it’s settings and other stuff
• Adding a sweet code snippet to your functions.php
• When you’re about to modify any theme template file.
• Before updating your WordPress installation to the latest WordPress version (on a sidenote: WordPress released it’s 3.0 RC2)
• Adding just a few lines of CSS to any stylesheet

There a few things you should backup on a regular basis:

• Your Theme folder
• The complete contents of wp-content
• The complete WordPress installation
• Your Database

The frequency of these backup depend entirely on how active your site is, but my general rule of thumb is at least every day. At least. Backing up your theme folder every now and then is only really necessary if you’re one of those people who like to temper with the different template files and your style sheet. But again, better be safe then sorry so there’s really no overkill in these kinds of things.

I know you keep hearing everybody talk about it, but these things ARE really life savers. So confession time: honestly, how well are you prepared for accidental screw ups, hardware failures or even hacked sites? How many times do you back up?

This article first appeared on BloggingPro: The Good And The Bad About Working With Theme Frameworks

Photo Credit: Pong

Humor Yourself, Backup Your WordPress Site is a post from: ForSite Media

Perhaps you have noticed here on BloggingPro most images in post do not exceed the 240px range, but of course not all images can be found in exact that width. Most of the time you need to crop or resize those images you found to the proper width size.

I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have to fire up Photoshop or GIMP for such an easy task I’d rather not.  Furtunatly WordPress comes built in with a solution. We even mentioned it before.

After you have uploaded an image you are given the chance to edit that image. Yes, that same screen where you decide what alignment you want to give that image, where to link it at, what title the image should have, that’s where you can actually edit the image. Right next to the thumbnail image it says <em>Edit Image</em>

That <em>Edit Image</em> certainly is not a replacement for Photoshop and the likes, but you can perform some basic actions like scaling, my favorite. To show you what I mean I actually created a short screen cast of editing an image to scale a 800px wide image back to 230px.

This is just an example of what you can do, as you have seen there are more things you can do with that image. A function in WordPress people in general make very little use of, mostly because they don’t know it’s there.Were you aware of this function and if so have you ever used it?

This article first appeared on BloggingPro:Scaling Images via the Image Upload Function in WordPress

Edit Images in WordPress is a post from: ForSite Media

Just a Few Steps

The only thing you need to do for this to work is installing the Theme Test Drive. There is a different way of seeing how your site would look like in a new a new theme, by the way. All you need to do is navigate to the Theme you would like to preview in your Theme menu and right click the link that says Preview and in the following menu you select Open in New Tab (or whatever similar your browser provides you). A new tab will open in browser showing you what your site looks like sporting the new Theme. This is however not a solid solution when it comes to testing the different pages and using widgets for example.

After having installed and activated Theme Test Drive plugin you will see an extra menu in Appearance which allows you to select what Theme you would like to test drive. By enabling the Theme of preference and selecting the proper user level, in other words should only admins be able to see the new Theme?

And We’re Done Already

All there is left for you to do is navigate to your site by clicking Visit Site in the top of your WordPress Dashboard and there you have it. The beauty of this solution is that it allows you to treat this new Theme as if though it would actually be live and that means you also have a new set of sidebars where you need to configure your widgets to get the result you’re looking for.

When you want to make adjustments to your currrent Theme, simply download a copy to your computer via FTP, rename the folder and adjust the Header part of your style.css with a higher version number, save it and upload it to your themes directory. In effect changing it from something like this:

/*
	Theme Name: Your Theme
	Theme URL: http://www.themeurl.com/
	Description: Your Current Rocking Theme
	Author: Remkus de Vries
	Author URI: http://remkusdevries.com
	Version: 1.0
*/

to

/*
	Theme Name: Your Theme
	Theme URL: http://www.themeurl.com/
	Description: Your New Rocking Theme
	Author: Remkus de Vries
	Author URI: http://remkusdevries.com
	Version: 2.0
*/

Now select the higher version of your current theme in the Theme Test Drive menu. That’s it. Happy fiddling!

Note: Even though this a great way to change a few things here and there, I do recommend setting up a proper copy of your site in, for instance a subdomain combined with a plugin like Maintenance Mode, when you are really getting your hands dirty.

This article first appeared on BloggingPro: Working Behind the WordPress Curtains

Working on Your WordPress Site Behind The Curtains is a post from: ForSite Media

Now a while back this would’ve not been the most interesting problem in need of a solution, but since WordPress is being used as CMS more and more and thus only using static pages, a proper solution is in need.

The two solutions, in the shape of plugins, I have used for this on a couple of recent projects I did are the following are the following:

RSS Includes Pages

This plugin modifies your RSS feeds so that they include pages and not just posts. Including pages in your feed is particularly useful if you’re using WordPress as a CMS where pages represent a good portion of your content.

Find out more at the plugin’s page.

Page Feeder

Page Feeder lets you easily create and customise an RSS feed for your pages. Customize your feed using the settings page or via URL parameters. This plugin is great for those who use WordPress as a CMS solution and is my personal favorite.

Find out more at the plugin’s page.

So there you have two solid solutions on using your WordPress as a static page only CMS. How many times have you used WordPress with static pages only?

This article first appeared on BloggingPro: How To Use RSS Feeds When You Use WordPress As a CMS

Adding Pages to Your RSS Feed in WordPress is a post from: ForSite Media

There are three sources about Custom Post Types I think you all should read to get a better grasp of what it can do for you. I’ve heard people say that the new WordPress 3.0 Custom Post Types feature is really not all that important, but I’d like to show them different by presenting you these three great sources.

1. Justin Tadlock wrote an extensive review about custom post types explaining in great detail what they are, how they behave and what you can do with them:
   

   Don’t be confused by the term “post” in the name. It is actually an extremely generic term and should not be considered the same thing as a blog post. If you prefer, you can replace it with “content” instead.

   Visit Justin’s site for more information.

2. The second source I’d like to bring to your attention is by Konstantin of kovshenin.com. Konstantin also demonstrates with some inspiring examples how to bend the custom posts types functionality to your liking. To give you an example:
   

   One more example – a Real Estate Agency, same story – Pages, Blog Posts, News stories, property For Sale, property For Rent, Land for sale. The last three would contain extra taxonomy in forms of Country, Region. Custom fields such as price, total area, etc. The Edit Property page could even contain a Google Map where you could point out its location!

   Visit kovshenin.com for more information

3. The last, but certainly not the least source I’d like to run by you is about the Custom Post Types UI plugin by Brad Williams. This plugin enables you to create custom post types without having to code, if that’s not your thing. Or as Brad puts it:
   

   This plugin provides an easy to use interface to create and administer custom post types in WordPress. Plugin can also create custom taxonomies. This plugin is created for WordPress 3.0.

   Visit Brad’s site for more information.

So, with all that information taken in now, what do you think the Custom Posts Type feature can offer you?

This article first appeared on BloggingPro: Custom Post Types Sources You Should Know About

Post image by teilr

Everything You Wanted To Know About Custom Post Types is a post from: ForSite Media

BuddyPress.org has evolved into a lively community and ever since BuddyPress can be installed on a regular WordPress site instead of a WordPress MU installation they have really gained momentum.

BuddyPress Features

The great part about BuddyPress is that all of it’s features can be turned on and off to your liking. But what are those features?

• Activity Streams: Allow users to post activity updates and track all activity across the entire site. Global, personal and group activity streams with threaded commenting, direct posting, favoriting and @mentions. All with full RSS feed and email notification support.
• Blog Tracking: Tracks blogs, blog posts and blogs comments for a user across your WordPress installation. With WordPress MU, and later on WordPress 3.0, you can also allow each of your users to start their own full powered WordPress blog. Track new posts and comments across your site.
• bbPress Forums: Full powered discussion forums built directly into groups allow for more conventional in-depth conversations.
• Friends: Allows the creation of friend connections between users. Your users can make connections so they can track the activity of others, or filter on only those users they care about the most.
• Groups: Let users create, join and participate in public, private or hidden groups. Groups allow your users to break the discussion down into specific topics.
• Private Messaging: Let users send private messages to one another, not just limited to one on one discussions, your users can send messages to multiple recipients. Site admins can also send site-wide notices.
• Extended Profiles: Enables customizable profiles and avatars for site users. Fully editable profile fields that allow you to define the fields users can fill in to describe themselves. You can tailor your profile fields to suit your audience.

With each of these features being optional, you could, for instance, install BuddyPress just to enable the forum feature. This would be the quickest and easiest way to add a forum to WordPress installation and have the forum be styled matching your already existing theme (you do need this plugin for that to work though). Another example would to just enable the Extended Profiles when you want people to sign up to your site. A great way to get to know a lot about your users.

Of course, the true power of BuddyPress lies in the combination of all these components activated together. Don’t think of BuddyPress as an alternative to Facebook, just think of it as adding social (and engaging) features to your already existing WordPress site.

Already on Ning? Enter BuddyPress

For those of you who already started a Ning to create your community, now with Ning announcing the phasing out of the free version, it’s as a good of a time as ever to start thinking BuddyPress. There are actually quite a few solutions at hand to transform your Ning to a BuddyPress site.

Curious for more?

Are you curious for more information about BuddyPress? There are a few excellent resources out there already. Number one being the BuddyPress site itself and for some inspiration have a look at the Gallery in the Forums and do check out the ever growing list of BuddyPress plugins.

To have a look at what a standard but fully functional BuddyPress powered WordPress site looks and feels like, have a look at BuddyPress Testdrive. Another great BuddyPress site for inspiration is BP Inspire which showcase WordPress site that have integrated BuddyPress in a lot of variations.

So what do yo think? Is BuddyPress the next step for your WordPress site?

This article first appeared on BloggingPro: Community building with BuddyPress

BuddyPress, Your Next Step? is a post from: ForSite Media

When I say sidebars, I don’t necessarily mean sidebars. Widget areas are of course not limited to the visual sidebars in a theme. Most themes have one or two sidebars and a matching 1 or two widget areas, but some themes have just two sidebars, but a total of 13 widget area’s.

The problem, even with two sidebars, is that you have very little control over which widget goes on what page or post.. or category or archive even. Luckily there are two plugins that can help us out here. Widget Logic and Section Widget. Both widgets do pretty much the same thing, be it that Section Widget is a lot easier to use when you’re not very familiar with Conditional Tags.

Widget Logic

Widget Logic gives every widget an extra control field called ‘Widget logic’ that lets you control the pages that the widget will appear on.

There is also an option to add a wordpress ‘widget_content’ filter — this lets you tweak standard widgets to suit your theme without editing plugins and core code. Do check out the FAQ for this plugin for extra insight on how to use this plugin.

Section Widget

Ever wanted to display a widget only on the front page? Subpages of certain pages? Posts with a certain tag? Section Widget‘s got that covered. With a very easy to use interface, you can create your section-specific widget in no time – without going through the frustration of writing PHP code.
In addition to plain text and HTML, Section Widget has also made it possible to use shortcodes in your widgets.

On top of that Section Widget adds a tabs functionality to the equation which is really helpful to keep your sidebar less cluttered. It even comes with 25 bundled themes. No wonder Section Widget won the WordPress Plugin Competition in 2009.

How to Have Even More Fun With Widgets Areas

The two afore mentioned widgets let you be very creative in what type of content you want to display in on which type of page, but there are a few more specific plugins I want to run by you. These plugins do different things, but all of them are perfect when you need them. Combined they make for the most flexible widget experience possible.

Exec-PHP

Exec-PHP allows you to execute PHP code in the excerpt and the content portion of your posts and pages and your widgets. Using this plugin should be done by someone who knows what he’s doing with PHP and that’s why you can restrict  the execution of PHP code to certain users by using roles and capabilities.

WYSIWYG Text Widget

The WYSIWYG Text Widget allows you to do with text widgets what you do when writing posts and pages.  This means you can add colors, links, and even images to your sidebar without knowing code.

Tabbed Widgets

A different version to the Tabs used by Section Widgets is Tabbed Widgets. Tabbbed Widgets lets you use other widgets for the tab content and specify a custom tab title. Other features are:

• Make tabs rotate in a set interval so that they become more noticeable and prominent.
• Set a random start tab on each page load so that all tabbed content gets equal exposure.
• Make unlimited number of tabbed widgets that can be then used as regular widgets via the Widgets menu.

Widgets Reloaded

The default WordPress widgets don’t offer much control over how they are output on the screen. Widgets Reloaded is was created by Justin Tadlock to take of any shortcomings the default widgets might have .

Widgets Reloaded replaces many of the default widgets with versions that allow much more control. Widgets come with highly customizable control panels. Each widget can also be used any number of times. The following widgets are replaced: Archives, Authors, Bookmarks (Links), Calendar, Categories, Pages, Search and Tags.

Query Posts

This last widget I’d like to mention is called Query Posts. Also created by Justin it alllows users that don’t know their way around PHP to easily show posts in any way they’d like. It’s like having a cool WordPress developer as a friend ready to do your bidding.

The widget has over 40 options to choose from. You can list posts by category, tag, custom taxonomies, author, date, time, name, or anything you can imagine. You can choose to show the full content, excerpts, or even a simple list. You can order the posts in all sorts of ways. You can even show pages.

So there you have it. A list full list of plugins to suit your every widget need. I’m curious to learn what widget area enhancing plugins you use I haven’t mentioned here. Do tell!

This article first appeared on BloggingPro:How to Create the Most Flexible Widget Areas in Your Sidebars

How To: Create More Flexible Widgets is a post from: ForSite Media

Whatever the reason may be, the solution needs to be more than just going to Settings, Privacy and select I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors.

The Absolute Privacy plugin by John Kolbert does exactly what it the title suggests; it turns your blog into the ultimate private blog and it’s not shy in features too:

• Prevent subscribers from viewing admin pages (like their profile page and the dashboard)
• Complete customization of notification emails
• Redirect non-logged in visitors to either the login page or a custom post/page!
• Allow access to specific posts or pages for non-logged in users
• Full RSS privacy control! Disable completely, enable completely, limit to headlines only, or limit to a specific number of characters

John recently added the Full RSS privacy control and that really makes this plugin a must-have for any WordPress site you want to keep hidden from the general public. To get a good grasp of what this plug-in can do for you can watch the following video review:

Now, the next time you want to use a public domain to discuss your plans for the upcoming weekend with your friends, but don’t want everybody listening in, use Absolute Privacy.

This article first appeared on BloggingPro: Do You Need Absolute Privacy?

In Need for Absolute Privacy for WordPress? is a post from: ForSite Media