Blog posts should be easily scannable. For the literary junkies and writing gurus out there, this may not sound terribly rewarding from the writer’s perspective. However, you must remember that blog writing is a different genre than writing prose.
You are writing in a different medium and to a different audience (or at least to an audience in a different mindset). These tips and tricks will help attract the ever attention deficit audience you so longingly seek to your blog posts.

Write Killer Titles

Clicking through the internet on any given webpage, an individual only chooses interesting, striking, or helpful titles to look at. The title of an article or blog post is essential to initially attracting readers.
In many ways, blog titling is very similar to journalistic titling. You have to think of a gripping title that also communicates something about the article. Be unique and wacky, but also be straightforward and clear. A title that is too vague or complicated will undoubtedly be overlooked. Titles are also an important place to consider search engine optimization strategies.
Try to think of a title that will rank well in a search engine search.

Headers, Bullets, and Numbering

These three formatting tools are the nucleus of writing visually. You have to write blogs that are easily scannable. Make it so a reader can glance over an article and get enough information from it that their interest is piqued.

By using bolded headers with bullets or numbering, your readers can easily locate the central points of your post and then reader further to gain the information they desire. Now, this may sound like I’m advising you to write something that makes people only want to scan it and not actually read it.

By creating a document that is easily scanned, you will gain more readers who actually stick around. All too often, blogger write quality content that is bunched together in one giant block of text that is just impractical to read on a computer screen. Make things easy for your readers. Break things up, keep things relatively short, and give a basic outline in the form of headers and bullets.
Writing visually on the internet is key to maintaining readers throughout your entire post and to attracting readers in the first place.

Keep Things Brief

While page and paragraph structure are endlessly important in blog writing, so is sentence structure. Write sentences that are clear and concise, but still interesting and dynamic.
This is a practice (as any writer will tell you) that you will spend your whole life trying to perfect. Writing displayed on the internet requires even more clarity. Because readers on the web are interested in constant entertainment, clear sentences are a must to keeping their attention.

More so than with any other writing, blog writing is all about the user experience. For this reason, you must consider your blog as a visual entity. You are not putting written word into pages of a book. You are writing something that is displayed on a screen. Create something that looks interesting and enticing. As a blogger, you have to keep your reader’s interest visually before you can even begin to hope to have your writing considered.

The virtual robots file includes the following 2 lines (unless it is modified by some kind of plugin or by your blog’s privacy settings):
User-agent: *
Disallow:
These lines tell all crawlers (called user agents) that all the pages and directories of your site can be indexed, including your admin pages (such as yourblog.com/wp-admin/ ).

As you may have guessed, indexing admin pages in search engines is not recommended, so you should definitely do some tweaking to these settings in order to improve SEO and prevent irrelevant pages from being indexed.
I recommend to add the following rules:

• If you use both categories and tags in your blog, do not index both (reason: duplicate content).
• Prevent search result indexation (if you have a search feature in your blog. reason: duplicate content).
• Consider preventing author and date archives (depends on whether you index categories and tags. reason: duplicate content).
• Prevent indexation of all admin pages.
• Advanced – consider preventing indexation of URLs that include arguments (depending of whether you use SEF premalinks). example: yourblog.com?s=q

There are a couple of options to set these rules:

• Install a plugin like Yoast’s Robots meta.
  This plugin adds meta tags to the head section of the pages and tell tells the search engine whether or not to index them.
  It also allows you to control search engine indexing for individual posts or pages.
• Create a robots.txt file. This is very simple, you can use your notepad for this task and save the file as robots.txt.
  Alternately, you can generate this file using an online generator such as this.
  Once you have finished, you should upload the file to your blog’s root directory.
  I use the following rules in my robots.txt file. It covers the steps above plus a few more.
  Note that I block search engines from crawling my category pages because I decided to use tags in this blog.

  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /cgi-bin
  Disallow: /wp-admin
  Disallow: /wp-includes
  Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
  Disallow: /wp-content/cache
  Disallow: /wp-content/themes
  Disallow: /wp-login.php
  Disallow: /*wp-login.php*
  Disallow: /trackback
  Disallow: /feed
  Disallow: /comments
  Disallow: /author
  Disallow: /contact/
  Disallow: */trackback
  Disallow: */feed
  Disallow: */comments
  Disallow: /z/j/
  Disallow: /z/c/
  Disallow: /stats/
  Disallow: /dh_
  Disallow: /category/*
  Disallow: /category/
  Disallow: /login/
  Disallow: /wget/
  Disallow: /httpd/
  Disallow: /i/
  Disallow: /f/
  Disallow: /t/
  Disallow: /c/
  Disallow: /j/
  Disallow: /*.php$
  Disallow: /*?*
  Disallow: /*.js$
  Disallow: /*.inc$
  Disallow: /*.css$
  Disallow: /*.gz$
  Disallow: /*.wmv$
  Disallow: /*.cgi$
  Disallow: /*.xhtml$
  Disallow: /*?*
  Disallow: /*?
  Allow: /wp-content/uploads
  
  # alexa archiver
  User-agent: ia_archiver
  Disallow: /
  
  # disable duggmirror by Digg
  User-agent: duggmirror
  Disallow: /
  
  # allow google image bot to search all images
  User-agent: Googlebot-Image
  Disallow: /wp-includes/
  Allow: /*
  
  # allow adsense bot on entire site
  User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
  Disallow:
  Allow: /*
  

Once you have set a robots.txt file for your blog, you can test it to see if it does what it should (blocking certain pages).
To test it, you can use the Crawler Access tool in Google Webmaster Tools:

• In GWT, go to Site Configuration -> Crawler Access.
• In this page, make sure the text area of the robots.txt file has been downloaded recently by Google and that it reflects the most recent changes you have made.
• In the URLs box, type different URLs to test against (for example, yourblog.com/wp-admin/) and click on the Test button.
  The result displays something like “Blocked by line 3: Disallow: /wp-admin”.
  If it doesn’t, you missed something when creating the file.

Another useful method to test the effectiveness of your robots.txt file, is to use Robots.txt Analyzer.

No matter which method I choose to submit my sitemap, I can’t get it to be accepted by Google Webmaster Tools. All I get is an X symbol for the sitemap status, and for each line in it, I get the following error:
“Paths don’t match
We’ve detected that you submitted your Site-map using a URL path that includes the www prefix (for instance, http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml). However, the URLs listed inside your Site-map don’t use the www prefix (for instance, http://example.com/myfile.htm).”

I too have come across this sitemap issue in the past. At first I tried to change my preferred domain (in Google Webmaster Tools, Site Configuration – > Settings) to http://mysite.com/ but then I got the message:
“Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://mysite.com/. Please verify http://mysite.com/.”

Therefore, in order to verify the other version of my site’s URL I did the following:

1. I added a new site with the same URL but without the www prefix.
2. I verified the site using the HTML file I already had in the root directory (if you have problems with the verification process, ask me in the comments section).
3. Once I verified the site, I tried to change the preferred domain again, but for some reason it didn’t solve the sitemap error (not sure why, it might work for you though), so I went into Site Configuration ->Change of Address and selected the new domain I just verified (the non www prefix URL).

That was it. Problem solved.

Following this solution, there were two things left to do.
First, I deleted the redundant prefix URL version I no longer use (to prevent having both www and non-www versions in my GWT account).
Secondly, I made sure that all links with www prefix in my site will redirect to the non www prefix URL.
To do this, I defined a canonical 301 URL redirection as described in this post (not too complicated).

If you found a shorter solution to that sitemap error, let me know in the comments area.

Regular Expressions are used to identify a pattern of characters, words or HTML tags inside a string when some part of that string is unknown.
For example, if I wanted to replace the string "Hello, my name is [name] and I am a blogger" with "Hello, I am [name] the blogger", I can’t use a regular search and replace because the name part is unknown to me.

Another example is when you want to make sure that a user entered a valid email address inside a form field. All email addresses look like this:
[user name]@[domain].[extension], but most of their parts differs from one email address to another (the parts in parentheses).

Now let’s see when Regex come in handy in WordPress.
One of the classic uses of Regex in WordPress is to grab the first image of a post and then show it in the excerpt or as a thumbnail of related posts.
I will not go into the solution here because it is already explained nicely here.
What I will show you is another classic use of Regex inside the popular filter add_filter('the_content'.. (read more about filter examples).

A few weeks ago, I created a Q and A section.
I decided to open each post in that section with:

This is part of the new Q&A section. Feel free to ask anything web related in the contact form.
[name] asks: [the question]

This is fine, except the fact that it may harm my page SEO ranking.
Therefore, I decided to change the beginning of the excerpts of these posts to:

Question: [the question]

You may see how it look like here.
The solution was to add the following filter to my theme’s functions.php file:

function qanda($content) {
	if(!is_singular() && has_tag('q-a')){
		$regex = "/(This is part[\s\S]+?)+(asks:)/i";
		$content = preg_replace($regex,'Question:',$content);
	}
	return $content;
}
add_filter('the_content', 'qanda');

Code explanation:
Line 2: The condition – if you are not displaying a single page or a post (which leaves us with homepage, categories, tags and search results). and also this post you are displaying has the tag Q & A.
Line 3: The action – identify the following pattern in the content.
Line 4: Action continues – replace that identified text with the word “Question:” inside the content using the preg_replace PHP function.

Additional resources

• Regex generator
• PHP Regex Forum
• PHP and WordPress Regex Examples
• Regex Basics: A Regular Expression Tutorial

I am a newbie in WordPress and not sure which plugins to install. Can you please advise?

After a year and some of running this blog, I have changed plugins several times and in some cases preferred to uninstall plugins in favor of writing functions manually.
I currently use the following plugins and very satisfied with them:

Akismet

There are quite a few spam blocking solutions out there but I decided to stick with the one that comes with WordPress built in installation. I have spam comments as much as other bloggers and in some cases I get legitimate comments marked as spam but this does not happen too much for me to handle.

BackWPup

Before I came across this excellent plugin, I used WP-DB-Backup which automatically sent database backups to my mail box on a daily basis (which I believe is very important). At some point I also installed wp-optimize that does a good job in db table optimization from the dashboard.
However, when I recently upgraded WebTechWise, I was looking for a backup solution for both my database and my theme files. So I found BackWPup that handles both, and fortunately it also replaces wp-optimize in table optimization.

Clean Options

As I explained in this post, this is a great solution to clean your wp-options table from old plugin traces.

Comment Notifier

I already reviewed this plugin in details and it still does a good job in notifying users on new comments to posts they commented on.

Contact Form 7

Provides an easy to use solution for basic contact forms. There is a fair amount of competitors who don’t fall short of it though.

Dashboard Post-it

Just a small plugin to handle a blog to do list on my dashboard.

Drafts Dropdown

This is where I gather all my ideas before publishing them. It gives quick access to all draft posts with one click.

Google Analytics for WordPress

In the past I used Google Analyticator, but when I tested this plugin I saw it has much more features than the first.

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu

This is really a matter of opinion, but I personally think that working with horizontal menus is much easier than working with vertical ones.

Source Codes in Comments

Nice little plugin that let you guys (and girls) add code to your comments without having to worry about the code becoming gibberish or disappearing.

Syntax Highlighter ComPress

I was searching for a light weight plugin that colorize code in my posts. This one does a decent job.

TDO Mini Forms

A feature rich (and somewhat complicated) plugin that I use to enable users to submit news in my user news section.

W3 Total Cache

For a long time I have been using the popular wp-super-cache, but upon blog upgrade I decided to give this one a try and got hooked. It has so many smart features to enhance blog performance and it also replaced my wp-minimize plugin. What I also like about it is the ability to programmatically refresh page cache or post specific cache. This also came in handy in WPhits big time because of the voting system that requires special caching customization.

WordPress Mobile Pack

Making your site compatible for mobile phones is no longer a luxury of huge widely popular websites. It is something that every blogger and website owner should take under consideration these days.
I wrote this post about some of the features of this plugin and why I use it instead of the popular WPtouch.

WordPress SEO

I chose this one over All In One SEO because it gives a wider solution to SEO issues. It not only handles meta title and description, but also includes a sitemap generator and indexation engine (interface replacement for the robots.txt file).

WP-PageNavi

A good plugin for pagination in blogs. I recommend installing this or one of the alternatives because it really upgrades the ease of navigation.

Do you use a different plugin for backup or page navigation? I would love to get some recommendations.

Is it possible to create a category specific tag cloud or to list tags per category?

There are a few plugins that are supposed to enable filtering tags for specific category. For example: TDO Tag Fixes and Sensitive Tags.
However, I always prefer to use functions whenever possible in order to avoid plugins that provide more than you need or not exactly what you need and may also slow down your blog.

Getting Tags for a Specific Category

Here’s the function to get the tags of all posts that are listed under category ’1′ :

<ul>
	<?php
	query_posts('cat=1&posts_per_page=-1');
	if(have_posts()): while (have_posts()) : the_post();
        $all_tag_objects = get_the_tags();
		if($all_tag_objects){
			foreach($all_tag_objects as $tag) {
				if($tag->count > 0) {$all_tag_ids[] = $tag -> term_id;}
			}
		}
	endwhile;endif;
	$tag_ids_unique = array_unique($all_tag_ids);

Once we have the list of unique tags for that category, we can use it to generate a tag list or tag cloud.

Listing tags per category

To display a list add the following lines beneath existing code:

	foreach($tag_ids_unique as $tag_id) {
		$post_tag = get_term( $tag_id, 'post_tag' );
		echo '<li><a href="'.get_tag_link($tag_id).'">'.$post_tag->name.' ( '.$post_tag->count.' )</a></li>';
	}?>
	</ul>

Creating a tag cloud for a specific category

Displaying a tag cloud for the specific category is even easier. All you need to do is call the wp_tag_cloud function and specify the tags to include like this:

wp_tag_cloud('include=' . implode(',', $tag_ids_unique));

After seeing how to list tags or create a tag cloud for a single category, adding a tag list/cloud for more categories is fairly simple. Just repeat the above code blocks as desired (for list or for cloud) and change the cat=1 in the line query_posts(‘cat=1&posts_per_page=-1′); to the number of the category you would like to find tags for (for instance, in order to show tags for category with id ’4′, type cat=4).

To see a live example of a tag list for two categories go to my topics page, in which I list tags for two categories: blog posts (that are displayed in the home page) and user news.

If you need any help in implementing this, go ahead and ask