The WP App Store is now open for business!

The WordPress App Store is a quick and easy way to purchase and install premium WordPress themes and plugins all in one place. It’s that simple! With brands like Woo Themes and ThemeJam or plugins like Gravity Forms – there isn’t much of a reason not to use the WP App Store.

Don’t know how to install WordPress plugins? Check out our video tutorial showing how to use WordPress plugins.

Related Posts

• Day 9: WordPress Contact Forms
• Day 10: 3 Ways to Let Visitors Submit Guest Posts
• Learn More About Your Visitors with the Google Analytics for WordPress Plugin

It’s easy! Simply submit a testimonial telling us what you like about your wpLifeGuard membership and you’ll be entered to win. On Tuesday, April 17th we will randomly select two members to win a full refund.

How to Enter to Receive a Refund

1. Have an Active wpLifeGuard Membership
2. Submit a Testimonial
3. Done!

Entries will be accepted until Tuesday, April 17th noon central time. Giveaway is closed.

Congrats to the Winners!

Congrats to Newton and Brian for winning!

Related Posts

• Welcome to wpLifeGuard
• Day 3: Offer a Giveaway

add_filter('jpeg_quality', function($arg){return 100;});

Source: WordPress JPEG Thumbnail Image Quality Setting and Adjustment

Increase WordPress Site Speed with JPG Compression

Need to squeeze a few extra kilobytes off your images to speed up your WordPress website? This handy snippet can be used to compress your JPGs to speed up your WordPress website. As long as you’re fine with lower quality images for the sake of smaller file sizes, less data transfer, and faster load time, then use the following snippet to compress uploaded JPG images.

add_filter('jpeg_quality', function($arg){return 60;});

Keep WordPress from Compressing JPGs with a WordPress Plugin

Don’t want to mess with WordPress code? No problem. The WordPress Plugin PhotoJAR: Base keeps WordPress from compressing JPGs as well as provide a few other nifty features, like dynamic resizing and caching of thumbnails, custom image sizes, gallery of galleries, maximum size setting for full size images, an [image] shortcode, and more.

Don’t know how to install WordPress plugins? Check out our video tutorial showing how to use WordPress plugins.

Related Posts

• Day 22: 7 Code Snippets to Improve WordPress Security
• The Simplicity of Using WordPress Shortcode
• Day 8: Speed Up your WordPress Site with W3 Total Cache

Showcase by Dev7studios makes the whole process of uploading, ordering and editing your images as simple as it can be. Then it makes your gallery look stunning by automatically showing your gallery in a beautiful “lightbox” slideshow. Built in features like dynamic image resizing and simple lightbox theme changing just make it all the better.

Check out the demo video to see how truly easy it is to create galleries and slideshows on your WordPress website.

Key Features

• Quickly create slideshows or galleries with ease
• Drag and drop gallery and slideshow organization
• Built in lightbox
• Create unlimited slideshows or galleries with unlimited photos

Don’t know how to install WordPress plugins? Check out our video tutorial showing how to use WordPress plugins.

Create a WordPress Gallery Today!

Related Posts

• Day 28: Use Jetpack to Boost Your WordPress site to the Next Level
• Day 9: WordPress Contact Forms
• Day 24: Check Your Theme for All the Latest WordPress Standards and Practices

How to Add a Single Link to the WordPress Admin Bar

<?php add_action('admin_bar_menu', 'add_toolbar_items', 100);
function add_toolbar_items($admin_bar){
	$admin_bar->add_menu( array(
		'id'    => 'my-item',
		'title' => 'My Item',
		'href'  => '#',	
		'meta'  => array(
			'title' => __('My Item'),			
		),
	));
} ?>

How to Add a Dropdown Menu to the WordPress Admin Bar

<?php add_action('admin_bar_menu', 'add_toolbar_items', 100);
function add_toolbar_items($admin_bar){
	$admin_bar->add_menu( array(
		'id'    => 'my-item',
		'title' => 'My Item',
		'href'  => '#',	
		'meta'  => array(
			'title' => __('My Item'),			
		),
	));
	$admin_bar->add_menu( array(
		'id'    => 'my-sub-item',
		'parent' => 'my-item',
		'title' => 'My Sub Menu Item',
		'href'  => '#',
		'meta'  => array(
			'title' => __('My Sub Menu Item'),
			'target' => '_blank',
			'class' => 'my_menu_item_class'
		),
	));
	$admin_bar->add_menu( array(
		'id'    => 'my-second-sub-item',
		'parent' => 'my-item',
		'title' => 'My Second Sub Menu Item',
		'href'  => '#',
		'meta'  => array(
			'title' => __('My Second Sub Menu Item'),
			'target' => '_blank',
			'class' => 'my_menu_item_class'
		),
	));
} ?>

Source: Add Links to WordPress 3.3 New Toolbar

Related Posts

• How to Remove, Move, or Style the WordPress Admin Bar
• What’s New in WordPress 3.3?
• How to Add Custom Alerts to a WordPress Dashboard

Restaurant Engine is a new service that offers “a turnkey, hosted website solution designed specifically for Restaurants.” If you’re a restaurant owner that needs a WordPress website and can’t afford a custom design, Restaurant Engine is for you.

Restaurant Engine’s quick and easy restaurant web hosting service makes it a cinch to setup a feature rich, well designed, effective website that will accomplish all your needs.

Key Features

• Go live in minutes
• Beautiful responsive designs
• Online menus
• Locations with Google Maps
• Social Media Integration
• Events Calendar
• SEO Optimized
• Online Orders and Reservations
• Photo and Video Galleries
• Fast and Reliable Web Hosting
• Expert Support

Check out the Restaurant Engine Tour or Restaurant Engine Designs for a more detailed overview.

Quality Designs

Restaurant Engine’s restaurant website templates in action.

Restaurant Engine’s excellent templates cover any restaurant’s needs and can even enhance the overal dining experience. With the easy ability to check out your menu, make a reservation, browse the restaurant’s events calendar, rate your restaurant, and more. All of this can be done through a gorgeous fully mobile compatible design.

Setup in Minutes

Restaurant Engine is unlike most other WordPress template services – Restaurant Entine is fully hosted and supported. The simple setup process allows you to get a website for your restaurant up in running in mere minutes with little to no technical knowledge required!

Get in for Free

Restaurant Engine is currently in beta, so that means you can sign up for free and get locked into a lifetime discount.

So be sure to check out Restaurant Engine to get some quality hosted restaurant website templates for your restaurant.

Check out Restaurant Engine

Related Posts

• Day 30: Excellent Places to Get Quality WordPress Themes
• WPMU – Quality WordPress Themes & WordPress Plugins
• Day 15: Automatically Generate XML Sitemaps to Boost Search Engine Rankings

There are many different ways to reach out to your users – email newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. The problem with these communication mediums is that users must opt in to receive these notifications. With this simple code snippet you can now place alerts in the WordPress dashboard without your users opting in to receive notifications. It’s even WordPress Multisite compatible.

Here is an example of a WordPress Dashboard Alert that we will be making.

How to Add Alerts to a WordPress Dashboard

Add the following code snippet to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file and change the text within the div to whatever you want.

function addAlert() { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
$j = jQuery;
$j().ready(function(){
	$j('.wrap > h2').parent().prev().after('<div class="update-nag">This is a test alert. Do with it what you want.</div>');
});
</script>
<?php } add_action('admin_head','addAlert');

How to Add an Alert to the WordPress Dashboard Home Only

Add the following code snippet to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file to add an alert to the WordPress Dashboard Home – not all WordPress Dashboard pages.

function addDashboardAlert() { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
$j = jQuery;
$j().ready(function(){
	$j('h2:contains("Dashboard")').parent().prev().after('<div class="update-nag">This is a test alert for the dashboard home only. Do with it what you want.</div>');
});
</script>
<?php } add_action('admin_head','addDashboardAlert');

How to Add an Alert to the WordPress Dashboard Based on User Level

If you only want to display a message to your Contributors or Editors, no problem. Use the following code snippet in your WordPress theme’s functions.php to display an alert on the WordPress Dashboard to administrators. If you want to change it to a different user level, check out User Levels on the WordPress Codex.

if (current_user_can('administrator')) {
	function addDashboardAlert() { ?>
	<script type="text/javascript">
	$j = jQuery;
	$j().ready(function(){
		$j('.wrap > h2').parent().prev().after('<div class="update-nag">This is a test alert for admins only. Do with it what you want.</div>');
	});
	</script>
	<?php } add_action('admin_head','addDashboardAlert');
}

Conclusion

Creating an alert in the WordPress Dashboard is extremely easy – not only is it easy, but it’s a great way to convey an important message to your WordPress site’s users be it on a standard WordPress install or on WordPress Multisite.

Related Posts

• How to Disable Theme Switching from the WordPress Dashboard
• How to Stop Receiving New User Email Notifications
• How to Disable WordPress Plugin Deactivation

Recently One of my WordPress blogs received 16000+ SPAM Comments in a span of just over a month.

Statistics / Graphs

Notice the spike in bandwidth (green) and then the drop when the spam techniques were implemented.

Again, notice how much bandwidth is used before and after spam techniques were implemented.

The Damage Spam Can Do

Clearly it’s a case of spam bots / links exchange programs. Nearly 100% of comments were genuine-looking with a single purpose of obtaining links, even though they’re “nofollow” links.

The WordPress installation was default with no comments related WordPress plugins. Each comment was automatically approved. Within days, the number of comments increased, so did the size of each post, accounting for huge daily data transfer. As you can see the Traffic (Hits) increased nearly 5 times, whereas Traffic (Bandwidth) increased nearly 50 times! That can cause an serious increase in server load.

1. How to Remove 16,000+ Comments

Well the million dollar question is – “What will you do with 16000+ approved comments (spam)?”

DO NOT install a plugin like Disqus. It will retrieve all the existing comments and upload, making them almost impossible to remove. You must get rid of them before proceeding.

As of now WordPress does not allow to delete all blog comments at once.

Login to your cPanel phpMyAdmin SQL. Execute the following queries there.

delete from wp_comments where comment_approved="0";
delete from wp_comments where comment_approved="spam";
delete from wp_comments where comment_approved="1";

Now, you will face one more issue. The displayed comments count on each of your posts will not change. You need to reset the comment count in WordPress. Create a new php file and name it whatever you want, like updatecount.php. Paste the following code into this new file and place it in your WordPress’ root then navigate to the file and delete the file when done.

<?php include('wp-config.php'); // Needed for login details to WordPress database to make necessary changes
 
function updateCount()
    {
        $posts = mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query("SELECT ID FROM wp_posts ORDER BY ID DESC LIMIT 1")); // Fetch row in WordPress database containing information about post data
        for ($i = 1; $i < ($posts[0] + 1); $i++)
        {
 
     $comments = mysql_query("SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS comment_ID FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '$i' AND comment_approved = 1;") or die("Failed to calculate number of approved comments"); // Calculate the number of approved comments for a post and store in a variable. If unsuccessful, end program.
 
     mysql_query("UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_count = '".mysql_num_rows($comments)."' WHERE id = '$i';") or die("Failed to update the number of comments calculated"); // Update the comment count using the comment number fetched earlier. If unsuccessful, end program
 
     echo "Updated Post #$i - ".mysql_num_rows($comments)." comments <br />"; // Display message to user for each post comment count successfully updated
        }
    }
 
updateCount();
?>

2. Reduce Spam with WordPress Plugins

WordPress Plugins are an excellent way to stop comment spam.

• Akismet – The Best one ever! Installed by default, but you need to register before actually start using it. This plugin track backs all the spam on various Blogs and blocks it globally.
• Disqus, IntenseDebate, Facebook Comments are good alternate comments system. These load the comment dynamically from their server, thereby reducing the load from database / your hosting server.
• Math Captcha, reCaptcha are worth considering in case you want to stick to WP Native Commenting system. Not all comments are from Bots, but few are actually done by Human Farms for backlinks, Nevertheless it will reduce SPAM drastically.

3. Other Measures to Reduce Spam

• Require an approved comment. While it will require more time and effort to manage your blog, requiring users to have at least one approved comment will further reduce the number of spam comments that get through.
• Close comments on Older Articles – You can choose to block comments on all posts (say 30 days old). Go to wp-admin >> Settings >> Discussion >> Automatically close comments on articles older than (tick).
• Ban IP Address – This should be your Last Option. You can either see the stats for Hits v/s IP log via Awstats in your cPanel or you can directly see most common IPs in your Comments Logs. You can now Block certain IPs directly from cPanel or in case you love using WordPress Plugins use WP-Ban or Perishable Press 5G Blacklist

4. Conclusion

While these techniques did not reduce the number of hits on my blog. the number of spam comments getting through reduced drastically after installing Akisment. But it still let through roughly 5% of the SPAMs. After installing Math Captcha, the number of comments reduced to roughly 10% of post-akismet-installation spam. Number of daily hits are still the same. I guess the bots havent learnt yet! It will take time, definitely. Meanwhile it just messes up your Google Analytics.

Related Posts

• Use .htaccess to Fight Spam on your WordPress Site
• Day 26: Fighting WordPress Comment Spam
• Day 27: Clean Up and Optimize your WordPress mySQL Database

The creators of WordPress, Automattic, really are a fantastic group who not only made the greatest CMS currently available, they also take time to have a little fun. This is evident by this WordPress Easter Egg.

What’s an Easter Egg? Well, aside from those plastic eggs filled with delicous chocolate, an Easter Egg is an inside joke by developers. Sometimes they’re un-intrusive and only funny if you know the backstory, some are more obvious, if you can find them, like this WordPress Easter Egg.

WordPress Easter Egg

Here is a fun WordPress Easter Egg that occurs whenever you compare WordPress post revisions. You’ll see an animated series of events that calls you out by your author name or WordPress username and then proceeds to re-create events from the classic movie – The Matrix. Give it a try yourself or watch the video.

How to Remove the WordPress Easter Egg

If you have a non-technical client who would freak out and be rather upset about this WordPress Easter Egg (it’s happened), then the following code snippet will hide the WordPress Easter Egg. Simply paste it in your WordPress theme’s functions.php file.

function prevent_matrix_easter_egg() {
    $left = empty( $_POST['left'] ) ? ( empty( $_GET['left'] ) ? '' : $_GET['left'] ) : $_POST['left'];
    $right = empty( $_POST['right'] ) ? ( empty( $_GET['right'] ) ? '' : $_GET['right'] ) : $_POST['right'];
 
    if($left == $right) {
        $redirect = get_edit_post_link( $left );
        wp_die("Error: Cannot compare a revision to itself.<br /><a href=\"" . $redirect . "\">Go Back</a>");
    }
}
add_action('admin_action_diff', 'prevent_matrix_easter_egg');

Whoops. This is unexpected. No related posts.

How to Disable WordPress Theme Switching

Paste the following code in your WordPress Theme’s functions.php to completely disable WordPress theme switching and save clients from themselves.

// disable theme switching
add_action( 'admin_init', 'wplg_lock_theme' );
function wplg_lock_theme() {
	global $submenu;
	unset( $submenu['themes.php'][5] );
	unset( $submenu['themes.php'][15] );
}

How to Disable WordPress Theme Switching – Except for Whoever Setup the Site

Paste the following code in your WordPress Theme’s functions.php to only let the user with the ID #1 change themes – and the user with the ID #1 is the person who setup the site, which is usually the developer. If you have a different user ID, simply change the number to your user ID so you’re the only one who can change the theme.

// disable theme switching
add_action( 'admin_init', 'wplg_lock_theme' );  
function wplg_lock_theme() {
	global $submenu, $userdata;
	get_currentuserinfo();
	if ( $userdata->ID != 1 ) {
		unset( $submenu['themes.php'][5] );
		unset( $submenu['themes.php'][15] );
	}
}

It’s also worth noting that only users with the “Administrator” level can change the theme. So it’s also perfectly valid to give clients the “Editor” capability. More info on WordPress’ user levels.

Code Snippet via Steve Taylor

Related Posts

• How to Disable WordPress Plugin Deactivation
• Theme Review: Tweet Archive Theme
• How to Use WordPress to Display Content Depending on a User’s Level