As I mentioned previously, I upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1 (from WP 2.2.2) recently using my WordPress upgrade process. After upgrading, all of my plugins worked except for the Crawl Page and Brian's Threaded Comments plugins. One of my readers mentioned that CoolPlayer did not work with WordPress 2.3.1. I can assure you that is not the case. Both CoolPlayer 9.0 and 9.3 worked with WordPress 2.3.1. However, I had to hit the browser reload button after I upgraded from CoolPlayer 9.0 to 9.3 before the plugin worked correctly.

I could never get the Crawl Page 1.00 plugin to work, but I did get Brian's Threaded Comments plugin to work with WordPress 2.3.1. After upgrading to WP 2.3.1, I got a 404 error whenever I tried to leave a comment. The fix for this problem is actually fairly simple. You just need to enter "wp-comments-post.php" in the custom box on the threaded comments admin page (Options => Threaded Comments):

WordPress 2.3.1 breaks a lot of plugins. You should check around to be sure your plugins work before upgrading. At the bottom of this post, I listed plugins that I use that work with WordPress 2.3.1. If you are using an older version of the Google XML Sitemaps plugin (I was using 2.7.1), you should upgrade to the latest version (currently 3.0.2.1). The new version works with WP 2.1+ and has a bunch of new features. It's a big improvement on already nice plugin.

Plugins that work with WordPress 2.3.1:

• Akismet 2.0.2
• Audio player 1.2.3
• Better Feed 1.1
• Brian's Threaded Comments 1.5.12
• Contact Form ][ 2.0.13
• CoolPlayer 9.3 (CoolPlayer 9.0 also works)
• Democracy 2.0.1
• FeedBurner FeedSmith 2.3
• Google XML Sitemaps 3.0.2.1
• Head META Description R1.1.2
• Related Posts 2.02
• Similar Posts 2.3.6
• Simple Recent Comments 0.1.2
• Smart Update Pinger 2.0
• Spam Karma 2 2.3 rc3
• Unfancy Quote 2.0
• WordPress Database Backup 2.1.5

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I like the plugin, but it requires more work than the standard WordPress plugin. For one thing, the plugin requires you to replace your existing comments.php file for your theme with the file supplied with the plugin files. Then, unless you are lucky, you have to mess around with the style to get the plugin to format correctly for your theme. I think the plugin was designed to work with the default (Kubrick) WordPress theme. This is the reason why I switched back to the default theme for my blog. I didn't have time to edit the style sheet for my previous theme.

I've also noticed that the threaded comments plugin and the CoolPlayer plugin conflicts with each other, resulting in some of the comments being garbled in IE 6. The plugin seems to work fine in IE 7 and FireFox.

Download Brian's Threaded Comments plugin for WordPress and see if it works out of the box for your theme. If it doesn't, you will need to edit the plugin files (comments.php and briansthreadedcomments.php) and/or your style sheet (style.css) for your theme.

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I tested the new import/export feature. It worked as advertised, but it does not save everything. For instance, the options you have already setup and the descriptions of the categories are not included in the exported XML file. When I moved this site to a different web host this past week, I used the new WordPress Database Backup 2.0 plugin to save my posts and configuration. Then I restored the backup on the new host using phpMyAdmin.

The new backup plugin has a very useful feature: automatic backups (Manage –> Backup). As you can see in the screen shot on the right, you can schedule backups to occur hourly, daily, or weekly. I have to admit, I was a bit nervous when I used the automatic backup feature. But it has worked like a charm for over two weeks now. At first, I limited my tests to just this site, but now I also use the automatic backup feature on my other four sites. I find the automatic backup feature very handy because it is a bit of a chore to manually backup five sites.

BTW, the backup files are emailed to you. I actually used one of the automatic backup files to restore the database when I moved to my new web host. My guess is that if you have a massive blog, you might have problems having your backup emailed to you. I think if you leave out your email address in the "Email backup to" box, the backup will be saved on the server (not confirmed). The backup of my largest WordPress site has 2,882 posts and the 3.8M backup file arrived daily via email without any problems.

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You will need to find the following line in the Better Feed plugin (if you have not added a footer or modified the plugin, it's around line #101):

$content .= wp_ozh_betterfeed_detokenize($wp_ozh_betterfeed['footer']);

I'm going to call it the "footer" line. Once you have found the "footer" line, you will need to add a block of code above that line. Something like:

[block of code]
$content .= wp_ozh_betterfeed_detokenize($wp_ozh_betterfeed['footer']);

I have put together three sets of block codes that you can use. Select the one that best suits your needs.

Block 1 – Alternate ads
This code block is for alternating ads in your feed. For instance, post #1 will show "Ad-B", post #2 will show "Ad-A", post #3 will show "Ad-B" again, post #4 will show "Ad-A" again, etc. Here's the block to insert above the "footer" line:

if ($id % 2 == 0 ) {
  $ad = "Ad-A";
} else {
  $ad = "Ad-B";
}
$content .= $ad;

Block 2a – Rotate between four ads
[2007.03.10 note: The random number generator used in this block can cause old posts to show up as "updated" in Bloglines. If you don't want this to happen, use Block 2b instead.]
This code block is for displaying one of four ads in your feed. For instance, post #1 will show either "Ad-C" or "Ad-D", post #2 will show either "Ad-A" or "Ad-B", post #3 will show either "Ad-C" or "Ad-D" again, post #4 will show either "Ad-A" or "Ad-B" again, etc. Here's the block to insert above the "footer" line:

if ($id % 2 == 0) {
  $num = rand(1,2);
  if ($num == 1) {
    $ad = "Ad-A";
  } else {
    $ad = "Ad-B";
  }
} else {
  $num = rand(1,2);
  if ($num == 1) {
    $ad = "Ad-C";
  } else {
    $ad = "Ad-D";
  }
}
$content .= $ad;

Block 2b – Rotate between four ads
[Added on 2007.03.10]
This code block is for displaying one of four ads. It's like the block of code above, but it uses the timestamp of the post instead of a random number generator. It shouldn't change an old post to "updated" in Bloglines. Here's the block to insert above the "footer" line:

$num = get_post_time('s');
if ($id % 2 == 0) {
  if ($num < 30) {
    $ad = "Ad-A";
  } else {
    $ad = "Ad-B";
  }
} else {
  if ($num < 30) {
    $ad = "Ad-C";
  } else {
    $ad = "Ad-D";
  }
}
$content .= $ad;

Block 3 – Display an ad for every 3rd, 6th, and 9th post
I use this code block for my news site. I write over 20 posts a day on that site and it would look too commercial if I ran a RSS ad in every post. This block of code will display an ad for every 3rd, 6th, and 9th post. Here's the block to insert above the "footer" line:

$ad3 = "Ad-A";
$ad6 = "Ad-B";
$ad9 = "Ad-C";
$num = substr ($id, -1);
switch ($num)
{
  case 3:
    $content .= $ad3;
    break;
  case 6:
    $content .= $ad6;
    break;
  case 9:
    $content .= $ad9;
    break;
}

You will need to replace "Ad-A", "Ad-B", "Ad-C", and "Ad-D" with the html code for your ads. Keep in mind that the code is already using double quotes. So, you will either need to use single quotes or omit the quotes in your html code for your ads. For instance:

$ad = "<p align=center><a href=http://www.embeddedstar.com/careers/><img src=http://edageek.com/adimages/jobs468.gif border=0></a></p>";

As you can see, I didn't use any quotes between the double quotes above.

One other note. WordPress assigns post id numbers in the order you saved them. The id numbers can get out of order if you don't publish your posts in the same order you saved them. This may cause the ads to appear to display out of sequence (ie – the same ad displaying two times in a roll). That is not the case.

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If you look at the WordPress upgrade instructions, it'll tell you to delete certain files and don't delete certain files. Seems kinda of messy to me. Below are the steps I took. Keep in mind my situation will be different from your setup, so you will need to modify the steps to suit your needs.

1. Download and extract WP 2.1 to a new directory named wordpress2.1
2. Back up the database by using the WordPress backup plugin or phpMyAdmin
3. I made a change to template-functions-post.php in the old version of WordPress to alter the behavior of the more tag, so I had to make the change in the new version. In WP 2.1, I had to make the change in a new file called post-template.php.
4. Copy the following files from the old WordPress directory to the new directory:
   • wp-config.php (it's in the root wordpress directory)
   • plugins (except Akismet because WP 2.1 comes with a new version of Akismet)
   • theme files
5. Deactivate the plugins (don't forget to write down special codes, like the Akismet api key, in case you need to re-enter them after you re-activate the plugins)
6. Rename the old wordpress directory (ie: wordpress –> wordpress2.07)
7. Rename the new wordpress directory (ie: wordpress2.1 –> wordpress)
8. Run the upgrade script (load …/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php in the browser)
9. Reactive the plugin one by one

Remember, the above steps are for my situation. You will need to look at the WordPress upgrade instructions and modify the above steps for your setup.

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Note: It appears your web server needs to support php mbstring and sockets extension in order for the RPC Server to work locally. So if you can't get the RPC Server to work locally, you will have to use the RPC Server in China.

The new version of CoolPlayer supports both the plain text editor and the rich text editor in WordPress. Now you can insert the coolplayer tag directly from the create/edit post page by clicking on the coolplayer button. This version also fixed the auto play problem in FireFox. Now the video doesn't auto start unless you want it to. The audio player also has a new skin:

The embedded player supports these types of files: rm, rmvb, ra, rv, ram, smil, smi, rtsp, rpm, asf, wm, wma, wmv, wax, wvx, ogg, ape, avi, mid, midi, wav, mms, m3u, asx, mov, qt, mqv, m4v, m4a, m4b, mpeg, mpg, m1s, m1v, m1a, m75, m15, mp2, mpm, mpv, mpa, flc, fli, cel, aiff, aif, aifc, cdda, bwf, rts, 3gp, 3gpp, 3g2, 3gp2, au, snd, ulw, smf, kar, qcp, sdv, gsm, amr, caf, amc, mp4, sdp, pdf, fdf, xfdf, xdp, xfd, gif, jpg, jpeg, bmp, png, xpm, dir, dxr, dcr, cst, cct, cxt, w3d, fgd, swa, swf, spl, mp3, flv, rtmp, rbs, xml, rss, xspf, atom.

It also supports YouTube, Ifilm, VSocial, TuDou Video, Evil Chili, Wildko, Yikers Videos & Games, Red Balcony Videos & Games, Live Video, Odeo Audio, Revver, MetaCafe, MySpace, GoEar, Break, Stupid Videos, DailyMotion and Google Video.

The installation is fairly simple. Just download, extract, upload folder to your plugin directory, and activate. I recommend testing the player plugin first before uploading the RPC Server locally. To install the RPC Server: download, extract, upload the files to your coolplayer folder, and activate. Then change the location in the options -> coolplayer menu.

Here's an example of the video player in action:

Read CoolPlayer 9 (481 words)

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The second reason why things are crappy is because Akismet does not appear to be working on my blogs. Every few minutes, I get an email to approve a comment that has about 100 links in it. This has been going for a few days now. And it is getting reaaaaallllly ANNOYING.

Then there's my daddy blog, which was hacked early Saturday morning. Somehow, a hacker was able to insert a script and a bunch of links above the WordPress template's code. The hacked stuff loads before <!DOCTYPE html section of each web page. I downloaded my templates and I didn't see any modifications to my templates. I deactivated all the plugins and selected the default WordPress theme. It didn't make a difference. I upgraded to WordPress 2.0.5 from 2.0.4 and the hack is still there. I couldn't figure out how to resolve the problem so I submitted a ticket to my web host. Seven and a half hours later, they reply with something like, "We don't support third party applications and perhaps your password has been compromised."

That was really helpful. It's possible my password was compromised, but I didn't see any tampering of any of my files. I really don't understand how the hacker was able to insert the extra code before the html header. Makes me wonder if the web host has some sort of WordPress related virus that was doing it. I created a non-WordPress page and it loaded without any additional code. So, the problem is WordPress related.

The next thing I did was uninstall WordPress. I didn't want to do this, but I didn't see how I had any choice (my content was not viewable). So, after uninstalling, I reinstalled the latest version. Then I restored the database from back-up. Guess what? I got the exact same result with the default theme. I didn't upload my plugins so the only ones enabled were the ones that came with WordPress (Akismet and Database Backup).

At this point, I was wondering if the hack occurred in the database. To test this, I restore the database to another site with a different web host (#2). This time, the hack was gone. The database was fine. Since my blog was now working correctly, I had web host #2 change the domain name to daddyforever.com and then I change the entries for the name servers to point to web host #2. The dns propagation could take up to 48 hours, but I saw the change in less than 24 hours. But it wasn't what I was expecting. I could no longer connect to my site at web host #1 or #2. I didn't want to be Chicken Little, so I waited several hours before asking web host #2 to recheck their work. Sure enough, they discovered they made a mistake in the dns setup on their end.

My daddy blog is now back online after two days. I still have no idea how the hack occurred. The morale of the post? Back-up often.

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I've been playing with the Cool Player plugin for WordPress since yesterday. The plugin allows you to play multimedia files in your blog. I've only tested the plugin with mp3 and wmv (Windows Media Video) files, but the plugin is suppose to work with all of these types of files:

Google Video, Youtube Video, vSocial Video, ASF, ASX, WM, WMA, WMV, WAX, WVX, OGG, APE, AVI, MID, MIDI, WAV, SWF, SPL, MP3, FLV, RM, RMVB, RA, RV, RAM, SMIL, PDF, FDF, XFDF, XDP, XFD, MOV, QT, MQV, MPEG, MPG, M1S, M1V, M1A, M75, M15, MP2, MPM, MPV, MPA, FLC, FLI, CEL, RTSP, RTS, 3GP, 3GPP, 3G2, 3GP2, SDV, AMC, MP4, SDP, GIF, JPG, BMP, PNG, XPM

The plugin is suppose to work with IE, Firefox, Opera, and other browsers. I can confirm it does work with IE, Firefox, and Opera.

A nice feature about the Cool Player is being able to specify more than one file at a time (see example below). In addition, a user can can enter a media url to play by double clicking the bottom of the player.

Here's an example of the Cool Player plugin configured with two files.

Read Cool Player Plugin (592 words)

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Rob has also created three new plugins which use the same infrastructure: Random Posts, Recent Posts, and Recent Comments. The random posts plugin displays a list of posts chosen at random from your blog. The recent posts plugin displays a list of your blog’s most recent posts. The recent comments plugin displays a list of your blog’s most recently commented posts. Like the similar posts plugin, Rob's new plugins give you more options (such as excluding certain categories) than what WordPress provides out of the box.

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Yes, I know you can already insert links with FeedFlares. The difference is that FeedFlares are actually images that link to FeedBurner before they are redirected to your URL. Better Feed links are text links that point directly to your site. So if your site is syndicated elsewhere, you will have real links pointing to your site. Links that can pass PageRank juice to your site.

With this plugin, I can also insert images (ad banners) in my feed. I was even able to get phpAdsNew ad server to serve ads into my feed. I could see two different ad banners in my FeedBurner feed (the one at: feeds.feedburner.com/myfeed). However, the ads are implemented via Javascript, which don't seem to work in RSS readers like Bloglines, Google RSS Reader, and Newsgator.

I love the plugin, but if you don't like playing with HTML code, the plugin isn't for you. There is no admin interface. You have to edit the plugin file itself. It isn't hard. For instance, I added the HTML code below to the plugin file for my RSS feed footer:


<hr noshade style="margin:0;height:1px" />
<p align="center">Permalink: <a href="http://izachy.com/2006/10/26/better-feed-wordpress-plugin/">Better Feed WordPress Plugin</a><br />Links:  <a href="http://izachy.com/">iZachy</a> : : <a href="http://daddyforever.com/">Daddy Forever</a> : : <a href="http://www.embeddedstar.com/">Embedded Star</a> : : <a href="http://edageek.com/">EDA Geek</a> : : <a href="http://edablog.com/">EDA Blog</a><br />© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : <a href="http://izachy.com">iZachy</a> is a trademark of Online Destiny</p>


Go to the Better Feed WordPress plugin page for more info.

[Update: The extra stuff you insert into the feed will not be displayed unless you are using full feed. However, you can limit how much of your post is displayed in the feed via the <!–more–> quicktag.]

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1. No links in titles
The Google News crawler can't handle links in titles. Run your titles in h tags and include a permalink on the page that the Google News bot can use.

Holy jumping up and down Martha, that can't be right. Can it? After all, on most WordPress themes, the title of each post is a link to itself. I thought for sure Brian, the author of the post, must be wrong so I checked on the Google News site and this is what I found:

…each article must link to a page dedicated solely to that article. When the headline on this page is an active link, however, we may have difficulty displaying it correctly. Making headlines regular text, not links, will increase the likelihood that our crawler will extract the correct headlines.

Good golly Miss Molly, Brian does know what he's writing about. This brings me full circle with a question I had when I first started using a blog platform (I have been using a blog platform for less than a year). One of the things I noticed after installing WordPress was that the title of each post links to itself. I thought it was very odd so I did some research. What I found out was that the title links to itself because it was convenient for the developer to copy the same code over and over. Otherwise, the developer would have to spend more time editing out the links on some pages/templates.

I didn't want the title linking to itself so I removed the link. Then I noticed that just about every blogger had titles linking to the same page. Doubt crept into my mind. I was thinking, "I'm a web 1.0 dinosaur, maybe these web 2.0 bloggers know something I don't know. Maybe having the title linking to itself was great for SEO." So, I went back and reinserted the links into the titles. Now, I have to go back and remove the title link on my newsy site. The chances of getting my news site included in Google News is very, very, very, very slim. But why make it more difficult?

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But Rob didn't just stop there, he improved my hacks by placing the "exclude pages and categories" options in the admin menu. No more messing with the code. I was actually planning on doing the same thing, just not sure when. Now I don't have to write my own plugin. Rob already did it.

Another nice feature of the Similar Posts plugin is that you can tweak the similar keywords for each post when you are writing the post. This gives you the ability to fine-tune the keywords to your liking. In addition, if you have previously used the Related Posts plugin to assign keywords to posts you can now import them all from the Options page. I didn't even know you could assign keywords with the Related Posts plugin.

Here's my little comparison of the two:

The plugin is great, but I would suggest changing the "no similar posts" result when there's no related posts. Instead, it would be nice if the plugin could display a set of user-defined posts when the plugin can't find a related post. I have not seen "no related posts" on my site recently, but it will eventually show up again when I write an oddball post.

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[plugin has been disabled]
(lyrics here)

You can customize the colors of the player, pre/post appended clips (ie – "a word from our sponsor"), and configure it for podcasting. There are also options to determine what is included in the RSS feed. The plugin isn't suppose to place a player instance in the feed. Instead, you are suppose to choose what the plugin inserts into the feed. However, I noticed that even though the plugin defaults to "nothing" (meaning the feed shouldn't contain any reference to the audio file), there's a working player in both Bloglines and the new Google Reader. In Newsgator, there's no player but it does show a link to the mp3 file at the bottom of the post. Google Reader also has a link to the mp3 file. I like having the player in the feed, I'm just not sure how that is happening.

I did encounter two problems during the installation. First, after extracting the plugin, there's an audio-player folder and a file (audio-player.php) that sits outside of the audio-player folder. The first time I tried installing the plugin, I didn't see the file outside of the audio-player folder so I didn't ftp it over to the plugin directory. So, if you don't see the audio player in your plugin menu, you need to ftp "audio-player.php" to your plugin directory.

The second problem had to do with the code syntax (I left out the brackets):

audio:reasonforliving.mp3

Even though the mp3 file is located in the default "audio" directory, the file would not play. However, when I used the URL instead, the file plays (I left out the brackets):

audio:http://izachy.com/audio/reasonforliving.mp3

I'm happy with the plugin and would recommend it to anyone who wants to embed some audio files into their posts.

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Read Feedvertising vs phpAdsNew Ad Server (389 words)

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The other problem I have with the fancy quotes is that some of the WordPress plugins choke on the fancy quotes. This usually happens when you are on a site (like this one) that explains how to do something by copying and pasting some code from their site. If the code involves quotes, WordPress turns them into fancy quotes. So, when you copy a quote from a WordPress site and paste it into a text editor like Homesite, you don't actually get a quote. Instead, you get a special character that looks like a quote, but doesn't behave like one. As a result, a plugin like the Landing Sites Plugin crashes.

I finally got around to installing the Unfancy Quote Plugin for WordPress. The plugin replaces the fancy quotes inserted by WordPress with simple quotes. I've been testing the plugin on my test site and it works as advertised. The plugin was simple to install and you don't have to insert any special code into your templates. All you have to do is activate the plugin in the admin menu.

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Read Showing Posts When There's No Related Posts (396 words)

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However, when readers click on the more link, they are shown the post starting from the cut-off point on down. That means they don't see the top part of the post unless they scroll up. It makes sense from a reader's point of view. Why see something you already read? However, from my point of view, it would be better to show the reader the page starting from the top. Keep in mind that I normally set the cut-off between the first and second paragraph. So I'm not forcing readers to re-read half the post. Just the first paragraph.

So what do I gain from all of this? Well, potentially more money. By showing the page from the top, readers can see my top Adsense ad. My top ads pay better than my bottom ads. When WordPress shows the post from the cut-off point down, readers don't see the top ad unless they scroll back up.

Now the tricky part, how do we get WordPress to display the page from the top on down? I looked around the WordPress Codex, but I could not find any parameters for the <!–more–> or the_content tags that would do the trick. So I had to hack one of the WordPress function (it's a simple hack). Follow the steps below if you want to change the behavior of WordPress.

Locate the file "template-functions-post.php" and make a back-up copy of the file. It's located in the "wp-includes" sub-folder where your WordPress files are installed.

Locate this line (it should be line 92 – the line wrap below is not intentional):

$output .= ' <a href="'. get_permalink() . "#more-$id\">$more_link_text</a>";

[Note: In WordPress 2.1, you will need to modify line #102 in a file called post-template.php]

$output .= ' <a href="'. get_permalink() . "\">$more_link_text</a>";

That's it. WordPress will now show the page starting with the top.

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Read Excluding Categories from the Related Posts Plugin (760 words)

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Don't let the name fool you. The plugin does not create or direct visitors to a landing page. Instead, the plugin displays related links when visitors come to your site via a search engine. The idea is that when visitors are referred to your site from a search engine, they are looking for something specific – often they quickly check the page they land on and then leave if what they are looking for isn't there. This plugin creates additional links for your search engine visitors to increase the stickiness of your site.

Read How to Fix Landing Sites Plugin (551 words)

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• Allows you to override a page's or a post's title tag with a custom one defined through a custom field (title_tag).
• Allows you to define a custom home page title via the WordPress admin menu.
• Reverses the order of the blog name and the title (giving more keyword prominence to the title instead of the blog name). You can also omit the blog name or to replace it with a shorter nickname.
• For users of the UltimateTagWarrior plugin, the plugin adds the names of tags into the title on pages that have been tagged.
• Uses a category's description as the title tag on category pages.

Even though the primary purpose of the plugin is to create search engine optimized titles, the plugin doesn't actually do this for you automatically. You still have to manually create your own search engine optimized titles for your posts. So, if you have to create your own search engine optimized titles, why do you need this plugin? In most cases, you can use the title of the post as the title of your page. In these cases, you do not need the plugin. However, if you create post titles that grabs readers' attention, but the titles do not translate to good SEO, then you can use this plugin to substitute a more search engine optimized title for the page.

After playing around with the plugin, I have a couple of suggestions:

• Automated Install
  The plugin is easy to activate. However, for people who are not conformable with editing code, having them manually replace the existing title code in the header with the new code might be a little dangerous. My guess is most people will not have a problem, but there will be a few people who will either delete too much of the header or not enough. I have never created a plugin so I don't know if this is even doable, but a more automated process would be desirable.
• Option to Disable Category Description as Titles
  The plugin uses category descriptions as titles for categories. However, some bloggers (like me) are already using plugins for the META description in the header. These plugins generally use the category descriptions as the description for the post. Since I don't want to use the category description for both the title and description of the category, I would like the option of disabling this feature in the SEO Title Tag plugin.

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I looked on the Wasabi site (home of the Related Posts plugin), but didn't find anything other than a comment from someone with the same problem. The question was posted three months ago and it was never answered. So, I looked at the plugin code and came up with a quick solution.

To disable pages in your related results, just follow these five steps:

1. Log into the admin area of your WordPress blog.
2. Click on Plugins, then click on Plugin Editor.
3. On the right is a list of your plugin files. Click on Related Posts.

4. In the Editing related-posts.php text window, scroll down until you find this line:

   . "AND (post_status IN ( 'publish', 'static' ) && ID != '$post->ID') ";

   Its almost half way down (its a few line below // Primary SQL query). If you are using Windows, you can do a search by hitting ctrl-F and searching for static. It's line 92 if you are using a text editor on your computer.

   Change 'publish', 'static' to just 'publish'
   Static refers to pages and publish refers to posts. The new line should read:

   . "AND (post_status IN ( 'publish' ) && ID != '$post->ID') ";

5. Click the Update File button and you are done.

That's it. Your pages will no longer be listed as related to any of your posts.

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Next, I looked in the WordPress Codex. If the info was there, someone did a great job of hiding it because I could not find it. Then I searched on the web via Google. I couldn't find it there either. Obviously, if Google can't find it, then it doesn't exist. So, I gave up until a few days ago. That's when I was working on a non-WordPress site — a site that uses relative addressing. That's when it hitted me. I was using absolute addresses when I linked internally on my WordPress blogs. I was using something like, http://izachy.com/link/ instead of /link/.

In my next post, I used a relative address to link to another post. Result? I didn't ping myself. This discovery might be obvious to some people, but if you're a little dense like me, you might appreciate this helpful hint. Remember, don't use the full URL unless you want to ping yourself.

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Now, back to Timecapsule. Like I said its a nice way to promote old posts. I did have a problem. I changed the maximum posts to display to two posts, but the plugin showed all four posts for a particular date. IE cache problem? Maybe, but I hit reload several times with the same results (even shift-reload). I launched FireFox and Opera. Still showed four posts instead of two. I changed the max posts to display to one, three, four, and five. The browser still showed all four posts. It must be me, because I don't hear anyone else with this problem. Not sure what I am doing wrong. I tried it with both the WP default and classic themes. And yes, I did click on the "update options" button.

Here are a couple of other suggestions for the plugin:

1. Give users the option to specify a message when there are no posts to display. Currently its "I was obviously slacking 'cause I didn't write anything this day. :-(" I think its funny, but new visitors to the site might wonder why there's a message about slacking off on a particular date. I know I can go into the php file and change it myself, but some users don't want to play with the code thingy.
2. Give users the option of not displaying anything at all when there's nothing to display. Or to display posts on the nearest date. So basically, users will have the option to display their own text, nothing, or nearest date when there are no posts to displayed.

I like Aaron's plugin and would use it if my site wasn't new.

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Read Six Suggestions for Adsense Injection (420 words)

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The pictures of the design are nice, but it would have been even better if the mockups were working examples you could play around with.

I also hope the final design will fit on a 1024 screen. In the mock-ups, I had to scroll horizontally. I hate scrolling horizontally.

That said, I think the design looks good so far. The admin area does look more professional, but still clean. When I put together admin interfaces, I have a tendency to focus on functionality over aesthetics. As a result, my interfaces tend to get cluttered over time (but very functional!).

Having been through several redesigns with a big corporation, I know redesigns are not easy. There's too many opinions and you can't please everyone. The Shuttle team did a great job — especially since they don't even get paid!

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Now that I'm using WordPress to run some of my sites, I've pretty much stuck with one side bar for all my pages. Sure I could put in a bunch of if statements to pull in different nav bars, but that could get really messy fast. So, I've come up with two methods that I could use to alter the side nav bar and the layout for single posts and pages. This will come in handle for showing more ads on a long page and disabling ads for a short page.

Read Show More Adsense Ads on Long Posts (608 words)

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