ESSENTIAL WORDPRESS PLUGINS (REVISITED AGAIN)

Wordpress is immensely powerful straight out of the box, but it's possible to add pretty much ANY functionality you want, and it's usually for free.

This is a list of the TOP Plugins we use at q292u.com.
They are in no particular order.

(This is an UPDATED version of an updated version of an earlier post. There are SIGNIFICANT changes, as Wordpress is such a moving target)

AKISMET.
ESSENTIAL anti-spam system. Free to non-commercial users.
Filters out unwanted (spam) comments automatically, and provides stats on what it's doing. ESSENTIAL.

WORDPRESS SEO. (YOAST)

We now use this in preference to All-In-One-SEO-PACK. Allows us to tailor in-post SEO far better. Also handles Sitemaps. ESSENTIAL

BETTER-WP-SECURITY.

Plugs all the holes we could find. Also handles backups. Excellent! ESSENTIAL

ADROTATE.
Handles advertising on your site. Very comprehensive. Individual ads are created and then made into groups. You can then position the groups as widgets, in posts and on pages. Ads have start and end dates, and tracking can be switched on or off. Better than maxbannerads.  ** The latest version has had features removed due to a "premium" version. Avoid this version. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

WP AUTO TAGGER.
Automatically adds relevant tags to your posts as you create them, based on post content. It'll find tags you hadn't thought of. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.

AUTO POST THUMBNAIL.

Automatically sets the "Featured Image" attribute of the post, based on the content. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

HYPERCACHE.
Excellent caching plugin, creates static version of all your posts and pages as they are created. Far better than SUPERCACHE. ESSENTIAL if you use a lot of plugins, or have a lot of visitors.
Get the "Clear Cache" Button plugin as well.

EXCLUDE FROM NAVIGATION.
Some themes automatically add all pages to navigation menus. This is how to stop it. Adds a checkbox in the editor. ESSENTIAL.

SMART 404.
Attempts to redirect 404 errors to relevant pages based on search query, and URL requested. Reduces bounce-rates. ESSENTIAL

Google Analytics. (YOAST)
This adds Google Analytics tracking code to all your pages and posts, so you can keep tabs on everything. You need an analytics account. ESSENTIAL.

CONTEXTUAL RELATED POSTS.
Adds links to other relevant posts on your site. Engages visitors, and keeps them on your site longer. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.

STOP SPAMMERS

Blocks spammers from ever registering. So they can't post. Nice. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

COVERT SOCIAL CONTENT

We use this instead of FEEDWORDPRESS, due to performance issues. NOT FREE!

Strongly Recommended

COVERT SOCIAL BUZZ 

Generates Likes/Tweets/etc. Not Free. Strongly Recommended.

WP SOCIAL POPUP.

Generates Likes/Tweets/etc. Strongly Recommended.

SOCIAL LOCKER (FREE Version)

Excellent! - Locks up content until the user tweets, likes, g+1 or whatever. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.

Wordpress - Caching Plugins Revisited

We've been using "quickcache" for ages, after a nasty experience with wp-supercache. (it ate a website!) Anyway, we've been doing some back-to-back testing on two similar websites running different caching plugins. The results were: Fastest: Hypercache, with browser caching and compression turned on. DB Cache didn't seem to make any difference when combined with hypercache. Had some issues getting rid of quickcache, as well. Had to switch off cacheing, then disable, then delete, then edit wp-config to restore the cache setting.. Google Page Speed scores have risen from around 70 to around 89..

Feedwordpress / Gzip plugin problems - can't access admin panel

Yesterday, after all the hoo-haa with Feedwordpress refusing to activate, I ran into another problem: I couldn't access the feedwordpress admin panel! on FOUR sites.. All I get is "page unavailable", or the dreaded error 324 in Chrome (don't start me on that one). So I backtracked - what ELSE had I changed recently? The answer was I had used plugin to switch on GZIP compression on the affected sites. Deactivating the plugins "Force Gzip", or "Wordpress Gzip" allowed me back in to the feedwordpress admin panel. I have no idea why switching on Gzip kills the feedwordpress admin panel, but it does. You heard it here.

Wordpress - Feedwordpress - Will not activate!

This was a bit of a problem. My site, which relies on FeedWordPress (fwp) for updates, had crashed. The only way to get the site back up was to disable all active plugins via the database (see my other posts), and then re-activate the plugins one-by-one to find the culprit. Turns out that the culprit was FeedWordPress. FeedWordPress does this when there are a LOT of links to check. Like my site. The only way to fix this quickly is to edit the database directly using the hosting control panel. DO NOT edit the RSS links using the inbuilt links editor - it will chop the end off the links, destroying them. It will chop the affiliate bits off the end.. 1. Get the ID of the link category that fwp is looking at. To find out, you need to know it's name. I called mine "FWP". Yours may be "Blogroll". Use the wordpress links editor, but DO NOT edit any links. Now look in the WP-Terms table, and find the record with that name. Make a note of the link_category_id. 2. You are also going to need an empty link category. Use the wordpress link category editor to create one, (I called mine "FWP-DUMMY") or just select an existing link category with no links in it. Note down the link_category_id. 3. Open the wp-options table and look for the feedwordpress_category record. It probably will not be on the first page.. Edit it. The number in there should be the link_category_id for your existing category. Change it to the number for the empty link category. Save it. 4. In Wordpress, activate FeedWordPress. It should work OK now. That's because it's looking at an empty category and has nothing to check. 5. Go back to the wp-options table, and change the feedwordpress category back to the original value. Save it. Feedwordpress is now up and running. Finally, make a note of the link-category_ids for the FWP category and the Empty category, so you won't have to mess about next time.

New Site Launched: www.motorbikes4sale.net

That's right, another q292u site was launched this week, called Motorbikes4Sale.net. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

This site raised a bit of a problem: although it's fed by RSS feeds, there is only ONE feed per manufacturer. So how to create tags for keywords that are NOT a category? Model Names, for example..

After extensive searching, and at one point even considering writing a cronjob plugin to do the job, we found "WP Auto Tagger". This uses the Yahoo API to find suitable tags based on the post title and content. It works like a dream!

WORDPRESS: How to disable all active plugins, without access to the dashboard..

See my earlier post as to why I needed to do this..

My site was down. Dead. No access to the admin functions. The problem was a plugin gone bad (when I tried to disable it).

So, I needed to disable plugins, but couldn't get into the admin panel.

The excellent support guys at Unlimited Web Hosting came up with this ingenious solution:

Here's what you do: use CPANEL or PLESK to access the Wordpress database of your site directly. It'll be something like phpmyadmin. Details vary with web hosting firms. If in doubt, ask yours.

Browse the WP_OPTIONS table. Look for a record called "active_plugins".
Copy the contents of this field into notepad, and save it, just in case.
Now go back to the database, and EMPTY the contents of "active plugins", and save it. (you can always restore it from the copy you made).

Now access your site. It should come back up, but with no plugins running, so it'll be weird. Now go into admin as usual, and re-enable all plugins one-by-one, EXCEPT the one that caused the problem.
I'd DELETE that one..


** DISCLAIMER. If you try this solution, and it messes things up, that's your problem. I take no responsibility for it. It worked for me. **

** If it all goes wrong, simply restore the database from your backup. You DO have a backup, right? **

WP-SUPERCACHE ATE MY WEBSITE! - It's EVIL!

Whatever you do, BE CAREFUL if you are using the WP-SUPERCACHE Wordpress plugin..

I'll explain the problem: My site was having speed issues, so I investigated alternative cach plugins. I settled on Quick-Cache.
So, I disabled Supercache, which then argued, in BIG RED LETTERS at the top of the dashboard, and advised me to visit it's settings page, as caching was off. I didn't want to do that, so I hit "deactivate" again.

BANG!. The site was dead. Not only that, but it was displaying the contents of the WP-CONFIG file in plain text on the frontpage!!! Including database login details, password, etc.. DISASTER!

I was heading home on the train as all this was unfolding, so I got the support guys at Unlimited Web Hosting to shut down the site, which they did, instantly.

We then spent most of the night, on and off, trying to get the site back up.
Unlimited showed me a neat trick to disable all Wordpress plugins without access to the site.. I'll be posting about that later..

Anyway, I decided that wp-supercache had corrupted something, probably wp-functions, so I reloaded Wordpress over the existing files (after configuring wp-config).

Jackpot! The site came back up. I then re-enabled the plugins, one-by-one. (they were all disabled from earlier).

DELETED WP-Supercache, and installed and enabled Quick-Cache.
I suggest you do the same.

SETTING UP CRON JOBS IN PLESK

My web hosts Unlimited Web Hosting use the PLESK system rather than CPANEL.
There's no direct access to the Unix Shell, so you can't directly use Unix CRON commands.

The solution is in PLESK itself. Select Domains, then the domain you want to add a job to. Now find "Scheduled Jobs", and select a "System User" - probably the FTP user.
Click "Add Scheduled Job".
In "Minutes", add the Minutes you want the job to run, eg "15,30,45,0" to run every 15 minutes.
In "Hours", add the number(s) of the hours you want the job to run, eg "4,8,12,16,20", or "*" for ALL hours.
Same applies for the "Day" and "Week" fields.

So, for example, if you want to run a task twice an hour, every hour, every day, use the following:
Put "00,30" in the Minutes field, and put "*" in all the other fields. Simple, but not immediately obvious.

I now have proper CRON jobs running my feedwordpress systems, and also "DIGI AUTO LINKS". I've timed them to minimise cpu use..


Minutes:

Cheap Car Books - Total Site Revamp.

www.cheapcarbooks.com/

The previous theme was based on twentyten. It looked awful.
I've spent so much time on my higher-profile sites, that I've not touched CCB in months.
Well. Today fixed that.
New Theme "Retro-Fitted".. Custom menu.
Ad-Rotate. Adsense, Amazon affiliate ads.
New SEO plugin. (all-in-one-SEO -SFWD)
Sorted.

I really MUST mention ad-rotate again here. Set up your ad groups, set up your widgets to use them. Slot in your ads, and you have total control. Wonderful. How I managedusing datafeedr I will never know.

Wordpress / Feedburner RSS Issue resolved

For a LONG time, no images have been appearing in the RSS feed for www.quirkycars.net. Now, it's not as simple as it looks, as the standard Wordpress RSS is redirected via a plugin called Feedsmith, to Feedburner.
So, either the images were being removed by feedburner, or they were not there in the output from the site.
So I disabled the plugin, and examined the output directly. No images. (http://www.quirkycars.net/feed). Damn.
Checked the Settings->Read options, correctly set to "Full Text". No option to block images.
After looking around on the web, I FOUND the problem: Change the RSS address to http://www.quirkycars.net/?feed=rss2 : The images ARE present in that one.
So, then: change the Feedburner RSS feed address to [websiteaddress]/?feed=rss2, and we are sorted. Don't forget to re-enable Feedsmith..
Sounds simple, but this has taken a LOT of detective work..

Wordpress/Tweetmeme

Installed tweetmeme buttons on one of my sites.
Bit of a nightmare!
First, they didn't appear at all. Tried their solution for that. (wp-footer) No good.
Tried inserting javascript directly. No good.
Traced problem to "mod_rewrite" rules used by supercache.
Removed rules (not used anyway), and NONE of my post links work :(
Reset permalinks settings, (-> default, then -> custom) which rewrites the htaccess file, and we're up.
.. and we have tweetmeme buttons. Excellent!

Wordbay problem.

Inexplicably, Wordbay stopped working across all my sites on unlimited last week.
Not only that, but it took out all sites with it installed.
Had to rename wordbay folder via FTP to get back in.
Quick e-mail to Mark Daniels (wordbay developer), and he's as puzzled as me.
It does point to a change at Unlimited, but they say no..

Anyway, It works if I switch off geo-location. Mark's changing the code for version 1.6, out soon.

10/10 for support, Mark!

Wordpress 3.1.2 Upgrade

Upgraded all sites to wordpress 3.1.2 last week.
Tested all sites: OK.
Of course, on Saturday, I find that one of the sites has fallen over with a memory allocation error in wp-db.php, which is in the Wordpress core directory..

Quick e-mail to unlimited support who confirm that nothing has changed at their end.

So that means it's either a problem with 3.1.2, or one of the plugins. Only solution: disable all plugins, and re-enable one by one, testing site as we go.

Eventually traced to "efficient related posts" plugin.
Site back up and running in a few minutes. Sorted.

Internal Server Error 500

Been getting this error intermittently across multiple sites and multiple hosting.
Last night, I had two sites down for a couple of hours.
Apparently, Wordpress is trying to access something that isn't available, and rather than timing-out, it's crashing.
WP forums has lots of conflicting info about this.
It's either a problem with dodgy plugins/themes, a problem with mod_rewrite rules in htaccess, or just Godaddy being crap. Well I'm not with Godaddy.

The only thing that seems to be consistent is that it started happening after WP 3.01.
I've just upgraded to 3.1.. so we'll see what happens..

Wordpress: "you do not have sufficient permissions to view this page"

I thought I'd upgrade security on some of my sites last week.
I installed a plugin called "wp-security-scan", which made some sensible suggestions:
1. Change the table prefixes from "wp_" to something else (and update wp-config)
2. Rename the admin user

It the offered a button that said "rename now.."
So I did.
The plugin then reported that it couldn't update wp-config. So I did that manually.

*BANG* - The sound of the door slamming on the admin panel.

I couldn't log in "you do not have sufficient permissions to view this page"..

Looks like a file rights issue, right? Wrong. Nothing odd about the file rights or ownership (according to Jab Web Support).

So I set about rolling back the changes. Rather than use my database backup, I decided to find out exactly what that plugin had done..

So, I manually renamed all the tables back to "wp_"
till no login.

Looking inside the tables, though, I found that the plugin had renamed all FIELDS starting with "wp_" as well..

Things like "wp-user_roles". Fairly crucial.

Anyway, the solution was to browse wp-user and wp-user-meta for any fields starting with the new prefix, and rename them back to "wp_"..

Et voila. Access granted. :)

All would have been well, except that some IDIOT at Jab Web wrecked the DNS settings for the site, and it disappeared off the web. Thanks Guys!

Fortunately, I spotted the error, and corrected it. And fired off an email at Jab Web. No response even now...

Site Updates

Moved all remaining sites over to Wordpress Mobile Pack, rather than Wordpress Mobile Edition.
This was not without complications! Rights, settings, etc.
All sites with serious traffic are now running WP-Super-Cache. Page load times on Supercars-for-sale.com have dropped from "up-to-30-seconds" down to about 1 second.
Google Analytics says that traffic has picked up a bit as a result. Again, some interesting issues, and clashes with Mobile Pack.
Tweaked the Wordpress Mobile Pack Templates. Created new "Mobile" Ad groups in Datafeedr, and inserted the php code into header and footer. Bingo. Mobile ad space, controlled directly within WP admin.

.. and finally, got to the bottom of the speed issues. Wassup database had 280000 records.. MBP ping optimiser something similar. Deleted the lot. Sorted. Why can't these plugins do their own housekeeping?

New-Style Posts

I've been experimenting with the post styles on some of the sites.
(I got the idea from www.johnfoxxandthemaths.com)
The idea is that each post has the Category (or tag) as a prefix.
For example, a "news" item would be "News - The world ends tomorrow"
My best example of this on www.nervejam.com. I've used a different class to highlight the Prefix. Looks really good.  It became necessary, as so many posts were being syndicated from the OMD site, without mentioning OMD. Well they do now!

I've done something similar on www.synteknik.com, but as this is a more minimal theme, I've left the styling alone.

Best of all, it's really easy. In it's simplest form, it's a copy-and-paste job. Copy the category bit, and paste it into the line that displays the title.
I've now done it with three different themes. And one of those is a weird one..
Simples.

Mobile Access to Websites.

Now that I can get my Wordpress sites 100% functional (php safe mode off, fast cgi on), I've revisited the Mobile issue.

I've now implemented Wordpress Mobile Pack on all but one of my sites (Advertising obligations on that one..)

It's excellent. It detects your mobile device, and serves up the mobile version instead of the desktop. It even has a mobile admin theme.. There's an option to use m.yoursite.com as well. May have to look into that..

Account Quota Exceeded!

Started getting warnings about exceeding my disk quota at Jab Web on Saturday..
I normally have about 1Gb free space, so something was clearly amiss.

Couldn't find anything obvious (no single big files), but NerveJam.Com was reporting 1.7 Gb disk space..
Deleted all mail in case it was the database backups.. Got another message on Sunday.
Contacted support..

Monday, all disk quotas back to normal.. No message from support. Baffled.

However, I have taken the opportunity to install and run the "clean options" WP plugin on all sites.
NerveJam.Com had over 1000 junk entries in wp-options..


and I'm looking at "auto prune posts" as welll..

Wordpress "unable to establish a database connection"

Have you just uploaded a new version of Wordpress via ftp?
Did you overwrite wp-config.php ?

You now have two options: restore the file from the backup you made before the upgrade.
You did make a backup, right?

Alternatively, use the File Manager in your control panel (CPANEL, PLESK, etc), to edit the wp-config.php file.
(It'll be in the root of your Wordpress install)

You need the following information:

Database Name
Database User Name
Database User Password
Database Host Name. (Usually "localhost", but NOT always. It's not on 000webhost for instance)

On Cpanel, all these values can be read from either "mysql" or "phpmyadmin", apart from the password. You may need to set a new password. On Plesk it's under databases - database users. Again, you may need to set a new password.

Now enter these values in the correct places in wp-config.php and save the file.

Next time, take a backup.

 and that's it.