New Blog Design And Plug-Ins
May 2, 2007
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I changed my blog theme and layout yesterday along with installing several new plug-ins.
I was previously using the Semiologic theme. While it had a lot of nice features (it’s much more than just a simple theme), I found it difficult to edit the page to exactly what I wanted at times.
The new theme comes from Michel Fortin’s Clean Copy template…with some modifications of course (the sidebar has been moved to the right so the main visitor scan area can be in the posts).
Here are a Few of the New Plug-Ins:
This is one of the best plug-ins I’ve seen. It makes adding tags to your posts easy which increases your searchability and it adds additional “tag” pages for more content for the search engines to crawl. How did I ever live without it?
Add social bookmarking links or a dropdown box at the bottom of each of your posts. Make it easy for viewers to increase your traffic by bookmarking your content.
See your most popular posts by traffic, comments, trackbacks, and more. You can also modify the settings to have it score in whatever way you like. Nice way to keep your most popular posts available and viewable (see my use of it in the right sidebar).
Basic Wordpress set-up adds a no follow tag to your comments. So commenters don’t get link love from posting and participating in the discussion. Originally this was done to prevent comment spam, but the spam keeps coming (most blocked by Akismet). If people participate in the discussion, they deserve the link credit in my opinion…so this plug-in gives it to them.
Redirects visitors to one specific link for your domain. So instead of people linking to terrydean.org or www.terrydean.org, mine is set for all visitors to go to www.terrydean.org (the benefit here is that some search engines now see all the incoming links for the same main page instead of separate pages).
Since this post has detailed some of the new plug-ins I’ve added, let’s mention two old faithfuls I couldn’t imagine being without.
This creates an XML sitemap for Google, Yahoo, and MSN spidering. It is basically a map to your site for the search engines to find and index all your pages. As your site is updated, it also pings Google to let them know about the new content.
If you allow comments on your blog, this plug-in is essential. Make sure it is activated in your Plug-in section. It blocks a majority of the incoming spam comments. Without it, I wouldn’t even consider having comments turned on.
Popularity: 73% [?]
Related Entries:- Feed New Visitors Different Blog Content
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- Playing With the Comment Sniper
- Download Stumbleupon
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[…] While this is a free blog hosted by Wordpress, I find Terry changing his theme from semiologic to the one provided by Mike Fortin. […]
Hi Terry,
I am a newbie in wordpress and i would like to consult you. Here are my questions:
1. I do have the same theme like you from Michel Fortin. I changed the sidebar to float right instead of left (original from Cory Miller). But then the alignment gone. Can u guide me there.
2. I am looking to edit the about me page (Sidebar - where you put your pic) but i just could not find the right place to do my editing. Pls help.
3. How do i put in the Name & Email Column (exactly like what you have on your right sidebar)so that i can build a simple list from there? I notice that it is easy to do it with blogger but not wordpress.
Been frustrated with the above few questions. Hope you can give me a hand on this ! Appreciated it alot.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Yeap
Hi Nicholas,
I will post how to do some basic editing in Wordpress in a future posting. Here’s a quick tip for question 2 and 3…you can edit them in Presentation - Theme Editor - Sidebar.
The way I did it was to copy and paste the HTML code out of Dreamweaver into the slot I wanted on the bar. It took a couple of tries of pasting it in different slots until I had it exactly where I wanted. I just pasted and saved. Nope…don’t like it there. Cut it out and put it in a different spot until it was right.
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[…] Some of my favorites are Akismet, Do Follow, and social bookmarking plugins. See the most recent plugins I recommend http://www.terrydean.org/new-blog-design-and-plug-ins/ […]