Have you ever noticed that many next generation web browsers will often detect a blog’s feed by displaying a feed icon on the right side of the address bar?  This is something many estabalished sites have taken the time to set up to encourage feed subscribers, but something that most WordPress themes don’t do by default.  

In order to instruct next generation web browsers to automatically detect your WordPress blog’s feed(s), you’ll simply need to do is make a quick modification to your header.php file and add the following code:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> RSS Feed" href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" />

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> RSS Comments Feed" href="<?php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?>" />

If your theme already has the first code in place for the RSS Feed, then you’ll just need to paste the second set of code in to display your RSS Comments Feed.  You can also swap out the PHP code and instead use your Feedburner feed address if you’d like.

If you aren’t sure if you should bother to do this or not, never underestimate the power of suggestion.  It is an unobtrusive way to promote your RSS Feed and Comments Feed while not using up any valuable screen real estate.

The internet is a dynamic place where things are always changing and adapting. And just like the internet, the blogosphere is also changing rapidly and seems to be particularly susceptible to trends. One prominent blogger will create a theme and the whole blogosphere will rush to follow.

One of the most recent trends in the blogosphere is the rise in popularity of many magazine-style WordPress themes. Many of them are paid themes, but there are also several free magazine style WordPress themes as well for people to download.

Here are a few of my favorites:

OpenBook Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Options Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Structure Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Rebel Magazine Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Massive News Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Jello Wala Mello Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Visionary Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Mimbo Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Morning After Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Zeke 1.0 Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Forte Theme

Source | Download | Demo

The Studio Theme

Source | Download | Demo

If you know of a good one that you’d like to see added to the list, please let me know in the comments below!

This guest post was written by Keith Dsouza of Techie-Buzz. Keith is a WordPress enthusiast who has contributed numerous WordPress plugins to the WordPress community. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a guest post for Hack WordPress, please contact me.

Disasters are unavoidable and could happen any day, your server could have a crash one day and you will be left with nothing. Maybe your database will crash and you will lose all your posts. Your blog could be hacked too and someone may just delete all your posts. These are some things that could happen any day to anyone.

Taking precautions to safe guard your WordPress Blog is one of the best option to stay on top of it. The key to remember is that your database is the backbone of your blog, if you lose it your blog will be bankrupt, having a regular backup is they key to keep your blog up and running at all times.

WordPress is a platform that has many great developers working for it and providing with numerous amounts of plugins that could help to overcome the unavoidable.

WordPress Database Backup is a handy and blog saving plugin that will help you take daily backups of your database, you can either run the backup manually or setup cron tasks (scheduled tasks) to send you a backup of your database on a day to day basis.

The cron tasks have been introduced since WordPress 2.1 and if you do not have the latest version you should upgrade your WordPress installation first.

Below are some detailed instructions and tips on how to use the WordPress Database Backup plugin to setup cron tasks to automatically send you emails every day so you have the latest copy whenever you require it.

Step 1

Download and activate the WordPress Database Plugin for your blog.

Step 2

Click on the Manage option in the Admin panel navigation and from there click on the Backup link in the submenu.

Step 3

Once you are in the backup page, you will see a lot of options. Scroll down till you see an option to schedule a backup. In the scheduled backup you will see various options to schedule you backup.

You can schedule a backup varying upon how frequently you post on your blog. The best option is too choose a daily backup of your database. You will also be given an option to choose the database tables you want to backup. By default all core WordPress tables are backed up.

While making a choice to backup other tables you should only choose those that are critical to running of your blog, if you choose all the tables there are chances that the script may fail due to reading huge data.

If you want to backup all the tables the best option is to run the task manually and only email critical data to you every day.

That’s it with three simple steps you can save your blog from liquidation and always be sure that you are one step ahead of failures. You just have to follow the steps once and then you can ensure that you have a plan against disaster.

If you are looking for a way to generate more traffic and inbound links for your blog, and you have some web design talent, one of the best things you can do is contribute a few free WordPress themes to the WordPress community.

In order to focus on making your theme unique, I recommend starting out with a blank theme template. Jonathan Wold has created an excellent tutorial called How to Create Your Own WordPress Theme, in which he walks you through the basic setup of a generic WordPress theme. From there, you are then on your own to express your creativity and add some plugin integration for potential users of the theme.