One of my favorite parts about using WordPress for my blogs is getting to work with PHP code, which I find to be much easier to write/hack.   For those that are shy around code, it really isn’t that difficult to get ahold of the basics of PHP, so WordPress is the right place for you. 

One great area to start is learning how the WordPress loop works.  This is a basic function of blogging used to display the most recent X number of posts on your blog’s homepage (for traditional blogs).   Rather than go into to much detail here, I’d like to point you towards a new post by Themelab which is designed to be the Utlimate Guide to the WordPress loop. 

This post definitely lives up to its name and goes beyond just showing you how to do something.  It actually explains how and why it works, and includes screenshots with many of the examples.   If you have any interest in learning about the WordPress loop you may want to read through this post and/or bookmark it for future reference. 

Just wanted to post a heads up and let everyone know that I haven’t disappeared.   I usually try to post 1-2 times a day whenever possible, but I’ve been having some computer problems that required finding some parts.  I ended up having to buy them online, so now I’m just waiting for them to arrive.  For the moment, my computer access is very limited, but I hope to have things back to normal by the end of the week.  

Anyway, in the meantime, why don’t you check out this video from WordCamp Dallas about what is being worked on for WordPress 2.6.

[Video found via WPCandy]

Depending on how your WordPress blog is set up, you may have an interest in displaying your WordPress tags for your readers to dig through in a nice looking cloud format. This is something that is very nice for readers to see, as long as you are responsible with your tagging and don’t use an overwhelming number of tags.

In order to display tags on your WordPress blog, you’ll just want to add this little code snippet whenever you want the tag cloud to display (usually in the sidebar or footer somewhere depending on your blogs layout).

Here is the code you’ll need:

<?php wp_tag_cloud(''); ?>

WordPress also allows you to customize your cloud to display the way you want it to. Most people like to emphasize the most used tags by making their font much larger. You can determine the size using the following code:

<?php wp_tag_cloud('smallest=8&largest=36&'); ?>

In this example, the tags will be displayed in alphabetical order with the least used tags being 8px and the most used tags will be 36px. You can of course adjust this to meet your needs.

If you’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.5 already, you’ve probably noticed a slightly improved look to your login screen.  While improved, how sweet would it be to have a custom login screen for your weblog?

If you’re interested in checking out how to do this, Just Creative Design has written up a great tutorial on how to accomplish this, and it is surprisingly easy to accomplish.  You can see their login screen here as an example.

As a follow up to yesterday’s post about WordPress permalink structure (where a good discussion took place in the comments), I decided today that I would dedicate a post to showing you how to switch your blog’s permalink structure without creating any invalid URL’s.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to grab the Permalink Redirect plugin (my plugin review here) and activate it.  Once activated, when you go into the Settings panel you should find a new tab called Permalink Redirect. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you should see this:

In the old permalink structures box, you can paste your current permalink structure there (depending on which you choose, something like /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/).  If you are unsure what exactly to type, please refer to the permalink page on the WordPress Codex.

Now save and go to the Permalinks tab.   Select the custom field and type /%postname%/, then save.

Now go to an old URL and it should automatically redirect you to the same post’s new URL.   The search engines will see the 301 redirect and update accordingly!

Any questions?  Feel free to comment below!

One of the great things about using WordPress is the built-in SEO advantages that this software gives you over building static pages or other blogging software. You have an advantage from the start over others not using WordPress! With that said, there are a lot of SEO techniques that need to be set up or applied by the user. The permalink structure is one of these that you can easily set up when creating your blog and then forget about it.

By default, your WordPress Dashboard gives you a 3 choices to choose from. The default permalink structure is a terrible option from an SEO standpoint and the other two aren’t bad, but they aren’t your best option. According to Matt Cutts at WordCamp 2007 (Matt is the lead guy for the Google Search team), the best permalink structure you can use is just the post title with hyphens. According to Matt:

• Don’t put your blog at the root of your domain.
• Name your directory “blog” instead of “WordPress”.
• In URLs, no spaces are worst, underscore are better, dashes or hyphens are best.
• Use alt tags on images: not only is it good accessibility, it is good SEO.
• Include keywords naturally in your posts.
• Make your post dates easy to find.
• Check your blog on a cell phone and/or iPhone.
• Use partial-text feeds if you want more page views; use full-text feeds if you want more loyal readers.
• Blogs should do standard pings.
• Standardize backlinks (don’t mix and match www with non-www).
• Use a permanent redirect (301) when moving to a new host.
• Don’t include the post date in your URL.

For WordPress users, this is easy to set up. Go into your blog’s Options panel and click on the Permalinks tab. You should see the following:

Click the custom radio button and type /%postname%/ into the field. This is the most ideal setup for your WordPress blog.

If you already have an established blog using another structure, you can easily use the Permalink Redirect WordPress plugin to redirect your posts to the new structure.