Search engine algorithms are always changing, so even for the top experts in Search Engine Optimization, there is a constant need for studying the newest SEO techniques in order to compete in todays online world.

WordPress has always been very search engine friendly by default, and when you add things like the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin or the SEO Sniper plugin to the mix, you have the potential for a very well optimized website without any real work.

With that said, there are a variety of SEO techniques that you can apply to your sites setup that aren’t covered with a simple plugin, and Joost de Valk has taken the time to cover WordPress SEO in great detail.

I have made it a habit to stay very current on the latest SEO techniques and I found this post extremely useful, well organized, and Joost did a great job of explaining things in a way that pretty much anyone can understand.    And hey, if you don’t like to read about SEO, you can at least click over to check out his new website design (and improved domain name).  Great work Joost!

I have added this post to our WordPress resources page.

This guest post was written by Ben Fraley of Ben Fraley.com, where he enjoys writing about WordPress. If you have webmaster or WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for Hack WordPress, please contact us.

Ok so, true to form, here’s my first review of a Wordpress tool for Hack Wordpress. It’s a Firefox extension called “Zemanta,” and if you like Wordpress, you just gotta get this. What it does it suggest links, tags, categories, even pictures for your blog post AS YOU TYPE IT. That’s correct, it doesn’t even wait for you to be done, and you don’t have to go searching yourself. It does it for you. It’s just awesome.

The extension installs into Firefox, and goes seamlessly into the Wordpress (2.3 and 2.5) admin section without any installation into Wordpress itself (I guess it’s not as much a Wordpress plugin as it is a Firefox plugin for Wordpress. Semantics ). Very easy, and very, VERY useful.

A couple readers have commented on how they like the navigation menu that you’ll find at the top of each page on this blog and wanted to know how to do this on their WordPress blogs.

I really love the improved navigation it gives readers, and doing something like this on a WordPress blog is actually really easy, thanks to the incredible community WordPress has. All you need is the Breadcrumb Navigation XT WordPress plugin and some simple code to place where you want the navigation to display.

Once you’ve got your plugin uploaded and activated (activate the Core version), you can place the following code where you want the navigation to display:

<div class="breadcrumb"> <?php if (class_exists('bcn_breadcrumb')) { // New breadcrumb object $mybreadcrumb = new bcn_breadcrumb; // Assemble the breadcrumb $mybreadcrumb->assemble(); // Display the breadcrumb $mybreadcrumb->display(); } ?> </div>

You can style it to look how you want using .breadcrumb on your stylesheet.

Enjoy!

Hack WordPress was one of only 3-4 “WordPress” niche blogs that existed prior to the creation of the Premium WordPress themes market. As I sit back and reflect on the early days of the premium WordPress themes market, when Solostream’s themes were first being converted to premium, and Revolution was being launched, each existing WordPress blog was faced with a choice. Do we promote these themes? After all, WordPress was founded on open source, and each of us (WordPress founders, plugin/theme authors, and WordPress bloggers) were contributing our time and energy to improving the WordPress community without any compensation. Should these people be paid for what we do for free?

Some blogs ending up promoting them, while other blogs did not. I personally ended up making the decision that I would promote premium themes on this blog because I felt that they would help improve WordPress, and to this day I really think that they really have. Many of these authors are making so much money that they are able to make (and support) their themes as a full time job, which I think is pretty sweet. It also comes with a lot of responsibility, and the money allows these authors to truly focus, innovate, and make their themes more advanced, which advances WordPress as a whole. The bar gets set and all new themes are measured against them. It forces continued functionality and innovation. I truly believe that if the ability to monetize these themes didn’t exist for most of these authors, the quality of themes out there would be much lower because it wouldn’t be worth their time to try to raise the bar. Would we even have CMS themes for WordPress yet?

We also need to remember that this isn’t really any different than doing custom WordPress themes for people (such as Unique Blog Designs).  Premium WordPress themes have made it so people can afford a custom quality theme (in most cases) from an affordable price for a blogger or small business.  People with high income blogs can still afford to get there theme custom made.

One point I would also like to make is that I do think that people with WordPress blogs have an obligation to only promote products they do use or would use if the need for it presented itself. I’ve always made sure to be selective and only promote themes or plugins that I felt were truly of premium quality. I also try to only promote ones that are well supported by their authors. I can think of at least 20 that I’ve chosen not to promote here because of a number of reasons (invalid code, I felt wasn’t premium quality, etc.).

Anyway, regardless of my opinion of them, over the last 8 months premium WordPress themes have really found a home in the WordPress community, and I’ve even noticed that blogs have been created strictly for the purpose of promoting these themes. From the people I’ve talked to, the opinions of this market are mixed.

One person firmly against the premium themes market as a whole is Justin Tadlock, who recently wrote a post titled Screw the WordPress Themes Market. Justin is someone that I’ve been following for quite awhile now and have a huge respect for his opinions on all things WordPress. He releases a lot of great free WordPress themes, free WordPress plugins, and also blogs regularly about WordPress. Here is an excerpt from his post:

WordPress was built from a community of people willing to share freely. Yes, even themes. What? Yes, themes were free at one point. Good Great themes were free at one point.

I’m not going to beat around the bush here — stop releasing pay-for-use themes.

Sure, there’s a market there, but I don’t want to see every single mediocre theme have a price tag attached to it. Just because it’s a magazine-type theme doesn’t mean it’s a premium theme, or that it’s worth some form of funds anyway.

If you’re going to release a theme and call it premium, then you need to — in the words of a high school cheerleader — “bring it.”

I don’t have a problem with people releasing themes for money. It’s something I’ve considered on several occasions. What I do have a problem with is users getting screwed out of $100, $50, or even $30 because they bought a theme that’s mediocre at best, a theme that has invalid code, or don’t get the support they need for using the theme.

Reading Justin’s post actually reminded me of what I was saying when I wrote the post Premium WordPress Theme Responsibilities a couple months ago. To many people are releasing average themes and charging for them.

It seems everyone has an opinion about premium themes, and I’d love to hear yours. What is your opinion of premium WordPress themes?

In the past we’ve talked about how to add a print button to your WordPress theme. Today I wanted to give you the javascript code you need to create an Email This button on your WordPress blog.

Before getting to the code, I wanted to first say that this code is designed to allow readers to click on the button and have it open up their default email software and create a subject and link that point to the post the reader is currently visiting. This code is not designed to allow readers to contact the blog author.

If you are wanting your readers to be able to contact you, I recommend you use one of the many great contact form WordPress plugins available. You should never embed your email address into some HTML code because it will be picked up by spam bots. Contact forms prevent spammers from finding your email address. The other thing you can do is offer “EmailAddress AT EmailCompany DOT com” (which your email address information filled in) to avoid spammers.

Okay, so back to the Email button code. Here is the javascript you will need:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!-- Begin
function isPPC() {
if (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("PPC") != -1) return true;
else return false;
}
if(isPPC()) {
document.write('<a class="contact" HREF=\"mailto:\?subject\=Take a look at this page I found, ‘ + document.title + ‘?body=You can see this page at: ‘ + window.location + ‘\” onMouSEOver=”window.status=\’Send your friends e-mail about this page\’; return true” TITLE=”Send your friends e-mail about this page”>Email to a Friend<\/a>’);
}
else { document.write(’<a class=”contact” HREF=\”mailto:\?body\=Take a look at this page I found titled ‘ + document.title + ‘. You can see this page at: ‘ + window.location + ‘\” onMouSEOver=”window.status=\’Send your friends e-mail about this page\’; return true” TITLE=”Send your friends e-mail about this page” rel=”nofollow”>Email This!<\/a>’);
}
// End –>
</script>

This will create an email where the reader can enter in someone’s email address and send them a link to your post/page.

Open source is a wonderful thing.   Probably my favorite part about it is that everyone who uses open source software can find ways to help improve it.   So, what can you do to help WordPress grow?  Weblog Tools Collection did a great job recently when they tackled this exact question in their post 24 Ways to Contribute to WordPress.

The first three things that come to mind when I think of contributing to WordPress are creating WordPress themes, creating WordPress plugins, or creating a WordPress blog to help the community.   If you’d like to see the other 21, click over to check out the list.