SEO Update

# Dig your internal traffic analytics for traffic drops or bad trends;

# Perform [site:yoursite.com] search in Google to see if Google reports same number of indexed URLs;

# Check if Google Webmaster Tools report any problems;

# Take a look if Google toolbar PR has changed (graybar PR might be a signal of penalty);

# Check your site ranking for a “domain-name” search (without the TLD).

via 10 Ways to Diagnose a Google Penalty.

Secure Your Wordpress Blog in 7 Easy Steps

I recently had the misfortune of suffering a series of Malware/Trojan virus attacks on this and some other Wordpress blogs we operate. I had been planning on taking measures to protect our Wordpress applications from potential attacks such as this but like many other things, procrastination took first priority.

via Secure Your Wordpress Blog in 7 Easy Steps | SearchRank Blog.

In-Depth Analysis Tools

When you need more detailed information, for example when you’re investigating your own website, or your competitor’s, you need tools that go more into depth. These tools might show link building efforts, structures, or maybe even data from the past.

Although Google’s Webmaster Tools also can provide quite some link related info, I’m not going to mention this one, because it can only be used for your own sites, and not -for instance- competitors.

via Indispensable Link Building Tools | Wiep.net.

Get homepage images without a custom field

When the first magazine themes arrived a couple of years ago, custom fields were the big thing that drove them. Trouble is, everyone hates filling them out. Thankfully, it is very easy to circumnavigate the need for custom fields with a piece of functions.php code. We’ll also be resizing the image, using phpthumb, the which was used in the example above.

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// Get URL of first image in a post
 
function catch_that_image() {
 
global $post, $posts;
 
$first_img = '';
 
ob_start();
 
ob_end_clean();
 
$output = preg_match_all('//i', $post->post_content, $matches);
 
$first_img = $matches [1] [0];
 
// no image found display default image instead
 
if(empty($first_img)){
 
$first_img = "/images/default.jpg";
 
}
 
return $first_img;
 
}

All that is left to do is display the image on the homepage, which we can do with the following code:

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<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/phpthumb/phpThumb.php?src=<?php echo catch_that_image() ?>&w=200" alt=""/>

The image will be resized to 200 pixels wide.

Source – WordPress Support Forums

via 10 tricks to make your WordPress theme stand out.

FreeFoto.com : Lots of images, orgnized in different galleries.

Dexhaus : Good site with excellent photos.

Kavewall : images and textures.

Digital Dreamers : Different falleries.

StockVault : Very well-known, and very good of course.

FreePhotosBank : Good choice.

via 50 sites to find free stock images.

1. WP Security Scan

This very easy to use plugin will sort out some of the basic security issues with WordPress – it’ll change your database’s name and alert you to flaws in your installation’s security, amongst other features.

Download.

2. Protect your plugins

Plugins are an easy way for a hacker to get access to your blog if they’ve got flaws in them. An easy way for hackers to find out which plugins you’re using is to go to /wp-content/plugins/, and they’ll find all the plugins that you’re using. The solution? Put a blank index.html file in the wp-content/plugins/ folder.

via 10 Easy Ways to Secure your WordPress Blog.

Protest Loudly Against Spam Blogs to Those Who Host Them

Report specific scam, scraper, and spam blogs to those who host them. Blogging about it won’t change anything. Go to the sources and those who host them.

Demand Google’s Blogspot/Blogger or WordPress.com, and other blog and social media hosting services to clean up their sites and remove all spam blogs and help you fight back against copyright infringements and plagiarism. It’s their responsibility, so remind them.

via The Year of Original Content: How to Fight Back Against Abusers | The Blog Herald.

Here are my five favorite RSS plug-ins for WordPress:

Subscribe Remind by Trevor Fitzgerald – places a small reminder at the end of each post to remind readers to subscribe to your RSS feed. Check out the below screenshot’s very last line after the related posts. (11,689 all time downloads from the WordPress Plug-in Directory)

subscriberemind

WP Greet Box by Thaya Kareeson – This plugin inserts a welcome note with a link to your RSS feed at the beginning of a blog entry very similar to what the Subscribe Remind plugin does. However, this plug in is setup for referrals from Twitter (pictured below), Google, Yahoo!, Digg, sSumbleupon, Technorati, etc. Plus it has a admin page where you can create your own welcome message for other services. (26,352 all time downloads from the WordPress Plug-in Directory)

wpgreetbox

RSS Footer by Joost de Valk – This is another plugin that adds an extra line to your blog posts that invite your visitors to become subscribers of your RSS feed. Very nice admin interface which allows you to customize the text and its location in your blog post. (22,671 all time downloads from the WordPress Plug-in Directory)

Extra Feed Links by scribu – This small plugin adds auto-discovery links for RSS feeds based on what type of page and content is displayed. It then shows that RSS feed to your browser and it will then add links to those various other RSS feeds for category, tag, search, author and comments. More options to subscribe will usually result in more subscriptions. (2,411 all time downloads from the WordPress Plug-in Directory)

Feedburner Email Subscription Form in a Sidebar Widget. This one is not actually a plugin but a way I get an email RSS subscription form in my sidebar for visitors to sign up for email based delivery of my sites RSS feeds.

To get this form in the sidebar I simply choose a Text widget in the appearance admin panel and then paste in the email subscription form code from Feedburner’s website into its text area and save it. After that I now have the below text box in my sites sidebar.

emailsubscriberssfeeds

via Five Tools to Increase the RSS Subscribers for your WordPress Blog | Weblog Tools Collection.