Theme Pages Text

QUESTION:
How do I add more text on my FAQ, Gallery, Contact, and Links pages like on the Theme demos?

ANSWER:
These special Theme pages are set up in such a way that when you enter your information in the Site Options pages, it’s displayed on your site through hard coding on a few php files included with your Theme. That’s the magic that makes these pages so easy for non-techies to update. Adding additional text to those pages is incredibly simple too.

Say you want to add some text above your contact form with additional instructions or information. In your WP administration area, click on “Pages” from the left side menu. Then, from the list of pages, click on “contact”. You’ll notice that the large text area is blank, just as you left it when you (or I, depending on who set up your site) added the page during installation. To add text to the page, just type away in that large text area. Make sure to click on “Update” to save your changes when you’re finished.

You can do this on any special Theme page. It’s that easy!

Theme Sidebar Help

QUESTION:
How come when I install a Theme and set the sidebar options they don’t show up on my site?

ANSWER:
In a fresh WordPress installation, most versions of WP include some widgets already set up in the sidebar. All you need to do is remove them. Then the options you select using the Site Options page will display on your site. The same is true if you’re migrating from another theme that you used widgets with.

To remove widgets from your site’s sidebar, in your WP admin area click on the Appearance menu tab. Then click on Widgets. Drag and drop all widgets from the widget area back to the inactive widget area.

Remember that ANA Theme Sidebar options and widgets can not peacefully co-exist. You can either use what’s included with your Theme or pick your own widgets for your sidebar.

Keeping WP Updated

Every so often, the good old WordPress team releases an update to the WP software. It’s in your best interest to keep your version up to date at all times.

New releases of WordPress usually address security issues, among other things. The WP team fixes any reported bugs found in previous versions. Updating to the most recent version will obviously make your site more secure.

This alone is reason enough for me to keep all my WordPress sites updated. I take site security seriously.

I run 20+ WordPress-based sites. Upgrading can be time-consuming but I force myself to do it anyway because it’s that important. For security reasons alone.

If I can keep all my sites updated, so can you.

The simplest way to upgrade your WordPress installation is right in the WP admin area. When you see the update nag notice at the top of your WP dashboard, click on the “Please update now” link.

(Before updating, always back up your files and database. Just in case.)

On the update page, click on “Update Automatically”. Hold onto yourself for a few seconds while WP works its magic and you’ll see a message that your upgrade has been successful. There are more complicated ways to update WP but for most users, updating automatically is the way to go.

That’s it! For the sake of your site, why not take a minute to do this?

While we’re on the subject, why not keep your plugins updated as well?

Plugin updates usually consist of the author fixing bugs and adding features. Sometimes they address security issues. In any case plugins should always be kept updated too.

In WordPress, whenever a Plugin has an update available, you’ll see a little number in a circle (which represents the amount of updates available) in the Plugin Menu tab. Click on that to see a list of updates. From here you can update each plugin individually or in a bunch. The WP interface guides you through it like a solicitous friend.

One note of caution about updating plugins. If you’re running a brand-spanking-new-just-released version of WordPress like a good website owner, you might want to wait a few days before updating your plugins.

Sometimes it takes plugin authors a little time to test their plugin and adjust it to work properly with the newest version of WP. Since WordPress is so awesome, you can find out what version of WP each plugin is compatible with by clicking on the “View Version Details” link in the update notice. On the right side of the information pop-up, you will see a box labeled “FYI”. Look for the “compatible up to:” line. If that matches your WP version, you’re good to go. Update away!

Otherwise, wait a few days and check on the compatibility again. If it’s still not compatible, you can click on the link to the WordPress.org Plugin Page to see if there’s more information available.

Keeping plugins up to date is generally not quite as important, security-wise, as keeping your WordPress installation up to date. It’s still worth taking the time to do.

Updating to the most recent version of WordPress is easier and quicker than picking up the pieces of a hacked site. Don’t learn that lesson the hard way.

Fun with functions.php

Here’s a few tricks for your WordPress site’s functions.php file. Locate the file in your theme directory. Place the code anywhere in between the starting <?php and ending ?> tags. Make a back-up before making any changes!

• To remove unnecessary items from your site’s header, add the following lines:
  
  
  remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘rsd_link’);
  remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’);
  remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘feed_links’, 2);
  remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘index_rel_link’);
  remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wlwmanifest_link’);
  remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘feed_links_extra’, 3);
  remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘start_post_rel_link’, 10, 0);
  remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘parent_post_rel_link’, 10, 0);
  remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘adjacent_posts_rel_link’, 10, 0);

• To remove the top admin bar from WP v3.0 and higher, add this chunk of code:
  
  
  function my_function_admin_bar(){
  return false;
  }
  add_filter( ‘show_admin_bar’ , ‘my_function_admin_bar’);

• Add protection to your WP admin login page. When you enter a wrong password or an invalid username, an error message comes up in the login page. If a hacker gets one element right the error message will help them identify that. Add the following code to make the error message box come up empty:
  
  
  add_filter(‘login_errors’,create_function(‘$a’, “return null;”));

• In standard WP installations, [...] is added at the end of each post excerpt. That’s ugly. You can change this to anything you like with thise code. Change the “Read More” to anything you like:
  
  
  function custom_excerpt_more($more) {
  return ‘Read More…’;
  }
  add_filter(‘excerpt_more’, ‘custom_excerpt_more’);

Now wasn’t that fun?