SEO meta techniques for a wordpress blog

single.php for single post
category.php for any type category/term
index.php for blog home/default template for other types

<?php
if(is_category()){
    $cat = get_query_var('cat');
    $cmeta_desc = '';
    $cposts = get_posts(array('numberposts' => -1, 'post_type' => 'post', 'category' => $cat));
    if($cposts){
        foreach ($cposts as $ck => $cp) {
            $cmeta_desc .= $cp->post_title.",";
        }
    }
    $cmeta_desc = rtrim($cmeta_desc, ",");
    ?>
    <meta name="description" content="<?php echo $cmeta_desc;?>">
    <meta name="keywords" content="<?php single_cat_title();?>">
<?php
} else if(is_single()) {
    $tags = '';
    $tag_list = wp_get_post_tags($post->ID);
    foreach ($tag_list as $tk => $tag) {
        $tags .= $tag->name.",";
    }
    $tags = rtrim($tags, ",");
?>
    <meta name="description" content="<?php echo $post->post_title;?>">
    <meta name="keywords" content="<?php echo $tags;?>">    
<?php
} else {
?>
    <meta name="description" content="PHP developer, tech savvy, tech blogger, freelancer">
    <meta name="keywords" content="php, mysql, wordpress, codeigniter, web developer, freelancer, web consultant">  
<?php
}
?>

WordPress custom URL rewrites and tips

            add_filter('rewrite_rules_array','wp_insertMyRewriteRules');
            add_filter('query_vars','wp_insertMyRewriteQueryVars');

            // Adding a new rule
            function wp_insertMyRewriteRules($rules)
            {
                $newrules = array();
                $newrules['news/(.*)/?'] = 'index.php?pagename=news&reporter=$matches[1]';
                return $newrules + $rules;
            }

            // Adding the 'reporter' var so that WP recognizes it
            function wp_insertMyRewriteQueryVars($vars)
            {
                array_push($vars, 'reporter');
                return $vars;
            }

1. Avoid using query vars like id - use something more unique (like 'reporter') to avoid clashes with WordPress.
2. Don't flush rules on every init! It's bad practice, and will write to .htaccess and call database updates on every page load!
3. WordPress will always flush permalinks whenever you update a post or your permalink structure (simply update your permalinks when you make changes to your code).

Usefull function for custom post type in wordpress and more

I’m gonna share someuseful function here which is really handy for custom post type. Some guys really don’t know about those functions, as i got those useful after digging some solutions for real life problem.

1. is_post_type_archive(‘POST-TYPE-NAME’), this is needed when you are checking something for post type archive/listing page like in common header/footer. we frequently use for add some js/css or some class in common places.

2. get_query_var(‘var_name’), we frequently use this to get category name, its retrieve corresponding value of given variable name. I have got this most useful when i need the slug/post_name of a post of any post type. For the last couple of month, i used below code to get last/second segment of URL of a post :

$subpath = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$tokens = explode('/', $subpath);
$scn_seg = $tokens[sizeof($tokens)-3];

But that was the extra effort to get URL segment for a post, we can do it by get_query_var(), we need to pass post type name as a parameter to this function like for ‘news’ post type we will use get_query_var(‘news’).

$news_post_slug = get_query_var('news');

So for the URL : http://example.com/news/lorem-ipsum-dolor/, we can get the post slug(post_name used in DB) by get_query_var(‘news’).

3. wp_deregister_script() sometimes we use plugins for some extra facilities like custom post type/twitter feed, plugins use wp_head() to inject its necessary js/css or others function to hook, same as for wp_footer(). wp_deregister_script() is needed when we use our own js like jquery library. So there will be 2 jquery file when using own with wp’s native 1. and sometimes for new bee, its hard to find out why js error occurred and js functions are not working …. wp_head() renders some others links also. to avoid this type of situation, we need to remove that, we can use just wp_deregister_script('jquery'); in theme’s functions.php file.

This is useful to give a condition for admin section like below, otherwise admin panel’s may create problem:

if( !is_admin()){
   wp_deregister_script('jquery');
}

Its also better to add your own library just after de-register wp’s native jquery like below :

if( !is_admin()){
	wp_deregister_script('jquery');
	wp_register_script('jquery', ("http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"), false, '1.3.2');
	wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
}

Finally its handy to remove the jQuery from your wordPress font-end/theme files, add wp_deregister_script(‘jquery’) just before wp_head() on your theme’s header.php file like below.

wp_deregister_script('jquery');
wp_head();

Will add some other WP function soon which we need frequently in development.

Show user login form in sidebar/template in wordpress

Recently, i was looking for a solution to show a simple user login form in site sidebar, googled but it referred for using plugin like sidebar-login. Suddenly i got wordpress have already its native function to use for login form.

wp_login_form() allows to add the form in any place you wish. some parameters exist there to control the form attributes. i can just put your attention to the following :

• ‘redirect‘ — where to redirect after login
• ‘remember‘ — whether to remember the values.

Let us see an example:

if (is_user_logged_in()) {
   echo 'Hello, ', $user_login, '. <a href="', wp_logout_url(), '" title="Logout">Logout</a>';
} else {
   wp_login_form();
}

here, we just checked for logged in user to show different message.
If you want you can customize the look of the form by defining extra css putting it within a div as following screen.

So instead of using a plugin with extra feature,using native function is as easy as better!

WordPress ‘Featured Image’, how to use…

WordPress stands for most common and popular CMS now a days. Sometimes we need just a media field for a image to be added in a post. WordPress latest 3+ version has this facility, so you don’t need to use any ‘custom field type’.

In default theme, this feature enabled by default, but when you are using a custom made theme or a theme of your choice which you downloaded, but not supported ‘featured Image’ section, then what to do.

Its very simple for wp developer to add that support to your theme. Add below code to your theme’s functions.php file :

add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');

Now you will see that section in your admin sidebar when adding/editing any page/post. And also you will find option at your ‘Screen Options’ section as below, so from there you can enable/disable that for future need.

In right sidebar, ‘Featured Image’ section after adding a image:

Now, You knew how to add theme support and how to add an image on admin panel. So to show this image on front-end, in any single post/page or in any loop, just add below code to show it between wp post loop:

<?php the_post_thumbnail();?>

This will show that image as you added in admin panel with that image ratio. Note that this code will execute when you are using wordpress’s default loop code like <?php if ( have_posts() ) while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?> and <?php endwhile; ?>

If you use custom loop code using other function like get_posts() or custom query like $wpdb->get_results(), then it depends on that way and you have to pull data with correspondence format.

Use, modify and share your thoughts and happy blogging

Add Page Excerpt Option in WordPress Admin Panel

WordPress is not a blogging platform now, has many other features, options, resources, plugins to fulfill your requirements.

In some wp version(like 3.1), for ‘pages’, no ‘excerpt’ option, even not option in ‘Screen Options’ to display it . So an easy way to add this to your wp admin panel, follow below steps:

add the following code to your functions.php file.

 //Add Excerpts to Pages 
function themeprefix_add_page_excerpt_support() {
 add_post_type_support( 'page', 'excerpt' ); 
} 
add_action('init', 'themeprefix_add_page_excerpt_support');

We have done this excerpt option by a wordpress hook. At first we used add_post_type_support function to use a specific post type option then we packed within a function. And this function called by a worpress hook/filter to make it available for admin panel.

Functions.php is found in “wp-content\themes\[your-currently-active-theme]\”.

Cheers