WordPress Appearance Editor Menu Option is Missing. I recently encountered an issue where the option to edit my theme files from the WordPress back end was gone. My WordPress Appearance Editor Missing – Gone! As it turns out, a setting within the iThemes Security was the culprit. Fortunately the fix was simple, and I was back up and running again within a couple of minutes. But, figured I’d quickly share the fix in case others encounter the same issue.
How to make an .htaccess file in Windows; In the following simple solution, I cover the process of creating an .htaccess file from within Windows. By default, Windows does not allow you to name a file .htaccess. Instead, you will receive the error “You must type a filename”. However, we can force Windows to name the file .htaccess, here’s how.
It is easy to Embed Mp3 Music, Audio Files, or Songs on a Website or Webpage, so that your visitors can choose to play music in the background while they browse your site. This can be accomplished via the embed tag. However, some browsers like Firefox might not be natively hooked to a default media player, leaving the user to install additional plugins. Sure you could embed Windows Media Player, but the code would not function if the user was without Windows Media Player installed.
Keep Reading » How to Embed Mp3 Music on a Website
WordPress Disable Image Attachment Page Links – In the following simple solution, I’ll show you one way to Remove or Prevent Attachment Pages from appearing for every image attachment you add to WordPress. Because WordPress stores attached image data in the database as a Post Type, hence a URL is automatically created for each image. As a work-around, one can simply redirect the attachment URL to the parent post of the attached image.
Keep Reading » WordPress Disable Image Attachment Page Links
In this Simple Solution I cover how to Reset Default Zoom Level for your Web Browser (Tested in Firefox and Internet Explorer). There are often times when you might use the Zoom feature of your Browser either intentionally or by accident. The Zoom feature allows everything on a Web Page to scale larger or smaller, making it easier to read the content by zooming in +, or fit the content into your screen by zooming out -.
Keep Reading » Reset Zoom in Firefox and Internet Explorer
Easily Put YouTube Videos in your WordPress Posts: There are many plugins available that can be used to Embed YouTube Videos into your WordPress Posts, but did you know that a default WordPress installation already ships with this capability? Embedding those YouTube Videos into WordPress is much easier than one might think.
WordPress Double Dashes -- Removed on Post: By Default the WordPress formatting API automatically converts two dashes or double dashes -- to a single dash –. If you are posting code syntax or Linux command line entries on your blog, this can quickly pose a problem. There are many hard coded core fixes and plugins that work around the dash issue. However, an easier fix is already built into WordPress. Simply use the code button in the html editor.
In the following simple solution, I will show you how to replace all global occurrences of a URL link (or any other text) within your WordPress post content using SQL Search and Replace Query from phpMyAdmin. This is useful if you need to change a link or text that might appear in more than one post, without going in and manually editing each post by hand to reflect the new link or text.
One way to Fix Simple Tags after Upgrading to WordPress 2.9; In the following simple solution, I’ll show you how I fixed the Broken Simple Tags Plugin after upgrading to WordPress 2.9. It appears that the Plugin Author has hard coded values to check the version of WordPress that is currently installed. If the value does not match, the plugin will not function.
When attempting to upgrade WordPress, you might encounter a Fatal error like we did on one of our WordPress installs when upgrading to WordPress 2.8.5. The error is typically encountered when automatically upgrading (from the dashboard) WordPress installations containing a lot of posts and or using many plugins. The Fatal error might appear as follows:
Keep Reading » Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted
In the Following Simple Solution I will show you how to Mass Delete WordPress Comments directly from the WordPress database. If you have hundreds of pending WordPress comments that are mainly spam comments, it can take forever to delete them manually via the WordPress dashboard. By using the following process to delete WordPress Comments, you can acheive this goal in a matter of seconds.
In the following simple solution, I cover how to Disable WordPress Autosave function. A lot of people are having problems with the WordPress Autosave feature. The WordPress Autosave feature was intended to automatically save your work in the background after a certain period of time to prevent you from losing your work. However many are finding that their most recent post or page edits are getting lost when they go to preview and publish the entry.
In the following simple solution, I’ll show you how to Search and Replace SQL database information from PhpMyAdmin. This SQL query method is extremely helpful when you need to replace multiple text strings and do not wish to export the entire database just to make those changes. With the SQL Search and Replace (SQL Query Method) the database changes can be made instantly on the fly.
Exclude specific categories from being displayed in the sidebar in WordPress 2.8. In the following simple solution, I show you how to keep select categories from being displayed in your sidebar on your WordPress pages and posts. This is very useful if you have a lot of categories, or have changed the content of your blog, have been indexed for the content and no longer wish to use or display specific categories on your WordPress site. Upon completion of this tutorial, the permalink structure of the hidden categories are still made available to the search engines, however, the categories you have chosen to hide are no longer displayed from your sidebar to the visitor.
Keep Reading » Exclude Categories from Sidebar – WordPress 2.8
Adsense WordPress Shortcode: In the following simple solution, I will show you how to create a WordPress Shortcode that can be used to display your Google Adsense ads anywhere within your posts or pages. This simple function added to your Themes functions.php file, makes it very easy to include your Adsense Ads with post or page content while you are writing the content for your blog.
Show More than 15 Recent Posts in WordPress 2.8 +. By default the number of recent posts that can be displayed in your WordPress sidebar is (at most 15). Maybe you want to display 30 recent posts or more? It is really a shame that the default limit is 15 posts, so in the following simple solution, I will explain how to modify the WordPress Recent Posts Sidebar Widget entry to Display More Than 15 Recent Posts.
Keep Reading » Display more than 15 recent posts – WordPress
Margin Spacing Different in Firefox than Internet Explorer: If you have spent a good amount time messing with CSS, you may have noticed that the margins set for a Class or ID can often preview different in Firefox and Internet Explorer (IE 6 and earlier versions). In most cases the alignment problem will appear if you have margins applied to a floating element. This issue is also known as the IE6 Double Margin Bug. In the following simple solution, I’ll show you how to make the margin spacing appear the same in both Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers.
Keep Reading » Margin Differences – Internet Explorer and Firefox
In the following simple solution, I’ll show you how to remove the wlwmanifest and EditURI links from the WordPress head section of your blog. You only need these links if you plan to use Windows Live Writer to write to your WordPress blog. If you do not plan to use Windows Live Writer, you can safely remove these header links to slightly reduce the size and load time of your pages while potentially increasing SEO by moving the important site content upwords.
In the following simple solution, I show you how to use a little php code snippet to automatically update your WordPress Copyright Date every year (appending the new date automatically). The process is super simple, but I figured that there may be others out there looking to accomplish the same goal and thought it would be nice to post an example.
If your encountering a warning in WordPress stating Warning: array_keys() [function.array-keys]: The first argument should be an array in /home/yourhome/public_html/yoursite/wp-includes/widgets.php on line 1044, your not alone. This error is fairly common amongst many WordPress users just after upgrading, moving or reinstalling WordPress.
In the following simple solution, I will show you how to exclude or hide categories from your WordPress Sidebar by using the PHP Code Widget Plugin. In the past, I explained how to accomplish this by hard coding the changes into the WordPress wp-includes/widgets.php file. However, past methods may cause you to lose those exclusions when upgrading, if the widgets.php file has changed.
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at… If your receiving an error like this in your web browser just after trying to edit a file, the culprit is most likely that there are spaces, misc characters or newlines either just before an opening <?php tag or right after a closing ?> tag. In WordPress, the problem may appear from a corrupt wp-config.php file. However, the problem can occur in other files as well.
In the following simple solution, I cover the process of removing the (year, month, day) date from WordPress day and name based permalinks (post urls). There was a time when many professional bloggers recommended using a day and name based permalink structure. However, for present day SEO, many bloggers now recommend using simple name based or category and name based permalinks.
Keep Reading » WordPress – Removing Post Date from Permalinks
Embed PDF in WordPress: In the following simple solution, I’ll show you how to easily embed PDF files into your WordPress posts. There are many times in which I have needed to embed PDF files into a page or post for clients, enabling a visitor to read the PDF document right from the page. The process of embedding PDF files into a WordPress post is fairly simple, assuming your using a WordPress version later than 2.6.
IO Error Uploading Images in WordPress. When browsing a local drive for a picture to upload, you may encounter the: IO error. An error occurred in the upload. Please try again later. It seems there are a lot of WordPress users, including myself that have encountered this issue. In the following simple solution, I’ll show you what I did to address the problem and get my WordPress Image uploads to stick.
Change the default WordPress admin login username: As I have previously mentioned , new WordPress installations, by default, use admin for the administrator username. This admin account provides access to the WordPress backend and grants access to all aspects of the WordPress installation. Since the default administrator login (admin) is well known, this can become a security vulnerability. A hacker could perform a brute force attack on the account and retrieve your WordPress admin login password, potentially compromising your site.
As of WordPress 2.5, and beyond, the <meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress” /> meta tag was moved from the template to the core of WordPress. This means that you can no longer simply remove the call from the template. We now need to include a function in functions.php In order to remove meta name generator” content tag. I feel it’s important to remove this tag, because it exposes the WordPress version your site is running which could lead a person to expose vulnerabilities for the particular WordPress version and further compromise your site.
Keep Reading » Remove meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress”
Change the excerpt length: There are many cases where a blog author might want to increase or decrease the length of WordPress post excerpts “the_excerpt()“. Excerpts are basically condensed descriptions of your blog posts and are commonly used to provide introductory “teaser” information about the post. In the following simple solution, I’ll show you how to lengthen or shorten the excerpt in WordPress to suite your personal blogging needs.
In the following simple solution, I show you how to turn off or disable the WordPress Post Revision feature. Although I enjoy the look, feel and new features of WordPress 2.6, I simply find the WordPress Post Revisions to be entirely annoying. I’ve seen this feature wreak complete havoc on some great post ranking plugins and don’t want to ever risk posting duplicate content. Because of this, I have disabled the WordPress Post Revisions feature on many of my blogs. You can too, here is how I did it.
Keep Reading » How to Disable or Turn Off WordPress Post Revisions
In the following tutorial, I’ll cover how to Delete or remove Existing WordPress Post Revisions. With WordPress 2.6 and beyond came a feature called Post Revisions. Some people feel that this feature clutters up the database with redundant content. I am one of those who can do without the Post Revisions feature. I have actually seen Post Revisions displayed as redundant posts in conjunction with some popular post rank displaying plugins. So, here is how to remove WordPress Post Revisions from your SQL database.
Keep Reading » How to Delete Existing WordPress Post Revisions
How to redirect index.html and index.php to the home page. We recently did some website work for a local business. The business was using a static html website and we wanted to convert the site to a WordPress based platform for multiple reasons. During the conversion, we needed to not only perform 301 redirects for all of the currently indexed html pages, but also perform a redirect for the index.html page. This was a bit more complicated as you cannot simply perform a 301 redirect on an index page. Here is how we did it.
Keep Reading » Redirect index.html and index.php to the home page
Changing the default WordPress admin login username: By default, WordPress installations use the admin username. The admin account provides access to the WordPress backend and all characteristics of the installation. Since this is well known, it can become a security vulnerability. A hacker can easily perform a brute force attack on the account to retrieve the WordPress admin login password.
How to Exclude specific categories from being displayed in the sidebar in WordPress 2.6 through 2.7.1. In the following simple solution, I show you How to keep select categories from displaying in your sidebar on your WordPress pages and posts. This is very useful if you have a lot of categories, or have changed the content of your blog, have been indexed for the content and no longer wish to use or display specific categories on your WordPress site. Upon completion of this tutorial, the permalink structure of the hidden categories are still made available to the search engines, however, the categories you have chosen to hide are no longer displayed from your blog sidebar to the visitor.
Keep Reading » Exclude categories from sidebar in WordPress 2.6-2.7.1
Ultimate Tag Warrior is pretty much obsolete (at least if your using the latest WordPress version). However, if you used to use UTW, and have since migrated to another tagging system such as the WordPress default tagging system or Simple Tags, you may want to completely remove the old Ultimate Tag Warrior tagging structure from your database to save some space and reduce clutter.
Keep Reading » How to remove Ultimate Tag Warrior MySQL Tables
Getting Highslide Working with Nextgen Gallery for WordPress is not complicated. Highslide is even supported by NextGen Gallery. However, the support in NextGen Gallery will only get the basic functions of Highslide to work. By default, the Highslide control bar navigation and captions do not work when used in conjunction with NextGen Gallery.
Keep Reading » Integrating Highslide with WordPress Nextgen Gallery
The following tutorial explains how to fix the “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site. Operation Aborted” error that is often encountered just after implementing either the Lightbox, Lightbox 2, Thickbox or Slimbox WordPress plugins. This problem effects Internet Explorer only and causes the page to partially load and then ultimately crash, resulting in an error stating that “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site”, Operation Aborted. As it turns out we need to make the Lightbox or Lightbox based script load after the rest of the page has loaded. Firefox and other browsers are not prone to this problem.
Keep Reading » Fixing the Operation Aborted error when using the Lightbox WordPress Plugin
In the following tutorial, I show you how to change the maximum size of an uploaded image in WordPress 2.5 and beyond. By default, when you upload an image in WordPress using the “full size” image option, the image is automatically resized to a maximum width of 500px. This works fine in most cases, for most people. However, if you are using a theme where your post content is utilizing a width larger than 500px, you may want to upload larger images to help maximize the space you have to work with.
Keep Reading » WordPress – Set the maximum width of an uploaded image
How to make your Windows Vista administrative account act like an XP admin account: As we all know, with the introduction of Windows Vista has come the inclusion of many new security features. We might even consider some of these features overkill. If you are using good real time protection antivirus software and real time firewall protection, you can, in most cases, turn off the additional security features that have been included with Windows Vista. I personally like to run my Windows boxes on an admin account with full administrative rights. This eliminates any need to give permission or hand over control for specific access rights. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to do the same.
Keep Reading » How to make Windows Vista admin account act like XP
If you’ve used Windows Vista for any great amount of time, you have most likely seen UAC (User Account Control). UAC is that annoying, nagging, “Windows Needs your permission to continue” popup window that seems to appear whenever you attempt to run just about any program. The UAC prompt typically occurs when attempting to run any program that requires administrative rights in Windows Vista.
Keep Reading » Disabling UAC (User Account Control) prompt in Vista
In the following quick tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up Windows Vista to display hidden system files and folders. Setting up Windows Vista to display hidden system files and folders is a bit different than it is with Windows XP. In Vista you can find these options in the Control Panel. Before proceeding, remember that system files are hidden for a reason. Be careful and cautious.
Keep Reading » How to view hidden system files and folders in Vista
A friend of mine contacted me the other day with the following problem: Help, I can’t find the static page option in WordPress. In the newer releases of WordPress, a blogger has the option to make their entry or home page appear as a chronological list of posts (posts page) or as an introductory static page. Using the WordPress static page feature will make your blog present much like a regular website. However, what many don’t know is that this option is not automatically available and does not appear by default.
Hiding WordPress Categories: In the following simple solution, I am going to show you How to keep a selection of WordPress Categories from displaying in your sidebar on your WordPress pages and posts. This is very useful if you have a lot of categories, or have changed the content of your blog, have been indexed for the content and no longer wish to use or display specific categories on your WordPress site. Upon completion of this tutorial, the permalink structure of the hidden categories are still made available to the search engines, however, the categories you have chosen to hide are no longer displayed on your blog to the visitor.
Xampp and similar localhost webservers that can be run from a local computer do not have mod_rewrite enabled by default. Furthermore, the AllowOverride directive is usually set to none, causing Apache to ignore an .htaccess file. If this is the case, your WordPress installation might return a 404 error, stating post not found and you would only be able to access your posts via a default permalink structure. I.E. http://localhost/?p=2. In the following simple solution, I show you how to make WordPress Permalinks work in Xampp and other localhost server installations. Upon completion, you will also have the ability to use .htaccess files on your local server.
Keep Reading » How to make WordPress Permalinks work in Xampp
In the following simple tutorial, I’ll cover the process of removing the Comments Off text from all of your WordPress Category/Archive lists. A WordPress Blogger might want to do this if they have disabled comments globally and no longer need to display information related to Comments. If you need to Globally disable WordPress comments, see the Globally Disable WordPress Comments post.
Keep Reading » How to Remove Comments Off text from Category List
Like most WordPress bloggers, you probably like to keep your WordPress up to date. However, when there are major changes done to the WordPress core, some plugins may fail to work as they used to. Such is the case with WordPress 2.3-2.5 series upgrade and Ultimate Tag Warrior. Those that were using Ultimate Tag Warrior, prior to WordPress 2.3 are likely to face some problems when performing a WordPress upgrade. This is mainly due to the fact that WordPress 2.3 and beyond includes it’s own tagging structure.
Keep Reading » Ultimate Tag Warrior replacement for WordPress 2.5
The following tutorial explains how to use .htaccess to redirect underscores _ in a tag url to dashes -. This is very important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because many search engines including Google do not recognize underscores as spaces between words. They do however, recognize dashes to separate words and tag keyword phrases.
Keep Reading » Using .htaccess to redirect underscores to dashes
The following tutorial covers the process of quickly and easily changing or converting your WordPress Tags from using an underscore _ to a dash – for search engine optimization. Google and other search engines do not recognize an underscore _ as a space and therefore will merge multiple keyword phrases into a singular word which is not what you want for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your keyword tag phrases. To fix this we can use a dash which is a space recognizable character.
If you have migrated from Ultimate Tag Warrior to Simple Tags, this tutorial is for you.
Keep Reading » Changing tags from underscores to dashes for SEO
This tutorial explains how to modify the WordPress recent posts sidebar widget entry to display more than 15 recent posts. By default the number of posts to show is (at most 15). Maybe you want to display 20 recent posts? Or more? I’ll show you how.
How to add a second sidebar widget for use on separate pages or posts: The following tutorial covers the process of building a second widget compatible sidebar that can be used on specific pages or posts. Using a different WordPress sidebar for pages and posts allows the user to display different sidebar content on a given post or page. In addition, the user could add the duplicate sidebar widgets plugin to add the same widget content to both sidebars.
Keep Reading » How to make a WordPress Page or Post use a different sidebar
Starting with version 2.3, WordPress now includes the option to add tags to your posts. This included function works similar to the all popular UTW Ultimate Tag Warrior tag plugin with the exception that it’s already pre-configured and included with WordPress 2.3. In the following tutorial, I’ll cover how to benefit from the new WordPress 2.3 tagging option by adding the tags to your custom template. Note: if your looking for an All-In-One solution, my streamliner template includes the tagging option and is compatible with WordPress 2.3 as well.