November 4th, 2008 by SwaraTech

For the best results using FeedBurner with your self-hosted WordPress site, we recommend the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin (originally authored by the legendary Steve Smith). The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well.

The plugin is currently compatible with downloadable WordPress versions 1.5 through 2.5. (Please note that “tag” feeds in later WordPress versions are not supported.)

Installation

Download the plugin, then follow the instructions below to begin forwarding all WordPress feed traffic to your FeedBurner feed.

1. Copy the plugin file, FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin.php into your default WordPress plugin directory, wp-content/plugins/ .
2. Activate the plugin by logging into your WordPress administration area, clicking Plugins, then clicking Activate at the end of the “FeedBurner FeedSmith” row.
3. In the WordPress administration area, begin the configuration by clicking Options and then the FeedBurner FeedSmith sub-option.
4. Follow the links to create your FeedBurner feeds, or if they already exist, simply fill in their URLs in the boxes provided.Note: If you currently use the old, 2005-vintage version of the Ordered List FeedBurner plugin that generates a FeedBurner-specific URL (an example: www.yoursite.com/feedburner_838196/), that URL is no longer available or necessary. You will have to reset your FeedBurner feed’s Original Feed address to now use your standard blog feed address. Additionally, you should examine any .htaccess files that control access to your WordPress installation’s content and remove any existing references that forward or redirect your feeds, as these references will no longer be necessary.
5. Verify your URLs in the text entry fields, and click Save.

Now all of your WordPress feed traffic should be redirected to FeedBurner.

Deactivation

To deactivate automatic forwarding of your feed traffic to FeedBurner, deactivate the plugin via the Plugins section of your WordPress Administration control panel.

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November 1st, 2008 by SwaraTech

There are three basic types of WordPress permalinks:
The default looks like

http://example.com/?p=N

where N is the Post ID number. It works on all server environments, but it doesn’t look as nice as some of the other options.

mod_rewrite: “Pretty Permalinks”

These are the holy grail of permalinks (see Pretty Permalinks). There are many different formats, but the most common, and most versatile looks like

http://example.com/category/post-name/
or  http://example.com/year/month/day/post-name

Some people eliminate some or all of the date elements (day, month, year) to have a shorter permalink format. mod_rewrite permalinks require Apache’s mod_rewrite module.

PATHINFO: “Almost Pretty”

PATHINFO permalinks look very much like mod_rewrite permalinks but for one exception: they have /index.php inserted before them, like so:

http://example.com/index.php/yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/

Otherwise, they are the same as the “pretty” mod_rewrite permalinks, and are similarly flexible. Anything that mod_rewrite permalinks can do, PATHINFO permalinks can do, with the help of that /index.php part.

There is a helpful plugin that displays the type of permalinks being used and detailed information on the internal rewrite rules used by WordPress.

Choosing your permalink structure

In the Settings → Permalinks panel (Options → Permalinks before WordPress 2.5), you can choose one of the “common” structures or enter your own in the “Custom structure” field using the structure tags.

To activate PATHINFO permalinks, start your permalink structure with index.php/.

Structure Tags

You can use these tags to customize your “Pretty” or “Almost Pretty” permalinks. Make sure to end your structure with either %post_id% or %postname% (e.g. /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/) so that each permalink points to an individual post.

%year%

The year of the post, four digits, for example 2004

%monthnum%

Month of the year, for example 05

%day%

Day of the month, for example 28

%hour%

Hour of the day, for example 15

%minute%

Minute of the hour, for example 43

%second%

Second of the minute, for example 33

%postname%

A sanitized version of the title of the post (post slug field on Edit Post/Page panel). So “This Is A Great Post!” becomes this-is-a-great-post in the URI (see Using only %postname%)

%post_id%

The unique ID # of the post, for example 423

%category%

A sanitized version of the category name (category slug field on New/Edit Category panel). Nested sub-categories appear as nested directories in the URI.

%author%

A sanitized version of the author name.

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October 24th, 2008 by SwaraTech

A friend recently asked me how to move his blog, which is on /blog/ on his domain, to a new domain on it’s own. The steps are easy, but have to be taken in the right order to make sure you’re not annoying your users and the search engines:

1. Put up a robots.txt on the new domain with the following contents:

   User-agent: *
   Disallow: /

2. Copy the database and files to the new domain.
3. Edit wp-config.php to have the right database settings, and add the following lines, replacing sample.com with the right domain:

   define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://www.sample.com/');
   define('WP_HOME', 'http://www.sample.com/');

4. Now set up your blog install, with the same settings as on the old domain (if you have a caching plugin installed, delete your cache files).
5. Install the Search and Replace plugin, and do a search and replace for your old URL’s and change them with your new URL’s.
6. Once you’re done, and you’ve checked everything works twice:
7. Remove the robots.txt file.
8. On your old blog, add the following line to your apache .htaccess or vhost-config:

   Redirect 301 /blog/ http://www.newdomain.com/

9. Remove the old blog code and database.
10. Change your FeedBurner account, if you have one, to pick up the correct feed.

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