A lot of people who are into search engine optimization vary on this. Personally I use /%postname%/ and set it up for my own clients. Why?

It is easy and contains the keywords necessary for the optimal search. I am not known as an expert, but I have built quite a few sites that have improved well through ranking. I believe this has been the best. I know there are people that like %postname%.html and /%category%/%postname%/.

Why is it not as great to put the date or category in the URL structure?

Well, you are telling the search engine that the day and the category are more important than the article itself. For those who write tutorials and helpful topics, it is not the date or category that people are looking for in the search engine.

The great thing about WordPress is that is is easy to choose a custom structure and while posting, you can have a page slug that sums up the article, while the actual post name is longer. A lot of times this is to focus on keywords.

By the way, I really think that if you have not, you should check out Matt Cutt’s article Straight from Google: What You Need to Know. If you noticed, Matt Cutts uses a post name structure, but he also utilizes custom slugs where his URL path contains keywords the sums up his post, and his title is different. The article contains a slide show and video too. Another person I recommend that has a lot of experience is Joost de Valk.

What permalink structure do you use for your website and why? Any SEO tips for WordPress users?

Lately I have been seeing a lot of talk about frameworks. Rather than go into it right away, I just thought it might be fun to have a poll here at WP Addict about what people use as a framework.

You can leave a comment if you want, but it is not necessary. And the plugin used for the poll is WP-Polls by Lester Chan

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Since 2.9’s release a lot of users have been complaining that they were unable to use the scheduled posts feature. While you could schedule the post, it would not publish at the time you wanted. In fact, you would have to go in and adjust manually publish.

Other problems that have been addressed can be found at the WordPress trac. Please note that if you are having actual upgrade issues to be specific about your problem or it will be difficult to resolve. If it is just plugin issues, either contact the plugin creator, or go to the WordPress Support Forums and post a new topic. Please note, some plugin creators may not provide support or request you to join their own forum.

The update should be available as an automatic download or for those still having trouble, you can download and manually upgrade your WordPress installation.

WordPress 2.9, also named Carmen, was announced on the WordPress development blog in their post, WordPress 2.9, oh so fine for anyone to download. Of couse, those who can automatically upgrade, you should be able to see the notice in your WordPress administration panel and be able to upgrade from there.

Some of the great features introduce were:
- Ability to mass upgrade plugins
- Post/ File Restoration for accidental deletions
- Built-in image editor
- Easier ability to embed videos
- Upgrading TinyMCE and SinglePie
- Support for canonical URLs
- Ability to register post thumbnails
- Improvement of PressThis
- Theme Editor Improvements
- Hooks and Filter improvements

In fact, there were quite a few mentioned at the development blog. Of course, this makes 1 step closer to merging WordPress and WordPressMU, which were hinted about earlier this year.

There are over 1,088 themes available at the WordPress Theme Directory. There are a lot more elsewhere online. Although Leland of Themelab blogs Stop Downloading WordPress Themes from Shady Sites, the point really should be: be cautious when downloading any themes ANYWHERE.

Some of the things to look for:

- Encrypted code
- Inability to edit layout to fit your own means
- Link spam that have nothing to do with your site or may be linked inappropriate websites in the footer
- Malicious code that could open your server to attacks or your own computer to viruses

“Free” is without expecting anything in return. It is great to leave a link from the original theme creator on your site so your visitors will be able to use the free theme too . However, it is a nuisance to have all the other frills, and not-so-frills. It might be difficult to accept that you could either pay for a safe theme or download a free one from a trusted source, but it is important for your internet safety and the safety of your readers. It also aleviates future problems if the layout no longer functions due to WordPress upgrades and code changes that might break or make older themes buggy. Having to hurry and fix a theme issue is not fun, and if you have a free theme from a untrustworthy site, you will be scurrying to get a new theme up.

Although not everyone has their free themes uploaded to the WordPress theme directory, if you have found a theme you like, go to the WordPress support forums or ask anyone in the WordPress community if a certain place can be trusted and can vouch for it. Like visiting any site, if you cannot trust it, why download?

Are there any sites that people should avoid?

As a longtime user of WordPress, I have seen how WordPress has migrated from a blog platform to a Content Management System (CMS). These days I hear,

“Oh, WordPress the blog script?”
“WordPress is not a CMS.”
“Can I -INSERT QUESTION- with WordPress?”
“I’ve heard about WordPress, but I’m not sure if I want to use it. I just want a website without the blog.”
“I heard WordPress is hard to learn.”

My response:

WordPress is a CMS. It is no longer just a blog platform. There are features that make it flexible enough to turn a WordPress site into a forum, a social bookmark site, a social network, an e-commerce site, and more. The beauty of WordPress is that you do not have to have a blog for your website. You can choose to harness that feature, but you can have a site of just pages. There are plugins built for WordPress that literally transform websites from ordinary to extraordinary.

Using WordPress is easy. I know it is because I have taught people in their 60s how to use WordPress. It does take a little time to learn, regardless if you want to be a WordPress.org self-hosted user or a WordPress.com hostee. You do NOT have to necessarily know HTML or PHP if you are using a free template or have someone design one for your site. It is as easy as typing an email.

WordPress won a CMS award at the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. This is pretty significant news and confirms the status of WordPress in the CMS World when pitted against CMS giants like Drupal and Joomla.

So, what do you think? Has WordPress made you think of it as a CMS or do you think of it as just a blog platform?

For those who are W3 warriors, web standard is important. However, for those validating each page, you will run into a validation error on your comments.php with aria-required=’true’.

This is the code chunk where it is found in comments.php:


<?php if ($req) echo "aria-required='true'"; ?>


This refers to an WAI-ARIA Primer, which is basically an add-on to XHTML 1.1 for use in for accessibility with dynamic applications. It helps those with handicap to know what fields are required. The markup for WAI-ARIA is still in draft and has been since February 2008. While currently in draft and not yet fully supported, this is an area that either the template designer can either leave out the WordPress coding or keep it.

For accessibility sake and hopefully more development with WAI-ARIA, it is harmless to leave the code on comments.php.

What are your views on this feature?

As Wikipedia defines canonicalization, especially for search engines and search engine optimization (SEO):

In web search and search engine optimization (SEO), URL canonicalization deals with web content that has more than one possible URL. Having multiple URLs for the same web content can cause problems for search engines – specifically in determining which URL should be shown in search results.

For example, WP Addict could be listed as:

http://www.wpaddict.net

OR

http://wpaddict.net

The problem is that is that search engines merely split the content results between the two URLS if I were a person to be wishy washy and not define where users and search engines should be linking. I have to determine the primary entry point to the site, which in my case would be http://wpaddict.net.

You want the search engines to find one place to your site and not fragment visitors who have come in from a search engine in any way with a slightly different from the main URL of your site. Some people fear that this could cause duplicate content.

There are a couple ways to help with this in WordPress

1. .htaccess – You are telling your own server that you are hosted on where your main URL is at. Add the following into your .htaccess file:


RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^YOURURLHERE\.URLEXTENSION$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.YOURFULLURLHERE/$1 [R=301,L]


Replace YOURURLHERE with your URL name and URLEXTENSION with your extension like .com, .net, .org, etc….

Replace YOURFULLURLHERE with your full URL name, and no, you do not need to put it in uppercase as I have. Lowercase may be best.

2. Your can download Joost de Valk’s WordPress plug called Canonical URLs.

Please note that Google does not penalize for duplicate content, rather more so if you spam. So, if you are a blogger who has allowed a person to cross post an article on another site, you might not be penalized. However, you will be penalized if you are posting your material in places that are not relevant to your article(s).

Do you have any other solutions to canonicalization for your WordPress Blog?

On November 12, 2009, WordPress released version 2.8.6. These fix several security issues with the WordPress.

One was a cross-site scripting issue or known as XSS for Press This. Normally with the press this function in your WordPress admin panel you can bookmark and publish your favorites to your site. What was happening was that hackers could infiltrate through this area and inject malicious scripts onto your published pages.

The other issue is an exploit of the Apache configurations of the server.

This only brings WordPress closer to 2.9 version release. You can download and upgrade WordPress 2.8.6 manually or for those who have not already noticed at the top of their WordPress administration panels the notice that an upgrade is available with one click.

There are quite a few sites dedicated to extending a helping hand. Some for free, some for a fee.

However, do not forget about the WordPress Support forums! It is a forum that is full of many people who regularly answer any questions that come up, even myself. If you have not signed up there, you really should try it. A lot of people may have the same question. A lot of the questions fall under:

- installation
- bug issues
- plugins
- development of WordPress
… and much more.

It really is a great community to start finding any answers for your WordPress needs. For newbies, the forum is great because a lot of the people answering the questions have experienced the same issues. Some of the plugin developers frequent the site as well, so it is a great way to have a centralized place for even them to improve their own plugins.

For those who are knowledgeable about WordPress, it can be a way to further yourself if your advice is very helpful. Also, the kicker is – it is free!

There are not enough mentions out there praising the WordPress support forums. In fact, there are not many praises out there for WordPress-related forums. WP Addict will eventually dedicate a resource section for WordPress users to find what they need in the community for their project.