Feed your WordPress Demons!
Have you ever wondered about runnings some of the cool free PHP scripts that are out there on your blog? I have. The PHP community is just wonderful. Folks contribute code left and right to help push the Open Source movement forward. But if you try to run PHP codes on your Wordpress plug-in without making changes to the underlying code, you are out of luck.
Thankfully, the good folks at RunPHP have developed THE plugin for running PHP scripts on your Wordpress blog. All you have to do is download RunPHP and enable it on your blog. You can then choose to Run PHP per post or page. You can choose who has the right to run PHP scripts on your blog.
runPHP widget then shows up under each post/page that you want to run PHP code on. If you have the right access level, you can just put the code down, and bam. Your Wordpress blog can now run almost any script that is out there.
A Word of Caution: RunPHP is a very powerful script but can also compromise your blog’s security. If your blog is hacked, god knows what can be implemented on your blog. Having said that, if you have secure scripts that you want to run on your Wordpress blog, now you can.
If you perform a lookup on “SEO for blog” you will probably see an article or two about adding XML sitemap to the root of your blog to help Google find your pages. A blog is a dynamic structure which means Google sometimes finds it tough to navigate through your pages. Now, if you have used a simple Permalinks structure for your blog, you may not have too much trouble with Google, but in general people who provide XML sitemap for Google and other search engines often see better results.
Well. If you have looked at a XML sitemap before, it may have scared the heck out of you. But the beauty of Wordpress is that there is always someone out there who comes up with a useful plug-in that addresses the basic needs of everyday bloggers. Google Sitemap is a free Wordpress plug-in that allows you to create a super XML sitemap for your blog without too much fuss.
Once you download and install Google XML Sitemap plugin, you are set to go. You need to make sure that you create a blank sitemap.xml file on your root. You will then have to manually build your very first Wordpress XML Sitemap. Below is the message you get when you run the plug-in to create your first sitemap:
Google Sitemap plug-in comes with lots of features. First you can choose how you want to provide your sitemap to Google. You can provide it as a XML file or if it is too large, you can go with the zipped version. You can also choose which engines to notify about your blog. You can choose Ask, MSN, Yahoo, and Google of course (keep in mind that you need a developer token to activate the Yahoo! feature).
There are a few useful features with this plug-in. You can define how your posts are prioratized. You can choose the number of comments or just go with one priority for all posts. You can also define what pages to include in your sitemap using a simple check-box form. You can also choose the location of your sitemap, but it should usually be on the root on your blog.
Finally, you can put priorities down for your pages manually as well. So basically Google Sitemap plug-in allows you to create fairly sophisticated sitemaps without having to write a single line of code. This plug-in is going for free and you can download it here. Don’t go overboard though.
Take a look at the above picture. You have surely seen those CAPTCHA boxes on popular websites before. There was a time that only very popular sites had to worry about spam and implementing anti-spam measures such as CAPTCHA. But times have certainly changed. Nowadays, there are plenty of unethical, black-hat marketers who target blogs of all sizes with their automated software. So if you happen to own a blog and don’t have an anti-spam plugin installed on your blog, you are leaving your blog and community wide open to spam attacks. Thanks to JR Antispam plugin for Wordpress, you won’t have to worry too about spam.
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