WordPress for Beginners » Tutorials

Most Wanted Twitter Hacks and Plugins for WordPress

Editorial Staff — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:23:07 +0000

Twitter has grown exponentially over the past year, and it is one of the fastest growing social networks at the moment. It is an extremely powerful marketing and promotion tool that no active blogger can ignore. Twitter has the power to make your articles go viral, and the “Twitter Effect” is something that most bloggers want. In this article, we will share some of the most wanted and extremely useful twitter hacks and plugins that will allow you to maximize your benefits from twitter.

Note: These hacks are for all user levels. Some knowledge of PHP / HTML will be required for some of the hacks. We will try to provide alternative plugins for each hack that we share to make it easy for beginners.

Display a Retweet Button with a Counter

If you have visited an active blog, then you have seen a retweet button on their site. Majority of the time, it will be from a service known as Tweetmeme.

Snippet

One way to get this button on your site is by placing the following code in your single.php template (At a location where you want to put it).

The above code will output a big button like you see on the left hand side of this post. Make sure that you change the source to your twitter account. It is essential that you do this because it will help you get more exposure.

If you do not like the big retweet button, you can display a compact twitter button, which you can see at the end of this post. Simply paste the following code:

Note: Don’t forget to change the source from wpbeginner to your username in the above code.

Plugin

Tweetmeme also offers a plugin that you can download. The plugin will allow you display these buttons within your posts. You will have an option to pick:

The display size (compact or large)
Pick the Source of this tweet (Your Username)
Where you want to place the button in the post

Display Twitter Follower Count as Text

There are users who absolutely hate buttons like Feedburner buttons or Twittercounter buttons. Are you one of them? Do you want to display your twitter count as text, so it blends in to your new custom design? Well then this hack is just for you.

Snippet

Paste the following code any where you want to display the count:

$tw = get_option("twitterfollowerscount");
if ($tw['lastcheck'] < ( mktime() – 3600 ) )
{
$xml=file_get_contents('http://twitter.com/users/show.xml?screen_name=wpbeginner');
if (preg_match('/followers_count>(.*) $tw['count'] = $match[1];
}
$tw['lastcheck'] = mktime();
update_option("twitterfollowerscount",$tw);
}
echo $tw['count'];
?>

Make sure to replace wpbeginner with your twitter name.

Explanation of this code: This code will open the XML file for the username that you specify. It will look for the node followers_count, and then it will display that count on your site. Best part about this code is that it will display cached results, so it will keep the load time to the minimum.

This code was written by Rarst (@rarst)

Plugin

For those users who do not feel comfortable modifying the theme files, you can use a plugin called “Subscribers Text Counter“. This plugin will let you display the follower count in widgets, or on posts/pages. This plugin also utilizes the caching system, so it is a good solution.

Display Your Recent Tweets

It is great to give a community sense to a site by displaying recent tweets in the sidebar or on a separate page. Many blogs often display their most recent tweets in their site. This section will show you various different ways to display your recent Tweets.

Snippet

There are numerous codes on the web that will let you display recent tweets from your twitter account without a plugin. Almost all of those codes have some shortfall. Below we will share one of the snippets that will allow you to display your recent tweets with caching.

Paste the codes below, wherever you like to display the recent tweets:

Download the Code File

You must change the username from “wpbeginner” to your username. You can find this towards the very end of this code where it reads parse_cache_feed(wpbeginner, 1). The number in front represents the number of tweets that will be displayed. You can change the number to the amount that you like, but we recommend that you keep it to a minimum because this code is utilizing the Search API.

Known Issues: This snippet is using the Search API, so if your account is removed from twitter search (ofcourse by twitter), then this snippet will not display any results. Also the search API only displays tweets that were posted within the last 7 days.

For those users who are flagged from the search by twitter, we recommend that you contact them and ask why that is the case. In the meantime, you may use a JavaScript solution that will display your tweets from your feed.

Place the following code in your footer.php right above tag.

Remember to change the username from wpbeginner to your username. Also you can change the count from 5 to whatever you like.

Then add the following HTML tags any where you want to display the recent tweets.

You would need to edit the CSS file for proper styling.

Known Issues: This plugin does not have caching, so the scripts will be loaded every time the page loads.

Source: Twitter

Plugin

If you are one of the users who do not want to modify their theme files, there is an alternative plugin that you can use.

Alex King’s Twitter Tool

This plugin will let you display recent tweets from your account. It will store your tweets in the database to limit the API queries. Tweets are archived every 10 minutes.

Note: there are way too many plugins that do this, to list them all here.

Display Recent Tweets from Multiple Accounts

Display recent tweets from Multiple accounts come can be useful to increase community interaction when you have a multi-author blog. You can spend hours on the web trying to find a good solution, but below are two best solutions that we found.

Tweet!

Tweet is an unobtrusive JavaScript plugin for jQuery that lets you put twitter on your website. This is a great snippet that loads the tweets using JSON. For the download and directions, you should visit the official page.

Known Issues: This script utilizes the Search API which has it’s limits. Your search query has a character limit set to 140 characters. So in short, you will be able to get a maximum of 6 – 8 users depending on the length of their username.

Tweet Blender

Tweet Blender plugin allows you to display multiple user’s tweet. This plugin actually displays the tweets from user’s feeds, so it does not rely on the Search API. But the more names you put, the longer it will take to load.

Known Issues: None that we know of.

Integrate Twitter Conversations About Your Posts

People are talking about your posts, and their convesation is not limited to the comments in your post. A lot of that conversation is happening on Twitter. Why not bring this conversation right back to your blog?

Tweetback plugin imports those tweets about your posts as comments. You can display them in between the other comments on your blog, or display them separately.

You can also add widgets to your site that shows the “Most Tweeted Posts” and “Recently Tweeted Posts” with the use of a plugin called Tweet Stats . You must have the plugin (Tweetback that we mentioned above in order for this plugin to work).

Take your Blog communication to Twitter

Above we showed you how you can integrate twitter conversations about your blog posts into your comments. In this trick, you will give the user an ability to post the comment on your site, and then also have their conversation on twitter.

Commentwitter

This plugin will add a twitter login area below the comments, so users have an option to post their comment to twitter.

Display a Special Welcome Message for Your Twitter Users

There are some sites that display a special welcome message to their twitter users. This increase their chances of getting more followers and more retweets for that post.

Simply place the following code in your single.php file where you want the welcome message to be displayed.

if (strpos("twitter.com",$_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER])==0) {
echo "Welcome, Twitter User! If you enjoy this post, don't hesitate to retweet it to your followers";
}
?>

Display Your Twitter Friends on Your Site

You have seen the Facebook Fan page widget, Google Connect widget, and Mybloglog widget. All three of these display the friends/fans pictures. You can do that with twitter as well.

Twitter Friends Widget

This plugin displays your Twitter friends/followers in your sidebar in the same way that they appear on your Twitter homepage.

Twitter Profile Field in Comments

Top tech sites are already doing this. If you go to Mashable or Tech Crunch, then you will see that they have an additional field below the Website URL for Twitter profile. There is a plugin that will let you do that fairly easily.

Twitter Link Comments

This plugin will add an extra field to your comment form so a user can add their Twitter username. A user configured ‘follow me’ link is then displayed along with their details on all their comments. The extra field and ‘follow me’ link can be configured using the settings page without ever needing to modify any template files. (unless you want to)

While these are some of the Most Wanted Twitter Hacks and Plugins, this list is definitely not the end of what you can do with twitter and WordPress. Infact there are 662 Results in the WordPress Plugin Directory when one runs the query for Twitter. There is also a list that we used as our source 107 Twitter Plugins for WordPress.

If you liked this post, then please retweet it, so others can also take advantage of this useful article. Also don’t forget to follow us on twitter.

Most Wanted Twitter Hacks and Plugins for WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Rewrite Guest Author Name with Custom Fields in WordPress

Editorial Staff — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:24:05 +0000

Have you ever had a guest post on your blog? How do you go about giving the author full credit? We have seen many sites where they add an author profile box either above the post or below the post. But even with the guest author box, the author name field would still show the site author. Some bloggers create entire new author profiles for their guest authors in order to display the right name. We think that it is pointless to create extra user profiles if you know that this guest author will only post once.

The trick we are sharing in this article will allow you to show guest author’s name by simply entering a custom field in your post.

Open your functions.php file and paste the codes below:

add_filter( 'the_author', 'guest_author_name' );
add_filter( 'get_the_author_display_name', 'guest_author_name' );

function guest_author_name( $name ) {
global $post;

$author = get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'guest-author', true );

if ( $author )
$name = $author;

return $name;
}

Now every time that you are posting a guest post, just make sure that you add a custom field called guest-author and it will replace the author’s name with the text that you put in that custom field.

Example:

How to Rewrite Guest Author Name with Custom Fields in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Insert Ads within your Post Content in WordPress

Editorial Staff — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:56:01 +0000

Have you seen blogs that has ads inside their post content? These ads are either after the first paragraph or the second paragraph in most cases. Most beginners wonder whether these sites insert ads manually when they write the content, or if there is a special code for this. It would seem extremely inefficient if one enters the code manually specially if you had to switch advertisers after one year and you have over 200 articles. This article will show you a snippet that will let you enter ads within the post content after the first paragraph.

First open your single.php file and look for the content code that would look something like this:

Replace that code with the codes below:

$paragraphAfter= 1; //display after the first paragraph
$content = apply_filters('the_content', get_the_content());
$content = explode("
", $content);
for ($i = 0; $i if ($i == $paragraphAfter) { ?>

Your Text / Ads Go Here

echo $content[$i] . "
";
} ?>

You may change the number of paragraphs by changing $paragraphAfter line.

Source of this article is suspended by the host, we used Google Cache to get this tutorial and it works.

How to Insert Ads within your Post Content in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Highlight the Search Terms in Results in WordPress

Editorial Staff — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:13:50 +0000

In an attempt to make your WordPress search even more user friendly, you can highlight the search terms in the results. We did this for one of our clients, so we thought it would be useful for other users. In this article we will show you how you can highlight search terms in the results in WordPress.

First open your search.php and look for the following code:

Replace the above code with:

Make sure that you paste this line above the title code:

\0', $title); ?>

Now open your CSS file and add the styling for the class search-excerpt, and it will highlight the term. Currently the code is making the search terms bold.

Source: Michael Martin

How to Highlight the Search Terms in Results in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Display Search Term and Result Count in WordPress

Editorial Staff — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:16:06 +0000

In this tutorial we will share how you can add a simple function on your search page which will display the search term and the number of results. This feature was a special request by one of our user via email. If you want us to cover a topic, then feel free to make a suggestion.

Open your search.php file in your template folder and add the following code:

Search Result for post_count; _e(''); _e(''); echo $key; _e(''); _e(' — '); echo $count . ' '; _e('articles'); wp_reset_query(); ?>

The code above will display something like this:

Search Result for twitter — 15 articles

This is just one of the cool things that you can do for your Search Page when customizing it.

Source: Michael Martin

Display Search Term and Result Count in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Change the Category Base Prefix in WordPress

Editorial Staff — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:14:10 +0000

We got several requests asking the same question: How to modify the category base prefix in WordPress? Well there is a very easy way to change the category base prefix, but there is no real solution to completely remove this prefix. In this article we will show you how to change the category base prefix in WordPress, and we will also touch base on a possible way that will allow you to remove the category prefix entirely.

What is a Category Base Prefix?

In your URL structure, you will see something like this http://yoursite.com/category/wordpress

That word category is the base prefix that all WordPress blogs will have as long as they are not using the default permalink structure.

How to Change / Modify the Category Base Prefix?

It is really easy to change that prefix to anything you like. For examples then your URL would look like yourdomain.com/articles/wordpress

First you would need to go in your WP-Admin Panel and go to Settings » Permalinks

There you would see an Optional box which allows you to change the category base prefix and the tag base prefix. (Example Below)

Simply add the text that you like, and you are done. This way is guaranteed to work because it is a hard-coded option within WordPress.

How to Remove Category Base Prefix in WordPress

There is no bug free way to get this done. For those who want no problems with their site, we recommend that you do not even try this because it can lead to problems. There is a plugin that allows you to completely get rid of the prefix, so it would be yourdomain.com/wordpress rather than yourdomain.com/category/wordpress. This plugin is called Top Level Directories.

Known Issues:

This plugin will not work if you have a permalink structure like %postname or %category%/%postname% and there is currently no workaround.

If you add a suffix to your permalink structure (such as .html) you can fix this issue. For example, try %category%/%postname%.html – This is not ideal, but there is no good solution for this issue.

For now we suggest that you stick with a modified base prefix if necessary. All we can do is hope that WordPress adds this feature in the future versions.

How to Change the Category Base Prefix in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Add Content and Completely Manipulate Your WordPress RSS Feeds

Editorial Staff — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:37:28 +0000

A while back we shared how you can control your WordPress RSS Footer with a use of a famous plugin called RSS Footer by Joost. While the plugin is great, but it is very limited. You can only add text to the footer, and it is always the same text displayed on each post’s footer. What if you want to display different text for each post in your RSS post? What if you want specific posts to have a different title in RSS Feeds? What if you want to display a specific custom field in your RSS Feeds? Well this is why we present you this article which will show you how to add any type of content in your WordPress RSS Feeds. This hack will put you in control of your WordPress RSS Feeds and you can manipulate it in anyway you want.

Note: This hack is not for beginners. Only users who feel comfortable with editing functions.php file and have some knowledge of php should try this. Beginner users should either use the plugin mentioned in the article above, or consult professionals like us to do it for you.

1. Add a Custom Field to your WordPress RSS Footer

In this first example, we will show you how you can use custom field to display specific text/object in your WordPress RSS Feed. This trick will allow you to show different text, advertisement, image, or anything else for each post. First open your functions.php and paste the following codes in the php tags:

function wpbeginner_postrss($content) {
global $wp_query;
$postid = $wp_query->post->ID;
$coolcustom = get_post_meta($postid, 'coolcustom', true);
if(is_feed()) {
if($coolcustom !== '') {
$content = $content."

".$coolcustom."
\n";
}
else {
$content = $content;
}
}
return $content;
}
add_filter('the_excerpt_rss', 'wpbeginner_postrss');
add_filter('the_content', 'wpbeginner_postrss');

Now most of you are wondering how this code is functioning. So here is an explanation. We create a function called wpbeginner_postrss which runs a global wp_query to search in each post if a custom field called “coolcustom” is defined. If Cool Custom is defined then it shows the value after the post content. If there is no custom field defined, then the function by default shows just the post content and nothing else. We use the variable $content to display content. We are using if(is_feed) function and adding the custom text or other content to the main post content itself which you can see by the second filter. But it will only be displayed in the RSS Feeds due to our user of if(is_feed) function. By doing it this way, we avoid all the compatibility issues.

Some of you will say but you just did what RSS footer plugin does with a function. Yes and NO. Yes we are adding the code at the footer of the post, but this text is not the same exact text for each post. It is different because you specify different text for each post via custom fields. This trick will be very handy to comply with the new FTC guidelines for blogs that have all different type of posts.

2. Adding Additional Text to Post Titles in RSS

Does your blog have guest posts, sponsored posts, and review posts? Well if you do then you will find this very useful. Some bloggers have custom styling to display each different type of post, so their users can distinguish between them. But when these posts go in a reader, all the stylings are gone. That is when this trick comes in handy. In this trick we will add any text either before or after the title.

For example if your title was “Commercial WordPress Theme – StudioPress” and it was a sponsored post, then you can change it to “Sponsored Post: Commercial WordPress Theme – StudioPress”. Same if someone wrote a guest post etc.

To accomplish this, open your functions.php file and add the following code in there:

function wpbeginner_titlerss($content) {
global $wp_query;
$postid = $wp_query->post->ID;
$gpost = get_post_meta($postid, 'guest_post', true);
$spost = get_post_meta($postid, 'sponsored_post', true);

if($gpost !== '') {
$content = 'Guest Post: '.$content;
}
elseif ($spost !== ''){
$content = 'Sponsored Post: '.$content;
}
else {
$content = $content;
}
return $content;
}
add_filter('the_title_rss', 'wpbeginner_titlerss');

Explanation for the code:

We are using the function called wpbeginner_titlerss which runs a global wp_query to search in each post if it contains either $gpost or $spost. These two elements are basically looking for two specific custom fields called “guest_post” or “sponsored_post”. If anyone has these custom fields added with a value true, then the code will add it in the text. If not then you will just see the normal title. You can see first the code looks for if $gpost is true, if that is not true whether $spost is true. If that is not also not defined, then it displays normal content. But if either one of them was true, then it displays the different text you specify here. We are using $content string to display the post title.

Now that was just displaying custom fields in the title. Do you want to display Category name on each title? Well then you should simply paste the following code in your functions.php file:

function wpbeginner_cattitlerss($content) {
$postcat = "";
foreach((get_the_category()) as $cat) {
$postcat .= ' ('.$cat->cat_name . ')';
}
$content = $content.$postcat;
return $content;
}
add_filter('the_title_rss', 'wpbeginner_cattitlerss');

Explanation: We are using the function wpbgeinner_cattitlerss to get the category ID for each post and then displaying that right next to the title. So if the title is “Get Contact Form 7″ now it would be “Get Contact Form 7 [Plugins]“. You can see that there is no if then variable in this code. We use $content for the main title and $postcat variable to define the category name. You rearrange that if you like.

3. Add Same Text on all Posts in RSS

If you just want to add the same text then you might as well use the plugin called RSS Footer by Joost because it is easier. But if you want to do it yourself this is how you do it. Open your functions.php file add the following code:

function wpbeginner_postrss($content) {
if(is_feed()){
$content = 'This post was written by Syed Balkhi '.$content.'Check out WPBeginner';
}
return $content;
}
add_filter('the_excerpt_rss', 'wpbeginner_postrss');
add_filter('the_content', 'wpbeginner_postrss');

Explanation: We are calling a function wpbeginner_postrss to add in each post a content before the post saying This Post was written by Syed Balkhi and after the content Check out WPBeginner. But we add the function if(is_feed), so it will only be displayed in RSS Feeds.

This would be very helpful if you wanted to sell ads on specific posts in RSS, add custom FTC guidelines or just wanted to have more control over your RSS Feeds.

Source: We used Joost’s RSS Footer plugin for a lot of guidance in writing this tutorial. The title RSS hack part we got from a French tutorial site and we added our own variables and gave it the ability to be custom titles per custom field.

How to Add Content and Completely Manipulate Your WordPress RSS Feeds is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

Editorial Staff — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:40:07 +0000

There are times when you come across a feature in a blog, and you just start thinking to yourself: How can I get this in my WordPress blog/site as well. Everybody have experienced this feeling. Sometimes you know you want it, and don’t know where to look for, or even what to look for. In this article we will be sharing some of the most wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks that you will definitely find useful.

These tutorials are classified under various skills level. For some tutorials, you will need to know basic HTML and some WordPress Knowledge. Use the link below as one of your resources:

WordPress Theme Cheat Sheet for Beginners

1. How to use a Custom Page as a Home Page in WordPress

This is one of the most wanted hacks that users want to know how to accomplish. First you need to learn how to create a custom page. You will need to duplicate your page.php or create a brand new .php file and add the following code at the very top:

You can change the template name. Change any styling, that you want in that page. Go to your WordPress admin panel and create a new page and select this template.

Once you have published this page go to Settings » Reading in your admin panel.

And select your page to be the homepage. Now you have yourself a Custom Home Page.

2. How to Create a Page that Displays Random Posts

Have you ever been to a site and saw this cool feature? They have a link in their top navigation to something like Stumbe! or Read Random Articles, or some other creative text. When you click on that link, it takes you to a page that displays one random page. Each time you refresh, you are delivered with a new post. Well this trick is just for you then.

You would need to follow the trick #1 in this article to create a custom page template. And simply paste this code in there:

query_posts(array('orderby' => 'rand', 'showposts' => 1));
if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

endif; ?>

This is a simple WordPress Loop that is running a query to display random posts and the number 1 in there is telling WordPress to only show 1 post. You can change that number, but most of the time people do it one post a time.

We have a Quick Reading Page on our site as well, so you can see this trick in action.

3. How to Display any External RSS Feed on Your Site

Have you seen other bloggers who display their other blog’s feed on their site. You want to do it too for extra promotion and traffic. Well here is the tutorial for you. Simply paste the following code in anywhere in your theme:

$rss = fetch_feed('http://feeds.feedburner.com/wpbeginner');
$maxitems = $rss->get_item_quantity(5);
$rss_items = $rss->get_items(0, $maxitems);
?>

No items.';
else
// Loop through each feed item and display each item as a hyperlink.
foreach ( $rss_items as $item ) : ?>

title='get_date('j F Y | g:i a'); ?>'>
get_title(); ?>

4. How to Display Relative Dates in WordPress

Have you ever seen this in blog posts and comments and wondered how did this blogger manage to do this? Actually it is pretty easy.

You would need to download a plugin called WP-Relative Date

Once you have downloaded and activated the plugin, look in your single.php, index.php, and page.php for this code:

Replace it with:

5. Allow Users to Submit News on Your Site

This trick is being adapted by many top sites to keep a useful resource section in their sidebar which is maintained mostly by site’s audience. Did you want to know how you could do that?

First you will need to download a plugin called TDO Mini Forms and follow directions.

6. Link to External Links from Your Post Title

Did you see other sites link to external posts from their post title? Well that is because it is completely useless to create a new post where inside you are going to tell users to go to another site to read it. You are wasting your user’s time. This trick will allow you to link to external links from your post title in WordPress.

First open your functions.php file and add the following codes in there:

function print_post_title() {
global $post;
$thePostID = $post->ID;
$post_id = get_post($thePostID);
$title = $post_id->post_title;
$perm = get_permalink($post_id);
$post_keys = array(); $post_val = array();
$post_keys = get_post_custom_keys($thePostID);

if (!empty($post_keys)) {
foreach ($post_keys as $pkey) {
if ($pkey=='url1' || $pkey=='title_url' || $pkey=='url_title') {
$post_val = get_post_custom_values($pkey);
}
}
if (empty($post_val)) {
$link = $perm;
} else {
$link = $post_val[0];
}
} else {
$link = $perm;
}
echo '
'.$title.'
';
}

These codes must be placed in php tags.

Then open your index.php and find the following code:

And replace it with:

This can also be accomplished by a use of a plugin called Page Links To.

7. Use WordPress as a Free Email Newsletter Service

Did you see other sites using Email Newsletter services? Well you can make your WordPress work this way as well. Simply follow this tutorial.

8. Display any Number of Posts in a Loop

Did you ever want to display a different number of posts on different pages. For example on your category pages, you want to display 10 posts which you can control from your Admin panel, but another page you want to show only 5 posts. Well this tutorial is just for you.

Open a Template file where you want to display an x number of recent posts:

// if everything is in place and ready, let’s start the loop

// to display ‘n’ number of posts, we need to execute the loop ‘n’ number of times
// so we define a numerical variable called ‘$count’ and set its value to zero
// with each iteration of the loop, the value of ‘$count’ will increase by one
// after the value of ‘$count’ reaches the specified number, the loop will stop
// *USER: change the ‘n’ to the number of posts that you would like to display

if ($count == "n") { break; }
else { ?>

// for CSS styling and layout purposes, we wrap the post content in a div
// we then display the entire post content via the ‘the_content()’ function
// *USER: change to ‘‘ to display post excerpts instead

// here, we continue with the limiting of the number of displayed posts
// each iteration of the loop increases the value of ‘$count’ by one
// the final two lines complete the loop and close the if statement

Source

9. Highlight Author’s Comment

Have you ever seen this on blogs where author’s comments are distinguished from other comments? Well this is a simple and easy trick.

First you need to open your style.css in your template folder and add the following:

.authorstyle { background-color: #B3FFCC !important; }

Then you need to open your comments.php which is also located in your themes folder and find the code that looks some what like this:

id="comment-">

Replace it with:

">

Note you must change 1 to the user id of the author. Once you do this, your blog comments will have a different background for the author’s comment compared to the rest.

Thanks to Matt Cutts for this tutorial.

10. Create Thumbnails for Each Post and Display Them

This technique utilizes the new feature added in WordPress 2.9 to add Thumbnails to each post and you can display them anywhere in the loop.

11. Display Feedburner Subscriber Count as Text

Have you ever been to a site that is not using Feedburner button and is still showing subscriber count? Well they are probably using the trick we are about to share. Most designers use this trick to have custom styling and avoid the annoying feedburner button.

Simply copy and paste this code anywhere you like most likely sidebar.php

//get cool feedburner count
$whaturl="http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=your feedburner id";

//Initialize the Curl session
$ch = curl_init();

//Set curl to return the data instead of printing it to the browser.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

//Set the URL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $whaturl);

//Execute the fetch
$data = curl_exec($ch);

//Close the connection
curl_close($ch);
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data);
$fb = $xml->feed->entry['circulation'];
echo $fb;
//end get cool feedburner count
?>

You can wrap it around in styling to make it look like however you want.

12. Display Twitter Follower Count as Text

First you would need to create a file twitter.php and paste the following code in there:

$tw = get_option("twitterfollowerscount");
if ($tw['lastcheck'] < ( mktime() – 3600 ) )
{
$xml=file_get_contents('http://twitter.com/users/show.xml?screen_name=wpbeginner');
if (preg_match('/followers_count>(.*) $tw['count'] = $match[1];
}
$tw['lastcheck'] = mktime();
update_option("twitterfollowerscount",$tw);
}
echo $tw['count'];
?>

Make sure to replace wpbeginner with your twitter name.

Then Simply place this code anywhere you want to display this:

Source

13. Create Your Own Private Twitter Site using WordPress

14. Control When Your Posts are Available via RSS

There are times when you publish a post and suddenly find an error. You can go back in the admin panel and change it, but it is already published in the feeds. With this hack, you can put a delay of as many minutes as you like, so you can double check the post live.

Simply open your functions.php and add the following code in there:

function publish_later_on_feed($where) {
global $wpdb;

if ( is_feed() ) {
// timestamp in WP-format
$now = gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s');

// value for wait; device
$wait = '10'; // integer

// http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_timestampdiff
$device = 'MINUTE'; //MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR

// add SQL-sytax to default $where
$where .= " AND TIMESTAMPDIFF($device, $wpdb->posts.post_date_gmt, '$now') > $wait ";
}
return $where;
}

add_filter('posts_where', 'publish_later_on_feed');

Change the time from 10 minutes to whatever you like.

15. Allow Multiple Authors to be Associated with One Post

If you run a multi-author blog and have a post coming up that more than one author has contributed to, you can use this trick. This trick is being used by many top multi-author blogs.

Simply Download a Plugin called Co-Authors or Co-Authors Plus

16. Change the Default Gravatar Button

The default mystery man is really annoying for most users. Plus if you have one more chance of branding your blog, then why not do it. Changing your default gravatar lets you brand your blog more. With this snippet below you can change your default gravatar.

First you need to open your functions.php which is located in your template folder. If you don’t have one then create one and insert the following code:

add_filter( 'avatar_defaults', 'newgravatar' );

function newgravatar ($avatar_defaults) {
$myavatar = get_bloginfo('template_directory') . '/images/gravataricon.gif';
$avatar_defaults[$myavatar] = "WPBeginner";
return $avatar_defaults;
}

In the code the image is being extracted from the theme directory and it is called gravataricon.gif obviously you will change it to your image name. Where it says WPBeginner, that is the name of the avatar of how it will show in your admin panel options area.

Head over to your admin panel and click Settings > Discussion and change the icon, and now you have a branded comment area with your logo.

17. Display Random Header Images in WordPress

Most blog designs get boring if they have a huge header picture and it is static. This is when this tutorial comes in to make your header images dynamic because it rotates on each visit. You can select as many images as you want to rotate randomly. It brings life to a blog.

First you need to name your images in this format:

headerimage_1.gif
headerimage_2.gif
headerimage_3.gif

You must separate the name with an underscore. You can change the headerimage text to himage or anything you like.

Once you have done that paste the following code in your header.php where you would like the images to be displayed or in any other file.

.gif"
width="image_width" height="image_height" alt="image_alt_text" />

Make sure that you change the number 3 if you decide to do more than 3 images. This code is not exclusive for WordPress, it will work with any php based platform.

18. Only Display Certain Categories in a Menu

In many cases, users only want to display certain categories in their navigation menu at the top of the page. There are limited spots, that can only be filled by top categories, but if you use the default wp_list_categories code, it will show all categories. This is why this hack below comes in very handy when you want to create a navigation menu and only display certain categories.

Note, you can also change the ‘include’ text to ‘exclude’ and show all categories and exclude those that you don’t want displayed. The numbers displayed in the code are the category IDs. Remember since WordPress shows categories in a list format, you will need to edit the CSS in order to make it work.

19. How set an Expiration Date for Your Posts

This hack comes becomes very useful when you are running a contest because you might be posting information such as clues or hints that you don’t want to stay up for ever. Instead of manually removing the article, you can just make it expire automatically. It also works if you have a product that you are offering a discount on. You posted it on your blog, but you don’t want that discount to stay on your blog after its over. So you can remove it automatically with this code.

All you need to do is replace your WordPress Loop with this code:

if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
$expirationtime = get_post_custom_values('expiration');
if (is_array($expirationtime)) {
$expirestring = implode($expirationtime);
}

$secondsbetween = strtotime($expirestring)-time();
if ( $secondsbetween > 0 ) {
// For example…
the_title();
the_excerpt();
}
endwhile;
endif;
?>

Once you have done that, you can use custom fields when writing a post to set an expiration date. Make sure you select the key “expiration” and use the the following date format: mm/dd/yyyy 00:00:00

Now this hack does not remove or unpublish the article instead it just excludes the article from being displayed in the loop.

20. Delete Posts Revisions from Your Database

WordPress has a lot of good features and one of them is Post Revisions. This was included in WordPress 2.6, even though this is a good feature, it can cause some problems. One of them is increase the size of your database. Depending on how long it takes you to write a post, you might have as many as fifty post revisions. Now you can manually delete them, or you can run a simple query which we will show you in this post and get rid of all these useless revisions.

First thing you need to do is login to your phpMyAdmin and select your WordPress Database.

Click on the SQL Button and enter the following query:

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision";

In this code basically we looked up a table wp_posts and removed every post that had a post_type revision associated with it. Now depending on the size of your database, this may save you a lot of space.

21. Create a Membership Directory using WordPress

The end result is a moderated directory that allows members to enter information about themselves. Live Example.

22. Create a Peel Away Effect in WordPress

Have you arrived at a site where you see this page peel effect that some bloggers have. They are advertising their recent ebook, or some other product, and you want to do the same. Well then Hongkiat Blog has a great tutorial about this. The tutorial eliminates the use of plugin, but if you want an alternative option. Page Peel Plugin can get you the same functionality with a lot less work.

23. Custom CSS Stylesheet for Individual Posts

There are sites that use custom stylesheet for individual posts. Do you want to know how you can do it also? It is very simple. This is accomplished by the use of Custom Fields.

First you will need to open your header.php and insert this code somewhere in between codes.

$customstyle = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'customstyle', true);
if (!empty($customstyle)) { ?>