We recently completed updating all our premium WordPress themes to use the new Menu Management function that shipped with WordPress 3.0. You can download the necessary files for your particular Solostream theme from the support forum here. You’ll just need to login to the forum and you’ll see a list of the files available for download, along with some upgrade instructions.
I also did a short screencast (below) to show you how the menu management system works. It’s fairly intuitive, but I’ve already had a few questions on it, so here ya go.
Why you should upgrade to WordPress 3.0 – In a word, security. The added functionality in WP 3.0 is great, but some people are happy with their current version of WP and prefer not to upgrade. It’s fine if you don’t upgrade, but it leaves you at greater risk of having your site get hacked. And I can tell you from experience, it’s no fun when that happens. So, for that reason, you should always run the most recent version of WordPress on your sites.
Now, here’s the tutorial I promised …
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PART III: Plugins to Make Your Life Easier
Below is a list of plugins that I have used to harden WordPress (and make my life easier). In no particular order, they are:
WP Security Scan – Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.
1. passwords
2. file permissions
3. database security
4. version hiding
5. WordPress admin protection/security
6. removes WP Generator META tag from core code
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PART II: Database Modification and WP Admin
If you’re reading this, I can empathize. It’s really a downer when you’ve realized that your database has been compromised, but hopefully we can get things working right again.
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PART I: Introduction and Housecleaning
It’s no fun when your WordPress site gets hacked. I had a first-hand experience the other day when I was told by my brother that it happened to his site. After being able to successfully get it up and running again, I’d like to now share some helpful information and a step-by-step guide with all of you.
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Update 08/05/2010: The custom navigation function is now built into WordPress 3.0. See: Solostream Themes and WordPress 3.0 Menu Management Function.
With most WordPress themes, your site navigation menu is based on your pages. For each page, a link is created in the navigation menu, and the link text is based on the title you choose for the page. This method of creating a site navigation menu is inferior for many reasons, some of which are these:
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Our new WordPress theme, WP-Ellie, is now available, and I just uploaded a short demo video. YouTube is still processing the video, so it may be a bit blurry for the next hour or so.
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In Top WordPress Plugins for 2010 (Part One), I offered five of the best WordPress plugins I think are must-haves for your site. Lets move on to part two for five more of my favorite WordPress plugins.
6. Improve Search Engine Rankings with All-in-One SEO
By default, WordPress is a very search-engine-friendly publishing platform. Likewise, so are most WordPress themes. Whenever we develop a new theme here at Solostream, SEO is a key factor in deciding how it’s put together. Still, you can never have enough SEO for your site, and the All-in-One SEO plugin offers a set of features that can take your SEO to the next level.
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One of the best things about WordPress is the community of savvy developers who create all those wonderful plugins. If you visit the WordPress Plugin Directory, however, you’ll find over 8000 available plugins to give your WordPress site a little extra bling.
Phew. That’s a lot to pick from. Unless you like to experiment ALOT, how can you possibly know which ones you should be using? So, with that in mind, here are 5 of my current favorite top plugins for 2010.
1. Stop Comment and Trackback SPAM With Akismet
If you get any traffic at all to your site, you will get some SPAM comments and trackbacks. The more traffic you get, the more SPAM you get. And you certainly don’t want Viagra ads popping up (no pun intended) all over the comments section of your site. So, you need some protection.
Akismet, created by the same folks who develop WordPress, is an awesome first line of defense. In fact, it’s the only SPAM filter we use on all Solostream sites. The only minor drawback is you need to set up an account at WordPress.com, and get an API key to make Akisment work. And if you’re using it for a commercial site, you’ll need to shell out $5 per month.
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Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve spent some time playing with the new WordPress image editor that shipped with WordPress 2.9. It’s pretty cool and something you should play around with if you use any images on your site. I went ahead and did a short video tutorial covering the important parts. The video runs about 6 minutes.
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It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. There’s a SNAFU with your web host, and they tell you that your website is no more. It’s gone. Kaput. Like Elvis, it has left the building. And worse, they don’t have a recent back-up of the data. Or worse still … they don’t have ANY back-up copies of the data.
Think it can’t happen? It can. And it does. But it doesn’t have to be that big of a problem if you’re prepared for the worst.
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This is a short video that walks you through the WordPress Theme install process.
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This is a short video that walks you through the WordPress install process. If you host offers WordPress Auto-Install, you probably want to watch this video instead.
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As the title suggests, this is a short (5 minutes) video that walks you through the WordPress Auto-Install process.
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I managed to get a new demo video posted on YouTube this morning. The video is a little over 5 minutes long, and it shows you how easy it is to customize our latest WordPress theme, WP-Sublime. If you’d like to embed this video on your own site, just grab the embed code from the video or from the YouTube page.
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We received a thoughtful inquiry from a customer recently who wanted to know how to better understand the manner in which images are managed within our themes. This is naturally too good a topic for just one customer so we thought we would share our complete explanation with everyone.
At this time, our most popular themes incorporate the functionality of “Get The Image” to generate thumbnail images that appear in Feature Articles and Post Excerpts. There is some confusion as how this tool works and what happens when you use it. Without further ado, here’s our best explanation.
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We have completed the testing for our most popular themes on the new WordPress 2.8 version. Here is the list of themes that are confirmed to work properly on the new platform:
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We’ve all heard of Spring cleaning sessions. Well, for whatever reason, Solostream customers have created an equivalent phenomena right now — Fall Update/Upgrade/New Plugin season. Perhaps this is being triggered by the soon-to-be-released WordPress 2.7.
The rash of activity has triggered an important conversation with our team that we need to share with you. One of the most painful (and frustrating) experiences in working with technology is the moment of a major crash when installing an update or the unintended disruption of a feature or service when a new plugin is installed on a site.
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Yes, you read the title correctly. Believe it or not, the wait is over and the Solostream team has finally launched a forum that all members of our community may use to post support questions, issues, and anything else (General Discussion). Why did it take so long? Well, our security standards had to be met and we wanted to ensure that there is a support community available. SMF exceeded our expectations.
All WordPress and Theme Tutorials from www.solostream.com, www.wp-vybe.com, and www.wp-magazine.com have been carried over. It is now possible to easily find what you’re looking for in the posts. And, if something you need answered isn’t there, you can just create a new topic under the board.
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Brian was kind enough to create this extensive list of resources for bloggers. He was also kind enough to include Solostream.
I get a lot of folks who want to add a header graphic to my Simplicity WordPress theme, so I figured it was time to just write a tutorial on it. It’s really pretty simple to do.
Step 1: Understand the Dimensions
The header of Simplicity is the wide, blue area at the top where you see the blog name and description. The width of the header is 940px wide. That means any header image you place there needs to be no wider than that. As for the height, well that doesn’t really matter. The header height will expand to fit.
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