Is Your WordPress Site Ready for Google’s Mobile Algorithm?
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Is Your WordPress Site Ready for Google’s Mobile Algorithm?

April 21, 2015 has come and gone – and with it Google’s deadline to ensure that your Web site is mobile-ready. That is, your Web site should display clearly on multiple devices, particularly smartphones and tablets. If it doesn’t, then Google may rank it lower in mobile search results. How to Tell if Your WP Site…

Help! My WordPress Admin Toolbar Is Missing!
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Help! My WordPress Admin Toolbar Is Missing!

Short one today, but trust me – it’s useful. Have you ever logged into a WordPress site, then clicked “Visit Site” in the upper left-hand corner of your dashboard, only to find that the familiar WordPress admin bar is missing when you’re viewing pages? Specifically, that’s the toolbar you’ll see at the top of this…

Disable WordPress Page Comments by Default
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Disable WordPress Page Comments by Default

It’s 2014, and WordPress is well into its 11th year of existence. It’s become the most widely-used Web site CMS (content-management system) in the world. So, why do “static” pages still accept user comments by default? Specifically, when you create a new page (a page, not a post) in WordPress, it allows users to add comments…

Make Your WordPress Twenty Ten Theme Responsive
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Make Your WordPress Twenty Ten Theme Responsive

I know, I know…it’s 2014. WordPress.org has stopped updating the Twenty Ten theme. Most WordPress users have moved on to themes Twenty Twelve and higher. However, you may have well-designed child themes based on the old Twenty Ten theme, a fixed-width parent theme that, nonetheless, has a lot to like. It’s solid and easy to…

Automatic Updater Plugin for Self-Hosted WordPress Sites

Keeping your WordPress site’s backend (plugins, WordPress version, and themes) up to date can be a hassle, especially if you maintain numerous WordPress sites. For years, I wondered why WP doesn’t provide a dashboard option for automatic updating, configurable by update type (i.e., checkboxes for themes, plugins, and WordPress core software). As it turns out,…

Curing the WordPress “White Screen of Death”

In a nutshell: try editing “functions.php”, in your active theme’s folder, to remove empty spaces from the bottom of the document. It worked for me. Allow me to share my experience with the infamous “WordPress White Screen of Death”. In four solid years of working with WordPress, I had somehow been fortunate enough never to…

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Five Reasons to Build Your Web Site in WordPress

You’ve probably heard a lot of buzz about WordPress. Many high-profile Web sites published with it (see www.adele.com for a recent example). But what is WordPress – and why should you use it to build your Web site? WordPress is a publishing platform that’s easily installed on most Web servers. If you buy hosting through…