WordPress Tips Archive

Want More Retweets? Use the Official Tweet Button

Posted on the 16th of August, 2010 | 6 Comments

A little over a month ago, I recommended to use the TweetMeme WordPress plugin to get more retweets on your posts.

A few days ago, Twitter announced their own button for retweeting. Several methods of integrating the official Tweet button in your WordPress sites have already emerged.

Jun

2011

Remove Unnecessary Code from wp_head

Posted on the 11th of July, 2010 | 10 Comments

WordPress includes a lot of stuff through the wp_head() hook included in most themes. Most of this stuff I would consider unnecessary. A few lines of extra code in your header probably won’t slow your site down that much, but I like to keep things as clean and efficient as possible.

In this quick tip post, I’ll go over how to remove the following from being output through the wp_head hook.

Really Simple Discovery (RSD) link
Windows Live Writer link
WordPress generator notice
Post relational links

Read on for the description of each of these to see if you need them or not, and how to remove them.

WordPress Tips

Jun

2011

How To Make Old WordPress Themes Compatible With New Versions

Posted on the 24th of April, 2010 | 7 Comments

So you want to make your old WordPress themes compatible with newer versions of WordPress. With WordPress 3.0 right around the corner, theme compatibility is something on a lot of people’s minds. It’s pretty simple: do absolutely nothing.

I’ve been making WordPress themes since around WordPress 2.3 was released, and guess what? Those themes still work today and there’s nothing I need to do to keep them working with newer versions of WordPress.

Will they have threaded comment functionality (circa 2.7)? Nope, they probably still have “single level” comments though.
Will it use post_thumbnails to handle post thumbnails (circa 2.9)? Nope, but not every theme makes use of post thumbnails anyway.
Will they have the new navigation menus, custom header and background images introduced in the upcoming WordPress 3.0? Nope, and keep in mind not every theme will have a need for custom background or header images.

Most of these features I would consider optional. With maybe the exception of threaded comments or the new menu system, a lot of themes won’t even need or be designed around things like custom post thumbnails or header images.