I was previously using UTW to show a list of related posts at the end of each page and was concerned I would lose this feature when I upgraded. Thankfully you can preserve this feature by making use of the WordPress import feature.

Once you’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.3 follow these steps:

• Deactivate the UTW plugin if you haven’t done so already.
• Make a backup of your WordPress database.
• Within your WordPress administration screen go to Manage –> Import and select Ultimate Tag Warrior. This feature will import all your UTW tags over to the new WordPress tagging system.
• Install the WordPress 2.3 Related Posts plugin. The great thing about this plugin is that it also allows you to add a list of related posts to your feed. There is no longer a need to use a separate plugin to handle this.
• Follow the plugin installation instructions.

This whole process went very smoothly on this blog, and I’ve got the added bonus of not having to run so many plugins now

If you want to know how to migrate other UTW features like tag clouds then read this excellent article on WordPress 2.3 tags.

How has your WordPress 2.3 upgrade gone?

If you’ve got any more WordPress 2.3 tips or tricks to share I’d love to hear.

Here are my favourite 5 themes from the site.

Balloon

A clean looking theme with plenty of white space.

Preview Download

inBloom

Interesting selection of colours which I think works well.

Preview Download

Mr techie

Nice Web 2.0 look and feel to this one. I like how the design has been laid out. There is also room for ads in the sidebar.

Preview Download

newave

If you want a minimalist and clutter free home page for your blog then this one will appeal to you. The entire home page is visible without any scrolling. I like how the latest article is shown in full with previous articles shown as excerpts to the right.

There is no sidebar but I like that. No sidebar could work well on some sites, such as those which publish lengthy articles. Removing the sidebar means wider articles and less scrolling for the reader. Nice Web 2.0 rounded edges and shadows with this theme.

Preview Download

unmoving

Interesting use of headers with this theme which works well.

Preview Download

Did you know you can use this WordPress plugin for any type of Javascript, not just Google AdSense? I’ve successfully used AdSense Deluxe to implement CrazyEgg tracking code on my site. You could use it for other types of Javascript too.

For those not familiar with this plugin you might like to read my review.

Just enter any Javascript code in the usual place you would enter your Adsense code. You then manage this code just like any other AdSense block you’ve already setup.

Over time, your blog comments can accumulate a wealth of information. Whole conversations can take place there. Readers searching your blog may be interested in this information.

The Search Everything WordPress plugin enables your readers to search all your blog content, including pages and blog comments.

Configuration is done via the plugin options page. You can even search metadata too.

I’ve been using this plugin for many months. It’s well worth a closer look.

If a cluttered sidebar is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean sidebar?

Am I going mad you ask? Heck no. I’m just illustrating the many blogs I see which clutter their sidebar with a huge monthly list of archives.

It’s time to free yourself from these shackles, clean up your sidebar and implement an archive system that oozes with splendour.

Less cluttered than stuffing all this in your sidebar eh! I’m sure your readers will appreciate it too. Hey, it may even be good for SEO too when the Google crawler stops by your site.

Want some of this archive magic on your own blog?

Simply head over to the SRG Clean Archives page and install the WordPress plugin. Activate the plugin, then sit back and marvel at your new look archives.

At some point during the development of your blog you may want to add content that appears before or after each blog post. Examples could be a Google Ad before each post, or maybe a link at the bottom of each blog post encouraging readers to subscribe to your blog.

In the past I’ve done this by modifying the WordPress template files directly. But this can be fiddly, and not everyone is comfortable editing template files, especially the non-techie folks out there.

This is where the Post Post plugin from Douglas Karr comes to the rescue. This is a plugin for users who wish to customize the content before and after every post on their blog. Not only that, you can also use it to add content before or after your feed too, something I’ve found especially useful.

The plugin is easy to configure via the plugin options page. You can add content before/after each post, before/after your feed, and before/after each page.

I know Doug would like to develop this plugin further at some point but I find it pretty useful as it is. I use it to allow me to include advertising in my feed. Something I was unable to do until I used this plugin.

Get your Blogging Tips from Douglas Karr at The Marketing Technology Blog

If you’re looking for ways to encourage readers to comment on your blog then one option to consider is the Comment Relish WordPress plugin.

This plugin will send an automated email to users who leave a comment on your blog for the very first time, who have never commented before.

The idea is to thank the user for taking the time to leave a comment and hopefully encourage them to come back again. You can customize the exact email message sent via the plugin options page, which is shown below.

There are various tags you can include in the main body of the email, which get replaced with the real values when the email is sent. The email message I use also includes a link to my Feedburner feed to try and encourage first time commentators to subscribe too.

I think this plugin is a great idea to try and encourage first time commentators to return to your site. It also gives your blog a bit more of a personal touch.

For a while now I’ve been a fan of the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin. It offers lots of cool tagging features including the ability to produce a list of related blog articles at the end of each post. The only problem is that this functionality doesn’t extend to your RSS feed.

I’ve often seen bloggers using this technique and finally discovered the Add Related Posts To Your Feed WordPress plugin. The idea of the plugin is to encourage readers to explore other areas of your blog by showing related content at the end of your feed. This encourages visitors to click through to your site and discover content they might have otherwise missed.

The plugin is easy to use. Simply activate the plugin and that’s it. You will though need the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin installed before the related posts plugin will function.

The Custom Query String (CQS) WordPress plugin is not that well known, but it is a powerful plugin offering functionality I have been seeking for ages on my blog. The plugin allows you to specify how many pages to display on different sections of your blog, such as 5 posts on your home page, 10 posts on your archives, 30 posts on your search results, etc.

In the WordPress Options Reading screen there is a section where you can set the number of blog posts to display.

This is all well and good, but this setting will apply to every page on your blog. This isn’t very intuitive. Let’s say for example I want to display 5 blog posts at most on my home page. I can set this by using the text box shown above. My blog home page will look fine, showing the last 5 posts, but it doesn’t take into account the archives or search results pages.

Anyone doing a search on my blog would only get to see 5 posts per page. This is not very useful, especially if many search results are returned. The user will have to keep pressing the Next or Previous links at the bottom of each page to see the next set of results.

This is likely to annoy visitors fast. If they can’t find information on your blog quickly then they’re likely to go elsewhere. This is where the Custom Query String (CQS) WordPress plugin helps out. It enables you to specify how many pages are displayed on each section of your blog.

The plugin options page look as follows.

In this example you can see that I display 3 posts on my home page, but I allow up to 30 posts to display in the search results page. This enables me to keep my home page clean. showing just the latest 3 posts, but still provides the facility for my search page to show more results. This is far more user friendly.

You can customize any of the following pages shown in the image below. You select the page from the dropdown list and then set the number of pages to display for that page.

You can also specify how many posts to display on a category by category basis as follows.

The plugin itself is no longer being developed, but it is robust and I have had no problems using it. It is definitely worth a closer look.

Today I am continuing my review of WordPress plugins used on this site. This posts looks at the WP-PageNavi WordPress plugin. You can see it in action at the bottom of my home page.

If you look at the bottom of most blog home pages you will see a Next and Previous link which allow visitors to view older or more recent blog posts. I’ve no idea whether many people use these links, but they are only really useful for finding posts created in the last few weeks or so. These links are not very practical for finding posts buried deep in your blog archives.

I’ve also read that web crawlers don’t like these Next and Previous links either. These crawlers (also known as web spiders or robots) are small pieces of software (called bots) sent out by search engines such as Google to index your blog. Most crawlers like to be able to get to any page on your blog within a few clicks. If a crawler can’t get to each page in a few clicks then you are making it more difficult for your blog to be indexed by the search engines.

It has been suggested that replacing the Next and Previous links with a pagination structure as follows is more friendly to crawlers trying to index your site.

1 2 3 4 5 »…Last »

Each of the page numbers is a hyperlink which the user can click on to jump to that page. This enables visitors to access older articles with fewer clicks, and web crawling spiders will like it too.

You can customize the pagination look and feel via the plugin options page.

There are other methods to help visitors access older articles on your blog which personally I think are more effective than the pagination plugin. These can include creating a site map which lists all your blog posts and pages on a single page, or an archives page, both of these topics I will go into in more detail in later posts.

Even so, I think having a page navigation system like WP-PageNavi can do harm in trying to maximize your site’s accessibility.

How do you navigate around blogs and other web sites you visit? Do you ever use the Next and Previous links?