WPCandy

By Sumesh from Blog Creativity, a blog about blogging tips, usability in design, SEO and WordPress (theme/plugin reviews, hacks and WordPress optimization).

WordPress is often praised for its inherent SEO capabilities. The option to use post slugs, clean and valid xHTML (mostly) etc. are some of the reasons for the praise.

However, anyone who inspects a WordPress theme closely will notice that there are several dozen weak points in WordPress themes (in the default theme, freely available themes and even paid themes). Some of these are caused by WordPress core functions (which were developed 5 years ago, since when SEO has evolved), while others are due to designers not willing to brave the choppy waters of SEO experimentation.

Modifying the core functions require extensive hacking (which can be done with proper tutorials), but the changes will be erased during WordPress upgrades. So, the subject of this post shall be mostly about those mistakes caused by faulty theme coding.

In this series of posts, you can read on what the SEO mistakes are, and how to solve them.

Note: The technical aspects of the solution (like code required for various modifications) is beyond the scope of this post. Michael tells me that WPCandy readers are mostly capable of doing such tweaks by themselves, but I will be glad to troubleshoot your problems (if you run into any) at the support forum at my blog.

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The Quommunication team has just released the feature-packed WordPress theme called Video. And boy oh boy, is it sexy.

“Once Video is added to your WordPress you only have to find or upload any video you like, go to it’s page and search the embed function and copy the code in WordPress to the body of your new post. To add some description, simply write it below the embedded video. That’s it!” - Quommunication

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A few months ago I wrote an article on how to use Coda with WordPress via Clips. Well the creators of Massive Blue and Nonimage have created a site called Coda Clips, featuring a ton of clips for CSS, Expression Engine, HTML, JS, PHP, Textpattern, WordPress, and other coding languages.

While browsing through some of the clips, I noticed some tags I have never even seen before! Here’s a few that are worth mentioning:

Anyways, if you use Coda, make sure to check out this sweet resource. Oh and if you have a few of your own snippets, make sure to submit them!

Ever since Michael Cromarty decided to leave the WPCandy team in early February this year, I’ve been mostly running this blog on my own with the help of some guest bloggers. I’ve been on the lookout for a new partner to help cover the tasks Michael used to do, as well as just help with around in general. Well after a little hunt, I ended up gathering 3 2 new partners! Read more…

If you’ve ever developed a WordPress theme, you’re (hopefully) familiar with the Template Hierarchy and how the WordPress template files fit together like a puzzle.

With WordPress, you have pages that display the content you put on those pages. To style the content on these pages, we use different files in a WordPress theme (duh). But which files are assigned to which pages? That’s where the Template Hierarchy comes in. Depending on what templates are available in the theme, different files will be assigned to certain pages.

“WordPress looks for template files with specific names in the current Theme’s directory and uses the first matching template file listed under the appropriate query section below.” - WordPress Codex

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To celebrate the third annual CSS Naked Day, WPCandy has gone naked. I have temporarily removed our stylesheet to honor Web designers and Web standards. In fact, if you personally know a Web designer, thank him/her today!

“The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your .”

What does this have to do with WordPress? Not much, actually. Except that quite a few blogs (powered by WordPress) that I read have participated in this event. I thought I’d make a post just to notify you guys that WPCandy participated in this event and we didn’t just delete our stylesheet by accident.

This is a guest post by Jeff Chandler of Jeffro2pt0.com

During my interview with Small Potato, I realized that this man was very smart. As I dove into the reasoning behind why his theme club was setup in the way that it had been, a number of light bulbs went off in my head. These are just some of the pros and cons I have discovered when looking into the SP theme club.

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While at WordCamp Dallas last weekend, Matt Mullenweg talked a bit about WordPress 2.6 and what’s to come with it. It seems someone in the audience managed to get it all on tape too!

Throughout the video, Matt touches on some WordPress Stats, the WordPress Theme Marketplace, and posting with WordPress via mobiles.

Maybe in the near future, I’ll write up a post on what I would personally like to see in WordPress 2.6.