WP-Super Cache

However, since the release of the latest version, there were some buggy issues and we were unable to delete the cache. It was getting tedious to FTP inside the server and manually delete the cache. Then repeatedly reinstalling the plugin, some strange kind of 403 errors occured. It was time to try a new caching plugin…

Kindly note these are isolated issues affecting only our server and WP-Supercache is undoubtedly an excellent plugin, which is not only the most popular plugin, but also highly recommended.

WordPress Caching

A caching plugin is the single most important plugin to add to WordPress blogs, as it stores php pages as html files and minimizes server load. It will keep your site online even when the server is down, and will help your website survive unexpected traffic spikes even on shared hosting.

I wanted to use W3-Totalcache and combine it with a CDN service like MaxCDN (or Amazon Cloudfront which we already use to cache some static files), but since the plugin is so feature rich and so powerful, the controls and options in the plugin are too overwhelming. Meanwhile, the forums are filled with growing popularity of QuickCache. So I decided to give QuickCache a try…

Install Quick Cache

Firstly QuickCache works out of the box. Simply activate and turn on caching and you dont need to edit any setting unless you want to really customise caching options, which we didnt need, not will most other users. So basically it was simple to start and get working instantly.

At most you might want to increase the caching time from default 3600 (1 hour) to 36000 (10 hours) or higher if your content does not change too frequently. Also note that QuickCache does not cache pages for admin and known users by default, and also refreshes the pages after people post comments. So you need to actually logout to see it is working. Another good option is it will refresh only the single post after edits, and not the whole cache ( for which there is a quick clear cache button on top).

If you FTP inside the server, the files in the /cache folder are also stored differently. While Supercache used to replicate your entire site structure in the folder, Quick Cache stores them as MD5 hash files, which checks with your Salt in a complex interaction before serving cached files.

Quick Cache  Gzip Compression

Note that unlike Wp-Supercache, QuickCache has no option to enable gzip compression of your webpages. Gzip compression is a good idea as it helps to compress pages and deliver them to modern browsers, which helps to speed up you site load times and deliver a faster and better user experience.

Quickcache FAQ does suggest 2 ways to activate gzip compression manually. One is by editing your .htaccess file using mod_deflate, but that did not work for our site. The other alternative did work as Knownhost has installed zlib on our server. Simple create a blank notepad file, add zlib compression

zlib.output_compression = on

and save as php.ini and upload to your server root folder. It works and pages do get gzip compressed. Since it does not output ‘gzip on’ comment in the html code, you can test it using any HTTP compression test tool.

So basically we are very happy with QuickCache as of now and it is caching our WordPress blog error free and it is also highly recommended. Are you using Quick Cache and have some tips to share?

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I have been using the amazing Broken Links Checker plugin for quite some time since Panda updates became famous and it has helped us find and fix all broken links on our website.

Check Broken Links

Few months back, the first time we used the plugin it took several hours as it scanned across our entire site and you could continue to refresh and see how many links were broken and how many were redirects. Since over last 7 years, this was the first time we checked broken links in such a comprehensive way, nearly 10% of outbound links were broken!

This was a huge exercise to fix all links in thousands of posts, but the interface integrates very well in the WordPress admin and easily allows you to Edit url, unlink text or mark the url not broken.

There are many options about to optimize as per your schedule, with many other custom options. But as I continued to fix these urls, I realized it would take many weeks to fix up the entire site. The plugin meanwhile also offered a quick and powerful way to nofollow all such links and even add a CSS strikethrough on all broken links so visitors would not click through these broken 404 links.

This is a highly recommended plugin for all WordPress bloggers. Broken links are very bad for SEO and this is a very powerful tool to fix all broken urls in few clicks. Try it out and tell us how many broken urls did you find on your WordPress blog?

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If you made minor changes, old cached CSS files might not make a difference. But what it you made substantial structural changes, or introduced new classes… your site would appear totally broken to regular visitors.  How many readers would think that refreshing the page will fix your site?

Force CSS Files Refresh

The answer is to force browsers to load the latest CSS file.

1. The way to do this is to change to a new CSS file name in the HEAD of the html, that will force the browser to load a new stylesheet file. But if you edit your CSS too frequently, its cumbersome to keep fixing new CSS files everytime and editing the source stylesheet name everytime.

I used to keep 3 CSS files like style1.css, style2.css, style3.css and keep cut pasting the latest code edits to the new one and updating the header.php file. An easier way is to add a so called version to your CSS file everytime like ?v=25122011, this will change the file name and force a refresh, but then again you have to change the file name everytime you edit WordPress stylesheets.

2. Then I came upon this nice trick suggested by WordPress developer Mark Jaquith, which suggests you use the function filetime which adds the server time the file was changed to the CSS url. Here is the code – cut and paste and try for yourself.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); echo '?' . filemtime( get_stylesheet_directory() . '/style.css'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />

So we used this code and now our stylesheet call code in the HEAD looks like this
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/wp-content/themes/qot/style.css?1324491378" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />

You note that the new code has made our stylesheet style.css?1324491378 – This number will change whenever we save a new version of the style.css and will force site visitors to load the fresh copy of the CSS file.

A smart trick which makes web designing easy for bloggers who like to tweak their site design every day…

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Read our VaultPress review. We have been using Vaultpress for many months now as it quietly syncs our site database, themes, uploaded images and plugins in the background in real time providing a ready updated complete backup when needed.

VaultPress WordPress Database Restore

Previously you needed to download the files and restore them yourself, but the new feature of 1-click database restore makes it worth the money.

There are many WordPress backup services, but we chose Vaultpress, and the $15 per month spent on this service is worth the money should the database just crash one day. All plans include Realtime Backups, Downloadable Archives for Restoring, Vitality Statistics, and the Activity Log. Our Basic plan provides access to disaster recovery and support services also. More expensive plans also include  site migration assistance, automated security scanning, security consulting and performance auditing.

See the video how database recovery works

Previously we used to keep daily database backups, but now we add Vaultpress to the daily cpanel backup and full VPS backups by our amazing webhosting service Knownhost - it all helps to secure backup copies of the whole site for easy restoration (Remember when our site was hacked!). I am sure many more people will find Vaultpress useful now.

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PHP, MySQL Versions in WordPress

The minimum requirements for WordPress 3.1 (current version) are PHP 4.3 and MySQL 4.1.2. But the The minimum requirements for WordPress 3.2 (which is coming very soon) is PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0. So though most web hosting services would have updated their server, you need to be sure and not get stuck during update.

The easiest way is to install the Health Check Plugin – Its a simple WordPress plugin which will check checks PHP and MySQL versions of your server and compare them with WordPress 3.2 requirements.

We installed it and got an this response.

The response suggests excellent –  we are running on PHP 5.2.16 which better than required 5.2.4.

I suggest you also check your PHP and MySQL version and contact your webhosting if your server falls short. Of course, if your hosting provider cannot upgrade your PHP and MySQL, its time to find a new web hosting for your WordPress blog.

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Our WordPress admin was getting really slow and so were the increasing  number of resource alerts. Like most WordPress bloggers, we too were always hesitant to meddle with the database fearing irreversible loss of data. There are many powerful WordPress database plugins, but they all seem too powerful and capable of modifying so much data, that it seemed better in expert hands. So we were looking for something very simple, easy and trustworthy.

Optimize WordPress Database

The we found the amazing Optimize DB plugin by Yoast, who is a well known creator of some other amazing plugins too. We simply installed and activated the plugin and it automatically analyzed how much database overheads it could save instantly. Then we backed up the database, though Vaultpress saves our latest database files automatically.

This what a partial screenshot of what we got. The plugin was going to optimize our WordPress database and save it by 33%!

Well there is only one button to click, and we clicked it. And in the next few seconds, it was all done.

The WordPress admin speed seems better, site resource alerts seem lower too.

Warning: Always back up your full database before attempting any database changes. This seems standard disclaimer, but is very essential to restore your database if something goes wrong (and sometimes things do go wrong).

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We use Vaultpress WordPress backup and its stats informed us that we had over 4000+ posts and 8000+ post revisions! The number of post revisions is double the number of posts! No wonder the database file size is growing so fast. Every post we edit keeps accumulating post revisions. If there are frequently edited posts, the revision can be a large number.

Optimize Post Revisions

Of course you can stop post revisions by adding the following to wp-config.php (in root of your WordPress installation)

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false);

But post revisions have really helped me recover crashed posts, so I want to continue using them. So I add these to wp-config.php instead.

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 3);
define( 'AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 120);

This saves only the latest 3 post revisions of any article (note false is replaced by 3, you can add a different value if you like), so multiple edits will not pile up these post revisions. Next I increased the autosave interval to 120 seconds (default is 60 seconds). So this lets me continue using post revision with decreased saves and only latest saves. But this does not delete my 8000+ useless post revisons over 3-4 years old, which I no longer need.

Delete Post Revisions

Download the Delete Post Revisions Plugin and it will delete all the post revision there are. This is how the admin panel of the plugin looks like. We did not click the check box as there were too many revisions. There is only 1 button and that does the job.

It took the plugin over 20 minutes as we had over 8000 post revisions and we had to repeat 3 times till we got the message that no post revisions could be detected.

So now our databases is much cleaner and lighter as we have deleted unnecessary post revisions and have modified good settings for post revisions to work well in future.

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Block WordPress Filters

Normally WordPress has powerful filters which block and strip code, so if you disable the filter, you can add whatever you like in the input forms. I followed this discussion and found this useful tip.

In the theme editor, open your themes functions.php file and add this code before the closing php closing tag ?>

$filters = array('term_description','category_description','pre_term_description');
foreach ( $filters as $filter ) {
remove_filter($filter, 'wptexturize');
remove_filter($filter, 'convert_chars');
remove_filter($filter, 'wpautop');
remove_filter($filter, 'wp_filter_kses');
remove_filter($filter, 'strip_tags');
}

Warning: Any wrong code entry to the functions.php file can take your blog down and block wp access. So fiddle with it only if you know what you are doing. If something goes wrong, edit the file to original via ftp, and all will be well.

Add Category Description Theme Support

Now you need to enable the category description code in your theme (which is usually absent). So in your theme editor open archive.php (which displays tags and categories archives) and add the following code after the Category / Tag headline.

<?php echo category_description(); ?>

Add HTML to Category Description

Now you can add any html code and scripts to description fields of categories and tags.

Make useful category and tags descriptions and see the rising search engine ranking of these pages. Do you like this design + SEO tip?

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Change WordPress Login Logo

1. Modify your logo size to create a new image with following parameters

• .GIF image
• Transparent background
• Size – 310px wide, 70px height
• Name - logo-login.gif

2. Check your WordPress login screen which would be located on the url http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/ or if you host your WordPress in a folder, then it is at http://yoursite.com/folder/wp-admin/

3. Now login via FTP on your server and browse to the wp-admin/images folder

4. Find logo-login.gif image and back it up (rename to logo-login-back.gif or download it)

5. Upload your own logo image logo-login.gif to replace it

6. Check your WordPress login screen and your logo is live

if you require people to login to your site, you must change your WordPress login screen logo to bet better brand value.

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You read our 10 best reasons to install bbPress and for long time bbPress has been one of the best free forum softwares out there, and now it is also the easiest forum software you could ever integrate with WordPress. Right now the latest bbPress 2.0 beta in active development and you should try it on a test wordpress installation. Download bbPress WordPress Plugin (in beta testing) to see the new features.

bbPress WordPress integration

The new version will allow seamless integration with your WordPress site and theme, allowing integrated admin interface for forums, topics, and replies, splitting and merging topics within a single forum. Shortcodes will help you customize where your forums appear and there is the integrated child theme of TwentyTen for starters.

The power of WordPress will let you keep track of changes with topic and reply revisions, mark topics as favorites, receive emails when new replies are posted to topics you subscribe to, get forum widgets in sidebars and anonymous posting lets you open your community.

It will work with WordPress hooks, and Multisite application means that you can host unlimited bbPress forums. The important thing is there are no additional database tables and it promises to work in sync with BuddyPress Forums and WP caching plugins.

Something great is happening … I know a lot of bbPress forum owners are looking for the importer to migrate all their forums to the new WordPress integrated platform … and the time will come soon. I tried the beta and it is still buggy as of now, but I am sure the amazing WordPress community will make it better soon, and them all WordPress bloggers can get a one click forum of their own. Meanwhile there are many other WordPress Forum Plugins you can also try.

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