Plugins are the most common reason why things go strange or do not work whenever it comes to your WordPress blog. This is because they have been written by third parties. Nevertheless they offer some great additional features and functionality. One such “issue” is that your site may suddenly become very slow or it may become impossible to log into the WordPress admin area even though the rest of your site is running fine. If this happens, the first thing that you should do is visit the plugin author’s web site to see if there are any new versions of the plugin available. If you find that their server is down, then this may be the problem. In this case, you will need to disable the plugin until the other site is back up once again. You can do this by simply moving the plugin folder outside of your WordPress plugin directory.

Popularity: 11% [?]

It is a good idea to use categories to power the “Must Read” and “Worth A Look” lists on the side of your WordPress blog. The code that you will want to use in order to do this will look like this:

<h3>Popular Articles</h3>
<ul>
<?php query_posts(’category_name=popular’); ?>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a><br />
<?php the_excerpt(); ?></li>
<?php endwhile; ?><?php endif; ?>
</ul>

You are going to want to add this code to your theme’s template file. Once you have done so, it will be time to add posts to it. From this point on, every time that a post is placed into that category, it will appear within this list. Of course, this can be further customized in any way that you desire.

Popularity: 12% [?]

It is important to keep your WordPress install updated since the old ones can oftentimes become vulnerable. In order to keep this updated you will want to open the header.php file part of your theme. Once you do this you will find the following code:

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>” /><!– leave this for stats –>

You will want to completely remove this code in order to protect your WordPress installation. While this will not make your WordPress blog hack proof, it will make it so that hackers are unable to easily locate your blog, just in case it happens to be using a vulnerable WordPress installation.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Having a “Print This” button will be better for some blogs than it will be for others. The types of blogs that will do best with this are those that offer tutorials, recipes and guides. If you run this type of of a blog, then here is the JavaScript code that you will need to use in order to create this button:

<a href=”javascript:window.print()” rel=”nofollow”>Print This!</a>

With this button installed, the page that your visitor is on will be printed. Therefore, you probably do not want to place it on your homepage or else they will be printing your entire homepage, which they probably will not be appreciative of.

Popularity: 10% [?]