Category: General Blogging

An imaginary person, not me honest, was working on a WordPress site.  This person (who is very charming and handsome BTW) made a change to the code in the theme, coded the change incorrectly and brough the site crashing down, I just thought I would share with you a quick way to work around a problem with my how to on disabling a WordPress theme manually.

Does This Sound Familiar?

Here’s the scenario, you have added some code to the theme files, the code is incorrect, and an error is thrown, it then gets worse, as the same error is thrown as you attempt to get back into your dashboard to fix the error.  How are you going to get around this?

Here is My Quick Fix

A very quick fix to get your site back up and running is to delete the theme.

When you delete your theme, WordPress does a double takes realises that the files aren’t there and begins to work without a theme, your site’s front end will throw a white screen, but no error message, and best of all you can now access your back end.

You can then go in an activate a default theme or fix any error you may have inadvertently introduced.

Fool It Into Thinking The Theme is Not There

You probably don’t want to delete your theme is you are working on it, so a little cheat is to make the theme disappear by changing the file permissions.

Using your ftp client of choice, connect to your site and browse to wp-content/themes and change the files permissions of your chosen theme directory to 000.  This prevents WordPress from access this directory and makes it think the active theme is not available, again the system will be back with a blank front end.

Remember to change the permissions back so you can work on the files.

Wrap Up

Hope this little nugget helps someone in the same predicament.

UPDATE: WordPress TroubleShooting Training 

I have recorded a video training session on troubleshooting WordPress for my WordPress training and support community the WP Owners Club.

[leadplayer_vid id=”50753A7F726BC”]

In the final training post of this tutorial I would like to take you through recovering the database archive you created in Backup and Recovery: Backing Up Your Database.

I will discuss the times when you should consider a database restore, what tools to use for the restore and lastly a video showing how to do that restore.

When to Restore Your Database

The times when you recover your database will be very similar to restoring your file base namely

• Migrating your blog
• Hardware or system failure causing data corruption
• Roll back a failed update of WordPress
• Recovering from a hacking attack
• User error – you accidentally deleted yourdatabase for example
• As part of a test of your backup

The only difference is that you must spot where the error lies, if you have corrupt posts, restore the database, if you cannot find theme files restore the file base.

Stop Before You Do Anything Else

Backup the database as it is now.  This gives you a stable poitn to return to if you cause issues with your recovery.  You know it cannot get anyworse than it already is.

If you can, collect metrics, how many posts, comments, tags and categories do you have,  this can be obtained from the dashboard of your blog.  This will be used to help you test that recovery has worked correctly.

How To Restore Your Database

In our backup process we created a SQL archive file.  The contents will look something like this

—
— Database: `wpowners`
—

— ——————————————————–

—
— Table structure for table `wp_wpoc_comments`
—

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `wp_wpoc_comments` (
`comment_ID` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
`comment_post_ID` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL default ‘0’,
`comment_author` tinytext NOT NULL,
`comment_author_email` varchar(100) NOT NULL default ”,
`comment_author_url` varchar(200) NOT NULL default ”,
`comment_author_IP` varchar(100) NOT NULL default ”,
`comment_date` datetime NOT NULL default ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00’,
`comment_date_gmt` datetime NOT NULL default ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00’,
`comment_content` text NOT NULL,
`comment_karma` int(11) NOT NULL default ‘0’,
`comment_approved` varchar(20) NOT NULL default ‘1’,
`comment_agent` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
`comment_type` varchar(20) NOT NULL default ”,
`comment_parent` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL default ‘0’,
`user_id` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL default ‘0’,
PRIMARY KEY  (`comment_ID`),
KEY `comment_approved` (`comment_approved`),
KEY `comment_post_ID` (`comment_post_ID`),
KEY `comment_approved_date_gmt` (`comment_approved`,`comment_date_gmt`),
KEY `comment_date_gmt` (`comment_date_gmt`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=2 ;

—
— Dumping data for table `wp_wpoc_comments`
—

INSERT INTO `wp_wpoc_comments` (`comment_ID`, `comment_post_ID`, `comment_author`, `comment_author_email`, `comment_author_url`, `comment_author_IP`, `comment_date`, `comment_date_gmt`, `comment_content`, `comment_karma`, `comment_approved`, `comment_agent`, `comment_type`, `comment_parent`, `user_id`) VALUES
(1, 1, ‘Mr WordPress’, ”, ‘http://wordpress.org/’, ”, ‘2009-09-29 04:26:45’, ‘2009-09-29 11:26:45’, ‘Hi, this is a comment.<br />To delete a comment, just log in and view the post&#039;s comments. There you will have the option to edit or delete them.’, 0, ‘1’, ”, ”, 0, 0);

….AND MANY MORE

This extract from my archive files show the comamnds which will recover my comments table.  First the file recreates the tables, then it runs a series of insert commands which will add the data back into that recreated table.

It may not seem very technical, but essentiually, the recovery process is a series of reacreating tables and the placing the data back into the tables one row at a time.

PhPMYAdmin Restore

We used phpmyadmin to build the archive file and we are going to use it again to restore the data.  Load up phpmyadmin acording to the instructions supplied by your hosting company.

Navigate to your database and select the import function.  Browse to your saved archive file and click on go, your import and recovery will now begin.

How Long Will The Recovery Take

That all depends upon how big your blog is.  In the video acompanying this post, it takes less than a minute,  but a production blog with hundrerd of posts and many plugins will take far longer.

PANIC POINT!

When doing the recovery, your system will go off and appear to do nothing, you will panic that your recovery is not working, this is okay, I recommend that you practise your recovery so that you know how long it takes so you will not panic during a real recovery scenario.

Upon completion of the process phpmyadmin will return a status update of how may tables and records were recovered, this is when you know that the process is completed.

Keeping Your File Base and Database In Line

If you have restored your database to a point before a WordPress update you will need to run the update process again.  This can be done by running the following script

http://{YOUR DOMAIN}/wp-admin/upgrade.php

Testing the Recovery

Using the metrics we collected earlier, you should log into your site and ensure you have recovered the correct number of posts, comments etc.

VIDEO: Recovering the WordPress Database

Running time for this video is approximately 3 minutes.

[S3 bucket=wpocrestoredb text=View the video>>]restoreDB.html[/s3]

Discuss this Post

If you would like to discuss this topic, please  leave a comment

In this tutorial I would like to take you through the process of recovering the file base archive we created in the tutorial Backup and Recovery: Restoring Your File Base.  I will look at when to recover, how to do that recovery and show you the process in the associated video screen cast.

When To Recover

Here are some of the scenarios you will encounter which may require a backup recovery.  It’s my guess you will know when to recover, you will not be able to access your blog or the backend, that’s when to begin.

• Migrating your blog
• Hardware failure causing file corruption
• Roll back a failed update of WordPress
• Hacking attack
• User error – you accidentally deleted your file base for example
• As part of a test of your backup

Don’t Panic

When you are in a recovery scenario, the most important thing is not to panic, you need to slowly and methodically recover the file base and database, this tutorial is equipping you with the knowledge to do that process.  At the end of this series there are some exercises to test this knowledge so you do not enter a recovery situation cold without prior experience of the process.

Counter Intuitive Moment

Make a backup of your problematic file base, before you start the recovery.  This give you a position to fall back to if your recovery process causes more problems.  It will not get any worse than it is now thinking.

Keeping the Database and File base In Line

Just a quick point to say you need to keep your filebase version and your database version in line.  For example if you have just updated your version of WP it is very likely that the database has been updated too, please recover the database before recovering the file base to keep the two systems in line, you can have issues if you are using an updated database and an old file base.

How To Recover Your File Base

Recovering your file base is the reverse operation to backing it up, using an FTP client in SFTP mode, go to your saved archive and upload the files back to your hosting account.  You can recover the full archive by uploading it to your hosting account, or you can just upload a part of it.  For example you have have been editing your theme, and caused an issue, you cann select just the files under wp-content/themes to recover.

VIDEO: Recovering the WordPress File Base

Running time for this video is approximately 2.5 minutes.

[S3 bucket=wpocrestorefb text=View the video>>]restorefilebase.html[/s3]

Discuss this Post

If you would like to discuss this topic, please leave a coment

Next In the Series

The next part of the backup and recovery tutorial looks at restoring your database archive.

There has been a tiny change to my blog which has had huge repercussions to my site, I thought I would share this tale of stupidity with you as a warning of how little things can snowball into larger problems.

The Issue

There is a line in my theme header file which looks like this:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"

Have you spotted the problem yet?  What do you mean you cannot see the glaring error!

That particular statement needs to be suffixed with a “/>”

Big Deal, Why are You Draining My life-force With this Sad Little Detail?

Because I had, for some reason unknown, deleted a couple of characters, my HTML was badly formed and this had a knock on effect which seriously effected my site

The Snowball Effect

The line underneath the content type was my title tag, the badly formed html means that this line was not readable.

The title tag is read by google when they index my site.

All of my content now had the title Subscribe  see the image below.

A few weeks ago my site took a Page rank drop, probably because of this issue, Google cannot ascertain what the hell my posts are about.

There is a very good chance that people are not clicking on my links from the search engines due to this teeny tiny error.

I have probably missed the chance to gain new readers, subscribers and clients.

Bugger, and all for a bloody back slash and greater than sign.

Come On Where is the Moral Lessons In All This Like At The End Of A Disney Movie?

Gather round kids, here is the lesson for the day.

There is a fantastic tool in the Google webmasters site which has been telling me for months that I have 130 pages with missing title tags.  I thought it was talking rubbish so I just ignored it.  Check out the tools at:

google.com/webmasters diagnostics -> html suggestions

So when Google tells you there is a problem sit up and listen.  They are quite good at all this internet stuff.

I’m About To Swear Like Hugh Grant Now, Please Block Your Ears if Easily Offended

Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, BUGGER!

Exhibit A

I am planning to run  a workshop to show people how to performance tune their WordPress blog.

If you want to improve the speed of your site or protect it from the dreaded slashdot effect then this is the workshop for you.

UPDATE 22 DECEMBER 2009

I will be making this available as a members only section of my site so you can watch the videos and read the content at your own pace

What’s The Format

I will deliver the workshop as a webinar using Gotomeeting.com It will be part presentation part live demonstration of me tuning a blog.  There will be ample time to ask questions throughout the session.

I will save the webinar as a screencast video and make it available for download after the event so you can refresh your memory when you come to tune your own blog.

The topics I am planning to cover are:

• Finding the bottlenecks
• Tuning plugins
• Tuning Themes
• WordPress cache plugins
• MYSQL Query Cache

Limited Seats

I can only take 15 people on the workshop. This is not an internet marketers statement to create a false sense of scarcity, rather it is the limit of seats the software can offer.  So first come first served I’m afraid.

If I get a good response to this workshop I will run multiple sessions at different times for different timezones.

When

This is the wrong time of year to be planning a live event with the holiday season about to descend upon us,  with this in mind I have created a survey below, if the majority of you want the session before chritsmas I will arrange it, otherwise it will be in the first week of the new year.

Cost

The session will cost $77 for that you will receive the live training, a recording of the event and follow up support via email when you come to tune your own site.

Early Notification list

Help me to find the best time to run the event by completing the survey below and I will give you a priority notification when I take bookings :

In later posts in this series I want to talk about using plugins to backup your database, but in this post I want to go back to basics and take you through manually backing up your database with the MYSQL tools your hosting company provides.

I want to do this to give you an understanding of the database and what is required of a manual backup before we move onto automating this process with plugins.

What To backup

WordPress uses a database system called MYSQL to store all of the variable data of your site.

To create an adequate database backup you need to backup all of the system tables created by WordPress and all of the additional tables created by plugin installs or related but none WordPress systems such as forums or affiliate software.

A quick glossary of terms, a database is a container for all of your data, you will have one database per WordPress install.  The database will contain many tables, tables are containers of collections of data organised by purpose.  For example there is a table for your posts, a table for your users and passwords etc.

Why You Need To Backup Your Database

Your blog is a dynamic thing, every time you add a post, receive a comment , get a link, changes are made to your database.  All variable options of your site such as users, revision history of your posts, categories, plugin data and tags are all stored in tables inside of your database.  This needs to be archived on a regular basis so you can recover in the event of a system failure.

How It Is Backed Up

My Preferred method is to save an export of the database.  This is a file containing all of the commands necessary to recreate the tables and then to populate the tables with data and to setup any relationships such as indexes.

For the rest of this tutorial I will focus on using the phpmyadmin utility.  This is the most widespread MYSQL admin tool supplied by hosting companies.  Please contact your hosting company for details on accessing phpmyadmin.

For full details of this tool please visit www.phpmyadmin.net

Once in your phpmyadmin tool, select the database your wordpress install uses and then navigate to the export tab, you will see the screen shown below:

Make sure that you check the Add DROP TABLE /VIEW/PROCEDURE options to make recovery in the event of a catastrophe easier.

As I have said I like to export the database as a SQL file of commands, this is selected in the left hand column, lastly I like to save the file to my local file system, this is done by clicking on save as file near the bottom of the page.

Once done, click on go and an export file will be created, this will take a certain amount of time dependant upon the size of your database.

VIDEO: BackingUp Your WordPress Database

Running time for this video is approximately 6 minutes.

[S3 bucket=wpocbackupdatabase text=View the video>>]backupdaatabase.html[/s3]

Discuss this Post

If you would like to discuss this topic, please  leave a comment.

Next In the Series

The next part of the backup and recovery tutorial looks at backup using plugins.

In this post I want to talk about backing up your file base, what the file base is, it’s content and why this needs special treatment.

This post comes with a screencast video to show you exactly how to backup the files in question.

What Is The File Base

It is my name to distinguish the physical files which make up WordPress as opposed to the Database which contains all of your content such as posts, pages, comment, tags and categories.

The following directories make up your files base:

• wp-content
• wp-admin
• wp-include
• Blog Root

Why Back This Up I Can Download the files

Yes you can, but the file base also contains variable information that is not easily downloaded from the WordPress.org site such as configuration files, themes and any changes you made to your theme, all of your plugins and any media files uploaded to your blog such as images or video.  You need to archives all of these alongside your WordPress scripts.

How To Backup Your File Base

Take one FTP client of your choosing, my favourites are Filezilla or the Firefox plugin FireFTP, and navigate to the root of your blog install, select all of the files there including all the sub-directories and make a copy of them to a local file system on your computer.

I like to copy them into a date stamped directory so I can create multiple copies of my filebase.

Archiving Your Backup

You have a backup of your files on your machine, not to make you paranoid, but what happens if you PC crashes, you loose all of your backups, can I suggest you make an archive of your archives.

Save them to a CD, upload them to an online storage site, check out Google docs, that’s free or attach them to an email and send them to yourself if you use a service like Gmail.

VIDEO: How To Backup Your File Base manually

Here is the screencast video to show you exactly how to backup your file base.  Running time approx 5 minutes.

[S3 bucket=backupfilebase text=View the video>>]backupfiles.html[/s3]

Discuss this Post

If you would like to discuss this topic, please  leave a comment.

Next In the Series

The next part of the backup and recovery tutorial looks at backing up your database.

In a series of blog posts, I would like to take you through the process of backing up, and then recovering your WordPress blog.  I will look at why this process is so important, all of the components required to make a full backup, how to do a backup, then I will look at the most important aspect, how to recover your archived data and files.

The first part of this tutorial takes you through an introduction to the backup and recovery processes.

Why Do I Need A Backup?

Computer systems go phutt on an all too regular basis, having a backup allows you to rebuild your blog with the minimum effort.  Consider the time and effort you have put into developing your posts and your cool theme,  how many people have taken the trouble to leave a comment and the links you have built up on Google, all of this needs to be archived so you can recover it in the event of a catastrophic failure, hacking attack, hardware failure or user error.

If you have to recover your blog from scratch without a backup, this will take a huge amount of time (time equals money) , you will loose a lot of your blog’s traction and any authority you have built with the search engines may be affected.

Take a moment to work out the cost to you or your organisation if your blog fails and cannot be recovered quickly.

What You Need To Backup

There are two components you need to consider when doing a WordPress backup, the data in your MYSQL database and what I call the filebase or the files which make up a WordPress install.

The database is commonly backed up by most people, but who considers their filebase?  The filebase includes all of your uploaded media (images, video, podcast etc), your theme, your plugins and the files which make Wordporess run; the scripts and configuration files.

A partial backup of only one of these components is of little use, you need to backup both.

How Often Should You Backup?

The frequency of your backups should be done in line with how often you update your blog, if you write posts daily, backup daily, if you are uploading lots of media, backup the filebase frequently.  Do it often, and do it early.

My preference is once daily for my database and weekly for my code base.

You should also perform a backup before any major change to your blog.  You should backup before you update the code, add plugins, change the theme or add a third party product such as a forum which will share the same database.

Keep Multiple Copies of Your Archive

Having multiple point in time backups allows me to restore to a particular period before my failure happened. If you only keep one archive you may reimport the problem when you do your restore.

An example is probably helpful here. Imagine your blog has been hacked on Monday and rogue code has been added to your site, then imagine you only notice the hack on Wednesday, your single point in time archive from Tuesday will still contain the rogue code from Monday, you need an archive from Sunday to sucessfully recover to an operational point in time.

A good example of a retention policy is to keep a weeks worth of daily backups, then to keep four weekly backups.  This means you can recover up to a month in the past.

Archiving My Backups

If you keep all of your archives on your local hard drive, there is a change you could loose these, I recommend you archive your archives.  This can be done by copying your data sets to cd, or to an online service such as Google docs.  Just make sure you have  an archive you can recover from if your pc or mac crashes.

I use Gmail as a sneaky way to archive my backups, I have setup a rule to move my backup files directly to a storage area  automatically, this means I have a number of checkpoints with my backups so I can do a point in time recovery.  I use plugins to send me those emails, I will explain more about this in the backup plugins section later in this course.

Testing Your Backup

It is all well and good having a backup, but have you tested your recovery process, I wrote a guest post on Problogger about this subject, check it out at http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/12/testing-your-blog-backup.

What’s Next in the Series?

The rest of this series is much more practical, I will take you through backing up and recovering your system.

Backing up the file base and the database manually

I will show you how to manually create an archive of your file base, or the files which make up your install such as wordpress scripts, theme files, plugin files and any media you upload such as images or video.

I will then move onto backing up your database.  This is where your blog content is saved your posts, paghes, comments, tags categories and the variable data which allow syou system to run such as user information, plugin configuration or blog options.

Backup Plugins

I have shown you how to manually back your database and file base, this is an important learning process to understand what is required for a good backup, but manual backups are not very efficient, I will move onto a section on using plugins to automate your backup procedure.

Recovering The Files and Database

I was once told by a system administrator that you are only as good as your last backup, I agree, but add the caveat, you are only as good as your last backup your know how to recover.

The last parts of this tutorial will show you how to recover your two types of archive.  This is often overlooked.  Having the knowlege to recover your blog when it has crashed is very important.

Discuss this Post

If you would like to discuss this topic, please  leave a comment

Next In the Series

The next part of the backup and recovery tutorial looks at backing up the code base.

After spending countless hours trying to fix a problem on one of my Word Press blogs I had the good fortune to find WPDUDE.Neil very quickly found and fixed the problem.What impressed me was the personal service and patience to deal with any query that I had as a non techie.So if you have a problem with your blog don’t despair -help is there.
Martin Godden http://e2012predictions.com

In my post yesterday I wrote about taking 404 errors and using them to your advantage, in this post I want to build on that and talk about tracking down 404 problems and fixing them.

What is A 404 and Why Fix It?

404 is the error returned by web servers to browsers if a file cannot be found.  This is a standard error and is usually a dead-end on a website.

We need to fix certain 404 errors because people are coming to your site expecting to find content but are getting errors instead, this does not look good to fickle blog readers, the slightest thing can make people unsubscribe or not come back to your site.

Finding 404 Errors

How do you find what URLS are causing 404 errors on your site?  You look in your logs.   You should have  a log file of all the accesses of your site, these will show what page, the referer, what user agent (browser) and many more things.  The thing we are interested in is the http return code, searching for 404 will show your problem URLS.

Each hosting provider will have a different config for their logs, please refer to their documentation on how to review your access logs.

Here is a sample from my log file, I have highlighted the 404 error message and the page/post name.

“150.70.xxx.xxx – – [19/Nov/2009:10:28:25 -0700] “GET /hire-me HTTP/1.0″ 404 17600 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)”

Here I can see that there was a file not found error trying to retrieve the page hire-me.  This is not good, a potential client is getting a 404 because I have renamed that particular page.

Fixing That Problem

Once I find a 404 error I want to fix it by redirecting to a live page.  I know what you are thinking, he is about to tell us about a plugin after he had us ferreting about in our log files, you are quite correct, and it’s only because I care and want to give you a holistic view of your 404 problems that I asked you to look in your logs 🙂

Redirection Plugin

I use a plugin called redirection which (as the name suggests) redirects URLs to other URLS. Check it out at http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/

The beauty of this plugin is that it has a 404 detection function.  Using that I can very quickly find out which URLs are causing me problems and then fix them.  Below is a screenshot of my 404 for today.

Both of  these URLs are ones I have renamed, I want to fix the 404 errors by redirecting them to the new page.

301 Redirection

Using the redirection plugin I can set up a URL interceptor which will capture all visits to the 404 URL and do a 301 redirect to a new page or post.  301 redirects are cool if the visitor came from a search engine, because next time you site is indexed, the incorrect URL will be updated to the new one.

See It In Action

I have setup a redirection for /hire-me, see what happens if you click on

https://dev.neilmatthews.com/hire-me (hint check the browsser bar for the new URL)

Don’t Fix Them All

If people are getting 404s because of typos or things like that I do not recommend creating redirects, only redirect things which are real issues like renamed pages

404 No-More

Get your 404 errors fixed, it makes you look more click and professional with an increased chance of subscription or other action.

The dreaded 404 error is the scourge of most websites, in this blog posts I want to tell you how to re-purpose the 404 error and use it to your advantage.

What Is A 404 Error

404 is the error returned by web servers to browsers if a file cannot be found.  This is a standard error and is usually a dead-end on a website.

Why Are 404s Returned?

You site will return a 404 for one of the following reasons:

• Typo in the URL e.g. wpdude.com/aboutt instead of wpdude.com/about
• The pages really does not exist e.g. wpdude.com/how-to-build-joomla-sites
• You created the page, it got into the search engines indexes, then you took it down
• You renamed the page

Create a Custom 404 page

Most WordPress themes have a page called 404.php, this is designed to handle any file not found errors and display a dull yet nicely themed message saying you went to the wrong page.  What I want to suggest is that you take this page, and transform it into a springboard to other live pages on your site.

Editing 404.php required some coding skill, if you feel up to it, put on your code monkey hat, order a dozen pizzas, loose your social skills and follow me.

Add A Search Box

Why not add a search box to your 404 page this gives people the chance to search your posts for the title they want.  Here is the code to add a basic search box to your 404.php file.

 <form id="searchform" method="get" action="/index.php">
      <div>
         <input type="text" name="s" id="s" size="15" /><br />
         <input type="submit" value="Search" />
      </div>
     </form>

Contact

Another good way to springboard people to the content they want, or to bring your attention to the problem is to add a contact form.  I use the plugin contact form 7, which does not support forms in themes, so I provide an email address to contact me on.

Give Up Your Pillar Content

Why not give them something excellent ot read anyway, give them a list of your pillar content or your most popular posts.  In my case I am using the popularity contest post plugins to display my most popular posts judged by the number of times a post has been read.  To do this I add the following php command to my 404.php file:

akpc_most_popular()

See It In Action

I have implemented these on my own 404.php file you can see this in action by visiting wpdude.com/zzzzzz

Don’t Make The 404 A Deadend

A 404 is usually a dead-end, the wrong page to be on.  Why not repurpose this into a useful experience for your site visitor.  Push them to your key content or give them a call to action so they can find what they want, small actions like this turn casual visitors into subscribers.

If you need help implementing a useful 404 page, please contact me via my service page.

An out of the box install of WordPress is okay, but you can spice up your vanilla install and make it extra tasty by following these ten steps:

1 Permalinks

The default permalink structure of WordPress has a lot to be desired, change this to a custom one and you can improve your SEO and make your posts more meaningful to search engine users.  Change your default permalinks to %postname% in the custom section.

I wrote an article How To Change Your Slug For SEOon this subject.

2 Jazz Up Your Admin Account

The first user created by WordPress is usually admin, make your blog a bit more personal by giving admin a nick name, give it your name, put a personal touch to your posts.  This is done from users and subscribers section.

3 Add a Liberal Dash Of Plugins

Plugins rock, they extend a dull old WordPress install and make it sing,  here are my “must have” plugins

• All in one seo
• Askismet
• Google XML sitemaps
• WordPress.com stats
• WordPress Database backup

4 Put On A Pretty Dress

Figuratively speaking, don’t use dull default themes, go shopping for a new theme, if you are serious about blogging, check out a premium theme, better still check out one of the cool breed of new themes like Headway which allows you to design your own look and feel without any coding skills.

5 The Key To A Good Blog is An API Key

Stop reading and go over to wordpress.com.  Create a free account and get yourself and API key, this will be used to register visits for your wordpress stats and combat comment spam.

6 Get Yourself Noticed

You’ve got a fancy new blog, now you need readers, get yourself noticed on the search engines by first getting your self indexed.  Step one is to add a sitemap, a text file on your site which tells Google and Co all about your blog posts and pages, read more about sitemaps in my article Getting Your WordPress Posts Into Google Using Sitemaps

7 Set A Comment Policy

The best time to set a comment policy is when your blog is new and you have no comments.  Check out How To Control You WordPress Comments

8 Feed Me, Feed Me Now

Get yourself a feedbuner account and stream yoru rss feed into it.  Feedburner gives you statistics on how many people are subscribing to your blog, and how people are using the content you publish. You can setup a feedbuner account at  http://feedburner.google.com.

9 Backup Your Blog

Learn how to backup and recover your blog before you have too much content.

10 Get Writing

You are thinking I couldn’t think up tenth config item so I threw in get writing, you are wrong, this is the most important item, get writting your pillar content, the important stuff for your niche, have something cool to read when your first visitors begin to arrive.