WordPress at MacEwan Help

Dealing with Spam

Trevor Beck — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:18:07 +0000

We’ve all had junk come through our e-mail – but the same thing can happen on our web site.

Spam actually comes in two kinds of forms – posts from live users and posts from computers.

Posts from Users
When we allow discussions on our site (see Settings–>Discussions) we allow people to express themselves and their opinions. By approving discussions first, we can control what appears on our site, but sometimes that’s more trouble than it’s worth. Quite often all we want to do is ensure people participate in a respectable way.

For many of us, respectable does not include swearing, so WordPress provides a way to create a list of words that if they appear in a post, that post must first be approved by an administrator. From the Discussions settings, just add the words you want to the list (to get you started you can use this sample of curse-words.)

Posts from computers
Like the spam that hits your e-mail, there’s much generated by computers. Rather than try and manage these yourself, you can enable the WP-SpamFree plugin. It will look after deleting any computer generated spam before it even is posted to your site. As a side benefit, WP-SpamFree can also generate a simple contact form for your users to submit message to you directly.

Create a post excerpt & using the “more” tag

Trevor Beck — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:56:29 +0000

When all your posts appear on one page, having long posts can mean a lot of scrolling. You can manually insert a “more” tag into your post so your reader sees a short piece and clicks on the title to see the full story.

[az-index id="8"]

Publish your post at a later date

Trevor Beck — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:52:54 +0000

Sometimes you create posts that are time sensitive and you want them to appear on your site on a specific date. Discover how easy this can be!

[az-index id="8"]

Rearrange the post editor to suit your style

Trevor Beck — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:50:52 +0000

There are a lot of fields on the post editor page that you may never use. This tutorial will show you how you can rearrange items so your more commonly used items are handy.

[az-index id="8"]

Use Quick Edit and Bulk Edit to make changes

Trevor Beck — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:41:16 +0000

Quick Edit and Bulk Edit are two features that will make it easier for you to quickly make changes to single posts or a whole bunch at once.

[az-index id="8"]

Adding a Widget to the sidebar

Trevor Beck — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:18:46 +0000

Widgets are an easy way to add different types of content to the side columns of your site. Although there are basic widgets available to you, be sure to check out the Widgets and Plugin categories to find other pieces of information you can add to your site.

[az-index id="8"]

Create an image gallery

Trevor Beck — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:17:39 +0000

If you have photos posted in Flickr or Google, you can easily link to those sites. However, the other alternative is to upload your images to your site and then create a gallery of the photos.

Keep in mind that you site has a limited amount of space and every photo you upload goes against that amount. Be sure to resize your photos using a simple online tool like Picnik.

[az-index id="8"]

Display tags in your sidebar with a widget

Trevor Beck — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:30:07 +0000

Assigning tags to your posts is an excellent practice and just another way for visitors to find information. However, to ensure users have access to those tags, you’ll need to make them available on your site by enabling the Tag widget.

[az-index id="8"]

Adding categories and tags to your posts

Trevor Beck — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:27:04 +0000

Creating content for a site is easy, but finding it can be a difficult task for visitors. WordPress provides two ways of organizing your information – categories and tags. Categories are general areas where you can group similar types of information. Tags are like keywords – you can assign a number of tags to a post, making it easier for users to find information (be sure to make use of the Tag widget).

[az-index id="8"]

Display news and posts from other sites

Trevor Beck — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:20:10 +0000

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way web sites make their content available away from their site (watch this video for an explanation of RSS). Using RSS feeds, you can post news and information from other sites into your sidebar automatically!

[az-index id="8"]