Dear Christina,

I’ve run into a cool little feature on a few websites I frequent and I’m wondering how they do it.

On the website, if you decide to copy a section of text and paste it in, say Word or Twitter, it automatically adds a link back to the original site.

Example:

This- “Why not get everything taken care of in one place?”

Pastes as this-

“Why not get everything taken care of in one place?”

Thanks. I await your wisdom.

Dear Taneesha,

A great question!

A back-up schedule depends on the type of site you have.

A blog changes content all the time so you would want to back-up at least once a week.

A business website, that only changes once in a great while, could do fine with once a month or once every two months.

I rely on this plugin to back up ALL of my WP sites. You can search for it from your dashboard – WP-DB-Backup.

ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS back-up everything before installing the newest version of WordPress.

Use an ftp client to download your theme files as well (located in wp-content/themes).

Follow the instruction for the backup plugin to do it correctly and have the backup emailed to you or downloaded to your computer. Keep the files in a safe place and always keep the latest two versions. I say keep two because if one becomes corrupt you have a shot at still having a good copy.

Hope that helps,

~Christina

Dear Christina,

Is there a way to connect a WordPress blog to a WordPress website? I’d like to create a blog tab on the website which when clicked on will open up a WP blog which has a separate domain.

Thank you.

Janine -Your Virtual Wizard

Dear Janine,

There are actually two ways to add external links to your WordPress sites navigation.

The easy way is to install the plugin PageLinksTo. I have not personally used this plugin but I have seen good reviews on it.

Please use with caution and backup everything first.

My preferred way is manually. It involves jumping into the code of your theme but it’s painless, I promise.

First you’ll need to go into Appearance->Editor and then click on header.php (this is the usual place for the code but you may have a separate file named nav.php, in that case you’ll be opening it instead)

You are looking for something like this: <?php wp_list_pages( ); ?>

Let me point out that some themes choose to list categories in the navigation instead of pages- if that is what your theme does you’ll be looking for <?php wp_list_categories( ); ?>

Now to add your external link you’ll add the following directly under that code:

<li><a href=”http://yourdomain.com“>External link name</a></li>

If you have more than one external link to add you’d just add another line like the one above. remember, the links you add will show at the end of your navigation bar.

So your final code will look like:

<?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=’); ?> (or <?php wp_list_categories( ); ?>)

<li><a href=”http://yourdomain.com“>External link name 1</a></li>

<li><a href=”http://yourdomain.com“>External link name 2</a></li>

Be sure to save all changes and refresh your WordPress site to see your handiwork.

~Christina

Dear Christina,

How do you add meta tags to your pages?

Thanks in advance.

Tahneesha Smith – A Virtual Blessing

Dear Taneesha,

Adding Meta tags to your WordPress site is really good SEO practice.

Those tags help the search engines categorize your pages more efficiently, which makes it easier for a potential client to find exactly what they are looking for.
Hopefully that’s you.

Adding separate tags for each page/post is not the best idea, but it is possible.

The easiest way is to install the All In One SEO plugin. This plugin is streamlined for the best WordPress SEO.

Once installed you can set your Meta tags, descriptions and keywords for your entire site and then, customize them all for each individual page or post as you want.

At the bottom of each page/post you’ll see this (you’ll see the same plus tons more options on the settings tab for this plugin):

Examples for each section:

Title: This is the title you want at the top of your(and your visitor’s) browser- if you look at the very top left corner of your browser window right now you’ll see “Adding Meta Tags to Pages | Dear Christina”

That’s my title for this page/post. I configured All In One SEO from the settings tab in my dashboard, so the title changes with the post. I don’t have to do anything except maybe add some additional keywords for this one post.

Description: The description should be short and sweet. This is not the place to explain your entire business, just a quick blurb that gives searches a reason to click to your site.

Keywords: Don’t go overboard here either. A few choice keywords go a long way. Enter only those that your target client may be searching for.

Title Attribute & Menu Label: I don’t touch these.

Disable on this page/post: Only check this box if you don’t want the page/post indexed by the search engines.

I hope my answer helps you in your SEO efforts.

~Christina

Dear Christina:

What are some WP plugins that you would recommend be added to a blog?

Janine -Your Virtual Wizard

Dear Janine,

When it comes to the plugins you need to install on your site, Bloggers and Company sites need different things.

Company sites, obviously, don’t need any comment, spam or social plugins.

Bloggers, on the other hand really need a good spam blocker, a way to make commenting (and following comments) easy and links to social networking sites.

I recommend the following specifically for bloggers:

Subscribe to Comments -  allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments.

dofollow -lets you remove the evil nofollow attribute from your comments.

Aksimet – make comment and trackback spam a non-issue.

Sociable – adds social media buttons to your posts.

TweetSuite – automatic Tweeting of new posts

FlickrRSS -  allows you to display Flickr photos on your weblog.

For all WordPress based sites I recommend:

Google XML Sitemaps Generator – generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog.

All in One SEO Pack -  Automatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) out of the box for your wordpress blog.

WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection -  self-explanatory

WordPress Database Backup – creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database.

~Christina