The Code

Just simply open you sidebar.php or on any file (eg:tab.php etc) where you need it to appear on sidebar and paste these codes.

<h2>Random Posts</h2>
<ul>
<?php $posts = get_posts('orderby=rand&amp;numberposts=3'); foreach($posts as $post) { ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?><br />
<span><?php the_excerpt(); ?><br /><em>&amp;mdash;Posted on <?php the_time('n/j/Y') ?></em></span></a>
</li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>

Simply troubleshoot, try and see how it looks like until you satisfy with it. Enjoy!

Keep This in Mind

What we need to do is open the existing .htaccess file on your wordpress blog and paste the hack codes below OR create new .htaccess file if it does not exist. Upload to your site root and chmod it to 644 to protect it from malicious hacker types.

Be sure to keep the original working .htaccess as backup just in case you need to revert to original settings.

The Hacks

• Protect the .htaccess file itself

# protect the htaccess file
<files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

• Protect the wpconfig.php file

# protect wpconfig.php
<files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

• Disable the Server Signature from showing

# disable the server signature
ServerSignature Off

• Limit the File upload size

# limit file uploads to 10mb
LimitRequestBody 10240000

• Blacklist undesired users and bots ip address
  

#who has access and who doesnt
<Limit GET POST PUT>
order allow,deny
allow from all
deny from 123.456.789
deny from 93.121.788
deny from 223.956.789
deny from 128.456.780
</LIMIT>

• Allow only your IP adress on the wp-admin directory

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "Example Access Control"
AuthType Basic
<LIMIT GET>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from xx.xx.xx.xx
</LIMIT>

Be sure to put your ip address on line xx.xx.xx.xx. You can allow more ip address by adding another ip address on next line.

• Redirect users to Custom Error page

#custom error docs
ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.php
ErrorDocument 403 /forbidden.php
ErrorDocument 500 /error.php

• Prevent directory browsing

# disable/prevent directory browsing
Options All –Indexes

• Redirect ‘Day & Name’ permalinks structure to new permalinks structure of /%postname%/ without losing any backlinks

The first thing to do is to login to your WordPress admin, go to Settings → Permalinks and select custom. Fill out the field with /%postname%/.

The permalinks will look like this one below:

http://www.yourblog.com/name-of-the-post

Now open .htaccess file or create new one if not exist. Paste this code inside it.

RedirectMatch 301 /([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$4

Now you should have all backlinks with the new permalinks structure.

• Remove /category/ from WordPress url

Now what we want to do is to change

http://www.domain.com/blog/category/postname

to

http://www.domain.com/blog/postname

Just paste the code below onto the .htaccess file

RewriteRule ^category/(.+)$ http://www.yourblog.com/$1 [R=301,L]

• Redirect WordPress RSS feeds to feedburner with .htaccess

# temp redirect wordpress content feeds to feedburner
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner    [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedValidator [NC]
RewriteRule ^feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ http://feeds2.feedburner.com/catswhocode [R=302,NC,L]
</IfModule>

Do not forget to change the feedburner url to your own feedburner url.

• Block referring domains

For this example is digg. But who don’t want referal from Digg? This is just for example. You can put any domain name.

#block referring domains
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} digg\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]

• Disable hotlinking of images with forbidden or custom image option

RewriteEngine On
#Replace ?mysite\.com/ with your blog url
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
#Replace /images/nohotlink.jpg with your "don't hotlink" image url
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/nohotlink.jpg [L]

• Setting canonical url manually using .htaccess

# set the canonical url
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

• Deny comment posting to no referrer requests/ Protect from Spam Comments

There is also a way that you can protect comment or post spamming using .htaccess.

This code will look for the referrer (the page from where the commentator came from) and will deny commenting if the commentator tried to access the wp-comments-post.php file without directly coming from your blog.

Just change the line 4 and specify your blog url there.

# protect from spam or post comments
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*yourdomain.com.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$

RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L]

• Redirect visitors to a maintenance page

Replace maintenance.html (line 2) by the page you’d like to redirect your visitor and the IP adress on line 3 by your own ip.

Note that a 302 redirection is used, to avoid search engines indexing the maintenance page instead of your real homepage

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.123\.123\.123

RewriteRule $ /maintenance.html [R=302,L]

• Compress static data

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml application/xml application/xhtml+xml text/javascript text/css application/x-javascript
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

• Forcing the use of browser cache

FileETag MTime Size
<ifmodule mod_expires.c>
<filesmatch "\.(jpg|gif|png|css|js)$">
ExpiresActive on
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
</filesmatch>
</ifmodule>

• Protect WordPress Blog From Script Injections

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\<|%3C).*script.*(\>|%3E) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L]

• Use .htaccess for php compression

You can try to use .htaccess to apply php compression, but use this code with caution at your own risk. It might not support your web settings etc.

# php compression – use with caution
<ifmodule mod_php4.c>
php_value zlib.output_compression 16386
</ifmodule>

• Limit the number of Simultaneous Connections

MaxClients < number-of-connections>

• Set the Time Zone of the Server

SetEnv TZ America/Indianapolis

What Else?

Refer to these sites for more informations:

• A to Z of WordPress htaccess Hacks
• The Ultimate Htaccess
• 10 Awesome .htaccess Hacks for WordPress

Find your theme’s functions.php file, and paste the following code:

function hls_set_query() {
$query  = attribute_escape(get_search_query());
if(strlen($query) > 0){
echo '
<script type="text/javascript">
var hls_query  = "'.$query.'";
</script>
';
}
}
function hls_init_jquery() {
wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
}
add_action('init', 'hls_init_jquery');
add_action('wp_print_scripts', 'hls_set_query');

After that manually you can open your theme’s header.php file and paste the following code before the </head> tag.

<style type="text/css" media="screen">
.hls { background: #D3E18A; } /* <- Change the CSS style of */
/*    highlighted texts here. */
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery.fn.extend({
highlight: function(search, insensitive, hls_class){
var regex = new RegExp("(<[^>]*>)|(\\b"  search.replace(/([-.* ?^${}()|[\]\/\\])/g,"\\$1")  ")", insensitive ? "ig" : "g");
return this.html(this.html().replace(regex, function(a, b, c){
return (a.charAt(0) == "<") ? a : "<strong class=\""  hsl_class  "\">"   c   "</strong>";
}));
}
});
jQuery(document).ready(function($){
if(typeof(hls_query) != 'undefined'){
$("#post-area").highlight(hls_query, 1, "hls"); // <- Change 'post-area' to ID of HTML tag you
//    want to highlight search terms in.
}
});
</script>

Make sure to change the “post-area” in the code to the HTML tag ID (for eg: content or post) of the area you want your search terms highlighted. You can also change the way the highlighted text styles by changing the CSS properties of the “.hls” class.

Enjoy!

Why text inside search forms?

The text can actually help readers to identify the search area more easily, encouraging them to use it and even clarify the search process for non-experience users. Some examples of texts that you can include in the search box:

• search here
• search
• To search, type and hit enter
• search this blog

How to do it

Simply locate where is search form code. It can be in sidebar.php, header.php depending on where it is located. Just find this line of code:

<input type="text" name="s" id="s" size="20"/>

Then replace the whole code above with this bunch of code:

<input type="text" name="s" id="s" value="Text to be displayed here" onfocus="if(this.value==this.defaultValue)this.value='';" onblur="if(this.value=='')this.value=this.defaultValue;"/>

With a simple code above will give you a clickable, and then dissapearing text inside the search box, and replaced by the texts you typed. When you click on other side than the search box without typing any text, it will reappear again the default search text.

More

Then you can customize the looks of the font and its color by modifying or adding the suitable css stylesheet.

To get a nice search result, you can go to our previous post:

How to Create SEO Friendly Search URL

Let say we want to add something like an adsense ads in our post, we can use shortcode such as [adsense].

How it can be done:

Open your theme’s functions.php file and add this code below:

function showads() {
return '<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-1414767574446180";
/* 468x60, created 10/16/09 whtop01 */
google_ad_slot = "8134999590";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>
';
}

add_shortcode('adsense', 'showads');

Just type [adsense] in any place of your post, adsense ads will appear.

Much simpler example:

Open functions.php file and add this code below:

function wptidbits() {
return 'Have you subscribed to <a href="http://wptidbits.com">WPTidBits</a> posts today?';
}

Then add this another line below after the above code:

add_shortcode('wtb', 'wptidbits');

Now you are able to use your own [wtb] code as a shortcode. Just paste the shortcode into any place on post (in HTML mode).

These two are the simplest examples i can give. Surely if you do try using it always and be creative, you will be able to create your own shortcodes. Enjoy!

Simply open your wordpress theme’s functions.php using any of your favorite editor and add this code below:

<?php
function close_comments( $posts ) {
if ( !is_single() ) { return $posts; }
if ( time() - strtotime( $posts[0]->post_date_gmt ) > ( 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 ) ) {
$posts[0]->comment_status = 'closed';
$posts[0]->ping_status    = 'closed';
}
return $posts;
}
add_filter( 'the_posts', 'close_comments' );
?>

You can run this script as a plugin, through your theme’s functions.php, or through a custom user-functions.php file. Simply set the desired number of days by changing the number “30” to whatever you would like. As is, this script will close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks on all articles posted more than 30 days ago.

Since many years back, rounded corners has been major signature of design elements in Web 2.0 trend. Many css coder have been using rounded corner images to achieve this purpose. But since the page loading time, number of images used, dns lookups, minified css, javascripts and so many things has been counted for an “excellent” web 2.0 website, using css3 codes might be the life saver.

Using simple -webkit-border-radius or -khtml-border-radius properties, we can get rounded corners without using any image at all.

Straight to the Point

For example, code below will return 5 pixel border radius corner to all.

-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-khtml-border-radius: 5px;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;

While this one will give only top corners rounded.

-moz-border-radius: 5px 5px 0px 0px;
-khtml-border-radius: 5px 5px 0px 0px;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px 5px 0px 0px;

It will look like image below:

Bad News

The bad news is that not all browsers can support this feature. You can try view demo below in different browsers to see it live or follow this useful site that states a complete table on the browsers compatibility. Read more why it is so.

Use the downloaded file below for testing. Open it using you favorite css editor and keep different combination. Of course it is very simple. But, why not strengthen it? Have fun!

See it or Have it

The Problem

• Let say we have created a page, named for example About (slug also named about). Suddenly we change our mind and delete it.
• After sometime, we decided that we saw the necessity of the page and recreate a page with the same name and slug.
• However, the result returned name About but the slug became about-2. Even after several time editing and renaming (even deleting also), still return the same value.

Have you ever faced something like this?

The Solution

I know the solution is quite easy for most people especially those who are wordpress savvy. This is quite useful for newbie like me..

• Go to your wordpress Pages menu, you will surely find something like ‘All‘, ‘Published‘, ‘Draft‘ (if you have draft saved) and ‘Trash‘.

• The solution is in ‘Trash‘. Click it and you will see the original about slug and permalink. This is all where your deleted pages will go into.
• Hover onto it, select and click ‘Delete permanently’.

• Now, you can create or edit the un-edited slug about-2 page into about page.

Problem fixed! Enjoy!

• First open your themes index.php file using any of your favorite editor.
• Find the following code of line:

<?php if(have_posts()) : ?>

• Copy the code below and paste it before the above code.

<?php
$postnum = 1;
$showads1 = 1;
$showads2 = 2;
?>

• Scroll more down the index.php page and find the following the code of line:

<?php endwhile; ?>

• Same procedure, copy and paste the code below before the code above.

<!--Ads Code Start Here--!>
<?php if ($postnum == $showads1) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/ads1.php'); } ?>
<?php if ($postnum == $showads2) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/ads2.php'); } ?>
<?php $postnum++; ?>
<!--Ads Code End Here--!>

• Finally, create two files named as ads1.php and ads2.php and paste any advertisement code into both the files. Not only advertisement actually. You can try to insert anything, really.
• Make sure to put both files into the same directory as the index.php file.

The code above will display ads after the first and second post. By changing the $showads1=1 and $showads2=2 number into “2” or “3” will give different position of advertisement. Try with different combination to get anywhere you want the ads to appear.

Best example is that you can see after my first post, there are two rows of section (popular posts and subscription section).

Now, enjoy!

Using functions.php modification

• Simply find and add this code below into your theme’s functions.php file.

//Custom Login Logo
function my_custom_login_logo() {
echo '<style type="text/css">
h1 a { background-image:url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/custom-logo.png) !important; }
</style>';
}
add_action('login_head', 'my_custom_login_logo');

• Create your own logo not exceed than 250pixels x 68pixels and upload into your theme’s images directory.
• By default, the logo url link is linked to http://wordpress.org/. To change the url to your homepage, just add this another piece of code under the code above.

//Custom Login Url
function change_wp_login_url() {
echo bloginfo('url');
}
function change_wp_login_title() {
echo get_option('blogname');
}
add_filter('login_headerurl', 'change_wp_login_url');
add_filter('login_headertitle', 'change_wp_login_title');

Using WordPress Plugins

• You may use wordpress plugins such as Theme My Login plugin. Follow the link and see how to use it.

The code originally found on WPRecipes and written by Rami. Great guys!