WPCandy.com has put together a nice sample content file that can be imported into a WordPress site to help make testing and development easier. Writing dummy content is one of the more boring aspects of setting up test sites with WordPress so this sample file makes a great edition to the developer’s toolkit.
Smashing Magazine has put together a comprehensive WordPress Developer’s Toolbox containing links to tutorials and references for almost everything you can think of when it comes to developing sites with WordPress. The format is a bit confusing but the content is well worth checking out.
Have you checked lately to see what your listings on Google look like? There are thousands of WordPress themes on the web for bloggers to use, and not all of them include even basic search engine optimisation (SEO). This theme here at Crane Factory was made from scratch, and initially I had no meta tags included to help Google display a useful description for my site. As such my site listed on Google like this:
By adding meta tags to my header file I’m able to tell Google to display more relevant information when listing my site in search results, which should hopefully improve the number of clicks that I receive from Google users.
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The next time Google crawled the site their index was updated to reflect the change.
Why not take a few moments to see what your own site looks like in Google search results. You might find a little SEO touch up to your own theme is due.
If you spend some time working under the hood with WordPress you will start to realise the power of the PHP programming language and the MySQL database engine.
These two technologies make software such as WordPress possible and are behind some of the biggest and most popular websites on the internet today. Which is why I want to learn more about them.
Enter PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. Now in its third edition this book takes a beginner’s journey through both PHP and MySQL and then goes on to teach practical real world techniques for coding your own websites.
You will learn such things as how to use databases securely, authenticate users, write shopping carts and e-commerce components, and even how to write your own content management system like WordPress.
PHP and MySQL Web Development came highly recommended to me and I in turn recommend it to anyone who shares the same interest in web development.
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