Unfortunately, no one can be told what the WordPress Easter Egg is.

You have to see it for yourself.

Easter Eggs in WordPress?

Have you run into the WordPress easter egg? In case you haven't, I'll show you how to find it without spoiling the surprise and tell what the easter egg is.

This one has been in the WordPress for quite some time (since 2.6 I think), but not very many people even know it exists. And even less have found it.

When I watched the State of the Word 2010 video by Matt Mullenweg, he mentioned the easter egg in the video (as there are new surprises coming in the WordPress 3.0), so it was a good time to make a post about it...

Is it secret? Is it safe?

It is possible that you will run into this yourself, even that the circumstances that are required to find the easter egg are pretty rare... If you want to save the surprise, DO NOT read the rest of this post.

But I won't spoil the actual surprise by telling anything about the easter egg, just how you can find it. If you'd like to see how to find the hidden run in WordPress, scroll down...

(I added some white space and dots below for those who don't want to read how to find the WordPress easter egg)

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

This is the last chance to turn back if you don't want to know how to find the easter egg...

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

OK, this is quite simple actually...

The WordPress Easter Egg

You need to have WP Post Revisions enabled. The revision management is ON by default, so unless you have specifically disabled them, you're good to go.

(As it is good practice to disable post revisions to optimize WordPress database, it is possible that you have disabled them. In case you have disabled the post revisions, go enable them temporarily (in the wp-config.php), then continue)

To see what happens...

• Go to the Dashboard of your WordPress blog
• Go to any post with revisions
• On the Edit post screen... Scroll down to find the Post Revisions
• Click on a revision (ignore the "restore" on the right)
• On the revision preview screen, scroll down, and find the "Compare Revisions" part
• (1) Select the same revision on both columns, and
• (2) hit "Compare Revisions"

There you go, now you know how...

Go try it out, I think that was pretty damn cool.

Don't spoil the fun for others

Please don't reveal the easter egg in the blog comments here - it's much more fun to see what happens without knowing what to expect...

You are, of course, free to share how to find the WordPress easter egg, like I have done here, so if you liked this post, I'd love to see you link back here and use the buttons below to bookmark and share this post with your WordPress using friends.

1. The Ultimate WordPress Permalinks Guide
2. WordPress htaccess: The Definite Guide
3. Top 27 Most Popular Free WordPress Themes

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
WordPress Easter Egg – Spoiler free guide for finding it

And do you know that you can create "normal" website with WordPress instead of "just blogs"?

Yeah, there's a lot to blogs and blogging that doesn't meet the eye and there's a whole lot more to WordPress than just blogging and blogs, just like there are incredible misconceptions around about blogs and what they are about..

How You Can Take WordPress Beyond Blogging

First, you must understand that WordPress is much more than a "blogging tool" and that "blog" is not a diary that some teenage girl writes about her life.

Blogging is a way to share information and with WordPress you can do it without technical obstacles, so you can concentrate on the content, instead of technical tasks. Unlike many think, blogs are not just for someone to share their opinions and thoughts, e.g. online diary or log (thus, weblog) - a blog can be anything you want and over time it'll be hard to distinguish the difference between a blog and the website next to it..

Almost everyone thinks that blog is only some kind of "special" website, somehow different than a "normal" website.. Although this is probably true for the free blog publishing platforms like blogspot.com or WordPress.com, with self-hosted WordPress you can think beyond blogging - if you want. So in that sense, there is no difference between a blog and a website anymore (if there ever was)..

Even people aware of WordPress think of it as blogging platform, and don't think about the content management aspect. In WordPress.org, the WordPress description starts with "WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform", but then the talk quickly jumps to blogging, which is kind of a shame as WordPress is much, much more!

• Need to set up a one page / sales page website? check.
• Need to have Search Engine Optimized website from the start? check.
• Need to set up a magazine like website? check.
• Need to add new content easily and without any "computer skills"? check.
• Need to have a great looking website with zero design by you? check.

And the list goes on, the versatility, power and ease of use of WordPress doesn't stop to amaze me..

Yes, there's much more to these tools than just blogging - That's because WordPress, Joomla or even Blogger are content management systems first, blogging platforms second. If you ask me, you CAN and SHOULD build ALL YOUR WEBSITES with WordPress.

I can't recommend the other content management systems because I haven't used them, more and less because there has not been a reason for it, because WordPress is so good and best there is, in my opinion that is and according to pretty much all other probloggers out there.

If you for some reason choose another tool than WordPress, that can work equally well - as long as you're taking the step away from static websites towards modern days of content management and separate design, you're doing it right..

You Don't Have To Be a Web Designer to Build a Website

It doesn't matter if you're starting a blog, setting up a website or creating a one page sales page, do it with WordPress. It's free and very, very powerful content management tool that is way more than a blogging platform..

WordPress  is THE EASIEST way to set up your very own website that you can be proud of. Setting up a website with WordPress is so easy that anyone can do it, and if you don't feel like it, there are plenty of reasonably priced persons out there that can set the foundation for your website fast.

Like said, do not think you MUST start a blog to use WordPress. Even if you're building "one-page" website, DO IT WITH WORDPRESS.

You can have WordPress website running in 5 minutes, if you have a domain and hosting already. If you don't, getting one takes about 15 minutes, depending on service provider, so let's say that you can have a website running in 30-60 minutes.

And if you ever need to edit ANYTHING, you can, without destroying the whole thing or paying someone a lot of money to tweak your website.

Setting Up a Website in 7 Easy Steps

1. Get your own hosting and register a domain
   • I recommend DreamHost, the host I use and the host I've been extremely happy with them
2. Get WordPress installed
   • With DreamHost, and many other hosting services, you can install WordPress with one click!
   • If one-click-install is not available, you'll have to download and install WordPress yourself
     • Not too hard, but unnecessary as your host really should have one-click service for you..
3. Optimize the WordPress Settings and tweak the default settings
   • Use my WordPress Settings for Every Blog
4. Install the Essential WordPress Plugins
5. Get a WordPress Theme and activate it
   • At the start, use the free WordPress themes (thousands of them to choose from),
   • Get a customizable WP premium theme, or
   • Get ready made one from Unique Blog Designs or StudioPress.
6. Create Content
   • e.g. Write a Post or Create a Page.
7. Publish

See - Building a website isn't very hard when you look at it in small chunks and not as gigantic operation you must plan carefully..

And if you want to concentrate on creating content, get someone to set the site up for you (just remember that setting up a website doesn't cost thousands of dollars!) and keep writing content that you can add right away when the website is up and running.

1. Warning: If You Still Build Your Webpages With FrontPage, You Are Doing It Wrong!
2. Learning How to Build Your Own Website Teaches You More Than Just That!
3. Don’t Pay Too Much for Static Websites

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
You Don’t Have To Be a Web Designer to Build a Website

I do this because, it is better to show that you are using Google Custom Search instead of making the search look like it is not Google Search. This will show your readers that they are about to enter Google Custom Search so the possible advertisement doesn't surprise them. It might be that the Google terms and conditions for AdSense for Search states that it is forbidden to "camouflage" the search to look like normal search, but I didn't check if it is so.

I didn't need to check, because there is proof that Google Custom Search is used MORE than the regular WordPress search (at problogdesign.com) and as we know that, we don't want to hide the fact that it is Google search, right?

How To Get Google Custom Search for Your Blog

Create the form in the Google AdSense:

• Select to show the results in your own web page
• Choose to only search from certain sites
• Add your domain to the list of domains to search from and add "*" to the end
  • e.g. zemalf.com/*
• Customize the form by selecting style and colors that fit your blog
• Set the result page as http://your_domain_name.com/index.php?
  • e.g. http://zemalf.com/index.php?
• Add the Google Custom Search form code to your blog, either directly to theme or through widget/plugin
• Add the Google Custom Search results code to the search.php

How To Add the Google Custom Search Box to Your Blog

• Add text-widget to your sidebar,
• Add the search code directly to your them (replacing the old search form there is), or
• Install a Google Custom Search -plugin

I recommend that you either use a text widget or , as it is good to minimize the need of plugins in your blog to maximize performance and compatibility when WP is upgraded.

How To Add Google Custom Search without a Plugin

• Add the custom search form code to a text widget or your theme:

The Google Custom Search form code looks something like this (the partner id will be your own of course):

<form action="http://your_domain_name.com/index.php?" id="cse-search-box">
<div>
<input type="hidden" name="cx" value="partner-pub-1234567890123456:abcde1-8uf8" />
<input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:10" />
<input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8" />
<input type="text" name="q" size="31" />
<input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" />
</div>
</form>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/coop/cse/brand?form=cse-search-box&amp;lang=en"></script>

Copy the code you get after creating the custom search and add it to your theme or text widget.

How To Add the Google Custom Search Results Code

To display the search results on your own blog and fitting to your WP theme, you need to edit the search.php file.

• Add the Search Results Code to the search.php:

<div id="cse-search-results"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var googleSearchIframeName = "cse-search-results";
var googleSearchFormName = "cse-search-box";
var googleSearchFrameWidth = 800;
var googleSearchDomain = "www.google.com";
var googleSearchPath = "/cse";
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/afsonline/show_afs_search.js"></script>

The most simple search.php can only have the search results code in it, or you can add your theme's header and footer in it.

<?php get_header(); ?>
*GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS CODE IS HERE*
<?php get_footer(); ?>

If you want to have the WordPress regular search results on the same page (search.php) with the Google Custom Search Results, you can edit the custom search form like this you can do that too..

How To Combine Google Custom Search with Regular WordPress Search

• Add hidden type "text" with name "s" to the form
• Edit the form tag and add name for the form + javascript code to copy the search terms from "q" to "s"
  • "s" is what WP uses to pass the search terms to the search.php

In the Google Custom Search Box code,

REPLACE:

</div>

WITH:

<input type="hidden" name="s" value="" />
</div>

and, REPLACE:

<form action="http://zemalf.com/index.php?" id="cse-search-box">

WITH: (all can be in the same line)

<form
  action="http://zemalf.com/index.php?"
  id="cse-search-box"
  name="searchform"
  onsubmit="document.searchform.s.value = document.searchform.q.value" >

..so we added the last to lines (name and onsubmit) to the form-tag, these copy the search term from "q" to "s". On the results page, the "q" is used to display the Google Custom Search results and the WordPress default "s" to display the regular results.

If you want to customize the colors of the search box or the results, you can edit the custom search properties in your Google AdSense "manage ads" control panel, so there is not need to edit the search box code or search results after you include them once.

If you have any questions or problems getting Google Custom Search to your blog, leave a comment or send me your question and problems through the contact form (on the contact -page)

1. How To Combine Google Custom Search and AdSense with the Default WordPress Search
2. How To Add a XML Sitemap to WordPress Blog
3. How To Add Category and Tag Based Advertising and Content to Your Blog

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How To Add Google Custom Search to Your Blog

In this post, how to edit many posts at the same time and define categories and tags for multiple posts:

• What To Do Before Starting the Mass Edit
• What Plugins Should Be Installed to Help the Bulk Edit Process
• How the Bulk Edit Works in WordPress (versions 2.7+)
• How To Handle Massive Amount of Posts and Change Categories and Tags on Them

If you have done or planning a Blogger-WordPress import, you more and less have to do this kind of heavy editing of your posts, as the Blogger / blogspot tags are imported as categories. You can easy this process by removing and editing the tags in the Blogger before you do the import, but with the user interface there, it might actually be easier to do it like I show in this guide by removing the old categories and tags all together and re-categorize and re-tag your whole blog.

Whether you are moving or moved from old blog to self-hosted WordPress or you are planning to re-organize your blog by rethinking the categories and tags you use and need advice and tips on editing large amounts of posts in your WordPress blog in general, read on...

Categories and Tags in WordPress

Categories and tags have several functions in WordPress: They help you and your readers to find the posts with ease (or make it very hard to find posts if not done properly). In addition to making your blog more navigable, proper categorizing and tagging can make search engines index your site better and thus, help to bring more traffic to your blog.

If you have just started or are just about to start a new blog, before you begin writing posts to your blog, you should think about how you will categorize and tag your posts. The usual problem is that at the start you might not have a clear idea what kind of categories you should use, and you should place some word as category or tag, etc.

So if you have not categorized or tagged your posts the way you think you should have and you want to change your categories and/or tags later, YOU CAN, so no worries. With large amounts of posts it can take a bit of time, but when done right, it will definitely help the readers to navigate and the search engines to index your site.

If you have imported your old blog or blogs to the WordPress from Blogger / blogspot, like I did, you more and less HAVE TO re-categorize and tag all the imported posts (as the import function places Blogger tags as categories in WordPress). You need to do this just to clarify the structure of your blog with simple categories and clear tagging strategy. If you have imported from WordPress.com the categories and tags should remain, but you could still re-plan and edit them if you like.

Whatever your reason to re-categorize and re-tag is, when you want to change your categories and/or tags in large amounts, you need to do some bulk / mass editing...

Before You Start Bulk Edit of Your Posts

Define new Permalink structure for your blog

NOTE: When importing from a old blog, for example WordPress.com or Blogger / blogspot, define the permalink structure BEFORE the import!

If you want to change your permalink structure, do it before you start editing and updating the posts, and go "refresh" it when you're all done. You can use any permalink structure you want, and it might depends on your blog, but for most blogs the "YEAR/MONTH/DATE" permalink structure isn't the best possible one, not to even mention the default "?P=123" or the "ARCHIVES/123" -structures.

Date-based permalinks are great for blogs that have time-related content. But if your blog is more timeless and information based, you can consider other options as well. But always include the %postname% in the permalink structure.

Use some time to check the best permalink structure for your blog, and then choose from these

• /%postname%/
• /%post_id%/%postname%/
• /%year%/%month%/%day%/%postname%/
• /%category%/%postname%/

While you are in the Permalink Settings, set the OPTIONAL custom structures for category and tag URLs. I use "topics" for category base and "tags" for tag base, but the defaults will be ok in most cases. These base-names will be in front of individual category or tag slug in the archives.

Note that if you use this kind of category-postname permalink structure and you're also using "child-categories", your posts will linked both in the child category and parent-child kind of structures. Because of this, you should use parent/child categories, if you have the %category% in the permalink settings. Also, only set one category for each posts and use multiple tags instead.

For example you have a category called "Blogging" and child-category under it called "WordPress". You write a post "I rock!" and file it under "WordPress". The post will have "main" permalink in /blogging/wordpress/i-rock/ but it will also be filed /blogging/i-rock/, again producing possible double content on your site. This might change in the future versions of WordPress, but at least for me, this seems to be the case in WordPress 2.7.x.

Install these beneficial plugins to automate maintenance tasks before editing your posts

When editing the posts, you don't want to lose the backlinks and want to make sure people coming through the backlinks to your blog find the newly linked posts.

You should also decide if you want to use tags as your *only* way of structure on your site, you would probably be better off when you prevent your categories from being indexed. Or the other way around, if you want to use tags as the *only* way of structure, prevent your tags from being indexed with noindex settings. This matter has not been researched too much, so it is ok to let both categories and tags indexed, but some experts in Search Engine Optimization think that indexing them both might hurt your ranking in search engines because of the double content.

To handle the redirecting to the new permalinks and the noindexing of either tags or categories, if you decide to use that, these are the best pluging I've come across to handle those matters:

Redirection -plugin

Redirection will manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors. You can use Redirection for link masking and set your custom redirects, but the real benefit of the plugin when editing your posts is that Redirection -plugin automatically creates redirect from the old permalink to the new one when you edit the your posts permalink or the permalink structure! If you are not using categories or tags in the permalink, you don't need this, but install Redirection plugin anyway, because if you happen to change your permalink structure, you don't have to think about the redirection issues as they are all done automatically. So all the links you have for your posts will still work and people coming through the backlinks will be redirected to the new permalink. And you don't have to do anything else but to install this plugin. It's a kind of magic!

All in One SEO Pack

You should have this on your blog anyway, but if you don't go install it, it will do a great deal for your site in terms of search engine visibility.

In category and tag editing context, you should check the noindex -settings in the All in One SEO Pack: This is useful for avoiding duplicate content.

By setting this you can decide what is the main way you structure your site, and disable indexing for the other:

• Use noindex for Categories
• Use noindex for Archives
• Use noindex for Tag Archives

Similar functionality with noindexing can also be found from Robots Meta -plugin (http://yoast.com/wordpress/robots-meta/), and it has additional functions for robots ("commands" for search engines) in addition to the noindex -settings for tags and categories, for example disabling the author archive might be worth it, if you are the only user and blogger in your blog. So I recommend that you install both, Robots Meta and All in One SEO Pack to your blog.

Now you have all the preparation done for bulk editing your posts:

• Permalink structure re-defined if necessary
• Redirection -plugin installed to automatically handle redirections to the new permalinks
• All in ONE SEO and Robots Meta -plugins handling the noindexing for robots -definitions if you decide to focus how your site is indexed to either tags or categories.

After the above is in order, you are ready to start editing your posts..

Integrated Mass Edit in WordPress 2.7 and onwards

Manageable -plugin has been integrated into the WordPress when 2.7 was released.

How the Bulk Edit works

1. Go to the "Posts" and "Edit".
2. Select any number of posts from the "Edit Posts" page
3. Select "Edit" from the "Bulk Actions" pull-down menu
4. Click Apply

From the "Bulk Edit Posts" -menu: Add Categories, Tags and other attributes to all those posts at the same time.

The problem with Bulk Edit is that you can only ADD categories and tags, you cannot remove them.

Bulk Edit will help you adding new categories and tags to many posts, but this won't help with managing too complicated category-/tag-tweaking, which is especially needed when handling hundreds or thousands of posts imported from old blog, like Blogger, for example.

The solution is to remove the unwanted categories and tags (something you probably want to do anyway, when re-categorizing and re-tagging your blog)

More Advanced Category and Tag Editing of Huge Amount of Posts

If you have a lot of posts to go through that don't have very descriptive titles, mass editing your posts can take a long time, but it's worth it. After cleaning up the old categories and tags, and editing the new category and tags into the posts, your WordPress blog will have much cleaner navigation and archive structure which will help both you and your readers to navigate the posts more easily.

The most simple solution is to handle the categories and tags for large amounts of posts is first removing all tags and categories you already have, and then adding the new tags and categories into the posts with the bulk edit.

REMOVE ALL tags and categories you have on your blog.

To remove and edit the tags:

1. GO TO the Tags page (Posts >> Tags screen)
2. SELECT all tags by clicking the checkbox over all the tags
3. CHOOSE Delete from the "Bulk Actions" pull-down menu
4. CLICK APPLY
5. CONFIRM THE DELETE

Tags page only shows 20 or so tags on one page, so repeat until you have all tags deleted.

If you imported your posts from Blogger, you don't have any Categories in, apart from the default ones or the ones you have already added.

To remove and edit the categories:

1. DELETE the old categories using the same process and then
2. ADD new ones from the Category-page.

After CLEANING the old tags and categories, go to the Edit Posts -page, and

ADD Categories and Tags using the Bulk Edit Posts -function

Before you start editing, go add new categories in the Category edit -page, if you didn't do that yet.

1. Go to the "Posts" and "Edit".
2. Select any number of posts from the "Edit Posts" page
3. Select "Edit" from the "Bulk Actions" pull-down menu
4. Click Apply
5. Choose Category for all the chosen posts
6. Add Tags for all the chosen posts
7. Set other options if necessary (usually not)
8. Click Apply
9. Repeat for more posts

Why you should have a clear category and tag structure on your blog

First, it helps you when you're writing new content as you immediately know what ONE Category the posts should go to, or if there is no clear category, you know to add one. And adding Tags to your posts should become a second nature when you have a good selection of tags already created and you know what kind of posts and content you have tagged with each tag.

Editing large amount of posts might be bit labor intensive, but how I handled it was that I simplified the categorizing and tagging a great deal when I edited my posts imported from blogger. So I only used ONE CATEGORY for posts - this is very useful for SEO and linking practises on your blog as it avoids double content and post having several permalinks if you're using /%category%/%postname%/ permalink structure. And for the imported blogger posts, I simply added one or two tags per post and later went through all the posts and added more if I felt that post needed more tags so the posts could be found more easily.

The most important thing about categories and tags is that you use them consistently, so posts related to each other have common category and you can supplement that with tagging. Usually 2-8 tags per post works well. And always remember to optimize all this, categories, posts, tags and your blog for your readers. Search engine optimization will follow through.

Afterword on Mass Editing Your Posts, Choosing Categories and Tags for Your blog, etc.

Thinking through and choosing the right categories and tags for your blog is important. With this guide you can edit your old blogs categories and tags by mass editing the posts, and here's further reading to help you to improve your categorizing, tagging and deciding the categories and tags for your blog:

Additional Resources on Categories and Tags:

• How to Choose Categories for Your Blog @Problogger.net
• Tag, You’re It! Leveraging Tagging For Your Blog @Problogger.net
• Using Categories and Tags Effectively on Your Blog @Problogger.net, Guest Post by Michael Martin (Pro Blog Design).
• What's the difference between tags vs. categories in your blog? @J.D. Meier's Blog
• Putting Some Thought Into Blog Categories and Tags @Lorelle on WordPress

That's all, I hope you found this article helpful and again, share your thoughts, ask your questions or give me feedback on this article by leave a comment.

1. How To Add Category and Tag Based Advertising and Content to Your Blog
2. Posting Source Code on Your WordPress Blog Posts
3. How I Pushed My Blog from PageRank 0 to PR4 in 37 Days

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Bulk Edit Posts, Categories and Tags on Your WordPress Blog

With special attributes on your page and links, you not only get the normal Google Analytics data, you also get advanced data in a form of outgoing links and tracking those links.

Don't worry, it's very easy! This one is actually so easy to setup, anyone who can install a plugin to WordPress can do it! (just in case, all instructions you need are here on our previous article: Adding Google Analytics to Your WordPress Blog)

With the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin, you have to do any javascript coding, as the plugin does all the work for you automatically and by default. If you don't have Google Analytics running on your blog yet, go do it now.

The easiest way to achieve this is installing the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin. First, set up Google Analytics account if you haven't, and proceed into adding Google Analytics to your WordPress Blog.

Tracking outgoing links

If you have the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin installed, this is all done automatically for you, but I'll take you through how the link tracking actually works...

The magic happens in the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin: take a look at the advanced settings by clicking the checkbox for "Show advanced settings".  You don't have to change any of the settings, but take a look at the "prefixes for outgoing clicks"

by default these are:
/outbound/article
/outbound/comment
/outbound/commentauthor
/outbound/blogroll

Now you can untick the advanced settings checkbox. Note: If you're going to make changes here, make the changes for a reason, and as the plugin text states: only adviced for advanced users who know their way around Google Analytics.

The Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin adds javascript "onclick" properties to the outgoing links using the defined advanced settings prefixes. The plugin adds the domain or the full link (defined in the settings of the plugin) after the prefix. For example, the Google Analytics links on this article, get this kind of addition on them:

onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.google.com');"

To see how these show up in your Google Analytics, we need to go and check inside the Google Analytics...

Looking at the outgoing links inside Google Analytics

After having the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin running on your blog for a while, you've probably had some of your readers click on the outgoing links you have provided in the articles, links, sidebar or the links in comments and trackbacks.

1) Go to your Google Analytics dashboard by clicking the website profile
2) Check the bottom right for "Content Overview"
3) Click "view report"
4) On the "Content Overview" page, scroll down a bit if needed and click on the "view full report"
5) Look for /outbound/ "Pages" and you see what outgoing links the users are clicking to move away from your site.

For example:

/outbound/article/technorati.com
/outbound/article/www.google.com
/outbound/article/www.youtube.com

Now that you have these stats, it's up to you how you want to utilize them, but at this level, you're already getting more data for your traffic which is always great.

For bit more advanced Google Analytics usage and if your blog is designed to direct readers to certain links, you can set Google Analytics Goals for these outgoing links (e.g. your salespage on a different domain, or such).

Using this kind of outgoing link tracking will increase your Pageviews, which is ok as getting the data where readers are going is now in your hands. If you have run your blog without tracking, remember this when analysing your data.

Until next time, enjoy your new data and statistics!

1. Adding Google Analytics to Your WordPress Blog
2. How to set up Google Analytics
3. Optimized Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Track Outgoing Links with Google Analytics

The sitemap for search engines will help search engines to find and index your site/ blog and keep your listing and information up-to-date with your latest content and inform about the changes in your blog structure with zero effort. The sitemap for your readers is optional compared to the sitemap for the search engines, but that too takes only couple of minutes and can potentially help your readers navigate your site better.

In addition to explaining what a sitemap is, in the rest of this article I'll show you:

• How to setup and install a plugin on your WordPress that generates the XML sitemap for search engines for you
• How to install another plugin that automatically generates a sitemap for your readers anywhere you want to display it on your blog.

What are Sitemaps?

Like said, you can and should have two sitemaps on your site, one for the search engines and another one for your readers. The sitemap for Search Engines is arguably the more important one, as it helps the search engines to index your site. And it takes one minute or less to install the plugin that does all the search engine sitemap work for you, so you definately *must* install it, as it only servers you well after you've done it...

XML Sitemap for Search Engines

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site... ...Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site. -sitemaps.org

Note: The XML-Sitemap format was introduced in 2005 by Google and adopted in 2006 by YAHOO, MSN Search and Ask.com so thats why it’s often called "Google Sitemaps". -Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress

As explained, to help Search Engines find your blog and website, you want to have XML sitemap on your site. Google XML Sitemaps -plugin does this automatically for you.

Google XML Sitemap -plugin Installation and Activation

If you're running WordPress versions, 2.7.x, the plugin installation is super easy:

1. Just go to the Plugins section,
2. click “add new”,
3. search for “Google XML Sitemap”
4. check that the search result is the correct plugin
5. click “install”
6. activate the plugin after succesful install.

or you can install more manually with the earlier versions of WordPress:

1. Download the plugin from the Google XML Sitemaps at WordPress Plugin Directory
2. Upload the plugin to plugins -folder with ftp client, like FileZilla
3. Activate the plugin from the plugins -page in WordPress dashboard

Google XML Sitemap -plugin Configuration

After the installation and activation, the default settings are usually ok, so you don't have to do anything. (That was very easy configuration, don't you agree!)

However, if you want, set the options how you want the sitemap to be created, for example if you don't want some parts of your website to be listed (note that the search engines might still find those pages and index them if you don't configured the robots meta to prevent the indexing)

And as you just installed the plugin, you can go to the configuration screen of the plugin, and rebuild the sitemap manually by clicking "rebuild the sitemap" link there. In addition to creating the XML file, the Google XML Sitemaps -plugin will notify Google, MSN and Ask.com about your new (or updated) sitemap. Normally, you don't have to do the manual rebuild, it will be done automatically for you, but if you change permalink structure, or change page or post urls, you should go and do the rebuild manually (takes one second to go and click the button).

If you don't touch the settings for the location of your sitemap file, it will be generated to http://your-blog-domain/sitemap.xml or /blog/sitemap.xml or other directory, depending how your blog is configured - e.g. http://zemalf.com/sitemap.xml. Compressed sitemap.xml.gz -file will also be created and search engines will usually use that, but that is something you don't have to worry about. Now you can link the XML Sitemap on your footer if you like, but you don't have or need to. Search Engines should pick up the sitemap based on the announcement the plugin sends.

Sitemap for Your Readers

There are plenty of ways to do this, but I use the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator, which inserts configurable sitemap anywhere you want in your blog.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator -plugin Installation and Activation

Like above, with WordPress 2.7.x and onwards:

• Go to the Plugins section in your Dashboard, click “add new”, search for “Dagon Design Sitemap Generator”, check that the search result is the plugin you want, click “install” and activate the plugin after succesful install.

or install manually with the earlier versions of WordPress:

• Download the plugin from the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator at WordPress Plugin Directory, upload the plugin to plugins -folder with ftp client, like FileZilla. Activate the plugin from the plugins -page in WordPress dashboard

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator -plugin Configuration

Go to the configuration screen and set the options as you like, again the defaults are fine, but check the options for your liking and you are set, the plugin is now ready for action.

Go create a new page ("Pages" in your Dashboard, "add new"). Add some introductory text to the page if you want (e.g. "Complete Sitemap for Zemalf.com"), and the add the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator tags to the page:

<!-- ddsitemapgen -->

I created a separate page for my sitemap, and you can see it in the ingeniously named "Sitemap" for this site at the page list navigation (on top at the time this was written).

You can also add the sitemap directly to your theme template if you like and feel confortable going into the php-files:

<?php echo ddsg_create_sitemap(); ?>

For example, you could add the code to the theme's 404.php -file or possibly in the loop if no posts are found, but I leave the option for you. If you're interested in details about the plugin and the latest updates, check the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator -plugin homepage.

Great Job - Now Enjoy the Results!

Now you have a sitemap set up for the search engines and they can't wait to crawl through your website and content, and you have a page for your readers to navigate through your site if everything else, like category, page or tag listings fail to point to the right direction.

It might be that "reader's sitemap" won't be used that much, but in case it helps your readers to navigate your site, enjoy more of your content and stay on your site, I say it's worth the couple of minutes it takes to install the plugin and page for the sitemap. After setting the sitemap up, you don't have to maintain it at all.

1. How To Add Google Custom Search to Your Blog
2. The 6 most essential WordPress plugins
3. Automatic Image Compression with SmushIt for WordPress

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How To Add a XML Sitemap to WordPress Blog

Remember to check Google's Terms & Conditions when adding the Google Custom Search. You are not allowed to hide the fact that you're using Google Custom Search. Reworked instructions are here How To Add Google Custom Search to Your Blog.

I wanted to combine these two. I like the default as the WordPress search gives clear blog post links and integrates automatically into the WordPress Theme and templates. On the other hand, Google Custom Search is more accurate in a sense and is "automatically" monatized through Google Adsense.

This article shows you how to get the best of both words, custom search results from Google, along with Adsense ads and the WordPress search results that display the most relevant posts from your blog.

Note that the most simple way to add Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE) to your blog, is to use a plugin and corresponding widget, but I rarely say no to a chance to mess with javascript and php, so here we go!

How To Combine Google Custom Search and AdSense with the Default WordPress Search

Search Functionality in WordPress

In most WordPress Themes there are two php-files that handle the search form and search results:

• searchform.php
• search.php

searchform.php is the actual search form and it can be displayed anywhere in your blog. Most templates display search form at the top of the sidebar or in the header, but your template might have it elsewhere or nowhere at all. If your template doesn't have default search you can add it yourself, or you can use a search widget to display search.

search.php is used to display search results, based on the search query from the search form displayed by searchform.php.

Setting Up Google Custom Search

1. Go to Google AdSense
2. If you don't have a Google Account yet, Create a Google Account now, it's free and you get access to all kinds of services for free.
3. In the AdSense control panel, go to the 'AdSense Setup' tab
4. Click on the 'AdSense for Search'

Now it's time to setup the Google Custom Search

1. Choose "only sites I select"
2. Enter your domain + "\*" to the Selected Sites -list. e.g. zemalf.com/*
3. Check the other options, which should be ok by default. Hit Continue >>
4. Edit the looks of the search box or if the Default "Look & Feel" is OK, Hit Continue >>
5. Choose "Open results within my own site", and
6. Enter URL where search results will be displayed: http://yourdomain.com/index.php? - e.g. http://zemalf.com/index.php?
7. Don't forget the question mark (?) after the index.php
8. Edit the search results palette and options, when satisfied, hit Continue >> again.
9. Give name for your Search Engine (visible for you at Google AdSense), e.g. Search from Zemalf.com
10. Hit Submit and Get Code

On the next page, you will see two boxes, one with Search Box Code, and the other with Search Results Code.

• The Search Box Code will go into searchform.php
• The Search Results Code will go into search.php

Editing the WordPress Template and Inserting the Google Custom Search

Step 1 : searchform.php

• Go to Theme Editor. (Appearance >> Editor in WordPress 2.7.x)
• Open searchform.php (or edit it directly through ftp or such)
• Look for the original search form, which starts with <form> and ends with </form>
• Take a copy of the original form, and paste it to text editor, like Notepad++
• Now, replace the original form in the searchform.php with the Google Search Box -code (the one with <form> and such)
• Insert this line between the Submit line and </div>

<input type="hidden" name="s" value="" />

• The "s" is used by the default WordPress Search, as Google Custom Search uses "q"
• There should be this kind of text inside the form tag:

<form action="http://zemalf.com/index.php?" id="cse-search-box" >

• Add the name variable and onsubmit -command inside the form tag, like this:

<form action="http://zemalf.com/index.php?" id="cse-search-box" name="searchform" onsubmit="document.searchform.s.value = document.searchform.q.value" >

if your custom theme uses some other name than "searchform", replace searchform with whatever you want, just make sure you replace it in the name="" and inside onSubmit as well. With this we can pass the search terms in the s-variable (used by WordPress search) as well as the q-variable (used by the Google Custom Search).

If your original search form (you have copied on the text editor) had some custom names or id's, try to put them in without messing the Google search code. I added the id and class variables from my theme. You can also add default value to the text input if you like, like this (using fancy javascript to change it based on user activity).

In the end, you will have something like this in your searchform.php:

<form action="http://yourdomain.com/index.php?" name="searchform" id="searchform" onSubmit="document.searchform.s.value = document.searchform.q.value" >
<div>
<input type="hidden" name="cx" value="partner-pub-YOURownAdSenseCODEwillBEhere" />
<input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:10" />
<input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8" />
<input type="text" name="q" id="searchbox" class="searchfield" value="Search from yourdomain.com" onfocus="if(this.value == 'Search from yourdomain.com') {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '') {this.value = 'Search from yourdomain.com';}" />
<input type="submit" name="sa" value="Go" class="searchbutton" />
<input type="hidden" name="s" value="" />
</div>
</form>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/coop/cse/brand?form=cse-search-box&amp;lang=en"></script>

• You should now have functioning search in your blog, but only the default WordPress Default results are visible.

Step 2 : search.php

To get the Google Custom Search results visible too, we have to edit the search.php

This is even easier than the searchform.php edit, as you just have to take the Search Results Code from the Google AdSense for Search page, and insert it in the search.php where you see fit. I placed it on the top portion, over the WordPress post results, which start with: <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

If you don't care about the default WordPress Search results, and just want the Google Custom Search in, the most simple search.php (Search Results) page looks like this (ignoring the sidebar):

<?php get_header(); ?>
*GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS CODE HERE*
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Tweaking the WordPress Search Some More

I have still some work to do on optimizing my search with php tweakin and plugins. Here's one link I'm going to look into and boost the search even more: Make WordPress' search function suck Less. @Yoast.com

Credits and Further Reading

I went through all these blogs and websites looking for the code and help and found some help, but not the solution I was looking for, s0 eventually I came up with the "onSubmit" solution for passing both q & s to the results page.

However, these blogs and websites have plenty of other relevant info, so feel free to dig in. Also if you want to use plugin for the search instead, or display the results in separate "search results" page instead of index.php and search.php, look for help and more detailed guides from these:

• How To: Building a Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE) into Your WordPress Blog @WordPress Hacks
• How to Set up Google Custom Search for Your Website and Make Money @Dosh Dosh
• Google Custom Search and WordPress Integration @Aleem Bawany
• How to Integrate Google Custom Search Engine Results into WordPress Blog Template @Thu Tu's Blog
• Integrate Google Search on your WordPress blog @Cats Who Code
• Integrate and Display Google AdSense for Search and Co-Op Custom Search Engine Results in WordPress Blog Page Template @My Digital Life
• Google Custom Search Plugin

Test Run Zemalf.com Search

If you want to see how the described combination of Google Custom Search and Default WordPress Search works, take a test run and search something using the search form on the top right corner.

1. How To Add Google Custom Search to Your Blog
2. How To Get Google AdSense and Display Ads on Your WordPress Blog
3. How I Made One Dollar and 88 Cents ($1.88) With Google AdSense!

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How To Combine Google Custom Search and AdSense with the Default WordPress Search