Even more blog improvements

Wow I'm on a roll with blog improvements! I have added a few more features that I'm sure will be very helpful. I found a WordPress plugin called Optimal Title that switches the positioning of the page title so that the blog post title is first followed by the blog title itself. Click on the title of this post to see what I mean and watch your browser's title bar. This not only makes it much more intuitive for you as the reader, but it also helps me to be indexed much better by Google and the other guys. This way, more of you will find me here in Ireland.

The other improvement I'm most excited about is the Related Posts plugin. I have place three related posts you might be interested in at the bottom of each post. Have a look for yourself... You see? Isn't that cool? I guess it looks at the tags and groups the posts with similar tags together. Whatever it's doing, I like it! I encourage you to go through some of my recent posts and see what you've been missing. The Related Posts plugin is showing some of my really old and embarrassing posts, so go ahead and have a laugh!

One last minor thing I did was to move the Subscribe to Comments link to the bottom of each post following the comments section. This way you keep track of what others are saying and/or responding to your own comment. Give it a try!

Have a great day and enjoy the upgrades!

Comments

[Bryan Baker]

Nice improvemnents James. I'll be implementing the Related Posts and Optimal Title later today. Thanks for posting about your improvements!

[James Britton]

Hey, you're quick! I guess we're feeding the blogging addiction right now. Fun isn't it?

[Bryan Baker]

Well, I couldn't wait so I went ahead and installed them now. Leave your responses for me James!

[Bryan Baker]

Oh, well I'm actually up early to finish a Financial Accounting assignment due in 3 hours :-D

[James Britton]

I just posted back on your blog. Looks good! Check out my comments for the http://wasabi.pbwiki.com/Related%20Entries" target="blank_" rel="nofollow">Related Posts Plugin:

This one was tricky. After installing the plugin, you have to run the script like the readme file explains. If that fails, you have to run a query on your MySQL database to alter a table. Then you can add the code into your “loop” or in my case it is “Main Index Template” wherever you would like the related links. I also found it best to use the the dl tags instead of li so you don’t get bullet points showing up. You can also set the number of links you wish to be displayed and whether or not you would like a preview of text to be shown.

[Aaron Schaefer]

FYI, I just released a new version of Optimal Title that fixes the XSS security issues it shared with WordPress version 2.1.2 and earlier. It is recommended that all users of the plugin upgrade to version 3.0.

The way in which the plugin works has also been changed in order to make it both backward and forward compatible with all versions of WordPress. As long as your WordPress installation is up to date, you won't ever have to upgrade the plugin again. I'm just trying to get the word out since I know a lot of people use it. Let me know if you have any problems...

[James Britton]

Thanks for the update Aaron. My Google ranking has increased significantly since installing this plugin!