If you are familiar with Wordpress, you will undoubtedly know that the blogging tool can be customised in all sorts of ways. This is one of its great strengths and one of its appeals, and this is what makes it the blogging tool for most people. One of the ways in which it can be customised with very good results is through the modification of custom fields, or if you are with it, custom field hacks.
So what follows is essentially ideas to get the best out of custom fields, and a link to where you can find the code.
Post expiration time. If you are running a competition or any post that you only want on your website for a limited amount of time, then having a post “disappear” after a certain date is reached, could be handy. This site has a solution for this problem, and you can find them here.
http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-set-post-expiration-datetime-on-your-wordpress-blog
This hack will not delete the post but prevent it from being displayed after the expiry date has been reached.
Displaying content differently. Wordpress does not have any built in features that allow you to display content in a different way, but with this hack you can do exactly that. This is a great one if you are really stuck with a design or theme for your Wordpress blog.
http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-manually-define-to-show-full-post-or-excerpt-on-your-homepage
Displaying music and mood on Wordpress. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but with this code you can now display your mood and your music to your readership while blogging. It could help you connect to your readership by making it more personal.
http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-display-your-current-mood-on-your-posts
Meta tags. In the SEO world Meta tags are not as useful as they used to be, but they still have a function, and this custom field hack, allows you to create Meta description tags for individual posts. Anything you can do to search engine optimise your sight can only be a good thing.
http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/unique-meta-description-and-meta-keywords-in-your-wordpress-themes/
http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-create-a-meta-description-function-for-your-wordpress-blog
Bringing external resources to your blog. Many bloggers find creating a post just to show another resource as a bit of a pain. The sites shown below, can allow you to link to an external resource extremely easily and quickly.
http://www.istudioweb.com/hacking-wordpress-theme-external-url-for-post-title-2008-01-12/
http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-link-to-some-external-ressource-in-post-title
Custom CSS styling can often be needed. Sometimes, it is hard to configure your layout of posts or even the blog itself. You can always switch to HTML mode, but this brings with it its own hassles. By creating this custom field, you can embed CSS styling very easily, and this brings with it the benefits of using CSS.
http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-embed-css-in-your-posts-with-a-custom-field
SEO the title tag. You may not know this but the title tag is not optimised by default. This is not so great for pulling in traffic. So by using this custom field, you can do exactly that.
http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-redifine-title-tag-with-a-custom-field
Prevent search engines from accessing posts. There may come a time when you only want certain posts to be accessed by your regular readership, rather than the public at large. The is where this custom field comes into play, as it prevents search engines from accessing posts.
http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-disable-search-engine-indexing-on-a-single-post
Obtaining a custom field value. For non developers obtaining a custom field value for custom fields, can be a difficult concept to get your head around. Luckily a developer that knows a lot about custom fields and custom field values, came up with these custom fields.
http://www.mattvarone.com/wordpress/useful-functions-for-wordpress/
http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-easily-get-the-value-of-a-custom-field
By customising Wordpress with custom fields, you will enhance your blog and let you do the layouts, and designs that you always wanted to do. They are all pretty straight forward to use, so you should be up and running with them fairly quickly. Have fun, and don’t be afraid to experiment.
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