WordPress is one of the greats as far as a platform is concerned and so say over 25 million other people. The list of users is growing daily and the reason must be obvious to see. It’s easy to use and almost everything you need is there at the touch of a button. If it’s not installed in the basic program it is available as a plug-in or widget. One of the problems with it is however that because it is a broad based platform it has to accommodate everyone and as a result the platform as a whole can have many functions you might never use. When this happens it’s a good idea to customize the admin area to enable it to load a whole lot faster.

One of the things you can do is use hooks: Either actions or filters

A full text on the matter will be found on WordPress under hooks but we will run through a few of the basics here.

Actions hooks happen when a particular thing happens in the basic core of WordPress. This sets up the scenario to set a sequence of events into action.

Filters are what WordPress sends into action when it modifies text to send it to the servers or to the database. This can be changed using an Api Filter with an add_filter() function. The complete rundown of this is under Hooks and Filters on WordPress.
What is about to happen is that these are going to be used to remove unwanted fields in your WordPress admin panel.

Let us start with the functions.php

Open your file and let’s start. First do a test. Put in the follow code

The result should be print of Hello world. Now remove the code again because we now know it works.

Now its time to disable widgets one the Dashboard

There are several widgets there that we will never use and it might be a good idea to get rid of as many as we can that we are sure we won’t use. This will speed up your load time considerably. Go into the Dashboard setup area and we will then proceed to disable a number of them. First we use the Unset () function to take out the ones we do not want shown.
Now  add_action() by using ‘wp_dashboard_setup’ to begin with in your functions and then named remove_dashboard_widgets, in the  second place.
This is the code you need to use.

All the full instructions are available on WordPress under removing widgets.

In total WordPress comes with twelve std. widgets. To disable any in a theme you need to drag them back from the sidebar in order to deactivate them.
Any that you have changed in order to use a third party widget in place of it can be deactivated.

Uncluttering the menu

Some menu items might never be used and its time to clean them up. Some on the top of the list can be removed using the code below.

In addition you can disable sub menu items as well with the following code

You will be able to find your submenu items in the admin/menu.php sub area.
That should clean up a lot of your dashboard.

The most talked about subject in the world is the weather. Is it going to rain, when is it going to rain, it’s too hot, it’s too cold. Almost the first thing one stranger will say to another is a remark about the weather. Even the term I was about to use is about the weather. It’s the ice breaker.  Weather is what actually governs our lives and without it we would be lost and not survive on earth.
With that in mind it might be a good idea to put a weather widget on your website. There is more than the weather bug out there so let us look at a few of the options.

The first widget I looked at came from Accuweather

Here you can sign up and download a very comprehensive weather widget for your website. If you have a mobile site as well (As you should have) you can also get a version for the mobile site. There are 9 different shapes and colors that you can get it in so it should be able to suit your site easily.

Next up is the Weather Bug. Of course

You are required to register to use it on your site. It has been around a long time and it works. You can give alerts or give out allergy warnings for pollen areas. It is world wide so it can be used anywhere. Remember to scroll down through the sizes as there are items especially selected for you to use on blogs. There are a number of different sizes available so have a look at them and the shapes available before deciding. A little preview box is available for each one.

Third on my list of weather widgets is The Weather channel

This supplies you with a special version for your website or blog which is downloadable. It is for the weather in your location and not for the general area or the worlds weather. In other words it is location specific.

Last but not least is Show my Weather

This site is a bit limited in that you type in your city and it produces a code for that areas weather. You do not have a full spectrum of areas to choose from and from the list available on the right it does no appear to work every where. It is definitely only available for the USA as it requires a zip code.

Well, the little snip arrived, and all is good. She is just as charming as ever, and it will be hard to resist as she tries to wheedle me to get her way. Luckily, the weather has cleared so she is able to play to her hearts content in the garden while I sit under the oak with the laptop.  She is fascinated by the laptop as she only has the desktop and thinks the laptop is just her size. Actually, I make her sound like a little monster, but she is very good. The initial excitement of arriving by plane was all good. She was a little overtired yesterday I think. I know I didn’t sleep much the night before, and I am sure she didn’t either.  However, they arrived and are here for the week, so I will be a happy chap for the while. I must admit I do miss them when they aren’t within driving distance. However, the snips or snippets are awaiting us.

I will carry on from where I left off.

1.Most Talked About post

 Would you like to know what the mostly talked about posts on your blog were this year?  It’s a case of bringing them into view with a few snippets of code and changing the dates to bring it up to date, and there they will appear.
Wp Recipe has the code available for you. Just bring it up to date.

2. Keep Your Admin Section Private.

Matt has been kind enough to share with us how to make these vital areas safe on our blogs. If you head on over to his web site at Matt Cutts you can learn all about it.

3. Give yourself Style

Darren Hoyt has a few suggestions as to how to use some code and a download to give yourself a something different on your blog. He offers three various items you can look at.

4. Widgets

There is a way sometimes widgets are in places that we just don’t want them. Well there is a way to move or remove them without actually altering the basic template. Justin Tadlock has a few suggestions to make on his website.

5. Add Your Info Box First

You know how sometimes you just want your own info to appear first?
Well, Lam Nguyen has this little tit bit of a snippet to offer you. It’s available on WordPress Hacks.

 
6. Make Your Own Decision on What Will Show or Not

Not everything has to show. That’s the rebel in me coming out. This site has a variety of hacks and things that you can alter, and you will find many items to use at Hongkiat.

7. Spread your Words

By that I mean use a Feed burner. With some .php code in the right place, it’s possible. Jeff Starr has come up with some excellent .php code for us to use rather than having to use a plug in.
At the end of the day folks, would you rather start to learn how to do a little coding by listening to the guys who know, or would you rather stick to plug-ins which can eventually weigh your web site down until it almost so slow people leave. Get yourself a clean and lean machine.

Website chat widgets are a very useful resource in enhancing website interaction. They are widely used and offer excellent real time feedback opportunities. Precisely, experts have cited them as being incredible solutions for increasing user engagement while growing community participation. If it is a business website chat widgets are recommended since they promote direct contact with potential clients as more sales can be derived from the interactive process.
Certainly, many questions can be asked as to how they are essential to web site production. Furthermore, the curiosity may exist as to how chat widgets are added to the site if there is none. It is very simple. More importantly there are many free widgets that can be used when integrating this feature into a web design.
Available in contemporary science and technology stores around the world are chatango, meboo.me; JWChat; Cbox and MiBrew web messenger. There are many more, but in this article the writer will focus on the five which are listed first. What they are and how life on the internet is enhanced when logged into a website furnish with Chat widgets are some answers, which will be attempted.

1. Chitango

Chitango is a uniquely customized web chatting room with amazing interactive features. The user options are immense. A major advantage Chitango offers its users is that each visitor can have his/ her own avatar. It is a masterpiece in the computer technology science industry when considered in the sense of web designing infiltrations. Importantly, users have full access to individual graphic illustrations while in these chat rooms.

2. Meebo.me

This chat widget is a byproduct of Meboo.com. It has its peculiar web audience affinity being a Web based IM Platform service provider. Distinctively Meboo.me can be applied to Typepad or blogger which ever is the user’s preference.
A remarkable advantage of Meboo.me chat widget application worth highlighting is its compatibility with Gtalk, Yahoo messenger, AIM and Face Book. This feature really lends to its immense popularity within the industry. As such, it one of the most used widgets since users are allowed to interact using their Gtalk, Yahoo messenger, AIM or FaceBook registrations.

3. JWChat

This device is considered an Ajax Powered chat script, which interacts only with JavaScript and HTML. Despite this apparent limitation JW Chat is still rather advantageous in many respects. Therefore, being able to interact only with JavaScript and HTML domain is really its distinction, which esteems it above chat widgets in the industry.
Distinguishing features are a traditional orientation with sounds notifying users if messages are unread and as well as emoicons distinctly displaying pictorial facial expressions.

4.  Cbox

Cbox can be considered a merger between traditional features of Desktop IM Chat widgets with Social networking elements. It contains a rather precise user interface which is the client based. JavaScript and HTML are the supportive programs to which it is oriented for accommodating functionality.

5. Mibew Web Messenger

Mibew Web Messenger is also called the Open Web Messenger. Predominantly, it was intended for live chat feature but can adapt to alternative methods of Wed widget interactions.PHP and MySol are the two the two scripting languages to which it is most compatible.

How many widgets can one use? Good question that and oh, by the way, I hope your day started out right, and you are going to enjoy the rest of it. I woke up musing about widgets and when I first heard the word. If I remember correctly, it was in a book about a fake penny stock company on the stock market. I always wondered what a widget looked like. Nowadays, widgets come in all shapes and sizes and do a variety of different things. Beloved, in WordPress, they are more than half of what makes it work so well. Face it, without widgets and the outside ideas that are brought in to add on to WordPress, the WordPress team would have to work a whole lot harder just to keep up with the expansion demands of the public at large.
However, unless we are all going to be twins, triplets or the like, we need to add our own creativity to how we use the widgets.

Two Areas are Better than One (Multiple Widget-Ready Areas)

 
Today if you download a theme you almost automatically expect it to be the widget ready, and not just one area, but at least two areas. To enable you to use your widgets you need to set up the functions to act with your theme and the widgets. You just need to insert the code in the correct place. Go to the functions.php area of your theme
Dependent on what you want, for instance, if you want a side bar on both left and right you would set it up as follows:

Now that that’s organized we move on to the next step.

We need to get it working. (Activate the widget area)

What we now need to do is go into the theme area and find the sidebar files. You will probably find them in “Sidebar.php” but you might have to look elsewhere. It’s totally dependent on the theme.
You are going to drop in two little sections of code.
The first is:

We are now set up and ready.

Not the Same Way Please. (Widget Logic)

This little plug-in called Widget Logic is very useful when you don’t want the widgets shown the same way on every page of your WordPress. What it does is allow you to control your widgets by using conditional tags. You use these tags to say where you want certain widgets displayed.

 Are You In The Loop? (Query Posts)

When we refer to the loop we are talking about how different pages and posts show up. We don’t want the exact same thing showing up the exact same way all the time. For this we use the plug-in Query Posts. This plug in takes the hassles out of working with PHP code more than you have to. Once installed, you can organize your posts by many different methods, including by category, author or tag. The array of functions it has of organizing your posts is vast but sensible.

That Error!!! (404 Templates)

Dare to be different with your 404 Errors page don’t use the standard one that comes with the template you are using. Most are unimaginative and you need to stand out in the crowd. By using the following code available from this template you can change it to suit your style. Just by adding a widget and setting it up in the functions.php area as per the code you can have a whole new look. Register it as follows

Now you have a choice of widgets to use instead of the dreary old 404 message.

Monetize your WordPress (Insert Ads Between Posts)

By using certain code you can set up your theme to place ads between different posts.
Register you code like we did above but with the following code.

Your first widget post will now appear below your first post.

The WordPress blogging platform has many strengths, and this is why it is by far the easiest platform to use, and the best. If you are new to WordPress, there are many options to explore, and after a little use will leave you nodding your head in admiration.

To get the best out of WordPress, it is essential that you learn about plugins, widgets, and themes. These will enhance your blog both from an aesthetic perspective, and help bring your blog to a wider audience. This way, you will hopefully attract a wider readership.

This being the case, this article deals with the essentials of what you should do to make the blog the best it can be from the beginning.

Theme

We have dedicated whole articles to this very topic, but in essence is about creating a mood. Try and think of it as a feeling rather than an appearance, and obviously the theme should be related to your blog. A music blog for example, may want a theme of a venue or club. One that rotates around music learning, may want to give the feeling of learning scales in a studio. Try and think about what you are after and apply your theme accordingly. Try not to get to entangled in specifics of columns, and sidebars. Just try and recreate online, what you would like to experience offline.

Plugins and widgets.

Plugins, are for me one of the best inventions known to humanity. It must rank number three after the flushing toilet and the wheel? Anyway, plugins add features to your blog, and either work in the background, and handle functions such as search engine optimization, and statistical data collection, or they enhance the appearance of the blog, often creating sidebar widgets. The beauty of plugins is they are largely created by WordPress users to address limitations of the basic WordPress platform, and in doing so improve WordPress overall. Many are free, though a donation to the creator is polite, and they all are very easy to install. When finding plugins, only use ones that are compatible to your version of WordPress. Ideally, your current version of WordPress should be the most recent.

Widgets are elements that sit in the sidebar and generally make it easier for your readers to do, or access something. Some are used solely for display purposes, and some are just for fun. There are all kinds of widgets that have practical functions too. The general rule is less is more, but rules are meant to be broken. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Personally, I just drop in the ones I like, and don’t worry too much about anything else.

The essential WordPress plugins you should be thinking about installing for that first blog are:

Platinum SEO plugin. All things SEO related are contained in this plugin, as spreading the word of your blog is just as essential as writing one.

Google Analyicator plugin. This plugin makes your WordPress pages visible on your Google Analytics account. This way you can see what posts and pages are popular, and which ones are not. Other data from Analytics is also visible such as the sources of your blogs traffic, and how many visitors the site is receiving.

XML Sitemap plugin. This plugin is another must, as it creates an XML sitemap of your blog which is food and drink to Google’s webmaster tools. Here you can see how many sites have linked to yours, what keywords conjure impressions on search engines, and gauge the healthiness of your blog.

WP Captcha Free. This plugin puts a captcha on your comment posting but only if the poster is non human. This clever plugin works on timing, and is indeed a work of genius.

Other Plugins you should consider are ones that go to promote the mood of the theme. If your blog is about cookery, then a plugin that lists menus from different restaurants could be a great one for your site.

My own site is all about my freelance writing endeavours, so I have opted for an intimate theme that gives the feel of reading long into the night. The plugins and widgets I have opted for either go to promote story telling, or have a functional use such as social networking.

Once these have been installed, and are working you are then ready to write your first blog. Whatever the subject matter, the content has to be vibrant, relevant, and compelling, no matter how small the niche. The themes, the plugins, the widgets are great, but none can override stale content. Content is King, all the rest of it are members at court.

When writing the blog, think about what is the most important and most interesting elements to it are, and concentrate on bringing these to the foreground. Try and imagine what you would want from your blog if you were a reader, and strive to bring that to life.

Other factors which make blogs more popular are:

Pictures – A picture grabs a readers attention and can break up large passages of text, which can be off putting to many web readers.

Content – As mentioned before keep it compelling, vibrant and relevant. You may want to consider short paragraphs if possible. One thing to remember about a blog is that titles catch the eye, so a more creative one will probably get more readers.

Posting regularly – It is better to post regularly than erratically. So the key is to stick to a schedule. A post here and a post there, does not aid your quest to retain readership.

Many new bloggers are tempted to post all the time, which is great if you can do it, but if the content is not hitting the right chords, then this will make little if not no difference to attracting and retaining readers. Remember that content is truly King, so if you are going to post make sure that the content is as described above. Two good posts are easily worth five average ones.

Promote discussion – Discussions always go well with blogging, so it is a good idea to try and get people to join in with the post. As long as you’re not deliberately controversial, you will find more interest from your readers if they can put forward their view on a post.

Attracting readers

After your blog has been written the next stage is to get people to read it. You could be the next Shakespeare, and not a soul would know because your words are read by no one else. WordPress and blogging is all part of the web 2.0 phenomenon, like social media. Therefore social media is a good tool to get visitors to the blog.

The following provide good foundation for social media exposure.

Twitter, write a blog, tell your followers

Digg, write a blog, get digg to show it

Delicious. Same as above just slightly different

Facebook. Creating a page for your blog and link it to twitter is always a good idea.

My Space. Tell the world about your space.

There are hundreds of other social media out there, that can be utilized to bring you exposure. Some are more appropriate than others. Many social media sites can be linked to each other, which saves you time in getting the message out there.

It can be a daunting prospect when you first start blogging. New worlds and new methods will open up before you, but you will have fun exploring them, and soon it will feel like you have been blogging for years.

My newest addition to a set of amazing themes. Metropolis is an incredibly cool and clean Web 2.0 theme. It’s 3 column, 2 are fully wigitized and a iDtabs section. It’s full css and xhtml valid and tested and working on almost all browsers. I’ve also included some neat social bookmarking shortcuts.

Live Demo

Download: Metropolis Theme