Here’s code to install in your functions.php to follow the above tutorial:

remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');
remove_action('wp_head', 'feed_links', 2);
remove_action('wp_head', 'index_rel_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3);
remove_action('wp_head', 'start_post_rel_link', 10, 0);
remove_action('wp_head', 'parent_post_rel_link', 10, 0);
remove_action('wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link_wp_head', 10, 0 );

Laying the Groundwork for Your New Sidebar

So what we’ll do in this tutorial is to add a second sidebar to one of our custom template pages in our WordPress theme. We have a custom homepage in our template where we want to include a robust call to action to our website visitors rather than a Category list which is more appropriate for blog readers. The screenshot below shows the default “Sidebar 1″ sidebar from our simple template, and we’ll add a second sidebar called “Homepage Sidebar”.

Let’s first take a 10,000 foot view, we are going to employ the following steps to add our sidebar:

• We are going to register our sidebar within the template by making an entry in the template’s functions.php file.
• We are going to create a separate, custom sidebar file called sidebar-homepage.php.
• We are going to include a reference to our custom sidebar-homepage.php file in our custom page template.

That’s it! With these three steps, we’ll have a 2nd sidebar that will display on our custom homepage. With the same technique, we could create additional sidebar areas, the steps would be the same.

Step 1: Registering the Additional Sidebar Within the WordPress Template

First step: we start by registering our sidebar within the template’s functions.php file. 99% of all WordPress templates/themes have a functions.php file. If your theme doesn’t have one, simply create a file in a text editor (we like Notepad++ in the Windows environment and TextMate in the Apple environment). If you don’t know how to find your theme files, you’ll find them in your web host in the following directory: www.yoursite.com/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/.

You’ll want to begin by finding any existing “register_sidebar” entries in your functions.php file. Ours had the following existing sidebar definition for our single default sidebar:

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) {
register_sidebar(array(
'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
'after_widget' => '</li>',
'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
'after_title' => '</h2>',
));
}

To register our second sidebar, we simply add the following code to the functions.php file:

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) {
register_sidebar(array(
'name' => 'Homepage Sidebar',
'id' => 'homepage-sidebar',
'description' => 'Appears as the sidebar on the custom homepage',
'before_widget' => '<div style="height: 280px"></div><li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
'after_widget' => '</li>',
'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
'after_title' => '</h2>',
));
}

So what did we just do?

• We told our WordPress installation, “we are adding a second sidebar area that we’ll use in our theme”
• The sidebar’s name is “Homepage Sidebar”
• The ID of the sidebar (we’ll refer to that ID later) is “homepage-sidebar”; you can choose “footer-sidebar”, “second-sidebar” or anything you want
• We added the description “Appears as the sidebar on the custom homepage” that will display just under the sidebar’s title.

If you upload your new functions.php file to your WordPress installation, you should see your new sidebar if you browse from your WordPress dashboard to Appearance, then Widgets. It should look like the following picture. We’ve already added a Text Widget with the title “Contact Us” to ours, but yours will be empty when you first look at it. But, all we have done is create the sidebar so far; we haven’t yet taken the steps to display the sidebar anywhere in our theme, that will come in the next steps.

If you see your new sidebar in the Widgets area of your WordPress Dashboard, you are ready to move on to the next step.

Step 2: Create an Additional Sidebar File

Wordpress themes use a default file called sidebar.php to display sidebars on pages and posts. But, our goal is to create a second sidebar, we’ll do that with a separate file called sidebar-homepage.php.

Again, we’ll open our text editor and create a file and paste in the following code and insert the ID of your new sidebar within the “dynamic_sidebar()” declaration like so:

<div id="sidebar">
   <ul>
      <?php
      if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('homepage-sidebar') ) :
      endif; ?>
   </ul>
</div>

Now, we have to note that our example sidebar file is highly simplified. Most sidebar files have more code–this extra code displays core navigation in the event the sidebar does not have any widgets installed in it–but for the purposes of this tutorial, we have to simplify it. As an alternative, you can simply copy your sidebar.php file and rename it. Don’t forget to include your sidebar ID within the dynamic_sidebar declaration (shown in red in the code example above)–that sidebar ID tells WordPress which sidebar (which we registered in Step 1) to display.

Step 3: Call the Additional Sidebar from Your Theme Files

We’re almost there. Now, all we need to do is call our new sidebar file, sidebar-homepage.php from our template files–keep in mind that our file name must follow this construct: sidebar-_______.php; we’ll see why in a moment. In our example, we’ll call our sidebar file from a custom template page–but you can call your new sidebar from a footer file, header file, or any theme file that displays on your WordPress site.

The function in WordPress that calls sidebars is get_sidebar(). When get_sidebar() is used with no information within the parenthesis, WordPress grabs the default sidebar.php file. But we want to grab our sidebar-homepage.php file, so we put “homepage” in single quotes within the get_sidebar parentheses. This tells WordPress to grab a file called sidebar-homepage.php . The code we want to insert in our template file is the following:

<?php get_sidebar('homepage'); ?>

What we’ve told WordPress to do is the following: we want to grab a sidebar file, but not the default sidebar, we want a file called sidebar-homepage.php. With this string of code, we’ve successfully grabbed our custom sidebar file.

Our New Sidebar

If you’ve coded your additional sidebar correctly, you can drag Widgets from the WordPress dashboard to your new sidebar and you’ll see the widgets displayed on your WordPress site. Here’s our new sidebar displaying on our homepage, while we display our default sidebar on interior pages and blog posts:

Other Approaches to Adding Sidebars

Our method is one of many, there are more elegant ways of accomplishing the same result without creating separate template files, but the method outlined here is simple and reliable. Please comment below if you have questions or run into trouble.

The great thing about writing our book, WordPress 3.0 Search Engine Optimization, is we get to hear from all those readers who have taken our material and put it to work in the field. Today, we’ve got a fascinating question from Robert, who asks that question we confront every day in one way or another: Just how far should I trust Google’s sophistication?

Hi Michael,

I’m currently reading your Packt book on WordPress SEO, and I have a quick question about HTML5 and the way it uses header tags. Your book says to use only one H1 tag per page, which makes sense. However, HTML5 advocates multiple H1 tags per page, as long as each is contained in a separate section/header.

Worse yet, the first H1 tag on a page is usually a wrapper around the home link logo and contains the same meaningless title text on every page. You can see a typical example at CSS3maker.com :

<header>

<h1 id=”logo”><a href=”index.html” title=”CSS 3.0 Maker”>Css 3.0 Maker</a></h1>

</header>

Most SEO bloggers assume single H1 tags are a thing of the past. Based on your experience, has there been any evidence that Google/Yahoo interpret HTML5 content any differently than HTML/XHTML?

If not, should I remove the header and h1 tags around my logo anchor tag? My site looks like the CSS3maker code above. And like them, I don’t have anything else in my header, so if I remove the H1 tag, wouldn’t I also just scrap the header tag? I have a meaningful H2 tag in my content section, which could be elevated to an H1 tag.

Thanks,
Robert

BTW, I’m really enjoying your book.

Robert,

This may be a cop out…but does this help?

I think google is tuned in enough to ignore site-wide h1 tags. One of my philosophies is “packaging”–make it so brain-dead easy for a search engine that it can’t POSSIBLY get confused. We are sort of on-page nerds when it comes to that stuff. Most of the pages we create are pretty perfect, at least on the page.

Do we, in our SEO business, remove site-wide h1 tags around logos and site names in the header? Absolutely we do, but I don’t think it’s the kiss of death if you don’t. Remember one thing: google has to fit its algorithm so that it doesn’t punish sites for small mistakes–otherwise, it would punish 80% of the web or more.

I am very glad you are enjoying the book!

Michael
[tweetmeme]

Buy the Book Today at Amazon

[tweetmeme] WordPress, in its default state, prints a lot of excess code to the head section of webpages. One element that always annoyed me were two entries that always appeared:

<link rel='prev' title='' href='' />
<link rel='next' title='' href='' />

These entries are recommended for web usability for disabled persons–consider that before removing them. We were looking for a way to lean up our pages, though, so we thought we’d like to remove these entries. There are some outdated instructions in WP forums that will not work in WP 3.0; we tried several approaches, but nothing worked.

In your WordPress template, you’ll find your functions.php file. Open that file and enter the following line.

remove_action( 'wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link_wp_head', 10, 0 );

This “filter,” as it is called, will tell WordPress not to generate the link rel=’prev’ and link rel=’next’ lines in the WordPress head.

Just a note on why those outdated instructions wouldn’t work with WP 3.0. The filter we created instructs WP to turn off the action titled “adjacent_posts_rel_link_wp_head.” Our commands works in WP 3.0 and above because the former action prior to 3.0 was titled “adjacent_posts_rel_link.”

Elements like Google Map embeds get stripped out. Here’s the Fix.

[tweetmeme] If you have ever tried to enter a Google Map embed into a WordPress page or post, you’ve noticed that switching between “Visual” and “HTML” view in the page or post edit window strips the iFrame out–leaving you with broken code that displays nothing. Luckily, there is a fix.

You’ll need to find the functions.php file in your active theme folder. It’s a standard WordPress file, so it’ll be there. Next, we are going to add two short functions that change the way the WordPress editor handles iFrame code. You’ll want to insert the following lines of code before the closing “?>”  of your functions.php file.

// this function initializes the iframe elements 

function add_iframe($initArray) {
$initArray['extended_valid_elements'] = "iframe[id|class|title|style|align|frameborder|height|longdesc|marginheight|marginwidth|name|scrolling|src|width]";
return $initArray;
}

// this function alters the way the WordPress editor filters your code
add_filter('tiny_mce_before_init', 'add_iframe');

That’s it. You can test your mod by entering some iFrame code in the editor window and switching between  the visual and HTML editor.

[tweetmeme]

Inserting images into WordPress posts and pages can usually trip up new users–we get asked about this a lot. Once you do it a few times succesfully, though, you’ll feel like a master. What follows is a quick and dirty overview of how to do it.

1. Open a New Post or Page, or Edit and Existing Post or Page

The first thing you need to do is to open a document to work on. In WordPress you can choose from posts or pages, and they both work the same way. Go to your WordPress dashboard and click on the left navigation for either posts or pages. When that navigation button expands either select “edit” or “add new’.

2. Upload Your Image

Next, you want to upload your image. When you have the Post/Page edit window open, place the cursor where you want your image to appear in the document. Then click the icon that appears at the top of the edit window, indicated by a red circle in the following image (it looks like a grey rectangle with a thin grey border around it):

Next, you will see that once you click the graphic icon for image uploads indicated in the picture above, the “add an image” dialogue box pops up, as shown in the picture below. You’ll note that in this picture the “from computer” tab is highlighted– but you can also upload from a URL. Today we will learn how to upload from computer. Keep in mind that once images are uploaded, resizing them or editing them is difficult or impossible, so you want to make sure your images are sized right before you upload.

Hit the “choose file” button and browse to where the picture is on your computer– just like you do with e-mail. Once you have the file selected, hit the “upload” button. Don’t close this window yet–you will enter parameters in the next step.

3. Choose Your Parameters

Once you have hit the “upload” button your image will upload (your image is now stored on your web server/web hosting), the “add an image” dialog window changes dynamically to show you a range of parameters. You can see a picture of the dialog window below:

I have highlighted the common parameters that are most important when uploading an image.

Link URL

First is the “Link URL”–this selection box fills automatically with the link location of the image file. If this box contains a URL (as shown in the picture, it is filled with a long URL), then the image will be a clickable link in your post. If this box is empty (you can empty it by clicking the “none” button just under the box) then your image will not be a clickable link. In most cases, you do not want your images to be clickable links, so I almost always hit that “none” button to empty that box.

Alignment: Left, Right, Center

The next parameter is “alignment”– you simply select the radio button for left, center, or right. Left and Right alignment will make your text wrap around the image; “none” means that your text will not wrap around the image.

Size

The last parameter is “size”– here you simply select the size, in pixels, for which you want the image to appear. As you can see in this example, I have selected a full-size image that is 560 pixels wide, and 492 pixels high.

Insert Into Post

The last step, once your parameters are set, is simply to hit the “insert into post” button–your image will be inserted into the post in the position where your cursor was when you upload your image.

If you have made a mistake, simply highlight the image, hit the delete key on your keyboard to remove it and start over.

4. Making Changes Later

Of course, this tutorial would not be complete if we did not at least brush on how to make changes later– and WordPress is pretty well set up to make edits to the way your image displays. See the screenshot below:

When you wave your cursor over the image in the document edit window, you will see two small icons appear–the icon of an image will bring up the edit window from step three–from there you can change parameters, like size and orientation left, center, or right. The second icon is the familiar “do not enter” symbol– clicking this will remove the image.

Good Luck!

We get asked a lot about WordPress’ suitability for search engine rankings. WordPress’ reputation and having a sound foundation for SEO has certainly seeped into the public’s mind. For the most part, the reputation is deserved. This site, TastyPlacement.com runs on WordPress, and ranks very well for our intended keywords.

There are a few drawbacks with WordPress, but like most things SEO, it’s really about the cumulative effect of everything. Overall, we’d grade WordPress an A- on it’s suitability and power for SEO purposes. But it’s so good at so many things, that it presents a compelling story overall.

Now, we’ll dig into the nuts and bolts.

WordPress SEO Benefit: Google Just Likes It

I have seen it time and time again: WordPress sites rank very well in Google search results pages, even in competitive markets. I can only conclude that Google favors the platform over others. I never thought that WordPress was much use to hard-core spammers, so it’s possible that WordPress sites enjoy a “trust factor” in Google’s eyes.

WordPress SEO Benefit: Speed of Content Creation

WordPress is built to run: it is designed for the speedy and continual publishing of content. Since I have converted nearly all my sites and most of my client’s sites to WordPress, our speed to publishing has increased. On a static html site, the creation of content would generally involve either hard-coding the article, or using a WYSIWYG interface, then adjusting menus–sometimes on multiple pages. With WP, sites grow big and grow fast. All that content brings breadth to your keyword families quickly, and your large site can quickly become “bait” for inbound links from other websites.

WordPress SEO Benefit: Crawlability

Websites must be crawlable by search engines in order to be indexed properly and appear in search rankings. WordPress’ internal logic and link structure is simple and shared universally among millions of websites–so WP is familiar ground for search engines. This familiarity means that Google’s spiders can find what they are looking for, and index and rank the content with confidence.

SEO Benefit: Plug-Ins and Support

Because the WordPress community is so large (enormous, really), the variety and number of plug-ins for SEO support has grown tremendously (Plug-ins are small software modules that website owners can optionally install in addition to the default WP installation). The All in One SEO Plug-In, or the Platinum SEO Pack are both quick and easy “one stop” plug-ins that accomplishe a basic, but sound set of SEO goals such as manual Title Tags and Meta Descriptions.  These plug-ins extend WordPress’ functionality to rival the control and customization you would achieve under a static site.

SEO Benefit: New Content “Bump”

Another great feature of WordPress, which is also shared by other blogging platforms is the “new content bump”. A new post (generally not a “page” though–WP divides its content into two classes of webpages: “posts” and “pages”) will receive an initial lift in rankings during it’s first few days after publishing. This is logical: blog posts are intended to be topical and current, like a news item–Google treats this fresh content as noteworthy and rewards it with a bump in initial rankings. Ranking position will generally settle down after a few days.

SEO Benefit: Pings, Comments and Trackbacks

Pings, Comments and Trackbacks are interactive features built into WP–these supplemental tools let other blogs and individuals interact with a WordPress site: this brings inbound links and traffic (in the case of pings and trackbacks), and free content and visitors  (in the form of comments to blog posts).

SEO Drawback: Poorly Designed Themes

But it’s not all rosy: I see a lot of poorly designed themes that undercut WordPress’ SEO power. Here’s an example I often see: a theme/template will be designed with the blog’s title bearing a Heading 1 (h1) tag–that’s not the way to go. The h1 tag should speak to the subject/topic of each page or post–to repeat an h1 tag mindlessly throughout hundred of pages on a blog is a waste of a valuable SEO tool.

The fix? Code the Blog Title in a plain old CSS class–and utilize the powerful h1 tag for the on-page title for each post or page.

SEO Drawback: Rigidity in Menu Presentation

The biggest hang-up that WP forces upon us is perhaps the way menus are presented. The Page/Post methodology described above generally means that posts and pages are kept separate in menus. That’s not an insurmountable problem, but excluding individual pages from particular menu locations (like a top bar menu, where space is limited) can require coding the WP template’s core .php files, or inserting page ID’s in Widget boxes ad nauseum. Now, to get advanced: If you want to “nofollow” certain page links, say to a contact page or a privacy policy page (in a static site, this task is a breeze) you can either forget it, or go hunting for a plug-in.

When it comes to menu presentation in WordPress, I have learned “the wisdom to recognize that which I cannot change”. I have adapted, and I got over it. It’s a small price to pay for all this power.

Download the Free Glass Onion WordPress Theme.

Here at TastyPlacement, we love WordPress and offer WordPress development services.