New videos are best viewed full screen, beware they eat up a lot of bandwidth!

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Test does not use usual scale but a normalized one based on the couple of hundreds of thousands people that solved it. It’s pretty hard and the correct answers were never published. Take your time.

Link: iqtest.dk

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Since the forum is actually a page where the forums is rendered by a plugin, it is possible to select a template for the page (this is a feature of WordPress, found on edit page screen). Page template allows you to specify a custom look for your page, for example without restrictions in width like I need.

Page template I created looks like this:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Forum
*/

get_header();

if ( have_posts() ) while ( have_posts() ) { the_post();  the_content(); }

get_footer();
?>

You first specify the template name, in this case I used Forum. I then call he header of the theme (get_header) to render the upper menu with navigation.

After is the WordPress ‘loop’ which will print out my page.

At the end I call the footer code (get_footer). Since my theme actually calls the sidebar in the footer I had to add this code to the footer.php:

<?php if (! is_page(’forum’) ) get_sidebar(); ?>

The code says do not display the sidebar if the page is forum.

The last thing is to select the forum template for the page and the magic happens - my WordPress forum is now full width.

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Nonces in WordPress

Nonces work in the following way:

1. First you generate a nonce with a unique identifier
2. You pass the nonce along other query data (link or form) to you script
3. You verify the nonce before doing anything else

In order to create a nonce you can use wp_create_nonce() function.

$nonce= wp_create_nonce  (’my-nonce’);

Next, pass the value of $nonce as a parameter in your request. For example:

<a href=”myplugin.php?_wpnonce=<?php echo $nonce ?>”>

You can use wp_verify_nonce() function to check the nonce before you perform any other action in the plugin.

$nonce=$_REQUEST['_wpnonce'];

if (! wp_verify_nonce($nonce, ‘my-nonce’) ) die(”Security check”);

And that’s all! If you thought it can’t be any easier than this you’d be wrong.

Using nonce functions

WordPress provides couple of functions to simplify the usage of nonces even more.

For your forms you can use wp_nonce_field() which will output a hidden field with a nonce. Place the function somewhere inside your form.  For example:

<form action=… >

<?php wp_nonce_field(’my-nonce’); ?>

…

</form>

If you want to add a nonce to a link, you can use wp_nonce_url() function.

For example:

<a href=”<?php wp_nonce_url($url, ‘my-nonce’); ?>”>

If you are using the plugin on administration pages you can then use check_admin_referer() function to check the nonce. For example:

check_admin_referer( ‘my-nonce’);

It will automatically extract the nonce from query parameters (_wpnonce) and verify it.

Nonce and Ajax scripts

it’s easy to use nonce in your Ajax scripts.  First create a nonce using wp_create_nonce().

$nonce= wp_create_nonce  (’my-nonce’);

Then pass the nonce as _ajax_nonce parameter somewhere in your Ajax call:

$(”#text”).load(”…/ajax_response.php?_ajax_nonce=<?php echo $nonce ?>”);

To check the nonce in ajax_response.php use check_ajax_referer() function:

check_ajax_referer(’my-nonce’);

Here is another example (taken from Live Blogroll) plugin:

$nonce = wp_create_nonce( ‘wp-live-blogroll’ );
…
jQuery.ajax({
type: “GET”,
url: ‘<?php echo $wp_live_blogroll_plugin_url ?>/wp-live-blogroll-ajax.php’,
timeout: 3000,
data: {
link_url: this.href,
_ajax_nonce: ‘<?php echo $nonce ?>’
},
success: function(msg) {
jQuery(’#lb_popup’).html(msg);
jQuery(’#lb_popup’).fadeIn(300);
},
error: function(msg) {
jQuery(’#lb_popup’).html(’Error: ‘ + msg.responseText);
}
})

Receiving file:

function WPLiveRoll_HandleAjax($link_url)
{
// check security
check_ajax_referer( “wp-live-blogroll” );

Including nonces should not take more than 5 minutes for most plugins, and it is something all plugin authors (including me!) should work on.

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Darker areas on images represent places of high interest - bright areas represent no interest.

1. Looking for a job?

If you are looking for a job you can obviously use this tool to your advantage.

Good Salary

Typing ‘good salary’ into Insights, reveals that New Jersey looks like the place to be. You are better avoiding mid-west.

Urgent Care

Urgent care is relatively new medical branch and let’s say you are interested in opening the practice. Seems that it can’t go wrong in Arizona.

Software Developer

If you are software developer Washington is the place to go. No wonder, Microsoft is there.

2. Looking for same-minded people?

Insights can be used to easily locate people with same interests.

Iphone

If you are a geek, east coast is your best bet to find friends. DC and New York in particular.

Monster Trucks

If you are for a different kind of fun, involving huge trucks crashing over cars don’t look far from North Dakota and neighbors.

3. Following politics

Barrack Obama

Hawaii seems to generate most interest for Obama.

George Bush

Based on the chart, if I was Bush I would retire to Texas.

4. How about…?

Nature

Seems like if you are into nature in US, you should visit Colorado and avoid Nevada.

Pollution

If you are worried about pollution, Oklahoma seems to be the place to go - based on lack of search for the topic.

5. Market research

Let’s say you want to open a business, but you are not sure if you want to sell cars, furniture or tv.

There is still big interest for cars, but the market is steady, if not declining a bit. On the other hand, tvs are catching up and clearly trending upwards. There you go, tv store is a sure business in the US.

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Good job Google on releasing that one!

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I loved the sound of that word, and if you couple it with a 530 WHP Subaru Impreza STI and a rally driver (Ken Block) here is what you get.

And who says you can’t snowboard with a car?

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I called it WP Digg This, and it allows you to select articles you want to show Digg button on, simply by adding a custom field to the post with key ‘digg’ and value ‘1′. Very simple and it works. This is much better then showing Digg button on all pages of your site.

In case you wonder, the site was just fine the whole day, not using more than 5% resources. Thanks to the girls from Peachy Green for calling me to say article was on Digg FP. Thanks to Dave for cheering  the whole day. And thanks to my hosting who answered promptly when I asked them to keep an eye on the server. They monitored the site throughout the day as article consecutively went to Delicious and Mixx front pages. Finally big thanks to all who voted, I am glad you liked it!

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The document is a comprehensive guide to WordPress optimization and performance. If you ever experienced slow WordPress site or WordPress admin panel crawling to a halt, this is the guide for you.

“WordPress Optimization Guide” collects my experiences but also experiences of other users of WordPress throughout the Internet into an easy to follow tutorial.

It’s all about speed, speed and more speed. Read on “WordPress Optimization Guide“.

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By using this method you have greater control over the titles than any plugin can offer, so effectively you will be able to disable a plugin in the process, if you were using one (and one down is always good!).

Your title tag is usually found in header.php theme file. Here is the example code I use on my site.

<title>
<?php
global $post;
if ( is_single() || is_page() || is_archive() )
wp_title(”);
else if(is_404())
echo ‘404 Error! Page Not Found’;
else if(is_search())
echo ‘Search for: ‘.wp_specialchars($s, 1);
else
bloginfo(’name’);
if (is_home())
{
echo ‘ | ‘;
bloginfo(’description’);
}
if ($post->post_parent)
echo ‘ - ‘.get_the_title($post->post_parent);
?>
</title>

Let’s see what it does one by one.

Single pages and archives

if ( is_single() || is_page() || is_archive() )
wp_title(”);

This code instructs that on singe post pages (is_single), pages (is_page) and archives (including categories, is_archive) default page title is written. This will be the post title or the category name. So my goal is to have only the specific phrase I have written, and nothing else.

404 Page

else if(is_404())
echo ‘404 Error! Page Not Found’;

I have chosen simple Page not found title to let everyone know they are on a misplaced page.

Search results

If the user is on search results page, I want them to be able to quickly reference the search term by looking at the page title. This also helps search engines querying that page.

else if(is_search())
echo ‘Search for: ‘.wp_specialchars($s, 1);

$s is the variable that holds the search term and wp_specialchars is a function for escaping printed text that you do not know in advance.

Other

In all other cases (such as home page) I simply print out my blog name.

else
bloginfo(’name’);

Home Page

if (is_home())
{
echo ‘ | ‘;
bloginfo(’description’);
}

In specific case of a home page, to the already printed blogname (’Vladimir Prelovac’) I specifically add blog description to get ‘Vladimir Prelovac | WordPress Expert and SEO Consultant’ for my home page title.

Sub-pages

I have structured some of my pages like for example WordPress Plugins. This is the parent page for all my plugin pages.

When on a plugin page, the plugin name will be printed but I also want to print out the parent page name, in this case ‘WordPress Plugins’. In this case I get for example ‘Theme Test Drive - WordPress Plugins’.

if ($post->post_parent)
echo ‘ - ‘.get_the_title($post->post_parent);

To check if the page has a parent you can use check “$post->post_parent” which stores the ID of the parent page if it exists. To get the title of a post by ID use get_the_title(0 function.

Conclusion

By editing the theme file you have much better control of what the page title will be. This allows you to have much better search engine results with just a little effort, and also maybe turn off one plugin in the process. Note however that the change will remain strictly on the edited theme, and if you are the type who frequently changes themes this will not be a practical solution.

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