/**
* Summary returns the current follower count of a specific Twitter account, or FALSE if not found
* @param String $twitter_username the username you wish to get a Twitter count for
* @param Number $transient_cache the time in seconds to cache the transient (default is one hour)
* @return String an unformatted number of followers from twitter
*
* @author Christopher Ross (@thisismyurl)
* @version 1.0.0
*/
function thisismyurl_twitter_count( $twitter_username = 'thisismyurl', $transient_cache = 3600 ) {

$current_twitter_count = get_transient( 'thisismyurl_twitter_count' );

if ( empty( $current_twitter_count ) ) {

$xml = file_get_contents ( 'http://twitter.com/users/show/' . $twitter_username );

if ( $xml ) {
$twitter_profile = new SimpleXMLElement ( $xml );
$current_twitter_count = $twitter_profile->followers_count;

if ( !empty( $current_twitter_count ) )
set_transient( 'thisismyurl_twitter_count' , $current_twitter_count, $transient_cache );
} else {
return FALSE;
}

}

return $current_twitter_count;

}

To display your current Twitter count in your WordPress theme, include the code:

if ( function_exists( 'thisismyurl_twitter_count' ) )
echo thisismyurl_twitter_count( 'thisismyurl', 3600 );

If the count can not be returned, the function will return FALSE which allows error checking such as:

if ( function_exists( 'thisismyurl_twitter_count' ) ) {

$twitter_count = thisismyurl_twitter_count( 'thisismyurl', 3600 );

if ( $twitter_count )
echo 'Twitter Count:' . $twitter_count;
}

What do you think? Is there a way to improve this function?

So, instead of polluting the root directory with dozens of special cases you can now place those files in a sub-directory (but not two levels deep!).

Here’s an example structure:

/theme-directory
—-/pages
——–/page-about.php
——–/page-contact.php

There’s no need to worry about telling WordPress to find the files, as WordPress with automatically parse the directories for the page files (but only one level deep. Thanks for point it out Andrew, that’s a big improvement for structuring the theme!

add_action( 'template_redirect' , 'thisismyurl_change_theme_manually' );
function thisismyurl_change_theme_manually() {
if ( 'twentyeleven' != get_current_theme() )
switch_theme( 'twentyeleven', 'style.css' );
}

Update: Nacin (@nacin) pointed out a couple fixes for this piece of code. First, the get_current_theme() is depreciated, so get_stylesheet() is a better function to use and secondly, running this on the front end of the site isn’t the best idea.

With that in mind, here’s the revised code.

add_action( 'template_redirect' , 'thisismyurl_change_theme_manually' );
function thisismyurl_change_theme_manually() {
if ( 'twentyeleven' != get_stylesheet() && is_admin() )
switch_theme( 'twentyeleven', 'style.css' );
}

You can read more from Andrew Nacin at nacin.com.

If they’d just wanted to load a single page template, I would refer to the default hierarchal structure and simply create a theme file named page-[slug].php but how to do it for each of the subsection pages as well? On Friday when I wrote the a piece on redirecting WordPress based on the URL, it occurred to me that there are a couple really easy ways to do it.

Here’s my solution:

add_action( 'template_redirect','thisismyurl_about_template_override' );
function thisismyurl_about_template_override() {
if (  strpos( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/about-us' ) > 0 ) {
include ( TEMPLATEPATH . '/page-about-us.php');
exit;
}
}

So what’s it do? Simply put, it waits until after WordPress has loaded everything it needs to load to run smoothly, then just before WordPress tries to load the theme file we intercept the logic and force it to load page-about-us.php instead.

A hook is a means in WordPress to override the default functionality of WordPress and in this case, what we want to do is force WordPress to redirect before it’s even begun loading all the extra logic. To do that, we’ll tap into the template_redirect function. This function loads immediately after the website is initiated but before the theme file is loaded. It’s a perfect place to do things like redirect a page or, (as the name implies) the template. For example if you want to override a post or page template, this is where you can do it.

I’ve made two other small edits to the Smashing code example. First, I’ve added the redirect 302 value to the wp_redirect() function to tell Google that this is a temporary redirect (301 would be permanent) and I’ve combined the array for get_posts() into a single line as we won’t be reusing the variable.

add_action( 'template_redirect','thisismyurl_random_post' );
function thisismyurl_random_post() {
if (  '/random-post' == $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] ) {foreach ( get_posts ( array( 'numberposts' => 1, 'orderby' => 'rand' ) ) as $post ) {
wp_redirect ( get_permalink ( $post->ID ) , 302 );
exit;
}

}
}

Simply place this bit of logic in your functions.php file and you’ll be able to randomly redirect people to articles using a URL such as http://thisismyurl.com/random-post

What if there was another option?

Take for example a guy like me, I build dozens of sites a year and work around the clock for big, fancy companies so you have to assume that sometimes I get requests to build websites from friends and family members. I can’t really spot work on my national newspaper clients to build a free marketing tool for my mom, yet I also can’t ask her to do it herself.

What people want from a fast, cheap website is simple, here’s my list:

1. to be able to update content easily
2. for it to look nice
3. easy to manage, with few technical issues
4. fast to setup
5. cheap

My honest advice, to business owners looking for the best, cheapest, and fastest way to get a professional website up and running in minutes has two parts to it.

WordPress.com

First, I recommend people sign up for WordPress.com to run their website. It’s free and it takes all the hosting issues away. It comes with an easy updating tool, web stats, marketing details, protection etc. and it has one more thing that makes it perfect for small business owners, you can register your domain name for $17 a year which includes your hosting.

$17 gets you a branded, professional hosting environment with a fully functional content manager and thousands of templates to choose from.

Facebook.com

Once you setup your website with WordPress.com (either free or with a domain name) you can add a Facebook business page to your website, where your customers can easily talk to you and share their questions. Facebook is free.

Setting up a WordPress.com account and a Facebook page should take you about two hours, once you’re done you’ll have a professional and amazing website with full social media integration. If you’re not technical and could use a hand setting up this combination, drop me a line and we can work something out .

When I’m asked by my close friends how to create a fast, cheap website without sacrificing quality … that’s my answer.

Here are two simple WordPress shortcodes that I can insert into any page or post to automatically generate the sitename and siteurl for a website.

The shortcode siteurl generates thisismyurl.com which sitename creates thisismyurl.com automatically.

function rodonic_shortcodes_siteurl() {
return "<a href='" . get_bloginfo('url') . "' title='" . get_bloginfo('url') . "'>" . str_replace('http://','',get_bloginfo('url')) . "</a>";
}
add_shortcode('siteurl', 'rodonic_shortcodes_siteurl');function rodonic_shortcodes_sitename() {
return "<a href='" . get_bloginfo('url') . "' title='" . get_bloginfo('sitename') . "'>" . get_bloginfo('name') . "</a>";

}
add_shortcode('sitename', 'rodonic_shortcodes_sitename');

Consider first off why people are hacking websites and then you’ll be better prepared to defend them. Most hacks are simple, brute force attacks designed to gain access to as many websites as possible, as quickly as possible. This way, the hacker can insert their website links and increase their Search Engine Optimization without having to do any real work. In order to defeat them, you don’t have to make your WordPress website into an impenetrable fortress, you just need to make it harder to attack than another website.

Harden your WordPress admin

Ross wrote a piece on Blondish.net with some helpful tips on hardening your WordPress admin by using Limit Login attempts, WordPress Firewall and WP security Scan among others. As a first step, these are the bare minimum a serious WordPress admin should be using but there’s a few more steps you should take as well.

Limit your WordPress admin directory

The operating system WordPress works on is called Linux and it has its own, extremely powerful website security. Dreamhost has a simple to follow tutorial on adding directory level password protection to your website that will also work on Bluehost and other hosting companies. This will add a server level of security to your website, making it almost impossible for most hackers to get into your site.

Limit your WordPress admin to IP addresses

Extending on the example above, you can also limit WordPress to specific IP addresses. An IP address is your unique identifier on the web, all devices have one and they’re limited (for a period of time) to your unique device.

Using .htaccess files and following the tutorials, you can limit who can access your WordPress administration area by limited which IP range can access your website’s admin control.

Focus on passwords

We all hate complex passwords but in a brute force attack, having a simple password (123456, password, letmein etc) is the easiest way to lose control of your website and with modern browsers, you can let it manage most of your passwords anyways so more complex passwords don’t have to be a headache.

There are three key passwords on a WordPress site. The hosting account password for FTP access, the database password and the WordPress admin password.  Each of your passwords should include at least 16 characters, including a mix of uppercase and lowercase, a number and at least one special character. Most importantly, the three should not use the same passwords.

If you suspect a password has been compromised, change all three immediately.

Protect Your Website Code

The methods above are focussed on protecting your WordPress administration and basic website server but there’s more to protecting WordPress than just protecting the website admin and server, you also need to protect the code that makes WordPress work.

Review every plugin and theme

If you’re a developer, know your code. Every plugin or theme you add to your website is a potential security hole. Even if you’re not a coder, take a few minutes to read forum posts about a plugin before adding it, review the code and understand what you’re adding to your website.

Backup often

The WordPress database is fairly small, use a tool such as the WordPress Database Backup plugin to do daily backups of your WordPress database. If you suspect your website has been hacked, simply restore to an earlier version of your site.

If you’d like a more robust solution, VaultPress by Automattic will do a great job backing up your site as well, for a reasonable fee.

Hide your WordPress version

By default, WordPress displays it’s current version number for everybody (including hackers) to see. It’s a little like advertising your weaknesses, so a great idea is to hide the current version number using my WordPress plugin or by adding the proper hooks to your code.

Do you have any other tips, or do you do something differently? If so, please share!

RSS Feeds for author pages can be found at http://thisismyurl.com/author/thisismyurl/feed/

RSS for categories can be found at http://thisismyurl.com/category/tutorials/wordpress-tutorials/feed/

If you want to subscribe to comments on a post, you can do that at http://thisismyurl.com/4747/goodbye-adsense-adchoices/feed/

In fact, almost every page you reach on a WordPress powered website can be subscribed to as an RSS feed simply by adding /feed/ to the end!

So what is RSS anyway?

It’s great that WordPress lets you publish your content in RSS feeds, but what practical good is it? What is RSS? RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a standard format that computers can read. In it’s simplest form, RSS is a way for your blog and another piece of software to speak to each other but in practice it’s a whole lot more.

With RSS Feeds, readers can subscribe to your website and receive notifications when new content is published. Google can quickly crawl new pages, complex web applications can analyse your web content and Facebook can read your RSS straight onto a business page.

What makes WordPress such a good solution for online newspaper publishing?

First and foremost, WordPress is easy.

It’s easy to install (Bluehost offers a one click install) or you can download the files for free and upload them to your own hosting environment.

It’s easy to scale, starting small with WordPress is simple. You can start off small with a $75 a year hosting account, or even host on WordPress.com while you’re figuring out how it works. Moving from a small hosting account to a large account is as straight forward as moving the database.

It’s easy to build a great site. There are already plenty of free or commercial themes on the market for WordPress, and a number of them are ideal for publishing newspapers and magazines with but creating a custom, unique theme is as easy as hiring a WordPress developer to create a new theme.

It’s easy to optimize your newspaper because WordPress takes care of most of the Search Engine Optimization for you and the things it doesn’t natively do, it can be easily augmented with plugins or custom coding.

It’s easy to integrate with powerful social media tools, search engines, advertising solutions, membership tools and commenting systems.

It’s easy to use and I think this is the most important things for newspaper publishers. WordPress is easy to use, not just from a technical side but also for writers, editors, publishers, the advertising department and the readers who are looking for a strong, easy to read newspaper.

How do you build an online newspaper with WordPress?

Now that we’ve established why WordPress is a great choice for building an online newspaper, let’s take a closer look at how to actually go about turing WordPress into an online newspaper or magazine.

First, you’ll need to install WordPress. Installing WordPress through Bluehost or a similar website provider is simple. Most include a one click solution, but if you need to do it the long way, you can download WordPress for free and setup the software using their built it auto installer.

Once you have WordPress installed, you’ll need to find a great WordPress theme for your newspaper. This can actually be the most difficult part of the process, as each newspaper needs a unique and attractive theme. Building newspaper themes is what I do for a living, so feel free to contact me but alternatively there are some great low cost theme solutions.

• WordPress.org has a number of free WordPress newspaper themes available;
• Bavotasan.com has one of the more popular newspaper themes for WordPress, both a paid and free version;

As well, there are a number of premium (commercial) WordPress newspaper themes available for download.

With your theme in place, setting up WordPress as a newspaper is remarkably straight forward. There are a few plugins that I highly recommend for newspaper WordPress sites, such as:

• JetPack, a plugin from the makers of WordPress which includes a few great tools. It ships with WordPress.com Statistics for determining your most popular posts, as well as an email based subscription tool, a spell checker, social sharing tools and distribution enhancements.
• EditFlow, from the people behind the company behind WordPress (the developers of this plugin are employees of Automattic) allows you to add editorial process to WordPress. This simple feature turns regular WordPress websites into a newsroom with an approval process, editorial notes and a publishing calendar.
• Co-Author Plus lets you assign multiple authors to a WordPress newspaper bi-line.
• Image Credit adds an image credit to your images for photographers.

Now, you should be ready to start publishing your own online newspaper!