This snippet must be used before the Loop, where the page data is still loaded. It can be used in your theme’s index.php to alter the posts/blog page, but will also work in a custom page template with a Loop with the same effect with the if() clause removed. If you’re familiar with how the $post object works, then $this_page will behave in much the same way.

[sourcecode]<?php

$this_page = $wp_query->get_queried_object(); // Get the current page
$this_page_id = $wp_query->get_queried_object_id(); // Get the current page ID
$posts_page_id = get_option(‘page_for_posts’); // Get the posts page ID

if ( $this_page_id && $this_page_id == $posts_page_id ) { // If the current page has an ID and is the posts page
$updated = ‘Last updated: ‘ . get_the_time($this_page->post_modified); // $this_page is a standard post object
$content = apply_filters(‘the_content’, $this_page->post_content); // Apply ‘the_content’ filters
$content = str_replace(‘]]>’, ‘]]&gt;’, $content);

echo "Last updated: $updated</br>$content";
}

?>[/sourcecode]

To only display the content on the first blog page, add

&& !get_query_var('paged')

to the if() clause.

This post is written by Kawauso. He is a 20-year old university student who writes code for a couple small organizations

We’d love to list everyone but we’d be here forever So here’s our top 15 list of WordPress people on Twitter you should be following. We placed them in alphabetical order based on Twitter handle.

Andy Peatling – @apeatling

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/apeatling/status/12466183628[/tweeted]

Andy is the lead developer of BuddyPress, a platform built to add social networking capabilities to WordPress.

Brian Gardner – @bgardner

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/bgardner/status/13985904226[/tweeted]

Brian has been an active member and contributor to the WordPress community since 2006 where he first started using it for his personal blog. Since then, he has created a very successful company named StudioPress.

Jane Wells – @janeforshort

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/janeforshort/status/13879037397[/tweeted]

Jane is the ninja of all ninja’s! Interface and experience designer for WordPress, WordCamp traveler, cat lover, and much more. Catch up with Jane at jane.wordpress.com.

Lorelle VanFossen – @lorelleonwp

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/lorelleonwp/status/13496110440[/tweeted]

Where to begin, Lorelle has become a staple resource in the WordPress community. She has been involved since the early days building out the Codex. Lorelle has spoken, written, and evangelized WordPress since the beginning. Go check out some amazing stuff over at Lorelle on WordPress.

Mark Jaquith – @markjaquith

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/markjaquith/status/13977338952[/tweeted]

A Lead Developer for WordPress and a freelance WordPress consultant, Mark is arguably one of the tallest developers in the galaxy! He is a WordPress master and recently became a father. Congrats Mark!

Andrew Nacin – @nacin

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/nacin/status/13940559705[/tweeted]

Andrew got involved with WordPress not too long ago, back in January 2008. His first exposure to WordPress was relaunching the blogs for his college newspaper using WordPress version 2.3.2. Andrew has turned into one of the premiere core developers and is one of the main developers of WordPress 3.0. I don’t think he sleeps anymore! You can read more from Andrew at andrewnacin.com.

Pete Mall – @petemall

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/petemall/status/13838403759[/tweeted]

Pete is a WordPress ninja so he fits in well with us here at WPV He is the master of WordCamp’s and can PHP’ify anything! Most recently he put together a cool way to add a WordPress logo to your Twitter avatar, go check out TwitRbn. Read more from Pete at Developer’s Mind.

Matt Mullenweg – @photomatt

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/photomatt/statuses/13691346008[/tweeted]

We can’t forget the co-founding father of WordPress. Matt’s involvement started before WordPress even existed. He then helped launch a company called Automattic, around August 2005. Matt is still the outward “face” of WordPress and we love him for it. Check him out at Ma.tt.

Matt Martz – @sivel

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/sivel/status/13803567854[/tweeted]

One of the smartest guys I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with! He is passionate about WordPress and helped me learn quite a bit over the years. Matt is a core contributor and IRC master! Matt is the mastermind behind Free Your Feed. You can read and learn about what Matt does over at Sivel.net.

Aaron Brazell – @technosailor

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/technosailor/status/14051094736[/tweeted]

Aaron is as passionate about his sports teams as he is WordPress. He recently authored the WordPress Bible, and is a core contributor. Make sure to follow up and read more from Aaron on Technosailor.com.

Alex Mills – @viper007bond

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/Viper007Bond/status/14028683843[/tweeted]

If you’re here at WPV, you’re probably interacting with one of Alex’s plugins. He is a seasoned developer and has been a WordPress fanatic since somewhere around 2003. Alex works on WordPress.com for Automattic and has a great site of his own at Viper007Bond.com.

Fredrick Townes – @w3edge

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/w3edge/status/13383635124[/tweeted]

Ever heard of Mashable? Their CTO Fredrick started using WordPress almost four years ago. Fredrick is also the CEO of W3Edge. He created and contributed W3 Total Cache, which we consider to be the best WordPress caching plugin.

Brad Williams – @williamsba

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/williamsba/status/13823610839[/tweeted]

Brad kicked off his WordPress habit over three years ago and hasn’t looked back. Not only is he a regular contributor, he’s also the co-author of Professional WordPress. He is the CEO of WebDevStudios and a seasoned WordCamp speaker!

Jeff Chandler – @WPTavern

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/wptavern/status/13806750636[/tweeted]

Jeff stays pretty busy these days! He not only hosts and produces a live podcast – WordPress Weekly, he also has 17 different full time jobs and does an outstanding job running WPTavern, a great WordPress community.

Joost de Valk – @yoast

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/yoast/status/13734949438[/tweeted]

Joost has created and or maintains some of the most popular WordPress plugins available today. He’s been creating WordPress everything since 2006, which is also when he started providing professional SEO services. You’ve probably been to Yoast.com in the past, go play around some more, you’re guaranteed to find new cool stuff!

Bonus Round

As I mentioned earlier, we could be here forever. Since we’ve made it this far, here’s a few more mentions we couldn’t leave out. Plus we couldn’t end the post without shamelessly plugging ourselves

Jonathan Dingman – @dingman

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/Dingman/status/13328274854[/tweeted]

Jonathan and I have been collaborating since 2004 after some great conversations in the WordPress IRC channel. He’s been involved with WordPress since 2003 and is the co-founder of WPV. Dingman organized the first ever WordCamp NY in 2008.

Dre Armeda – @dremeda

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/dremeda/status/13870141161[/tweeted]

Hey wait, that’s me I co-found WPV with Dingman which has been a great time! I’m a WordPress contributor and love spreading WordPress Vibe. I’ve been involved with WordPress since early 2004 and rarely blog on Armeda.com. I’m heading up WordCamp San Diego 2011 and most recently I founded CubicTwo LLC, a web services firm focused on content management solutions.

WPVibe – @wpvibe

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/wpvibe/status/14164866470[/tweeted]

Last but not least….us! Make sure to connect, we love to help! Ask us WordPress questions anytime, we’ll make sure to help you out as soon as possible, that’s what it’s all about right?

And the list goes on…

Make sure to follow everyone on the list, you won’t regret it.

Who are some of your favorite WordPress people to follow? leave your thoughts in the comments!

Keep the vibe!

Here are the options we have for “resetting the query”:

• rewind_posts()
• wp_reset_query()
• new WP_Query

How are these three different?  Here’s the difference.

rewind_posts() reset the The Loop position for the particular instantiation of The Loop.  wp_reset_query() resets the $wp_query main query.  And new WP_Query() will let you keep the original query around in case you want to use it later on, but this will create a new query that you can “loop” through.

Here are some examples.

rewind_posts()

[sourcecode]
// First loop (get the last 10 posts in the "myVibe" category)
<?php query_posts(‘category_name=myVibe&showposts=10′); ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<!– Do stuff… –>
<?php endwhile;?>

//loop reset
<?php rewind_posts(); ?>
//Second loop (Get all posts)
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<!– Do stuff… –>
<?php endwhile; ?>
[/sourcecode]

wp_reset_query()

Actual function:

[sourcecode]
function wp_reset_query() {
unset($GLOBALS['wp_query']);
$GLOBALS['wp_query'] =& $GLOBALS['wp_the_query'];
}
[/sourcecode]

Example usage:

[sourcecode]
<?php $my_query = new WP_Query(‘category_name=special_cat&posts_per_page=10′); ?>

<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>
<!– Do special_cat stuff… –>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php wp_reset_query();
<?php $my_query = new WP_Query(‘category_name=my_other_cat&posts_per_page=15′); ?>
<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>
<!– Do special_cat stuff… –>
<?php endwhile; ?>
[/sourcecode]

Trac discussion of wp_reset_query()

new WP_Query

[sourcecode]
// going off on my own here
<?php $temp_query = clone $wp_query; ?>
<!– Do stuff… –>

<?php query_posts(‘category_name=special_cat&posts_per_page=10′); ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<!– Do special_cat stuff… –>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

// now back to our regularly scheduled programming
<?php $wp_query = clone $temp_query; ?>
[/sourcecode]

Some examples taken from codex.wordpress.org

This particular release isn’t necessarily for WordPress, but it’s for Google Chrome — and I feel like it would be useful for you if you’re a Google Chrome user.

Click here to download After the Deadline for Google Chrome.

Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:

But I see two issues with it. When I tested it out, it first didn’t show up at all and when I went to the post, it showed I was in South Africa. Well, that’s not right. So I asked Alex from the WP.com team, and he said it has to do with my geolocation database, which didn’t even cross my mind. I assumed that it would just work after I installed it.

The next issue I saw is that it doesn’t have the option to auto-display the map, but rather you only see it when you hover over the description. That seems a little silly to me, but maybe that’s just me.

It’s a good first attempt for v0.1, but there’s much to be desired still for it to be a production plugin.

Here is my presentation.

Any questions or comments or plugins that you suggest, please leave them in the comments.

Thanks!

If you’re looking to limit the_excerpt() or get_the_excerpt() by a specific word count, here is a great code snippet that you can throw into functions.php that will do just that.

[sourcecode lang="php"]function my_excerpt_length($text){
return 20;
}
add_filter(‘excerpt_length’, ‘my_excerpt_length’);

function new_excerpt_more($more) {
return ‘…’;
}
add_filter(‘excerpt_more’, ‘new_excerpt_more’);[/sourcecode]

Any questions or feedback, please leave them in the comments!

To change this default behavior, it’s actually quite easy.

Include the following lines of code in your functions.php file.

[sourcecode]function vibeExcludePages($query) {
if ($query->is_search) {
$query->set(‘post_type’, ‘post’);
}
return $query;
}
add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’,'vibeExcludePages’);[/sourcecode]

By adding this bit of code, it will basically tell your search results to not display anything but posts.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.

Enjoy!

A user with the alias of “steinmicforma” has created a project on Sourceforge that utilizes a PostgreSQL database instead of MySQL. The WordPress Codex has limited documentation on how to do this, so someone took it upon themself to create a project that would help those users that wanted this.

I have to only think that this is a very limited number of users, but those users certainly do exist.

The project is in sync with current WordPress versions, so the latest release is 2.9.2. Hopefully it will continue to stay in sync as well, to be a valuable resource to the WordPress community.

Here are just some of my favorite WordPress SEO plugins that I use on a regular basis.

SEO Smart Links

This plugin absolutely rocks. It’s first on the list because I feel it’s one of the more valuable SEO plugins for WordPress. This plugin has the ability to easily set and forget keywords and links, and the ability to even auto-link tags and categories, if you choose to do that.

Here are some of the features of this plugin:

• Find keywords in your posts, pages and comments and link them to your other posts, pages, categories and tags
• Full control with customizable options
• Ignore list for keywords you do not want to link
• Improves your site’s interlinking
• Control external links with custom keywords
• Add nofollw attribute or open links in new window
• Caching for speed – make sure you have define(‘ENABLE_CACHE’, true); set in your wp-config.php

SEO Smart Links plugin link

SEO Titletag

This plugin is a huge help with optimizing your <title> tags within the HTML of your post.

There are a few options with it as well, to customize the title tag experience.

Here are a few of the features of this plugin:

• Allows you to override a page’s or a post’s title tag with a custom one.
• A Title Tag input box in the Edit Post and Write Post forms. (Previously in version 1.0 you had to use the Custom Field box.)
• Mass editing of title tags for all posts, static pages, category pages, tag pages, tag conjunction pages, archive by month pages, – indeed, any URL – all in one go.
• Mass editing of slugs for all posts and static pages.
• Define a custom title tag for your home page (or, more accurately, your Posts page, if you have chosen a static Front Page set under Options -> Reading), through the Options -> SEO Title Tag page in the WordPress admin.
• Define the title tag of 404 error pages, also through Options -> SEO Title Tag.
• Handles internal search result pages too.
• If you choose to keep the blog name in your title tags (not recommended!), the order of the blog name and the title are automatically reversed, giving more keyword prominence to the title instead of the blog name. Note there is also an option to replace your blog name with a shorter blog nickname.

SEO Title Tag plugin link

SEO Slugs

I’ve been using this plugin off and on, and I’m probably going to turn it back on for this site. This plugin helps ease the process of writing slugs for your posts. The WordPress default is set to use the slug of the entire post name, which is not always ideal. The SearchEngineJournal wrote a great article about URL Best Practices for SEO, which outline a lot of great things to do for your permalinks. The first item on this list is short URLs.

This plugin will help automatically create shorter URLs and more effective URLs.

One of the key features of this plugin is that it will instantly strip common [and ignored] words like “what”, “you”, and “a” out of the permalink.

SEO Slugs plugin link

SEO All in One Pack

In terms of number of downloads, this by far one of the more popular SEO plugins available for WordPress. This does a lot of things, in a single plugin. Here are a few things this plugin features.

• Advanced Canonical URLs
• Fine tune Page Navigational Links
• Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
• ONLY plugin to provide SEO Integration for WP e-Commerce sites
• Nonce Security
• Support for CMS-style WordPress installations
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs
• For beginners, you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• For advanced users, you can fine-tune everything

…and that’s not even the entire list! This is a great, “one stop, get it all done in a single plugin,” plugin. The other plugins I mention in this post are still great, if you want slightly more granular control over things.

Here’s a screenshot of what the options look like.

All in One SEO Pack plugin link

Headspace2

Another SEO pack of sorts, but this one is written by John Godley, now an Automattic employee. He has been a long-time WordPress developer, and I still use many of his historical plugins.

This plugin features an array of customizations for configurable meta tags, page titles, custom “more text”, site name and site description, custom themes per page, and custom plugins per page.

Here are a few other great features of Headspace2:

• Allows you to add Google Analytics
• Allows you to authenticate to Google Webmaster Tools
• Ability to easily integrate into CrazyEgg (heat map click-tracking)
• Allows you to authenticate to Yahoo! Site Explorer
• Easy integration into Feedburner Stats Pro

Something else I noticed about this plugin that is different than just about any other SEO plugin, is the ability to import settings from other plugins. You can import settings from legacy plugins like Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, and Simple Tagging; which I think it pretty awesome.

Headspace2 plugin link

BONUS: Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

This bonus plugin, termed YARPP, is not exactly an SEO plugin, but I feel it helps a great deal with SEO. Related content is great for internal link juice; which is one reason why Wikipedia is effective and has such great rankings. Internal, relevant links, are quite important to the search engines and while this does play a role in SEO, it’s equally as beneficial for the visitors [to see what related content you have on the site.]

For an example of this plugin, just look right below the end of this post and look for “related posts” and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.

YARPP plugin link

So those are some of my favorites. Do you have any WordPress SEO favorites or tips?