WordPress Twitter API Plugins Not Authenticating

A friend asked me to investigate why he was unable to use any Twitter plugins with his blog, but only on a specific server. After Googling around a little, I saw solutions that ranged from disabling PHP’s oauth module, to updating server time. It turns out that none of these fixed the problem – the issue was lack of SSL support for Curl. His server is running cPanel, and although Curl...

Link building exploit that only Google can see

I was called by a client today who had looked at her site in Google’s cache and was shocked to see spam links for penis pills. When she viewed her site, however, there were no links to be seen. Thinking the hosting provider had fixed the issue, I looked at the most recently-cached item, which was only a few hours old, and saw that the links were still there. The database was clean, and no...

Must-have plugins for any WordPress install

One of the things that makes WordPress so great is the fact that you can extend it, without touching the core, through the use of plugins. Here is the list of must-have plugins that I put on every blog I deploy, and why: All In One SEO Pack – allows you to set custom titles, and meta descriptions very easily. Sociable – adds social bookmarking icons to your posts. NextGEN Gallery...

Affiliate Link Cloaker Plugin

Introduction This plugin will cloak an affiliate link in a similar fashion to a product called GC Affiliate Cloaker. It essentially spits out some JavaScript that opens the cloaked link in an iframe. Cloaking in this case is not for SEO purposes – it is to shorten URLs so they look prettier and also to prevent other affiliates from stealing your commissions. You can use a redirect plugin...

Updating WordPress XML Sitemaps Offline

I personally love Arne Brachhold’s Google XML Sitemap plugin for WordPress. I personally use it on any WordPress install I do. On larger blogs, or blogs where you’re using automated content generators (i.e. posting content in an automated way through XML-RPC) the default build mode will slow down your blog because it rebuilds the entire XML sitemap from scratch every time you create...