Or…

How to create a custom template file for single post pages.

It happen to me, I got the dreaded email from a BlogHer team member about a sponsored post that violated the agreement. Doh!! I am a violator, but not intentionally. I violated because I am an idiot basically.

You see, my baby only poops once every week or so and she cries and has the most raunchy farts you’ve ever smelled. She’s a very unhappy girl so her mommy and daddy are also unhappy, tired and quite brain dead.

I am four weeks postpartum and my pregnancy brain hasn’t cleared up, so when the Tune-In Bar came to my attention I was stoked to put it on my site and didn’t realize I’d have no means to remove the bar from my few sponsored post pages. Oops & crap!

Thankfully I did find a easy way to remove the Tune-In Bar code from only my sponsored post pages using a plugin, custom templates, some basic knowledge about templates and HTML knowledge.

I did this on my wordpress self hosted blog this week and you can too. Here is how:

1. First install and activate the Single Post Template Plugin here: http://www.nathanrice.net/plugins/single-post-template/

2. Next, create your own custom template file without the BlogHer Tune-In Bar code. Yeah, it is more complicated that I just made it sound in that sentence but I’ll walk you through it. It is easy, you can do it!

• First using an FTP program such as FileZilla locate and download the single.php file from your current template.
• Rename the single.php file, try something like altsingle.php and upload it to your server with all your other template files.
• Edit the alternative template file you just renamed & uploaded. I edited mine in the backend of my WordPress, self hosted blog by going to “appearance” and then “editor”.
• Add the following to the very top of your file:
  

  <?php

  /*

  Single Post Template: [Descriptive Template Name]

  Description: This part is optional, but helpful for describing the Post Template

  */

  ?>

• I kept my single.php template file exactly the same but just replaced the <?php get_header(); ?> string with an entire copy and paste of the contents of my header.php file minus the BlogHer Tune-In Bar code
• Save the edited alternative template file. Then go to a post and test it out.
  

If you start a new post or edit an existing post you’ll now find a dropdown menu allowing you to select the template file you’d like to use.

Using this method the sky is the limit with your post pages. You can remove a portion of the side bar or the entire the side bar. Remove the header, footer, a BlogHer Ad code, add some custom tracking code… Whatever you can dream up can be done just by using custom templates.

This makes me quite happy as you can see. Probably because it’s like the only thing I am not a floundering idiot at these days. I can’t make my newborn baby happy right now but I can make custom templates and tell you how to make them too. That is a win I’ll be savoring until the next win cause a girl needs something to hold on to.

Enjoy your custom template making!

You might also consider reading this post: http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/create-custom-single-post-templates-for-specific-posts-or-sections-in-wordpress/ for further explanation. It is a similar post on the same concept. Or leave your questions in the comments section and I’ll try to help you out.

WordPress Attack Underway: WordPress Users Must Upgrade [ALERT] – http://bit.ly/Cu3c7 (via @mashable)

Mashable writes “WordPress has responded to news today that outdated versions of the popular blogging software are vulnerable to a new attack. The attack affects only self-hosted versions of WordPress, not those at WordPress.com. The organization’s advice is simple: if you aren’t using the most recent version (2.8.4), upgrade now to avoid problems.”

Lorelle writes on her WordPress-centric blog:

There are two clues that your WordPress site has been attacked:

First, there are strange additions to permalinks, such as: example.com/category/post-title/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/. The keywords are “eval” and “base64_decode.”

The second clue is that a “back door” was created by a “hidden” Administrator. Check your site users for “Administrator (2)” or a name you do not recognize.

If you noticed some 404 pages here earlier it is because I was under attack… I had an invisible administrator as described above and I also noticed the weird permalink stuff last night. Initially I thought the permalink funky stuff was related to the new theme. So I’ve upgraded as wordpress recommends but I still had the invisible administrator to figure out.

Anyway, if you are under attack and wondering how to get rid of the invisible administrator here is what I did:

After logging in to phpMyAdmin I browsed user tables and found that on both mine and N’s blogs there was a user with a blank user_email. Once that use was deleted the invisible administrator dissappeared.

Updated Oct 3th 2009:

Noticed a drop in traffic after you’ve reclamied your blog from the wordpress hacking? I did. Be sure you’ve checked your permalink structure and that it’s been restored to what it was before.

Just removing this junk (%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/) isn’t enough, I know from experence. You see my permalink structure was set to just display as /%postname%/ so when I simply snipped off the extra junk that was added in the hacking I didn’t notice that the /%category%/%postname%/ was different that what I had always had my permalink structure set as…

Changing your permalink structure means changing your ranking in the search engines and if you care about search traffic this is bad for you. Is your permalink structure back to how it used to be prior to tha hacking? You might want to take a look.

Register.com sent me and unsolicited email about free domain registeration that they are giving away till 3/25/08. I thought it looked like an interesting deal so I headed over to the site to read the find print.

It is actually free for 1 year from the date of registration (you will need to buy your own hosting plan separate from the domain if you wish to use it), the catch is that they want your credit card information on the account so that when the free year is up they can charge you for a second year and so on. They charge $35.00 for 1 year domain registration!! What a rip off!

I actually do not recommend register.com’s hosting plans to anyone who wishes to have control over their site/ SEO. I used them back in the day and was grossly disappointed. I don’t even recommend them for domain registration because it is way over priced but with a free domain why not use them?

The key is to transfer the domain to another registrar at the end of the year and THEN pay for the next years registration. This is what I plan to do!

I got my free domain registration for customgiftsbytalina.com, I will redirect it to my business site (www.craftedcustomgifts.com) thus reserving my business name as a domain so nobody else can use it and misrepresent the business.

A free domain name could be benificial to you as a blogger. Getting a domain registered and buying a hosting plan means you own your blog. It wont be hosted at a free blogging site (like blogger.com, wordpress.com or MSN spaces) which increases your chance for making money off that blog, plus you have more control!

Free blogs often cannot use all the nifty little plugins (like comment luv) that exist because they are unable to edit template files and so on. Free blogs are free so the capabilities and benefits are often limited. If you are a serious blogger this free domain name offer can launch you into the world of professional blogging/ owning your own site!

If you want ot claim your free domain head over to their promotion page (http://www.register.com/promo/acquisitions_lp_1.rcmx?trkID=EMAoFkNb1W) and get started.. The offer is only good for the week so don’t wait if you want one.

Then mark your calendar and remember to transfer the domain registration to another registrar of your choice before it expires next year!

Many readers have inquired about website hosting plans and services. There are a number of options to choose from and often times the choices can seem overwhelming. I have found another helpful resource for those shopping for web services. If you visit http://www.webhostingchoice.com you will find a very easy to use tool that allows you to search for plans and services that fit your needs. I believe this tool is helpful and will save time with it’s side by side comparisons of services within your search range. If you are looking for information on a number of hosts and services and would like to see them all in one place you would benefit from following the link posted above.

Also, if you are new to site building or if this is your first website you would also benefit from the informative articles the have posted on the site. These informative articles can help to make sense of buying hosting service and a domain.

I just found a great deal for bloggers who wish to market their blogs outside the realm of the internet. You can get 100 FREE business cards, you just pay the shipping cost! These blogger business cards are a great way to market your blog in the “real world”! On ooprint.com you can design your blog business card with their user friendly site, the blogger specific templates allow you to list your blogs main keywords & tags on the business card along with your preferred contact info.

If you are looking for ways to grow your blogs readership real world marketing through blogger business cards is a great idea that you may want to look in to!

Did you know that many bloggers who get paid to blog are suffering from dramatic page rank drops? Do you know why? It is because of Google’s rules about “passing page rank” through paid links.

Payperpost is a great way for bloggers to get paid for writing but questions have been raised about whether or not they are asking you to break google‘s “passing page rank” rules. Some payperpost writers claim that using “rel=nofollow” in the html for sponsored links is against the payperpost terms of service. Not using it will surely impact your page rank and may even get your sites removed from google so what decision will you make? Which one is more ethical? Are you looking to make money or to provide helpful content to web users, do you have to choose one or the other?
I thought the goal of payperpost was to create internet “buzz” for advertisers and to refer readers to opportunities that were relevant and useful to the target audience. I didn’t think payperpost was a round-about way for advertisers to buy page rank and optimal search engine placement.

Yes, I know that many people are saying that google page rank means nothing anymore and that they are “a soft monopoly” that is loosing respect and creditability over all this. I am just not sure if I believe it just yet. Google is my preferred search engine and they do have many users who believe their results are the best, besides I do get over half of my traffic from their search results!

I guess it all goes back to what we believe is the best type of search results. Do you like your results to be free of paid results and do you think paid results are often irrelevant, do you care? Do you think that advertisers who pay for publicity should also benefit from preferred search engine placement?

Shouldn’t their be a way for the small businesses and the “great content” producers to get into the search engines without having to pay and arm and a leg for publicity? What are your thoughts about all this and where do you think the coin will fall?

Their are some great debates going on about the google/ payperpost saga that you can read about on the payperpost forums. This is a very controversial topic and each blogger has to decide which way they will go.

Additionally, any site owner that chooses to place advertisements on their site for personal gain should consider the pros and cons very carefully! For more reading on the paid links/ page rank issue check out these sites:

• Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings
• Matt Cutts on text links and pagerank
• Why paid links in the search results can be bad
• Information about buying and selling links that pass PageRank
• Paid Links To Manipulate PageRank

If you are a e commerce site owner you know that this is the worst time possible to have server/ hosting issues with your site. These issues not only loose you potential customers but they are very stressful because you can do nothing to remedy the issue.

I am amazed at how many outages I have read and heard about this month. I have a number of coworkers who were caught up in an extended outage that took their sites and emails offline for several days back at the beginning of November. “Navisite, the US webhosting firm, is scrambling to fix an extended outage that is believed to have rendered tens of thousands of websites inoperable for more than three days. The company hopes to completely resolve the problem by Tuesday morning at the latest.

The interruption started Saturday as part of a planned move to replace a fleet of aging servers operated by Alabanza, which Navisite recently acquired. Navisite warned customers their websites would be down for several hours during the migration, but unexpected issues have caused the process to take much longer than originally anticipated.”

Unfortunately, on Monday another outage occurred that impacted many webmasters, it was the Rackspace’s outage. Although this outage only lasted hours and the issues were remedied it was still a huge inconvenience for site owners.

With all these outages webmasters are taking along hard look at how to prepare for server issues. The best thing you can do is keep an up to date back up of your site! Site hosts generally work to prevent data loss and “offline time” but it’s best to always be prepared!

Other webmasters use site monitoring programs such as AlertBot website monitoring, these resources typically alert you when your site is down so you can work with your hosing company to resolve the issue immediately.

Whatever you do just know that downtime unfortunately happens. Choose a web host that has a good reputation for remedying issues and who has minimal outages but know that sometimes there is nothing that the hosting company can do prevent the outage (like a car smashing into a power pole) and the best thing you can do is be prepared.

My website (Custom Gifts By Talina) went live in November 2005. Over the course of the last few months I have experienced many site building mistakes and frustrations. I am taking search engine optimization classes and chatting with several other small business owners on various groups (AZ Craft Biz Connection & QFLEA) to learn more about website building and marketing.

I originally purchased service for 1 year with what I now know as a very bad hosting company (register.com). I learned I was not able to control my site construction as much as I needed and was not helped when I went to them to remedy this. Their “website now” service was not good for SEO and they were very unhelpful and basically refused to let me build my own site via frontpage.

The main thing that made me mad is that they market to people who don’t have site building experience, they claim to make building your site a breeze. Then they make getting your site in to the search engines via good SEO practically impossible. SEO is the best way to get your site on the search engines free, but they would rather have you not use SEO (because you can’t with their site builders) and just pay them extra to list your site on all the search engines. They way I saw it, they were trying to force me to pay them to list my site on the search engines, they want more money from you. Why would you pay for something that you can learn about and do free (and more ethically)? I ended up canceling my service and switched hosting companies all together.

While I was going through my hosting company issues I discovered so many people have had similar experiences and others have great services to recommend. The purpose of this post is to provide information and recourses on good/ bad hosting companies. This post will be more informative and well rounded if my readers post feedback on their experiences.

Some companies that were mentioned in discussion groups are:
doteasy.com
godaddy.com
siteocity.com
register.com
001host.com
web-designing.org
addr.com
aplushosting.com
premiumwebdesign.com
panthrpc.com

I did some personal research based on good recommendations I received. I have included the company and the price breakdown for you to reference if needed.

Company – 1 month / 1 year
http://www.siteocity.com – $1.95 / $23.40
http://www.theprimehost.com – $2.95 / $35.40
http://www.mountainvalleyhosting.com – $2.99 / $35.88
http://order.1and1.com – $2.99 / $35.88
https://www.godaddy.com – $3.56 / $42.72
http://www.ozeweb.com – $5.00 / $60.00
http://001host.com – $5.95 / $71.40
http://www.web-designing.org – $6.00 / $72.00
http://www.aplushosting.com – $6.95 / $83.40
http://wahmshoppes.com – $7.00 / $84.00
http://addr.com – $7.95 / $95.40
http://hostingct.com – $9.95 / $119.40

If you have a moment please take the time to post your recommendations/ experiences in the form of a comment below. Thank you for stopping by and I look forward to your recommendations!

The following comments were left:
Wed, 01 Feb 2006
I use http://www.web-designing.org and Sue offers wonderful service. She’s usually only and IM away. She does her best to work with your needs. Her prices are fab. and the service is top notch!! — Melissa http://www.mels-smells.com
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Wed, 01 Feb 2006
I too am using the hosting services of http://www.web-designing.org. I (and apparently many others) cannot say enough about her personalized service. If I didn’t see all the others above, I would never even realize that she had other clients because, honestly, she gives such wonderful customer support that I could swear I was her only client.
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Tue, 31 Jan 2006
We cannot say enough for Sue Smith of www.web-designing.org. She set up my web site a few years ago and then in the next year we did my husbands website. She covered everything, with such a personal touch that I won’t leave and go anywhere else. We have the best as far as we are concerned.
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Tue, 31 Jan 2006
Sue Smith of http://www.web-designing.org/ is my host and also does my site maintained for the last 3yrs. Since I went online in 1999, I have had several hosts. Sue is by far the best. She’s talented, stays updated with the ever-changing quirks of online business and she’s quick. If you want a protective “tiger” in your corner, Sue is the web guru for you. The lady knows her stuff.
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Tue, 31 Jan 2006
Hi my name is Pat Crump and my website is www.country-wood.net When I started my web site 4 years ago I knew nothing and so I went with a host that had a fill in the blanks program, Crow Soup, I just did not realize all the hidden things that there were and after 3 1/2 years it was pointed out to me that all my meta tags were advertising for them instead of my web site. There were also other things that I could not change that were not helping my site at all. So I made a change and went to Web & Graphic Designs at http://www.web-designing.org/ Sue set up all my pages for me put in the right meta tags for my web site and makes all the changes for me and fixes everything for only $35.00 a month, which I was paying $20.00 a month and doing all the changes and building new pages myself and advertising for my host instead of myself. I am taking a HTML class and trying to learn how to do things and belong to several groups where they share lots of information that helps. I’m really glad that I found Sue and she was honest with me and got my site fixed up and looking good. If there is a problem or a broken link she is right there to fix it, with crows soup it took a while to get an answer to questions on how to fix something or what I should do, they did answer me back but it did take a while for them to get to it. Pat Crump
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Tue, 31 Jan 2006
I have been using Web-Designing.org for a few years now. Sue is a wonderful web hostess, always on top of things and willing to look into any problems and answer questions. There have been very few problems over the years, all of which were taken care of promptly. I don’t expect any hosting company to be problem free, but this one is very close. Sue is very helpful and cares about her clients. I would highly recommend her hosting biz for her customer service, not to mention that you get a lot of space on the web for the money, as well as a lot of options on the control panel. Sue’s entire hosting package is well worth the money.

Post your own reviews and opinions below!