Answer My Searches » WordPress

WordPress got Really Slow All of a Sudden – Things to Try

Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:34:05 +0000

A couple days ago this blog got painfully slow. It was working fine for years and then it just started taking up to five minutes to load a page.

Here is the first thing I tried:

You can try deactivating all of your plugins. If that fixes it then go reactivate your plugins one by one testing your site each time to determine which one is the culprit.

In my case plugins weren’t the issue. Somehow my theme had started making it slow (no idea how!). So I switched to a new theme and everything got better.

Using MySQLDump When Your Password Has an Ampersand

Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 06:41:41 +0000

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Apparently Bash doesn’t like ampersands (&) within your commands. So when I tried to run Mysqldump with my new password with an ampersand I got this dumb error:
mysqldump -uusername -ppass&word --host=elite.db --add-drop-database --add-drop-table --hex-blob --all-databases
-bash: word: command not found Usage: mysqldump [OPTIONS] database [tables] OR mysqldump [OPTIONS] --databases [OPTIONS] DB1 [DB2 DB3...] OR mysqldump [OPTIONS] --all-databases [OPTIONS] For more options, use mysqldump --help

Anyway, the trick (as I graciously learned here) is to use the longer --password option and to enclose the password in escaped quotes as so:
mysqldump -uusername --password=\"pass&word\" --host=elite.db --add-drop-database --add-drop-table --hex-blob --all-databases

Is Your Blog Showing Incoming Trackbacks? An Easy Way to Check

Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 05:02:01 +0000

Believe it or not there is a WordPress blog set up for the explicit purpose of testing trackbacks.
To Test:
Simply go on over there.
The sidebar there has the login info.
Log in and make a quick post with the trackback info for your own post you want to test.

Read this guide to make sure you are setting up your test post right.

And then I believe you sit and wait umm, 4-12 hours*. If you don’t see a trackback, your trackback spam solution is blocking it or something else is wrong. This site will put you on the right path to fixing your problem at least for WordPress.

*I don’t know exactly how long a trackback should take to appear. Perhaps an experienced reader can fill us in?

An Effective Solution to Trackback Spam in WordPress Blogs

Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 04:01:31 +0000

You may not know it but a few months ago I had an embarrassing problem with trackback spam. I searched around in anguish and finally settled on this wonderful WordPress plugin as the solution:

The Trackback Validator Plugin

Here’s the description from the homepage. The logic makes sense to me:

The TrackBack Validator plugin for WordPress performs a simple but very effective test on all TrackBacks in order to stop spam.

Legitimate TrackBacks are sent by people commenting on your weblog, accompanied by a URL that points to that commentary. Spam TrackBacks are accompanied by a URL that points to a pay-per-click affiliate website or other irrelevant material. The Validator exploits this key difference:

1. When a TrackBack is received, the plugin retrieves the Web page located at the URL included in the TrackBack.
2. If the page contains a link to your weblog, the TrackBack is approved.
3. If the page does not link to your weblog, the TrackBack is flagged as spam and rejected.

Because TrackBack spammers do not set up custom Web pages linking to the weblogs they attack, this simple test will quickly reveal illegitimate Trackbacks.

We are actively developing additional heuristics to add to the plugin; if you observe TrackBack spam that makes it past this plugin, please let us know.

Note: I waited 3 months + after installing this plugin to post about it because I wanted to make sure it truly worked. And it has, I haven’t gotten a single trackback spam since.

[tags]Trackback, trackbacks, trackback spam, trackback spam prevention, wordpress, wordpress trackback[/tags]

Changing Your WordPress Titles to [document title] — [site title] Format

Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:49:17 +0000

This SEO tips post, for tip number 2 says:

Short relevant TITLE = must. Don’t put “news”, “home page”, or other such stuff in the title tag. Format: [document title] – [site title]

So, assuming this advice is valid, I went ahead and made the change to this website. Here’s how I did it in case anyone else finds it non-obvious.

First I’ll show you the new code to use and then I’ll walk you through how to use it.

Here is the new code:

<?php if ( is_home() ) { bloginfo('name'); ?>» <?php bloginfo('description'); } else {wp_title(' ');if(wp_title(' ', false)) { echo '--'; }bloginfo('name');} ?>

(Sorry about having no new lines, I’m PHP naive and don’t know how that would affect things.)

Here’s how to change it in your own WordPress blog.

First copy that code into your clipboard.

Next follow the steps illustrated in these pictures:

Go to your blog:

Go to the administration area:

Select Presentation:

Select Theme Editor:

Select the Header file:

Replace the title code:

Finally, hit the update file button on the same page, and you’re done.

Details
If you’re curious how the code works, it says, if it’s the homepage, print blog name followed by blog description, otherwise print document title followed by — followed by blog name and if the document title is blank, just print the blog name, i.e. no –.

If you are wanting to make your own code, this WordPress documentation page dealing with wp title should help.

[tags]wordpress, wordpress and seo, wordpress seo, title, tutortial, howto[/tags]