Just in case  you hadn’t noticed yet, I’ve rearranged by website, again. I kind of have this thing that I have to update it about once a year so that I can utilize all the great stuff I keep learning. I was the same way when I was a hair stylist back in the 80′s….I never had the same hair style for longer than about 6 months. Okay, so I’m easily bored.

Since I was so busy with the rearranging, I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks either, and while I was so buy with the rearranging, I discovered some great new things that I wanted to pass along to all of you. Okay, maybe they’re not so new to the world, but they’re new to me, and I think you’ll really like them, too!

1. Password protect a page in your WordPress site. Since I have some downloadable products that I sell as part of my SEO e-book, I needed a way to password protect the page these products are listed on. My previous site had been built with Dreamweaver (even though the blog portion was always a WordPress blog), and previously I had password protected a folder which contained the page the products were listed on, along with the products themselves. Since I wanted to keep all the pages within WordPress, and you can’t have a WordPress page within a folder, I needed to protect just the individual page.You can do this in the Publish box, which is directly to the right of the text editor box, as you’re adding a new page or post.
   
   Click the Edit link next to Visibility: Public, then select the radio button for Password protected. You will then be prompted to enter the password and you can click OK. Super easy!
2. WordPress Find and Replace Plugin. Since I created my new site in a temporary folder, when I finally moved the site, there were many links and pathways left with the folder name in them. Rather than manually go through each page and post, this plugin will allow you to search for a certain string, then replace it with the correct text. For example, if a link on a page was written as http://www.theresasheridan.com/newsite/web-design, I could search for the string “http://www.theresasheridan.com/newsite”, then simply replace that text with “http://www.theresasheridan.com/” and the link would now be correct. While I still had a few stragglers, it was much easier to fix a few, than hundreds.
3. WordPress Broken Link Checker Plugin. What about all the other links that might be broken on your site? This plugin will find any broken link on your site and alert you of it, at intervals set by you. This allowed me to find hundreds of broken links in old comments, not to mention the remaining few broken links I had due to the site move. They can easily be fixed or you can delete the source, if necessary.
4. WordPress Display Widgets Plugin. While I’ve known about this plugin for awhile, I still find it really handy, so I thought it was worth mentioning. This plugin allows you to display or hide any widget on any page. So if you have a widget that you want on the home page, but not on subsequent pages, you can set it to show only on the home page. This is particularly handy for themes where you can’t create multiple page layouts, but you just don’t want every widget on every page.
5. SEO Facebook Comments Plugin for WordPress. So cool, I just figured out how to do this! Install the plugin, create your app in Facebook, then voila! people can comment on your blog using their Facebook profile. Anytime someone comments, the comment will appear on their wall, so all their friends will see. This is just another great way that Facebook can help increase awareness of your site and drive traffic to it. You can select the option to allow WordPress commenting still, so that people who don’t use Facebook can still comment. Check out my comments below and feel free to leave a comment. I love connecting with people on Facebook!
6. Cool CSS Button Generator. Sometimes buttons can be tricky. While you can use an image, it can be much easier to set up custom CSS so that all the buttons on your site are consistent, without having to insert image code for each one. Plus, if you use different text on each of your buttons, this means one button for every form. This tool allows you to set the various colors of your buttons, set the size, and then generates all the CSS code that you need. Assign the button the proper class, if necessary, and it’s done. Cool buttons without creating images. Check out my button at the bottom of this page, below the WordPress comments field.

Questions or comments? Please leave them below and I’ll do my best to answer them for you!