Wordpress Posts | Book Exhibitionism

May 6, 2012
by Patricia
11 Comments

Question: SEO Settings (Answered!)

Note: The very awesome Sarah explained it all in the comments!

Holy mother of WordPress.

I claim to be relatively educated when it comes to WordPress (which means I’m able to google and use cheat sheets, can code themes and stuff like that.) but there is one thing I have not yet managed to understand, called SEO.

I do know how it works. All I do not know is what to tell this freaking widget.

So, my question is: What do I put in those fields? What are incoming autolink anchors? If I write a review for a paranormal romance novel called The Very Thirsty Vampire by Claudette Darke, what do I put in the Title Tag-line and in the Meta Description? what is this More Link Text about? Is it what’ll be displayed when you search for posts via Google? And wait, Rich Snippet Type?

HEEEEELP ME?!

Holy. Mother. Of. WordPress.

April 23, 2012
by Patricia
0 comments

Ressources (Updated)

I noticed that I needed a post about my ressources. And with ressources I mean stuff I use, like to look at etc. As a bookblogger I noticed how few of us share where we get stuff from. I’d like to change that, so I’ll regularely add links.. Right now I’m a little lazy, though, so I hope you excuse the little number of actual links:

Tutorials, Reference (eg. WordPress)

envato.com

Graphics

For reviews

Tv Tropes

Plots

Conflict

Seven Basic Conflicts

Master Plots

Characters

wikipedia (Yep)

Ratings:

Imho this is important. I once read a book that triggered me and am very grateful for every book with a “sexual content” or age rating. Right now I’m tagging books with “Young Adult/Adult/Middle Grade” etc. and I also now started to put the Fiction Ratings in my reviews. (http://www.fictionratings.com/) There are no real rating-rules for books. If you want to know more, though below are the fiction ratings and if you follow the link you’ll find the wiki page for the Motion Picture Ratings. There also are ratings used for online, pc, whatever-games like these here.

April 18, 2012
by Patricia
0 comments

Tutorial: How To Set Up a Review Archive with Custom Loops

Or: How to get a Review Archive that updates itself automatically.

This is one of the things that comes easiest to me. Easily customized, WordPress offers us tons of ways to make our blogs handier, more organized, fluffier, or whatever it is we want to achieve, as long as we are ready to learn something and spend some time on it.

While I’m by far no pro, I have managed to understand how custom loops, taxonomies and post types work and I’d likt to share this with other bloggers, especially because I have been asked how to do this or if there was a plugin doing the work, yesterday.

I don’t know about a plugin, but this here is how it’s done without one. And it means: How you set up a page and give it a template, then create custom loops that will enable WordPress to automatically add reviews to the page without you needing to edit it everything you wrote one.

Little sidenote: If you don’t want to do the php and css-ish stuff yourself, I’ll set everything up for you for free! :)

Okay, now up to the actual work!

Preparation

How do you want to organize your reviews? By author? Title? Genre? Let’s say we want to organize all of our books by author. Now there are two immidiate ways to do that. Either set up a custom taxonomy called “book-tag” with the plugin “Types” or use the actual “tag” function you already have, using WordPress.

Now you’ll have to add tags to all of your reviews, which is a bitch. If paid, I’d probably do it for you, but God, it seriously is some work! Worth it, though. Add “Authors A”, “Authors B”, “Authors C”, “Authors D” etc.

To explain why this is needed: We’ll set up a page later and we’ll add dozens of customized extra loops. Each loop will query the database and display all the posts tagged with, well, the tags you’ve added before.

It’ll look like this:

Loop for Authors A
Loop for Authors B
Loop for Authors C
..

If you are done with that, download the theme you are using right now. (I am using a customized version of Yoko, a theme that has been coded by Elmastudio.)

Create a WordPress page (http://yourdomain/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=page) and call it ”By Author” and now let the fun begin!

Actual work

Open the folder of the theme you are using, copy the page.php (this is also called a template). Now open the page – Copy.php but first rename it. The name is supposed to be page-by-author.php

This is how my page.php looks like:

<br /><br />&lt;?php<br />/**<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> * @package WordPress<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> * @subpackage Yoko<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> */<br />get_header(); ?&gt;<br />&lt;div id="wrap"&gt;<br />&lt;div id="main"&gt;<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> &lt;div id="content"&gt;<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> &lt;?php the_post(); ?&gt;<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> &lt;?php get_template_part( 'content', 'page' ); ?&gt;<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> &lt;?php comments_template( '', true ); ?&gt;<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- end content --&gt;<br />&lt;?php get_sidebar(); ?&gt;<br />&lt;?php get_footer(); ?&gt;<br /><br />

First delete everything from before <?php the_post(); ?> to before <?php comments_template(”, true); ?>. In my case I’d delete the following two lines, but in your case that might be much more.

&lt;?php the_post(); ?&gt;<br />&lt;?php get_template_part( 'content', 'page' ); ?&gt;

Now where those lines were, the custom loops go!

Here is a custom loop that will display 500 posts that have been tagged with the book tag “authors-a”. You can see what other options as to displaying the posts you have below in the Codex about wp_queries.

<br /><br />&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-a', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// HERE GOES THE WAY HOW THE POSTS ARE DISPLAYED<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt;<br /><br />

To get one for every letter in the alphabet, you’d have to copypaste this 25 times, changing the “book-tag” thingie to “authors-b”, “authors-c” and so on!

Here is how my final page-by-author.php looks like:

<br />&lt;?php<br /><br />/**<br />* Template Name: Organized by Author<br />*<br />* @package WordPress<br />* @subpackage Yoko<br />*/<br />get_header(); ?&gt;<br />&lt;div id="wrap"&gt;<br />&lt;div id="main"&gt;<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> &lt;div id="content"&gt;<br /><br />// The custom loops start here!<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-a', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-b', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-c', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-d', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-e', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-f', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-g', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-h', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-i', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-j', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-k', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-l', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-m', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-n', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-o', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-p', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-q', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-r', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-s', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-t', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-u', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-v', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-w', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-x', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-y', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;&lt;?php $args = array( 'post_type' =&gt; 'post', 'posts_per_page' =&gt; 500, 'book-tag' =&gt; 'authors-z', 'order' =&gt; 'ASC', orderby' =&gt; 'title');<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> $loop = new WP_Query( $args );<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> while ( $loop-&gt;have_posts() ) : $loop-&gt;the_post(); ?&gt;<br />// This is how the posts are displayed:<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="&lt;?php the_permalink(); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php the_title(); ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;?php endwhile; ?&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<br />// The custom loops end here!<br /><br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> &lt;?php comments_template( '', true ); ?&gt;<br /><%%KEEPWHITESPACE%%> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- end content --&gt;<br />&lt;?php get_sidebar(); ?&gt;<br />&lt;?php get_footer(); ?&gt;<br />

Wait.. how does this work? And what does this all mean?

Okay, each custom loop displays a list of post-titles. You know, HTML, CSS and PHP are languages and us bookbloggers.. we like language, right? So, let me translate this:

<ul> = Opens the list

<?php $args = array( ‘post_type’ => ‘post’, ‘posts_per_page’ => 500, ‘book-tag’ => ‘authors-z’, ‘order’ => ‘ASC’, orderby’ => ‘title’);
$loop = new WP_Query( $args );
while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post(); ?>

= Opens Loop, explains what we are looking for and how much of that we want to display (plus how).

// This is how the posts are displayed:
<li><a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>

= This is how ONE post is displayed, actually. It is a List-item (li) and when you click on it the link refers you to the actual post.

<?php endwhile; ?> </ul>

= Closes the loop and closes the list for this particular loop, until, a line later a new list is opened.

The end

Now obviously there is lots I haven’t talked about here and I’m pretty sure I could have made this “tutorial” a little easier. I will, when the time comes, edit it so it’s easier to understand everything, but for now, I’m sure it’ll do.

Anyway, there are other ways to use custom loops and you can read about them in one of the articles I’ve linked to below. You can style everything in your style.css, you can use custom textfields to display covers instead of titles, show the blurb on hover, show the date you read the books etc pp.

I hope it helped you a little. If it didn’t: Sorry. If you have any questions, leave them below in the comments section. If you need my help, just email me (patricia ät bookexhibitionism dot de) and we’ll set something up!

Links

March 15, 2012
by Patricia
8 Comments

Custom Post Types

It happens rarely that I am physically ill, and not tired. It happens so seldomly, in fact, that I just spent a few hours in front of the PC and changed a few things here on BE out of sheer boredom ~~and the fact that I am apparently unable to just read a good book~~. I’d love it if you told me what you thought about it! (For those who are interested in the whole thing, I’ll add some links, at least one link to a plugin specifically, below.)

I added yet another custom post type, this time called “books”, customized the templates a little, added custom taxonomies and text-fields, and now have a cover-wall. It’s like a timeline or reading-diary. Sort of what we have on Goodreads, but the way I want it to be displayed. *ego.gif*

I’m not done with it yet, but I like it so far.

Here is the archive, which basically works as a timeline. And here is an example for how the post looks in the single.php. As you can see, it’s all very green, and I deleted a sidebar, the sub-navi and several other things. You can find a link to this part of BE in the mainnav under “My Library” → “Timeline” :)

Meike told me that some things aren’t displayed properly in IE so if you find something, too, or just think that it’s all a dumb idea and ugly, or that it isn’t, please let me know! : )

Links

WordPress Codex: Custom Post Types & Taxonomies
Justin Tadlock: CPT in Home Blog Page & Custom Colums for CPT
Net.Tutsplus: Introducing Custom Taxonomies
Types: A plugin that does most of the job

March 14, 2012
by Patricia
0 comments

LinkyTools and your Sidebar

This is actually a test to see if custom post types show up in my blog’s archive, index page and feed, but I thought while I’m at it I should share a little piece of wisdom:

You should add LinkyFollowers to your sidebar.
You should customize the code, though, so it won’t mess up your sidebar.

Today when I left a few WOW comments I noticed that several blogs hadn’t customized their widget and that as a result their sidebars were dominated by many Linky faces. It’s easily fixed once you’ve looked at the super short code:

 <script
src="http://www.linkyfollowers.com/include_follower1.aspx?widgetid=ID&show=14"
type="text/javascript"></script>

All you have to edit is this part:

widgetid=ID&show=14"

You can change the 14 to any number you want to. If you copypaste this one, don’t forget to change *ID* to your ID, though. ; )

January 16, 2012
by Patricia
23 Comments

Plugins

If you follow me, you might remember this post. Here comes the page which will include all the plugins I might recommend in future posts, tweets, etc.

Standard Plugins

Jetpack

Jetpack is a WordPress plugin that supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.

It includes things like WordPress Stats, the URL shortener, E-Mail subscription (and comment subscription), and many more features!

Fix RSS Feed

Seriously. Who knows what you might do with your theme, but this plugin will always fix your RSS feed. You don’t need to worry about anything, because the typical feed error “XML or text declaration not at start of entity” or anything similiar to that will go away.

WordPress Database Backup

I don’t need to worry about anything with all my plugins, in case you haven’t noticed yet. Once you install this and tell the plugin to send you backups every week/two weeks/month, it will do just that and send you an email with your wordpress plugin. Yay!

Broken Link Checker

BEST. THING. EVER. (Or at least in the top ten!) This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found.

For your Dashboard

Featured Image Column

This plugin has no options. It simply adds a column before the title (far left) the show’s the posts featured image if it’s supported and/or exists.

Add a defualt image simply by filtering you own image in. Usefeatured_image_column_default_image or filter your own post_type by using featured_image_column_post_types.

Color Admin Posts

Change the background colors of the post/page within the admin based on the current status : Draft, Pending, Published, Future, Private.

Admin Customization

Admin Customization allows you to change the appearance of your WordPress backend.

The plugin allows you to: change the backend favicon. change the backend logo. hide the admin logo text and / or logo image. change the logo text font size. change the login page logo with a logo of any width. change the admin footer text. disable dashboard widgets. hide update notices and plugin update count. turn on redirection to homepage on administration panels logout.

Calendars, Events, Manage your content Plugins:

Ajax Event Calendar

An easy-to-use visual community calendar that allows authorized users to add, edit, move, copy, resize, delete and filter events into customizable categories – supports daily, weekly, monthly and yearly repeating events. Calendars can be added to your site by typing “[.calendar]” shortcode in the body of a page, a post or a text widget. Event lists are similarly added via the “[.eventlist]” shortcode. Both shortcodes are highly customizable with numerous display options.

As a bookblogger you know how hard it is to keep up your schedule– book releases, reading diaries, posts, interviews, whatever.

Editorial Calendar

Did you remember to write a post for next Tuesday? What about the Tuesday after that? WordPress doesn’t make it easy to see when your posts are scheduled. The editorial calendar gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog.

You are a bookblogger! Plugins

Progressbar: Readers Edition

This one is the work of paperthin.de, a very cool fellow (German) blogger! You can add a progressbar to your sidebar (supports ebooks, audiobooks and physical books) like this:

Advanced Spoiler

New version of Ajax Spoiler plugin renamed to ‘Advanced Spoiler’.

Show or hide contents (text, image etc.) with animated effects wrapped by spoiler markup tag([.spoiler] Hidden Text [./spoiler]).

Possibly helpful plugins

WordPress Hide Dashboard

On WordPress it’s possible for you to add other users. There are different roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Subscriber, .. And this plugin allows you to make the things they are not allowed to see go away. Just for them. It hides these dashboard parts. Very good, isn’t it? Especially if you regularely have guest-authors.

W3 Total Cache

It makes your site load faster, if you need it to. I haven’t installed it, because, well.. I often edit posts, because I’m almost famous for my typos. But it’s handy!

W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.

Content

WordPress Typography

Improve your web typography with: Hyphenation — over 40 languages supported; Space control, including widow protection, gluing values to units, forced internal wrapping of long URLs & email addresses; Intelligent character replacement, including smart handling of: quote marks, dashes, ellipses, trademarks, copyright & service marks, math symbols, fractions, ordinal suffixes; CSS hooks for styling: ampersands, uppercase words, numbers, initial quotes & guillemets.

Revision Control

Revision Control is a plugin for WordPress which gives the user more control over the Revision functionality.

The plugin allows the user to set a site-global setting (Settings -> Revisions) for pages/posts to enable/disable/limit the number of revisions which are saved for the page/post. The user may change this setting on a per-page/post basis from the Revisions Meta box.

The plugin also allows the deletion of specific revisions via the Revisions post metabox.

WordPress Related Posts Plugin

WordPress Related Posts Plugin will generate a related posts via WordPress tags, and add the related posts to feed.

WP Page Navi

Want to replace the old ← Older posts | Newer posts → links with some page links?

This plugin provides the wp_pagenavi() template tag which generates fancy pagination links. See the installation instructions for using it in your theme.

Add Post Footer

Add Post Footer automatically add any custom paragraph, html code, ad code, technorati tags and/or related links list to the end of every posts.

Easy Columns

Easy Columns provides the shortcodes to create a grid system or magazine style columns for laying out your pages just the way you need them. Quickly add columns to your pages from the editor with an easy to use “pick n’ click” interface! For usage and more information, visit affiliatetechhelp.com.

Comments Plugins:

Comment Reply Notification

Instead of getting spammed, this one will only send notifications if the comment itself has gotten replied to, not ifANY comment has been left. I love it, it’s very good if you are a meme lover, and what the fuck, it’s just brilliant!

Admin Commters Comments Count

Next to all appearances of each commenter’s name in the admin, this plugin shows a count of their total number of comments, linked to a listing of those comments.

By default in WordPress, it is not possible to tell via a single glance whether a particular commenter has commented before, and if so, how many times.

CommentLuv

This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.

Social Login Plugin

The Social Login Plugin is a professional though free WordPress plugin that allows your visitors to comment, login and register with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Paypal, LiveJournal, Hyves, Вконтакте, Google or Yahoo.

Disqus for WordPress

Disqus, pronounced “discuss”, is a service and tool for web comments and discussions. Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.

The Disqus for WordPress plugin seamlessly integrates using the Disqus API and by syncing with WordPress comments.

Here is another post about integrating it. And here is the Disqus Comments Importer.

Comment Rating Field Plugin

Comment Rating Field Plugin is a plugin which adds a 5 star rating field to the end of a comment form in WordPress, allowing the site visitor to optionally submit a rating along with their comment. Ratings are displayed as stars below the comment text.

Captchas:

Are you using your own Amazon links? Then using Akismet for free is kind of illegal. So, instead here are some plugins you might want to use:

SI Captcha for WordPress

Adds CAPTCHA anti-spam methods to WordPress forms for comments, registration, lost password, login, or all. In order to post comments or register, users will have to type in the code shown on the image. This prevents spam from automated bots. Adds security. Works great with Akismet. Also is fully WP, WPMU, and BuddyPress compatible.

GAB Captcha 2

Gab Captcha 2 is a simple, easy-to-solve and efficient captcha plugin for fighting spam in WordPress comments.

It adds an easy Turing test before each comment form. The Turing test consists of emphasized characters (red by default) that you must type in a text field. The plugin can be configured in your administration area.

Captcha

Captcha plugin allows you to protect your website from spam using math logic which can be used for login, registration, reseting password, comments forms. Added Russian, German and Dutch languages.

Animal Captcha

Animal Captcha is a lightweight plugin for WordPress that adds a captcha control on comments and register with a nice picture of an animal than any man knows, and yet a robot is unable to identify. It’s nice, comfortable and very safe. Languages: English, Spanish, German, French and Portuguese. Try a test.

Sweet Captcha

This is the one I use. The problem is that you’ll need to get your own SweetCaptcha account, so you’ll spend some time with that. And it appears some people have had issues with it lately. ; (

Instead of asking the user to input difficult and boring text, Sweet Captcha offers a cute and interactive friendly user experience. The Sweet Captcha consists of a question the user needs to answer by dragging the correct answer.

Verification Code for Comments

Add an verification code when user posting a comment to keep robots away. You can use an image verification code or a math equation instead.

Robots may post lots of spam comments into your database. You can add a verification code image or a math equation to avoid this.

Custom Post Types, Taxonomies and Editing these Plugins

Custom Post Types UI

If I were you, I’d ask me to do a customized plugin for you, because the Custom Post Types UI plugin certainly is cool, but if you do something wrong, you might freak out. Anyway, you can add custom post types and more importantly taxonomies to your website. (Tags and Categories are taxonomies)

So instead of adding all the authors you’ve mentioned in your post in the tag-area, you might add a taxonomy called “authors”. (If you want it, message me and I’ll do a plugin for you. It’s very VERY easy!)

Categories to Tags Converter

Very important if you move from Blogger to WordPress! Convert existing categories to tags or tags to categories, selectively.

Term Management Tool

f you need to reorganize your tags and categories, this plugin will make it easier for you. It adds two new options to the Bulk Actions dropdown on term management pages:

Merge – combine two or more terms into one
Set parent – set the parent for one or more terms (for hierarchical taxonomies)
Change taxonomy – convert terms from one taxonomy to another

It works with tags, categories and custom taxonomies.

Simple Custom Post Type Archives

Adds friendly permalink support, template files, and a conditional for public, non-hierarchical custom post types.

Requested:

If you are searching for a plugin, ask me and I’ll search for some. Here are the ones I’ve found so far:

Survey and Poll Tools

1. WordPress Survey and Quiz Tool

Allows users to create quizzes, surveys or polls hosted on their WordPress install. Features: Unlimited Quizzes. Unlimited Surveys. Unlimited Polls. Unlimited number of sections for quizzes, surveys and polls. Auto marking for quizzes with all multiple choice questions. Ability to limit quizzes and surveys to one submission per IP address. Ability to send customised notification emails. Ability to send notification emails to a single email address, multiple email addresses or a group of WordPress users. Ability to have notification emails only be sent if the user got a certain score. Ability to have surveys and quizzes be taken by registered WordPress members only. Ability to have quizzes and surveys with or without contact forms. Ability to have custom contact forms. Ability to export and import quizzes,surveys and questions. Ability to have PDF certifications using DocRaptor

2. WordPress Simple Survey

WordPress Simple Survey is a plugin that allows for the creation of a survey, poll, quiz, or questionnaire and the tracking of user submissions. Scores, Names, and Results can be recorded, emailed, and displayed in the WordPress backend. The plugin is jQuery based which allows users to seamlessly and in a graphically appealing manner, take the quiz without reloading the page. Each answer is given a weight (or score/points). Once a quiz is submitted, the user is taken to a predefined URL based on their score range; this page can be anyURL including pages setup in WordPress that can contain information relevant to the particular scoring range, including the user’s score and answer set. The plugin can also keep a record of all submissions and email results to a predefined email address.

3. Surveypress / Lime Survey

Using this plugin, administrator can integrate WordPress with LimeSurvey,an open source powerful feature packed survey tool, which gives the capability of importing users from WordPress to LimeSurvey and registered users of WordPress site can see the public active surveys in there dashboard and take them as well! Furthermore, grant some users the ability to create survey or manage templates(if you wish!) on the basis of Roles or on per user basis! This plugin will be very useful for those who need a nice website/blog with the power of survey management.
Features: Import users from WordPress to LimeSurvey. Map the roles of users in WordPress with user capabilities/responsibilities in LimeSurvey. Allow other users to create survey, manage labels/templates, create user and so on in LimeSurvey via this plugin. Make your surveys public (in LimeSurvey!) so that users can see and take them directly through there dashboard in WordPress. Customize the behaviour of this plugin!

4. Polldaddy

The Polldaddy Polls and Ratings plugin allows you to create and manage polls and ratings from within your WordPress dashboard. You can create polls, choose from 20 different styles for your polls, and view all results for your polls as they come in. All Polldaddy polls are fully customizable, you can set a close date for your poll, create multiple choice polls, choose whether to display the results or keep them private. You can also create your own custom style for your poll. You can even embed the polls you create on other websites. You can collect unlimited votes and create unlimited polls. The new ratings menu allows you to embed ratings into your posts, pages or comments. The rating editor allows you to fully customize you rating. You can also avail of the the ‘Top Rated’ widget that will allow you to place the widget in your sidebar. This widget will show you the top rated posts, pages and comments today, this week and this month.

WordPress Newsletter Tools

1. Post Notification

Post Notification. With each new post an email is sent to every registered User in the Database. The email can be text or HTML.

Where you have to use the 1.1.x one, because every other version apparently is not compatible with the new WordPress versions.

2. Subscribe2

Subscribe2 provides a comprehensive subscription management and email notification system for WordPress blogs that sends email notifications to a list of subscribers when you publish new content to your blog.

Email Notifications can be sent on a per-post basis or periodically in a Digest email. Additionally, certain categories can be excluded from inclusion in the notification and posts can be excluded on an individual basis by setting a custom field.

→ 15 Plugins to Manage Subscribers

January 10, 2012
by Patricia
27 Comments

Plugins Bookbloggers Might Need, Oh My!

First of all: Please add the plugins YOU use. I’m looking for anything helpful.

Complete (and regularely updated) post can be found here.

This post is not done yet, I’ve simply published it earlier to make it possible for some people who already made the move, to get the plugins I like!

* * *

So, plugins. Y’all know how awesome WordPress is. It’s made of awesome, people who use it, are clever, blahblah. You get the point. One of the things I’ve mentioned in my Why WordPress Rocks post was that you have the freedom to add plugins, to do whatever you want, to customize the whole thing until it is a database, or a shop, or well, just a bookblog.

Here are some of the ones I think some people might want to use. I don’t use all of them, by the way, because there simply are things I don’t need. But, who knows, maybe you do. If you’re not a WordPress member yet, go check my post out and read about how I will do all your work and how there is actually someone in the comments-area who offers to host your webblog for freaking free. So, yes, you can actually be awesome and don’t even have to pay for it. ~~If only someone had told the Kardashians that.~~

1. Standard Plugins

Jetpack

Jetpack is a WordPress plugin that supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.

It includes things like WordPress Stats, the URL shortener, E-Mail subscription (and comment subscription), and many more features!

jetpack screenshot 1

Fix RSS Feed

WordPress Database Backup

This picture is old as fuck, but I use this and it’s still working. I don’t need to worry about anything with all my plugins, in case you haven’t noticed yet. Once you install this and tell the plugin to send you backups every week/two weeks/month, it will do just that and send you an email with your wordpress plugin. Yay!

Backup screenshot

Broken Link Checker

BEST. THING. EVER. (Or at least in the top ten!) This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found.

Ajax Event Calendar

As a bookblogger you know how hard it is to keep up your schedule– book releases, reading diaries, posts, interviews, whatever. It all goes here:

You are a bookblogger! Plugins

Progressbar: Readers Edition

This one is the work of paperthin.de, a very cool fellow (German) blogger! You can add a progressbar to your sidebar (supports ebooks, audiobooks and physical books) like this:

progressbar-edition-for-readers screenshot 2

Shortcode Ultimate

SPOILERS! Just add the [.spoiler] Shortcode and bam, you have a spoiler. The rest is helpful, too, but the spoiler thing is the best!

With this plugin you can easily create buttons, boxes, different sliders and much, much more. Turn your free theme to premiun in just a few clicks. Using Shortcodes Ultimate you can quickly and easily retrieve many premium themes features and display it on your site. See screenshots for more information.

shortcodes-ultimate screenshot 2

Comment Reply Notification

Instead of getting spammed, this one will only send notifications if the comment itself has gotten replied to, not if ANY comment has been left. I love it, it’s very good if you are a meme lover, and what the fuck, it’s just brilliant!

Comment Reply Notification Setting

Custom Post Types UI

custom-post-type-ui screenshot 3

Possibly helpful plugins

WordPress Hide Dashboard

WordPress Typography

Categories to Tags Converter

Very important if you move from Blogger to WordPress! Convert existing categories to tags or tags to categories, selectively.

Term Management Tool

f you need to reorganize your tags and categories, this plugin will make it easier for you. It adds two new options to the Bulk Actions dropdown on term management pages:

Merge – combine two or more terms into one
Set parent – set the parent for one or more terms (for hierarchical taxonomies)
Change taxonomy – convert terms from one taxonomy to another

It works with tags, categories and custom taxonomies.

term-management-tools screenshot 1

Bottom Line

There are dozens of plugins. Sometimes it’s hard to find what you are looking for, because you don’t even know yet that you are looking for it. ~~The great thing is that sometimes you don’t even need the plugins, you can make them yourself.~~

January 3, 2012
by Patricia
114 Comments

On WordPress, Why It Rocks

Edit: I offer to install your selfhosted WordPress, and explain how it’s done in this post. I also point out why you should move. Whether it be jimdo, tumblr, blogspot, livejournal. WordPress is always the best solution. I also hate GFC.

Those of you who got the questionable honor of reading my rants, comments, reviews, tweets.. know that I love WordPress, and start to dislike Blogspot/Blogger. Not those who use it, just the platform. I especially dislike GFC and would like to have everyone over here, where great reviews are written and stunning books are read.

Yes, on WordPress.

And is it any wonder? Come on, let’s face it, the coolest blogs are over here. (No, I’m not including mine this time.)

You know, I would even help you. You buy your webspace (mine costs ~30 bucks a year, there are cheaper and more expensive ones) and I’ll do the rest for you. Huh, what do you think?

I mean, yes, you have to find your favorite theme, but I’ll install it, I’ll install all important plugins, explain how WordPress works, I will freaking do that. All you have to do is export your blogger (jimdo, livejournal, tumblr) posts, mail me and there you go.

Please?

Do you really need reasons? Really? How is that:

Custom everything: Post types, post formats, pages, textfields, commentforms, searchforms, categories and tags (click to see a picture), …
Plugins: We have everything here. You can even make your blog a freaking SHOP, damn it. Want to check the WordPress Plugin Directory out? Do it here.
Comments: You know what I mean, right? Is it even possible to properly answer to comments on Blogspot? Is there a hierarchy function? But here, you get the perfect comment form, template and notifications. (There is a plugin that enables you to only be notified if your comment has been replied to– No 300 emails anymore!)
WYSIWYG Editor: For those who don’t use HTML, we have the perfect WYSIWYG Editor and it is customizable. Tables? Headers? Lists and nested lists/blockquotes? The “more” thing? We. Have. It. All.
WordPress Stats: You don’t need any other counters, you have WordPress stats and it works properly. You know what I’m talking about, don’t try to pretend you don’t. ; )
Themes: There is no professional collection of blog themes as there is for WordPress. You go from free themes to those you might have to pay for, but every theme designer who is worth the salt in their blood, knows how to do a WordPress theme. We have Frameworks, blogthemes that are done and can still be customized – i.e. via Drag and Drop!

Add to that the community, the many things you will LEARN, the professional look and here you go. WordPress. And come on, it is 2012. Isn’t it time for you to become one of us?

Why Blogspot and Blogger suck won’t do:

Seriously? Seriously?

Next to deactivating your accounts and blogs, next to making it impossible for you to follow OTHER blogs not hosted by blogspot? Next to all the times GFC does not work anyway, and next to the readers you lose because your blogs needs an hour to load because you took the liberty of including snowflakes, you really need other reasons? Next to not giving you the chance to say NO to updates? Really?

Blogspot is cute, yeah. But you ain’t cute, you are a kick-ass bookblogger, right? Blogspot is your evil stepmother, taking away your freedom and all of that.

So, get the heck up, pay the 20–30 bucks a year and get yourself a WordPress.org blog!

Who did it, who’s been here all along, and who plans to do it: The Grammarian Reviews, The Bewitched Bookworms, The Story Siren, Dear Author.. The first three explain why, too.

Some point out how easy it is to change things here on Goodreads, others point out that it’s horrible to know that Blogspot could delete your blog at any time without your consense. And all agree on this: WordPress rocks.

Oh and have you noticed how the most amazing author blogs are hosted by WordPress? Ilona Andrews, anyone? Jeanine Frost? Both have themes from here, if I recall correctly, by the way:

header

So, in conclusion we have this:

WordPress rocks
Blogspot does not
You should move your blog
I will do it for you, if you don’t have the time or patience to do it. For free. (Or for a book ROFL)

But wait, maybe you’re all indipendent and want to do it yourself. It’s easy, too:

Download WordPress (here)

Maybe test it on a local server for free, to see if you work out.
Work out

Buy a wespace and domain (as I’ve said, I paid roughly 30 bucks)
Create your own database, write down your name and password
Download Filezilla (here)
Open it, fill in your other name and passwort to access your webserver

Open the wp-config-sample.php and configure it (fill in your database name and password)

Upload WordPress

Open your web-address, do the 5 minutes installation

Click on Tools – Import/Export and Import your Blogger.xml
Install some plugins and your theme

Maybe do a research to find the best ones!

Inform your followers, change your feeds, update your twitter/goodreads/facebook/networked blogs
Your blog is now made of awesome!

Some of these things might take more time, but not that much. I’ve heard there are actually people who want you to pay 100 bucks for that. (Including WordPress.com, but I can see why there) but in my opinion, it is worth maybe 10–20 bucks, because look at the above, please. If it’s your job and you offer service and know that there are dozens of people.. Yeah. But I still think.. 10–20 bucks. Or a Mass Market Paperback ROFL. ; ) Or for free, because it ain’t my job.

So from now on, if you want to move or know someone who wants to, I’ll freaking do the job for you, just come over here and stop using GFC!!! >_<

If you are a former blogspot blogger and have moved to WordPress, or if you are a normal WordPress blogger, please share what you think about WordPress. (You can just copypaste the: “WORDPRESS ROCKS” part, of course) Oh and no, you can very well tell me why you like Blogspot, but I can’t imagine anyone moving from WordPress to Blogspot and thinking that it’s been the best choice of their life.. Care to prove me wrong? (And while you’re at it, you can also teach us how to breath under water. *grin*)

Edit: I did not mean to offend anyone. This is my sort of humor and if it did insult you, I am sincerely sorry and apologize. I won’t re-write this post, because I’m not a fan of it and I don’t want to anyway. Your blog platform does not change the person you are or your blog’s content and I thought that it was obvious and that it was obvious I thought so.

Tuto­ri­als, Ref­er­ence (eg. WordPress)

Graph­ics

For reviews

Okay, now up to the actual work!

Prepa­ra­tion

Actual work

Wait.. how does this work? And what does this all mean?

The end

Links

Stan­dard Plugins

For your Dashboard

You are a book­blog­ger! Plugins

Pos­si­bly help­ful plugins

Con­tent

Com­ments Plugins:

Cus­tom Post Types, Tax­onomies and Edit­ing these Plugins

Requested:

Sur­vey and Poll Tools

Word­Press Newslet­ter Tools

1. Stan­dard Plugins

You are a book­blog­ger! Plugins

Pos­si­bly help­ful plugins

Bot­tom Line

Do you really need rea­sons? Really? How is that:

Why Blogspot and Blog­ger suck won’t do:

But wait, maybe you’re all indipen­dent and want to do it your­self. It’s easy, too:

So from now on, if you want to move or know some­one who wants to, I’ll freak­ing do the job for you, just come over here and stop using GFC!!! >_<

Tutorials, Reference (eg. WordPress)

Graphics

Preparation

Standard Plugins

You are a bookblogger! Plugins

Possibly helpful plugins

Content

Comments Plugins:

Custom Post Types, Taxonomies and Editing these Plugins

Survey and Poll Tools

WordPress Newsletter Tools

1. Standard Plugins

You are a bookblogger! Plugins

Possibly helpful plugins

Bottom Line

Do you really need reasons? Really? How is that:

Why Blogspot and Blogger suck won’t do:

But wait, maybe you’re all indipendent and want to do it yourself. It’s easy, too:

So from now on, if you want to move or know someone who wants to, I’ll freaking do the job for you, just come over here and stop using GFC!!! >_<