40+ Most Wanted WordPress Tricks and Hacks

Have you ever came across a WordPress blog, saw something you liked, and questions like ‘how they did that‘, ‘is that a plugin or hack?‘, ‘where can I get those cool mods‘ begin to pop? Well, it’s really pretty normal because most of us did the same thing. For this article we’ve spent time with some 14 WordPress bloggers, finding out what kinda hacks and plugins they are really looking for to enhance their blog in any aspect. Here’s our outcome, 40+ most wanted WordPress tips and hacks, including those you don’t even knew the keywords to search for.

While you are at it, here’s few more WordPress related articles we’ve previously written:

• 49 Most downloaded WordPress themes
• WordPress themes for Video Blogging
• 20 Desktop blogging clients
• 16 WordPress premium themes that don’t suck

1. Display categories in horizontal Drop-Down menu

   Instead of using your categories in sidebar, you can put them up on the navigation bar, dropping down the sub categories in second-level drop down.

   

1. Add Gravatar for post author

   How about adding Gravatar to your post titles to highlight the comment author?

   

2. Using custom page as homepage

   Instead of showing recent entries as main page on your blog, customize it!

   

3. Add author bio on every blog post

   For multi-authored blogs, adding the bio info of each author at the bottom of their respective posts is a good way to give props to the author as well as providing information to the readers as to who that person is without having to refer to an about me page.

   

4. Display recent post from specific category

   Control recent post of any categories you want to display.

5. Highlight author’s comments

   This helps differenciate the author’s comments away from the rest. Useful for commentators to spot which are comments made by the author.

   

6. Create thumbnails for each blog post and displays them

   How to create thumbnails for each blog post, use them anywhere you want, make your post more interesting.

   

7. Create and show categories image

   How to add some simple PHP code to your WordPress template and make linked images appear instead of text for your categories in posts.

8. Format images for feed readers

   Get your blog content to display properly, even in feeds.

   

9. Create really cool WordPress date button

   Display your blot post’s date in the form of button.

   

10. Hiding Advertisements For Single Posts

    Quick and easy way to hide advertisements for any particular post by making some minor changes to your theme.

11. Creating a dynamic sticky

    There are some news you just want them to stay on top.

12. Customize Error 404 page

    Create a new Error 404 page of your own.

13. Protect CSS Mods for ANY WordPress Theme

    Implementing a custom stylesheet that simply overrides the styles defined in the theme’s original stylesheet

14. Make your blog Digg proof

    Tweaks and settings to add to your blog to take the Digg effect.

15. Using WordPress as Membership Directory

    Create a moderated membership directory that showcases your member’s information.

    

16. 4 Ways to speed up your wordpress blog

    Some quick tips on how to speed up your self-hosted WordPress site.

17. Create mobile version of your blog

    Create a mobile version of the website within clicks with Mofuse.

    

18. Open links in new windows (by default)

    Title’s pretty self-explainatory, make all links open in new window.

19. Turn WordPress blog into CMS (Content Management System)

    Your WordPress blog don’t have to look like a typical blog display. It can be something more fun.

    

20. WordPress Thumbnail Size Limit Hack

    Don’t like the default thumbnail JPEG quality? Change it.

21. Automatically post Del.icio.us daily link to WordPress

    Get more daily post on blog, from del.icio.us

    

22. Create a peel away effect on blog

    Very effective way to market products and bring more attention to pages you want visitors to focus.

    

23. Seperate Comments from Trackbacks/Pingbacks

    Get a clear view on what are comments, what’s not.

    

24. Blog Alone or Together with Writely

    Writely is one of my favorte Web 2.0 apps. It’s a full-fledged web-based word processor that you can access from anywhere. Think of it as Microsoft Word for the Web.

    

25. Embed Google Ad in first wordpress post

    The leading SEO (Search Engine Optimization) sites will tell you that placing an ad after the first post in your blog’s home page is particularly effective.

26. Creating multiple single posts for different categories

    Fast and simple way to assign a specific stylesheet for only one category of blog posts in a WordPress blog.

27. Using WordPress Custom Fields

    You can do pretty much anything you want with custom fields. Your imagination is your limit.

28. Creating an Archive Index

    Create single page with links to all your archived entries, arranged just so to form the main gateway into your blog’s past.

29. Wicked WordPress Archives in One Easy Step

    Provide specialized archive views that place a premium on scannability.

30. Place a login form in the sidebar

    Put a login on the front page of your WordPress blog.

    

31. Protect WordPress post against hot-linking

    Plugin for WordPress that helps prevent image hotlinking as easy as installing and activating it.

    

32. Moving a Static HTML Site to WordPress

    how you retain the old URLs after moving static HTML to WordPress.

33. Build a Techmeme River of News Clone

    Building something similar to Techmeme with WordPress.

    

34. Custom login page

    This is more significant for multi author blogs, or sites you have set up for clients.

    

35. How to Put Your Best Content Forward

    Don’t let your best content get lost in the archives.

36. Display Twitter messages in WordPress

    Customize the Twitter message display on your WordPress blog.

    

37. Add Stripe Ad to boost response / earnings

    A new non-obtrusive way of displaying a single line of advertising message, a special note or other information right at the top of your blog

    

38. How to Display Facebook Statuses on WordPress Blog

    Put your Facebook statuses directly on your wordpress blog. Works for both self-host WordPress and WordPress.com bloggers.

    

39. Post text and image count

    Counts and display number of words and images (leaving the default WordPress smilies out)

40. Place content only in RSS Feed

    Ever wonder how some bloggers control some content to be shown only in RSS feed but not the blog. Here’s the plugin to do that – RSS Footer.