But for many theme and plugin developers, and even users who may want to do a little DIY theme hacking, there is very little documentation for getting the feature set up to do the things you want it to.  That’s where this guide comes in.

Turing a Post into a Sticky Post

In the 2.7 Post edit panel, over in the publish module, you’ll notice a little checkbox.  When you check this box and publish the post (or save an already published post), that post will then be pulled to the top of your homepage.

Also, it is worth noting that a post can be made “sticky” using the “Quick Edit” panel as well. In WordPress 2.7, simple click the Posts -> Edit link, then click the “Quick Edit” link.

This will bring up a panel that lets you edit common features of a post like its categories, tags, title, slug, date, author, etc.  But it also allows you to change whether or not a post is a sticky post.

This is especially handy when you need to “unsticky” a post in order to let another post take it’s place at the top of the homepage.  Imagine how tedious it would be to have to pull up the full Edit Post panel just to “unsticky” a post.  It would get very annoying, so I’m glad to see the developers opted to include this option in the Quick Edit panel as well.

Styling a Sticky Post

If you’re like me, you probably want to have a way to let your readers know that, although the post is at the top of your homepage, it may not necessarily be the latest post you’ve published. Luckily, WordPress 2.7 introduces the new post_class template tag that will give a class of “sticky” to any post that has been made into a sticky post.  Here’s how you would use it.

(By the way, it would be worth your while to take a look at the Codex page for post_class when it becomes available. The function can really give you some cool flexibility in how different posts are styled. I suppose that’s another post for another day.)

If you’re familiar with the loop, you’ll probably recognize the following code (or some variation of it):

<?php if(have_posts()) : while(have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<?php the_content(); ?>
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>

In order to use the new post_class template tag, just be sure to wrap the content of each post that the loop outputs in a new div.  The code would looks something like this:

<?php if(have_posts()) : while(have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div <?php post_class(); ?>>
<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<?php the_content(); ?>
</div>
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>

Depending on what type of post it is, it will output different kinds of stuff.  For instance, if you view the source code for my homepage, you’ll see my posts wrapped in these divs already.  For the post Community, Self-Respect, and Free WordPress Themes, the div class generator created this:

<div class="post hentry category-blog category-general category-planet-wordpress category-wordpress-news tag-elevate-themes tag-free-wordpress-theme tag-free-wordpress-themes tag-wordpress">

Now, if that post had been marked “sticky”, then you would have seen the word “sticky” show up in that list too.  You can use any of those classes to style a post differently, but in this case, we’re just looking to differentiate the sticky posts. By adding a new class declaration in our CSS file, we can make a sticky post look any way we want:

.sticky {
    background: white;
    border: 2px solid black;
}

The possibilities are really endless — it’s all up to you!

Sticky Styling in Other Templates

As far as I know, the sticky feature does not actually affect any other templates besides the homepage post listing.  The only possible exception would be the search results (see the Trac ticket for more information).

However, there is one caveat as pointed out by Michael at WPEngineer.com — sticky posts don’t simply get “pulled to the front of the line”.  In fact, if you’re browsing through someone’s archives, and you are using the post_class() template tag, your sticky posts will get that sticky styling, just as though they were at the top of the homepage.

To remedy this, you’ll want to figure out a way to only apply that special sticky style to sticky posts that are on the homepage.  That means we’ll want to exclude things like category and date archives, page 2 of the blog homepage (example), and any other templates that you might use (tags, single posts, etc.).

In order to accomplish this, you’ll need to figure out a way to add a class or ID to the body tag of your theme.  Darren Hoyt has a good post on how to do that is pretty good, but I’ll try to write up a post later that will teach you how to mimic the post_class function for your body tag.

So, once your body has a class or ID, just modify your CSS a little to reflect your desire for the sticky style to only be applied to the homepage:

#home .sticky {
    background: white;
    border: 2px solid black;
}

Easy enough?

is_sticky() Conditional Tag

Along with the ability to use the post_class to identifiy sticky posts, you can also use the is_sticky() conditional tag to check to see if a post is sticky or not.  Here’s a practical example (to be used within the loop):

<?php
if (is_sticky()) echo 'This is a sticky post!';
?>

The is_sticky() conditional tag returns a Boolean value of TRUE or FALSE depending on whether or not the post is a sticky post.  Use your imagination to determine the different applications this tag can help you achieve.

A Custom Loop to Return All Sticky Posts

If you’re a hardcore theme developer and want to use a custom loop to return only posts that have been marked as sticky, you can use this very handy code provided by Otto at the Support forums:

query_posts(array('post__in'=>get_option('sticky_posts')));

This code goes before the loop. It qualifies the loop by telling it to only return posts that have been marked “sticky”.  You can use all the other parameters of the query_posts loop qualifier as well, but that “post__in” part is the part that actually tells the loop to only return the sticky posts.

A Custom Loop to Ignore Sticky Posts

Generally speaking, sticky posts will show up at the top of ever single loop you use on your homepage.  So for complex themes that use multiple loops on the homepage to return different data, each and every one of those loops will return the same sticky post(s).  And it seems like even loop qualifiers like the query_posts argument post__not_in don’t work on excluding posts.  No matter what you do, those sticky posts will be at the top of all your loops.

Thankfully, once again Otto comes to the rescue with some more handy code.

If you want your loop to ignore the sticky status of posts, just use this code before the loop:

query_posts('caller_get_posts=1');

Again, this parameter can be used with any of the other arguments for query_posts.  And this code doesn’t simply exclude posts marked sticky … it actually ignores the sticky status altogether.  So if a person marks a post as sticky, by using this query_posts parameter, you can have your loop act normally, not pulling that post to the top unless it is the latest post published (depending on the other query_posts parameters).

Getting Rid of Stickies Completely

Finally, if your theme doesn’t take advantage of the sticky option at all, and you just want to prohibit users from making a post sticky in the first place, you can just wipe out the field in the options table that holds all the sticky post IDs by placing this code in your theme’s functions.php file between <?php ?> tags: [HT: WPEngineer.com]

update_option('sticky_posts', array());

This empties the field and get’s rid of all sticky post IDs that the user may have saved.  This could easily save you the trouble of having to support users that insist on checking the sticky checkbox despite your warnings.  It’s just a way for you to nip the problem in the bud.

However, use it with caution.  Users don’t normally like it when you remove their data.

Well, that about wraps it up.  Everything you need to know about the Sticky Post feature in WordPress 2.7. If you have any other tips or questions, please feel free to let me know in the comments below.  I’d love to hear your thoughts about this new feature.

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That is to say, it won’t break under 2.7. However, this latest version of WordPress does add a good many NEW features to themes that, unless properly accounted for, your theme probably won’t be taking advantage of immediately.

For instance, threaded comments. Even if you turn on threaded comments in your new 2.7 Admin settings, unless your theme is using the new wp_list_comments() function in its comments.php file, you won’t see any threaded comments. A minor detail, but it is worth noting.

So, while 2.7 will most likely NOT break your theme, you should also keep in mind that it probably won’t be take advantage of the newest 2.7 theme features — at least not at first. Check back with your theme’s developer to see if they have plan for adding the new features into your theme in the future.

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I’m convinced the worst feeling in the world is when you know you could have done something, yet you chose to do nothing. Over the last several months, it has become increasingly clear that my self-respect was waning, and an intense desire to do something special was overwhelming me.

You see, I’m grateful for the community that supports free software like WordPress.  It’s that community that has given me the ability to work full-time from home, enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, and make some of the best friends I’ve ever had. WordPress has dominated my life for the better part of two years, which is shocking conisdering WordPress is just blogging software.  The fact that it supports hundreds, if not thousands, of people is shocking as well.

And to that end, I’ve been feeling dissatisfied with ONLY releasing themes that cost money.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m no zealot.  I’m as capitalist as they come. But something has been bothering me lately — it just didn’t seem right that a free program, supported by a team of volunteers, was severely lacking in quality themes that were also available for free.  It seems wrong — you can get a great piece of blogging softare for free, but almost all the good themes cost money.

Introducing My Newest Project

ElevateThemes.com (not live) has been stewing for almost a year now.  I distinctly remember running the unnamed idea by some folks at WordCamp Dallas for feedback.  I purchased the elevatetheme.com domain back in January. I’ve wanted to launch this site for a VERY long time — and now, I’m finally about to do it.

ElevateThemes.com is a major contribution to the WordPress community.  Not only because of the themes that will be available, but because of the ideal that it stands for — quality and free don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  You CAN have both.

An Innovative Business Model

Ever since I first conceived the idea, I’ve wanted to toy with the idea of a “freemium” model theme release site.  I wanted to figure out a way to give away free themes, yet build a sustainable income from the site as well.  In my opinion, unless an idea can indirectly monetize, eventually the project leader will burnout.

Elevate will be monetized in three ways:

1. Premium Membership
2. Theme Sponsorship
3. Community Job Openings

The Premium Membership will cost $97 per year, and will provide you access to theme documentation, tutorials, and support support forum.  This way you, as the user of the theme, will only have to pay for the things you want or need.  If you get stuck during installation, you can become a member and download the theme documentation or watch the video tutorials.  And if that doesn’t help, I (along with others) will be there to help you in the forums.

Theme Sponsorship is much different than the “theme sponsorship” of old.  No more spammy links in the footer.  That’s not cool.

I’m talking about a way for companies to directly target the user of the theme, without exposing the user’s readers to any ads at all. When you, as the user, download and install the theme, you’ll see a sponsor ad when you set up the theme options.  These sponsors are going to help drive the design and development of new themes, and the ads will only be exposed to the administrator of the site when he sets up the theme.

My estimates are that the ad will be exposed to tens of thousands of bloggers through Elevate.  That’s targeted traffic, and would be well worth it for any advertiser that has a product that would be beneficial to bloggers.

Finally, a community Job Board that will allow users of the themes we release at Elevate to find customization help if/when they need it.  Premium Members will have access to post to the Job Board as much as they want, and non-members can purchase Job Board posting access for just $47.00 per year. Yep, an entire year for just $47.

Launch Schedule

I’m currently developing the first two themes for release, and I expect to launch within the next week. If you want to see a sneek-peek at the first theme, check this tweet out.

Are You Leaving iThemes?

Absolutely Not! iThemes is still the place to get some of the best WordPress themes available.  With a team like the one we have at iThemes, there’s no way I’d leave a place like that.  We have some of the best talent together in one company, and we plan on continuing to raise the bar when it comes to WordPress themes, and build a very successful business out of it.

ElevateThemes.com is just my way of contributing back to the community in my spare time by bringing premium-quality themes to the table for people who would otherwise not consider buying a theme.

Are You Just Copying Revolution

Abslutely not! I want to be very clear about this … Elevate was conceptualized long before Brian announced Revolution’s move to the GPL.  And while I applaude his move, it was in no way whatsoever the inspiration for Elevate.  Also, although his business model has yet to be completely uncovered, it seems that our models are both different in concept and execution.

I believe that our two projects will prove to be complimentary rather than competitive.

Stay Updated

The best way to stay updated with the progress and launch schedule is to follow @elevatethemes on twitter.  I’ll be releasing screenshots of themes, and maybe even posing pre-launch download links for some themes.

Click Here to follow @elevatethemes on twitter

Finally

I’m waiting on the comps to come back from the designer for the new look for NathanRice.net.  After I launch ElevateThemes.com, this blog is the next thing on my list for giving a facelift.  And once this blog is a lot prettier than she is now, you’re going to see a whole slew of new posts, news, and more of those awesome WordPress tutorials that everybody here loves so much!!!

So I hope you’re ready for an action-packed month.  It’s going to be quite a ride, so you’ll definitely want to hold on tight!

To stay updated on all my projects, you’re going to want to Subscribe to my feed, follow @nathanrice on twitter, and follow @elevatethemes on twitter.

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However, this morning, I noticed that several of the people I follow on twitter (@nathanrice) were linking to this image over at Donncha’s Flickr:

Taking a closer look, and knowing that Matt Thomas is the designer from the Automattic team, I figured out the URL being displayed in that browser window and discovered the full-res version of the comp for the new 2.7 dashboard interface:

And just minutes ago, I noticed that Jane from Automattic posted the new images and details over at the WordPress development blog. Head on over there to see all the juicy details and drool over the beautiful new admin interfaces. I don’t know about you, but I personally can’t wait until 2.7 is ready to ship. As soon as it hits beta, I’ll be upgrading this blog. :-)

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Deep linking is the art of linking relevant keywords to related content within your own site. Essentially, you are leveraging your own site’s equity for gain.  What gain? In order to understand what is to be gained, one must first understand how links affect SEO.

Links and SEO

As I mentioned in my previous post regarding keyword density, SEO is so much more than just optimizing important segments of your website structure.  It has to do with calculations based on several different variables.  That doesn’t mean to ignore structural SEO, it just meanst that your job isn’t finished.

Included in those variables is the number of links your site, page, or post has pointing to it.

So, if I were to link out to a post written by my friend Ian Stewart on WordPress Child Themes, the next time Google crawls my site, it’s going to register that link as a “vote”, for lack of a better word, for his post, and associate that post with the keywords I used in the link.  So, in essence, I just voted that his post should rank high for the keyphrase “WordPress Child Themes”.

Make sense?

Deep Links and SEO

I’ll freely admit that self-referential links probably don’t count nearly as much as incoming, external links.  But they do help.

So, what do you need to do? Here’s what I do:

When I write a post, I don’t do any links at first.  I just write.  I find the external links that I want to use and keep them open in separate tabs.  Then, once I’m done writing and proofreading, I start filling in external links wherever I find it beneficial. Linking out is always a good practice, and doing 100% deep links could hurt you.

Then, I read over my post one more time, this time keeping an eye out for words or phrases that may be related to content I’ve written in the past.  For instance, if I mention the word “homepage”, I might link to the post I did called “3 Ways to Optimize Your Blog Homepage”.  Sometimes, I may even reword my sentence to get that link to fit with a more relevant (and more desirable) keyword or keyphrase.  So I may modify my sentence to include the words “homepage design” or “homepage optimization”.

For me, I want this series’ opening post (with links to all the posts in the series) to rank well for the search term “WordPress SEO”.  This is actually pretty difficult, given that there are much older, established sites out there with many, many incoming links that I have to compete with.  So obviously, good SEO and deep linking won’t be enough to put me at the top of the list.  As it currently stands, I’m ranked at the top of the third page for that search term. It won’t bring in thousands of visitors a day, but it will net me long-tail benefits.

And for less competitive search terms like “WordPress theme search engine optimization”, I just so happen to be #2 in the search results.  That’s not bad at all, given I’ve got very few quality links back to that article.  I achieved that ranking nearly 100% through good SEO and deep linking.

Don’t Overdo it

When most people discover deep linking, they tend to go crazy with deep linking in posts.  Let me encourage you not to do that.

Deep linking is great, but use it in moderation.  Here are some quick tips for deciding when to deep link:

1. Only Deep link if the URL is relevant to the phrase. Don’t force it!
2. Keep deep links to around 5 per post. Posts that are littered with links tend to look spammy.
3. Deep link, and link out to others at an even ratio. Look for ways to link to other bloggers.
4. Remember that deep linking isn’t just for SEO. It can drive deep traffic too.
5. Keep links short. Don’t link entire sentences.

Remember, this is about gaining strategic advantages, not huge leaps ahead.  Deep linking won’t work overnight, and it won’t land you on the front page for competitive keywords.  But it is just one more tool you can use to give yourself the upper hand in the SEO battle.

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In reality, SEO is a lot bigger than just making a few theme modifications and optimization.  Keyword density is one of those things that I understand very little about, but am very aware of its importance.

Keyword Density has to do with making sure your static pages and blog posts have a good ratio of content to keywords.  For instance, if you were writing a blog posts about common diseases in Golden Retrievers, you would want to first, identify what keywords you believe describe your content well and that you would like to rank for, and second, make sure that you insert those keywords regularly in your post content.

Keyword Usage

In our example above, we’ll probably want to rank for the search phrase “golden retriever common diseases” — so, along with the other strategies outlined in this series, you’ll want to make sure that you are inserting variations of that phrase throughout your content.

Most SEO experts will recommend your content to keyword ration be around 3-7%, and never exceeding 10%.  So for ever 90 or so words of content, you’ll want to use your keyword or keyphrase.

Keywords as Subheadings

Remember back when I told you that heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) are semantic ways of structuring your content?  H1 should be the title of the page or post itself. H2 is a subheading, etc.

Well, now is a perfect time to use the H2 tag to place emphasis on our keywords.  So, split your post into sections, and title the sections using the H2 tag.  Then, use your keyword or keyphrase between the H2 tags.

Keywords and Other Tags

Most people don’t realize that the <strong> and <em> tags are actually semantic XHTML meant for communicating that the content between them is important. In fact, the <em> tag stands for “emphasis”! So, if we strategically place our keywords and keyphrases between either of these tags, we are telling the crawlers that we considered that content important enough to draw attention to.

The Small Things

These methods aren’t going to launch you to the top of the results pages by any means, but when we talk about SEO, in many cases it’s all about gaining a strategic advantage over your competitors, and it will be the little things like this that will give you the upper hand.

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But what I’m about to share today doesn’t have any solid metrics, and I’m not convinced it will help you at all.  I do personally use this method on this blog, and I haven’t noticed any negative effects on my rankings, but there are some people who do believe that META Keywords should never be used, given their dark history.

So, implement this at your own risk.  (By the way, Proximity News Theme users can turn this feature off in the theme options panel under the Search Engine Optimization section)

An Introduction to META Keywords

Back in the early days of the Internet and search engines, one of the ways a site’s administrator (webmaster for all you 90’s web guys) could boost his site’s rankings for certain keywords was to use the META Keywords tag in the HEAD of his HTML document.  By doing this, he would be telling the search engine what kind of content was on that particular page.

But, some SEO guys figured out that you could game the system by stuffing keywords into the META Keywords tag that had very little, if anything, to do with the content of the website.  The result was that you could do a search for something innocent, let’s say “gold jewelery” and end up on a page that was pornographic or ad-stuffed.

It was lazy SEO, and soon enough all the search engines wised up to it and de-prioritized the META Keyword value in ranking pages for keywords.

There are no hard facts as to how much priority they still place on the META Keywords value, if any at all.  I’m inclined to believe that there is no penalty for using it in moderation, but the value is very low.  I do not believe any of the search engines completely ignore the value, though, which is why I happen to use it here on my blog.

Keywords vs. Tags

In WordPress 2.3, the idea of “tagging” your content was introduced into the core of WordPress.  You could now tag your content with certain keywords.  You may notice that I do this at the bottom of nearly every post I publish here at the blog.  I don’t do it because I believe it has massive value for SEO, but I do believe that it does affect your rankings, even if it is very small, especially in the blog search engines like Technorati.

In my opinion, there are no differences between tags and keywords.

I believe that tags and keywords are fundamentally the same thing, used for the same purpose — to tell something or someone, in a few short words, what the content of the website consists of.

Tags as Keywords

Since I’ve decided that I’ll be using my tags for the same purpose as META Keywords, I don’t see any reason not to use my tags AS my META Keywords.

So what we need to do is modify our header.php file and see if we can’t manage to use the tags we use to describe our posts as META Keywords in our page source.  The only problem is, most tag “template tags” are meant to be used within the loop.

That’s actually not a problem if you did what I recommended in our META Description post, since we already have a loop occurrence in our header.php file.  So, we’ll just piggyback on it.  The code currently looks like this:

<?php if (is_single() || is_page() ) : if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php the_excerpt_rss(); ?>" />
<?php endwhile; endif; elseif(is_home()) : ?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php bloginfo('description'); ?>" />
<?php endif; ?>

So, what we need to do is insert our code right after the <meta name=”description” … /> code, but because I like to keep heavy coding out of the template files, let’s put first put the following code into our theme’s functions.php file somewhere between PHP tags:

function csv_tags() {
    $posttags = get_the_tags();
    foreach((array)$posttags as $tag) {
        $csv_tags .= $tag->name . ',';
    }
    echo '<meta name="keywords" content="'.$csv_tags.'" />';
}

This code takes advantage of the get_the_tags function from WordPress which will return an array of the tags attached to the post.  I’m using a foreach loop to get the tags into a comma separated list.

Then just insert the function call right under the META Description:

<?php if (is_single() || is_page() ) : if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php the_excerpt_rss(); ?>" />
<?php csv_tags(); ?>
<?php endwhile; endif; elseif(is_home()) : ?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php bloginfo('description'); ?>" />
<?php endif; ?>

That function will only generate the META Keywords tag and keywords if the post actually has tags attached to it. It also filters out static pages, which by default, do not have the ability to be tagged using the Write Page panel.

You could also set some keywords to describe your blog as a whole to be used when on the homepage by doing this:

<?php if (is_single() || is_page() ) : if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php the_excerpt_rss(); ?>" />
<?php csv_tags(); ?>
<?php endwhile; endif; elseif(is_home()) : ?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php bloginfo('description'); ?>" />
<meta name="keywords" content="list,of,keywords,goes,here" />
<?php endif; ?>

I don’t personally do this, but you certainly could.

So, do what you please.  If you think adding tags as keywords is a good idea for your blog or website, then by all means try it out! If it works, great! If not, you can always just remove the code and probably won’t be any worse off for trying.

What are your thoughts? I’m curious to know if anyone has any information on META Keywords that I’m unaware of.  If I was mistaken in the post, I’d be happy to correct myself.

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And that’s exactly what we can do using the META description tag.  We can actually control what gets displayed in our little spot of SERP real estate, therefore utilizing a tremendous opportunity to convert that space into traffic.

Have you ever been linked to from another blog? Don’t you sometimes wish you could have had some say as to what was said in the blog post that linked to you?  It’s the same concept with using the META description to control the content that describes the page in a SERP.

Anatomy of a Search Engine Results Page

Search Engines, like Google, tend to display search results in a very standard format.  Usually the TITLE of the post or page is the link that actually takes you to the post, and under that link is a description of the site linked to.  Under that, you usually find the URL of the page as well.  Here is an image that illustrates my point:

We Can Manipulate All Three Parts

What most people fail to realize is:

1. Each one of these places can be manipulated by YOU!
2. Failing to manually manipulate them means you aren’t taking advantage of free ad space from the search engine!

Because search engines are the primary traffic source for most good websites (websites that have good SEO, at least), we can’t undervalue potential clicks to our content.  If people just scan past our page on the SERP, then we wasted our time getting it ranked! You need to pull them in! And the way you so that is by manipulating the content of your result in the SERP.

How To Manipulate Our Result Listing

Since there are three parts to every result listing, there are three parts that we need to manipulate.  Fortunately for you, I’ve already taught you how to manipulate the TITLE and the URL in this series.  In order to manipulate what the title looks like, you need to optimize your TITLE tag.  And in order to manipulate the URL, you need to be sure you’re optimizing your permalinks.

But, here’s how you change what the result page uses as the description for your content.

Essentially, you’re going to want to be ranking for three types of content — your homepage, your single posts, and your static pages.  So, we need to determine what the best strategy for displaying the most accurate, relevant description for our content within the META tag, which looks something like this:

<meta name="description" content="The Description of your content" />

This tag should go somewhere between the <head></head> tags in the header.php file of your WordPress theme.  But out dilemma is, how do we populate the “content” section of the META description dynamically based on what content we’re viewing?  Simple — we use a combination of conditional tags and a custom loop to pull either the sites tagline (if we’re on the homepage) or the excerpt (if we’re in a single post or static page).

The final result will look something like this:

<?php if (is_single() || is_page() ) : if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php the_excerpt_rss(); ?>" />
<?php endwhile; endif; elseif(is_home()) : ?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php bloginfo('description'); ?>" />
<?php endif; ?>

In plain English: if we are viewing a single post or static page, then use the_excerpt_rss as the description for that post or page.  The reason we use the_excerpt_rss is because it strips out all formatting tags, something that isn’t useful when not displaying the text. But, if we are on the homepage, then we need to use the blog’s tagline (the bloginfo(’description’) outputs the tagline of the blog).

So, by displaying this META description both conditionally and dynamically, we have way more control over what the search engine results page displays as the description of our homepage, static pages, and single posts.

Even More Control

Usually, most bloggers don’t take advantage of the use of the “optional excerpt” section of their Write Post panel.  But if you want to exercise even more control over what gets displayed on the SERP for content, then you need to be filling this section out.  If it’s blank, your post description will just be the first X amount of words in your post.  But sometimes those words don’t do a very good job of selling your content.  In this instance, do something like this:

Now that I have an optional excerpt filled in for that post, let’s see how that post looks on a Search Engine Results Page:

Perfection!

So, now you know how I use search engines to generate the majority of my traffic.  I don’t use the optional excerpt all the time — not by a long shot.  But whenever I feel like the post needs a good desctiption, and the first few words just don’t cut it, using this method is absolutely perfect!

Check back next time to see how we use a very similar method to generate META keywords for our content.

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But, they can be a bit cumbersome to use throughout your theme because of the ridiculous amount of code that it takes just to pull the data out and display it.

Conventionally, here’s how you would pull the data from a custom field where the key = image and use the value of that field as the “src” value in an IMG tag:

<?php $image = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'image', TRUE); ?>
<?php if($image) { ?><img src="<?php echo $image; ?>" alt="Alt Text" /><?php } ?>

Putting the value from the custom field into a variable definitely cuts down on the amount of code you have to write, but by utilizing a simple PHP function, we can make using custom fields even easier!  Open up your theme’s functions.php file and paste the following code somewhere between PHP tags:

function get_custom_field($key, $echo = FALSE) {
	global $post;
	$custom_field = get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true);
	if ($echo == FALSE) return $custom_field;
	echo $custom_field;
}

Now, when you want to get the value of the custom field, you simply use the function in your theme files like so:

<?php get_custom_field('image', TRUE); ?>

Using the “TRUE” value makes sure that the function actually echos the value, rather than just returning it.  But if for some reason, you need to use the value of the custom field (for instance, to store in a variable), then you can return the value instead of echoing it like so:

<?php get_custom_field('image', FALSE); ?>

Also, you could change the value of the $echo varialble in the function declaration to TRUE if you would like the default for the function to be to echo the value, rather than return it. It’s really up to your preferences.

Now, let’s take it one step further.  Let’s recycle some code from our get_custom_field function and use it in a function that will check to see if that custom field has a value — and if it does, then to use that value, along with the proper IMG tags to output an image, including width and height specifications:

function image_attachment($key, $width, $height) {
	global $post;
	$custom_field = get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true);

	if($custom_field) { //if the user set a custom field
		echo '<img src="'.$custom_field.'" alt="" width="'.$width.'" height="'.$height.'"/>';
	}
	else { //else, return
		return;
	}
}

Then, just use the function in your theme files.  This example would echo the image with a width and height of 100px:

<?php image_attachment('image', 100, 100); ?>

Cool, huh? :-)  Feel free to experiment with the many, many opportunities these kinds of shortcuts can bring you.

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