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How to Add Custom Post Types to Your Main WordPress RSS Feed

September 03, 2010 By: Editorial Staff Category: Tech News, Tutorials, custom post type wordpress 3.0, custom post types, custom post types rss feed, how to add custom post types to rss feeds, how to add custom post types to wordpress rss feed, how to add custom post types to your main wordpress rss feed, how to exclude a certain custom post type to be added to the rss feed, how to include a specific custom post type to wordpress rss feed

Custom Post Types was one of the most hyped feature of WordPress 3.0. This feature alone expanded the horizon of WordPress usage as a Content Management System (CMS). If you are using Custom Post Types, or thinking of custom post types, then you may have the urge to add it into your main RSS Feed. This option is not built-in by default because your main WordPress RSS feed only includes “Posts” not even pages, so custom post types are a long shot. In this article, we will share how you can add Custom Post Types to your main WordPress RSS feeds.

You would need to open your theme’s functions.php file and add the following code within the PHP markup:

function myfeed_request($qv) {
	if (isset($qv['feed']))
		$qv['post_type'] = get_post_types();
	return $qv;
}
add_filter('request', 'myfeed_request');

This code modifies the query to keep the default content type for blog posts “post” in the main RSS feed, and also adding new custom post types.

But what if you have five custom post types in your new project, and you only want to add three to the main RSS feed? Well that shouldn’t be any problem because we will just modify the code slightly to give you the option to only include the ones that you want.

function myfeed_request($qv) {
	if (isset($qv['feed']) && !isset($qv['post_type']))
		$qv['post_type'] = array('post', 'story', 'books', 'movies');
	return $qv;
}
add_filter('request', 'myfeed_request');

If you see in the code above, we simply added an array to modify the post_types that will be shown in the main RSS feed. We are showing the default posts, story, books, and movies.

Source: Core Trac Ticket #12943

How to Add Custom Post Types to Your Main WordPress RSS Feed is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Related posts:

  1. How to Make a Separate RSS Feed for Each Custom Post Type in WordPress
  2. How to use Custom Post Types in WordPress 3.0
  3. How to Create a Custom Post Types Archive Page in WordPress

How to Make a Separate RSS Feed for Each Custom Post Type in WordPress

September 02, 2010 By: Editorial Staff Category: Tech News, Tutorials, custom post type rss feed, how to create a specific custom post type rss feed, specific custom post type rss feed

Everyone is utilizing Custom Post Types in their new WordPress sites because this is a very powerful feature. One of our users asked us how can they create a separate RSS feed for a specific custom post type in WordPress. In this article, we will be answering that question.

You would think that it require a lot of coding, but it doesn’t. It works just like creating a separate RSS feed for each category in WordPress. You can simply type this URL:

http://www.yoursite.com/feed/?post_type=book

Just change the post_type name to the one that you want to create a separate RSS feed for. Are you looking to take it to the next level and make it for a specific custom post type and custom taxonomy? Well that is not hard at all either:

http://www.yoursite.com/feed/?post_type=book&genre=romance

As you can see in the code above, that genre would be the custom taxonomy, and romance would be the tag if you may call it that. You can create a button in your sidebar to link to that. You may also link this feed and create a separate feedburner feed for it.

How to Make a Separate RSS Feed for Each Custom Post Type in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Related posts:

  1. How to Add Custom Post Types to Your Main WordPress RSS Feed
  2. How to Make Separate RSS Feed for Each Category in WordPress
  3. How to use Custom Post Types in WordPress 3.0

How to Add Verification Codes to Your WordPress RSS Feed

September 02, 2010 By: Editorial Staff Category: Beginners Guide, Tech News, importing feeds to digg, verification codes in wordpress feeds, verify wordpress feed

Often when WordPress bloggers signup for third party publisher accounts such as Digg and others, they are required to verify ownership. Most services offer multiple options of verification such as adding meta tags to the header, uploading a blank file, and adding content to the RSS feed. This article will use Digg.com as an example because Digg version 4 has this new feature called auto feed syndication for publishers. The only way of verification is by adding the verification codes to your RSS Feed. After we posted about our account on digg, many of our users joined. We got a request to do a tutorial on this subject because it was confusing for beginners.

When Digg asks you to add the content in your RSS feed, it means for you to add it in your next post. So you will need to create a new post (doesn’t have to be about that service). It can be any post, and you need to add the code at the bottom of the post. For example, if your key is:

6ca1386293854e5d835d3f430df34700

then you will add:

<!–6ca1386293854e5d835d3f430df34700–>

The reason why you add the extra elements before and after is so this code is not shown to your users, but it is still added in the RSS feed. Once you add this code, you will have to wait for about 20 – 30 minutes for your feed to update (specially if you are using Feedburner).

The code can go anywhere, preferably at the bottom. Once your account is verified, you can remove the code from your post. If you are adding it in Digg this week, be sure to try it multiple times and let the page load fully before you click anything. Digg is very buggy as it is new. While you are on digg, don’t forget to follow WPBeginner on Digg.

How to Add Verification Codes to Your WordPress RSS Feed is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Related posts:

  1. How to Add Custom Post Types to Your Main WordPress RSS Feed
  2. How to Make Separate RSS Feed for Each Category in WordPress
  3. How to Make a Separate RSS Feed for Each Custom Post Type in WordPress

Digging into WordPress v3.0

September 01, 2010 By: Editorial Staff Category: Books, Tech News, coupon for digging into wordpress, digging into wordpress, digging into wordpress version 3.0, digwp, digwp 3.0, digwpv3, discount for digging into wordpress

Digging into WordPress is a book written by two of the most credible figures in the WordPress industry, Jeff Starr and Chris Coyier. They recently announced the release of version 3 to cover the latest WordPress changes. All previous owners of this ebook will get the updates for FREE. WordPress is constantly evolving where new functions are added and old are deprecated. Jeff and Chris has done a great job in keeping up and improving their book on each version. This book is a MUST HAVE for everyone who is trying to get more familiar with WordPress. It is built to broaden your horizon. In short, this is nearly a 450 page full of practical information.

Digging into WordPress version 3

Everything in the book is now hot-wired and fine-tuned to the latest version of WordPress, with new popouts and fresh links throughout the book. The beautiful colored pages, and ease of copying and pasting the codes make this eBook a fun resource to have. 20+ new pages are added in this release with a whole bunch of other stuff, including how to setup multi-site, custom post types / taxonomies, use the built-in shortlink feature, author templates, comment-form template-tags, and more of WordPress 3.0.

What do you get with this purchase?

Here’s what you get for $27:

  • Beautiful, full-color, easy-to-read design
  • Nearly 450 pages of practical, how-to WordPress content
  • 3 Free Themes: All Ajax, Lines & Boxes, and Plastique from their Theme Club House.
  • Free Lifetime Updates (current book owners received version 3.0 yesterday)
  • Friendly, helpful customer support :)

Well for being a WPBeginner user, you get a discount so this book will cost $27 $23 when you use the coupon: “WPBeginnerDIW“.

Buy this book now and you won’t look back.

Digging into WordPress v3.0 is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

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How to Create a Custom Post Types Archive Page in WordPress

August 31, 2010 By: Editorial Staff Category: Tech News, Tutorials, custom post type loop, custom post types archive page, display custom post types in a loop, how to create a custom post type archive page in WordPress, how to display custom post types in a loop, wordpress 3.0

Custom Post Types was one of the awesome features included in WordPress 3.0. One of our users asked us a question on twitter (@wpbeginner), how to create a custom post types archive page. We covered it in our initial article about Custom Post Types, but it wasn’t explained thoroughly. So in this article, we will show you a step by step guide on creating a custom post types archive page in WordPress.

1. Creating a Custom Page Template

First step would be creating a custom page template in WordPress. All we will do is add the following code at the top of our new .php file which we will call (custompt-archives.php).

<?php /* Template Name: Custom Post Type Archive */ ?>

2. Adding the Necessary Template Codes

Next, you will need to add the necessary template codes including but not limited to header, footer, sidebar etc. This area will vary for each site, but for basics it would look like this:

<?php get_header(); ?>
This is where our Loop codes will go in the next step.
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer();?>

3. Creating our Custom Archive Loop

The loop is explained in details at the WordPress Codex, and we will be using different aspects of it to create our custom archives loop. Our loop will simply list posts with the necessary information surrounding it. You will be responsible for adding styling around it. Our loop:

<?php
global $query_string;
query_posts($query_string . "post_type=YOUR-CUSTOM-POST-TYPE&post_status=publish&posts_per_page=10");
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

<?php endwhile;
endif; ?>
<div class="navigation">
	<div class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link('Previous entries') ?></div>
	<div class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link('Next entries') ?></div>
</div>
<?php wp_reset_query(); ?>

You can change the number of posts being displayed on the page by changing posts_per_page variable value.

Final Code

Your final code for the custom page should look like this:

<?php /* Template Name: Custom Post Type Archive */
get_header(); ?>

<?php
global $query_string;
query_posts($query_string . "post_type=YOUR-CUSTOM-POST-TYPE&post_status=publish&posts_per_page=10");
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

<?php endwhile;
endif; ?>
<div class="navigation">
	<div class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link('Previous entries') ?></div>
	<div class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link('Next entries') ?></div>
</div>
<?php wp_reset_query(); ?>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer();?>

Now upload this file in your theme’s directory. After you have done that, you need to go to your WordPress admin panel, and create a new page. Call it “Your Custom Post Type” Archives (or whatever you like to call it) and change the page template to “Custom Post Type Archive” as shown here. Do not add anything in the page content area, and simply publish the page. You should now have a custom post types archive page in WordPress.

How to Create a Custom Post Types Archive Page in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

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Lucky Winners of Impact Page Builder WordPress Plugin Giveaway

August 31, 2010 By: Editorial Staff Category: News, Tech News, free copy of impact page builder wordpress plugin, giveaway, impact page builder for wordpress, impact page builder plugin, impact plugin

This past week, we had a tremendous opportunity to giveway one of the hottest new WordPress plugins in the market, Impact Page Builder. We are giving away 10 copies of this plugin, and each of our winners have an option of either getting a Single Site License for FREE, or pay $39 fee to get an unlimited license (which is worth $88)..

This was a twitter-exclusive contest where users were required to tweet about the contest and post a comment with their twitter link. Last requirement was that they must follow @wpbeginner on twitter, so we could notify them via Direct Message.

Winners were selected randomly. Each entry was assigned a number, and the chosen ones received our Direct messages.

Contest Winners:
@OneJason
@arielmariani
@melowout
@peterlandt
@raksakaindra
@z3olyte
@thefunkhouse
@albertalbs
@poliquinp
@satryaWp

There were 85+ entries in the contest, so a lot of you did not get the chance to win. Impact Page Builder is an awesome plugin and it was tweeted by some of the top bloggers including us and @problogger. We have worked out a deal with them to offer WPBeginner users an exclusive 20% discount if you go through our link and use the coupon “wpbeginner“. (Just click on the coupon and buy it). This is a limited time discount, so grab it now while it is available.

Lucky Winners of Impact Page Builder WordPress Plugin Giveaway is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

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How to Install and Setup W3 Total Cache for Beginners

August 30, 2010 By: Editorial Staff Category: How to Install and Setup W3 Total Cache and MaxCDN for Beginners, Tech News, Wordpress Plugins, beginners guide for w3 total cache, best caching plugin for wordpress, best wordpress caching plugin, cdn in wordpress, cpanel hosting cname record, do i need w3 total cache, how to add cdn in firefox, how to create a cname record, how to improve wordpress yslow grade, how to install maxcdn in wordpress, how to install w3 total cache, how to setup maxdn in wordpress, setup maxcdn, setup maxcdn in wordpress, setup w3 total cache, w3 total cache plugin, yslow wordpress

Last week, we wrote an article announcing that we have switched our site from WP Super Cache to W3 Total Cache. That article also announced our partnership with MaxCDN. Due to a very high volume of request, we have decided to create a step by step user’s guide to installing and setting up W3 Total Cache for beginners. In this article, we will show you how to install W3 Total Cache Plugin, set it up properly so you can maximize the benefits, and how you can combine W3 Total Cache with CDN services to make your site load even faster.

Before you begin, we want you to download the YSlow Addon for Firefox and run it for your site. Write down the load time of your homepage, and the letter grade YSlow gave your site.

What is W3 Total Cache?

W3 Total Cache is the fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin. Trusted by many popular sites including: mashable.com, smashingmagazine.com, yoast.com and WPBeginner. 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.

1. Installing W3 Total Cache in WordPress

Before you install W3 Total Cache, you need to make sure that you uninstall all other caching plugins (for example WP Super Cache). If you do not do this prior to installing, the plugin will have issues upon activation. We have a very thorough guide explaining how to install a WordPress plugin which you can follow. Or you can follow the brief guide below:

Go to your WordPress admin panel, and click on Plugins » Add New, where you will search the name “W3 Total Cache”. You should see results like the image below:

Installing W3 Total Cache

Install and activate the plugin. If you choose to do this via FTP, first download the plugin and then upload it in to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory. Upon the activation of this plugin, a new menu option will be added in your WordPress admin panel called “Performance”. Click on the tab, and you will enter the configuration area.

2. Settings and Configuration of W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is a very powerful plugin, so it has tons of options. We will visit each of these options in detail, but first we need to start with the General Settings.

General Settings

Make sure that you are on the General Settings Page. You can confirm that by viewing two of these options:

Configure W3 Total Cache - General Settings

Now lets dive into the general configurations page. First you see an option to enable or disable preview. You should click disable, so the site is actually running W3 Total Cache rather than just previewing it. So your final screen would look like this:

Configure W3 Total Cache - General Settings

Next option on the screen will be Page Cache. This works just like how WP Super Cache plugin works. This section is responsible for creating static cache pages for each page that is loaded, so it is not being dynamically loaded upon each page load. By having this enabled, you will significantly decrease your load time. For Shared servers, which most users are using, the Disk (Enhanced) Method is highly recommended. Your final screen result should look like this:

Configure W3 Total Cache - General Settings

After the page cache, you should see the option for Minify in the general page. Minify is the famous technique of reducing the size of your CSS files, JS files, HTML files, posts, pages, and RSS. What this does is remove the unnecessary objects that your users do not need to see. Such as commenting in the stylesheet. That is for developers, not for average users to see. This plugin will remove all useless spacing from the code which by average speeds up your site load time by 10%. Disk is the only / best option for Shared servers. Your final screen should look like this:

Configure W3 Total Cache - General Settings

Next option is Database Cache. This is crucial for site load time because WordPress sites are entirely running on Database. Often high load of database queries are the cause that slows yours site down and/or crash the site upon high traffic. The Database cache option will cache queries such as pulling the twitter count from your database, if you are using that. This option can essentially speed up your site by 100x. Your final setting for this area would look like this:

Configure W3 Total Cache - General Settings

Object Cache is the option that comes next. This increases the performance of highly dynamic sites that uses the Object Cache API. The final settings should look like this:

Configure W3 Total Cache - General Settings

The next option after this is for Content Delivery Networks (CDN). W3 Total Cache supports MaxCDN, NetDNA, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, and Amazon Cloud Front. WPBeginner is using MaxCDN. This section will only apply to sites that are using CDN, or are planning on using CDN. If you think you will be using CDN, then we recommend MaxCDN (use coupon “wpbeginner” for 25% off). Example screen of someone who uses MaxCDN would look like this:

Configure W3 Total Cache - General Settings

The next and last option on the general settings page is for Browser Cache. Browser Cache enables HTTP compression and adds expiration headers on the objects of your site. Each time a user visits your site, their browser stores a copy of your site, so on the next visit, your user does not have to re-load the site entirely (which speeds up the load time). But each browser resets the cache on their own schedule even when the file has not been changed. By enabling this, your site will tell the browser how long to hold each object. For example, you don’t change your favicon every day, or even month. That is something can be stored for one month period without change. The final screen should look like this:

Configure W3 Total Cache - General Settings

Now that we have gone through the general settings page, we will dive into each individual settings to give you a look for more options.

Page Cache Options in Detail

Now that you have enabled page cache, we will show you what other options that you can tweak. First you need to go to the Page Cache Settings page like so:

Configure W3 Total Cache - Page Cache Settings

Now you will see the following options:

Configure W3 Total Cache - Page Cache Settings

Notice in the screen above that you will see Page Cache is currently enabled. If you do not see this, then you are doing something wrong. Go back to general settings and enable it. Next, you also see a way to empty page cache. When you notice an error on your site, you want to immediately fix it. This could be a spelling error that your user reported, or something else. In a situation like that, you would have to manually clear the cache so the changes can be implemented on the live site right away.

We have selected the option to not cache pages for logged in users such as administrators. The reason for that is, if we want to see any changes that we make on the live site before it goes live, we can do so. Next option is cache the homepage. Homepage is often the most visited page on many sites. It would be a good idea to check that. Cache feeds, categories, and tags is checked because thousands of people go through our categories daily. Dynamically loading each page will slow our site down significantly. We have not selected the option to cache search strings, and 404 pages because we do not see a need for it, but for some websites it can be great.

Now we will look into some advanced options for Page Caching.

Configure W3 Total Cache - Page Cache Settings

Under the advanced options, you can see that we haven’t really touched the default. You can select to change the page cache to be longer or smaller interval. Default is 3600 seconds. You can make it smaller interval if you have a busy site. Next option is for Rejected User Agents and Rejected Cookies. You can select not to send cache pages to Google Bot, not recommend, but you can if you wish. If your page use a specific cookie, you should have those pages listed under rejected cookies page.

Under the never cache the following pages section, you see that we have added another page to the list. By default it is the index.php and wp-.php. But we added a manual page in there. The reason why we added this page was because we want this to load dynamically. This is a secret page on our site that you can constantly refresh to get a new tip randomly from our article database. See our Random Posts Page. You can add any page that you do not want to cache in that list. All the other settings can be left to default.

Minify Settings in Detail

Minify Settings advanced option will vary from site to site, but there are somethings that should be universal. First you need to make sure that it is enabled.

Configure W3 Total Cache - Minify Settings

As you can see in the image above, that you have a green text saying it is enabled. We recommend that you follow the settings above exactly as shown. Each option is self-explanatory. One thing you should note is the Help Wizard at the top. That is a very nice feature that will come in handy when we see the CSS / JS Minify settings.

We are not using JS minify for this plugin because it was causing some areas of our site to not work properly, but we have minified our CSS. You are required to attach files, which you can do by either entering the URL of the file, or using the helpwizard.

Configure W3 Total Cache - Minify Settings

Once you select the files in there, you will see them added in the minify page below:

Configure W3 Total Cache - Minify Settings

Everything else should be left to blank, unless you know what you are doing.

Database Cache Settings

We did not modify anything in the Database Cache settings. Everything was left as default. You do not need to modify it unless you know that your site needs additional modification. The most important section is the never cache the following pages. For example, if one of your page or section heavily relies on database queries, then it is wise to add that page or that entire section in this field:

Configure W3 Total Cache - Database Cache Settings

Object Cache Settings

Everything should be left as default for an average site. If you know that you need something in there specifically, then you may modify it.

Browser Cache Settings

By default, only Gzip compresssion and Set W3 Total Cache Header is enabled, but we have taken it a step further in our setup. We enabled Set Expires Header, Set Entity Tag (etag) for each option. You may do the same for your site as well. It is recommended that you do a little research about expire header and etag functions, so you make an informed decision that well-reflect your site. Not everything that works for us will work for your site as each site has different needs. There are tons of pros and cons of these functions which could be an article on its own.

CDN Settings in W3 Total Cache

This section will be slighly biased because we are only showing MaxCDN implementation. We are using MaxCDN and their quality service, so that is the only option that we have access to display (we will also explain why we chose them). If you followed this tutorial entirely, you should have already enabled the use of CDN and seleted MaxCDN as the option (only if you have an account with MaxCDN). If not, then this can be done through the General Settings. One you have done that, lets visit our CDN Settings Page.

Configure W3 Total Cache - CDN Settings

As you see that we have selected all four options in the general settings. Host wp-include files, this so if your theme is calling jQuery from WordPress include library, it will be added and served through the CDN service. Theme files option is checked, so all of our theme files are served via CDN. Host minified CSS and JS files via CDN. This is important to have checked, so when W3 Total Cache minify your CSS files, it can be served via a CDN. Lastly serve custom files via CDN. Often bloggers have a tendency of keeping somethings separate for the sake of organization. Let it be ad images, or other set of files. You can specify those to be served via CDN as well.

Setting up MaxCDN with W3 Total Cache for WordPress

Next option is configuration of your CDN provider. We will show you how to do that with MaxCDN. You need to have an “Origin Pull” CDN account. Rackspace Cloud, and Amazon cloud front, do not offer this service which makes MaxCDN superior. Origin-Pull is simple to use and highly transparent. This type is also known as “mirror” CDN.

1. Login to your MaxCDN account (If you don’t have one, then get one).

2. In your MaxCDN dashboard menu, click on “Manage Zones” option. Then click on “Create Pull Zone” button, just like it is shown in the image below:

Configure W3 Total Cache - MaxCDN Settings

3. On the next page, you will need to fill out the necessary information to create a Pull Zone:

  • Pull Zone Name: This can be anything without spaces, minimum 3 characters long. Think of this as your username.
  • Origin Server URL: Enter the URL of your wordpress blog. Must have “http://” and the trailing slash(/).
  • Custom CDN Domain: This is Optional, but we recommend it for the sake of branding. Use any subdomain for examplke: cdn.wpbeginner.com
  • Label: This is like a description field. It is optional to add a description.
  • Compression: We recommend that you enable this as it will save the usage of bandwidth on your account.

We have filled out the fields for you to see in the image below:

Configure W3 Total Cache - MaxCDN Settings

Upon creation, you will see a screen that will give you the URL for your CDN. If you chose the option for Custom CDN Domain, it will ask you to create a CNAME record for that domain. We will show you how to create the CNAME Record with cPanel Webhosting providers such as HostGator, Super Green Hosting, and Bluehost. You will need to login to your cPanel, then scroll down to the Domains Section and click on Simple DNS Zone Editor.

Configure W3 Total Cache - Adding a CNAME Record

Then you will fill out the fields to Add an CNAME Record. The two values, you will be required to fill are: Name and CNAME.

  • Name: This would be what you put in your MaxCDN Pull Zone as the Custom CDN Domain. In the image above, you see that our custom CDN domain is cdn.wpbeginner.com, so we will put “cdn” in our name field.
  • CNAME: This will be URL provided to you by MaxCDN when you create the Pull zone.

We have filled out the fields for you to see in the image below:

Configure W3 Total Cache - Adding a CNAME Record

Now, you have the CNAME created for your MaxCDN Pull zone. Note: This method will be different if you have a different host. Sometimes, CNAME records are created via Domain Registrar such as Godaddy.

Lets configure our W3 Total Cache Plugin to work with MaxCDN. In the general settings above, you have already enabled Content Delivery Network option and set it to Mirror: NetDNA/MaxCDN. So now when you go to the CDN Settings page, you will see an option for Configuration. W3 Total Cache wants you to enter the API ID, and the API Key. These can be found in your MaxCDN Dashboard if you go to Manage Account » API. Copy those and paste it here. Next complete the field that asks you to “Replace site’s hostname with:”. You will add your custom CNAME here. You can see in our example below, we have added cdn.wpbeginner.com.

Configure W3 Total Cache - W3 Total Cache CDN Configuration

After setting this up, your MaxCDN should be setup and ready to go. But there are other options that you can add as well to improve performance a little bit further. Lets look at the “Advanced” options on the Content Delivery Networks settings.

Configure W3 Total Cache - W3 Total Cache CDN Configuration

If you look at the image above, you see that some fields are already filled. The main part in this area is Custom file list. After enabling MaxCDN on our site, we saw that almost all files were being served via CDN except for some plugin files such as OIO Publisher, SyntaxHighlighter etc. So we decided to add those to the list. OIO Publisher is a plugin that lets us manage ads on our site (Full Review). When adding ads through this plugins, we can upload images through the plugin which were stored in the plugin’s uploads folder. So now all those images were served through CDN. Syntax Highlighter adds JavaScripts at the bottom of our page which were being served directly. So we added the syntax highlighter folder, so all files are served via CDN. This area will vary from site to site as each site uses different plugins. Some users will not have to add anything in here, but it is just an option to know. Also if you notice in the image above, there is a Rejected files area where contact form 7 file is listed. If you are using contact form 7, then you do not want to serve the captcha file through CDN.

This will conclude our CDN settings setup. Now if you load your site, the image URLs should be served from the CDN subdomain rather than your site’s actual domain. For example:

http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/themes/wpbeginner/images/logo.jpg

will be replaced with:

http://cdn.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/themes/wpbeginner/images/logo.jpg

This concludes the setup of your W3 Total Cache Plugin. Your site should load a lot faster now. For the sake of testing, you can use YSlow to see what letter grade you get now compared to before. YSlow only recognizes the known CDNs names, so it will not recognize your custom subdomain. You will need to follow the tutorial on MaxCDN blog that shows how you can add your CDN to the list for your browser. This will be for the sake of testing the actual grade that your site gets.

Now that you have everything setup, it is best if you create a backup for your W3 Total Cache Configuration. After all, we went through a lot in this article. You will need to come back to your W3 Total Cache’s General Settings Page. There is a section for Import / Export Settings. Click to Download the settings file from your server.

Configure W3 Total Cache - General Settings

This is good to do because if your site crashes, or you accidentally reset the settings, you will have a file to backup.

We hope that you found this article useful. For those users who are still not sold on the concept of CDN, we highly recommend you give it a shot. CDN work with your web host to decrease server load and increase site performance. We are using MaxCDN and we recommend you to do the same. (Try them for just a month, and you will see why we recommend them). Use the coupon “wpbeginner” for 25% off.

If you have any questions, then please feel free to ask in the comments below. Also don’t forget to share this article on Twitter, Digg, Facebook using the buttons to your left. We truly appreciate your support.

How to Install and Setup W3 Total Cache for Beginners is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

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Follow WPBeginner on the New Digg, This could help all of us

August 27, 2010 By: Editorial Staff Category: News, Tech News

One of the most popular news aggregating social media sites, Digg recently went through a major overhaul. We were able to obtain a publisher’s account for WPBeginner. One of the nice aspects of the improved site is that it’s a little more social than its previous version. We are still a relatively small brand compared to big names like Mashable, Engadget etc. Therefore we need your support to get noticed. Please help us by joining WPBeginner on Digg. The best part about following us is that you know you will be seen. We are following every user that follows us back because we want to return the favor and check out the interesting news that you submit. Also, we haven’t seen another WordPress resource site on Digg yet, so we are also representing the WordPress unofficially.

Thanks for All your Support,
WPBeginner Editorial Staff

Follow WPBeginner on the New Digg, This could help all of us is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

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How you can help save other WordPress users some time?

August 27, 2010 By: Editorial Staff Category: News, Tech News, plugin repository, vote for plugins compatability

WordPress is a great platform and that is only because it has a great community behind it. There are thousands of plugins in the repository that are available for FREE. Thank you awesome plugin developers who gave us that gift. Now it is our turn to give back. It is frustrating to land on a plugin page which has been downloaded thousands of time and only has one person confirming that it works, or it is broken. We understand not everyone is a coder, but everyone can be a tester. We can all spend 5 seconds of our valuable time to visit the WordPress Plugin Repository and do the plugin compatability check.

This will help all other WordPress users who were thinking about using that plugin because now they will feel much more comfortable using the plugin. Assurance is great for satisfaction. Every self-hosted WordPress installation comes with Akismet installed and more than half of those blogs use Akismet. The sad part is that only 5 people took their time out reporting that Akismet works with WordPress 3.0.1. Why people why?

Awesome folks in the community have redesigned WordPress.org plugin repository. The entire reason for writing this post is to encourage users to vote on the version compatibility for the plugins they use. If you have no idea what we are talking about then follow the tutorial below:

First you will need a WordPress.org account, which is good to have because you can submit bug reports on plugins, do the compatability check, answer questions etc. You can Register an account for FREE through this link.

Next visit the WordPress Plugin Repository and search the plugin that you are using. In this example, we will use the plugin called Comment Redirect because we are using it on our site, and we know it works with WordPress 3.0.1. This plugin has been downloaded over 7,000 times out of which at least half of the users are still using it. But there are no responses of whether it works or not.

Plugin Compatability Votes

Well because it works, all we have to do is click Works. Now it will show other users that 1 person has verified that this plugin works with WordPress 3.0.1. So if someone else wants to use it, they have at least one person assuring them that it works.

Plugin Compatability Votes

But this can be a green light if more people vote. It needs at least 4 votes for WordPress to be 100% sure that it works. Below we are displaying the image for All in One SEO Pack Plugin, which has enough votes for WordPress to give a green light.

Plugin Compatability Votes

5 seconds of your effort can really improve this community. Please go and vote for the plugin compatability of the ones that you are using on your site. Also don’t forget to let us know in the comments which plugins you voted for.

How you can help save other WordPress users some time? is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

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Giveaway – Get your Free Copies of Impact Page Builder for WordPress

August 24, 2010 By: Editorial Staff Category: News, Tech News, free copy of impact page builder wordpress plugin, giveaway, impact page builder for wordpress, impact page builder plugin, impact plugin

WPBeginner is proud to announce the giveaway of this new, but truly awesome product known as Impact Page Builder Plugin. Much thanks to Seth Atwood for working closely with us and making this giveaway possible. Impact is an easy to use WordPress plugin that allows you to create an unlimited number of unique page templates. Using this extremely powerful plugin, you can make all of your pages look different. (This plugin can truly help in creating custom sales page templates like: this, and this one. Our default page template looks like this: About WPBeginner).

Prize

We will giveaway 10 copies of Impact Page Builder WordPress Plugin. Winners will get an option of either getting a Single Site License for FREE, or pay $39 fee to get an unlimited license (which is worth $88).

How to Win?

This will be a twitter exclusive contest. The guidelines are very simple. Just tweet:

Win a free copy of @impactplugin #WordPress Plugin from @wpbeginner – http://bit.ly/dBJgM5 (RT to Enter)

Note: You may modify the tweet as long as you mention (@impactplugin and @wpbeginner with a link to this post).

Once you have tweeted, simply come back to this post and comment with a link to your tweet and your twitter username.

Make sure that you are following @wpbeginner on twitter, so we can send a Direct Message to notify the winners. Winner entries will be discarded if they are not following us on twitter.

Thank you Impact Page Builder Team

We want to thank Impact Plugin team for sponsoring this giveaway. This is a very new plugin, but we got a review copy to test it out. There will be a fully detailed review coming up once this contest is over. To show some support, feel free to follow these guys on twitter:

@impactplugin

Winners will be chosen randomly, and we will announce the winners on August 31, 2010 on this blog.

Giveaway – Get your Free Copies of Impact Page Builder for WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

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