WPcademy

May 27, 2019May 27, 2019

Easy Guide to Make a Niche Review Site in WordPress

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a niche review site in WordPress like a Pro, so you can earn money from it.

Why Create a Reviews Site?

What’s the first thing that you do when you’re looking to buy something online? If you’re like most of us, then you check the online reviews of that product to see what others are saying about it.

This is why a popular online review site, TripAdvisor, is worth roughly $12 billion dollars.

Now while everyone cannot be as big as TripAdvisor, we know several folks that are earning anywhere from few hundreds to few thousand dollars a month from running a niche review site.

There are two popular ways of creating a reviews site. The first is to add a reviews section on your existing blog. The second is to create a completely independent online reviews site.

Regardless of the direction you choose, it’s important that don’t pick a highly competitive niche.

For example: there are tons of sites talking about digital camera reviews, but not as many that are talking about camera accessory reviews.

The secret to building a successful review site is to finding the right niche. A perfect niche has low competition, and it should be something that you’re passionate about.

Here are few factors to think about:

What resources can you offer to build traffic?
Can you easily attract advertisers? (i.e are there people selling paid products)
Are there affiliate programs available?
Are other people making money in this niche?
What is the competition like?

You can use tools like SEMRush, BuzzSumo, and Google Keyword Planner to help with research.

Once you have picked your niche, let’s take a look at how you can create a reviews site.

Step 0. Before You Start

To get started with WordPress, the first thing you would need is a good WordPress hosting and your own domain name.

Once you have signed up for WordPress hosting and set up your domain name, the next step is to install WordPress on your hosting account. We have a step by step guide on how to make a WordPress website.

If you already have a WordPress site, then just move to step 2.

Step 1. Choosing the Perfect WordPress “Review” Theme

The first step after setting up your WordPress site is to select a perfect WordPress theme.

When you look around for WordPress themes, you will probably find tons of articles about the best WordPress review themes, stay away from those.

You don’t need a WordPress review site template. Most of those WordPress review themes are bloated and will lock you into use them forever.

That’s why it’s better to use a WordPress reviews plugin because plugins will work with any theme / design that you choose.

You will have the flexibility to change your themes in the future without having to hire a developer.

We have an article that will help you find the perfect theme and install it in WordPress.

Basically pick a theme that you like in terms of look and feel. We will show you how to add the reviews functionality in the next step.

Step 2. Installing the best WordPress Reviews Plugin

First thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Product Review plugin.

The base plugin is free, and does not lack features that would hold you back. However, for additional functionality you will need to buy their premium addons package.

WP Product Review plugin is easy to use and it helps you stand out in search engines by adding schema markup on your review.

In plain English, it adds those star ratings next to your reviews in Google to help you stand out.

So go ahead and install this plugin.

Upon activation, you will notice a new menu item labeled ‘Product Review’ in your WordPress admin menu. Clicking on it will take you to plugin’s settings page.

The settings page is divided into different sections. First you need to set up the general settings.

Start by selecting where you want to display the review box. There are three options to choose from. You can show the review box after or before the content, or you can manually add it using the shortcode.

The next option is to choose whether you want to allow users to add their reviews as comments. If you allow this, then you also need to select how much influence user reviews will have on the actual review.

After that you need to choose how many number of options, pros, and cons you want to be displayed. By default the plugin will allow you to add 5 of each. You can adjust that if you need.

Now move on to the rating colors tab in settings. This is where you can define the default colors used by the plugin for ratings. WP Product review uses different colors for excellent, good, not bad, and weak ratings.

You can change the rating colors to match with your theme.

Next, click on the ‘Typography’ tab in the settings. This is where you can choose the default text for pros and cons columns. You can also change the text colors for different sections.

The final tab on the settings page is the buy button. On this tab, you can select the colors you want to use for the buy button.

Buy button will also have your affiliate link, so it is important that you choose a color that encourages more users to click.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save All Changes’ button to store your settings.

Step 3: Adding a Review in WordPress

Adding a review using WP Product Review plugin is quite easy. Simply edit or create a new post in WordPress.

You will write your main review, like you would write any other post in WordPress.

On the post edit screen, scroll down to the bottom, and you will find the ‘Product review extra settings’ meta box. Click on ‘Yes’ next to the option ‘Is this a review post?’.

This will expand the meta box and you will now see the additional settings for your review.

First you need to provide product details like images, buy now button text, product or affiliate link, and product price.

After that you need to add your options. These are like different aspects of the product and how you grade it for those qualities. You can add a number from 0 to 100, where 100 is the highest grade and 0 is the lowest.

Next you will add the pros and cons lists. Add the best features of the product in the pros list and the features it lacked in the cons list.

Once you are done, simply save or publish your post.

You can now visit the post to see the review box in action.

Step 4. Displaying Your Reviews in Sidebar

WP Product Review allows you to show your review posts in the sidebar and other widget-ready areas. Visit Appearance » Widgets page, and you will find the top products widget and the latest products widget in a list of available widgets.

Simply add the widget to a sidebar and configure its options. You can select the number of products you want to display, product title and image display settings. Once you are done, click on the save button to store your widget settings.

Now go ahead and visit your website to see the reviews widget in action. It will show the latest reviews with ratings and product image.

We hope this tutorial helped you create a beautiful reviews site with WordPress.

May 27, 2019

Easy Guide to Fix Image Color and Saturation Loss in WordPress

In this tutorial, we will learn how to fix image color and saturation loss in WordPress.

Why Some Images Loose Colors and Saturation in WordPress?

Many photographers capture photographs using Adobe’s RGB color space which has more colors and offer much better results.

However most web applications like WordPress, use RGB color space. When you upload your image, WordPress creates several image sizes. These images use RGB color space which has less colors than Adobe’s RGB format.

WordPress also uses compression on the resized images which may also contribute to slight quality loss. Here is how you can increase or decrease WordPress jpeg image compression.

Images captured with Adobe sRGB color space are more vibrant and accurately display colors in high tones. When converted by WordPress, those vibrant colors are replaced with slightly muted tones.

Having said that, let’s see how we can prevent this image color and saturation loss in WordPress.

Fix Color and Saturation Loss for Images in WordPress

The easiest way to fix this is by converting your images to RGB color space before uploading them to WordPress. This can be easily done using Adobe Photoshop.

Method 1:

Open your image in Adobe Photoshop and then click on File » Save for Web….

This will bring up the save for web dialog box, where you can check the box to convert the image in RGB and save it. You can also embed color profile with your image. Though it will not have much affect on browsers read an image.

Method 2:

Use this method if you are not satisfied with the result of the first method.

In Adobe Photoshop, go to Edit » Color Settings. This will bring up the color settings dialog box.

You need to select ‘North America Web/Internet’ from the settings drop down menu. Next, under color management policies section, select the RGB to ‘Convert to Working RGB’. After that click on the OK button to save your settings.

Now you need to open the original photograph or image that you wanted to upload. If the working space profile mismatches, Photoshop will show a warning and will ask you what to do.

You should select ‘Convert document’s color to working space’ and then click OK. Your photo’s color profile is now more accurately converted. You can now save the image to preserve your changes.

Repeat the process for all the images that you want to upload. Now you can safely upload these converted images without any color or saturation loss in WordPress.

Fix Color and Saturation Loss in WordPress with GIMP

Gimp is the powerful free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. You can use it to convert the color space for your WordPress uploads.

GIMP basically detects each image you try to open to see if it has a color profile embedded. In case your image is in Adobe sRGB color space, then GIMP will automatically show you a dialog box to convert it.

Sometimes an image may not have an embedded color profile or GIMP may fail to read it correctly. In that case you will need to manually change color space.

First you need to know what color space your photograph may be using. We are assuming that it is Adobe sRGB, but it could be different. Check your camera device to figure this out if you are unsure.

GIMP does not have Adobe sRGB profile built-in. You will need to download Adobe sRGB ICC Profile to your computer.

Select your operating system and then follow on screen instructions. You will be able to download ICC profiles in a zip file. Extract the zip file and inside it you will notice AdobeRGB1998.icc file.

Once you have downloaded the ICC profile. Simply open your image with GIMP and click on Image » Mode » Assign Color Profile…. This will bring up a dialog box like this:

Click on the drop down menu and then locate the ICC profile you downloaded earlier. Click on Assign button to apply it.

Once you have applied the color profile, GIMP can now safely convert it to RGB without losing colors. Simply click on Image » Mode » Convert Color Profile…

GIMP will now convert the color profile to RGB and you can save your image. Repeat the process for other images you want to upload to WordPress.

We hope this tutorial helped you fix image color and saturation loss in WordPress.

May 27, 2019

Easy Guide to Setup Automatic WordPress Backup with CodeGuard

In this tutorial, we will learn how to setup an automatic WordPress backup with CodeGuard along with sharing our honest CodeGuard review, so you can make an educated decision.

What is CodeGuard?

CodeGuard is a website backup service that can automatically backup your WordPress site and save it on the cloud. It also allows you to track your changes daily.

There are plenty of WordPress backup plugins available, and we have created a list of the best WordPress backup plugins.

However, using a plugin means you will have to keep it up to date, and in most cases the backups aren’t stored properly on an offsite location.

If you are managing client websites, then managing all backups separately is quite difficult. Not to mention that clients can accidentally turn off backups.

CodeGuard is a paid backup service that works on all website platforms including WordPress. Their monthly plans start from $5/month for 1 site and unlimited databases with up to 5GB storage. They also offer a free 14 day trial on all their plans.

We decided to give CodeGuard a try because it makes a bold claim of being “a time machine for your website”. In this CodeGuard review, we will put that claim to test.

Let’s start with setting up WordPress backups through CodeGuard.

Setting up WordPress Backup on CodeGuard

First thing you need to do is visit CodeGuard website and click on Start Your Free Trial button.

This will bring you to the signup form. Fill it out and click on ‘start my free trial’ button. You will be asked to enter a password for your account.

It’s essential that you use a strong password (See how to manage passwords guide for WordPress users), and then click on the next step button.

This will bring you to the add website page. First you need to enter your website’s URL and then provide your FTP information.

If you do not know your FTP username or password, then please contact your WordPress hosting provider. You can also find this information in the email your WordPress hosting provider sent you when you signed up. Alternately, you can also locate this information using cPanel by clicking on FTP or FTP manager.

After entering your FTP/SFTP information, click on the test connection button. CodeGuard will show a success message. You can now click on the connect your website button.

CodeGuard will connect to your website, and it will show you all the files stored on your server.

You will need to select the folder that contains all your WordPress files and then click ‘select root directory’ button to continue.

Now scroll down a bit, and you will see ‘Select website content’ section. You need to select all your files and folders.

Simply click on the top folder and all the files inside it will be automatically selected. Next, click on the begin first backup button to continue.

You will see a success message. CodeGuard will automatically start downloading your WordPress files to their cloud servers in the background.

You will be asked to add your WordPress database for backup.

The next step is to connect your database and to do that you will need the following information.

Your database hostname or IP address
MySQL username
MySQL user password

You can find this information in your WordPress website’s wp-config.php fileitself. Alternatively, you can contact your web host to provide you this information.

If you connect to your host using localhost as your hostname, then you will need to enter your domain name as the hostname.

On the other hand, if you use a hostname like mysql.example.com, then you will have to enter that or add your MySQL server’s IP address.

Enter your database connection information. Before you click on the next step button, you will need to copy the IP addresses shown under the Helpful Tips box on the right.

Your web host will not allow an external IP to connect to your database unless you explicitly allow it access. To do that, you need whitelist these IP addresses.

Simply login to your cPanel account and click on the Remote MySQL icon.

Copy and paste an IP address and then click on add host button. Repeat for all IP addresses given by CodeGuard.

Once you are done, come back to the CodeGuard’s add database screen and click on the next step button.

CodeGuard will connect to your database now. If you have more than one database, then it will ask you to select one. Choose your WordPress database and click on add database button.

CodeGuard will now start backing up your database to their cloud servers. Upon completion it will show your database and some basic WordPress stats.

That’s all you have successfully backed up your WordPress site and database on CodeGuard’s cloud servers.

How to Restore Site and Database from CodeGuard Backups

As a website owner, you need to be sure that the backup solution you are using for your site is easy to restore. CodeGuard offers automatic restore options which allow you to restore your WordPress files and database with one click.

You can also download your backups to your own computer to perform a manual recovery.

CodeGuard Review

CodeGuard really measures up to the claim of being a time machine for your website. Using the FTP / MySQL method, you can backup just about any website including WordPress and your other sites.

We always recommend storing your backups on third-party cloud servers which makes CodeGuard an ideal backup solution for anyone starting out.

While having backups is a choice, we strongly recommend that you have one vs not. We’ve had too many users whose sites were hacked, and they had no backup (which means literally losing years of content).

Regular site backups are the best insurance policy you can purchase for your web based business.

May 27, 2019May 27, 2019

Easy Guide to Properly Move from Squarespace to WordPress

In this tutorial, we will learn how to properly move from Squarespace to WordPress.

Why Move from Squarespace to WordPress?

Squarespace provides an easy to use platform to create and build websites. But it is very limited in terms of what you can do on your own website.

WordPress is more flexible, open source, and you can do anything you want with your website. Take a look at our article on Squarespace vs WordPress for a detailed comparison of the two platforms.

Also note that when we say WordPress, we mean self hosted WordPress.org site and not WordPress.com blog hosting service. Check out our guide on the difference between WordPress.org vs WordPress.com for more information.

Step 0: Getting Started

Squarespace hosts your websites on their own servers. If you are moving to WordPress, then you will need to host your own website.

If your Squarespace site has its own domain name, then you may want to transfer that domain to your new web host as well.

During and after the domain transfer, you will be able to access your Squarespace website as it will start using the built-in Squarespace subdomain.

Step 1: Installing WordPress

After signing up with a web host, the next step is to install WordPress. As the most used CMS in the world, WordPress is known for its famous 5 minute install.

Most WordPress hosting providers like Bluehost, Siteground, Hostgator, etc offer quick 1-click WordPress installers. Take a look at our detailed step by step WordPress installation tutorial for beginners for more information.

Step 2: Exporting Squarespace Content

After installing WordPress on your new web host, the next step is to export your content from Squarespace.

Squarespace offers limited export functionality. Depending on what content you have on your site, some of it will be exported. Rest of the content will remain on your Squarespace built-in domain, and you will have to manually copy paste it.

Here is the content that will be exported.

All your basic pages will be exported as WordPress pages.
One blog page will be exported, and it will appear in WordPress pages as Blog
All your blog posts under that one blog page will be exported as WordPress posts
Your Gallery pages will be exported
Text, Image, and Embed blocks will be exported

The following content will not be exported.

Product pages, Album pages, and Event pages will not be exported
Audio, Video, and Product blocks will not export
Style changes and custom CSS
Folders and index pages will be left out
If you had more than one blog page, then only one of them will be exported

Now that you know how restricting SquareSpace is, let’s go ahead and export the content so you can have a fresh start with WordPress where you have all the freedom.

This will show you the import/export settings. You need to click on the export button to continue.

Squarespace will now show you a popup with WordPress logo on it. Currently, Squarespace only exports content in format suitable for WordPress only. Click on the WordPress logo to initiate the export process.

You will see the progress of the export on the left under the import export buttons. Once the export is finished, you will see a button to download your export file.

Download the export file to your computer. You will need it in the next step when you import content into your new WordPress site.

Step 3: Importing Content From Squarespace into WordPress

The next step is to import the content you downloaded from Squarespace into your WordPress site.

Login in to your WordPress admin area and go to Tools » Import page. You will see a list of platforms to choose from.

Squarespace will not be listed there because Squarespace exports content in a WordPress compatible XML file format which means you need to click on WordPress to continue.

This will bring up a popup where you will be asked to install the WordPress Importer plugin. You need to click on the ‘Install Now’ button.

WordPress will now download and install the WordPress importer plugin. Upon completion, you will see a success message. You need to click on ‘Activate Plugin & Run Importer’ link.

On the next screen, you need to click on the choose file button and then select the Squarespace export file you downloaded earlier. After that click on upload file and import button to continue.

WordPress will now upload and examine your Squarespace export file. If everything is in order, then it will show you the import settings page.

This is where you will choose an author name for the imported content. WordPress can also import the Squarespace user and add them as a subscriber on your WordPress site. You can also choose an existing admin user as author or even create a new user.

There is an option to import attachment images. This option may not work at all. During our migration process, we kept running into errors. Guessing maybe Squarespace doesn’t want us to leave so they’re making it hard.

You should leave the checkbox checked anyways, hoping that maybe in some future version this issue will be resolved.

Click on the submit button and WordPress will start importing content from your Squarespace export file.

When it’s done, you will see the success message. You can now visit the pages and posts in WordPress to review the imported content.

Step 4: Importing Images from Squarespace

Unfortunately, the WordPress importer cannot import images from your Squarespace website. You will have to manually import those images.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Import External Imagesplugin in WordPress. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Media » Import Images page to run the plugin.

For more detailed instructions, take a look at our guide on how to import external images in WordPress.

Step 5: Fixing Permalinks

We need to make sure that you don’t miss traffic coming through the links from your old Squarespace website. WordPress uses SEO friendly URL structure, which allows you to customize the link structure in many different ways.

The goal here is to make our link structure similar to your Squarespace website. Squarespace uses year/month/day/post-name as the link format for blog posts. It also uses a prefix like blog or blog-1 in the post URLs.

A typical blog post URL using the default built-in Squarespace domain name may look like this:

https://example-website.squarespace.com/blog-1/2016/3/6/post-title

If you were using your own domain name with Squarespace, then a typical blog post URL may look like this:

https://www.yourdomain.com/blog-1/2016/3/6/post-title

In WordPress admin area, you need to visit Settings » Permalinks page. There you will see a list of URL structure options. The closest match to your old squarespace URL is ‘Day and Name’.

Click on Day and Name option and then move down to custom structure. You will see that the custom structure section will be automatically filled with year, month number, day, and post name tags.

You just need to add the blog-1 prefix before everything else. Like this:

/blog-1/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

Click on the save changes button to store your settings. This step makes sure that users visiting your website from search engines and other sources are redirected to correct posts and pages on the new WordPress site.

There is still a chance that some of your links may result into 404 errors in WordPress. Here is how to track 404 pages and redirect them in WordPress.

Step 6: Importing Other Content from Squarespace to WordPress

Squarespace only allows you to export limited content. If you were using their eCommerce features, events, or hosting audio video files, then you will have to import all of them manually to your WordPress site.

Depending on how much content you have there, this process can take some time.

For products you will need a WordPress eCommerce plugin, like WooCommerce.

For your video files, we recommend you to host them on third party video hosting services like YouTube and Vimeo.

Step 7: Getting to Know WordPress

WordPress is powerful platform with incredible flexibility. There are thousands of professionally designed free and premium WordPress themes that you can use on your site. See our guide on how to select the perfect WordPress themefor your site.

May 27, 2019May 27, 2019

Step by Step guide to Move Custom Domain Blogger Blog to WordPress

In this tutorial, we will learn how to move custom domain blogger blog to WordPress.

Step 1: Getting Started

Before we start, it is important to note that this guide is for the self hosted WordPress blog. See our guide on the difference between self hosted WordPress.org site vs free WordPress.com blog.

In order to get started, you will need a WordPress hosting provider to setup your self hosted WordPress website.

Step 2: Change DNS Settings

Blogger allows you to use any domain name registered by a 3rd party. U.S. based users can also use a domain registered with Google Domains.

When you first setup the domain pointing to your Blogger blog, you were asked to add CNAME and A records to your domain’s DNS records. You will need to delete those records and add your WordPress host’s DNS settings.

You can get DNS settings required by your WordPress hosting provider from their documentation or support websites. A typical DNS nameserver looks something like this:

NS1.domain.com
NS2.domain.com

In this guide, we will show you how to update DNS settings in Godaddy. If you have registered your domain with some other registrar don’t worry. The basic settings are the same on all domain registrars.

Important: DNS changes may take anywhere between a few hours to one or even two days to fully propagate. During this time, you can access your Blogger blog by logging into your account.

Changing DNS Settings in GoDaddy

Log in to your Godaddy account and click on the manage button next to domains. Click on the gear icon next to your domain and then select manage DNS.

You will see your domain information page. Next, you need to click on the DNS Zone File. This is where all the DNS level records for your domain are stored.

On the DNS Zone File page, you need to locate the A record and CNAME aliases you added for your Blogger blog and delete them. Click on save changes button to apply your changes.

The next step is to setup nameservers for your WordPress hosting provider. Go back to manage DNS page for your domain and then click on manage under the namservers section.

On the next page you need to click on custom and then click on edit nameservers link to add your new WordPress hosts nameservers.

Click on the save button to make your DNS changes go live.

Step 3: Remove Redirect

Your Bloggger blog’s original blogspot.com address is redirecting users to your custom domain. Since we have changed the domain settings, we need to remove this from Blogger too.

Simply log into your Blogger account and go to Settings » Basic page. Under the publishing section, click on the cross icon to cancel the redirect.

Step 4: Install WordPress

If your domain’s DNS has propagated now, you can now install WordPress on your hosting provider.

If your domain is registered on a 3rd party service other than your web host, then you will need to add the hosting for the domain. For example, in BlueHost you will add your domain as an Addon domain through cPanel unless it is the main domain on your account.

After adding domain to your new host, the next step is to install WordPress. Follow the instructions in our complete WordPress installation tutorial.

After successful installation of WordPress on your custom domain, you will be ready to import content from your Blogger blog.

Step 5: Export Content From Blogger

Before you can import content into WordPress, first you need to export it from your Blogger blog.

Blogger allows you to export content in an XML file.

This will bring up a popup where you need to click on the Download Blog button.

Depending on the file size, it may take a few seconds or a few minutes. Once you have your data, it is time to import it into your WordPress site.

Step 6: Import Blogger Blog into WordPress

Login to your WordPress admin area and visit Tools » Import page. There you will see a list of importers for different services. You need to click on Blogger to install the Blogger importer.

This will bring up a popup where you need to click on the Insall button. WordPress will now download and install the Blogger Importer plugin for you. Once it is finished installing the plugin, you need to click on Activate Plugin and Run Importer link to continue.

On the Import Blogger screen, WordPress will ask you to upload the XML file. Simply click on choose file button and upload the XML file you downloaded earlier. Click on the Upload file and import button to continue.

WordPress will now import your blogger posts from blogger, once it is finished you will be asked to assign an author to the imported posts. You can assign your blogger posts to an existing author or create a new one.

Congratulations! you have successfully imported your Blogger blog into WordPress. However, you still need to make sure that you don’t loose any search rankings and that visitors to your old blog can easily land to the same content on your new WordPress powered website.

Step 7: Setup Permalinks

WordPress comes with a feature that allows you to set up SEO friendly URL structure. However, since you are importing content from Blogger, you would want your URL structure to be as close to your Blogger URL structure as possible. To set permalinks you need to go to Settings » Permalinks and paste this in the custom structure field:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

Setp 8: Setup Feed Redirects

You have successfully redirected your Blogger blog to WordPress. However, users who have subscribed to your Blogger RSS feed will stop receiving updates.

You need to redirect feed requests to your WordPress feeds. This can be easily achieved by editing .htaccess file in your WordPress site’s root folder. If you can’t find your .htaccess file, then see this tutorial.

Start by connecting to your WordPress site using an FTP client. You will need to enable ‘Show Hidden Files’ option in your FTP client settings. If you are using Filezilla, you will find this option under Server menu.

Once you are connected to your website, you will find the .htaccess file in your WordPress site’s root directory. You need to edit this file and paste the following code before any other code in the file.

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule atom.xml /feed? [L,R=301]
   RewriteRule rss.xml /feed? [L,R=301]
   RewriteRule ^feeds/posts/?.*$ /feed? [L,R=301]
   RewriteRule ^feeds/comments/?.*$ /comments/feed? [L,R=301]

Save your changes and upload the .htaccess file back to the server. Your Blogger feed subscribers will now be redirected to your WordPress site’s feed.

May 27, 2019

Easy Guide to Add Categories to a Custom Post Type in WordPress

In this tutorial, we will learn how to add categories to a custom post type in WordPress. We will also show you how to display multiple post types on your category archive page.

The Plugin Method : Custom Post Type UI

For our beginner level users, we recommend using Custom Post Type UI plugin to create custom post types. When using Custom Post Type UI plugin, you have the option to associate your custom post type to any built-in or custom taxonomy including categories.

First you need to install and activate the Custom Post Type UI plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon installation, you need to visit CPT UI » Add/Edit Post Types to create a new custom post type or edit an existing custom post type you created with the plugin.

Scroll down on the Advanced Options to the bottom and there you will see the Built in Taxnomies option. Check the box next to categories and save your custom post type.

Don’t forget to click on the save post type button to store your settings.

Manually Adding Categories to a Custom Post Type

If you created your custom post type by adding the code in your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin, then you will have to modify the code to add category as supported taxonomy.

All you need to do is add this line in the arguments for your CPT.

 'taxonomies'  => array( 'category' ),

It is likely that you may already have this line in the existing code for your CPT with some other custom taxonomy in it. If you do, then you just need to add a comma after that and add category, like this:

 'taxonomies'          => array('topics', 'category' ),

Here is a full example code where we have created a custom post type called movies with support for built-in categories.

function custom_post_type() {
 
// Set UI labels for Custom Post Type
    $labels = array(
        'name'                => _x( 'Movies', 'Post Type General Name', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'singular_name'       => _x( 'Movie', 'Post Type Singular Name', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'menu_name'           => __( 'Movies', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'parent_item_colon'   => __( 'Parent Movie', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'all_items'           => __( 'All Movies', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'view_item'           => __( 'View Movie', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'add_new_item'        => __( 'Add New Movie', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'add_new'             => __( 'Add New', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'edit_item'           => __( 'Edit Movie', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'update_item'         => __( 'Update Movie', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'search_items'        => __( 'Search Movie', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'not_found'           => __( 'Not Found', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'not_found_in_trash'  => __( 'Not found in Trash', 'twentythirteen' ),
    );
     
// Set other options for Custom Post Type
     
    $args = array(
        'label'               => __( 'movies', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'description'         => __( 'Movie news and reviews', 'twentythirteen' ),
        'labels'              => $labels,
        'supports'            => array( 'title', 'editor', 'excerpt', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'comments', 'revisions', 'custom-fields', ),
        'hierarchical'        => false,
        'public'              => true,
        'show_ui'             => true,
        'show_in_menu'        => true,
        'show_in_nav_menus'   => true,
        'show_in_admin_bar'   => true,
        'menu_position'       => 5,
        'can_export'          => true,
        'has_archive'         => true,
        'exclude_from_search' => false,
        'publicly_queryable'  => true,
        'capability_type'     => 'page',
         
        // This is where we add taxonomies to our CPT
        'taxonomies'          => array( 'category' ),
    );
     
    // Registering your Custom Post Type
    register_post_type( 'movies', $args );
 
}
 
/* Hook into the 'init' action so that the function
* Containing our post type registration is not 
* unnecessarily executed. 
*/
 
add_action( 'init', 'custom_post_type', 0 );

Displaying Multiple Post Types on Category Page

By default the category pages on your WordPress site will only display the default ‘Posts’ post type. To display your custom post types on the same category page as your default posts, you need to add this code into your theme’s functions.php or a site-specific plugin.

add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'query_post_type');
function query_post_type($query) {
  if( is_category() ) {
    $post_type = get_query_var('post_type');
    if($post_type)
        $post_type = $post_type;
    else
        $post_type = array('nav_menu_item', 'post', 'movies'); // don't forget nav_menu_item to allow menus to work!
    $query->set('post_type',$post_type);
    return $query;
    }
}

Don’t forget to replace movies with the name of your own custom post type.

That’s all, we hope this tutorial helped you add categories to your custom post type in WordPress.

May 27, 2019May 27, 2019

What is a SEO Friendly URL/ Permalinks in WordPress

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to link to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change — hence permalink. In this tutorial, we will learn about WordPress SEO friendly URLs, and how you can customize your WordPress permalinks.

What is a SEO Friendly URL?

Before we go too deep into WordPress permalinks, it’s important that we define what is a SEO Friendly URL.

SEO Friendly URLs contain keywords that explain the article, and they’re easy to read by both humans and search engines. They also improve your chances to rank higher in search engines.

Example of a SEO friendly URL:

http://www.example.com/how-to-install-wordpress/

So what does a non-SEO friendly URL look like?

http://www.example.com/?p=10467

By default, WordPress now uses the post name in the URL which is the most SEO friendly URL structure.

So why do beginners still ask us for best permalink structure?

That’s because in the past, WordPress did not use pretty URLs also known as permalinks. The default used to be the non-SEO friendly example that we shared above.

This was changed in WordPress 4.2. If you recently installed WordPress, then your site URLs are SEO friendly.

You can easily verify your permalink settings in your WordPress admin area.

The Permalink Settings Page Explained

In WordPress, links are called Permalinks (short for permanent links). You’ll see the term permalink structure and URL structure being used interchangeably.

First thing you need to do is to visit the Permalinks settings page in your WordPress admin area.

Simply click on Settings link in the admin menu and then click on Permalinks. This will take you to a page that looks like this:

As you can see there are number of choices available.

Plain
https://www.wpcademy.com/?p=123
Day and name
https://www.wpcademy.com/2016/01/22/sample-post/
Month and name
https://www.wpcademy.com/2016/01/sample-post/
Numeric
https://www.wpcademy.com/archives/123
Post name
https://www.wpcademy.com/sample-post/
Custom Structure
Choose your own URL structure using available tags.

Let us explain these options a bit, and how useful they are for users and SEO.

The first option which is called plain used to be the default WordPress URL structure. This is not an SEO friendly option.

The day and name option is somewhat SEO friendly as it has the post name in it. However, with dates, the URL becomes too lengthy. But more importantly after some time your content seems outdated, even if you regularly update it. Similarly, the month and name option also runs the risk of being dated.

However if you’re a news publication, then you want to have the dates in your URL to show the recency and improve the user experience.

In our opinion, those two structures are only good for news sites. Business sites that are hoping to create ever-green content should avoid it.

Post name option is the most SEO friendly because it is short and pretty.

If you are running a larger publication, then you can use a custom structure that can also be SEO friendly.

At WPCademy, We use a custom permalink structure that adds a category name along with the post name in the URL. Because our site is large and contain thousands of articles, it suits us very well. You will see larger publications follow a similar URL structure.

In order to use a custom URL structure, you will need to add special tags in the custom structure box. For example, we use:

/%category%/%postname%/

Notice how each tag is wrapped between percent signs. Also notice the trailing slashes / before, after, and between the tags.

Creating Custom URL Structure with Available Tags

For the best results, we recommend using the options we mentioned above. You can copy the URL structure we use on WPCademy or choose the post name as your URL structure.

However, there are plenty of other combinations you can create using tags. Here is a list of tags that you can use to create your own custom URL structure:

%year% – The year of the post, four digits, for example 2016.
%monthnum% – Month of the year, for example 05
%day% – Day of the month, for example 28
%hour% – Hour of the day, for example 15
%minute% – Minute of the hour, for example 43
%second% – Second of the minute, for example 33
%postname% – A sanitized version of the title of the post (post slug field on Edit Post/Page panel). For example, if your post title is This Is A Great Post! It would become this-is-a-great-post in the URL.
%post_id% – The unique ID # of the post, for example 423
%category% – A sanitized version of the category name (category slug field on New/Edit Category panel). Nested sub-categories appear as nested directories in the URI.
%author% – A sanitized version of the author name.

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button after choosing your permalink structure.

As soon as you press the save changes button, WordPress will automatically update your site’s .htaccess file and your site will immediately start using the new URL structure.

Warning: Important Note for Established Sites

If your site has been running for more than 6 months, then please don’t change your permalink structure.

You don’t have to use the same structure that we used.

By changing your permalink structure on an established site, you will lose all of your social media share count and run the risk of losing your existing SEO ranking.

If you must change your permalink structure, then hire a professional, so they can setup proper redirects. You’ll still lose your social share counts on the pages.

There’s only one exception to this rule. If your site is using the plain URLs, then no matter how old it is, you should update the URL structure for better SEO. Yes, you will still lose social share counts, but the benefits far outweigh that.

We hope this tutorial helped you create a SEO friendly URL structure for your WordPress site.