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Send Tweets Directly From Your WordPress Site

By Matthew Guay on March 26, 2011 in Quick Tips

BraveNewCode is one of our favorite WordPress developers, and their WPtouch 2 Pro plugin it what powers the awesome mobile and iPad versions of Techinch. One of their other, less well-known plugins is the equally awesome WordTwit. This simple plugin lets you automatically publish your new posts on Twitter without setting up a third-party service. I’ve featured it before in an article about Moving Your Tumblr Blog to WordPress, since Tumblr automatically tweets new posts by default and WordTwit gives you that same feature.

WordTwit just got a bit more awesome today with the release of the new WordTwit 2.6. This new version lets you configure your site as a custom Twitter application! This means, when you publish a new post, it’ll be tweeted immediately, listing your site as the app it was tweeted from. This is great for branding, and plus, for anyone who loves to tweak everything they touch, it’s a fun way to customize your site’s tweets.

And.... it works!

To enable this, you’ll need to register your site as a new Twitter application at http://dev.twitter.com/apps. Then, update WordTwit on your site, and enter your OAuth unique codes from Twitter. Finally, activate it with your account, and your site will now automatically tweet your new posts and let the world know they were sent from your site!

Can Techinch access my personal Twitter account? Sure!

For more info about the new features in WordTwit 2.6 and setting up the Twitter custom app feature, check out BraveNewCode’s blog post about it from today. There’s a new pro version of WordTwit that BraveNewCode will be releasing in the near future, so it’s especially neat they went to the trouble to add the custom app feature to their free plugin. Thanks, BraveNewCode!

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WordPress for iPad, Much Improved

By Matthew Guay on March 17, 2011 in Quick Tips

If you’re serious about blogging, you’ll likely end up writing posts from almost anywhere. I’ve personally published posts from hospital waiting rooms, a home improvement store, numerous coffee shops and restaurants, and from the back of the car while traveling down deserted roads in the middle of nowhere (thanks to ubtiquous EDGE). Today, WordPress for iOS is a big part of that as I now use my iPad almost as much as my computer. The WordPress iPad app has traditionally been fairly frustrating to use, but today the WordPress for iOS team released the new 2.7 version of the app that fixes many of the problems and makes it much nicer to use, especially on iPad.

The new WordPress for iOS uses Core Data to store your post info, and seems to be much more stable. Then, the post editor is fully revamped on iPad as you can see in the shot above. Now, when you start a new post, an editor pane will open above the app, much like the Mail app on iPad. Add categories and more with native selector panes, and even upload images right from the editor without switching back and forth between different screens. New pictures are automatically added to the end of your post without any extra taps, either. For this post, I took screenshots, rotated and resized them with OneEdit, then uploaded them directly with the new WordPress for iPad.

Ready to schedule your post? You can still schedule your post or upload it as a draft. This has been changed slightly in the latest version, and now you’ll need to tap the gear button on the bottom of the editor to change the publish settings. This isn’s a problem though, as now it’s much easier to schedule posts as you want with the native menus. Plus, uploading draft posts still works great!

As before, you can edit existing posts and pages from WordPress for iPad, as well as manage comments on all of your sites. This works the same as before, but everything feels much faster and more stable in the new version. WordPress for iOS is still not perfect; I’d love to see either a WYSIWYG editor or an extended code editing keyboard, as right now, adding links or HTML formatting to posts is very frustrating. Also, I’d love to see support for the new WordPress post formats, as well as direct integration with WordPress.com Stats, VaultPress, and more. But, the new changes are encouraging, and they show that the Automattic team isn’t wasting time in trying to get their apps improved. The changes in this version set the stage for more features in future versions, and it finally works good enough that I’ll definitely be using it more. If you’re using WordPress on your iOS device, make sure to update or download WordPress for iOS today!

Download WordPress for iOS (free, universal app)

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Tumblr2WP: Move Your Tumblr Blogs to WordPress the Easy Way

By Matthew Guay on February 25, 2011 in Featured, Techinch

Would you like to move your Tumblr blog to WordPress, but think it’d be to hard to get everything moved over? Not any more! We ran an article a couple months ago about How to Move Your Tumblr Blog to WordPress, but it was still rather complicated. You had to export your site, import it into WordPress, then manually change each of your posts to the new WooTumblog post formats to keep everything working the same as before. If your Tumblr blog had many posts, it could be a daunting task!

Thanks to WooThemes, it’s now incredibly simple to move your Tumblr blog to WordPress. They’ve recently created the Tumblr2WordPress exporter that will export your entire Tumblr site into format that will work great with any Tumblog WooTheme such as Canvas, Crisp, or the new Auld theme. It’ll also work great with any theme customized with the WooTumblog plugin. Here’s what you’ll need to do.

Get Your WordPress Site Ready

First, you’ll need a website with WordPress and a WooTumblog compatible theme setup to import your site. Check out our details on the original post for more info. If you’ve already had the site setup for some time, you’ll need to upgrade your WooTheme to work with the new post formats. Check this support article from WooThemes for more info on upgrading your theme. Once it’s upgraded, you’ll be able to use the new WordPress 3.1 Post Formats for your Tumblog.

Export Your Tumblr Site With Tumblr2WP

Now, head over to the new Tumblr2WordPress site to get your Tumblr blog exported. Enter your Tumblr blog address; even if you’ve added a custom domain, make sure you use the original yourblog.tumblr.com address. Then, choose your settings; the defaults usually should be fine. Click Export when you’re finished, and save your export file to your computer.

Finally, go back to your WordPress blog and import your posts as your would from any other blog. After a few moments, your Tumblr posts should all be in your WordPress blog, with the correct post formats and all of your content, just as your Tumblr blog was before.

That’s a ton easier than the other method! Thanks to WooThemes, you can now move your Tumblr blog to WordPress much easier than before. So why wait? Move over today and take advantage of all of WordPress’ advantages without losing any of your content you’ve added to Tumblr!

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Add Shortcodes to Your Posts with WooThemes the Easy Way

By Matthew Guay on February 3, 2011 in Techinch

Would you like to add more features to your blog posts without having to hand code them in HTML? All WordPress themes from WooThemes include shortcodes to make it easier for you to add quotes, buttons, download links and more to your blog posts. The only problem is, you’ll still have to remember all of the codes to add the shortcode features to your posts.

That’s all now changed as WooThemes has now incorporated a great visual shortcode generator into their theme framework. This was first created as a third party WordPress plugin by developer Rico Gundermann, but now it’s been baked into the latest WooFramework. All you’ll have to do is update your theme and you’ll be ready to start adding features from shortcodes in two clicks. Here’s how to do it.

Add Shortcodes the Easy Way

First, make sure your site is running a WooTheme with the latest version of the WooFramework. You can check this from the Update Framework button under your theme settings in your WordPress dashboard. If it’s out of date, click Update and seconds later, you’ll have the latest features.

Now, head over to your post editor to start writing a new post. You’ll notice a new Woo button on the visual editor toolbar. This opens a menu with options for all the different shortcodes you can use to add buttons, icons, multiple columns in your text, quotes, social media buttons, and more. Select the one you want to get started.

A box will now open with the options for that shortcode. Enter any text that will be included, choose your styles, and preview the whole thing on the right. Click Insert when you’re finished, and you’ll be able to see the actually shortcode used along with any modifications. Even if you prefer to simply enter raw code, this is a great way to discover your theme’s shortcode features.

You’ll likely find features you didn’t know your theme had. Below is a preview of the WooThemes tabbed box with a quote inside, all made with shortcodes on my secondary, WooThemes powered site http://maybring.com/.

Want to try out the Shortcode Generator without having a WooTheme installed on your site? Just head over to the WooThemes Playground where you can try out all of the WooThemes features without having to purchase and install a new theme on your site. Here’s more info about the WooThemes Playground: http://techinch.com/2010/10/08/testdrive-woothemes-for-free/

Conclusion

Shortcodes aren’t unique to WooThemes; in fact, most professional WordPress themes include them nowadays. ElegantThemes have actually included shortcode buttons in the post editor for a while now. The only problem is, they end up making the editor too wide for small screens, and there’s no easy way to remove the buttons from the editor. WooTheme’s integration just works better than any other I’ve tried previously, and having everything in a menu makes it very easy to use. Plus, since the original plugin is opensource, hopefully other developers can use it to add great shortcode integration for their themes as well!

Does your favorite WordPress theme include shortcodes, and do you find yourself using them often?

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Redirect Your WordPress.com Blog to Your Self-hosted Blog Easier Than Ever

By Matthew Guay on January 21, 2011 in Featured, Techinch

WordPress.com is a great place to get started blogging. You can get a free blog with all of WordPress’ great features, themes, and support without having to deal with hosting and the frustrations of keeping your own site secure and updated. However, if your blog grows and you decide to take it to the next level, you’ll likely want to move on to running your own site self-hosted on your own hosting account or servers. If you were blogging at WordPress.com with your own domain (yourname.com), then it’s very easy to move: just import your export file from WordPress.com, redirect your domain, and you’re all set.

However, if you were blogging with a WordPress.com domain (yourname.WordPress.com), it’s a bit trickier to move. You can still just import all of your old posts, but any links to your blog will be dead and you’ll lose much of the traffic you previously had. If you don’t want this to happen, you’ll need to redirect your WordPress.com links to your new blog. Used to, this was very difficult. You had to add your domain to WordPress.com, which itself was a difficult task, then go change your CNAME records back to your new hosting account. With the delays in DNS propagation, it could often mean your site was more or less offline for a full day. That’s no fun!

The New, Easy WordPress.com Redirect

This past year, WordPress.com added a brand new Offsite Redirect upgrade option that makes it much easier than before to redirect all of your old WordPress.com traffic to your new self-hosted blog. Your site won’t be offline at all during any of the process, and it’ll actually take less than 5 minutes to get it redirected. Plus, your old links will be HTTP 301 redirected, which will make search engines pick up on your new links and not keep your old site’s links around.

Ready to get started? To redirect your blog, just login to your WordPress.com dashboard and open the Upgrades page from the left-hand menu.

You’ll find the Site Redirect upgrade option near the bottom of the page. You can read more about the upgrade, or just click Buy Now to get started redirecting your WordPress.com blog to your new domain.

Enter the domain name you want to redirect your site to, then confirm that you entered the site correctly.

Now, just select whether you want to pay directly with your credit card or through your PayPal account.

Enter your payment info or login to your PayPal account, and then authorize and complete the transaction.

As soon as your payment goes through, you’ll see your new domain listed on your Domains page. Unlike the old domain redirect hack, this method will actually show that this domain is for a site redirect. If for some reason you decide to switch to a different domain, you can change the redirect domain from this page as well. You can also enable Auto Renew so you won’t have to remember to authorize the payment again every year.

Now, just try visiting your old WordPress.com domain. It should immediately redirect to the new domain you added. It’s that easy!

Adding the New Redirect After Using the Old Redirect

If you had previously setup your WordPress.com blog to redirect by manually adding your domain and then changing the CNAME records, you could just keep paying for your Domain Mapping upgrade every year, and it’ll continue working the same. However, it’s the same price to redirect, so I decided to switch my site to the new redirect. There’s only one problem: you can’t add a redirect to a domain you already have mapped to your account. If you try to add one, you’ll see an error like the one below.

If your domain mapping is almost ready for renewal, you could go ahead and remove the old mapping, then add the new site redirect. Just scroll down on the Domains page, choose your old yourname.wordpress.com domain as the primary one, then delete your domain mapping. Once this is done, you can add your new Domain Forwarding as above.

Conclusion

WordPress is one of the most versatile blogging and CMS systems, and I’m certain that the free WordPress.com blogs have gotten many people (such as myself!) started using WordPress over other similar tools. Now that it’s so easy to redirect your old blogs, there’s really no major difficulty to moving your blog to a self-hosted setup if you wish. And, hey, if you ever decide that managing your own hosting is too difficult, you could go back to WordPress.com just as easily and add your domain there. The choice is yours, and that’s how it ought to be!

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