WordPress Archives - Page 13 of 18

Q&A: How can I prevent WordPress from automatically installing updates?

Posted on November 6, 2018

Question from Edwin G.: I’m really upset Rick. I checked my email this morning and found that both of my WordPress blogs had been updated to the latest version during the night without my knowledge or consent. I don’t like that!

I’ve had problems in the past with WordPress core updates breaking my blogs so now I always update my blogs one at a time, then check to make sure everything still works before updating the next blog.

Is there a setting in WordPress that I can change to prevent it from installing updates automatically? If there is, I can’t find one.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

How to keep your WordPress blog free of broken links

Posted on October 28, 2018

Update: Unfortunately, it’s been discovered that the “Broken Link Checker” plugin mentioned in this post has a very serious security flaw and the plugin’s author has chosen not to fix it.

Therefore I can no long recommend the use of this plugin.

I now recommend using the web-based broken link checking tool on this page.

Note: The original post continues below…

Broken links are a blogger’s worst nightmare. In addition to providing your blog’s visitors with a poor user experience, they also give your blog a bad reputation with the major search engines, and your search rankings can suffer as a consequence.

Even worse, if you sell advertising on your blog, broken links also make your ad space less valuable.

Tracking down broken links used to involve a boatload of manual labor. We had to visit each page and post and click on all the links to see if they were still valid. But now a nifty WordPress plugin called Broken Link Checker makes it easy to find all the broken links on your entire blog without lifting a finger. [Read more…]

Q&A: What’s the best way to hide the date/time on the comments on my WordPress blog?

Posted on October 21, 2018

Question from Keisha P.: I write a fairly popular WordPress blog and I occasionally change the dates on some of my older posts to put them back onto the first page of the blog.

But that’s causing a problem because the comments on those posts still have the old dates/times on them. I’m afraid my readers will notice the old dates and realize that the posts aren’t really new.

I’m using the Genesis framework and Executive Pro child theme on this blog. I know I can remove the code that displays the comments’ date and time from the Genesis module but I’m hoping there’s a better way. Do you know of one?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: How do I redirect all 404 errors to the home page in WordPress?

Posted on June 13, 2018

Question from Seth P.: I have a WordPress blog that has several missing posts that I’ve deleted because they contained outdated information that was either incorrect or no longer relevant.

My blog now has lots of requests going to the 404 error page because those posts no longer exist.

I’d like to redirect all of those requests to my blog’s home page instead of displaying the 404 error page. How can I do that?

Ricks’s Answer: [Read more…]

How I enabled SSL (https) encryption on RicksDailyTips and my other WordPress blogs for free!

Posted on June 5, 2018

I have two questions for you:

1 – Do you have a self-hosted WordPress blog that receives a lot of visitors from Google every month?

2 – Do you earn money with that blog?

If the answer to one or both of those questions is yes then you need to make sure your blog is secured with SSL (https) encryption asap!

If your blog doesn’t have any sign-up forms or request sensitive information from your visitors you might be thinking it doesn’t need to be a “secure” site.

Well, that used to be the case, but no longer. [Read more…]