Creating a Sitemap in WordPress using the Thesis Theme enables your visitors to see all of the content on your WordPress Blog, which is very useful.  If they can’t find what they are looking for, your web vistors can always refer to the sitemap.  This type of sitemap page  is not to be confused with a Google XML sitemap, which is something different entirely.  The latter is used for the search engines to let them know what pages on your website you want to include in the search engines.

This particular video is put out by 4Blogger.com who seems to have the only video ( at least all I could find) showing you how to add this type of blog sitemap).  Although I appreciate the effort on the part of 4Blogger.com, I do wish they would go slower in their tutorials.  I find his videos a bit hard to follow.

Somehow I actually got this sitemap to work once using this video.  However, the second time I watched it, I must have done something wrong, and  I got a bad error which locked me out of my WordPress blog.  I actually had to go into my Cpanel and then into MySql, find the code I but in one of the database tables and remove it.  Only then did the site let me log in again.  Please don’t make this same mistake! Before you modify this file, FTP into your host server, locate the custom_functions.php file and drag a copy to your desktop. This way if something goes wrong, you can restore the file easily and try again. If you get this error with no backup, you will not be happy at all.

/* SAVE THIS IN CUSTOM_FUNCTIONS.PHP FILE */
remove_action('thesis_hook_archives_template', 'thesis_archives_template');
add_action('thesis_hook_after_post', 'custom_sitemap');

/* SITEMAP AND ARCHIVES PAGES */
function custom_sitemap() {
if (is_page('204')) { ?>
<div>
<div>
<h3>Pages:</h3>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_pages('title_li='); ?>
</ul>
<h3>By Month:</h3>
<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>
</ul>
<h3>By Category:</h3>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories('sort_column=name&title_li='); ?>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<h3>Last 50 posts:</h3>
<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives('type=postbypost&limit=50'); ?>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<?php } }

Now you can style your site-map page by using the below css code. Copy and paste it in custom.css file.

/* SAVE THIS IN CUSTOM.CSS FILE */
/* custom  sitemap and archives page */
.custom .sitemap h3 {margin-top: 0;}
.custom .sitemap ul {font-size: .85em; }
.custom .sitemapl { float: left; width: 30%;}
.custom .sitemapr { float: right; width: 70%;}

The above code I have used to archive by categories, pages and posts. The  font-size and location for the above you can place any where in the page by adjusting site-map. If you need only posts in site-map you can remove all others like page, categories and etc also use width as 100%.

The young man is the video does a good job of showing you how to modify the default 404 page that comes with Thesis 1.8. Although I can appreciate the layed back feel of it, the default Thesis 404 page is a bit layed back for websites requiring something more conservative and professsional. The default message that says something like “Gnarly Dude You 404′d It” or something like that.

Here is a message that I presently use

We’re sorry, the web page that you are looking for cannot be found. Please check the URL again in your browser’s address bar, or contact the admin if you feel that this is a mistake. Other reasons that this page is showing are shown below:

• Page no longer exists
• Page is is currently under construction
• Page is secured to administrators, only

We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Here is the html code. You can paste it into your Thesis Hook plugin

<p>We're sorry, the web page that you are looking for cannot be found. Please check the URL again in your browser's address bar, or contact the admin if you feel that this is a mistake. Other reasons that this page is showing are shown below:</p>
<ul>
 <li>Page no longer exists</li>
 <li>Page is is currently under construction</li>
 <li>Page is secured to administrators, only</li>
</ul>
<p>We are sorry for the inconvenience.</p>

Below is a video I found on youtube.com that explains how to modify the footer in WordPress.  The footer text in WordPress can be changed relatively easily. Generally, this area at the bottom of the page is used to display copyright authority of blog as well to display links, a sitemap or privacy policy for a blog or website.

By default, every WordPress theme comes with a pre-formatted and written footer which you need to change afterward. You can edit the footer text by editing footer.php file of your blog or install some plugin to replace the existing text with the new one. In case of thesis, its very easy to achieve with the help of custom file editor.

Overall, this video is good, but please refer to the text below before you try and make this modification.  Although it’s a pretty easy mod, I do suggest that you create a backup of the custom_functions.php file in Thesis before you try and make this modification.   Creating a backup of anything you are about to modify is just a smart thing to do.  10 years as a web designer has taught me the true value of backups. 

The file you are looking for in your WordPress installation is in the “custom”  folder in your WordPress installation on your host server.  Use a tool like Filezilla to locate and FTP this file back to your desktop.  Once logged in, find and open the following folders:

wpcontent  >> themes  >> thesis_18  >> custom 

How to change the footer

What you will need to do to make this modification is to copy, then paste the two hooks, located at the bottom of the page ( yellow boxes) into the custom_functions.php file of your Thesis theme.  Both of these scripts go into the custom_functions.php file, one script on top of the other.  Put the top script in first. To locate custom_functions.php in WordPress:

• Log to your WordPress blog
• Go to your Dashboard
• Clicking on the “Thesis” link in the left column
• Select “Custom File Editor”.

You should now see a white box with “custom.css” selected by default.  Here you can select custom_functions.php. Then click “Edit Selected File.”

Safety Precaution!

“Whoa … hang on there, Hoss.  If I were you, I’d make that backup of custom_functions.php  that we talked about earier, if you haven’t already.  Here’s why:  If you make an error somewhere, you will get a bad error and you may not be able to access your website.  You will then scream out “Oh My GOD!” or “Someone just KILL ME!” or something worse.

Unfortunately, many of the tutorials you will find online, especially online or on youtube.com, assume you are a Web Design and Programming Guru, going  entirely too fast, especially for beginners.  Furthermore, most of them fail to warn you that bad things may happen if you are not sure what you are doing.  Heck, I have been doing this for 10 years and even I have an occasional brain fart and do it.  Everyone does.

The best thing is to FTP a copy of the file back to your desktop first.  This is a good practice so matter what you are modifying, especially when using CMS type editors.  They can be very unforgiving.  Even the WordPress editor will wipe out your code in a Flash, and leave you looking at a blank page.

Anyway, if you have a backup, and things don’t go as planned, you can always overwrite the buggy file. If you decide to just ” Wing It” with no backup, and you get an error, you may have to do what I did:  go into the mysql database in cpanel and manually extract the extra code that you put into the custom_functions.php file from the table.  Believe me, I have “been there, done that!”  It’s all part of being a web guy.  Thats why I have grey hair thats falling out.

Here is the code to copy/paste in

On, now that you have a backup copy, you are ready to proceed. Go ahead and mouse over this and copy it. Then paste that bad boy into your custom_functions.php file at the very bottom.

remove_action('thesis_hook_footer', 'thesis_attribution');
add_action('thesis_hook_footer', 'add_new_footer');

Last, you can insert text, links, or whatever html code you want  below in  place of the middle line of code, where you see  <p>Put your footer text and links here</p>.  When you are done, paste the code below into custom_functions.php just below the code you already pasted in there, and you should be done!

function add_new_footer () { ?>
<p>Put your footer text and links here</p>
<?php }

How to move the Thesis menu below the header

This is a good video that will show you how to move the default Thesis menu, which is located above the header, and relocate it below the header using the Thesis Open Hookplugin.

Indexed: When a page or website has been indexed, this mean that it has been included in a given search engines database.  The process takes place when one of the search engine crawlers or spiders ( a robotic program which visits your site)  and then includes your pages in it’s search engine database along with all of the other websites.  A example of this is Googlebot, Google s search engine robot.  This “bot” finds your website, crawls through the pages and then includes the content in its database.

Long Tail Derivative Keywords: A keyword phrase that actually contains the theme keyword phrase.  For example, let’s say your company is a pawn broker that buys gold for a living.  You’ve already done some keyword research, and want to try and hit under the keyword phrase:  “sell gold”.  An example might be “sell gold jewelry”, or “where to sell gold in Tampa, Florida.”

Long Tail Keywords: A keyword phrase that contains the theme keyword, plus and additional word or words.  The  more words, the longer the tail.  These are especially useful in finding niche keyword phrases that your competition is not aggressively pursuing.

Organic Traffic: Traffic that comes from a free  search engine, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.  This is not the same as “pay per click” or other paid advertising.  Instead your website, is indexed in a database along with many other websites. The more optimized your website is, the higher it should rank among other websites competing for top position under the same given search.

Semantic Long Tail Keywords: These keywords do not contain the theme keyword, but are still semantically related.  For example, supposed you owned a store that sells Rolex watches.   A semantic long tail keyword might be “Swiss watches”.  These are words that Google sees as related.

Theme Keyword: The main keyword for your website.  If this were a tree, this would be the trunk.  Lets say you own a jewelry store, and are trying to attract some organic traffic.  In this case, your theme keywords might be “jewelry” or “jewelry store.”

Category Keywords:   Additional keywords that build upon the theme keyword for your website.   If you owned a jewelry store that sell fine jewelry,  a category keyword might be  “diamonds” or “ladies rings”

To find good, Long Tail Keywords, use these settings in the Keyword Research Tool in Market Samurai, and refer to the video below.  Note: A few things may have changed in the newest release that are not in the video.

1. Create a New Project
2. Add your keyword, then click  Create
3. Click:  Keyword Research icon
   
4. Keyword Sources:  The check box for  Google Search Keyword should be selected. Also, make sure that Include Additional is selected in the drop down.
   
5. Click:   Generate Keywords button
6. Click:  Analyze Keywords button
7. Under Organic: Phrase-To-Broad (PBR), click plus sign, if needed.  Use a low number like 15. Also, under SEO Traffic (SEOT), click the plus sign, if needed.  Use a low number like 10
8. Competition: Under SEO Comp ( SEOC), click plus sign, if needed, and type in 30000 (thirty thousand)
9. You can uncheck any other sections such related to google adwords if you wish for now.
   
10. Click:  Analyze Keywords button

Notes:

• SEOT is the number of clicks that one could expect to get if they were able to get the #1 position in Google under this exact long tail keyword phrase.
• SEOC refers to the competition, and the total number of web pages globally that mention a specific keyword term in the same (phrase) word order.
• PBR refers to the percentage of phrase match searches out of broad match searches for this keyword.  The higher the percentage is here, the better.

How I Get My DotNetNuke Sites To Run So Fast 

One of the most common questions that I get via the forums on this site, or via e-mail is “How do you get your sites to run so fast”.  Although not perfect, my sites typically run a bit faster than your average DotNetNuke sites.  Previously I have kept the exact specifics of my changes to myself, however, with a litle encouragement from the community I have decided to share the full context of the changes that I make to a default DotNetNuke installation to get better baseline performance, as well as extra items that I do to help when I really need that “boost”.

Overview

First of all I want to start out by saying that a lot of the information that is displayed here can be found in previous blog postings.  Posts such as DotNetNuke Host Settings Explained, DotNetNuke Scheduler Explained, DotNetNuke Performance Settings Explained, and Simple DotNetNuke Performance Enhancements.  Are good starting points for some of the detail behind my recommended changes.

The following changes are simply the configurations that I have found to be the best “baseline” configurations.  Consideration is needed in regards to the site setup, update frequency, traffic, hosting environment and users to ensure that you have the proper setup for your specific environment.  I will discuss the settings section by section, simply noting the changes that are made.  Please reference the specific “Detail” document for more information.

DISCLAIMER: Follow these recommendations as a guide only, I am not responsible for any effects of implementing these changes.

Host -> Host Settings Changes

The first place I visit is the Host Settings page.  There are a number of key updates and changes needed in this section.  Again, only changes are noted here. 

 Appearance

In this section I uncheck the “Show Copyright Credits” box

Advanced -> Authentication Settings

In this section I uncheck “Enabled” for any provider that will not be used in the portal, typically the LiveId and OpenId providers

Advanced -> Performance Settings

In this section I change the “Module Caching Method” to Memory.  the “Performance Setting” to HeavyCaching.  And the “Compression Setting” to GZip Compression.

 Advanced -> Other Settings

In this section I change the “Scheduler Mode” to Timer.  I enable the “Event Log Buffer” and I disable the “Auto-Sync File System” option

These are the most common Host Settings changes that I complete.  Depending on the site I’ll make a few other small edits.

Host -> Scheduler Changes

The biggest change that I make here is to change the “SearchEngineScheduler” task to run typically once every 12/24 hours.  This reduces a big load on the server.

Other Changes

From a DotNetNuke configuration change that is all that I modify.  Overall those changes typically result in very noticable performance improvements, but many times it just isn’t enough to keep the sites running as smooth as possible.  So depending on the situation I have a number of other items that I work with.

Regular Purging of Event Log

As most people that have used DotNetNuke have discovered the EventLog table can become a very troublesome hinderance on the performance side of a site.  Enabling the Event Log Buffer helps reduce the effects of a large EventLog, however, the best policy is to clean the EventLog on a regular basis.

I do this one of two ways.  On my own sites I have an SSIS package within SQL Server that truncates the table every 24 hours.  On client sites I utilize my Scheduled SQL Jobs module to keep a 7 day rolling history of the EventLog data.  The key here is that we MUST keep the event log small.

Skin Selection and Menu Provider

The next item of consideration is a multi-part consideration.  I focus on finding CSS based skin layouts that utilize third party menu components such as Telerik and Css NavMenu.  With a simple skin change to sites I have noticed page load times that have reduced by over 50%. 

Finding a good designer that creates well laid-out skins with third party menu providers has been a key performance enhancement, at least in the page.  I have NOT benchmarked these numbers though since DNN 4.6.2, so the core menu provider might have better performance.

Compression/Caching Modules

As a last step, if I really need to get the most performance out of a site I will tend to lean towards Snapsis PageBlaster as a good option.  I currently use PageBlaster on this site only and have had very good luck with it, although when configuring the module you must be careful to test all functionality first.  This was another change that once implemented I noticed very visible performance improvements.

Summary

There you have it, that is my secret trick to improving DotNetNuke site performance!  Many people charge a lot of money to make these simple performance tweaks and I just laid them all out on the table for you fre of charge.  Feel free to share your comments below, if you have questions please visit the forums