Archives for March 2009

Excluding Categories in WordPress Sidebar Widget

This is a short Youtube video demo on how you can exclude categories from you side bar if using the sidebar widget. This requires us to edit the widgets.php file instead of the sidebar.php file. More how to videos can be found at the Traffic is Gold Youtube channel.

Similar Videos:
Excluding Pages In The WordPress Sidebar

We also announce our videos on Twitter, you can follow us on Twitter here: @trafficisgold.

Step by Step code credit goes to Lance Hoff

Step 1:
Download widgets.php from here: wp-includes/widgets.php

Step 2:
Find this line of code:
$d = $options[$number][‘dropdown’] ? ‘1’ : ‘0’;

under it palce this line of code: $ex = “1,2,3”;
(NOTE: change out 1,2,3 with the actual Categories you want to exclude.)

So all together it looks like this:
$d = $options[$number][‘dropdown’] ? ‘1’ : ‘0’;
$ex = “1,2,3”;

Step 3:

Find
$cat_args = array(‘orderby’ => ‘name’, ‘show_count’ => $c, ‘hierarchical’ => $h);

Replace
$cat_args = array(‘orderby’ => ‘name’, ‘show_count’ => $c, ‘hierarchical’ => $h, ‘exclude’ => $ex );

Step 4:
Save the file and uplaod back to it’s original location

You are done!!

Again thanks to Lance for the code and his step by step blog post. Please visit the site here.

What is #followfriday on Twitter?

Twitter is a very powerful instant communication tool. It can be used for fun, business or a combination of both. I wanted to answer the question; What is #followfriday? So here is a quick video showing you what follow Friday is and how to participate.

Follow me on Twitter.
Follow me on Youtube.

Hope that helps!

Google’s Vince Update – A Question of Trust

During January/February (2009) Google made an update to their search algorithm. Many in the search community are calling this update a Big Brand push. Meaning the change in the algorithm has helped big Brands achieve high rankings for certain keywords.

Matt Cutts of Google produced a video to discuss the update: “I would not call it an update, I would call it just a simple change.” – Matt Cutts

Further reading on the topic can be found here:
Search Engine Land
SEO Book

Twitter Page Updates – Widgets

My Twitter account has been very buggy today. It looks like they are rolling out some changes. Just noticed a new widget section on the right side navigation. Not sure if we will get the search box and trends I reported on earlier.

New widget link:

twitter_updates.gif

New Twitter Navigation Bar?

Is Twitter rolling out a new nav bar? My twitter account now has a trend link and a search box in the top navigation. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=twitter+navigation

new_twitter_nav_bar.jpg