WordPress Database Junk

WordPress Database Contains a Lot of Junk

WordPress stores a lot of junk in the database. WordPress news feeds, theme and plugin update release notices and information, old plugin and theme stuff from removed plugins and themes that don’t clean out their data; and that’s before getting to the useful junk like post revisions and other data useful to WordPress users.

Storing junk in the database is nothing new to WordPress, as a .org support submission from 4 years ago shows.

I noticed my WordPress database was excessive in size, found it padded with 7,000 lines of WordPress “news.” Why is this stuff in my database, and how do I get it out? wordpress.org/support/topic/database-padded-with-junk-content

Interestingly, no-one bothered to reply to the submission.

Unnecessary Data Stored in Database

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Website Taxonomy Overhauled

Web Site Tags Examined and Updated

The past couple of weeks have seen the taxonomy used on graphicline.co.za completely revamped. Unused or redundant tags were deleted (except for a few that remain for planned articles), header images added along with a short description of the tagged content and a meta description and a list of tags added to the site.

Search Indexing for Tag Archives

Mostly, tag archive pages are “noindexed” for search engines to avoid duplication problems. During the overhaul I was able to weed out the ones that were still indexed – created before I set the system to automatically noindex new tags using the Drupal Meta Tags Quick module.

Some tag archives were selected for search engine indexing, being careful to avoid those with very similar results from being indexed as well. Indexing taxonomy (tags and categories) can create really big problems when it comes to content duplication and search engines.

Views Reloaded

Revamping a Drupal User Guide

Some time ago I added a number of Drupal video guides from several sources to pages on one of my websites. These were really only intended for my use while getting to grips with Drupal CMS. Then they were forgotten.  Recently I was Googling something and lo and behold, one of these pages was on page 1 SERP. (When I added the videos, I didn’t yet have the meta-tags module to include “noindex” for robots, so Google indexed the lot).

But these pages had no content;  most just had the video, either embedded using YouTube or in iframes from vimeo. Seeing as I am in the process of reworking a lot of the web site, sorting out the taxonomy (tags) and adding headings and descriptions to these, as well as undertaking an appearance overhaul of pages showing teasers e.g. blog pages, article summary pages and so on, I decided it was time to do something useful to the numerous pages of Drupal video guides. The collection is being updated and re-published in the form of a Drupal ‘book content type’ at Drupal Guidebook (graphicline.co.za).

Key Words and Keywords

Confusing the Key Words

Why is there confusion about key words and what they are? I refer to content key words or terms. Perhaps the cause is the similarity perceived between the key word term for SERP and meta keywords. Possibly we (webmasters and other industry specialists) are to blame – perhaps we should have used a more accurate phrase to describe key words in content. KEY PHRASE or KEY SEARCH TERM is a more accurate identity for the idea of key words.

Key Search Term

Key Search Term perfectly describes the idea behind key words, “a group of words that a searcher will use to find information”.

The idea of using key words is producing an article ‘optimised’ for the best possible results in search engine results for an intended key term. In which case the article must be about the key phrase used, or the key term must be about the SUBJECT of the article. How Should Key Words be Used in Content extends this discussion in more detail.

Changing WordPress Permalink Structure

If you want to change the WordPress permalink structure of your blog or website there are a few things to consider first, and preparations to make before proceeding

The structure of Permalinks WordPress uses is easy to change; selecting a new option and clicking the radio button will take care of it for you. But what is the effect on SEO, what about all the links from other blogs and referrers?

You need to make sure search engines will still be able to find the content, and backlinks from the thousands (hopefully) of sites linking to yours will still send visitors to the correct page.

Here are a few guidelines that will reduce the loss of search engine ranking, and take care of the backlinks.

WordPress Page Categories and Tags

Category and Tag Taxonomy for WordPress Pages

Category and Tag Post taxonomy is familiar to all WordPress users, WordPress.com or self hosted systems. WordPress doesn’t have category or tag page taxonomy built-in. Several plugins are available from WordPress.org to extend these taxonomy terms to pages, closing the gap for WordPress to become a fully fledged website content management system.

One problem with these plugins has been the need to do some hard coding to allow these plugins to work properly. This is no longer the case. The latest version of Ninja Page Categories and Tags plugin now works without hard coding.

Ninja Page Categories and Tags

Ninja Page Categories and Tags adds the taxonomy to pages. When editing pages categories and tags can be selected the same way they are for Posts. The plugin can be downloaded free from WordPress.org.

The latest version 1.2.1 released on 14 February works without any hard coding or modification to theme template files, a better solution than having to custom code your theme. Theme changes will also be easier as a result as there’s no longer a need to add the code to a new theme.

osCommerce e-store

WPOnlineStore e-store for Graphicline

Finally, after several days trying e-commerce solutions, I am going to use osCommerce and WordPress for the PC store with the WPOnlineStore system.

As I mentioned, the Drupal 7 option requires several unstable modules; after running up a development Drupal system, there were clearly going to be some problems with the plugins that I don’t intend to spend time fixing.

WordPress commerce systems tried included WP E-Commerce, wpStoreCart and finally osCommerce which worked out the best of the lot, and is the easiest to set up as well requiring just a shortcaode added to a single page to create a full online store.

Click image for larger view

osCommerce is highly configurable with lots of functionality, and provided the appearance I was looking for anyway. A WordPress theme, probably Mystique, will be used on the front end; it looks good on the testing server, and matches some of our other themes (as well as this blog).

The Mystique theme is the Ajax powered version 3.1 from Digital Nature which also offers numerous options. Possibly using this theme is overkill as the WordPress part of the production store will be very basic, not much more than a front end for the shop.

The latest WordPress version will be used, version 3.3

osCommerce SSL Support

Another useful feature, osCommerce supports SSL (secure Socket Layer) adding security to the site for financial transactions. Although not required at the moment as only PayPal and Online transfer payment methods will e used, should the need to accept credit cards directly arise, the basics are already in place.

Other e-commerce systems tested:

Fix the Panda

Yes you can recover from Panda 2.5

If you have a site or blog that took a big hit from the latest Google algorithm update, don’t panic (Yet!).

It may take time, but it can be done. Now is the time to pay attention to basics. In some ways if your site was one that got hit very hard, possibly even de-listed, you could actually have an advantage going forward. You can now take drastic action to fix up all the errors and problems that accumulated over the years, or even months…

Broken links and missing content no longer has any relevance. Therefore you can get rid of bad content, plagiarised content, duplicate content, spam, and anything else that has no value, or may be damaging the site’s reputation with the search engine.

Be Absolutely Ruthless

Look at every piece of content on your site. Be absolutely ruthless. If it lacks quality, or does not add value – DELETE it now. If you really must have that trashy article, or near duplicate content, then add Robots Meta tags noindex, nofollow” /> These tags are used in different ways to limit what search engines do – “noindex” tells SE’s to ignore the page, “nofollow” tells it to ignore outgoing links. (For more information about these meta tags and others – Metatags.info has plenty of information).

Be particularly ruthless using the “noindex” term – why have all the junk pages indexed by Google? Including “noindex” will stop Google from adding these irrelevant pages to their index database.

“Nofollow” Meta tags: Use this as well on any page (or other content TYPE) that could get your site into trouble. If you have an RSS feed – this can really cause problems (read this article Too Many Backlinks are Bad News). Placing the Robots nofollow meta tag in the HEAD part of the page containing the RSS feed will stop search engines from following all outgoing links from that page (CMS users add this to feed aggregators, feed categories etc).

Voice Dictation for Web Content

Creating Web Content by Dictation

Using ones voice to create content for websites and blogs opens doors for business executives to provide a ready stream of new and fresh content for their company website and blogs.

Content can be recorded using one of the many dictation devices available, or even a smart phone, pda, or many ordinary cell phones. Business people who don’t have time to add written content to websites can simply give their voice recordings to a transcriptionist, who will convert the spoken words to text. The text is then provided to the website content manager or even the company’s in house web operator. Result – new content on the site.

Consider the web site content that can be prepared; product reviews, descriptive articles, news releases and more.

Voice Dictation for Web Content Service:

Graphicline today launched the pilot of a new service turning voice dictation into web site content with a product overview outlining the benefits of using a comprehensive voice dictation for web site content creation A collaborative effort with Intelligent Verbatim’s transcription service offers a full spectrum web content management system for business clients. Customers can send their recording in any of the standard audio formats (e.g. mp3, wma, aiff, wav) to Graphicline (Johannesburg) or Intelligent Verbatim (Cape Town).

The supplied audio will be transcribed, optimised for keyword useage and edited if required, then returned to the customer for approval. Once the final text copy is accepted, Graphicline will add it the clients website or blog along with any required graphics.

This product is the first of an upcoming range from Graphicline’s Holistic Web Management Service.

CMS Website for graphicline.co.za

New Look for graphicline.co.za

Drupal CMS Website

Graphicline switched over from a static HTML website to a Drupal CMS system. The new look site went live at about 16h00 SAST on 18 August 2011. Regular visitors may remember we are in the process of construction a client area on the site ‘The Zone’. The Zone is the basis for the new site, and was migrated to become our main website entry point. Drupal CMS First Overview.

CMS Website Theme:

For the present a stock Drupal theme is in use for the site. Eventually I will look to a more customised style; however that is some time in the future. Before then, there is much ‘backroom’ work needed to get things working the way they are required.

HTML not replaced;

The existing html content remains in place and available. The static site will be fully indexed into the CMS Website.