YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin) for WordPress is used to show a list of related content at the end of a blog post or in a widget. Out of the box it simply displays a list of related posts after your main content, yet the plugin can be highly customized through its own settings and the use of custom templates.

We like adding related posts at the end of blog posts to entice readers to consume more content as a step in our conversion funnel. We have found through studying our stats in Google Analytics that conversions on our site (like opt-ins, affiliate clicks, etc) are split among visits with one page view and visits with multiple page views.

In simple terms, less than half of our visitors opt-in on the first page they land on. The rest read more content first. Displaying related content is an easy way to give visitors what they want.

Like I said, YARPP can be used without any configuring, but I don’t recommend it. The defaults are not the prettiest and with a few simple changes, the display of your related posts can be greatly improved.

Here is a step by step list for our standard configuration of YARPP (after the plugin has been installed and activated):

See a Standard Configuration for the YARPP WordPress Plugin

With 2012 officially off to a start, one thing to remember that many people forget to do at the beginning of a new year is to change the copyright date on their websites.

WordPress sites can be built in various ways, so depending on how your site is built, there are a few ways that copyright dates are handled.

If your website has the copyright date hard coded into WordPress theme files (most likely footer.php) you can replace the current year with < ?php echo date("Y"); ?> and the copyright date will change to the current year and change again automatically next year.

Always remember to make a backup copy of your theme before making any changes to your theme files.

More Reminders About Automatically Changing the Copyright Date on Your Website

This past week a client from way back reached out to us because her WordPress website got hacked — and it wasn’t a basic, easy-to-fix hack.

She had several websites all in one shared hosting account running out-dated versions of WordPress (Some were running WordPress 2.7!) and the entire account was obliterated!

Naughty, adult-only links and content were injected into her sites and a lot of malicious code was added too. By the time she contacted us and we took a look at the damage, Google had already blacklisted more than one of the sites!

If you have your main “money” website in a hosting account with other websites to save a few bucks, I highly encourage you to rethink this approach.

Learn How We Backup, Protect, And Restore When Needed, Our WordPress Site

Recently, a client with a custom WordPress site we built wanted to display different text in a single sidebar widget on each top level page so when a visitor clicked through the navigation, the sidebar content in that one particular widget would change.

This can be accomplished in many ways, but one solution is through the use of the WordPress plug-in Widget Logic.

The plugin gives every widget an extra field where you can use WordPress’ conditional tags to control what page(s) your widgets appear on.

Learn How to Display Different Widgets By Page on Your WordPress Website

A blogsite, or simply a blog, is simply another version of the word weblog. A weblog is a site that is usually focused on one specific topic and consistently posts fresh, new content. It is frequently updated, used sort of like an online diary, and usually contains more personal commentary than a regular website.

Blogs, with features like trackbacks, pingbacks, and leave a comment, offer a whole new level of interaction with site visitors, allowing your content to start and participate in online conversations. The archiving options (by date or category) that blogs offer are also a great way to organize articles on websites.

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