Wordpress Hack #5: 10 Ways to Improve Navigation
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4,514 views
This is Day 5 of “30 Wordpress hacks in 30 Days”!
One of my Wordpress pet peeves is not being able to find what I want quickly. I like options. Lots of options. Many blog owners are not web designers by trade, so basic “usability” techniques are not usually something they consider. While the “blog” paradigm has been around many years now, sometimes I think that some basic usability principles for web sites have been lost. Too much is taken for granted. The average web user doesn’t know Wordpress from a printing press. Keep this in mind every time you tweak your blog. With that in mind, today you will learn how to hack and customize the following navigation points within your blog based on this tutorial:
- Breadcrumbs
- Next and Previous Links: Pagination
- Next and Previous Links: Single Page
- More Links and Excerpts
- Multi-Page Navigation
- Related Posts
- Most Viewed Posts
- Most Popular Posts
- Category Images
- Sidebar Options
So - let’s get started! Click to go to the next page below…
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
This post has multiple pages...
- 10 Ways to Improve Navigation
- Page 2 - Adding Breadcrumbs to Wordpress Navigation
- Page 3 - How to Hack Ugly Wordpress Next and Previous Links
- Page 4 - Wordpress Next and Previous Links for Single Pages
- Page 5 - Wordpress More Links and Excerpts
- Page 6 - How to Achieve Multi-Paged Post Navigation in Wordpress
- Page 7 - How to Add Related Posts After Content in Wordpress
- Page 8 - How to Display the Most Viewed Posts in Wordpress
- Page 9 - How to Show Most Popular Posts in Wordpress
- Page 10 - How to Assign and Show Category Images in Wordpress
- Page 11 - Sidebar Navigation Options in Wordpress
- View All
Tags: navigation, plugin, wordpress-hacks
April 18th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Thank you very much ! I’m glad you appreciate the Category Icons plugin.
Submarines last blog post..Latest version installed but WordPress says it can be updated
April 19th, 2008 at 4:20 am
You !!Rock I Am in search of these Post ..
Thannks for putting such a nice hack Here
Thanks
Vevin.Com
Vevins last blog post..View Locked Albums and Increase Yours Fans
April 19th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Very nice demonstration of breaking a post up into multiple pages.
This is something I love about wordpress also.
I post ebooks (old non-copyright books) and breaking them up into chapters, gives a lot of pages. Adding a few keyword links back to your home page or a page you want to push in the ranks is a great trick. You provide some useful content that is unique and add some link love back to your other pages.
I usually just make a “table of contents” and paste it in the beginning of the first page or on each page. I’ve noticed google likes this. Google wouldn’t really crawl the next pages that much until I started adding this. The plugin you suggest makes it quicker and adds more functions. I’ve downloaded it and will have to play![=)]](http://www.jtpratt.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/4.gif)
I am noticing that your title tag for each of the 11 pages for this post are all the same, does the plugin allow you to change that for each page? I know we can change the heading titles, but didn’t see anything about the meta tag. . . that would be another big bonus.
thx,
Charles
PS. . .
I’ve moded one of my sites, thus the earlier comments here go to a non-site now….
If you like…if easy, you can remove my old email and name (Charles linked to whateveryoneneedstoknow). Can’t keep up with all the sites.
April 19th, 2008 at 10:55 am
I did you one short with my last comment. I found a hack I was searching for, but it seems there is quite a little bit more to be found here… so I had to say: awesome lists! I just subscribed to I’ll back for more![=[]](http://www.jtpratt.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/11.gif)
Remkuss last blog post..Premium WordPress Theme: Morning After
April 19th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
You didn’t mention the sitemap plugin by Dagon Design. I think it makes it really easy to find all your posts sorted out by category.
I wrote about it and you can see it in action on my blog.
http://www.marketing-tools-review.com/blog/2007/06/favorite-wordpress-plugin-of-the-day-3-sitemap-generator/
April 19th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Thanks for the comment, Hock. I didn’t mention that plugin because I don’t think it’s very good, and also because it doesn’t belong on this hack about navigation. That’s more of an archive page, which was Wordpress Hack #2.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:59 am
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April 21st, 2008 at 11:23 am
Hock, thanks for the idea.
I checked out dagon design’s sitemap generator after seeing your comment here.
It works well for a noob like me.
I guess JT has two of us that like it![=[]](http://www.jtpratt.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/11.gif)
I just posted on JT’s other article about 404 pages. I’m using the sitemap generator on that page also. It gives everything for the lost visitor to find their way again.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Charles
Acupunctures last blog post..What are True Acupuncture points?
May 1st, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Just a heads up Breadcrumb Navigation XT, the page you linked to, is obsolete as of January, 2008. Breadcrumb NavXT replaced it. My server sometimes crashes
but you shouldn’t be seeing HTTP 500 messages. It’s probably safest to link to the wordpress.org plugin directory page for it, located at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/breadcrumb-navxt/ since that’s where I’m actually hosting it now.
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
[...] April 19, 2008 by Johnny I was just checking out JT Pratt’s page on using the nextpage tag in WordPress. You can checkout the his post at making more money blogging wordpress hacks using nextpage. [...]