Changing The Size of your posting page
Oh my, were have I been? Honestly, I have been busy with my own site which will be another resource for squidoo and many other type of people. That is not what this blog is about, but about wordpress. My goal is to write at least one entry here a week.
So today, I am going to be talking about how to change the size of the box that you post in.
Go to your settings section and go to the writing section and change the amount of lines. It is supposedly supposed to make more or less lines depending on what you want. Take a look and see if it does what you want it to do.
Settings
Outside of making sure everything is secure, you still have to make sure that your blog is setup right. Right now, I am going to cover settings here.
Take a look on your left hand side. Go down until you see settings. It there anything under there. If not, click the arrow by setting which should bring up all the other options available.
What does each do?
General basically has the blog information like title of the blog and tagline along with calendar information. That is where you can add tagline under the title if you have one. If not, make sure that you pull it out.
Writing section does gives you option for writing like in the text box, you can specify how many lines you want in the box.
Reading is where you can set it to show the blog posts as they are now or by switching the front page to a specific page you choose. You also can set how many posts show up on the front page.
Discussion is where there are a lot of settings. This is where the moderation function is located if you decide to moderate your comments that come through.
Media is where you can specify how big the images are when you put them on your blog if you have pics for your blog posts.
Privacy is where you can set your blog to be searched from search engines or not.
permalink is a setting where you can determine how you want your post urls to show up.
Essential Plugins for your WordPress Blog
This post was moved from it's original location in the SquidLog Support Forum.
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Writing a blog on SquidLog net is completely optional. If you do decide to create one, here are some basic but very useful plugins I suggest to begin with.
- Akismet: to curb comment SPAM. You need to input an API key to activate it. This key, which is essentially a passcode, can be obtained from WordPress.com. (If you don't have an account with WordPress.com you will need to sign up to receive your key). The plugin has a direct link to the appropriate page. If you do nothing else, please activate at least this one plugin as it will protect you from most comment spam.
- alternatively: WP-Spam Free. Doesn't require an API key and works also very well for most.
- All-in-one-SEO: enables you to put unique title and meta tags into every post/page. Upon activation, you will be reminded to visit the configuration page where you need to enable the plugin and fill in your basic settings.
- XML-Sitemaps: creates a sitemap for the search engine spiders. Could be helpful to get your pages indexed.
- Header-Footer: gives you easy access to the header and footer code areas where you can insert your tracking codes for stats, verification tags and the like. Some themes and plugins may already include this functionality but if not then this one does the job.
These are some of the essential basic plugins that are very popular. There may be others that do a similar job but these have always served me well. You will find them in your Plugins folder on the left hand side of your SquidLog blog dashboard. If you need help installing or configuring them just drop me a note and I can help you. Same goes for any other plugin you would like installed. If it's not on the list and you really need it just send me a note.
If you know of other cool, useful, basic plugins you can't live without feel free to share them here as well. Since this post was moved from it's initial publication on the SquidLog Support forum here are the previous comments:
drifter0658 demanded:
I need to have All In One SEO, XML-Sitemaps, and Simple Tags installed at the very least
but quickly goes on to appease us with:
Also, I have created some pretty easy to follow tutorials on these essential plug-ins if anyone is interested.
Thanks for the offer, drifter! Could you please post the tutorials here or give us a link at the very least? 
Melissa added:
I very much believe in making it [this WordPress blog] a community project. I think it would work better if its not just one person adding to it. We each can bring something different to the group and the blog.
Well said!
So, what are your bare essentials? (plugins only please)
How To Offer Email Subscriptions To Your Readers
Many folks prefer to subscribe to you blog feed via email instead of RSS readers. If you would like to offer this option here's how to do this.
Step 1: Get your feed URL
Generally, your feed will be something like this:
http://squidlog.net/yourblogname/feed/
Step 2: Burn A Feed At Feedburner.com
Sign up or in with your Google account. Enter your feed URL from Step 1 and burn a feed. Then look for the option "Email Subscriptions" under the "Publicize" tab. Copy the code snippet that you will receive here.
Step 3: Put The Signup Box On Your Blog
Head over to your blog's dashboard and go to the widget area. Put a text widget where you want your signup box to appear and paste in the code snippet you got earlier from feedburner.
If you want, you can style your signup box but it's not necessary for the functionality.
Feedburner offers some stats and other options for your feed. You can check it out at your leisure but for now you've got a functioning email opt-in form to your blog feed.
Add Email Subscription To Your Blog
Where to Start?
First off, I would like to welcome you to the Wordpress Tips and Tricks blog. This blog is a resource for squidlog to help the members of squidlog learn their way around wordpress. Some of you may know a whole lot about wordpress and some of you may not know really anything here. This place is for all walks alike.
So where shall we start? I think we need to start with the security of your blog. I could start anywhere really, but I thought that maybe I shall start talking about security and what you can do to protect your blog.
A blog's worse enemy really is spammers. They cause nothing but trouble and in most cases, they are what you would call spam bots. How do you know if they are spam bots? I know what they are when I see them. What makes me an expert in them? Years of experience seeing what they can cause on a forums. Their calling cards are always similar regardless of it they come in the form of a forum or in the form of blog comments. They usually post nonsense posts. They could be in the forum of x-rated to medicine to just gibberish. You'll know when you see it.
Squidlog does have a few plugins available to you to help prevent this from happening. Si Caption Options should be available on all blogs which should help toward the reduction of spam bots attacking your blogs with spam comments. There are other things you can do. There are also two spam plugins available to you. Akismet and spamfree are similar in nature. Neither one is better than the other. Test them out to see which one you like better. I have never used Akismet. I have always used spamfree and prefer to stay with it as it has never let me down. If you look on the left side of your screen on your wordpress dashboard. Keep going down until you find plugins. Click installed and find spam free or akismet. You then would activate it. Then you are ready to go to protect your blog and you won't get spam comment. Both plugins will tell you the same thing when it comes to spam comments. It will tell you how many that it has blocked.
Melissa