WPDigs

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Removing Semalt.com and other evil crawlers from messing with your Analytics

I have notices move and more visits from semalt crawlers and now that clients start to notice it in their stats it has become a nuisance. Putting this code at the bottom of the WordPress .htaccess file should help. It has tow other spambots I noticed on other client sites.  savetubevide and kambasoft you can add others as need be.

# Stop spambots

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*semalt\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*kambasoft\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*savetubevideo\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.semalt.com [R=301,L]

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer semalt.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer kambasoft.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer savetubevideo.com spammer=yes

Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=spammer

 

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Adding a simple WPML language switcher to a menu bar

WPML by default has many multilingual switching options, but one thing has always been missing for those who just need a bilingual site and want to switch between two languages without dropdowns or other such default widgets.

 

This code does a few things you probably only want the last part.  You will need to know the name of the registered menu in this case it’s  header-menu

Add the code to you themes functions.php

If you are using the Genesis framework the two default menu names are primary and secondary

 

// Add the new menu
function register_my_menus() {
  register_nav_menus(
    array(
      'header-menu' => __( 'Header Menu' ),
      'footer-menu' => __( 'Footer Menu' )

    )
  );
}
add_action( 'init', 'register_my_menus' );

//language switcher remove css
define('ICL_DONT_LOAD_NAVIGATION_CSS', true);
define('ICL_DONT_LOAD_LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_CSS', true);

/* WPML Main Menu */
function new_nav_menu_itemsmain($items,$args) {
    if (function_exists('icl_get_languages') && $args->theme_location == 'header-menu') {
        $languages = icl_get_languages('skip_missing=0');
        if(1 < count($languages)){
            foreach($languages as $l){
                if( ! $l['active'] ) {
                    $items = $items.'<li class="menu-item-'.$l['language_code'].'"><a href="'. $l['url'].'">'.$l['native_name'].'</a></li>';
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return $items;
}
add_filter( 'wp_nav_menu_items', 'new_nav_menu_itemsmain',10,2 );

The language switcher will be the last item on the menu and will now toggle between the two languages.

 

With some css you can move it over to the far right away from other menu items.

.menu-item-en, .menu-item-fr {float: right;}

 

switcher2 switcher1

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A little Genesis Theme SEO help for WPML

The default SEO settings in Genesis don’t show up in WPML string translation.  This function will help with that. Put it in your child theme’s functions.php file

/**
* Translates genesis options.
*
*/
function genesis_wpml_translate_options( $options, $setting ) {
// Add here options to translate
$translate_options = array(
'doctitle_sep',
'home_doctitle',
'home_description',
'home_keywords'
);

if( $setting == 'genesis-seo-settings' ) {
$_options = maybe_unserialize( get_option( 'genesis-seo-settings' ) );

foreach( $_options as $option => $option_value ) {
if( in_array( $option, $translate_options ) ) {
if( function_exists( 'icl_translate' ) ) {
// register option to translate and get translated
$translated_option_value = icl_translate( 'genesis-wpml', 'option-' . $option, $option_value );
// create new options array with translated values
$options[$option] = $translated_option_value;
}
} else {
$options[$option] = $option_value;
}
}
}

return $options;
}

// Check for WPML
if( defined( 'ICL_SITEPRESS_VERSION' ) ) {
add_filter( 'genesis_options', 'genesis_wpml_translate_options', 9, 2 );
}

You can do it the suggested xml way as well at the WPML website.

http://wpml.org/documentation/support/language-configuration-files/available-config-files/

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Special Characters and Spaces in File Names

Living in Quebec where one see accents over letters this is bound to happen. No matter how many times you repeat it to client they are bound to  upload a file or image with special characters and wonders why it doesn’t show up in certain browsers. It would be nice if WordPress would sanitize special characters by default but it doesn’t

This fixes that. Put it in your themes functions.php file and your client can name the file whatever the heck they choose..

//  try and fix file names when uploaded with special characters
function sanitize_filename_on_upload($filename) {
$ext = end(explode('.',$filename));
// Replace all weird characters
$sanitized = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9-_.]/','', substr($filename, 0, -(strlen($ext)+1)));
// Replace dots inside filename
$sanitized = str_replace('.','-', $sanitized);
return strtolower($sanitized.'.'.$ext);
}

add_filter('sanitize_file_name', 'sanitize_filename_on_upload', 10);

 

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Speed Up WordPress through .htaccess

Header unset ETag  
FileETag None

# BEGIN Expire headers  
<ifModule mod_expires.c>  
    ExpiresActive On  
    ExpiresDefault "access plus 2592000 seconds"  
    ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 2592000 seconds"  
    ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds"  
    ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds"  
    ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds"  
    ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 2592000 seconds"  
    ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 604800 seconds"  
    ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"  
    ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"  
    ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"  
    ExpiresByType application/xhtml+xml "access plus 600 seconds"
    ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 day" 
</ifModule>  
# END Expire headers

# BEGIN Cache-Control Headers  
<ifModule mod_headers.c>  
    <filesMatch "\.(ico|jpe?g|png|gif|swf)$">  
        Header set Cache-Control "public"  
    </filesMatch>  
    <filesMatch "\.(css)$">  
        Header set Cache-Control "public"  
    </filesMatch>  
    <filesMatch "\.(js)$">  
        Header set Cache-Control "private"  
    </filesMatch>  
    <filesMatch "\.(x?html?|php)$">  
        Header set Cache-Control "private, must-revalidate"  
    </filesMatch>  
</ifModule>  
# END Cache-Control Headers

# BEGIN GZIP (May not work on all servers)
# mod_gzip compression (legacy, Apache 1.3)
<IfModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file \.(html?|xml|txt|css|js)$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.*
</IfModule>
# END GZIP

# DEFLATE compression
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
# Set compression for: html,txt,xml,js,css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml application/xml application/xhtml+xml text/javascript text/css application/x-javascript
# Deactivate compression for buggy browsers
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
# Set header information for proxies
Header append Vary User-Agent
</IfModule>
# END DEFLATE

 

A very easy solution to gain some speed and increase your YSlow and Goolge site speed scoring.

 

I use this boilerplate code in the .htaccess file on all my sites.  It configures Etags, Gzips (if avaiable) sets far future expires for files and images, and more.

You can try W3 Total Cache to help with this but I find it over kill and conflicts at times with certain plugins.

WP Minify works great on many themes http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-minify/ and gives you added site speed without a massive plugin.

With it you can compress your css and javascript but make sure that they are only being used on the pages they need to be. Plugins add css and javascript pretty much everywhere even though you might only use it on the home page (for example and hompage slider) You can deregister unnecessary css and scripts in your themes functions.php.

Things are usually pretty light by this time and you may not even need to compress those files.