Decoder Ring Download for WordPress
Posted on February 29, 2008
Filed Under Projects, Uncategorized, Web Page Design, Web Pages, Wordpress |
You gotta love FREE! Right! Ok, here’s what we’re going to do. First we’ll do the virtual installation, and then test the installation to make sure it worked ok. That’s the easy part. Next I’ll try to explain how this amazing installation works. To say it is out of this world is an understatement. Once we have your FREE decoder ring installed we will do some tweaking. This really isn’t necessary because it comes installed with over 30 possibilities already, but everybody wants to customize things. Then we will really dig deep and make it a Super-Duper Decoder Ring. Then finally I will take a look at how this effects your search engine optimization in a positive way.
The WordPress Virtual Installation of the Decoder Ring
This sounds a lot harder than it really is. First make sure your computer is on (that was a joke!). Relax and sit very still. Now close your eyes and read this at the same time. (sorry, another joke!). Ok, relax and think about your WordPress blog, get that image in your mind. No, Not my great blog, your blog! Ok, with that image in your mind, look at the tip of your nose. If you were completely relaxed the installation took place. Thats all there is to it! Go ahead and laugh. It’s people like you who have installed this thing over a thousand times on my WordPress blog!
Testing your Decoder Ring virtual WordPress installation
Ok, your going to have to go to the administartion Panel of your WordPress blog. Not mine, YOURS! Go to one of your previous posts. Click on EDIT. We are going to edit one of your previously published posts. At the very end of one of your posts I want you to add the following Decoder Ring Code [space][space][:][a][r][r][o][w][:][space][space]. Do not put the square brackets in. When you have it done save the post. Now VIEW the post. If the Decoder Ring is working correctly you should see a circle with an arrow in it. If you didn’t get the circle with the arrow in it, you either have a typo error, or for some reason your WordPress setting are blocking the Virtual Installation. For the typo, please go back and try again. I can not help you if your WordPress installation is blocking my Virtual Installation. For everyone else that it worked for please read on.
How the Decoder Ring works
Basically we have secret code that checks for certain groups of characters and converts those inputs into images. Pretty amazing stuff! There are already over 30 different images in your blog at this time that you can use. Wanna try another example? Ok, type in [space][space][:][)][space][space]. See what comes up. Now, lets move on to customizing your Decoder Ring.
How do you Customize the Decoder Ring?
Wait a minute, there a guy jumping up and down in the back of the room waving his hand. “Isn’t this called Smilies?” he said. I threw an eraser at him. I am in fact talking about about Smilies. And guess what now I’m talking about customizing your smilies. Let’s take smilies on a whole new adventure. Think about this. You type in a group of characters and you get an image. The file name of the image is “icon_smile.gif”. The smilies function checks for the group of characters and converts it to the proper image. What would happen if you switched the current image that is called “icon_smile.gif” with your own image (with the same name) and downloaded it to where the original icon was. If you did that, when you now type [space][space][:][)][space][space], your new image automatically shows up! Just remember it changes every smile image on your site! Thats pretty cute, BUT, thats not what I want to talk to you about. By the way all smiley images are at the folder “………/wp-includes/smilies/”.
The search engine optimization, or SEO of Smilies
That has to be a first. SEO of smilies? I’ll go out on a limb and say “because smilies are on a web page, they would be considered on-page SEO”. I hear Google loves images. Thats great because smilies are images. The problem with smilies is they add no keyword value at all to your content. Look at the properties on any smiley you have on your blog. Right click on it and go to properties. If you want, you can even click on the image the Decoder Ring installed. Is anybody still believing that? Notice the Alternate attribute, it is very ugly”
How to change the alternative attribute on smilies, or smiley
If we could change the alternate attribute on the smilies image, every time you added a smiley, you would be adding the words that are contained in the alternate attribute to your content! You can do this by altering your “function.php” file. Big warning here, before you start, make a copy of this functions.php file. Its nothing more than a text file, but if anything goes wrong we can just copy and paste to get it back to where it was. Ok, the smilies function is almost at the bottom of the file. Below is a picture of what the smilies portion of functions.php.
It has a list of about 30 smilies. The list will look something like this ‘:-x’ => ‘icon_mad.gif’ . On the right of the “=>” is the file name. On the left of the “=>” is the letters that get typed in. All you have to do is type in the following line ‘:keyword:’ => ‘icon_mad.gif’ , now save the file. Now when you type in ” :keyword: ” in your post, the smiley face comes up but check out the alternate attribute it now says keyword. You of course have to be very careful how you use this.
How to create a Super Duper Decoder Ring
WOW! You can do his by changing both sides of the “=>”. You really are asking for trouble. You should be able to figure that out on your own, but you can check out my real estate example. Here’s what my super-duper customized smiley Alternative attribute looks like.
Here’s what my functions.php looks like.
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