Just recently, one of our power users helped me figure out a problem with the Press This Reloaded plugin. His workflow was greatly improved by this little tool and the latest release made it less capable (specifically, the URL was not going into the “Outbound link” field). We worked together and got it functioning even better than it was before.

First, I realized that some folks might not be aware of this plugin or might be having the same problem. Then, it occurred to me that there are a lot of things that can be done to make posting much, much easier.

So I made a video. I walk through a few of the things I do to make posting easier and how to use the Press This Reloaded plugin to make your life easier.

In addition, some of the steps I talk about above are listed below to help you navigate:

• First go to Appearance > WP-Drudge options > Advanced tab
  • Not adding post or page content? Check “Remove post and page editor.” If you need the editor later, you can come back and uncheck.
  • Not using custom fields? Check “Remove custom field display” to hide these as well.
• Now, go to Posts > Add New
  • Click the Screen Options tab on the top right and remove unused features. You can also switch the editor to a single column which creates a simple work flow from top to bottom.
  • Now, drag and drop the boxes to rearrange the page; put them in the order you add each item
• Install the modified Press This Reloaded plugin using the steps here. This will let you create posts directly from the article you’re reading.

Also, I wanted to let everyone know that we’ve got a WP-Drudge support forum up and running here. You might be asking “who is PROPER Development?” That’s me plus a small team of people who are building new themes, plugins, and content sites. A more formal announcement is on it’s way but, in the meantime, give those forums a try and let us know what you think.

Pain points

When I’m on the “Add New Post” page. I wish the “Outbound Link” box was right under the “Enter Title Box. And that you could navigate the boxes by hitting the “tab” key

You can do that now, as long as you’re not using the body copy. Look for the “Remove post and page editor” option on the Advanced tab of the settings page. If you check this, the body copy editor goes away.

Knowing where things are. When I have a particular change I want to make it takes a long time to find where to do it. Categories and labels are confusing.

We’re happy to help if you get lost, just give us a shout in the forums. There is definitely a learning curve but WordPress makes things about as intuitive as website management can be these days.

Need an option to change background colors on category labels.

That would have to be CSS since it would be very difficult to try to attach a color selector to each of your categories.

It would have to be SEO issues. As a news aggregator and often writer of original content, neither seem to be noticed for news searches.

We feel you there. We just recently wrote a post about SEO for curators that should help you get started.

Repetitive task such as keyword entry. I also would like to see controls clustered closer together to save from having to physically drag the mouse across vast reaches of screen real estate. It would just make article entry easier.

This makes perfect sense. The problem is that different people use different parts of that screen. That said, we included a few options on the Advanced tab of the options screen that can remove a couple of items. Also, look for a Screen Options button on the top right of your edit page to remove items and change the layout a bit. Several of those boxes can be dragged and dropped there to create a more pleasing order for you.

Features

How to use the advertising feature you now have to maximum benefit

This depends greatly on the ad server that you’re using, we just provide the means for displaying. The ad serving landscape seems to change so often, it’s hard to provide strong direction. Also, some servers work better for some publishers so it’s a matter of testing several out to see which one has the best benefit. The best advice I can give: go easy with the number of ads at first. It’s easier to build a site (i.e. get return and referred visits) if you’re cautious with your ad placement.

I use Hootsuite and I feature I love is the Hootlet, you install it in the Browser it auto-shortens links as ow.ly link for tracking, I wish there was something similar for wpdrudge. Something that with one click could post an article title, source link and scedule for a wpdrudge site, Facebook page and twitter. And could capitalize the first letter in a title.

That would be a great add, though link shortening usually happens through a third-party service (like it does in HootSuite). If you haven’t yet, give  Press This Reloaded a try (explained here). That might get you part of the way towards what you’re looking for.

I wish when a new post is published it would clear out all the fields without having to reload the page by clicking “Add new” again.

That might be an easy add on my end … let me take a look to see if I can get that in the next big release. Edit: this is coming in the next release in a week or so from now!

At first I thought I wouldn’t care to much about posting featured links and youtube multimedia but I was wrong. I’d love the ability to post multiple items like in a slider.

We’re allowing multiple featured items as of version 2.3 (check in the Header tab on the options page), no slider quite yet though.

Easier modification of headers and footers.

Not sure what you had in mind be we added uploadable header/logo images and background images on the last version. The footer is quite easy to modify, just text on the Other tab of the options page and a menu that can be added at Appearance > Menus.

The mobile functionality appears to be totally useless for a three column site.

We spent quite a bit of time working on a mobile solution for WP-Drudge. If you’re familiar with all the features built in, can you provide some direction for what you’d like to see in the comments below? Otherwise, we’re working on a video to walk through the settings in complete detail.

Would like to be able to move posts up or down irrespective of how they are dated.

Since the posts are listed in date order, that’s about the best we can do for now.

Automatic updates from within the WordPress Dashboard.

Maybe some day but, at the moment, that’s not possible with how WordPress is built. The automatic updates you get currently come from the open WordPress repository and since this is a premium theme and not tied into that free section, we’re not able to tap into that functionality.

Allow for centering of photos on main page. If you look at the ones (not ads) associated with particular articles, it seems odd to not have the photo centered. Maybe a button next to where you place the image link to offer to center it?

You can do this with CSS now, actually. Look for the “Center the post images” header on the Customize with CSS page.

Mobile is such a huge market right now that I would like to see a more spiced up mobile site. I think the Huffington post has a great layout on their mobile app. Instead of having one long list – you could have each category be its own page and add a small but noticeable touch like changing the color of the header depending on what category you are on.

You can build that now using a mobile template page with multiple categories listed (maybe list 2 – 3 links per category) and the category linked to the category page. We’ll get a better example of how this can be done on our demo page at some point.

On the All Posts Page (As seen here: http://gyazo.com/421629005ab299a14c9655b3b73c5edf) – It would be awesome to have a column that told you how many times each post has been clicked on. My IpContent had this feature on their articles and it was great at seeing which topics were popular and which ones aren’t. [I know you can see this info on the Jetpack-Stats page, but in the Clicks area - only the URL is shown and not the title of the page. Having this feature on the All Posts page would be perfect]

I agree, this would be a great add. We’re working on an article about how to add Google Analytics tracking to outbound links which will get you part of the way there. I don’t think it would be too hard to have a click-tracker in there so we’ll add that to the list for the next major version.

Would like to see one more nav menu…along the very top of the page.

I’ll see if there’s a simple way to do that for the next release … shouldn’t be a problem.

Automatic keyword entry. Is it possible to pull suggested keywords from an article?

This is a little beyond the scope of WP-Drudge but you might want to look into the Scribe plugin for WordPress. It’s an excellent way to create SEO-ready content and I believe it does keyword suggestion.

The ability to create an archive page (easily) that looks like the main/home page in format/layout. Currently, all of the archived headlines (with the exception of the most recent headlines, or if I click on ‘older entries’ indefinitely) are listed on the right-hand column. I’d like to be able to show users all of the archived headlines in the position and order in which they appeared on the homepage (i.e. left, middle, right). Ideally, I’d like this to be automatic once the headlines leave the homepage.

Between the WP-Drudge page template and the archive pages that are generated automatically, both of which are explained here, I think you should be able to create what you need. Be careful about adding too many links on one page, though. Once you get into the hundreds/thousands being displayed, you’re bound to have a pretty heavy, slow-moving page. Best to display a lot and allow for a “next/previous” page navigation, as it works now.

Documentation

video … video tutorials … video instructions on how to setup the theme like your example.

We’ve had a lot of requests for video so we added two – one on the getting started page and one on Posted Links. If you’ve got specific requests, leave them in the comments below and we’ve get cracking. Next ones on the list are a run-through of all the widgets.

A list of quick reminder / shortcuts? Somethings I don’t use often then I forget where the options are to change one particular thing.

That’s not a bad idea, but you can use the Documentation pages in the meantime, there is usually a clear path to the admin items you need.

A search feature on the support pages.

I can’t believe we missed this one! Added now, check out the sidebar in the Docs section.

General feedback

I can not but lead to external link directly to the page without hope apart from a intermediate page. How do I do?

The latest version has an option “Add interruption page” on the Other tab of the options page that sends people to a page on your site first before sending them to the link you posted.

I have no idea how archives work, where they are stored or what goes in there. “Deleting” a post is different from archiving (I think) but I have no option to send a post straight to archive. How do I do that?

The confusing part is probably just the idea that there is an “archive” state that a post can be in. Really, a post is either published or not (i.e. a draft or in the trash). There isn’t a way to archive a post but you can adjust the publish date to take it off of the homepage.

For example, if you have a Posted Link widget that shows, say, 20 posts in a specific category, the 21st post that isn’t shown is older than the 20th. If you wanted to “archive” a post off of that widget, you’d need to change the publish date so it wasn’t appearing. That post would still appear on the category pages, date archive pages, author pages, etc. It might also still appear on your homepage, depending on the other widgets you have active. If you wanted the post not to be seen anywhere by users, delete it. If you wanted to keep it around but not display it, change the status to “draft.”

I am a visual person, and I presume 80% of your audience is, so more videos, video tutuorials etc — I am really passionate about my industry and think your theme will work really well for me

More coming! If you’ve got a request, please leave it in the comments here or on the forums.

Enter FitVids, an small script that resizes your video embeds to fit in the space that they have automatically. Also, enter the FitVids WordPress plugin. Here’s how to set it up:

1. Login into your WP-Drudge enabled site and go to Plugins
   
2. Click Add New at the top
3. Type “fitvids” in the search box and click Search Plugins
4. The first plugin that is shown should be “FitVids for WordPress” (or similar). Click Install Now, then OK to confim.
5. Once the plugin downloads, click Install Plugin to add it to your WordPress install
6. Click Activate Plugin to turn it on
7. Now, go to Appearance > FitVids to show the setup screen
8. Under the “Enter jQuery Selector” header, you should see a field. Copy the code below and paste into that field:
   .link-col, #single-col
9. Click the Save Changes button and refresh your homepage to see if that worked. If not, select the check box under the “jQuery” header and click Save Changes again.

After the page loads, you should see the videos resize automatically for both desktop and mobile uses.

As the FitVids Github page will tell you, FitVids works out of the box for:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Blip.tv
• Viddler
• Kickstarter
  

If you have any tips or tricks for other WP-Drudge users, go ahead and post them in the support forums, we’d love to hear about it!

• Not enough original content
• Too much duplicate content

Because we believe that curation and aggregation sites can add value to the web at large, we want to help you do the best you can in search engines, whether you’re using WP-Drudge or not.

We’ve seen curation sites that do very well, in fact, whole businesses can be built on curation and search engine traffic can be a component. Following our guide here can help you get the most out of your WP-Drudge or other curation site.

A quick note: this guide is meant for people who are thoughtfully collecting and organizing existing content. There are a lot of pure aggregators out there that do nothing but pull in content without a human being behind the helm. That is a tough business model and, in many cases, against the content producers’ stated copyright. Please be responsible and respectful with your curation and aggregation.

First, the bad news

Put simply, search engines don’t like 2 copies of the same thing in different places. From their perspective, an extra copy does not add any value, it’s just another blob of text to index and store (or, in many cases, to ignore). Duplicate copy on the web is, and always will be, something to overcome.

The take-away? The less duplication you’re doing, the better.

In addition, search engines love original content. We’re talking actually original, written from scratch, not duplicated. Copied content, even if it’s rearranged, is surprisingly easy to discover. Original, from-the-horse’s-mouth blog posts, content pages, and descriptions are the bread-and-butter of good SEO.

The take-away? The more that you’re actually writing, the better. We’ll talk about how to do that below.

Now, the good news

So, we know that duplicate content is bad and original content is good. What else is good? Links!

Google figured out a long time ago that the web, built out of links, has preference inherently built in. If someone has a website and 100 unrelated people point to that website as a source of good information, that probably means that this site is a source of good information.

Do you buy it? Either way, that’s the basis of Google’s ranking algorithm and we need to play by their rules for the next decade, at least.

So, people linking to you are a good thing. What other kind of linking is good? Linking out to other sites, surprisingly.

If preference on the web is measured by links, then the more we can measure, the better. It’s like a poll. If I have a 1% sample, that’s pretty good. If I have a 10% sample, that’s even better. If sites are indicating what they prefer more often, search engines have more to go on.

There is a caveat to this, though. More incoming links (from good sources) is better. Outgoing links, however, have a point at which their return declines. There are no hard and fast numbers here but it’s safe to say that more and more and more outgoing links won’t help a site’s SEO without limit.

Our take-away here: don’t be afraid to show your preference on the web and link out to other sites.

Putting it all together

Let’s review what we learned above, so we’re on-track:

1. The less duplicated content we have, the better. The best-case scenario here is literally no duplicated content.
   Less = better.
2. The more original content we have, the better. This, generally, is a “the more the better” situation until you start to get into the 5 and 6-digit page numbers. Think in terms of a ratio: original / duplicated, the higher the better.
   More = better.
3. The more incoming links from good sources, the better. No caveat here, take what you can get.
   More = better.
4. Outgoing links are a good thing. Combined with original content, it’s even better.
   More = better (up to a certain point)

The best site you could possibly have with respect to SEO is a site with next to no duplicated content, tons of original content, lots of incoming links, and a healthy number of outgoing links. Wikipedia, right?

How to get there

I’ve been speaking in a general sense so far because there are simple “best practices” to SEO that have been the same for a long time and will continue to be important. Now, I want to make this very specific for curators.

I’m going to break these tips into sections below based on the learning above, with a bonus step for those just getting started.

Step 0: get your ducks in a row

This step is the “due diligence” step. I call it “step 0″ because a lot of folks have already walked through these changes. This is basically a checklist for WordPress SEO and can be used on any site.

• First, install WordPress SEO by Yoast. This is the best SEO plugin, period. The default settings are fine so I wouldn’t tinker with anything unless you’re clear on what it’s doing. If you’re using comment or interrupt pages, make sure to turn on the sitemap function.
• Make sure you have Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools installed. You can use the “Additional footer code” and “Additional header code” on the Advanced tab of the WP-Drudge options page to add the tracking code and meta validation, respectively. If you’re generating a sitemap, make sure to add that to Google Webmasters.
• Choose a specific keyword phrase or two for your homepage and make sure those are in your title and description. You want to concentrate on 2 – 3 keyword phrases for you homepage max. The more you do for those phrases, the better you’ll compete. More information about choosing keywords can be found here.
• Search engines can parse a whole site as long as there are links to all the pages. Turn on “categories in the header” (Header tab of the options page) or the Archive widget (use links instead of a drop-down) to create archive pages that are index-able.

Step 1 & 2: Avoid duplicate content, create original content

This is where curation and aggregation sites will get into trouble: content pulled from other sources.

We know from above that we want the highest ratio of original content to duplicated content so a purely duplicated site is where you’ll see the worst SEO.

So, how do we create content that’s original from content that is not? You’ll need to be creative but that is where the value lies. The more content you can create on your own, the better.

• One of the Drudge Report’s tactics is to re-write headlines to fit the political leaning of his site. He adds his own spin to the story by hardly ever using the standard title. The WP-Drudge template makes this very easy, as you have to create your own title each time. Re-write the headline to generate interest and to be original.
• One thing Drudge Report doesn’t do is post any text that isn’t linked somewhere. The WP-Drudge template allows for short blurbs on link listing pages. This is the best way to create original, search-engine-friendly content. You read the article you’re posting, right? Type up a quick 1 – 2 sentence summary and add it to the Headline blurb.
• Using our template, you’re able to post your own blog stories in addition to the curated links. Set aside the time to write a 400+ word article every month based on the trends you’re seeing. You can use content you’ve been adding over the last month to create a summary of your niche.
• Create resource pages with the best information on a particular subject. You’re exposed to a lot of information so take advantage of it. Create a buyer’s guide or a “free tools” page or “people to follow” for you niche. Create it with a few pieces of information, and then add to it over time.

Step 3 & 4: Incoming links & outgoing links

This is where curation and aggregation sites will shine: links, both incoming and outgoing.

Links are what makes the web go around and curation sites have these in spades. Assuming that you’re pointing to good content and providing a bit of your own value using the tips above, your curation site is one of the best attractors of incoming links possible.

• Well-curated resource pages, like the one you can create with WP-Drudge, are notoriously great for sharing and linking to. Google likes resource pages as long as they have some substance to them. Curation sites are built to attract links, as long as people know about them.
• Activate and link to archive and category pages to make sure you have lots of findable and linkable content. The more specific and valuable your pages are, the better they attract links.
• Link building, the action of going out and finding links for your site, is certainly the most difficult, and valuable, aspects of SEO. There are lots of great resources out there to get you started with this process (here’s one I wrote on incoming links and SEOMoz has many excellent posts on the topic) but start by thinking creatively. Are you building a news site about outdoor activities? If you are, you probably know a few (or a lot of) people who enjoy the same. Make sure your network is well aware of your project, then branch out from there.
• Outgoing links are, of course, simple to create and manage with WP-Drudge. Make sure you’re linking to quality sites and that you’re adding good keywords into the link text you generate.
• The old technique of adding blog comments works great for content curators. You already have a built-in comment: “This was a great resource, particularly the part about XYZ. I added you on my ABC topic curation site.” Many blogs have social commenting installed so look for an option where you can add your URL.
• Speaking of links, great content is a huge part of social networks. Make sure your site is hooked up to Twitter through a plugin or third-party service. We usually recommend Facebook for curators with enough time to write something specific for those posts; automated posts there don’t seem to do as well in our experience.

Step 5: Don’t mess around

This is a critical final step and it’s much easier than the other because it involves, specifically, no action at all.

When it comes to SEO, don’t get caught in the “easy fix” trap. This includes paying for incoming links, trading links with unrelated sites, black hat techniques like hidden content, or any other kind of gaming.

If you’re already duplicating content in some places, you’re already on thin ice with search engines so make sure everything else you’re doing is above the board. Working on SEO for your site can help a lot over time but looking for that big spike of traffic from search engines is a fool’s errand. Organic, sustainable search traffic is a steady growth pattern, not a sudden massive bump. As long as you’re growing month-over-month, you’re doing the right thing.

Anything else?

We’re happy to answer any questions you have about SEO for the WP-Drudge theme or curation sites in general. Just ask!

For current users within the upgrade period of 1 year, you’ll receive the theme package sent to your original payment email with instructions. For those outside of the upgrade period, we’ll send out a discount code to sign up for another year of upgrades within the next day or so.

Add special featured links on the top left

This was a feature we’ve been asked about a lot and made sure to include in 2.3. You can now create a list of links on the top left of your site using Posted or Static links. Just select a category on the Header tab of the options page and the links will appear at the top. There is no inherint limit to the number of links being shown so you may want to create a special category for these.

Image credits and post date display

You can now output an image credit caption below images used in both the link listings and on the individual posted links page. After uploading a featured image, just use the “Caption” field and the text will appear every time the image does. This feature does not work with hot-linked images (the “Link image” field).

Also, you can now display the post date and time on the link listing pages. This setting is on the Other tab of the options page.

More hooks and filters for theme and plugin developers

We’ve been doing a few WP-Drudge custom installs lately and found the need for a lot more hooks and filters in the template. I think we’ve got a great library of them now and everything is listed on the Hooks and Filters page here with in-depth explanations and a plugin sample coming soon.

Ability to change the number of featured items shown

You can now show more than one featured item at the top of link listing pages by changing the number on the Hear tab of the options page.

Logo/header and background image upload plus more fonts

The logo URL and background color fields have been removed from the options page and we’re now using the WordPress core header image and background controller. This makes life much easier for those that need a logo image change or a background image to be displayed. These are covered on their respective settings page and, don’t worry, your current setting will be moved over to this new system. We also added several new font stack options on the Typography tab of the options page. Have fun!

“Featured” flag, outbound URL, and quick edit

On the All Post page, you can now see which Posted Links are featured and what URL they point to. Clicking “Quick Edit” here allows you to change the Featured status along with the rest of WP core publishing options.

Add pagination and threaded comments

We had a couple of user requests for paged posts and threaded comments so we added support for that in this version as well. Paged posts are covered briefly here.

Fixed: loading speed, Google news widget, featured image size, and more

We fixed several user-reported bugs and a few more that we found. We also improved how those link lists were being built to speed up the whole template and create a bit more flexibility.

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Please contact us here or comment on this post and we’ll explain any of the new changes and fixes. Thanks again and enjoy the new features!

This was sent first to our main distribution list. Because, as you might have seen, that system mangles email format, I also asked people to move to our main update list, here. We’ll be sending this out again to make sure everyone sees it but, in the meantime, we got some very helpful responses and some really great comments from people. A big thanks to everyone that took the time to tell us how it’s all working.

This template was created with an idea in mind but it’s become what it is today through our generous and patient users constantly providing feedback. If you haven’t done the survey and have 5 minutes to help us improve this template, we would really appreciate it. As you’ll see below, we take these responses seriously. Take the survey here.

Below are some of the things that we read on the first go-around. These have been edited for length and clarity a bit but you should be able to recognize your question or comment. Need clarification or have another question? Go ahead and comment below!

Problems and “how do I do it”

Make the headlines bigger and place links to stories above headlines.

The size of the text can be adjusted on the Typography tab of the WP-Drudge options page. We’ll be adding the ability to add a block of links on the top left in the next upgrade coming out in a few weeks.

Adjust mobile features, still not sure how or if I did it well, or how i could improve it.

There are a lot of different features you can use and getting it right will require some tinkering and testing. For now, we’ve got a pretty complete overview here that walks through the steps of creating a mobile-friendly version and separate page. It’s on the list to walk through some of the settings and functions better on that page.

I wish the caption would work under photos (but only if it could be small, like 6 pt or smaller) so that it would speed posting our featured post.

Photo captions are coming in the next version. They will be slightly smaller but adjustable via CSS like the other portions of the site.

Sizing images … Sizing feature photos … Getting images for articles to scale uniformly

Image sizes came a few times so let me walk through a little better explanation of how they are handled.

Posted link images an be added one of two ways (covered here): by a link to an external image or uploading to your own site. Regardless of how these are added, they can show up in three places, if desired: as a featured item, as a regular posted link, and on the post page itself. The sizes of these images are controlled on the Images tab of the options page. The number you’re entering there is the width of the image; the height is automatically adjusted. The template has a control to make sure the image does not go beyond the size of the column and cover other parts of the site.

All images in the columns are sized universally but the featured image can be larger or smaller, depending on the setting you choose. You can tinker with the images a bit by uploading the image to the Media Gallery, editing it there, and using the “File URL” in the posted link. Steps are here and I’m happy to explain more, if needed.

Features

Threaded Comments – Right now, it does not seem that the template supports threaded comments

Thanks for pointing this out, it slipped through the cracks. We’re looking into adding this functionality to the next release coming out in a few weeks.

Comment thumbs up and thumbs down

GD Star Rating might be able to help with this but I haven’t tested it out at all. This won’t be something we’ll build into the template, though. There are a number of plugins you can try out, though, and we’d definitely like to hear back if any of them work well for you.

An option to show the “comments” link on the single post. I changed line 304 in essentials.php to allow for this, but it really should be an option so less advanced users do not have to edit the template.

There’s an option to show a “comments” link on the homepage. This will show a link to a page with comments for the link. If you’re altering essentials.php (which, generally, is a bad idea) then this is probably what you are looking for. The setting is “Show link to comments” and it’s on the Other tab of the options page.

The ability for a user to submit a link.

That was the purpose of the Contact Widget but we’ll think about a dedicated way to submit links, that might be an interesting addition. By the way, we also created a Contact Form plugin that works pretty darn well! No widgets yet but it’s a suitable replacement for the contact page template.

Sharing buttons such as twitter, facebook etc. Right now, if you want to share one of the links on twitter or facebook a user has to do it manually or a plugin has to be used.

This would not be difficult to add but the times that we’ve been asked about this, people needed very different things. Some want it on the homepage, some on the post page, some want to share their on-site page, some want to share the off-site link. I would suggest a plugin for now as it will be more fully featured than what could be built in right now.

Automatic shortlinks. This would be incredibly useful for sharing on twitter.

There are two ways to do this (Twitter typically shortens your links automatically, though). You can use the Jetpack plugin to get very short wp.me URLs for your blog. It also has a number of other features like sharing buttons and commenting functions. Alternatively, you can use the post ID (found in the URL when you edit the post) with a “p” query string to keep your domain. For example, this post can be accessed by going to http://wpdrudge.com/?p=150248.

Google fonts

You can actually do this already. I wrote up steps here. Building this directly into the template would be hard to maintain and not necessary for most people using it.

Two column setting

I wanted to get this added a few versions ago but it turned out to be a fairly large project overall. I still have it on the list to take care of at some point.

Ability to change alignment of links to left or right justified

This can be done easily with CSS. I added an extra section on this page under “Centering the posted link blocks.”

Ability to customize link and header colors for each column.

That’s a bit too granular to be able to add it to an options page. You can, however, do this with CSS. Each of the posted link blocks has an id associate with it so styling the header would be that id followed by h2.widget-head and then the color you’d like.

I’d like to ad more fonts( Bold,Black, and All Caps) and some instructions on how to change layout/fonts of headline/masthead to make it stand out for a specific day, for example

The featured section can be changed as often as you’d like and the controls are on the options page. The link color can be changed for each individual posted link using the fields at the bottom of the edit page.

I don’t know if this falls under a plug in, but an easy way to stream tweets. And please charge for this, because it would be totally worth it!!

There’s actually a pretty good module for this already called Twitter Widget Pro. I’ve used it on a few projects and it works quite well. There are a number of other ones you can try out as well but that one was the easiest to use and most reliable.

The ability to add trending stories above the featured story, in the top left column, similar to Drudge Report … a widget for the top left (above feature story) like Drudge has … Something that would address assigning a post or blurb at top left as on Drudge’s site.

This is being added in the upcoming version!

Customizing the anchor text somehow forlink back to original item/article etc – i use this for seo with feeds from my own sites spread across very isolated web

I’m not totally sure what you’re asking but it sounds like it might be helpful for everyone using the template. If you recognize this question, please explain in the comments below.

The ability to add favicon easily without messing with code.

If it’s easy to add, I’ll stick it in the next release. In the meantime, just create a favicon and drop it in the root WordPress installation directory. Nothing needs to be changed on the theme to make this happen.

Auto-capitalize the featured story, so when it moves into the columns it doesn’t stay capitalized or need to be edited.

That can be done via CSS. I added an item on the Additional CSS page.

I would like to see the theme be more responsive, not have a separate mobile site.

The basic responsive CSS works quite well (needs to be turned on) and it’s been tested on several different devices. You don’t need to have the separate site active, the CSS does a good job of affecting the layout. If you have any suggestions or problems, let us know in the comments below.

More styling options would also be great – like upload a background image for example.

Background image uploading is coming in the next version!

I tried to build in enough options to allow users to make their site what they want it to be. The problem with adding too many options is that it starts to get hard to manage and test when new releases come out. Also, it can eventually become a performance issue.

The basic styling options are on the various options page tabs. Beyond that, I add updates to the Additional CSS page often with questions from folks who want a little more customization.

Individual sized feature photo on each post

This would be difficult to work in and the first time I’ve heard it suggested. Still, I’ll add it to the list for a future release if I can figure out a simple way to implement it.

Documentation improvements

Walking through all the settings to make it look as much like DrudgeReport.com as possible. Maybe add this as a specific page in the documentation, just list out every step?

That’s a great idea, actually. I’ll put together a tutorial on this right after the next release.

How to improve SEO, tips

We have a blog post coming up to address this, actually!

A video demo of creating posted and static links. …How-to videos for the custom CSS header and footer

We’ve got video training coming very soon. We’ll start with these 2 and a quick start video for folks just getting started. If they work well for everyone, we’ll get one up for each section.

Nice detailed PDF – i love video but having page beside me it cant compare

I might be able to find a page to PDF convertor and, if I can, I’ll add it here.

I would love to see a user help forum, so I could see others’ examples of sites they created, read their questions and get answers, learn nifty tips and tricks I might have missed in the documentation.

Funny you should mention … we’re working on one right now!

The feedback and questions we’ve been getting through the documentation page comments have been very helpful but can be tough to follow. The information could be useful to people but the current format could make it tough to consume. We’d like to have this resource available for folks in the early part of November.

We’re releasing another version in a week or so with a couple of new features and a few bug fixes as well. I wanted to check with the community-at-large to see if there were any outstanding issues or things that could use some tweaking. If you’ve got something, bug, suggestion, or otherwise, go ahead and send it our way by replying here.

Thanks in advance for helping us make this template as great as it can be!

Next Release: Features and Bugs

First, the features!

To help with posting videos and other multi-media pieces, we added the ability to over-ride the blurb and body text setting on the individual posted links. This means you don’t have to set the whole site to use body text to post a video on the front page.

Another feature, which came as a suggestion, adds a page in between the link listing and the final site. With the “Add interruption page” option turned on, links on the home page don’t go directly to the site being posted, they go to a page on your site first which can have additional content, comments, or advertisements. You can see this in action on the WP-Drudge Curation News site.

We were notified of two bugs recently: one which affects ads on the mobile template and one that breaks the sidebar links on an on-site post. Both of these are fixed and portions of the template have been re-written to hopefully avoid these types of problems in the future.

Documentation: how can it improve?

Our next project after this release is a general improvement of the documentation for both users and developers. We add new stuff all the time but we’re aware of a few gaps and misleading steps, especially on the “Adding Posted Links” page. We’d like these pages to be as helpful as possible so we’ll be improving them over the next month or so.

With that in mind, how do you think they could be improved? What section got you stuck? What would you like to know more about? Let us know so we can keep that site relevant and useful!

Drudge registry list

Edit: the registry is live!

We’ve been ask many times for examples of WP-Drudge sites and, while the ones on the homepage are great, we know that there are people out there doing great things that we don’t know about!

So, we’re going to create a WP-Drudge registry page. Just send us your site name and URL and we’ll add you to the page. You get a link and maybe a bit of traffic and we can have a nice portfolio of sites using our template! They call that win-win.

Anything else?

As always, we’re happy to answer your questions! You can ask in the comments below or contact us here.

Thanks, as always, for being a part of the community and helping us make interesting software!

So, without further adieu…

The Mobile Version

3 important components come together to create the WP-Drudge mobile experience:

• A single-column, mobile page template that can be controlled with widgets
• A mobile prompt that can be configured to appear to certain users
• Better CSS and HTML across the site to support mobile users in general

The steps to create a mobile page are here and the new configuration options are detailed here. If you’re having any display issues or problems with this, please let me know.

Upgrade notes

If you purchased v2, you should receive an email with a download package today (Thursday, 5/17/2012). Upgrade steps are here. I’ve upgraded all of my WP-Drudge installs without any problems. I’m running the latest WordPress version, 3.3.2, and did extensive debugging.

It’s possible that your colors selected on the WP-Drudge options page, Borders and Colors tab, will get reset to defaults. Make sure, after you activate the new template, that you visit the options page, look for missing data, replace, and save.  The upside is that there is a color chooser there now so, hey, you might find a new color!

I added a new option for displaying the featured post on archive pages, explained on this page. You might want to double-check these settings to make sure that the featured post display is set how you want it. This will only affect people linking to their archive pages.

Other than that, all other settings should carry over. Content on the site will not be affected, as usual.

Changes and fixes

• Added mobile page template to create a single-column mobile-friendly layout
• Made several HTML and CSS changes to make the entire site more mobile friendly, including responsive CSS for main pages, smaller overall page size, and better meta tags
• Added “Mobile” options tab to the WP-Drudge options page
• Added color selectors to the WP-Drudge options page
• Fixed minor font issues for “Courier New” and Palatino Linotype selections
• Slight width change for triple columns to fill the entire width
• Posts that were sticky would show up as second posts in the featured area. This was not intended and has been fixed
• Improved contact page template and widget, including a complete re-write to help control spam and fix a few bugs
• Fixed the problem with featured stories showing on individual posts and search results
• Change how featured posts are shown on category and tag pages
• Added an option to show or hide featured posts on the date archive pages
• Fixed the problem with “Go to article” showing up on posts without a link
• Added a category ID class to all posted and static link widgets to assist with styling
• Added ID names to all widgets
• Fixed the date archive header display

So, whats next?

This is a big release with quite a few changes so I’m figuring on a clean-up release within a month or so. I have a few more features I’d like to get into place, like per-post over-riding for blurb/body text and adding the color selector to the link color.

My big focus for the next release, though, will be improving the documentation and working to make the template more developer-friendly. I’ll be adding hooks in various locations, developer-specific documentation, and more information about creating child themes.

Got a suggestion or a fix? Please get a hold of me. I take lots of user suggestions for improvements (that’s where most of the new features come from) and rely on the community to tell me where I’m going wrong.

Thank you and enjoy!

The Ask

So this doesn’t get lost in some of the technical stuff below, I’d like to ask current (and potential) WP-Drudge users to view the following pages on their mobile devices and give me some feedback in the comments below. I appreciate your time greatly and will use your feedback to make the best mobile template I can. The different pages are:

• New Mobile page template
• Home page
• Post page
• Category page

Use the comments below (or the contact form) to tell me if it looks good, any suggestions you have, and, most importantly, what kind of device you’re using. I use an iPhone so I know it’s looking good there. I’m guessing Android is good too but anything you can tell me is great! Thanks in advance…

The plan

I want to combine your choices with good mobile design and development to create a great experience for all mobile users. Here’s how I’m doing it:

• I’m creating a mobile page template which allows you to create single-column WP-Drudge pages in the same style as the rest of the site. These templates will function like the current WP-Drudge page template and give you a new widget area to add content blocks. It also provides a mobile menu area for static links at the top. Advertisements, if you’d like them to display, can be added just like widget-based ads now. Here’s my reasoning for this second site.
• This “mobile” display will be controlled using widgets, as mentioned, as well as a few new settings on the options page. I’m allowing images to be suppressed (to cut down on page size) and the featured item to be hidden (to cut down on vertical space).
• I’m also building in an option to redirect users to the mobile site automatically (you can turn this on or off). This uses user agent sniffing to figure out what type of browser is being used and send people to the mobile template (selected by you). I’m using the open source code from detectmobilebrowsers.com to make sure I’m as compliant as possible. There are a few problems with this method so I’m including a link at the top of the page to return to the regular page display.
• Lastly, I’m creating a way to easily add a link at the top of all pages to send people to your main mobile page. This can be dismissed, will display for small screen sizes (as well as potential mobile users instead of automatically redirecting them), and will save the preference as a cookie. As with everything, this can be turned off.
• The whole template is getting more mobile friendly in general. I’m guessing a significant portion of your users will opt to use the site as it is and we want them to have a good experience as well. Also, the only mobile-specific pages will be using the page templates; all the existing posts, content pages, and archive pages will all be on entity and need to be mobile friendly. I’m cutting load times everywhere and generally improving the template as a whole. You’re welcome :)

Whew, lots of information.

If you’re a developer or familiar with mobile development, I warmly welcome your feedback to my plan above. If you’re really looking forward to this mobile component and want to understand more about the above, ask in the comments, I’m happy to help explain.

The current state of things

I’ve got a mobile template up on the demo site, Cur8/Aggreg8, for you to take a look at. This is what the mobile template will generate (still needs a few tweaks). I’m leaving in images and leaving out the featured article. Also, there is no auto-redirecting or top-of-the-page prompt at the moment.

If you have a minute or two, please check out that link and let me know how it looks on your phone. If you could leave your phone type and what you saw in the comments (or email i@wpdrudge.com), that would be massively helpful!

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be adding the redirecting and prompts and I’ll need everyone’s help to test that as well. The more people that can provide feedback, the better this template will be.

Questions? Comments? Feedback?

Have anything to say about the above? Please let me know in the comments below or by email at the address above. Thanks in advance to everyone who can chip in a few minutes, I promise it will be worth your time once the template is mobilized!

This page is me trying to get ahead of them in the rankings so I can plead you, fair user, to purchase my template instead of downloading it for free. I give support, answer questions on the documentation pages, and offer free upgrades for one year. I’m not buying new cars and vacations with what I make from this thing, I’m paying my rent. Not trying to give a sob story, just telling the truth.

If you’re the person who posted my template on line, please, do the right thing and take it down. There’s no reason to steal someone’s hard work like that. If you’re someone looking for a deal or you’re just not sure, I trust you to come back and pay for a copy if you use it.

That’s about all I can do…