WordPress Core Tweaks plugin
This free plugin is based on the exact checklist of manual tasks used by all Search Commander, Inc. employees when setting up new WP blogs. Core Tweaks is hosted at WordPress.org
Using this plugin will set up all of the “correct” options for SEO by default, and will save even the most experienced WP user at least 20 or more minutes per installation.
For novices, or those who may be unfamiliar with generally accepted WordPress SEO strategies, you can save untold hours and costly mistakes.
The Process
The plugin adds a new admin menu item called “SEO Automatic” and a sub-menu “Core Tweaks” , and extends the built-in features of WordPress menu management. (yes, a brandable “white label” version is available for marketing firms that wish to hide how easily they’ve perfected the clients blog.)
It also combines (with permission) the full functionality of several other plugins we’ve grown to love, and those are Page Order, Page Link Manager, Post teaser, and Dagon Design Sitemap Generator (For a static sitemap, not to be confused with the XML sitemap generator which is still recommended).
If you have ALREADY installed any of the three plugins above, you should deactivate them, and after ours, you’ll retain all of their awesome functionality.
Current Version: 2.5
Here’s a short video showing the initial features of this plugin, which was developed primarily for use on a brand new WP installation…
== Completed Feature List ==
- Page Ordering for menu now available in WP
- Page Link Manager allows choice to not display page on menu
- Post Teaser shows snippet of posts on category, archive and main pages
- Change default post category name from “Uncategorized”
- Change default blogroll category name from “Blogroll”
- Delete default “Hello World” post
- Delete default comment on the Hello World post
- Change permalink structure to custom setting recommended by Scott & others
- Sets the Main Blog Email for convenience
- Sets the Admin User’s Email for convenience
- Change the name of the default page that WordPress adds from “About”.
- Set that default page to the static front page of the blog if using WP as a CMS
- Add and sets the page for displaying the posts for convenience
- Change article feed to summary (if desired)
- Remove all the blogroll links that are auto-installed by WordPress
Added changes from version 1.0b to 2.5
- Compatibility requirement for WordPress version 2.7 and later.
- Adjusted for compatibility with other plugins that use similar functions and features of wordpress that can cause conflicts.
- Corrected issue with deleting blogroll.
- Updated included plugins to current versions.
- Adding a new user will now add as an administrator. This was failing previously with role changes by wordpress.
- Sitemap page for Dagon Design Sitemap Generator now auto-creates with the correct shortcode.
- The blog tagline can be changed from the settings page.
Added with version 1.0b
- Page link manager is upgraded to 1.0b.
- Cleaning up file structure of plugin zip.
- New initial admin user can be added.
- H1 hack now auto changes thetitle() to singlepost_title() so that the h1 hack of changeH1 in the custom metas will work easily.
- Robot meta tag is added to the header.
- Auto creation of sitemap page for DDSiteMap Gen and removed from navigation menu.
- Auto creation of a robots.txt file in the blog root.
- Added change of H2 to H1 tags for current theme.
- Canonical Plugin now integrated.
- Dagon Design Sitemap Generator integrated.
Added with version 0.9b
- Corrected Cheatin’ Huh message, but need more testing by beta testers to be sure since this requires a fresh wordpress install.
- Added ability to change blog description/tagline.
- Added attempt to create uploads folder and set permission to 777. (Will work depending on what your hosting server allows.)
- Added uncheck option for the organize uploads by month/year.
Added with version 0.8b
- Nofollow and open in new tab options added for the rss feed widget.
- Nofollow and open in new tab for any blogroll links added.
- A few other minor features for the blogroll, such as option to choose number of links shown, image links, text links, show links category, limit links displayed to a multiple categories.
- rel=”nofollow” added for Link Relatations (XFN). The checkbox to do this is on the right hand side when editing a link. This now sets the rel to nofollow and works in conjuntion with the built-in XFN of WordPress’s link relations.
- Scott’s Secret Wordpress H1 Hack.
- Meta tag for Wordpress version number removes from the header automatically for security purposes.
== Pending Feature List ==
== Using this plug-in==
- The admin control panel is located in SEO Automatic > Core Tweaks
- Post Teaser is located in Settings > Post Teaser and has a checkbox option to turn it off at the top.
- Page Link Manager is located in Tools > Page Links
- Page Order is located in Pages > My Page Order
- RSS Extended is located in Appearance > Widgets as RSS(Extended)
- Blogroll options are in Appearance > Widgets as Links(Extended)
- Dagon Design Sitemap Generator is under Settings > DDSitemapGen
== Installation ==
Important notice:
This plugin is primarily for new installations. Therefore, if you are already using a plugin that will now be controlled by the WP_Core_Tweak plugin, upon activation, you will receive the following error:
“Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.”
Don’t be alarmed. Read the error to see which plugin is still active, deactivate it, and activate the WP_Core_Tweak plugin again.
The plugins for which this happens are…
- Page Order, which easily allows you to determine the order of the pages that appear on your menu.
- Page Link Manager, which adds an admin panel to choose which pages appear in the site navigation.
- Post teaser limits the number of characters that appearing on a category, archive or index page.
- Canonical URL’s helps you solve duplicate content issues on your site.
- Dagon Design Sitemap Generator auto generates a sitemap of your blog.
Installation is easy –
- Unzip the download
- Upload the entire folder: `sc-wp-core-tweaks` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
- If you are currently using any of the plugins included in sc-wp-core-tweaks, it’s highly recommended to deactivate them before activating core tweaks.
- Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Review options in WP Admin > SEO Automatic > Core Tweaks
- Note that the Post Teaser, Page Link Manager, Page Order, Canonical URL’s, and Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugins will automatically be installed with this plugin and can still be found in the normal locations and used the same as always.
46 Comments
Comments are closed. Please use the forum for comments, support, and bug reporting.
Brad Coughlin says:
Hey Scott,
I get the following message:
“Cheatin’ Huh? You must be an admin user to make these changes.”
I assume I need to add a new admin user to be able to access the core tweaks?
Thanks,
Brad
@bradcoughlin
Scott Hendison says:
Well that’s odd – Your regular login should be fine (as an admin) Are you saying you FTP’d the plug-in up, activated okay, but while you were logged in to WP as an admin it didn’t function and you got this message? If that’s the case, it’s a bug!
Scott Hendison says:
To be added in next version…
1. removal / change of
“Just another Wordpress blog”
Heather says:
I was able to reproduce the message that Brad received by using the auto-generated admin user. This plug-in is purposely set to require the highest level user to access it to prevent any subscribers or people you wouldn’t want to have even that type of control accidentally.
You would think that the initial admin user set up would have that high access, but obviously it’s not getting that (something is different with it compared to creating a new user as administrator).
On the next version, this will have to be corrected since the main point of the plug-in is to be used directly after Word Press install.
Thanks for that catch Brad.
Andrea Canfield says:
Installed WP last night for a friend of mine. Used your plug-in. Worked like a charm –
Thanks much. Andrea
Dan Nappi says:
I got the same message Scott received and it also the fatal error message and tried it again and can’t get it to work.
Scott Hendison says:
You mean you got the same message that Brad received? Yes, and Heather will fix for next release, and the workaround would be to create another Admin user for now. But, we’re interested in what the fatal error message was? Love to know exactly.
Next release coming appx. Feb 1…
Heather says:
Dan, You mean the fatal error on activation right? That’s something that will eventually be covered so it doesn’t display that. But what is happening is the frequent plug-ins that are being included in the core tweaks, must be deactivated to work.
The core tweaks plug-in is trying to do that for you automatically. If it’s not reactivating for you, please check your list of plug-ins for the ones listed above (page order, page link manager, post teaser) to be sure they did deactivate.
If they are and the tweaks plug-in still will not activate, first try deactivating all the plug-ins and try activating just the core tweaks. If that works, there is a plug-in conflict. We would really appreciate if you would be able to turn your plug-ins back on one at a time and post the one that causes the conflict here.
If that still doesn’t help, please comment back here with your WP version and any other info you think might be helpful to reproduce the problem.
Gary Pool says:
Scott,
Love the plugin. Will it ever be available for Plugin Central updates?
Scott Hendison says:
Thanks Gary – Yes, definitely, maybe with the next update (coming soon, Heather?).
I’ve just been lazy about it…
Heather says:
Gary,
All releases will be current here. SEOAutomatic.com will be hosting the plugin.
There will be a new version, as Scott said, within the next week or so. Please let me know if the error on my part of the plug-in initially being downloaded from PluginCentral.org will cause any issues for you. That was my mistake once the plug-in was ready for release. There is not a problem keeping the download zip at that site current if it will cover any upgrade notice issues.
But all support issues and comments will be handled here.
Scott Hendison says:
(Heather, I’m 99.9 % certain that Gary is referring to the official Wordpress Repository – and not to that other domain)
Jason Capshaw says:
Nice plugin! Wow, this should save me some major time. Thanks Scott!
Jason Capshaw says:
Scott, I am having a slight problem with the plugin. Basically, it prevents me from seeing the settings page, with the error: “Cheatin’ Huh? You must be an admin user to make these changes.”
Even though I am signed in as admin.
Heather says:
Jason,
We are in the process of correcting that now. If you could check back a little later on this afternoon the Cheatin’ Huh issue will at least be fixed and ready to download. There are also some other changes being made, but may not all be included today.
In the meantime, it’s been working to either create a new admin user, or I’ve noticed myself that just changing the password on the admin login instead of using the auto-generated one corrects the issue.
Heather
Heather says:
Repeated FATAL ERROR message when activating plug-in:
After further testing, depending on the plug-ins you are using that are now included in core tweaks, you may not be able to activate on the second try.
Core Tweaks attempts to turn those off for you, but for me it seems to be the Post Teaser plug-in that can’t automatically be deactivated. The work-around is simply, deactivate it manually in the plugins list first, then activate the core tweaks. (Same goes for Page Order and Page Link Manager if they do not deactivate automatically for you.)
In a way this is good. It’s nice if the Core Tweaks plugin can take care of every step for you, but sometimes it’s over-stepping the bounds being able to control too much.
Heather
Scott Hendison says:
Everyone needs to understand that this plugin is best suited for NEW INSTALLATIONS.
Therefore, if you’ve already activated any other plugins, (like Post Teaser) then TURN THEM OFF first, and at that point, any error messages will almost certainly not be an issue.
If activating any other plugins cause errors, THEN we have something to lookl at!
Jason Capshaw says:
Scott…no worries, I actually am installing it on a new install of wordpress, and I certainly understand beta
I just noticed that you included the H1 hack. I actually built a plugin based on your hack this week that does not require a template file change, you may want to bundle it with your setup package. My name is the link to it:)
Scott Hendison says:
During SMX West 2009, Google just announced support for a new tag, eliminating the risk of duplicate content penalty in your archive, category, and tag pages.
Therefore, we will be adding the canonical fix to the next version as well.
If you ALREADY have a blog up and running though, check out the canonical fix plugin by Joost.
Heather says:
The Core Tweaks plugin is now available at the WordPress’s plugin repository:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-automatic-wp-core-tweaks
baron says:
Works great, thank you
USlifepost says:
Seems cool.Thanks man!
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Manu says:
hi i need a help please
i activeted the pluging and after clicking the button make the changes in the pluging panel i received this message in each page:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function single_post_title_attribute() in /home/manubella/ashtangayogaoxford.org/wp-content/themes/oriental/page.php on line 16
Ella says:
Hi…! This rocks. You rock. Thank you for sharing and helping people out. I send you a virtual beer
debo says:
great plugin…is this going to be upgraded for 2.8?
Scott says:
It is already 2.81 compatible…
Brad says:
FYI – Upon upgrading via the WP Plugin Admin or deleting and replacing the plugin version 1.9 via the hosting file manager and replacing with version 2.0, the following two error messages occur:
2 Error Messages at /wp-admin -
include(/home/bowlingl/public_html/abatoninc/wp-content/plugins/sitemap-generator/lang/English.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/bowlingl/public_html/abatoninc/wp-content/plugins/seo-automatic-wp-core-tweaks/sitemap-generator.php on line 49
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘/home/bowlingl/public_html/abatoninc/wp-content/plugins/sitemap-generator/lang/English.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/bowlingl/public_html/abatoninc/wp-content/plugins/seo-automatic-wp-core-tweaks/sitemap-generator.php on line 49
This error has occurred on 14 different Wordpress sites at two different hosting accounts.
I have reverted back to version 1.9b and all sites are working properly without errors.
The WP version vary from 2.8 to 2.8.3.
Thanks,
Brad
Michael says:
Thanks, good work! Bravo!
Jeffrie Ann Hall says:
Hi~ I am very new to blogging and not a techie type AT ALL! So everything scares me! I just upgraded to WP 2.8.5, and yes,it scared me. Went fine though. Here is my question~ I would like to download this plugin, the only plugin I have that is covered by this one is the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator. So, I deactivate that first and then install this plugin, right? AND~ this IS 2.8.5 compatible?
Thank you!
Scott Hendison says:
Well yes, exactly. At that point, wherever you’ve added Dagon shortcode then your sitemap will just continue to work as it does now…
Jeffrie Ann Hall says:
Hi~ I deactivated my Dagon Sitemap Generator. The activated HeadSpace. The I didn’t have a Sitemap when I clicked on the Sitemap tab on my blog. What’s wrong? I have switched bac until I hear for you with answer! Geeez, I wish I knew more about all this stuff. I feel like I am trying to navigate a new planet without a map. LOL!
Scott Hendison says:
So you’re saying that you have the shortcode [sitemap] in the .html of the page, but with daigon off, and Core Tweaks activted (and have actually “run” from it’s admin page), you have nothing on the sitemap page? But when you activate Daigon it does appear? – Just clarifying – If that’s the case, I’m a bit stunned – not sure what tto say, and i’ll have to wait for Heather to be back. (I’ll be slower t oreply here, caiuse i’m out the door to Trick or Treat with the kids,,,
Jeffrie Ann Hall says:
In the meantime i will try to improve my typing skills. Hehe, I don’t press hard enough on some keys and lose letters, sorry but I think you get the meaning of what I had to say, right?
Heather says:
Jeffrie,
In case this wasn’t just a typo:
– “I deactivated my Dagon Sitemap Generator. The activated HeadSpace.”
Are you sure that you activated the Seo Automatic Core Tweaks plugin?
And the Dagon Design Sitemap shortcode for the sitemap page is
<!– ddsitemapgen –> (That is 2 dashes and a space before and after ddsitemapgen.)
I also noticed that on one site after the 2.8.5 wordpress upgrade, I needed to go ‘edit’ my sitemap page and just click update. (No changes, just like re-saving the page.) That only happened to me once though and was on a test are where I was in the middle of development of something – so it’s not an issue to bring up just yet unless you need to do the same thing.
If that does not work for you, can you please test deactivating all of your plugins, then turn on only the Core Tweaks plugin. (This way we’ll know if there is a plugin conflict.)
Heather
Jeffrie Ann Hall says:
Hi~
You have nothing to worry about, no conflict with your plugin. I really have a hard time with all of this. Even understanding replies to questions sometimes, due to lack of tech knowledge on my part.
In any case, a friend helped me and we got into a 500 Fatal Error situation. So I went to HostGator and they got my blog back up. Everything is fine, at this point!
Jeffrie
Patrick says:
I just installed the plugin and it’s giving me the “unwise to use admin” messge. But I’m not using Admin. I have a different user id that is an administrator level account. It doesnt’ even have “admin” in the name.
Also, I don’t have a “core tweaks” menu under settings. I do have a completely seperate “SEO Automation” section however.
Scott Hendison says:
Hmm, that’s a new one – So you’re logged in with a different username and still getting that message? – Heather, the programmer is on vacation, so i’m not sure what to tell you at the moment – Maybe add a NEW userrname, log in that way and see if it still says it?
Amar says:
I have the same issue as Patrick. Tried a new username, but no go.
Scott Hendison says:
Can you verify that you’re using WP 2.86?
Amar says:
Yeah, I’m using WP 2.86.
Scott Hendison says:
I’ve now tried it on fresh installs two hosts this morning, and had no problem with the permission / user. Hmmmm, I’m sorry, but this is a stumper that will have to wait for Heather, who is back on monday.
Heather says:
On the comment: “Also, I don’t have a “core tweaks” menu under settings. I do have a completely seperate “SEO Automation” section however.”
That is correct – Under installation and FAQs of the plugin download page (and also above) you can see that the menu is located: “Set options in SEO Automatic > Core Tweaks for changing the Wordpress preinstalled installation options.”
Heather says:
I was unable to duplicate the problem on new or existing installs of Wordpress for the “unwise to use admin” message.
For everyone who is having this issue, can you please provide more details?
The latest version of Core Tweaks is 2.4 – is this the version you are using?
I see above that using WP 2.8.6 has already been answered “yes”, but are the blogs new installations or pre-existing?
Do you have 2 main menus showing on the right of the admin area? One that says Core Tweaks and also one that says SEO Automatic? (If you have a very early Core Tweaks from it’s test phase – it is possible that the plugin could be double installed. Those early versions were sent to beta testers who were hand-notified when updates became available, but it’s not uncommon for early versions of plugins to get passed around or found on the internet.)
Any additional info you can think of might help track down the problem.
Top says:
Frage:
welche Firma hat von “Instant WP” hier in Deutschland (Germany) die Vertriebsrechte ?…oder die Vertriebsrechte in deutscher Sprache ?
Vielen Dank im voraus.
Mit freundlichem Gruß
G. Top
Scott Hendison says:
I’m sorry, but there is no version of Core Tweaks that is specifically written in German, or any language other than English, so there’s nobody with the “distribution rights”. I’d be happy to let someone translate one into any language, as long as it remains free. If anyone’s interested, feel free to get in touch.