WP SEO Sniper Professional Frequently Asked Questions

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  1. How do I modify my theme files for the automatically built and SEO’d footer links menu?
  2. Must I modify anything in my theme header.php file?
  3. How do I create a simple horizontal menu with links to my pages?
  4. Could you give me some ideas on how to use 301 redirects?
  5. Does this plugin work with the Semiologic and Semiologic Pro theme?

  1. How do I modify my theme files for the automatically built and SEO’d footer links menu?

    This is one of the rare instances where you have to edit your theme files. Edit the “footer.php” file of your theme, and then do one of the following two options.

    Option 1: The Easiest Option

    Look for the code in footer.php that looks something like this <div id=”footer”>. Your footer.php might contain something slightly different. Select everything between <div id="footer"> and its corresponding closing </div> (or the innermost DIV that encloses the existing footer content in your theme file), and replace it with the code below.

    <?php wp_footer(); ?>

    If the <?php wp_footer(); ?> code appears somewhere else in footer.php, remove it so that it occurs once only where you’ve inserted it as described above.

    Enable the “Automatically build the footer page menu” option in the WP SEO Sniper Options panel.

    Option 2: Slightly More Complex but More Versatile Option

    With this second option your theme files will still work if you disable the WP SEO Sniper plugin.

    Copy the following code into your text editor.

    <?php if (function_exists('wpseosniper_footer_links')) { wpseosniper_footer_links(); } else { ?>
    Your existing footer HTML code
    <?php } ?>

    Look for the HTML code in footer.php that displays your existing footer text and links. Copy the code and replace “Your existing footer HTML code” in the text editor with that code. Then, select all the code in your text editor and replace the HTML code that you’ve just copied from your footer.php with the text from your text editor.

    Here’s an example.

    If your footer.php contained the following code:

    <div id="footer">
    <p><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> is proudly powered by <a href="http://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a> <br /><a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>">Entries (RSS)</a> and <a href="<?php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?>">Comments (RSS)</a>.</p>
    </div>

    It should end up looking like this:

    <div id="footer">
    <?php if (function_exists('wpseosniper_footer_links')) { wpseosniper_footer_links(); } else { ?>
    <p><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> is proudly powered by <a href="http://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a> <br /><a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>">Entries (RSS)</a> and <a href="<?php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?>">Comments (RSS)</a>.</p>
    <?php } ?>
    </div>

    Don’t enable the “Automatically build the footer page menu” option in the WP SEO Sniper Options panel.

  2. Must I modify anything in my theme header.php file?

    That depends on your theme. Some themes have code to display the blog meta title that looks as follows:

    <title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> » Blog Archive <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?></title>

    The meta title code in your header.php should look like the code below to effectively work with WP SEO Sniper:

    <title><?php wp_title(); ?></title>

    You can delete everything else that’s between the <title> and </title> codes.

    Also, make sure that your header.php has the code <?php wp_head(); ?> somewhere between the <head> and </head> codes.

  3. How do I create a simple horizontal menu with links to my pages?

    Include the following code in your theme’s CSS file:

    #pagemenuhoriz li {
    display: inline;
    padding: 0px 5px;
    }

    Then decide where you want the horizontal menu to appear (usually just below the blog’s header graphic), and insert the following code:

    <div class="pagemenuhoriz">
    <ul>
    <?php wp_list_pages('title_li=&sort_column=menu_order'); ?>
    </ul>
    </div>

    You can then further style the appearance of the menu with additional CSS styling.

    This menu will exclude those pages where you’ve enabled the “Prevent this page from showing in the list of pages” option in the WP SEO Sniper options on the write or edit page screens.

  4. Could you give me some ideas on how to use 301 redirects?

    Sure. Let me show you one way I’ve used it on this site.

    Look at the red menu bar at the top of this page. See the menu item “Free SEO Plugin”? That is a WordPress page with zero content in it. All it contains is a title so that I could include the page in my menu.

    I use the 301 redirect feature of WP SEO Sniper Professional to redirect the page to a Blog post that contains the details of the free plugin. You can’t include a post in the list of pages. That’s the way I was able to in effect include one of my posts in the page menu.

    Why didn’t I just make the free plugin page a WordPress page? Ah. Good question. I wanted the free plugin post to go out on my RSS feed, get into Technorati, as well as being picked up by all the ping and syndication services.

    Another use of the 301 redirect feature is for easily cloaking your affiliate links.

    Create an empty page with only a title to identify it to yourself in the list of pages, give it a meaningful Page Slug (URL), check the “Prevent this page from showing in the list of pages” and “Prevent bots from spidering this page” WP SEO Sniper Page Options, and insert your affiliate link in the “301 redirect this page to” box.

    Voila. You have a hidden page that you can link to from anywhere and it will seamlessly redirect to your affiliate link, cloaking and protecting your affiliate link. The link people will click on will be a local link on your site.

  5. Does this plugin work with the Semiologic and Semiologic Pro theme?

    Yes, it certainly does. However, there are one or two caveats.

    WP SEO Sniper cannot manipulate the links that you display in the Header Nav of the Semiologic theme, which means those links will not be selectively nofollowed.

    To display the WP SEO Sniper footer links in the Footer Nav section of the Semiologic theme, do the following.

    In your Semiologic theme folder (usually /wp-content/themes/semiologic/), create a file called “custom.php”. Copy and paste the code below into that file. If there’s already a custom.php file, then add the code to the very top of the file (insert it before the very first line).

    <?php
    if (function_exists('wpseosniper_footer_links')) {
    remove_action('display_footer_nav', 'display_footer_nav');
    add_action('display_footer_nav', 'wpseosniper_footer_links');
    }
    ?>

    With this modification, the pages that you select in the WP SEO Sniper options for inclusion in the footer will be used in the Semiologic Footer Nav section, and those links will be nofollowed according to the rules you set for each individual page.

    Semiologic uses standard widgets for Archive, Category, Page, and other links in the sidebar, which means WP SEO Sniper will manipulate those links according to the rules you set.

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