Configuring WordPress to have a thumbnail with article excerpt

We have recently begun to post RSS feed information on client websites. One of the issues we were having was the ability to include thumbnails next to the displays of the article excerpts. After many hours of looking through the WordPress code and the RSS2HTML utility, I found that WordPress needs a plug-in in order to make this happen correctly.

I downloaded, installed, and tested the Thumbnail for Excerpts – by Radu Capan… this plugin was exactly what we were looking for. Now there is a thumbnail next to the excerpts and all is well. This plug-in also has the capability to be configured.

You can download the plug-in at: http://www.cnet.ro/wordpress/thumbnailforexcerpts/

What Search Engines See

nowing what search engines see when crawling your site and associated web pages is important to web designers and SEO analyzing. There are several tools out on the Internet that will help you review your coding and check the appropriate mark-up, but what does your page look like when all of this browser related information is removed? Stripping theses elements down to the bare minimum of text is what needs to be done in order to analyze key words and data that are important to writing your text so that it is optimized for organic search results.

The following tool is an excellent resource to help you with this task:

http://www.wmtips.com/tools/keyword-density-analyzer/

You are able to enter any URL and the tool will strip out all HTML/CSS/Javascript and provide you with the actual text that you can review to determine if a change to your data needs to be made.
With the report that this utility generates, you can then see the keyword phrases that are within the text, the percentage of the keyword density, and the Word Statistics that will tell you where the words or phrases appear within the tags.

7 Useful CSS Tools

“CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is still one of the most popular modes of designing a working website, yet, for many designers it can be at times a lengthy and tedious job. Thus, many web designers have [taken] to using CSS tools in order to quicken the process up as well as have more control over design elements…” This article by Marie Coles on September 4, 2010 outlines 7 Useful CSS tools. Read the article.