In this article you will find various ways of improving your theme by adding various wordpress post hacks like showing related posts, setting up and showing scheduled posts or showing a featured post. All of these hacks can optimize your wordpress blog by increasing time on site, bounce rate and other SEO issues.

How to show related posts based on keywords

First up Download, install, and activate the “Ultimate Tag Warrior fin” plugin. After this open up your single.php and before the comments template:

<?php comments_template(); ?>

insert this code snippet:

<div class="relatedposts">
<h2>Related Posts</h2>
<?php UTW_ShowRelatedPostsForCurrentPost("posthtmllist", "", "4"); ?>
</div></php>

You can set up the number of related posts by increasing the number “4″. Save the single.php and refresh your website. The posts will be shown based on the related keywords other posts have. You can also further stylize your snippet by creating a class entry “relatedposts” inside your style.css file.

How to list scheduled posts

Sometimes, you schedule posts instead of stuffing them all together at one time. This can be useful if you have much to write about and if you want to let your readers know what to expect for the future. This encourages the reader to visit you again and read that great post you scheduled for another day.

Ok, this snippet is easy to install, just paste the following code anywhere inside your theme files that you want the scheduled post to appear:

<?php
$my_query = new WP_Query('post_status=future&order=DESC&showposts=5');
if ($my_query->have_posts()) {
    while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();
        $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID; ?>
        <li><?php the_title(); ?></li>
    <?php endwhile;
}
?>

How to show a random featured post

This hack is useful for a number of reasons like SEO optimization, reader engagement, low bounce rate or having something to show-off. And here is how you can do it:

First you need to download this plugin, install and activate it.

Next thing is to open up your index.php file, and right after this tag

 <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

insert this tag

 <?php show_featured_post(); ?>

You can customize this further by wrapping the tag within a css style like this:

 <div style="padding:10px; border:5px solid #ccc; margin-top:10px;">
<?php show_featured_post(); ?>
</div>

Today we will learn where you need to go to learn cool new stuff you can implement in your WP template to make it very very attractive. Note that sometimes having a boring plain old theme is not going to get you high up, so the best thing is to spice up your design using some of the best custom field hacks on the web.

How to set up Thumbnails near your post titles

Here are some tips and tricks as well as some tutorials on how to implement Thumbnails in your template using WordPress custom fields.

• WordPress Custom Fields: Adding Images To Posts
• How To Add Image Thumbnail Using WordPress Custom Fields
• Giving each WordPress post a thumbnail, and display the thumbnail on the home page

Avoiding Duplicate Content using WP custom fields

Duplicate content is a pain in the nut when you are trying to SEO your wordpress blog, so here is how you avoid it using a simple custom field hack.

• How To: Avoid Duplicate Posts, shows how to avoid duplicating multiple posts instead of single post.
• Reducing Duplicate Content on WordPress Blogs
• Duplicate Content Cure Plugin for WordPress

Add Meta Descriptions to your posts using custom fields

Some say All in one SEO plugin is better for getting that valuable meta on your posts, but sometimes the custom field hack is much more better. Have a look at these tutorials and learn how to do it.

• Unique meta description and meta keyword tags in your WordPress themes
• How to: Create a meta description function for your WordPress blog

More custom field resources

• How to Use WordPress Custom Fields
• Creating Custom Write Panels in WordPress
• Custom Shortcodes
• More Fields