Stallion Responsive Theme version 8.4: added over 70 new color schemes! Stallion Responsive is not just a WordPress Theme that’s SEO friendly, it’s an entire WordPress SEO package of built-in plugins and SEO features taking WordPress to the next level in Post Panda SEO and Google performance metrics with advanced SEO measures to help take full advantage of the Google Hummingbird algorithm. Hummingbird is the Google search algorithm that understands human natural language patterns better than ever before: long tail keyword SERPs with a human touch and Stallion Responsive v8 includes multiple features to take advantage of Google: no other WordPress theme or SEO plugin has these Hummingbird features. Tested to WordPress Version 4.8.*. Note: It’s tested every day on […]
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Responsive Theme
I thought that I would not have to buy the new license while I bought your old generation already. But now it seems you need me to buy new one :(( feeling so sad
Stallion Responsive Discount
I originally planned to release a Stallion WordPress SEO Theme Version 7.2, but so much changed (6 months of theme development) it was no longer even possible to update from version 7.1 to what is now Stallion Responsive 8.
It’s equivalent to comparing something like Windows 7 to Windows 8, you don’t update you upgrade, generally a new install with new settings and features.
So Stallion Responsive though based on Stallion WordPress SEO version 7 (like Stallion 6 was based on Talian 5, but it wasn’t an update) are not the same theme.
That being said since I did originally plan to release a Stallion WordPress SEO Theme v7.2 I plan to offer those who ordered Stallion 7 over the past 12 months a discount equal to half what they paid for Stallion 7. Been really busy, so not got around to compiling the offer etc… (have to manually compile an email list of those who are entitled, takes time). If you ordered in the past 12ish months (will set the cut off date to 1st January 2013, which is over a year) the discount will be available (have to give the discount manually, so send me an email, but be patient won’t be doing much work this week: see PC issues below).
I’m not offering any other discounts, all other customers have had a minimum 12 months use of Stallion WordPress SEO version 7.* prior to the release of Stallion Responsive and that’s more than enough time to get their monies worth.
BTW Sorry for the delay responding, main PC decided to die this week followed by the backup PC (relatively old) also deciding to play up during a Windows update (that old it was running Windows Vista). Managed to get my main PC working, but won’t run anything even remotely resource intensive (freezes up). It’s weird, won’t run Avast Antivirus, Firefox, Windows Live Mail, Skype, Steam…. pretty much limited to Google Chrome and text editors, oh and a free antivirus program called Avira (apparently less resource intensive). Running one level above safe mode, really sucks not having a fast PC to work with.
Brand new PC on the way, 16GB RAM, 2TB HD, Intel Core i7 quad core I7-4770 CPU :-)
David Law
Stallion Responsive Discount
New Premium WordPress Responsive Theme
I just checked back my last purchase and saw that I bought over 1 year the stallion v7. Now I feel that I have to pay for the whole price like your new customer.
I think that you should consider about your old customers, not just focusing on 1 year less or 2 years. It should be how you can satisfy the customers so that we could blow up your theme to get more customers back.
Anyways, thank you so much.
New Premium WordPress Responsive Theme
Free WordPress Theme Support
You bought Stallion WordPress SEO almost two and a half years ago (December 2011: that would be version 6 I believe) and in that time have benefited from and used unlimited free support.
I don’t keep track of who I help, but I recognize your name, so guesing it’s probably a dozen plus support requests (feel free to correct me?).
Had a quick look for your comments on the old support site and looks like significantly more than a dozen and looks like many of them aren’t even Stallion theme issues: general WordPress support questions like WordPress language translation advice, suggestions on plugins sort of stuff…, but I helped you for free anyway when I could have been lazy and pointed you at the free WordPress support forums.
If you feel I haven’t supported your needs as a Stallion Theme customer for the price you paid almost 2 and a 1/2 years ago, not a lot I can do about it. If you’ve had better customer support elsewhere would love to hear about it so I can buy their products as they must be awesome.
If you wish to use Stallion Responsive v8 you’ll need a Stallion Responsive license and I have no plans to offer discounts to any customer who ordered prior to January 2013. I’m being overly generous offering any discounts, I’m still supporting Stallion WordPress SEO v7 (still supporting Talian 5 which I’ve not actively developed for years), so have more than forfilled the ‘contract’: free support for as long as the theme is developed.
I’m toying with the idea of increasing the price of Stallion Responsive to over $200 a license so I can concentrate on those serious about making money online (free support takes time). I’m serious about making money and wouldn’t blink at paying $500+ for the SEO built into Stallion Responsive with no support, but then I understand search engine optimization.
David Law
Free WordPress Theme Support
WordPress Responsive Theme - Different Screen Sizes
Hi Dave, I have a question about the responsive functionality of the theme. I have installed Stallion Responsive and have gone through the new options and looking forward to launching it to replace Stallion 7 on my sites this week.
From what I can tell, Stallion’s responsive functionality kicks in once you drop to around 800px resolution(?) Is it possible to get the theme to engage responsive version (meaning dropped sidebars and responsive menu) at a lower screen width point than 800px?
The reason is that according to my numbers I get very similar performance for tablets (which of course tend to be of larger screen resolution than smartphones) as I do for desktops.
However mobile phones (generally with screens in the 300-500px width range) perform much more poorly in pretty much every metric.
I run the 2 sidebar (200px left and right) layout, and I also don’t want to lose that upper left sidebar area for tablets for displaying ads.
I looked at a lot of the code, but I have to admit since it’s a new concept I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. Maybe this isn’t as easy a change as I think. Or maybe it is? If you have any ideas or thoughts on this would be much appreciated.
If it is possible to adjust responsiveness to a lower initial resolution, I may still end up using it as you’ve created it, but would appreciate first testing it limited to what seems to be my area of greatest need, that is screen sizes around the 480px and below width.
Thanks,
Erik
WordPress Responsive Theme - Different Screen Sizes
Responsive WordPress Theme Mobile CSS
Good question and should be relatively easy to achieve since all the responsive code is in one css file.
Best way to do this is via the Stallion Responsive Child Theme which all Stallion Responsive Theme users should install as a matter of course.
If you don’t have the child theme, download it from the main article, install and activate like any other theme after installing Stallion Responsive (that’s a parent theme).
From the main (parent) Stallion Responsive theme make a copy of the mobile.css file, on your server it will be under
Make a copy that after editing we’ll be uploading to:
The Stallion Responsive Child Theme is more advanced than a general WordPress Child Themes, your average child theme does NOT override ALL parent theme files, with Stallion almost all files can be over wrote simply by adding a copy to the equivalent location within the child theme folder as shown above.
When you upload the mobile.css file to the child theme folder, WordPress will only use the child theme version of mobile.css: means no editing the main parent theme. You should do this with any files you plan to modify, copy them to the child theme so the parent theme is never modified (makes your updates smoother).
Anyway, load your copied mobile.css file in a text editor and on line 9 you’ll find:
@media only screen and (max-width: 800px) {This is the start of the CSS code for screens of 800px and less (is not used for screens 801px+), it ends on line 116 with }, next line is for screens smaller than 768px and if you scroll further you’ll find rules for other screen sizes (11 of them).
For example for a mobile device with a screen size of 360px the first 494 lines of CSS code in the mobile.css file is ignored because of the max-width settings.
What “@media only screen and (max-width: 800px) {” does is ALL screen sizes smaller than 800px use this CSS, so that CSS isn’t used for screens 801PX or larger. When you get to the next @media it tells the browser to use this CSS for screen sizes smaller than 768px and so on….
You will see some of the CSS rules are repeated with different settings, like you’ll find multiple instances of
#wrap_stallion { width: 780px; }With a different width for each @media size, 800px is above and 768px below
#wrap_stallion { width: 748px; }If you aren’t familiar with how CSS works when you have the same CSS rule with different settings the browser reads the CSS rules in order and the last CSS rule read is the one that’s used. But, because we have the max-width setting for screen sizes between 768px and 800px only the top 800px rules will be used, lines 117 onwards will be ignored.
Hopefully that’s enough info to understand how the mobile.css file works, it in effect over rides the CSS of the other Stallion CSS files (the Desktop PC screen size) when a screen is smaller than 800px, for screen 801px plus the entire mobile.css file does nothing.
To achieve what you want should be a simple case of deciding what size you want as your starting point as NOT Desktop (I set not Desktop at 800px) and delete everything above it.
Say you wanted screens with width above 720px to still load your sidebars you’d delete lines 9 through to 162.
That would delete CSS rules for 800px and 768px, those screen sizes would load the full Desktop version.
You might have realized from the above you could also add your own screen sizes, if you wanted a 900px screen size you could add one, I’d make a copy of the 800px CSS rules an modify them.
David Law
Responsive WordPress Theme Mobile CSS
Mobile Responsive Display for Smaller Screen Widths
Thanks Dave, I just did what you suggested above–and it does look like it is keeping the left sidebar intact, however the mobile menu seems to still kick in at the same roughly 800px width (I am slowly shrinking my browser to simulate different widths as I think you suggested on another thread).
What seems to be a larger issue is that the sidebars behave strangely. It does retain the left sidebar all the way to smaller sizes–it never drops, even when I am in what I believe must be the 300-400px range which is below the 480px level I set for mobile responsiveness to kick in (viewed at maximum left-right screen shrinkage in Firefox).
In fact, it doesn’t drop the right sidebar either–rather they both adjust to different widths as you slowly shrink through the lower sizes. As it might sound, this kind of makes a mess on the screen.
It seems to me like the sidebars are 1)both remaining at their original positions all through the lower screen widths, but 2)expanding out to the widths they would take on, were they dropped to the bottom of the display at a given screen width. As a result the elements sort of overlap onto one another.
I edited mobile.css to display responsive at sizes beginning at 480px and below, and it looks like the sidebars are first adjusting to these sizes right around that mark, maybe slightly below it. Otherwise they are both staying in place and the screen is keeping its full-screen dimensions down to about that desired 480px level.
Is there maybe a tweak that needs implementing somewhere to 1)keep the normal menu down to the desired width, and 2)get the sidebars to simply drop below the desired width (as they otherwise would)?
I’m hoping and assuming I didn’t mess anything up on my end; I tested all this on a “clean” CSS file (on a color scheme that I hadn’t touched CSS on). I also tried it using both the 2011 header and the alternative header, thinking that might be the problem, but it seems to behave the same with both.
Thanks if you have any ideas for a fix, hoping it’s just another simple tweak!
Erik
Mobile Responsive Display for Smaller Screen Widths
Responsive WordPress Menu CSS Rules
Doh!, forgot the menu CSS code that’s located within the style-****.css files where **** is related to the colour scheme selected.
Similar instruction to the earlier comment, find the relevant style-****.css file for example if using White n Blue Rounded Corners it’s the file
and copy to the child theme folder.
Near the bottom of the CSS file you’ll find:
@media only screen and (max-width: 800px) {Change the 800px to whatever size you want the mobile menu to kick in, so 480px based on what you said.
That will fix the menu issue. If you change colour scheme you’ll need to make the same change to the corresponding CSS file.
Not able to test code snippets right now, waiting on a new PC to arrive, so below is quite significant CSS changes that I haven’t tested.
Think I know what the issue is with the sidebars not doing what they should do after the CSS change, forgot that I minified the CSS code after creating it. Basically my original mobile.css code repeated a lot of CSS rules for each screen size, since pagespeed is now important to Google SEO I removed all the repeated CSS rules for the lower screen sizes as they are present in the 800px rules: some of the 800px max-width CSS is needed for the lower screen resolutions and I told you to delete them all :-)
If you replace your current code between this CSS code:
@media only screen and (max-width: 480px) { .... css rules @media only screen and (max-width: 400px) {With this code:
@media only screen and (max-width: 480px) { #wrap_stallion { width: 460px; } #stsearchform, #header_widget { right: 10px; } #content_all { padding-right: 0; padding-left: 0; min-width: 100%; } .singleside { width: auto; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; position: relative; float: left; padding: 0 0 15px 0; } * html .singleside { left: 0px; } .leftside, .rightside { position: static; float: inherit; width: auto; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; padding: 0 0 0 0; } * html .leftside { left: 0px; } #footer_stallion { margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; } #footer_stallion2 { width: auto; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; } #archive_widget, #banner_widget, .stfullwidget, .stfoot, .stfoot3 { width: 432px; padding: 0; margin: auto 10px auto 10px; } #right-sidebars, #left-sidebars, #queries_stallion { width: 440px; padding: 0; margin: auto 10px auto 10px; } .sidebars-plus1, .sidebars-plus2 { width: 100%; padding: 0; } .st-footer-links ul { padding: 0 0 10px 0; } .str_landscape { height: 132px; width: 460px; } .post-meta, .extra-padding, #comment-area textarea, .comment-stallion { width: 440px; } .home .odd0, .archive .odd0, .search .odd0, .home .odd1, .archive .odd1, .search .odd1 { width: 440px; margin: 10px; } #st_feature_content, .st_feature_post { height: auto; } .st_feature_pager a { line-height: 0%; visibility: hidden; } .st-profiles-left, .st-profiles-right { width: 24px; } .st-profiles-left { left: 3px; } .st-profiles-right { right: 3px; } #imageMenu { width: 440px; } #imageMenu ul li a { width: 84px; } } @media only screen and (max-width: 400px) {It should work.
Been a couple of months since working on the CSS files and there were a few tricky CSS rules that needed a few tweaks as the screen sizes changed, if you find something doesn’t quite work look at the CSS rules you’ve deleted from the mobile.css file for ones missing above.
David
Responsive WordPress Menu CSS Rules
WordPress Mobile Responsive Navigation Menu
Just made both changes, I haven’t run it through specific screen emulators but based on shrinking my browser window, the above fixes seem to work like a charm with both menus and sidebars performing as they should with mobile responsiveness kicking in right about at 480px width.
There was one thing I noticed when deleting the widths I didn’t want–at the very top below the 800px level there was this bit:
/*body { font-size: 100%; }*/As below:
@media only screen and (max-width: 800px) { /*body { font-size: 100%; }*/ #wrap_stallion { width: 780px; } #stsearchform, ...I didn’t see this appearing right after any of the other widths in the mobile.css file. Is it possible this needs to be left in? Things seem to be performing fine without it, so maybe treat this as just an FYI-FWIW :)
Thanks,
Erik
WordPress Mobile Responsive Navigation Menu
Comment Out CSS Code
That’s commented out CSS rules, anything added between
is commented out CSS code, which is basically ignored.
Was some font-size CSS code I was going to use, but didn’t.
David
WordPress H1 Post Title Link CSS
The other bit I’ve hit a roadblock on concerns activating the H1 for post titles (The “Link H1 Heading to Self ON/OFF” feature). Can you point out where to control the CSS display for this bit? When I turn it on the title goes a shade of purple (#551A8B) and is underlined and letter spacing is wider than I’ve set elsewhere in the CSS.
Have tried in the CSS Inline Editor but that doesn’t seem to do anything, and places I’ve been able to otherwise adjust this in the CSS file (ie, the h1.stpostlink, h2.stpostlink, etc. CSS rule) don’t affect it.
As an aside I can understand maybe there is an SEO benefit of not having this post title H1 linked, but I think I prefer to have it on for user benefit.
My thinking is that most users are used to the title of a post being a link and thus a quick way to grab a link to it (for example to copy-paste to email or, even better, copy-paste into their own sites when linking back to me). I basically want to make that as easy as possible.
Thanks,
Erik
WordPress H1 Post Title Link CSS
Broken CSS Code
Hmm, looks like I broke the H1 self link CSS between testing the feature (was working correctly) and releasing: made a few minor updates within the first week of release and maybe broke it then.
One of the problems with so many features to test, easy to break one when modifying code for something else.
Have a few minor modifications ready for the next update, the Stallion SEO Super Comments pages in Stallion Responsive 8.0 lack canonical URLs, in the next update they’ll have canonical URLs to the right SEO Super Comment URLs so if like me you move comments around posts Google will only index one version and not the old and new URLs.
When I get a working PC setup will include a fix for the H1 CSS code as well. Also plan to modify the WordPress Tags Cloud Widget CSS, if you check Stallion Responsive in Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool it’s getting a few tap related warnings. Google added the new check after Stallion Responsive 8 was released, basically need to give the tag links more padding for mobile devices so they are easier to tap.
That’s a fun modification, will have around 60 files to modify :-)
David
Broken CSS Code
Website Launch
Gotcha…well if it’s not something I can fix myself, I guess I’ll just have to hang tight on launching the theme until the next update, since it’s a pretty prominent element on the majority of pages visitors will see.
I sympathize with the PC problems, that is the last thing you need when you do all your work online.
WordPress H1 CSS Link Code
Leave the H1 self link feature turned off until I fix the CSS, you realise it’s a link to the page you are already on so having it turned off doesn’t remove a useful feature?
Added the option thanks to Mark, he’d noticed there was a high click rate on the link which isn’t ideal: will confuse your visitors, they click it and they don’t go anywhere.
So added the self H1 link on as an option, I have it turned off and if I only designed Stallion Responsive for me would have not bothered having the option to have it a link.
I miss the link during development, used to click it to reload the page, so was really important to me, can’t think of any reason why a normal user would want a link to the page they are on?
Update: few mins after posting this comment had a look at the code and was obvious what I’d done to break it.
edit the file /stallion-responsive/layout/link_h1_self.php
Change the firt instance of
to
Only change the first copy of the H1 code (there’s two in the file, the second one is correct and used for when the H1 isn’t linked).
I’d used the contread id for the linked H1 when should have been the the stpostlink class.
David
WordPress H1 CSS Link Code
Should WordPress Post Titles be Permalinked?
Thanks Dave, that did the trick :)
Yes, certainly I know that it’s a link back to the same page. However I wouldn’t necessarily say that it is negative for the user.
1) One reason is that I think a lot of users are used to and aware that post titles are often links back to the post.
Along those lines, it’s a second option, outside the browser bar url, to easily grab a link if someone wants to share my content or link back to me.
I think the easier I make it to link to me, the better (within reason of course). Some of my content gets a good share of external links and I want to be careful about continuing to encourage that :)
2) Also, depending on the browser bar it may be significantly easier to “right click-copy link address” on post title than to highlight then copy the text in the browser bar.
This could be particularly relevant with mobile browsers. I know firsthand sometimes it is a real pain to highlight text in my tablet touchscreen browser bar with my fat thumbs :) with letters getting cut off at the end, or fingers hitting things I don’t want them to.
Yes, you can often just tap the browser bar area to auto-highlight then select copy, but can be clunky and may not even be an option in some of the many browsers out there I don’t use (I simply don’t know) not to mention on smaller smartphone screens.
Experiences may also vary in other desktop-level browsers with which I have no user experience, where you may have to highlight text manually using mousepads of varying quality.
That aside, post title text is often the largest text on the page (outside of maybe site title) and therefore easiest to lay a thumb on.
It’s certainly happened that I’ve accidentally hit other links (banner ads, other buttons/links in the browser bar area, etc) trying to copy a url out of the browser on my tablet screen.
So for those reasons I think having post title linked can be useful.
3) The other reason I want to keep post title permalinked for now, is that when I make a large change like upgrading to a more advanced theme, I like to control as many variables at first outside of major changes introduced via the theme.
Thus I want to keep post titles linked as they currently are, and for that matter also preserve the visual look even down to small details–so I try to replicate my current site look via CSS changes as much as possible, including even minor things in the sidebars like the look of the recent comments box, etc.
I feel that way I can have a better idea of the impact of certain changes, though I may very well switch this link off at some point.
Removing the post title link does on some level slightly change the link composition of each page though, correct, with one less link back to that page?
You would know better than I whether that is beneficial or not SEO-wise, or if little impact? (obviously I’m assuming if you have it as a recommended setting, it’s probably not going to hurt you :) )
Thanks again for your work in solving this especially with your current PC pains. So soon it’s full speed ahead :)
Erik
Should WordPress Post Titles be Permalinked?
SEO Benefits of Linking to Self
Linking to self (the page you are already on) is unlikely to have a major DIRECT SEO impact either way, but it’s another one of those SEO concepts that’s difficult to test, so fall back on common sense.
This is how I see it Google SEO wise.
Lots of webpages link to themselves, there’s nothing intrinsically black hat SEO self linking, so Google is highly unlikely to treat self links in a negative SEO way.
Is there any search engine user value in self linking Google might perceive? Google uses links as a vote for the page, link to a page and you are voting it’s a good webpage to visit, but you are linking to the page the are already on, in effect voting for yourself and in most god voting systems voting for yourself is discounted.
My best SEO guess would be Google ignores self links as a direct SEO factor (doesn’t pass PR back to self or anchor text benefit) since they add no user value.
That being said what about indirect SEO value, users do click the WordPress permalink title ones quite a lot (it’s a relatively high percentage when active) and Google is trying to take user experience and this sort of ‘real’ data more into account.
If your users are clicking on the self link at a very high rate (see your Google Analytics data) that will push down the click through percentage of other links from the page.
If Google considers click through rate now or in the future as an important SEO metric having self links will push the CTR of other pages down suggesting users don’t like what you are linking to.
So I have them turned off, but don’t have real SEO test data to backup my action.
David
SEO Benefits of Linking to Self
WordPress Responsive Video Theme
Hi, David
I wanted to redesign your blog to be a responsive video theme. I see you have 2 column feature but i think it would be good if i could change to 3-4 column feature and no need descriptions.
Need your ideas,
Thank you
WordPress 4 Column Responsive Layout
That’s a difficult responsive layout, was a lot of effort to add the 2 column layout and would take a significant amount of code work to create a 3 or 4 column layouts that’s responsive.
There’s 12 layouts built into Stallion Responsive, each column layout (currently single and double) requires both additional PHP code added to the template files (those that create the archive sections) and CSS code. So to add a 3 or 4 column layout would require similar sorts of changes.
I stopped at 2 columns because 3 plus doesn’t work with all 12 Stallion layouts, 4 columns would really only work with the full width layout for example. Many of the other layouts have a content width of under 600px, divide that by 4 columns and it’s less than 150px for actual content, just not enough space and that’s before we think about mobile devices. Even 3 columns and it’s under 200px per column, try adding a header and other content within that space and it looks a mess.
David
WordPress 4 Column Responsive Layout
Developing a News Website with a Responsive WordPress Theme
Hi David,
I was in touch with you recently on the comments regarding a technical issue I was facing on my blog and you very gracefully sorted out my issue just about 3-4 days ago.
I am now planning to build a News site which will have breaking stories or also other interesting stories posted. Some posts will be video posts with content underneath and some will be only text and images. I read about your product with much interest and downloaded the demo. However, I don’t have my own server at the moment since I am using a shared server for my existing blog.
Can you tell me how do I test the demo? Normally themes have a online demo to be seen on the seller’s website. I could not find it in your site. Or maybe I missed it. Can you show it to me?
I have used the WP-ClearVideo theme of Solostream for my previous blog and its not complicated at all and also looks good. I hope I will find Stallion also equally easy along with the SEO features. Please point me to a site which is currently using the theme so that I can have some idea of the layout. Do you think it will go well with a News kinda site. Normally a News site will have posts from all different topics. Also I hope it will allow video posts.
Also, when you say responsive, what does it mean? Does it mean that it will align itself well to the mobile and tablet displays too? Hopefully, the browser experience across different browsers will be uniform.
Lastly, I was looking at a solid hosting for the theme. Initially I considered the Business version of WordPress itself but I believe they don’t allow FTP. In which case, I don’t know how to upload custom themes. Which hosting would be safe & economical. More than the economical thing, I want it to be always up and even if there is any problem with server, it should have mirror sites from where it could be seen. Is that possible only with cloud hosting, in which case what costs am I looking at for hosting your theme.
Thanks for your patience.
Regards,
Rajesh
Developing a News Website with a Responsive WordPress Theme
Building a WordPress WebSite from Scratch
Your planned site sounds a bit like this one, basically a variety of different types of content, standard sort of stuff for a WordPress site. WordPress core handles YouTube videos quite well, though doesn’t by default allow them quickly (by pasting the YouTube URL) embedded into comments, I was using a plugin, but next update (v8.1 working on it now) it’s built into Stallion Responsive see this comment with videos: https://stallion-theme.co.uk/seo-meta-tags/comment-page-2/#comment-25716
The best demo site for Stallion Responsive is this website, this site runs under Stallion Responsive. Can’t show every feature on one website, for example can only show one of the 12 sidebar layouts and one of the current 40 color schemes, but it shows the main SEO features, for example your comment shows multiple SEO features. Best way to demo Stallion Responsive is download it and install it on a WordPress site like you would any theme: the demo zip file is the full product.
If you are familiar with WordPress you won’t have seen many if any WordPress sites with Comment Titles, you used the feature when you made your comment and added the title “Want to Develop a News Website with a Nice Responsive WordPress Theme”.
At the bottom right hand corner of your comment is a link, click it and it loads your comment as a stand alone webpage, I call them Stallion SEO Super Comments. You won’t find other WordPress themes with this feature, it’s not a standard WordPress feature. Give Google a day or two to index your comment and since you title is quite long it will probably rank number one on Google for the comment title:
Want to Develop a News Website with a Nice Responsive WordPress Theme
It’s not a real SERP that will generate traffic, but will show Google indexes and ranks your comment AND as important having this super comments link back to the main article with SEO’d anchor text and that helps the main article rank higher.
If you hadn’t added a comment title I’d have edited your comment and added a relevant one as they are really important to this websites SEO.
There’s dozens of unique SEO features built into Stallion Responsive like this, read through this site especially the Stallion Responsive Tutorials and you’ll get a better idea of it’s SEO power (it’s awesome) and I still have loads of tutorials to write! Sort of using this website to show Stallion Responsive’s power, rather than just write dry tutorials I’m targeting SERPs like “SEO Tutorial” (top 10 in Google) to show how it works. Have a lot of features to show like what image and Video posts look like.
To see the responsiveness either view this site in a mobile device (or an online mobile emulator) or reduce your browser window to see it resize (easiest way). If you are reducing the browser window refresh the page when checking what it looks like as images and ads don’t resize without a refresh (that’s normal for any site). You’ll see everything resizes to fit the screen of popular device sizes, that’s what Responsive means.
Stallion is probably more complicated to use than your current theme, but it has hundreds of options so you have so many more possibilities: I guess your current theme doesn’t have two header types with the option to disable them both completely (no top header area) or the option to hide almost every aspect of a page one bit at a time like the date info added to this comment is an option, one click of the mouse the date is gone. That being said it doesn’t mean you have to go in and manually set hundreds of options, you can have a site almost like this one with a few clicks of the mouse. After that it’s more you learn, more you can achieve: can’t expect an SEO package to do everything for you, to get the most out of Stallion you will have to learn some basic SEO (see the SEO tutorials, I’ll be adding more). If you don’t understand some basic SEO you won’t know how to use the unique features to target relevant SERPs.
My wife is terrible at remembering all the tech stuff, I’ll explain how to login to her test site and a few days later she’ll ask me again (this is just logining in!). Yet she has created multiple Stallion Responsive theme color schemes (they part of Stallion v8.0) from scratch (there’s a color scheme creator built in), she’s working on one now on her test site which she plans to use at her new Skinny Me website. When complete the color scheme will probably be added to Stallion Responsive v8.1, I’ll probably run out a few more color schemes for the next update as well.
If my wife can use it, pretty much anyone can.
We use these test sites:
I’ve uploaded some WordPress test data for easy testing, check the “Multiple Markup Tests2 links on the top navigation menu, have added more test data to one post). Would be cool to allow anyone to login to something like the above, but not had time to develop a version others could login to and test, so right now it’s looking through this site and installing the demo version on your own WordPress blog.
To see how changes look and features work. The bottom one I last used for testing the SEO widgets which is why there are so many widgets. And to develop a WordPress meme generator plugin (work in progress, not happy with it: output is very good SEO wise, but not easy to use).
Regarding WordPress hosting I’m not familiar with a Business version of WordPress? Is that for the free wordpress.com blogs, if so you can’t use any premium theme not sold by them. As I understand you can have any customization either, I’d never pay money for a blog there.
Stallion Responsive only works with the self hosted version of WordPress from wordpress.org. I’ve used Godaddy WordPress hosting (it’s not expensive and it works) which does include FTP access and Godaddy sets WordPress up for you. I’ve not tried a host that automatically includes mirroring, so have no recommendation.
After WordPress is installed, install Stallion Responsive and the free Stallion Responsive Child theme (hundreds of free header images etc….) via the built in WordPress theme install (no need for FTP for installing a theme).
David
Building a WordPress WebSite from Scratch
Content Marketing Strategy
Hi David,
Thanks for the detailed reply. Now I understand why there is no Contact link on your website. You would rather have people contact you through comments which will add automatic content for your site. That is really nice content marketing strategy!!
When I am testing the demo version, on my current blog (hosted on HostGator), I shall be making a new folder called News in the main directory and then upload theme there. I do not want to disturb the current theme & content on my blog. So, if I make a new folder to test your theme under the home directory, will I have to upload WordPress software separately in that folder as well for it to work? My current blog is a WordPress blog but if I make a separate folder ‘News’ under home directory, I guess the WP uploaded in home directory would be lost to this new folder. I may be wrong because I am not technically good.
If it doesn’t work, I will book the domain and hosting and then try on the new server.
Can you tell me more about child theme? What it means and why is it required? I will read up on it but what’s the basic in one or two lines?
Finally, for me to make the purchase, I have to basically weigh the utility factor for me. Honestly speaking, I would want my News site to look like this: URL no longer online.
That’s because the images of the latest news item will make people click on it and go further. While the SEO functions in your theme is really great but on my site, I am not really targeting a few keyphrases. I would be putting posts on multiple topics. So, I have to choose between the site layout style and the SEO benefits when I make the purchase decision.
As always, I am all ears to your inputs. If there is anyway to make your theme look like the above link, then it is a no brainer for me.
Thanks.
Rajesh
Content Marketing Strategy
How to Install WordPress in a SubDirectory
Yep, because of what Stallion does with comments my site can gain Google traffic from supporting my visitors and all the interlinking helps the main article as well: the main tech support article gains at least one internal backlink from each of the 50+ comments posts so far.
It’s a heck of a lot easier to write a comment than a full post, no one expects super high quality content in comments, so you can be more informal in a comment that you wouldn’t get away with in a full article. And Google sees webpages, not posts or comments, so the Stallion SEO super comments are treated just like any other webpage, Google ranks them.
As you already have WordPress installed you have one of two choices.
If your WordPress install is the multisite version you’d be able to create a new blog in a subdirectory now: you probably don’t have multisite, go to your Dashboard, if it’s multisite in the top left hand corner you’ll see a “My Sites” link, hoverover and it will show “Network Admin”, that’s where you make new sites.
Going to assume you don’t have that.
Probably the easiest way to test a theme without using it on your current live site is install WordPress again in a subdirectory.
It’s important not to use a subdirectory name your website already uses. If you have a page that loads when you go to example.com/news/ using the sub-directory /news/ would break that section of your live site. For testing best to use something you are unlikely to every use, I create a lot of SEO articles, so I couldn’t add a sub-directory /seo/ but I could use /seotest/ because I’m unlikely to create a page with /seotest/ as part of the URL slug.
You might be able to install WordPress in a sub-directory via your control panel, no idea if HostGator has that option, if it does it will save you creating a database for the new install. I’ve got one cheap Godaddy WordPress hosting package (rest of my sites are on VPS servers) and the Godaddy hosting does have a quick WordPress setup option: pretty much gets you to WordPress installed, login and create content, set a theme etc…
If not in your HostGator control panel (never used HostGator, so don’t know how) create a new database for the test install and note down the details for accessing the database.
If you are familiar with FTP it’s easy-ish :-) to install WordPress.
Download the WordPress zip file from https://wordpress.org/download/
Unzip on your PC, you’ll have a new folder /wordpress-3.9.1/ in that folder you’ll find the folder /wordpress/
Rename the unzipped /wordpress/ folder to whatever subdirectory you plan to use /newstest/ for example, you’ll now have:
If this was a new install you would go into /newstest/ rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php, load the wp-config.php file in a text editor and add your database details as supplied by your host HostGator (you can do this if you want).
Since you already have a WordPress install it might be easier to download (via FTP) your current sites wp-config.php file, put a copy in /newstest/, open that in a text editor and change the settings, these three settings:
/** The name of the database for WordPress */ define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here'); /** MySQL database username */ define('DB_USER', 'username_here'); /** MySQL database password */ define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');Reasonably good chance only “database_name_here” and “password_here” with “username_here” being the same for both databases. You get these from HostGator.
The rest of the settings shouldn’t need changing.
Don’t leave the “database_name_here” the same as for your main WordPress wp-config.php file, the test install will access your live sites database and change it. We want the test install to use a new separate database.
With the edited wp-config.php file upload the /newstest/ directory (don’t upload the /wordpress-3.9.1/ folder) to the root (root is where you see the current wp-config.php file) of your site using FTP.
When everything is uploaded go to domain.com/newstest/ and follow the Install WordPress instructions.
Login and follow the Best Way to Install Stallion Responsive instructions.
From the webpage above about child themes:
The Meganews WordPress Theme you linked to, though looks nice is awful SEO wise, you aren’t going to be able to create a site similar to that with Stallion: similar in the sense of exact color scheme and all the flashy features, the general structure pretty much any WordPress theme creates that sort of site structure.
Google has moved towards usability and performance metrics in recent algorithm updates, we have to care how fast a website loads, how easily a user can get to the content.
Google has a free testing tool called PageSpeed Insights (it’s relativity new and evolving). Check the MegaNews theme out http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftrendis.si%2Fwp-themes%2Fmeganews%2F&tab=mobile
Those are not good results, 39/100 for mobile and 49/100 for desktop. If you wanted good results with that theme you’d have to disable a lot of the flashy features.
Under Mobile click the “Show how to fix” link for “Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content”.
The MegaNews theme adds over 20 javascript files and a further dozen plus CSS files to create that look!!!
That is TERRIBLE Google SEO wise.
To add flashy features there tends to be a lot of javascript added to a theme and it’s going to have a negative impact on your Google rankings. Load that page on your phone, does it load fast (I didn’t check)?
Like I said Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is relatively new and evolving, when I ran this site through the tool a few months ago (not long after releasing Stallion Responsive v8.0) it was scoring in the 90/100 range (they didn’t have a user experience section of results), Google has added new metrics to the tool and it’s resulted in the score dropping (working on the fixes for Stallion Responsive v8.1: got some inline CSS for tap target issues on this site now to test some CSS fixes, it’s why the paged comments number are so blinking big).
No way I can fix everything, if you check the home page results (which I’m not happy with), as I know these test results are important I’m looking for fixes: http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstallion-theme.co.uk%2F&tab=desktop
You’ll note most of the Leverage browser caching issues are with AdSense code and FaceBook like buttons:
# http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js (20 minutes)
# https://apis.google.com/js/api.js (30 minutes)
# https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js (30 minutes)
# http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/expansion_embed.js (60 minutes)
# http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (60 minutes)
# http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/osd.js (60 minutes)
# https://oauth.googleusercontent.com/…e:rpc:shindig.random:shindig.sha1.js?c=2 (60 minutes)
If I turn the FaceBook like button and AdSense off no more Leverage browser caching issues. Same with minify javascript, it’s Google’s own AdSense code to blame!
Even the User Experience Issues are mostly AdSense.
Stallion Responsive is feature rich, but without causing unnecessary SEO damage. I could add those flashy features, but it would be at the cost of Google SEO traffic and Stallion Responsive is foremost a WordPress SEO package.
I’ll also add you should do some research on how visitors actually react to some of these flashy features, image sliders for example are pretty much ignored by users. They might click the first image in the slide, but because they tend not to add useful features (look awesome, but don’t add anything, fluff basically added by webmasters because it looks cool rather than serves a purpose) users have become blind to them.
Stallion includes an image slider feature and an accordion image navigation menu, both require additional javascript files loading, I don’t use those features on my sites even though I’ve optimized the code best I can.
David
How to Install WordPress in a SubDirectory
Plugins and the Stallion WordPress SEO Package
Hi David,
Thanks again for the detailed reply. I have installed WP in a new directory. Now I have to install your demo. Tell me what other plugins I should install for a functions like safety (Aksimet) and other features which your theme may not be providing. Let me list the few plugins I use on my main blog, which I use. I just want to know if any of these features already exist by default in your theme.
AddThis social bookmarking widget
Add Meta Tags: This one is useful for basic meta tags plus Scheme.org & Opengraph. I guess schema & open graph are important if we want our posts on FB & Google + to show the rich snippets from our website. However, if this feature is already there in your theme, then I don’t need to make the site heavy with additional plugins.
Contact Form Manager
Custom Sidebars: This one is necessary for my current blog if I need to have different set of navigation links on the side on different posts.
Get the Image: Not sure where this is used. Maybe to get thumbnails from different posts.
Google+ Author Information in Search Results (Free Version): I was not able to change the authorship in my theme files. Could not locate it. So, decided to install plugin for Google authorship.
Jetpack which shows Site stats too.
JM Twitter cards: Although the Add Meta tags has twitter card option but I installed this for Twitter posts.
JW player plugin for video player
LWP show more
Menu swapper: This was very important for changing the top navigation bar for different posts or pages. I didn’t want the top navigation bar to have same menus on different category posts. My theme allowed for only 1 top navigation menu and 1 footer menu
Post Tags and Categories for Pages: this was for showing tags & categories option even for the Pages.
UpdraftPlus Backup / Restore: This is to back up the site and also sync with Google drive. So, I always have a copy of the site on the cloud, in case the server of Hostgator catches fire!!
WP Super Cache
YouTube channel gallery
Aksimet for spam
Please let me know if any of the above functions already exist in your theme. In which case, I will install only the plugins which are required.
Thanks.
Rajesh
Plugins and the Stallion WordPress SEO Package
WordPress Plugins Do They Cause SEO Damage?
Not familiar with every WordPress plugin can indicate which ones probably OK etc…
On this website as of June 2014 I use
Google XML Sitemaps – customized version (not available to others yet) I’m testing, my version outputs a sitemap including the Stallion SEO Super Comments https://stallion-theme.co.uk/sitemap.xml not sure if this is a good SEO feature yet.
I’m moving posts and comments from other sites here, so using:
Post Type Switcher – changes posts to pages or pages to posts, will disable when done. Pretty much converting most Pages to Posts as WordPress has more features for Posts.
Move WordPress Comments – Move comments around
Tako Movable Comments – Another move comments around
I get a lot of comments in the wrong posts, I move them to better niched posts, so find the above plugins invaluable.
Features not part of Stallion Responsive and probably not SEO damaging.
Contact Form Manager
UpdraftPlus Backup / Restore
LWP show more
WP Super Cache – I’ve used it, it’s OK, I use W3 Total Cache as it’s better, has better Google performance features.
These features exist in Stallion Responsive
Post Tags and Categories for Pages – Tags are part of Pages in Stallion, though Pages aren’t categorized.
Custom Sidebars – Stallion has a similar feature Display Widgets (under Stallion Layout options to turn on)
Google+ Author Information in Search Results (Free Version) – Stallion Promotion Options
Get the Image – thumbnails part of Stallion, under Stallion Colour Options
YouTube channel gallery – there’s a Stallion YouTube RSS feed widget
AddThis social bookmarking widget – major like buttons part of Stallion – Stallion Promotion Options
Add Meta Tags – Stallion has advanced title tag and meta tag support (SEO Advanced Options), so best to avoid this sort of plugin. I still need to find an opengraph solution I like, ones I’ve looked at I’m not happy with the output.
not sure about these, depends how you use them.
Jetpack which shows Site stats too.
JM Twitter cards
JW player plugin for video player – probably OK
JetPack has interesting features, but comes with a lot of baggage, so I’ve avoided it.
Menu swapper – sounds interesting that would be a nice feature to have as part of Stallion. Although Stallion includes multiple theme location (4 of them) you can only set one custom menu for each location. Would be very useful SEO wise to be able to set a different menu for different parts of the site, on this site for example could make sense on the make money categories to not have all the SEO Tutorial links on the top navigation menu. will have to check that one out.
David
WordPress Plugins Do They Cause SEO Damage?