Comment on Stallion WordPress SEO Theme by SEO Dave.

WordPress SEO Theme Started to test Stallion 6.2 on this website (live sites is when the bugs show :-)). Thanks to those who gave feature requests (especially Mark who uses Stallion) for feature suggestions (used quite a few of them).

You can test the new Stallion colour schemes on the right menu, new WordPress Theme colours are Connections Reloaded, Coraline and Delicate (more to come in future updates). Can’t see them here, also added multiple Stallion 2011 Header Images sets including a money set.

Can’t show all Stallion features on one site, here I’ve activated the new features within the author biography, currently 8 image links to social network profiles, Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter etc… and a RSS feed link to Feedburner. The profile links are also replicated in a fixed floating section currently to the far right of the screen (can be on the left as well). Those worried about wasting link benefit these links have the option of built in Stallion link cloaking so no link benefit wasted. These links and other settings are added via a users profile page. I don’t really use all those social networks, so some of my profiles are a bit bare, if you have any suggestions for others to add LMK. Can technically add dozens, they only load when you add the social network profile links to your profile page.

Incorporated author archives back into Stallion (had the link disabled). When author profiles turned on there’s a profile link added to all archive pages. The author archives are NOT recommended on single user sites for SEO reasons (duplicate content issues, basically identical to home page archives: suppose you could turn them on if you have a static page for home), but could have a use on multi-author blogs as each author archive will be unique. This is a single user site so the feature (the author links) are turned off.

Added a new recent comments widget with gravatars and comment excerpt (see menu). I looked for a long time for a plugin that would achieve this sort of recent comments widget that was SEO friendly and found none, so took a plugin that came close and made it much better SEO wise. Might create a stand alone plugin with this code.

Added the new Google Translation widget (translate your site into loads of languages) and YouTube RSS Feed widget.

Try a search using the search form and checkout the new search feature that rather than showing the standard archive excerpt shows an excerpt that includes the keywords searched for and they are highlighted.

See the new navigation menu within the footer, could be used for adding privacy and similar links easily.

Added new static page templates including one that shows the latest 25 comments in full example at Recent Discussions will make reading new comments for regular visitors much easier, rather than having to visit multiple pages to see if there’s comments worth reading/commenting on they are all on one page with a link to the original comment/post for commenting: I’ll see if I can’t add a reply to link as well like I did with the Stallion SEO Super Comments pages.

There’s other behind the scenes features, like updated the code that lists the SEO damaging settings associated with the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin (the author had changed some settings names, so some of the Stallion warnings no longer showed).

Assuming no major issues show up in the tests should release Stallion 6.2 before the end of the month.

David