tips

Turning Categories Into Feeds

Out of the box, WordPress generates a number of RSS feeds for you automatically. These include feeds for comments, posts, and believe it or not, categories. I had previously thought that a plugin was required in order to turn categories into RSS feeds but that is not the case. Check this out.

WordPress supports a number of different syndication specifications, those of which are listed below along side their respected WordPress generated URL.

RSS Spec / WordPress URL

RSS 0.92 / http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-rss.php or http://www.yourdomain.com/?feed-rss

RDF RSS 1.0 / http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-rss2.php or http://www.yourdomain.com?feed=rdf

RSS 2.0 / http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-rss2.php or http://www.yourdomain.com/?feed=rss2

Atom Feed / http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-atom.php or http://www.yourdomain.com/?feed=atom

Comments RSS Feed / http://yourdomain.com/?feed=rss&p=50 where p stands for post and 50 is the post id.

Now here is the feed link which I found interesting.

Category RSS Feed / http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=50 where cat stands for category and 50 is the category ID.

Finding the ID number for a category is easy if the blog your browsing is not using pretty permalinks. However, if the blog IS using permalinks, you can type in the following URLs to access their RSS Subscription Links.

http://www.domain.com/feed – Main RSS Feed

http://www.domain.com/comments/feed – Comments RSS Feed

http://www.domain.com/category/category-name/feed – RSS Feed For That Category

Why would you want to know this information? Now, if you come across a site that publishes articles within only a category or two of interest, you can subscribe directly to those categories instead of the entire blog making your RSS reader that much more efficient. For instance, I occasionally publish jokes or perhaps something out of my personal life when all you really care about, are reviews or news.

I See Your WordPress Plugins

Wordpress.com LogoSimonne of AllTipsAndTricks.com has posted a helpful tip for WordPress users. By default, the permissions for your WordPress directory are set up in such a way to allow the public viewing access. Like Simonne, I’m not sure what the practicality would be except for those snooping around or those trying to figure out which plugins you have installed in which they can then look for vulnerabilities or exploits in those plugins to hack your site.

The fix is quite simple. You can do one of two things, change the permissions of that directory from 0755 to 0750 or, you can upload a blank index.html file. When I set my plugin folder to 0750, some of my plugins decided to stop working. So I opted for option two. In fact, I added a redirect within my index.html page that redirects the browser to my homepage.

Here is the code I used in my index.html file if you would like to do the same.

Redirect Code I Used In My Index.html File

UPDATE -Thanks to LGR for adding this in via the comments. You can simply add Options -Indexes to your .htaccess file. This will redirect anyone who is trying to view a folder index to your 404 error page without the need of creating empty index.html files. Thanks again LGR.