Categories
WordPress Tips

WordPress 3.3 Released

 

Released today, WordPress 3.3 beta is available for download.

Like any beta version, it should not be used on production sites.

Updated: WordPress 3.3 final release is now available.

You can update from your dashboard or download 3.3 below and update manually.

Latest Version of WordPress Ready for Download

Need help with installation & setup? Free setup service

Update Manually

You’ll need to update your installation manually if you want to try this beta version as automatic updates aren’t available if you download WordPress 3.3 before its officially released.

Whats new in version 3.3

  • Media uploader with drag & drop
  • Improved admin bar with easy access
  • Fly out admin menus like tooltips

The latest version of WordPress 3.3 is still in Beta and expected to be ready for official release in November.

Drag & Drop Media Uploader

This is a very cool feature for version3.3 as its so much faster and easier to upload images.
New Media Uploader

Permalink Structure Settings

You’ll find one extra option available in the Settings > Permalinks. Postname is the extra option which has been added here probably as an indication that this permalink structure is a good for Seo.

Caution: Be careful changing your permalink structure if you have an existing site with posts/pages and links. If you don’t know what you’re doing, seek advice first.

Permalink Settings

The performance issues with using difference permalink structures has now been fixed also.

Categories
SEO Opinion

All In One Seo Pack Plugin for WordPress

All in one Seo pack for WordPress is one of the most popular plugins having being downloaded over 9 million times. It includes some of the basic Seo features you need to optimize your blog for the search engines.

In this tutorial, i’ll show you the settings and options for configuring the All in one Seo plugin for your WordPress blog.

Download All In One Seo Plugin

Click here to download All In One Seo Pack Plugin for WordPress

Initial Setup

All in one seo pack works straight out of the box so you don’t have to configure the settings if you’re a beginner. However, you will notice this red warning box once you install and activate the plugin and it is highly recommended to configure the plugin options for maximum benefit.

Configure All In One Seo

Firstly, you do need to enable the plugin and they ask that you make a donation. After you check these boxes, you can proceed to the configuration options before Updating the options to remove the red warning box.

Configuration Options

There’s a few options you’ll need to configure in order to enable this plugin. If you don’t, the plugin will still work ok.

All In One Seo Pack Configuration Options

Home Title: Enter your Home page title here otherwise your default blog title will be used so make sure you have set one or the other and use a keyword which describes the overall topic of your site. i.e If your site is about WordPress then a title like WordPress Sites is perfect.

Home Description: Enter a unique description here describing the different content on your site. If you don’t enter a description here then No description will be used. i.e I have set mine something like this. WordPress sites offers tutorials and How To’s on Everything WordPress including Plugins, Themes and Seo.

Home Keywords: You don’t need to enter anything here if you don’t want as the search engines don’t used meta keywords for Seo. You can enter some related keywords if you want but i don’t think it will make any difference. If you do, enter the main keywords only and don’t stuff this box with too many keywords.

Canonical URLs: Checking this box will make All In One Seo generate unique URL”s for your entire sites page and posts. No 2 permalinks will the same preventing duplicate content penalties from the search engines like Google.

Rewrite Titles: Checking this box will set all page, post, category, search and archive page titles to be rewritten. In my opinion its better to uncheck this so your page, post titles etc are used by default rather than Blog Archive >> Blog Name >> Post Title. If you do check this box, you can edit the templates for each tag to your liking.

Default Title Format Tags

All in one Seo offers a range of custom title formats tags tom choose from if you want to customize your Seo rather than use the default settings. Here’s all the Default Title Formats you can customize.

Title Format Tags

The reason i suggest you uncheck the Rewrite Titles box is because the default tags which you’ll see in the above screen shot aren’t the best option.

You wouldn’t want all your posts titles to include your blog title on the end of every post title as seen above.

Recommended Title Tags

The above screen shows the default title tag formats however you may want to consider changing to these recommended settings.

Recommended Title Tags

More Configuration Options

SEO for Custom Post Types: If you are using Custom Post Types which you have added yourself, via a plugin or included in your theme, then enable this box.

Google Analytics ID: Enter your Google Analytics ID here to track your site with Google Analytics if you haven’t already added it  somewhere else in your themes temaplates. If you haven’t already, you can read more on how to setup Google Analytics here.

Use Categories for META keywords: Check this box if you want your post categories used as the META keywords for this post.

Additional Configuration Options

Use Tags for META keywords: Check this box if you want your tags for a post used as META keywords for that post (in addition to any keywords you specify on the post edit page).

Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page: Check this box if you want your keywords on a custom posts page (set it in options->reading) to be dynamically generated from the keywords of the posts showing on that page. If unchecked, it will use the keywords set in the edit page screen for the posts page.

No Index Settings

All 3 no index settings will help Avoid Duplicate content.

Use no index for Categories: Check this for excluding category pages from being crawled. 

Use no index for Archives: Check this for excluding archive pages from being crawled. 

Use no index for Tag Archives: Check this for excluding tag pages from being crawled.

No Index & Additional Configuration Settings

Additional Configuration Settings

Autogenerate Descriptions: Check this and your META descriptions will get autogenerated if there’s no excerpt. In order to increase click through’s from the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) you would be better off to create a compelling description (excerpt) for each post which attracts more clicks. If you don’t, check this box so Meta descriptions will be autogenerated from your content instead.

Post Meta Description

Capitalize Category Titles: Check this and Category Titles will have the first letter of each word capitalized.

Exclude Pages: Enter any comma separated pages here to be excluded by All in One SEO Pack.

Additional Post Headers: What you enter here will be copied verbatim to your header on post pages.

Additional Page Headers: What you enter here will be copied verbatim to your header on pages

Additional Home Headers: What you enter here will be copied verbatim to your header on the home page.

Log important events: Check this and SEO pack will create a log of important events (all_in_one_seo_pack.log) in its plugin directory which might help debugging it. Make sure this directory is writable.

Update Options

Once you have configured All In One Seo Pack, click the Update Options buttons and you’re set.

Edit Post/Page Screen Seo Fields

Once Set, all in one seo pack will display Seo fields on every post edit screen for –

  • Title
  • Description
  • Keywords

Post Edit Screen Seo Fields

Title: You can enter a different title for the search engines here rather than use the default post title

Description: See the above Autogenerate Description configuration options. Its best to use some type of sales copy here to attract higher click through rates from SERPS. Your post description will not be used by the search engines to determine rankings however any keywords will be highlighted in  SERPS snippets which can be used to your advantage.

Keywords: Not used by the search engines so no point in adding anything here in my opinion unless you want to insert some for your own refererence.

Video – Options Configuration

Conclusion

Personally i think this is a great Seo plugin however i use WordPress Seo by Yoast because it includes a sitemap which is very important and 301 redirect options, amongst many others options, on all edit post/page screens.

You can easily migrate All In One Seo Pack Settings to WordPress Seo by Yoast using SEO Data Transporter plugin when changing themes and to the Thesis theme for WordPress .

Whats your favorite SEO plugin?

Categories
SEO Opinion

Your Best Chance To Rank a Keyword First Page on Google Using Cornerstone Content

A common problem bloggers and webmasters are looking to solve is ‘whats the best way to rank a keyword first page of Google’?

In my opinion, based on my own experience, creating a main page/post that you focus the keyword you are trying to rank using what some call ‘cornerstone content’ is a solution which works.

Google Keyword RankYou’ll also need to create other posts that link internally to your cornerstone content page so you pass link juice to it and build up its rank.

Here’s another way to explain cornerstone content.

As an example, if you choose to try and rank for Best cake recipes, you would want to create a single post for each cake recipe and include all the most vital content for that particular recipe within the individual posts content.

Include content based on related keywords which are popular and useful for the ingredients, mixing and baking that cake recipe.

You’ll also need to check what the most vital parts (keywords) for Best Cake Recipes are. Google wants to give its searchers what they want, content that’s vital to the search query and content that’s both relevant to the keyword(s) as well as content that is also useful.

Ranking Keyword on Google

After completing keyword research, you’ll probably find best carrot, chocolate and vanilla cake recipes are the most popular so creating an individual post for each, then creating a single cornerstone post or page for 3 best cake recipes should work well.

After looking at the related searches in Google’s search results pages, you’ll see best birthday cake recipe could also be included.

The reason for this is that when you complete keyword research you’ll find the most popular keywords involve ingredients and baking as this content is vital to making a cake.

Cornerstone Content Ideas

Another way to explain how to rank a keyword first page on Google is to create a list of the 10 best whatever (related to your site) or 5 ways to whatever. A list of the best ways to solve common problems related to your industry or your sites overall topic will be the most useful content for your readers.

Your site might be about cakes or mobile phones, it doesn’t matter.

Write one post for each 10 whatever and include the most important information that’s vital to the use of the product or service you are writing the top 10 list about.

Example of Cornerstone Content

Now this cornerstone content doesn’t rank that well at the moment because i recently changed domains but it did rank first page on Google for Best Seo Plugins before.

The post includes 8 of the best WordPress seo plugins and many of these plugins also contain a link to an individual post about that particular plugin. These internal links give it lots of link juice and support and are all related information vital to the use of each plugin.

The best way to start learning how to create cornerstone content that ranks well in search engines is to create your own list. You can start with the best 3 products, services, methods or tips related to your own sites topic and then create individual posts about each 3.

Internal Linking

Make sure you link the most crucial related keywords from your list to each individual post and link back to your main page/post using the keyword you want to rank for. I think its better to use variations of the keyword you are focusing your cornerstone content on which all have the same meaning.

You can create internal links manually or use a plugin like Seo Smart Links.

The way i link related content internally is to paste the keyword into the posts search box to find which posts contain related content which i can then link back to the cornerstone content.

Then promote the cornerstone page or post as well as each post.

If its done properly, you cornerstone content will become popular, gain links from your readers and be shared more than most other posts on your site.

The most important parts of creating cornerstone content are:

  • create the cornerstone page
  • create related posts for each main cornerstone item
  • link the correct keywords internally
  • promote your content using an effective content distribution system.

I’ll be writing more about how to create cornerstone content to rank well in the search engine results soon.

Have any tips on cornerstone content and how to rank first page on Google for one keyword?

Have you created this type of content which attracts links before?

Categories
WordPress Plugins

How To Configure WPtouch Mobile Plugin with WP Super Cache

WPtouch Mobile PluginConfiguring the WP Touch plugin to play nice with the WP Super Cache plugin is fairly easy.

WPtouch will create a mobile friendly theme from your existing theme so your site is easier to use when accessed from a mobile device.

WPtouch Settings

Step 1 Install and enable WPtouch and navigate to Settings > Advanced Options

Under Custom User Agents in Advanced Options, copy all the currently enabled user agents.

WPtouch Advanced Options

WP Super Cache Settings

Step 2 Navigate to WP Super Cache Settings > Rejected User Agents

Paste the user agents into the rejected user agents box

Android, CUPCAKE, Googlebot-Mobile, bada, blackberry 9800, blackberry9500, blackberry9520, blackberry9530, blackberry9550, dream, iPhone, iPod, incognito, s8000, webOS, webmate.

You’ll need to remove all commas and spaces so each user agent is under the other.

WP Super Cache Settings - Rejected User Agents

Step 3 Delete the cache and refresh the page.

That’s all you need to do to configure WPtouch with WP Super Cache

If you get stuck, you’ll find more information about WPtouch including a video on their website.

Otherwise you may find help in the WPtouch WordPress forum.

Categories
WordPress Plugins

How To Install & Setup Your AWeber Web Form Plugin for WordPress

Webform Plugin for WordPressIn this post for beginners, i’ll show you a step by step tutorial how to install the Aweber web form plugin  for wordpress. You’ll discover how easy it is to add web forms to your WordPress blog with the click of a button!

With this plugin, you’ll be able to start collecting subscribers from your blog visitors without having to log into AWeber – just choose the form you want to appear on your blog from your sidebar drop down menu in your widget area.

Simply drag and drop web forms that you have created in your AWeber email marketing account into your blogs sidebar, footer or any other area, without having to log into your AWeber account or copy and paste anything!

All you need is an AWeber account and a completed web form.

Learn More About AWeber Email Marketing

AWeber is an email marketing service that helps users build email lists and stay in contact with their website visitors, blog readers and customers. Take a look at what  Aweber has to offer and get started with a brand new account for just a dollar.

This plugin provides a simple way to add an AWeber form to your sidebar and enable AWeber email web analytics for your website.

It gives you access to two “AWeber Mailing List” sidebar widgets that let you enter the subscription form’s details. These details are used to automatically display your AWeber email subscription form.

The settings page lets you enter your AWeber account id. Once entered, the AWeber web email analytics tracking code will be automatically enabled on all pages in your website.

No playing around with coding or template editing is required.

How To Install WordPress Aweber Web Form Plugin

If you have any trouble following the instructions below, check the Screenshots below for a visual step-by-step.

If you’re manually installing the widget as a .zip, make sure you upload it to “/wp-content/plugins/”. Once installed, activate it on your Plugins page by clicking the Activate link.

  • To connect the widget to your AWeber account, first click AWeber Web Form under Settings on the left hand side of your WordPress dashboard.
  • On this page, click the link next to “Step 1″.
  • You will be taken to a page asking you to authorize the connection between your AWeber account and the widget. Enter your login name and password here and click the “Allow” button.
  • You’ll be taken to a page with an authorization code  – simply highlight it and copy it.
  • Back in your WordPress dashboard, paste the authorization code into the field provided and click the “Make Connection” button.
  • Once you’ve installed this widget and connected it to your AWeber account, head over to the Widgets page under Appearance on the left side of your WordPress dashboard (Backend).
  • Drag the widget (it will show up under Available Widgets as “AWeber Web Form”) into the widget area in which you’d like your form to appear. You can drag it into the Primary area, footer, header and any other available widget area.
  • Once the widget is in place, you can choose which form you would like to appear. Expand the AWeber Web Form widget’s options by clicking the arrow to its right, then use the drop down menus to choose the list you want to work with, and the web form you’d like to place on your blog.
  • Then click the “Save” button and your form will be installed on all your blog pages.

Still Having Trouble?

If you don’t see any available web forms, make sure you’ve selected the right list.

If you’re in the list you want subscribers added to, but still don’t see a web form that you can add, you’ll need to log in to your AWeber account and create a web form first.

Screen Shots: Aweber Web Form Plugin Installation

Note: Please click the images to enlarge

Firstly, login to your wordpress backend (Dashboard) and find Plugins on the last hand side of your dashboard.

Click add new and type in Aweber into the search field and click search plugins.

Once you have found Aweber Web Form by Aweber, Click on install to install and activate your Aweber Web Form Plugin.

 

 

Scroll down to Settings on the left hand side of your dashboard and click on Aweber Web Form

 

AWeber Web Form Options

Step 1: Click  to the link and enter your username and password and Click Allow Access to get your authorization code.

If you do not have a Aweber account, Sign up for a 3o day Free Trial of Aweber today for $1.

 

Step 2: Copy the code Paste in your authorization code into the empty box and Click Make Connection

 

Your successfully connected to your Aweber account .

 

Next step – go to the Widgets Page and drag the AWeber Web Form widget into your Primary Sidebar widget area or any other widget area where you want the Aweber web form to be shown.

You may elect to have several forms in different areas of your site.

 

The widgets area can also be found under Appearance on the left hand side of your dashboard

 

Now select the form you want to use and click save. You can use several forms on different sites if you like. You may not have designed your form yet so you will need to login to your Aweber account and start the process by first creating a new list etc.

In the next post i will show you how to build subscribers from your blog comments & registrations using  Awebers new web form plugin & widget features.

Related Tutorials

Categories
WordPress Plugins

Aweber WordPress Opt in Widget Helps You Build Your List From Reader Comments

Aweber web formAwebers web form plugin for WordPress was created earlier this year to allow WordPress users to insert a sign up form on their blogs quickly & easily.

Aweber has now upgraded the widget so your site visitors can now sign and join your list even when they comment or register on your site.

Add Subscribers from Comments Form

WordPress Subscribe Checkbox for Comments

Another new feature Aweber has added is a Dashboard pane so you can easily check how well your sign up form is converting readers to subscribers.

Aweber Dashboard Pane for WordPress

Mailchimp via the Gravity forms addon, also offer this feature as well.

Building your list from both registered users & readers who leave comments means you’re building a list of quality readers who are already engaging and interested in your content.

If you haven’t started building your list, you can test Aweber for $1 for one month.

Categories
WordPress Tips

How To Improve The Web Page Loading Times of Your Images

There’s no doubt that sites with lots of images generally load slower than sites with text only. If your site uses lots of images, you may be looking for a solution on how to improve the loading times of your web pages which have the most images.

Recently the WordPress.com VIP team at Automattic, the TechCrunch 2011 Redesign team, and Jake Goldman (10up LLC) created a new plugin named Lazy Load which decreases page loading times by only loading an image when its within the veiwable area of your screen.

Techcrunch, Mashable and several other big name sites are already using this technology and now you can to.

Download Lazy Load Plugin Here

Lazy load images improves page loading times and server bandwidth.

There’s also another plugin named jQuery Image Lazy Load WP that you may also want to try.

More ways to improve page loading times – 5 Easy Ways To Increase Your Site Speed Using The Best Website Optimization Tools

Categories
SEO Opinion

What Happens To Your Keyword Search Queries When You Change Domains

Changing domains effects not only your incoming links but also your keyword positions in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). This all starts once you notify Google of your change of address in Google Webmaster Tools.

Recently i changed domains and have found the keywords in my content go from an indexing of over 7000 keywords to around 2,584 currently.

These keywords will slowly come back into the search results which i expect to happen once the next Page Rank update comes around sometime in January or Febuary.

If you change domains, you’ll find your keywords coming back on at about 200 per day but won’t be as high in the search results until your domain authority and page rank come back.

One way to track your keywords is to use Google Webmaster Tools or another tool named Market Samurai.

[box size=”large” style=”rounded” border=”full”]The Must Have Keyword Research Tool – Market Samurai

If you don’t know which keywords have the traffic and make the money, you are wasting your time.

Market Samurai - Keyword Research for WordPress

Market Samurai is the leading keyword research tool that all serious internet marketers use.

Discover how it can help you in our Market Samurai review…

[/box]

Old Domains Keyword Search Queries

You can see from the old domains keyword data available in Webmaster Tools under Your Site on The Web > Search Queries that the figures taken after more than 2 weeks from the domain change.

Old Domains Keyword Search Queries

More than 2 weeks after the domain change the keyword search queries at down 46% and click throughs down 33% on the old domain. These figures are useless because most of the old domains URL’s are no longer indexed.

The real figures are in the next screen shot

New Domains Keyword Search Queries

The new domains keyword search queries are growing because Google is indexing about 200 per day however the data from Webmaster Tools is 2-3 behind.

New Domains Keyword Search Queries

In hindsite it may have been better to add new content to the new domain for 2-3 months before notifying Google of Change of Address in Webmaster Tools as the screenshots above clearly show Google acts immediately when you notify of change of domains.

I’m not expecting my search traffic to get back to where it was until Feb however it should be higher then because of all the new content i am adding on a regular basis.

Crawl Errors

I’ve also noticed significantly more 404 page not found crawl errors after changing domains. One of the reasons for this is that i have a Apache 301 permanent redirect in my htaccess file which slows down the time it takes to access content when a link from the old domain is clicked on.

Even though its nearly 3 weeks after i notified Google Webmaster Tools of Change of Address, i can still see some of my old URL’s indexed in the search Engine Results Pages (SERPS)

Is Changing Domains Worth It

Based on my own personal experience and the facts above, the search engines take a long time to index all keywords in your content and don’t immediately transfer Page Rank (PR) or Domain Authority to your new domain.

Even if your new domain is an exact copy of your old site and you have permanently 301 redirected all URL”s to exactly the same content on a new domain to avoid any duplicate content being indexed, you won’t get back the search traffic for some time.

I’ll report back in a few weeks to see exactly what the progress is.

Have you moved domains or are you thinking about it?

What is the reason you want to make the change?

Categories
WordPress Plugins

How To Create a Pricing Table – Best Free Price Table Plugins for WordPress

Pricing Table Plugin for WordPressI’m sure you’ve seen those nice looking pricing tables on websites before and maybe you’ve thought about adding one to your website.

There’s several premium plugins which make its fairly easy to create a pricing table and there’s also premium packages which include all the code.

All you need to do then is work out how to install the table which can be a major challenge in itself.

Then there’s a couple of free pricing table plugins for WordPress which makes it very simple to create your own table without having to work with CSS & PHP code.

Once you’ve installed and activated the Price Table plugin, you’ll notice a custom post type named Price Tables below your comments tab in your WordPress admin screen.

Price Table Tab

To create a pricing table, simply click Add New and click Add Column.

Adding 3-5 columns would generally be the norm and then enter the details of your products or services in each column.

Pricing Table Columns

Once you have finished creating your price tables, copy and paste the shortcode into a page or post and publish.

Pricing Table Shortcode

Another option is to use the same page you created the pricing table in  as your prices page.

Example of Pricing Table

Free Price Table Plugin

This plugin is very basic and doesn’t offer any more settings or options to customize your price table apart from what you see in this screenshot. However its super easy to use.

The only thing a didn’t like about this price table plugin was that some of the text isn’t centred which should be easy to fix by adding some code in the plugins files or your themes custom style.css file.

There’s a also another free pricing table plugin which may be worth trying if you are looking for more color as you can see in the example below

Free Price Table Plugin for WordPress

I didn’t test the second pricing table plugin so i’d be happy to here from you if you have tried it. Cheers

Related Tutorials

Categories
Resources & Tools

What is Firebug

what is firebugFirebug is a browser extension/Addon created for Firefox and other browsers which allows you to make changes to your websites Javascript, CSS & HTML in real time.

After editing & modifying your sites CSS code, you can then copy the changes to your parent themes style.css or child themes style.css so the modifications become permanent.

Firebug Web development tool

Firebug is a free tool that enables new developers and beginners to easily style their own websites & blogs without needing to be an expert in CSS coding.

Download Firebug

You can download the Firebug extension for Firefox or install a lite version for other popular browsers

Modify Your WordPress Theme Using Firebug

Using Firebug

Once you have downloaded and installed the Firebug extension, right click anywhere on your website and click Inspect Element.

Firebug - Inspect Element

The left side panel shows your HTML by default and the right panel shows your CSS.

You can use Firebug to inspect which CSS style declarations affects different elements. It also displays which style sheet contains the CSS code and what line number the code is on so you can easily locate it.

Generally your parent theme will contain one style.css file however you may have more style.css files for different plugins, built in features like shortcodes and also if you have created a child theme.

Editing CSS Styles Using Firebug

Sometimes when you inspect CSS using Firebug you’ll notice a line through some CSS. This occurs when new CSS has been added to overwrite the old code and is loaded after the original code or loaded last.

Edited CSS Code

This screen shot shows the default link color has been changed and therefore shows a line through it.

One of the best features of Firebug is available in the Style Panel on the right

Here you can edit your site in real time and view the changes in nyour browser without actually changing the style.css file

Edit Style CSS

Firebug is the best tool for new web developers and beginners who want to learn how to design their own website and modify the styling and layout of their site.

Firebug works best with the Firefox browser however lite versions are available for other browsers.

More on how to use Firebug to customize your WordPress themes styling coming soon.

Chrome Inspector

Google also offers a tool like Firebug which is worth checking out.

This tutorial & video, shows you how to use Chromes browser to change the color of all links.

Categories
WordPress Tips

How To Create & Add a Feature Box Anywhere in WordPress

There’s many different methods you can use to add a colored feature box to your posts. The best method to use will depend on which theme & framework you are using.

Feature Box - Shortcodes

If you are using the Thesis theme for WordPress, you’ll find this tutorial on creating a feature box in Thesis handy. This method uses both PHP & CSS code which can also be modified for use in your own theme by editing the filters & hooks to match your themes.

Caution: Always backup your files before editing PHP code.

Is there an easier way to create a feature box in WordPress without having to learn coding? Yes

I have already written about how to highlight content in a feature box using CSS but what if you don’t want to write any code?

Another way to easily create a feature box is to use shortcodes. Some themes already provide built in  shortcodes. If yours doesn’t, you can easily install a shortcode plugin to add features which will include info boxes or feature boxes as some call them.

Create a Feature Box Using Shortcodes

So Shortcodes make it very easy to add styling & create feature boxes, but what next? How do you insert the feature box in the same position on all posts?

The solution is simple. You use your themes Hook Manager or install a Hook plugin which offers the same features.

A hook manager will allow you to add any type of code anywhere your theme offers a hook position.

Simply create your feature box using shortcodes and paste the html from your WordPress editor, which includes the shortcode tags, into the correct hook position offered by your Hook Manager or Hook plugin.

Feature Box Code

Thesis offers a hook plugin and the Woo Framework offers a built in Hook Manager which does exactly the same thing. If you are using the Woo framework, you’ll see that you can check the box to enable use of shortcodes in any hook position.

Editing & Styling Your Feature Box

The easiest way to make changes to your feature box is to use Firebug. If you are using a Hook plugin or the Hook Manager to place your feature box in your posts, you’ll notice it doesn’t look the same as the feature box your create in a single post using shortcodes.

The reason for this is shortcodes & HTML don’t work well together in a Hook Manager.

The solution is to edit your feature box using Firebug and add the CSS code changes to your child themes style.css file. This way all your changes will overwrite your parent themes style.css file and not be overwritten when you update your theme.

If you haven’t already created a child theme, you can download a copy the fresh canvas child theme for Canvas here for free.

Firebug Web Development Tool

Next time i’ll show you how to use Firebug to customize your WordPress theme without knowledge of CSS code.

Categories
SEO Opinion

SEO Tips for Beginner Bloggers Needing to Increase Targeted Traffic

Seo Tips for BloggersI keep getting emails from one client that keeps asking the same questions. Why? Because they aren’t getting enough traffic and therefore aren’t making enough sales. Fair enough.

I try and show them how i get traffic because it works after trying many methods and working out what works and what doesn’t

One of the best sources of new readers is from the search engines because searchers are looking for something at that time.

Subscribers receive an update everyday but generally don’t need the solution you have written about at the time they receive your blog post.

Seo Basics

Learn the basics of Seo and incorporate those Seo techniques into your content

Publish unique content daily

Create useful content that’s vital to the solution

Cover all bases to that solution within the post or link to other posts which do

Learn from the expert bloggers as they are the benchmark you aim to succeed

Website sales copy doesn’t work on blogs

Pre sell using real, authentic stories which solve real problems

Don’t focus on making money or yourself or your brand

The Best Seo Guides for Beginners

Written by Google  – Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization

Written by SEOMoz – Beginners Guide to Seo

The most successful bloggers

Darren Rowse – His main blog is photography and his photography blog has over 500,000 subscribers across all networks

Brain Clarke – He started with Copyblogger and now owns Studiopress and a new hosting solution for Studiopress

Chris Pearson – Thesis creator with the most useful theme users guide, great blog tips both on his personal blog & Thesis blog

There’s many more.

Learning the basics of and really understanding the basics of Seo is a major key to success because its focused on giving your readers exactly what they want and need at the time they are looking.

Here’s eight more SEO tips for on page optimization.

How do you perform SEO on your content?

Do you focus more on on page or off page SEO?

Categories
Resources & Tools

How To Publish Your WordPress Site To Your Web Server Using Microsoft Webmatrix

If you have already installed WordPress locally using Microsoft Webmatrix then you may know that you are able to deploy your WordPress installation to your hosts web server using FTP or Web Deploy within Webmatrix.

What is Microsoft Webmatrix

Micsrosoft Webmatrix for WordPress is an alternative local server to WAMP, XAMPP & MAMP for Mac.

When you install Webmatrix on your local computer, it installs all the necessary software to run WordPress including PHP & MYSQL once you have chosen WordPress from the App list.

Webmatrix offers some features that the others don’t like Web deploy as well as some great Seo tools for IIS which perform similiar functions to Google Webmaster Tools except the data is live and up to date, unlike Webmaster tools.

Publish WordPress to Web Server

The 2 ways you can publish your WordPress installation to your web server. You can use FTP or the Web Deploy option in Webmatrix.

Either way, simply enter your server details and destination URL to connect to your web server.

You’ll find these details in the welcome email you receive once you have chosen a suitable web host.

To publish your WordPress site to your web hosts server, click the publish button in Webmatrix on your local computer and enter your server details in the Publish Settings screen which looks like this.

Webmatrix Publish Settings

Webmatrix doesn’t provide a range of support options unlike the WordPress community so if you get stuck, you may find it difficult to get help at the moment. See below for support options.

Publishing WordPress Using FTP

If you choose the FTP option please note that FTP does NOT support the transfer of MySQL Databases so you will need to export them from Webmatrix and import them using phpMyAdmin.

Transferring SQL Databases using Webmatrix

To transfer your Databases, you’ll need to use the Web Deploy option when publishing all your WordPress files and databases to your live web server.

Once you have entered and saved your FTP details, you can change to the Web Deploy option so you can also upload your SQL databases within Webmatrix as well. Go to the Remote tab and click Settings.

Publishing WordPress Using Web Deploy

You’ll need to enter your web server access details and also click the connection String field next to your database to display the database settings fields.

Once you have created a new database in cPanel on your web server, enter your server address and new database details in Webmatrix settings

Database Connection Settings

Next step is to click Validate Connection and test that the settings you have entered are working. Then you can send all your files and databases to your web server using Webmatrix

Remote SQL – I.P White List

You may also need to whitelist your public I.P address (Not server I.P) under the Database section in cPanel. This allows remote access to your Databases so you can transfer them to your live web server.

cPanel - Databases - Remote SQL

Webmatrix Help & Support

You can easily give Webmatrix feedback & suggestions here as well as access the Webmatrix forum & community which in my opinion doesn’t provide the same level of support as the WordPress community which tends to cover all levels of experience.

Conclusion

There’s other options when you are ready to publish your WordPress site to your live web server on the internet which may be more suitable if you aren’t familiar with Webmatrix.

1) Use a WordPress backup & Migration plugin

2) How to transfer WordPress to a new server for free

Categories
WordPress Plugins

Shortcode Plugin for WordPress

Learn more about shortcodes in this video and see how easy it is to add shortcodes to your theme using a plugin.

Some themes offer built in shortcodes which enable you to easily add custom styling and effects like a pro web designer. If your theme doesn’t offer built in shortcodes, you may want to install a shortcode plugin.

A shortcode plugin will make it super easy to style your own blog posts and website pages to your own liking. Add any shortcode simply by clicking the shortcode icon added to your WordPress editor once you install the shortcode plugin.

Once you install a shortcode plugin to any WordPress theme, you enable premium features like:

  • Buttons
  • Highlighting text
  • ToolTips
  • Icon buttons
  • Notification boxes
  • Tabbed content
  • Image sliders
  • Toggle boxes
  • Columns
  • Protected members only content
  • Social media & sharing buttons

Some premium themes like the Woo framework already include many of these shortcodes which are built in to the theme so you don’t need to install a shortcode plugin.

Another option is a plugin named styles with shortcodes which offers even more features for adding shortcodes your your WordPress theme.

Or you could try the Responsive Shortcodes Plugin for WordPress.

Categories
Blogging Tips

7 Reasons You Should Start A Blog Today

WordPress BloggingWordPress Blogging has become a vital part of successful internet marketing for companies and individuals for many reasons.

Blogging also creates a useful resource of information to solve problems for your readers.

Here’s a list of some of the most important reasons why you should seriously consider starting a blog if you want to get your message in front of the biggest audience, connect to the right people and increase targeted traffic to your website.

Companies that blog have 55% more website visitors and up to 88% more leads per month than those who do not.

1. Ease of use: Its never been easier to install WordPress and start blogging without the need to hire a web designer. Adding new content and customizing your website has also never been easier.

WordPress offer the largest community of bloggers in the world therefore the largest support for WordPress users. If you ever need to make changes to your blog or need any form of help, you have an excellent chance of finding the solution from the WordPress community.

WordPress is the worlds most popular free open source software for blogging therefore you have access to thousands of free themes and plugins which enable you to design and build your own website or blog at a price which is affordable for everyone or even free in many cases.

2. Valuable feedback: Gaining feedback from your readers, customers, clients and industry is easy when you own your own blog. Positive or negative, feedback is a valuable source of information which helps improve many aspects of your business.

Feedback from social media groups and blog readers help you track whats popular and whats not, which gives you valuable information on what works and what doesn’t.

3. Complete Control: When you own your own WordPress site, you totally control all the content on your site and your own unique address on the internet. No matter what happens, as long as you have a backup of your content, you will always be safe from outside control.

Some free hosted blogging platforms take away some control and don’t allow you to use plugins and other addons which enable you to fully customize and control the design of your blog.

4. Increase Traffic: Increasing traffic to your website increases readership and helps build your brand. Blogging with WordPress allows you to more easily find the right readers which have a need for your solutions and services.

The more targeted your traffic, the more readers convert to customers if they trust you and believe you know what you are doing. Writing blog posts helps prove to your readers you are credible and competent in your field.

5. Social Media Proof: WordPress integrates perfectly with social media enabling you to easily share your content to like minded individuals across hundreds of different social media groups.

Social media also helps people find useful solutions to problems they don’t want to read about on a commercial website like reviews, How To’s & Tutorials based on your own personal experience about different ways to solve the same problem.

6. Building Links: Blogs are seen as someones personal experience rather than a commercial site therefore generally provide an honest opinion or authentic experience about a particular subject or topic.

Other blogs and websites like to link to valuable content on blogs rather than link to commercial websites. Search engines use links as part of their assessment process when determining what content should indexed in their search results.

The more links you have from related sites to your blog posts, the higher your content is indexed in the search results pages of Google, Yahoo & Bing.

7. Content Distribution: WordPress offers many ways to distribute your content to your readers as well as gain new readers. RSS is a free service which updates your readers with new content everytime you add a new blog post.

WordPress also makes it easy to add signup forms and build different lists of readers who subscribe for updates on different categories related to your blog.

Blogs are a great way to build trust so when you write a useful blog post which solves a problem in your niche, other bloggers will link to you and start a conversation.

Blogging creates conversation which spreads the word about you and the quality of the content inside your blog posts.

Cyber Monday is a great time to start your own self hosted WordPress blog because all the tools you need to get started are more affordable than ever, for a limited time only.

There are many other reasons owning your own WordPress blog is worthwhile for both personal and business reasons.

Blogging will help you stay reader focused and not just focused on selling yourself and your products & services.

If you know someone in your social network who will benefit from blogging, why not share this post for them.

Categories
WordPress Plugins

Hyper Cache Plugin for WordPress Blogs With Limited Resources

Hyper Cache is a fairly new caching plugin for WordPress created especially for blogs hosted on shared servers which generally offer low resources like limited CPU & Ram.

It’s already been downloaded over 200k times and was recommended to me by one of my hosts.

I installed the plugin on another blog hosted on a shared server provided by Bluehost which is exactly the type of environment Hyper Cache is made for.

How To Setup Hyper Cache Plugin

Once you have installed & activated the plugin, go to the settings page where you’ll find this Important notice –

To use this working mode, you must add to the file wp-config.php (at its beginning after the <?php) the line of code: define('WP_CACHE', true);.,

If you are not familiar with your wp-config.php file, you should seek help from your web developer or server administrator and always backup your files & databases before editing php files on your server.

Let’s now take a look at the different sections on the plugins Settings Page.

Status

Hyper Cache - Status Settings

The status screen shows the cleaning process which deletes cached pages hourly so any new content may take up to one hour to show across the web if you don’t delete the cache after adding new content.

Configuration

Hyper Cache - Configuration Settings

If you need help with configuring Hyper Cache, your best bet is to read more on the plugin authors blog or post a question on the Help page.

Configuration for Mobile Devices

Hyper Cache - Configuration Settings for Mobile Devices
Integrates with the WordPress Mobile Pack plugin

Compression

Hyper Cache - Compression Settings
Only the text part of the page will be compressed not images

Advanced Options

Hyper Cache Advanced Options
WordPress redirects are cached which reduces processing times

Filters

If you need to exclude any pages or posts you can filter them out here

Hyper Cache - Filter Settings

If you’re suffering from slow loading pages and site speed a caching plugin will certainly help as your pages are saved for faster loading.

However, caching is only one solution of many which should be considered when optimizing your web pages for speed and reducing server resources.

If you are suffering from CPU throttling or downtime because your site is using too many resources and hitting memory limits, the Hyper Cache plugin is one of the best caching solutions.

If the plugin isn’t caching your pages properly, two other popular caching plugins are W3 Total Cache & WP Super Cache.

Categories
WordPress Tips

Is Google’s Site Speed Analytics Accurate?

Google Analytics has made big gains recently adding both site speed and real time stats, but is Google’s site speed stats accurate?

In this review, we”ll take a look at todays analytics for site speed and use 2 other site speed tools to test the page loading times of what Google has listed as being the slowest on this site.

Googles Analytics Site Speed ReportsBefore these additions, Google Analytics seemed slow to update data and offered far less real time data than they do today.

Recently i deactivated and deleted many non essential plugins in order to reduce the use of server resources and improve page loading speeds.

I’ve been using Google Analytics Site Speed data to see how fast my web pages load and here’s the result.

To access Google Analytics Site Speed Reports you’ll need to setup a Google Analytics account if you haven’t already done so.

Site speed is located under Standard Reporting > Content > Site Speed in the new Google Analytics.

Here’s a screenshot of my top 10 slowest page loading URL’s for WPSites.net. You can easily check your own URL’s using Pingdom to test the accuracy yourself.

Average Page Loading Times

Average Page Loading Times - Google Site Speed

I highlighted these URL’s and searched for them in Google SERPS, then clicked them all to check out the real page loading times.

I also used both Pingdom and YSlow to test page loading times and here’s the real results in the video below. On average, all pages loaded in less than 5 seconds which is wildly different to what Googles Site Speed data produces.

Googles Site Speed Versus Pingdom

Increasing Site Speed & Improving Page Loading Times

You’ll also find SEOMoz has written several posts about Tracking Page Load Speeds Using Google Analytics & Tips on Optimizing Page Speeds.

If you haven’t yet checked out Googles site speed reports, you may find this post on how to fix slow page loading times and increase site speed useful.

I hope Google isn’t using site speed reports when assessing index rankings in SERPS!

Categories
SEO Opinion

What Happens To Your Links When You Change Domains

Links After Changing DomainsChanging domains is a decision you should spend some time on and research properly before you take the big plunge because you will suffer in the search results for some time.

I’ve already written about how to get your links indexed after changing domains so you should also check to make sure your links have been redirected properly which you can also do using Google Webmaster Tools.

Here’s an article on the Google Webmaster Blog which talks about how to discover your links in GWT

When you change domains, even though you can create a 301 permanent redirect so all your URL’s arrive at exactly the same content on your new domain, the link juice will become diluted.

Here’s why:

If you have 100 links coming from 20 different domains, you’ll find many of them now come from one single domain, your old domain.

Its better to have 20 links coming from 20 related domains rather than 100 links coming from mostly unrelated domains or coming from only 10 different domain sources.

The reason for this is because they are redirected from your old domain and the search engines count them as being from one source which is nowhere near is good as having them come directly from different domain sources.

The result of this is your domain authority and trust will not be nearly as good therefore your search engine results will not be nearly as high resulting in less traffic.

Old Domain Links

Webmaster Tools-Links to your site-Old Domain

New Domain Links

Webmaster Tools-Links to your site-New Domain

While i have more links according to Google Webmaster Tools, the source of the links has changed since i changed domains and reduced by more than 50%

The fix: Focus more time and effort on writing more content and increase the time you spend on link building. Also fix any 404 page not found errors which you can easily complete using Google Webmaster Tools.

Personally, i have never spent much time on link building and try and focus on creating real solutions to real problems all related to the overall topic of my site.

I read a really good article recently on SEOmoz about the relevance of content and why relevance is the most important Seo factor. Actually your content should not just be relevant but Vital & Useful which are even more important than just relevance.

Time will tell what happens over the next few weeks and months so i will report back on how the change is effecting my traffic from the Google & Bing SERPS.

I’ll be posting my site stats here in about a weeks time to show you exactly how things are going which will show the days before i made the change and several weeks afterwards.

Next time, we’ll take a look at what happens to your keyword rankings when you change domains.

Did you suffer from any broken links when you changed domains?

What happened to your links when you changed domains?

Categories
Resources & Tools

WordPress Tools – Products & Services Related to WordPress – Limited Time Deals

This is the best time to snap up WordPress related products & services because of the big discounts making everything so much more affordable.

I purchased 5 premium Woo themes for $54 which makes them less than $11 each which includes lifetime support and updates.

Here’s a list of all the products & services related to WordPress which are offering big savings:

Hostgator

Hostgator – 50% off all hosting services Use this link as No Coupon Needed

Offer expires Monday 28th November

Woo Themes

The most popular WordPress themes built on the Woo framework with 100,000 users.

Save 20% and get 5 themes for $54 which includes lifetime updates and support.

Offer expires Monday 28th November

Studiopress

Use Coupon THANKS to get 25% OFF the Genesis framework & all Studiopress themes.

Coupon expires Monday 28th November

Premise Landing Page Plugin

Save $70 on Premise Ultimate.Click here and Enter Coupon Code Thanks.

Offer expires Monday 28th November

BackupBuddy & iThemes

Save 28% on BackupBuddy & ALL ithemes products.

Enter Coupon code FREESHIPPING to get the discount.

No matter what happens, if you have created a full backup using Backupbuddy and saved it on your local computer, you can quickly & easily restore it, if you own BackupBuddy.

All Offers expire this coming Monday 28th November

I own and recommend all the above WordPress related tools

Categories
WordPress Tips

TinyMce Plugin – The Best Advanced Editor for WordPress

Advanced WordPress Editor PluginMany of the best WordPress sites use an advanced editor which offers extra features on top of those already included in the default WordPress WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor.

If you take a look at this screenshot and compare it to your default WordPress editor, you’ll see what i mean.

TinyMCE Advanced WordPress Editor Plugin

Download the TinyMce Plugin here

You can actually use the features in the advanced editor and then disable the plugin if you like. I mainly use TinyMce to create tables and then disable the plugin after i have finished.

Other features you can add to your default editor using the TinyMce advanced plugin offer are:

Advanced HR, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Advanced List, Context Menu, Emotions (Smilies), Date and Time, IESpell, Layer, Nonbreaking, Print, Search and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters and XHTML Extras.

Once you have decided on which buttons you want to add to your editor, got o the plugin settings and drag and drop them to add to your existing WordPress editor.

The TinyMce Buttons Arrangement allows you to easily choose which features you need and customize your existing WordPress editor by adding additional features the plugin offers.

TinyMCE Advanced Settings

This is not the only TinyMce plugin available as you’ll also find many more when you search the WordPress plugins directory.

TinyMce is an open source Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor which many plugin developers have used to develop different free editor plugins for WordPress, TinyMce Advanced is only one of them.

I’ll be writing more about how to use the best features from TinyMce in WordPress in the near future.