WordPress Plugin – Traffic Getting SEO Plugin
I have recently installed a new plugin on this blog and testing to see if it does any good. Jeff Johnson is not someone I’m familiar with in all honesty but a free plugin that claims to get you more traffic by tweaking your settings for better SEO results, who is complaining?
Traffic Getting SEO PluginTM is designed to optimize your blog for traffic. This obviously will have an impact on how much revenue you generate assuming you are selling something on your blog. What the plugin willdo is prompt and assist you with installing a number of recommended plugins that will affect SEO results of your blog. (more…)
Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #7 – Clickbank Marketplace
Table of contents for Site Monetization
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #1 – EZMinisites Template Club
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #2 – Joel Comm’s Adsense Empire
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #3 – Wordpress Adsense System
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #4 – Individual Products and Services
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #5 – Advertisers and Publishers with LinkWorth
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #6 – Chitika Eminimalls
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #7 – Clickbank Marketplace
It’s been quite awhile since I last wrote on this series. In that time, I hope that you have seen some success in your monetization activities. There will sure to be some hits and misses along the way. The current economic difficulties has in many ways prompted me to pick up where I left off here.
The bottomline is, keep at it and figure out what worked and what didn’t. Then find a solution around it for those that didn’t. Else, it might not be viable in the first place so drop the idea and do something different. (more…)
Link to GraphPaperPress fixed
It just came to my attention that there was a problem with the link I had to GraphPaperPress on my blog footer. Thad change the links but somehow I wasn’t aware of it. Good news is it has been fixed.
WordPress being a popular blogging platform, there are many free themes available for download. Yet, for those who would like a little character and differntiate yourselves from the masses, purchasing professional themes is one way to do it. Of course the other way is to build one from scratch provided you have the time and the necessary programming skills. Me, I haven’t got both or at least I don’t have the time.
Modularity is a highly customizable multimedia theme framework for Wordpress.
WordPress Plugins – OpenID
In an earlier post, I mentioned the WP-Gravatar plugin which is OpenID ready. The full functionality of the plugin of course depends on whether you have downloaded and installed the OpenID plugin too. If you have not yet done that or are wondering what OpenID is, visit OpenID.net to learn more.
WordPress Plugins – WordPress Automatic Upgrade
If there was a plugin out that that I would vote as a life-saver, this has to be one of them. The ingenuity of this plugin automates the otherwise tideous process of upgrading your WordPress installation.
Unless you had initially installed WordPress via Fantastico from your webhosting control panel, Upgrading WordPress can be a tricky affair if you hadn’t had your coffee for the day.
Sure, it is meant to be done in a few simple clicks of your mouse from your Fantastico panel. The downside is it does take longer for an available WordPress upgrade to be distributed through Fantastico. The longest I have experience was a 12 weeks delay. This basically meant that other self-hosted weblogs have already been upgraded to protect from bugs and security loopholes. Yet your weblog is still exposed to those known threats because you can upgrade until your hosting provider has distributed the new software on Fantastico. Well, if it makes you sleep better at night knowing that security breaches have been confirmed on your blog and that half the world knows about those breaches.. I guess there’s no problem then.
Self-hosted WordPress weblogs which had been originally self-installed can be upgraded after uploading the necessary files. Of course bloggers need to take care to upload the necessary files and not overwrite some critical ones. This really shouldn’t happen unless you are half asleep but doesn’t mean that it we won’t make a mistake.
The WordPress Automatic Upgrade automates that with a few mouse clicks. It’s pretty straight-forward and redundant to spell it’s functions out here. A recommendation will be to upgrade the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin first (if there is one available) before you upgrade your WordPress installation.
Alanis Morissette – Flavors Of Entanglement – Moratorium
Premium WordPress – Premium Magazine Style Themes – Graph Paper Press
It has been quite awhile since my last post on premium WordPress Themes. In all honesty, A large nuber of ‘designers’ have flooded the market with ‘premium themes’. Of all of them, only a few remain and even those that are still around the scene, only the really innovative designers have made a name for themselves and in many ways carved a niche as prices for premium WordPress themes have become more competitive.
Pricing has become a result of the competition as a result forcing designers to add more value to their designs. A few have even joined up and started theme clubs like those that are readily available for Joomla. I will be review a few of the best designers out there in the coming weeks.
One such premium WordPress themes designer that has impressed me is from Graph Paper Press. GPP wasn’t the first folks around but looking at the themes they have designed till date, I have to say I like the ‘clean and crisp’ feel. With various styles to choose from, users can build different genre of weblogs from corporate like portals and something closer to a photoblog format.
Most of their premium themes retail for USD24.95 and probably one of the most affordable themes available today. For a limited period, you can purchase license to ALL their themes for USD99.00 (a price other designers will charge you for just one theme). To sweeten the deal even further, you will have access to all their new themes for the rest of 2008. In fact, Thad Allender just launched his latest theme High-Def today. Below are some of their designs.
- High-Def
- Visualization
- Gridline News
- Gridline Magazine
I would get them all for USD99 though.
Blog Building – Getting Started #2 – Choosing a Web Host for Your Weblog
Table of contents for Blog Building
- Blog Building – Getting Started #2 – Choosing a Web Host for Your Weblog
There are 2 parts in this continuing series that I will be covering here.
- Choosing a web hosting service
- Installing your weblog
First, lets look at the different kinds of web hosting services available today. Depending on the web hosting service, different web-based control panel systems are available such as: cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk, InterWorx, Helm, H-sphere, Ensim, Sphera or one of many other control panel products. The most common and one I would recommend for compatibility and ease of use would be cPanel on Linux. Plesk and InterWorx allows web developers more flexibility. Web hosting services usually provide either or so know that your preferred system is provided before you sign-up with the web hosting service.
Shared Hosting:
By far the most common option chosen by most bloggers and webmasters alike, a shared web hosting service or virtual hosting service or derive host refers to a web hosting service where many domains and weblogs reside on one web server connected to the Internet. Each site “sits” on its own partition, or section/place on the server to keep it separate from other sites.This is generally the most economical option for hosting as many people share the overall cost of server maintenance.
The hosting service includes system administration since it is shared by many users; this is a benefit for users who do not want to deal with it, but a hindrance to power users who want more control. In general shared hosting will be inappropriate for users who require extensive software development outside what the hosting provider supports. But on the other hand, shared hosting is cheaper than other types of hosting such as dedicated server hosting.
All said, many web host that offer shared hosting companies today allow you to have multiple add-on domains. Meaning to say, should you decide to purchase another domain in the future for a new weblog, you do not have to sign-up for a new web hosting service.
Dedicated IP addresses used to be an option available for a low price of USD2 a month. Today, many web hosting services feature this as an additional benefit to their overall service. Suggested shared hosting services below:
Load Balanced Hosting:
The advancement in today’s hosting technology allows for load balanced hosting or cluster hosting or fail-over hosting. This form of hosting solution eliminates all single points of failure. By load balancing on multiple servers, your weblog will have multiple paths to its destination.
This technology was previously only available to large corporations hosting mission-critical sites. Today, load balanced hosting has been made very affordable. There are multiple paths for a visitor to access your weblog at any given point.
Loading of your weblog is distribute across multiple physical servers. In the event a web hosting server goes down for any reason beside regular maintenance, your weblog stays online. This is very useful especially if you are intending to build an e-commerce weblog. Usually costing no more than an additional dollar or 2 more than traditional shared hosting services, This services is recommended if having your weblog online with ‘zero downtime’ is critical to you. Suggested load balanced hosting services below:
Dedicated Hosting:
A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server, including choice of operating system, hardware, etc.
Dedicated hosting service comes with an equally high subscription ranging from USD99 to USD300 a month depending on configurations. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. That of course is dependent on how much sales is generated by your weblog. I will only suggest dedicated hosting to those who intend to build a large portfolio of products and services for online sales and genuinely want to start a long term online business.
Dedicated servers are most often housed in data centres, similar to co-location facilities, providing redundant power sources and HVAC systems. In contrast to co-location, the server hardware is owned by the provider and in some cases they will provide support for your operating system or applications. Suggested dedicated hosting services below:
Reseller Hosting:
Similar to all the above, except that you will be able to sell web hosting services on top of hosting your own weblogs. Reseller hosting services allow you to reseller shared hosting, load balanced hosting and dedicated hosting via private label. This means a customer buying from you will not be in contact with your original hosting provider. This is also known as ‘white labelling’ or ‘private label’. Most reseller hosting services offer you special templates for your reseller hosting services. With minimal editing, your web hosting shop front is online and ready to open for business.
Reseller hosting services offer a good way of starting a web-based business with minimal capital investment. If you package your services right, having 2 or 3 customers will in most cases pay for your reseller hosting services fees, literally making your own weblogs hosted for free.
Some web hosting services offer technical support if you purchase a reseller hosting package from them. Depending on the reseller hosting provider, technical support can be offered to your customers via email by actual support technicians and your customers wouldn’t even know the difference. Otherwise, you will have to be sufficiently well-versed to sort out kinks when your customers’ sites go ‘offline’. Suggested reseller hosting service below:
Installing Your Weblog:
The de-facto blogging platform / software today is none other than WordPress. Numerous 3rd party companies and even new start-ups continuously develop their products and services around the WordPress platform. Sure, there are other blogging platforms but none beats the adaptation, user-centric focus and flexibility that WordPress offers. Download the latest WordPress build below:
If you are using a cPanel enabled web hosting service, Fantastico will help you install your weblog in 3 clicks at most. Updates for the WordPress platform are also distributed through Fantastico thus m
aking your upgrades just as painless and 1 click less. The only setback is upgrades via Fantastico may take awhile longer to be deployed in Fantastico. In some cases, 8 weeks after it was released. All this is dependent on your web hosting service.
Like me, if you prefer not leave the fate and security of your weblog to Fantastico, I will suggest self uploading and installation of your weblog via your FTP program. Suggested FTP software below:
It gets a little tricky here but if you get it right, you should have you weblog up and running in 5 minutes or less. There are a few things involved here including:
- Creating Database
- Creating Database User
- Creating Database User Password
- Assigning Database and User
- Uploading WordPress
- Editing WordPress config.php file
- Web-based WordPress on-screen installation
Unfortunately, there is just too much information on the above for me to post here. Your web hosting service will usually have a FAQ or tutorial in creating and assigning databases and users. As for uploading, editing the WordPress config.php file and on-screen installation, WordPress should present you with sufficient information to start you up in the 5-Minutes Install. Else, a little reading and poking around will help you at the WordPress Codex Main Page.
If I could suggest something here, I would recommend you get yourself a copy of WordPress Adsense System v2.0. This product walks you through everything you need to know in WordPress from installation via cPanel through configuring it to your preference and also, integrating Google Adsense to drive your weblog revenue. Most importantly, this product provides you detailed steps including screen-shots in every phase. With the WordPress Adsense System v2.0, you will be able to install more than just WordPress on your domain. In fact, WAS v2.0 will put you many steps ahead of what will be covered here in this series in the coming weeks.
Tweaking WordPress:
In WordPress, there are generally 3 main areas where you can configure.
- Themes
- Plugins
- Individual Sections
All the above are located in your ‘wp-content’ folder upon successful installation.
WordPress Themes:
There are numerous themes available for free download. Hundreds of thousands I would believe. Themes usually come in various formats such as:
- 1 column
- 2 columns
- 3 columns
- 4 columns
- CMS / Magazine styled
Whichever you choose, Find one that suits you best. Themes can be changed at the click of your mouse so, don’t worry if you realise that you are not entirely happy 2 weeks down the road. You can search for a theme you like via the WordPress Theme Viewer.
Alternatively, if you prefer some character and more advanced themes, Content Management System (CMS) and Magazine Styled themes is recommended. Fully functional and optimised professional themes are available too.
WordPress Plugins:
There are countless plugins that will enable you to tweak your weblog and add features above regular weblog. These plugins are available for free and distributed under the GPL/GNU licenses. plugin developers constantly upgrade these plugins. A comprehensive list of plugins are available at WordPress Plugin Directory. Only your imagination will limit you on what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress Individual Sections:
Individual sections of your chosen WordPress Theme can be edited to include certain codes for customisation. Again, there is no limit to what you can do here. Those who are proficient in CSS will be able to fully exploit the flexibility of of the themes. For novice bloggers, the authors of your theme usually include a readme file when you first download the theme. Refer to those for tips and hints on where would be a good place to edit and install codes. The general rule is to backup a file before you decide to tweak it. Again, the WordPress Adsense System v2.0 will come in handy here.
That’s it for this series, go ahead and start building your unique weblog today. Have fun and remember to backup your files before you edit them, that way, if something breakups, just upload the backup file and try again.
WordPress Plugins – WP-Gravatar – OpenID Ready
WP-Gravatar is probably one of the more advanced Gravatar plugins build for WordPress. This little package will ensure your commenters will have little fuss adding their pictures to your blog. Clicking on their Gravatars will lead to their sites. Other avatar sources supported include:
- Gravatar
- MyBlogLog
- OpenAvatar
- Wavatar
- Identicon
- monsterID
- Favico.ico
What sets this neat little plugin apart from the rest is the use and integration of OpenID technology via OpenAvatar.
OpenID refers to the new web digital identity standards developed just slightly more than a year and a half ago. With the new standard, a web user is able to login to multiple websites using the same ID. When I first saw this last year, something in me asked what the hell took them so long.
OpenIDs are free and all you really need to do is register for an account. So far, Yahoo seems to be the main catalyst behind OpenID standards. Flickr, MyBlogLog and other Yahoo sites are already OpenID ready. If you have an account at either MyBlogLog, Flickr WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, AOL or Technorati, your member profile URL is good enough to use as an OpenID.
As for me, I decided to sign-up for a new and dedicated OpenID through VeriSign Labs’ Personal Identity Provider (PIP). It’s free anyway so what the heck. This one is good for multi-factor authentication. Meaning, if you have a Security Key (Two-Factor Authentication Key) link to your PayPal account, the VeriSign Labs PIP solution is the way to go.
Besides, logging into a OpenID enabled site like Ebay is made much easier with SeatBelt for FireFox. SeatBelt is a Firefox plug-in that assists you when signing in to OpenID sites with your PIP URL. Typically, if you are not signed into your PIP account when you access a sign in page using OpenID, you need to access your PIP account and sign in. Since you must do this within the same browser window, you have to navigate away from the page you wish to sign in to.
SeatBelt detects that you have clicked on an OpenID sign in field while not signed into your PIP account and prompts you to sign in. Once you have signed in, SeatBelt automatically returns you to the OpenID sign in page with your PIP URL filled in. The sign in session continues as normal.
Blog Building – Getting Started #1 – Choosing Your Domain Name
I have been asked a few times to post information on this topic a few times now. I was initially hesitant about doing so for the fact that this will be a rather long series and will be ongoing like my Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope series. Another reason why I did not want to start this immediately was because it will be a important I do a lot of research to present my readers with the most information available in the most concise and digestible manner. I do feel the latter is very important since most folks who will be reading this will be mostly new to blogging. Of course there will be some veteran bloggers out there who might want to lookout for more tips and tricks. To the veterans, do feel free to leave your comments and suggestions. I’m sure the new bloggers will appreciate the extra input.
The first thing to consider before you start blogging is choosing your domain name. Most bloggers will probably tell you your choice of domain name depends on what you intend to blog about. This alone can already be a daunting task for many people. Choosing the right domain name also helps to build your traffic (people visiting your blog) quickly. Depending on why you are setting up a weblog, SEO (Search Engine Optimised) domains names maybe the deciding factor.
The Personal Weblog:
This is by far the most common reason anyone will want to start a weblog. Personal weblogs allow bloggers to blog about anything and topics can be very diversed. As such, no particular niche (special focus) is really required. Readers of such weblogs are usually made up of people you already know. Of, course, until you tell them that you have a weblog, they are not going to start reading your weblog.
For many, their own names become the default choice of domain names. If you have a rather common name like mine, you might face some difficulty in getting your preferred domain as someone else might have already purchased it. Which is another reason why I would encourage you to purchase your domain and ‘lock’ it up so no one else can snatch it from you. Luckily for me, I managed to get http://nicholasmong.com. ‘M’ is my baptism name. I have registered this domain till 2017. The maximum of 10 years. As the owner of the domain, you will be informed before the domain expires and you can extend it for another 10 years.
So, if you realise that your preferred domain name consisting of your first and last name is already taken, try getting one with your middle name. Alternatively, try shortening your name and see if you can get a similar domain name. Be mindful to keep your domain name as short as possible. A domain name like ‘jonathanignatiuscallaway.com’ will present more chances or typos when someone types your domain name into the address bar of their web browser.
For those who do not wish to reveal their real names, pseudonyms are an alternative way to deciding on your domain name.
The Business Weblog:
Although businesses with regular updates use weblogs to keep their customers informed, you do not need to own a business to start one of these. If you are thinking of making additional income online or contemplating to start a web business, This will present the best approach. Carefully researched SEO domain names in this case can on many occasions influence how fast your business grows and how many new customers you get daily.
It has been said that using keywords in your domain name is important is attracting the right target group of customers. My other weblog resides on http://proaffiliateincome.com/ ‘Pro Affiliate Income’ for that very reason since I was focusing on affiliate income, affiliate marketing, affiliate opportunities and affiliate software. The best SEO domain names are usually made up of keywords that are most searched on search engines like Google, MSN or Yahoo. However, acquiring such domain names can be especially challenging since they are highly sought after and in many cases, someone else has already gotten there before you.
If picking domain names using keywords present more headaches than solving your problem, consider using a unique name. Whoever thought that Google and Yahoo will be the most popular domain names today? The popularity of Google has resulted in people saying “Google it” instead of “look it up on the internet search engine…” Of course, branding and a clear marketing strategy will bring even the oddest company / domain names to your target market. Just for laughs, ‘Chitika‘ is not even a word in the dictionary.
Of course, another way would be to just decide on your company name and use that as your registered domain name. Even if you are not intending to register your web business as a registered company with your local authorities, it will be useful to consider that. You will never know when your online business will turn out so profitable where you decide to quit your day job and focus on it entirely. Besides, if you are selling products or services, payment gateways like PayPal, Moneybookers or even AlertPay gives you an option to include your ‘Company Name’ in your billing information. Even if you are just selling ebooks on eBay or Half
, this helps customers identify with your business when they receive an invoice from you.
Start looking for your preferred domain names today. Below are 2 of the largest domain name registrars that you can buy your domains from.
- Network Solutions
(for Business)
- GoDaddy
(for Personal)
Domains need to be hosted by a webhosting company. I will be writing more about that in the next article of this series but if you can’t don’t wish to wait, below is one webhosting company that I would recommend.
- Bluehost
I hope this information has proved useful. I recommend you download WebCEO for those who wish to research domain names with suitable keywords. It offers a full suite of tools and the FTP feature is something I use to maintain my sites too.
Take the Chitika Premium Challenge – Matching Dollar-for-Dollar
In Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #7 – Chitika Eminimalls last week, I blogged about Chitika Eminimalls as an add-on to your current PPC programs alongside Google Adsense to enhance your monetization efforts on your site. If you have already signed-up, good for you. If you have not yet done so, There isn’t a better time to do it but now.
Chitika is currently giving all it’s publishers up to USD100 to take up a challenge. The Challenge is open to all publishers who are not yet using Chitika | Premium. Depending on the amount you generate from the PPC program, Chitika will match dollar-for-dollar up to a maximum of USD100 per publisher. Pretty sweet actually.
In simple words, if the Chitika | Premium program makes you USD100 this month, you can expect Chitika to double that making it USD200 in total. Hey when it does cost you a cent and it can potentially make you some decent money, why not? The Chitika Challenge will go on till the 30th June so get started today! 
Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #6 – Chitika Eminimalls
Table of contents for Site Monetization
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #1 – EZMinisites Template Club
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #2 – Joel Comm’s Adsense Empire
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #3 – Wordpress Adsense System
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #4 – Individual Products and Services
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #5 – Advertisers and Publishers with LinkWorth
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #6 – Chitika Eminimalls
- Site Monetization – Pushing the Envelope #7 – Clickbank Marketplace
It’s been awhile since I updated this series and thought I did just that this week. I hope that all the information provided so far has proved useful. Today, I’m going to share a little secret with you on how you can further monetize your site using 2 of the biggest PPC programme around today. Of course, getting paid without having to cough up a single cent. Sounds pretty cool yeah?
I have been using Chitika’s Eminimalls program for awhile now. Eminimalls has recently gone through an upgrade and is probably as smart a PPC programme can get. The best part of this all is if there are no relevant ads to display, Eminimalls will display your Google AdSense ads. So no matter, you will always be displaying relevant ads and increasing you income from your site. Chitika Eminimalls is of course approved to be use in conjunction with Google AdSense.
Relevancy in ads is key to ensure the highest click through rates. No one wants to see ads that are not relevant to what they are reading anyway. With the latest upgrade, Chitika Eminimalls increases the probability of displaying relevant ads.
If you have not yet signed-up for Google AdSense, get your free account here: http://nicholasmong.com/go/adsense
To sign-up at Chitika Eminimalls as a publisher, click the link below and get your free account: http://nicholasmong.com/go/eminimalls
If you will like to advertise or sell your products on Chitika Eminimalls, click the link below and let the publishers do the work for you: http://nicholasmong.com/go/chitikaadvertiser
Go ahead and give this a shot. Free doesn’t hurt.
Increasing unique hits on blogs
I have been watching my StatPress statistics in my WordPress dashboard since mid month with great interest. Since first installing the plugin a few months back, it has given me a pretty good idea on the number of unique hits I have been getting on all my blogs including most popular posts, referring sites, geographical locations, types of browsers used to view my blog, screen resolution size down to the operating system.
It’s a fair bit of useful information if you know how to process it and predict the trend of your blog stats too. Personally, I find the statistics most useful in understanding what my readers like to read most about and even search related results on major search engines.
Of course StatPress is not the only statistics tool I use but it gives me a pretty good idea of my blog traffic. To my new visitors and all of my readers, thank you for stopping by. I hope you like what you read here. You can subscribe to my RSS feed by entering your email address in the field below. It will send you updates from this blog.
Nicholas M Ong reaches PR5
For almost 2 weeks now, Google has updated PageRanks of sites. The first time I saw the new PR, I thought maybe Google was just fooling with me. After 2 weeks, NicholasMOng.com is still on PR5 so that is good news.
It took me less than 2 months to reach PR2 when I started this blog. I believe it reached a high of PR4 and suddenly dipped overnight to PR2 again after a few months. I started looking for reasons why and learnt that a number of the bigger blogs faced the same issue. It had to do with a number of reasons and one of them being ‘paid-to-post’ programs.
I have since removed any affiliation to those and quite subtlety switched the focus of my blog posts. I have to admit that over the past 12 months, I have lost some readers who did not like the new focus and gain more readers who liked what I blogged. So, I’m happy and I must say I have made some friends on this blog in the past 6 months.
Well, this blog will remain true to itself (me) and raves and rants of just about everything will continue as it has. To everyone out there, thank you for your support! Have a great weekend!
Release Candidate 1 – On the WordPress 2.5 trail
It’s as real as it can probably get right now. WordPress 2.5 is on the verge of being released as the next update after v2.3.3. Apparently, the folks over at WordPress decided to skip v2.4 and go straight to v2.5. Honestly, I’m not sure what difference does it make between the 2 versions.
For those of you who are interested in taking a peek at how the next release looks like, I have the information here. If you can’t wait to get your hands on v2.5 but do not mind a Release Candidate prior to the full release, the link to download the release candidate is provided below. I would download and install the RC but with my current schedule, I reckon I will give that a miss till the full release is out.
On a whole, the next release appears to be quite a major upgrade of the existing v.2.3.3. WordPress 2.5 even drops the navy header in admin dashboard and slaps on a little tanginess.
March 18, 2008
2.5 Sneak Peek
By Matt. Filed under Development.
A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting? Then WordPress 2.5 might be the release for you. It’s been in the oven for a while, and we’re finally ready to open the doors a bit to give you a taste.
For the past few months, we’ve been working with our friends at Happy Cog — Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, and Liz Danzico — to redesign WordPress from the ground-up. The result is a new way of interacting with WordPress that will remain familiar to seasoned users while improving the experience for everyone. This isn’t just a fresh coat of paint — we’ve re-thought the look of WordPress, as well as how it’s organized so that you can forget about the software and focus on your own creative pursuits.
Here are a few vignettes of what’s in store.
The Dashboard
The Dashboard’s most important role is to inform quickly and get you to where you’re headed in the admin. In interviewing users, we found that most of you ignore the Dashboard entirely — its useful information being mostly hidden in an overly complex design. The new Dashboard is focused on the most relevant tasks at hand: a quick summary of what’s published and scheduled for publication, the latest comments and incoming links, blog stats, and WordPress updates and news. You can add your own RSS feeds and edit the way information is presented so that the new Dashboard conforms to the way you use WordPress.
Navigation
The WordPress navigation has confounded even sophisticated users. With the new design, we’ve cut the number of navigation options in half, separating the primary functions (writing, managing posts and pages, editing the blog’s design, and managing comments) from secondary functions. This presents information at a more comfortable pace, revealing only the information that’s necessary. Everything you need is still there — just better organized. (Especially for people new to WP.)
Write
By far, the most frequently accessed part of WordPress is the Write screen. It gets the job done, but its myriad options can be overwhelming. The new write screen only displays the information that you’ll use most often. It displays the most common fields in a way that makes posting incredibly easy. Additional options are hidden away until you need them. The new Write screen anticipates the natural flow of the way you write, and is smart enough to remember the way you left it so that your preferred writing environment is always quickly available. The new visual editor even has a handy full-screen mode to help block out distractions while composing your newest post. (My personal favorite new feature.)
Manage
The Manage screens have been redesigned and unified so that now, managing your pages, posts, media, and comments all use similar, consistent interfaces. We’ve omitted superfluous information and made what’s important faster to find. We believe these changes will make you a faster, more proficient blogger.
You might also notice there are some new colors, the dashboard feels much fresher and lighter. If you’re jonesing for the old look under your user options you can now select the “classic” colors and get those old blues back. (It’s also pluggable so people can easily add or share their own color schemes.)
If you make frequent backups and you’re interested in helping us out with development by testing the new code, download and install Release Candidate 1 of WordPress 2.5, and join our testers mailing list to report any bugs you find in the code.
We’re also interested in feedback on the new interface and would love to hear your opinions, thoughts, rants, raves, and anything in between. We created a special email address just for the occasion: 2.5-feedback@wordpress.org.
The software is basically done and stable, and could be released today, but we’d like to incorporate feedback from a wider audience before making it available to the general public. After a few days of your feedback we’ll set a final release date. Personally, I can’t wait.
WordPress Plugins – Wordbook
Seriously, I’m sitting here and I’m begin to enter the mood of ‘buzzing’. Not a good thing. After a field day at work that has almost ended, I reckon I need to take my mind off work for a bit and do something else. Posting here came naturally though I have to admit, it wasn’t without some hesitation…
Anyway, like I mentioned in my last couple of posts, I have been messing around with my Facebook profile and having a little bit of fun with it. Mostly are social stuff like astrology, horoscopes, gifts and such. I did however find an application that may be off interest to bloggers.
Wordbook is a WordPress a plugin and RSS based application for Facebook that pulls your latest posts from your blog. The neatest part of it has to be this application actually posts your blog posts to your friend’ profiles. Pretty cool way of keeping your mates up to date on your blog. For bloggers who are more interested in increasing your blog readership and exposure, this application should do the trick nicely.
This plugin allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Mini-Feed. Your Facebook profile will also show your most recent blog posts.
I’m still struggling to figure out what twitter is all about. It’s probably due to the fact that I don’t quite seem to be able to find the time to figure this one out. I surely wouldn’t mind some help from folks.
Messing around with Box.net Facebook, MySpace and twitter
So I finally decided to mess around with Facebook. I’m still not sure exactly what I can do with this application though I’m sure many folks have many uses for it and even the marketing gurus have come up with more than a few uses. Well, if you have suggestions, feel free to let me know. All I do know that they are social networking sites but haven’t yet a clue how to leverage on them. Your ideas might even be useful to the rest of the readers of my blog. I could use some help on MySpace and twitter too. So, suggestions anyone?
I just placed the Box.net widget on my blog again. Man I got to update the files on that. Probably try to do it sometime next week. In the meantime, you can check out some of the music on the sidebar.
WordPress Plugins – Cryptographp and Simple CAPTCHA – Securing your WordPress from SPAM bots
Have you ever wondered who was registering at your blog? With user names like ‘jdutefnkeleys17‘ and similar email addresses like ‘hidden email‘, it makes me wonder if it a SPAM bot or a real human. In most cases, it’s a bot.
WordPress has many anti-SPAM built in features on it’s own. Aksimet for one is a great plugin with regular updates to combat the evolving SPAM bots. This plugin is of course a standard inclusion in any copy of WordPress installation. Then there is the Dashboard where blog owners can control who is able to leave comments. By selecting only logged in users, your readers who do not wish to register on your blog will not be able to leave any comments. However, as soon as you set comments to free for all, you have inevitably opened the flood gates for SPAM bots. if you don’t quite get the effects of this, look at the image on the bottom right corner of this blog and your will see how spam bots have been blocked since 2 months back.
So what can you do about it? Simple, by using a plugin to secure your comment form, you add a small image on the page to combat SPAM bots. Unless the image is entered into the box provided, no registration can take place. Cryptographp is one such plugin. Using the same principle of a Captcha image, this plugin blocks SPAM bots out.
How does this benefit your readers? Cryptographp only requires them to key in the images in the box provided. Compared to having to registering, waiting for activation email, logging in on your blog before they can even place a comment, this plugin is a straight-forward and simple tool to use.
- Cryptographp: Secure your comments form with a random image to combat SPAM bots. Place the code “
<?php display_cryptographp(); ?>“ on your comment form in your WordPress installation “comments.php”.
If you prefer not to tinkle with codes on your blog, Simple CAPTCHA does the job without additional features and customisation.
WordPress Plugins – SezWho – Empower your community
What is SezWho?
SezWho is a distributed context, rating and reputation system for social media sites like blogs, forums, wikis, video/picture sharing sites, discussion boards and anywhere else where people collaborate on the web. SezWho is focused on delivering benefits to all stakeholders in social media interactions:
- Readers can easily separate quality content from uninteresting content.
- Contributors get recognized and rewarded for their efforts by building portable credibility.
- Site-Owners benefit by having a more engaged community and get additional traffic based on SezWho’s unique contributor-oriented content discovery system.
SezWho is another new plugin that is designed to tap on social media/networking capabilities. A straight forward plugin, SezWho does 3 things:
- Rates comments by relative value
- Creates creditability for both your commenter and blog
- Drives traffic to your older posts
This plugin works both ways. Assuming I have a regular reader who leaves comments on my blog, it helps create activity and adds a little credibility for my blog. On the other hand, If the commenter has a blog of his own, by actively leaving comments of value on my blog, he will also be driving traffic back to his blog. How? well, when you leave a comment, you have the ability to add your blog URL right?
I discovered this plugin through BlogCatalog. If you are going to try SezWho on your blog, you might as well join me at BlogCatalog and leverage on social networking system.
WordPress Plugins – CommentLuv – Spread the Love
ave you ever had that feeling when you found something that everyone else missed out on and you tell yourself “they are going to love me for this…” Now of course, if you are the creator/designer/inventor of whatever you found, you can brag all about it. Unfortunately, I’m not the creator here but I can bet you some luvin’ that good old Simon didn’t get to this one before me. Simon’s has been posting some pretty interesting plugins and tips for WordPress by the way. Mine’s here.
Just when almost every blogger out there is using a DoFollow plugin to ’spread the love’, CommentLuv is an innovative plugin that passes a bit of luv onto your commenters by providing a titled link to their last blog post. This plugin attempts to parse the feed of the comment author by visiting their site and looking in the standard locations for a feed. If no default feed is found, it will attempt to parse the users page for a feed link and parse that instead.
It will start to work with any new comments posted after installation (it will not add last post links to comments made before CommentLuv has been activated)
It will not add your own last post if you are logged in as admin or use your own blog url as the comment author url. You can test it by adding a comment to one of your posts (after loggin out) and using a different URL for the author site field (use http://nicholasmong.com if you want!)
Go ahead, try it out and leave a comment on this post and get some luv direct to your very own blog! Another way to spread the ‘Love Links’ with CommentLuv.
WordPress Plugins – WP-Cache – Put the kick back in your WordPress
I was over at Simon’s and reading his post on ‘How to speedup your WordPress blog loading time’ and it reminded me of something. I had to turn on caching on my own blog. WordPress caching is useful for dramatically reducing load times of your WordPress blogs. What caching really does is that it creates and stores a ‘ghost’ image of your blog on your visitors’ browsers. Caching is useful and recommended in the following scenarios:
- Noticeable lags and increase in load times due to huge database activity/queries (especially common in huge blogs will numerous posts).
- Too many javascripts running in the background thus affecting load time.
- Your hosting provider informs you that your blog is exceeding the server load limits for you hosting plan.
Caching on websites are largely not encourage for a simple reason. Visitors see the old ‘ghost’ image they saw yesterday when they visit your site the next day. Unless they clear the cache of their browsers, updates may not appear on they browsers even though you are sure that you have made the updates. With pinging capabilities, these errors have been eliminated on blogs.
I’m not sure as I have done little research on this but my gut tells me that the performance of geo-targeting, advertising and other codes of the same nature running on javascripts may be affected with caching turned on.
If you prefer to use a plugin for WordPress for advanced caching instead of messing around with your wp-config.php file, My suggestion is to use the WP-Cache plugin. I run this on my server too. I have to agree that caching does put the kick back into your WordPress blog with significant improvements.
Powered by BlueHost
Ok, I finally finished moving servers. The main domain was straight forward then it came down to guess work on the add-on domains. Everything seems to be working fine up till this stage though. A few more scripts to move around here and there.
I will most probably have to wait till the weekend. Until then, the support and services at Bluehost are pretty good till this stage. The knowledge-base could have been a little more comprehensive. Otherwise, I’m a happy customer for now. Happy Valentines Day to everyone out there.
Google vs. Microsoft on Yahoo
Ok, so now we have it. Yahoo has rejected Bill’s offer and Eric jumps at the opportunity. In all honesty, Having to live with Windows already has Bill in my face at work and at home. Think what would happen if Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo goes through. Choosing between a Sony PlayStation 3 and an XBox 360, make a wild guess what I’d pick? In many ways, tyranny or not, I would rather Google ally/acquire Yahoo if I had a choice to choose between the two.
February 4, 2008, 7:37 am
How Google Could Keep Yahoo From Microsoft
By Saul Hansell
Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, is offering Yahoo — and, it seems, anyone else — whatever help he can to make sure Yahoo isn’t swallowed by Microsoft.
What sort of help could that be? Lots of money for the right to sell ads on Yahoo’s search results, most likely. Google would have a very hard time buying Yahoo outright, for antitrust reasons. But if Google offered a long-term guarantee for advertising revenue on Yahoo’s search pages, there would be a pot of money that could help finance a bid for Yahoo by a private equity firm or a media company. Yahoo also could try to stay independent by cutting such a deal and giving part of the money from Google back to shareholders in the form of a share buyback or special dividend.
There is a lot of money at stake. Since Google earns more for every search than Yahoo does, such a deal would immediately add money to Yahoo’s bottom line.
Here is a back-of-the-envelope way to look at how much is involved. Google agreed to pay a reported $3.5 billion to sell advertising for IAC/InterActiveCorp’s Ask.com unit. In December, according to comScore, Ask handled 1.1 percent of all search queries worldwide, while Yahoo had a 12.8 percent share. That means Yahoo has 11.6 times the volume of Ask. If you multiply the $3.5 billion figure by 11.6, you get a theoretical $40 billion over 5 years. That may be a bit high, as Yahoo had a total of $6 billion in ad revenue in 2007, split between search ads and graphic display advertising.
Regardless of the exact numbers, there are tens of billions of dollars in play that could be used to enable all sorts of financial engineering meant to keep Yahoo out of Steve Ballmer’s hands.
I’m not so sure any of these is likely to happen. What’s more, they are almost all really bad ideas, if you look at the long term value created by what is now the Yahoo business.
The reason gets to the challenge of running Yahoo, as well as Google, Microsoft and AOL: A company can make the most money at the highest margins if it has the biggest network of advertisers, the biggest network of sites on which ads run, and the largest group of sites it owns and operates. But those economic forces push companies to almost unmanageable sprawl.
Advertisers value both reach and effectiveness. That means they will pay higher rates for their ads to be shown to the most targets; broad media, like network TV, get a premium over targeted media like cable channels. But in search in particular, they do also value ads that are shown to the most likely prospects. Having the biggest network, and the right technology, allows a company like Google to offer both broad reach and effective targeting. As a result, ads on Google command a premium over ads on other ad networks, like Yahoo’s.
The way to get the biggest network is to negotiate for the rights to sell ads on lots of other sites. But the problem with this is that ad networks like Google give away about 80 percent of the money spent by advertisers to the sites on which ads appear. For sites that the ad company owns outright —Google’s own search pages, for example — it can keep all of the ad revenue. That’s why AOL’s new management has rejected, so far, proposals to sell off its portal business so it can concentrate on its growing advertising business. When it looks at this, it realizes that owning sites on which it can place ads is the best way to reap the profits from the ad network.
All of this means that if Yahoo splits its ad network from the rest of the sites it operates, it will erode the value of both halves of its business.
Lots of very smart people disagree with this assessment. Many current and former Yahoo executives, and lots of others in the Valley, argue that Terry Semel made a terrible mistake in trying to take on Google in search, and that it would have been better to double down on parts of its site that were most conducive to brand advertising, where it had been the leader. It certainly is true that the race to build Yahoo’s search engine and then the Panama search advertising system diverted resources from what could have been other initiatives that didn’t compete head on with Google.
But for Yahoo not to be in search or in search advertising, I think, would consign it to a much smaller role in the future. Search is so much a part of how people navigate the Web that it is hard to imagine being a successful Web portal without search at the center. Moreover, there is no longer a strict difference between search ads — sold in a huge auction — and brand ads — sold by a sales force over lunch. Rather, there is increasingly a smooth gradation, with even some graphic ads for big brands placed through automated systems and, soon, advertising exchanges. I suspect — although I’m not sure — that one big system that can handle all sorts of ads will have advantages over narrower advertising networks.
That’s why the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo in theory has the best likelihood of creating real value. It will have the second-largest ad network and a vast array of sites on which to place its own ads. Microsoft, moreover, has resources to pay for the development of lots of corners of the business at the same time in a way Yahoo did not.
The caveat here is management: If Microsoft and Yahoo cannot actually build sites and ad technology the market wants to use, none of this theoretical profit will wind up in the bank. And one of the few advantages of a complex arrangement that gives Yahoo’s search business to Google is that the remaining company would be easier to run.
WordPress Plugins – Lucia’s Link Love – DoFollow Plugin to Foil the Comment Spammers
On the prowl once again for a more advanced DoFollow plugin, I chanced on Lucia’s Link Love (LLL) plugin after visiting Andy Bread’s blog. What separates the LLL plugin from the ones available today is the ability to turn on the DoFollow feature only after your commenter has left a number of comments. So for human comment spammers who visit your blog once to leave a comment and never to return, this plugin leave the NoFollow attribute on. Another feature that this plugin adds is the ability to block SEO crazed comment spammers. One of the options in the plugin allow you to block sites with too many characters like ‘best viagra pills at the lowest price online delivered to your doorstep’. Catching the drift?
Be careful not to set your minimum comment count too high. You want to discourage human comment spammer and not your readers or genuine commenter from leaving comments. I believe a general number of 2 – 3 minimum comments before DoFollow is enabled on their links is an acceptable figure. Try out this new plugin and feel free to leave your feedback on your thoughts.
Jun 22, 2008 | Categories: Plugins | Tags: Comment Spam, Cryptographp, DoFollow, Firefox, Human Comment Spammers, Link Love, Love Links, Lucia's Link Love, NoFollow, Plugin, Release, SearchStatus, Spam Bots | Leave A Comment »