Backup Buddy Plugin – A Dream Come True
If you have read my blog, attended my workshops, or even casaully discussed WordPress with me, you know my feelings about backing up your files. Yes, most servers and hosts do it routinely, and yours might be one of them. But I don’t like to rely on them.
I always recommend using WP DB Backup plugin for your database which it basically all of your content — pages and posts. But what about your other WordPress files. And all the media you have uploaded? Yes, you can back those up usually using an FTP client, but maybe you don’t have the know how or the time.
I know what you are thinking.
This sounds like an ad.
Well, in a way maybe it is. But PlugInBuddy.com from iThemes, has come up with Backup Buddy. It’s great. And it backs up everything.
A side note. I was concerned the otther day when a client that I was doing consulting told me another “so called” WordPress expert told her to just use the export tool, and that will backup everything. Not! What are these people anyway, giving away wrong info!
Yes, I am an affiliate for this, a few bucks in my pocket. And yes, it’s not a free plugin. But damn, it’s great. And well worth the money!
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So Many Choices, So Little Time – Which Theme is the Best?
Whether it’s from clients, or attendees of my workshops, I often get asked, “What theme do you think is the best?” Wow, now that’s a loaded question!
Why do I get asked that so often? And is there really an answer? To be honest, no.
What is happening is there are a lot of WordPress “so-called experts” out there who have found one particular theme they like, or a series of them from a certain theme developer. Why the “experts” decide on pushing it could be several different reasons:
- They have learned a particular theme inside and out, and have decided it’s too much work to explore other themes.
- They have a vested interest in it, which may be financial.
- They bought the developer’s licence and fso it costs the nothing to offer the “free premium theme” as an incentive to hire them to create your blog or website.
- They feel the theme has worked miracles for them, and believe it will do the same for you.
- They are just simply biased and too stubborn to budge an inch.
Now I’m not saying this is bad, or that the themes they recommend won’t do the job. It’s just the limitations set upon the client. And although they may think that their “selected” theme is the greatest, it’s only their opinion, and doesn’t necessarily mean that they understand your needs.
So back to my question and my answer. I use and recommend a large variety of themes for my clients. The commission I get on an affilate ad, or the hype that may come from big name bloggers, don’t play into my decision. Why? Because finding a theme that will work for you is very important to me.
When searching for a theme, think of everything you want it to do, plus all those forseeable needs down the road. Talk to you developer and ask the hard questions. Ask around. See who else is using that theme and find out what they were able to do. If you find a theme that has been highly customized, be prepared to either dig in yourself or have someone do it for you. And if you don’t find a theme that will do it all for you, make sure what you settle on will still make you happy.
Remember, no one theme does it all. At least, not yet…
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What You Need to Know About Your Blogs’ Readers
In one of my workshops, Savvy Blogging with WordPress, I always share these stats. You may find them very interesting.
1. The 90-9-1 rule:
- 90% of your readers are lurkers (they read, but do not comment).
- 9% contribute from time to time, but other priorities distract them.
- 1% participate frequently and account for most of the comments.
2. Most won’t read your whole post carefully
- The average readers spends 96 seconds reading the average post.
- 79% of readers scan, rather than read.
- Only 16% will read the whole page.
Although you may feel every blog post doesn’t fit this mold, on the average, this is what we are looking at.
So be patient, provide excellent and useful content, and be consistent. You will get the readers you want.
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Protect your wp-content folder if using a CPanel hosting account
If you are hosting with someone like Bluehost.com, Hostgator.com or any other host with WordPress installations on a cPanel.
Case in point. Let’s say I know www.thisdomain.com is using WordPress. So I simply go in and type www.thisdomain.com/wp-content. An index page will come up like this in your browser window..
And if I was to click on 2010/ I would get access to all images uploaded the this WordPress default file. So I could easily download everything they have uploaded to their site. Sometimes you can do this to the plugin and theme directories as well. Or if I typed in www.thisdomain.com/wp-content/uploads the same thing will happen.
This can be a very big security risk if you offer subscriptions, paid material or other information that you don’t want easily grabbed.
How to solve this…
Sign into your hosting account, and click on your cPanel. At the very bottom, go into the “Index Manager” and select No Indexing for your site and it’s directories, or if you choose, just certain directories. If you don’t, users will easily be able to rip content, plugin and theme information from your site.
It will either go to a 404 page not found, or directory not found.
As always, with WordPress, be safe!
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Headway Video Site by John Haydon
Lately I have been sending people to get hooked up with the Headway theme. It’s latest version has an incredible visual editor. No more knowing CSS or code!
John Hayden has just come out with Headway Video site. A perfect resource for tutorial videos on Headway. Check it out here.
And if you decide you would like to purchase Headway, please consider our affiliate link on the right side of this page.
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Your Old Blog Posts Aren’t Dead. They’re Just Sleeping.
Post by Judy Dunn
We’ve been tricked. All of us.
That freshly baked, piping hot, sweet-smelling, pie called Original Content grabbed us by the collar. Assaulted our nostrils. Made us salivate.
This pie was made just for me. It’s fresh and juicy. No one else has had a bite. I want the first piece.
We bloggers know this pie well. We should, because we baked it.
As we create the content pie that becomes a new blog post, someone is standing over our shoulder. Maybe it’s that Internet marketer who sends us their weekly newsletter. Or that hot-shot author whose book, “Create Original Content or Die,” is on the bestseller list. And they are whispering:
“Say something new! ”
“Write with your own voice!”
“Be original. Be Cree-A-tive.”
Why Bringing Back an Old Blog Post Can Be a Good Thing
Attention spans are murderously short on the Web. Plus, you are always collecting new readers.
So you have your memory-challenged regular readers. And you have a brand new audience that has never read your old posts. That means that with just a little tweaking (or a lot, if it makes sense), you can get more google juice.
Of course, if you just start republishing old posts randomly, without choosing carefully, you’ll just be rehashing stale, boring ideas. But done right, you’ll get a surge in traffic and, very possibly, some new subscribers.
5 Steps to Waking Up an Old Post
- Revisit your older posts often. Your goal here is to find which posts were the most popular. If you see a certain post being viewed again and again, this is prime content to bring back. Sometimes it will be a post that had a lot of reader comments and sometimes not. Pay particular attention if the referring site (where the reader came from) is Google. If people are searching for help with a certain problem and they keep finding your blog post, you have a winner and you should consider republishing it.
- Look at your title, sub-heads and formatting with a fresh eye. Reworking the title just a little bit could make your post even more popular in a Google search. An added benefit: Google will look at it with fresh eyes, too. Google Analytics even tells you what terms people were using in their search when they found your post. Adding intriguing sub-heads also helps—to break up the text and draw the eye to the important parts of your post. And check your spacing. Do paragraph breaks often to help readers skim and scan. Sometime my paragraphs are just one sentence long, especially if I want to add emphasis to a thought.
- Consider updating the content. Your most popular posts got to be that way for a reason. If you can add new content, or rewrite, you’ll capture more readers, people who wanted to know more about what you were talking about. So think about the new things you could add.
- Add new tags. A tag is merely a keyword or category used to describe the topic of your post. Tags are indexed by Google and Technorati, so someone doing a Google search is more likely to come across your posts. Revisit your tags and think about whether adding a few new ones might help more people find your post.
- Think about adding a new image or two. If you are like me, you didn’t give much thought to images when you first started blogging. But images can be very powerful, hitting the part of the brain that triggers memory and emotions. The result: You attract more readers—and keep them engaged in your post. For more advice on what the right image can do for your post, read 5 Ways the Right Photo Can Get You More Blog Readers. For some good sources of photos, see my recent post, How to Find Spectacular Free and Low-Cost Images for Your Blog Post.
What about you? Do you republish old blog posts? Do you think it’s a good strategy?
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8 Recent Thoughts on WordPress
Hey, you may already know this, but WordPress is my life. Yes, I work with it on a daily basis. And no, I don’t know everything. But I enjoy finding those solutions to problems I have yet to conquer. So, just for the heck of it, here are eight thoughts I am having right now on WordPress as I sit here.
- Themes are a constant challenge. Their coding and CSS isn’t always obvious. Still convinced it’s worth paying for one.
- Permalinks are great. But if you move a site, and you suddenly start getting 404 errors on all of your pages, except your homepage, it can be a permalink problem. Simply go in and reset to default, save, then reset your custom permalink. That may just solve the problem.
- Bluehost is still my favorite hosting site. Three issues this week, all resolved within 15 minutes via the 24/7 chat.
- Nothing more gratifying then helping someone on Twitter solve a WordPress issue by sending them to a blog post I did.
- Looking forward to the WordPress workshop I’ll be presenting tomorrow, WordPress and the 3 Bears – Themes, Plugins and Widgets.
- Blogging is not dead.
- Cringe when other so-called WordPress developers and “experts” say you can create yourself an awesome online presence in just a few hours.
- Still don’t like the over-used cliches rockstar or sucks in any kind of reference to WordPress, or as a matter of fact, anything in life.
So, a bit of meandering, but just imagine what all my thoughts are in a day’s time!
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Where Are the Visitors?: 5 Ways to use Google Analytics to Increase Your Blog Traffic
Ever wondered if it’s worth it to track your blog traffic? Google Analytics makes it easy. If you are already a user, here is my list of the five most useful things to do with it. And if you are not, here are some reasons why maybe you should.
Substitute the word “blog” for “website” here if you wish. Because most of this, except for, perhaps, the bounce rate advice, applies equally to both
If you haven’t registered yet, just go to Google Analytics and follow the steps to install it on your site. It usually takes 24 hours for the data to start rolling in.
5 Ways to Use Google Analytics to Increase Your Blog Traffic
- Get the big picture with the dashboard overview. A quick view of how you’ve done in the last month: number of visits and pageviews; bounce rate (% of visitors who leave right away without going on to other pages); average time on site; traffic sources and content overviews. Useful for: Pinpointing the main problem areas and accessing data for improvements.
- Study your visitors. I look at new vs. returning visitors because one of my goals is to increase the number of returning visitors from month to month. To grow my readership, I also want a healthy number of new visitors. And I watch visitor loyalty, which counts first-time visitors, all the way up to the percentage who have visited 200 or more times. Useful for: Analyzing your content to see what types of posts are bringing readers back.
- Keep an eye on your traffic sources. Track where your visitors are coming from: direct (typed your blog URL directly in); referring sites (visitors coming to you from other sites); and search engines (people googling terms/keywords to find your post). The keywords section shows the top 10 terms people googled to get to your blog posts. Useful for: Analyzing your blog promotion (how many people are coming to you from other sites). Top keywords give you ideas for writing more posts on the topics people are searching for.
- Look at the popularity of your content. I love this section. It not only shows which posts were most popular (content by title), but which pages were viewed the most and the average visitor time on page for each. Also shows you the top landing pages and the page visitors most frequently left your blog from. Useful for: Determining reader interest. Sometimes an old post will be on the most popular content list and you might want to revise, add fresh content and repost.
- Set goals and track results. Create a goal and track your results. For instance, maybe you want to increase the number of subscribers to your e-newsletter. Name your goal “e-letter signup” and identify a URL for tracking, for instance, the thank-you page when someone signs up.
Google Analytics is coming out with some more sophisticated tools that are especially useful for measuring results for your website. But these five strategies will get you on your way to tracking good, basic information on your blog (or website).
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Using WordPress in Your URL
Just an FYI, did you know that it is in violation of the WordPress trademark to use “WordPress” in your url? You can see here what they say in on their site, but in a nutshell…
It’s best to use yourdomainwp.com instead. For example if you have a site called WordPress Themes, your URL should be wpthemes. And if you already have a URL with WordPress in it, they say:
“If you already have a domain with “WordPress” in it, redirecting it to the “wp” equivalent is fine, just as long as the main one users see and you promote doesn’t contain “WordPress.”
But I still see this abused all the time. Have you? It’s important to remember what this great open source software is giving us, free of charge.
Also, you will find many sites, although they don’t have WordPress in the url, they have it in the site name. This is okay to do. But what you shouldn’t do is make it look like it’s affiliated with the official WordPress site. Also, do not take chunks of text from the WordPress site and drop it onto your site as if it’s your own copy. I see this done and it really irks me. This is copyrighted information.
What you need to do is note that copy has been taken from the WordPress site, by giving them credit. And most important, if you do have WordPress in the name of your site, please put a disclaimer at the bottom of the site that it is in no way affiliated with WordPress.com or WordPress.org.
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WordPress 2.9 – Update Success
This is the second day since WordPress 2.9 has officially been released. Normally, I wait a couple of weeks to upgrade. But this time I took the dive and the update went through seamlessly. In fact, I have seen a lot of the same results via Twitter. Sounds like a lot of the bugs were worked out in beta. Way to go WordPress!
Of course, I did backup all my files and database just in case!
I will come back and post any plugin or widget conflicts as I hear them.
And how did your experience go?
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