Archives For WordPress

Consolidating plug-ins with Jetpack and WordPress SEO

June 27, 2012 — 2 Comments

Over the past few weeks I’ve been going through the WordPress sites that I manage (roughly 100 of them, between my projects and clients) and refining the choice of plug-ins on each of them.  I’m using InfiniteWP to keep them all updated, but I’ve been manually working through them to add/remove various pluings.  Two plug-ins in particular are replacing 8-10 plugins on most of my sites.

WordPress SEO

[ Get the WordPress SEO plugin here] Joost de Valk (also known as “Yoast”) is a highly respected WordPress developer, and this package includes quite a few great tools to help with the search engine optimization of your site.  I had previously used a handful of plug-ins (mostly from Joost) to accomplish my goals, but this package is now more functional than those individual pieces.

  • Canonical URL’s — To make sure Google knows the true URL of each page.
  • Google XML Sitemaps — To create (and submit) sitemaps of your posts/pages.
  • Robots Meta — To include robot meta tags in certain areas of the site to prevent duplicate content issues.
  • RSS Footer — To add a snippet of text (and a link) at the bottom of your RSS feeds to help take advantage of people that scrape your feeds.

This is an excellent plug-in, and he updates it regularly with new features.  The one piece that this doesn’t replace is PuSHPress, which enables PubSubHubbub support to your site.  In short, it makes new entries go out really fast to people that get your posts using Google Reader and similar tools.

Jetpack

[ Get the Jetpack plugin here ] Similar to WordPress SEO, this plug-in replaces a variety of plugins that I’ve been using over the years.

  • Subscribe to comments — I hate it when I comment on a blog but they give me no way to subscribe to email updates of subsequent comments on that particular post.  This takes care of that.
  • Various social plugins — I’ve used a variety of social plugins (Digg Digg, ShareThis, Sociable, various individual networks, etc), but this takes care of them all in one place.  However, it doesn’t yet handle Pinterest so if you want that you’ll still need to add it separately.
  • WordPress Stats — If you like the WordPress stats plug-in, you now need to use Jetpack to stay current on it.  This offers nice lightweight stats, though I also include Google Analytics on every site.
  • Contact forms — This replaces other contact form scripts (Contact Form 7, etc), though I still use Wufoo most of the time.

Other plugins

So those two plug-ins have replaced many of the ones I used to use, but I still have a decent collection that are also installed for most clients.  They include:

  • Akismet – An excellent anti-spam plugin, which comes standard with WordPress, though you need to activate it.
  • Disqus Comment System — A replacement for the built-in comment system (and replaces the need for Akismet, Highlight Author Comments and some of the features in Jetpack).  I use it on a few sites, but not too many yet.
  • FeedBurner FeedSmith — If you push your RSS feed out via FeedBurner, this a great plug-in to help direct people to the proper feed.
  • Highlight Author Comments — This allows you to style author comments a bit differently then normal comments, so they’ll stand out when the post author leaves a comment on the post.
  • InfiniteWP Client — I manage most of my WordPress sites using Infinite WP, and this is a required piece of that.
  • jQuery Lightbox for Native Galleries — This turns normal WP galleries into cool lightboxed galleries. Here is an example.
  • PuSHPress — As I mentioned above, this enabled PubSubHubbub support on your blog, which means it goes out to RSS readers really fast.
  • Shadowbox JS — Allows you to do some neat shadowbox trick with media on your site, like popping YouTube videos up in little boxes.
  • Widget Logic — Allows you to pick and choose which pages particular widgets should appear on.
  • WPtouch — Creates a mobile-friendly version of your site automatically.  While I prefer to use mobile responsive themes instead of this, it can be helpful for older blogs.

There are a few others that I use from time to time depending on the theme (various sliders, theme-specific plug-ins such as Genesis Simple Edits when working with a StudioPress theme, etc), but that’s my main list.

 What are your favorite WordPress plug-ins?

In Site Content, WordPress , , , ,
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Your competition isn’t (necessarily) the enemy

April 13, 2012 — 4 Comments

I enjoy attending local events and meetups, and lately I’ve been going to more of them.  It’s a great place to meet people, learn new ideas and I just like an excuse to get out of the house from time to time.

When I run into others that are in my field, it’s typically a great thing.  The entire crowd at any given WordPress Meetup could be considered “competition” to one another (we’re all web developers trying to make a living), but it doesn’t feel that way at all.  We share knowledge and ideas, and help people solve their problems.  It’s wonderful.

I’ve found the same to be true of other meetings; when I meet fellow web developers we typically exchange info and keep up with each other.  Building that kind of community around your business can be very helpful and rewarding.

Yesterday was weird, though.  I went to the Marietta Business Association for the first time, as I’ve heard it’s a good group (and it is).  Before lunch I was hanging out talking to folks and was chatting with a guy that works for an I.T./web company.  As soon as he found out what I did, he said “Oh, that’s pretty much what we do too” and was clearly done.  In other words “I can’t sell you my stuff, so I’m wasting my time“.  It was quite surprising, and more than a little bit rude.  We swapped business cards and he took off.

After the meeting, I went home and emailed the folks that I met to say thanks for their time.  For example, one woman owns a catering company and will be providing lunch at the meeting next month, so I simply said that it was nice to meet her and I was looking forward to a great lunch next month.  Since I typically email everyone I get cards from, I emailed the I.T./web guy as well — something like “nice to meet you, if I have a client with IT needs I’ll certainly keep you in mind”.

I guess that was enough to jumpstart him, so he sent back a lengthy response telling me exactly what kind of client he’s looking for, all of the things they can do, how great they are, etc.  He’s clearly a sales guy, and maybe that kind of technique works, but seemed awfully pushy to me.  I much prefer working with folks, learning from them, and knowing what their strengths and weaknesses are.  In the case of this guy, all I know is that he’s a rude, pushy salesman that does I.T.  I won’t be sending anyone his direction.

On the other hand, here are some great people in the Atlanta area that I’ve met over the past few months that might be valuable to some of you:

The list goes on and on.  While I’m sure it doesn’t work this way in every industry, I’ve found it invaluable to connect with these people and many others like them, and I’m looking forward to meeting plenty more in the near future.  If you’re in the Atlanta area and you’re into WordPress, come check out Kathy’s meetup, Marna’s meetup, or a new one that I’m starting in a few weeks.

If WordPress isn’t your thing (or you’re not in the area), look for a Meetup or other group near you and start connecting with like-minded folks today!

In WordPress
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Working toward A Brighter Web

January 24, 2012 — 3 Comments

A Brighter WebOver the years I’ve posted quite a few video tutorials on here and on other sites.  The problem is that they were scattered all over — many on here, quite a few on Google Earth Blog, various ones on my Google+ account, etc.  Recently I set out to get all of those organized, and the result seems to be pretty good.

With the help of Ali Green, we’ve put together a new site called A Brighter Web.  On the site we have over 60 video tutorials on topics such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and WordPress.  We’re adding a few new videos every day, and we’ll be expanding our range of topics over time.

With that in mind, what would you like to see on a site like that?  More social platforms, like FourSquare and LinkedIn?  Or perhaps software tutorials, like Photoshop?  Leave a comment and let us know what you’d like to see, and we’ll certainly take your ideas into consideration moving foward.

Thanks!

In Facebook, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, Videos, WordPress , , , , , ,
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How to make it all come together

June 25, 2011 — 1 Comment

Over the years, I’ve discussed a lot of ideas to help your business flourish online and today I’m going to show you what it looks like when it all comes together.

The East Cobber is a free local magazine in Marietta, GA that was created back in 1993, and they’ve had an online presence for nearly a decade.  However, with the ongoing shift from print to digital, they realized the the site could do so much more.  Last year they enlisted the help of Green Mellen Media, and the results have been amazing.  Here is a chart showing their growth since the new site launched last fall.

The beginning of that chart is October, 2010, when they had 1,509 visitors.  Last month they had a total of 16,498.  For a year over year comparison, they had 1,691 visitors in May 2010, and then the 16,498 in May 2011 — an increase of 875% in a single year!  Even better, this wasn’t from a brand new site; this was a very well-established site from a popular magazine.  So what made the difference?  There were quite a few things, but here are some of the big ones.

WordPress

We moved the entire site over to WordPress, which helped with quite a few things.  It not only made it easier for them to publish articles, but WordPress has excellent Search Engine Optimization by design.  Using a StudioPress-powered theme helped even more, as they add some additional SEO tweaks to the mix.  Here is their incoming traffic from search engines over the past eight months:

Content

This is the big key.  Rather than posting a few articles each month when the new issue came out, they’re posting multiple stories every day to keep the community informed of local news and events.  They’ve published over 2,900 entries since the new site went live, making them a true hub in the community.

Social

I recently pointed out how you can’t fake your way to social media success, and they’re an example of social media done right.  Their Facebook page auto-posts some new items from the site, but they’re quick to respond to comments and often run contents to give away prizes from area businesses.  They’ve gone from just a few hundred likes on the page to well over 1,000 and it continues to grow quickly.

The key here is that they work hard at it.  People are always looking for shortcuts, but the East Cobber folks simply got to work and are engaging with the community daily.  We’ve given them some tools to help make it easier, but there is no substitute for actually diving in and connecting with people.

The Little Things

Little things can add up too:

  • We didn’t put our name in their footer in order to help them rank as well as possible in Google.  The results above speak for themselves.
  • They post a new photo of the day on their home page every day to keep things fresh.
  • They trusted us and we trusted them.  When we assured them that a feature or idea wouldn’t work, they believed us.  When they told us that their readers were interested in certain topics, we believed them.
  • We used most of my favorite WordPress plug-ins, plus a few others to help add additional functionality to the site.
  • We use Google Analytics (which generated the charts above) see what content people read the most, what needs to be improved, etc.

The magic solution

People are often looking for the magic solution to put their online business on autopilot, but things just don’t work that way.  A properly configured site, using a solid platform, with lots of hard work put into building content and the community, can lead to a very successful site.

Traffic is continuing to grow for them, and I expect it will for some time.  Congratulations to Cynthia and her team for such great success over the past year!

In Analytics, Marketing, SEO, Site Content, Social Media, WordPress , , , ,
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My favorite WordPress plug-ins

May 1, 2011 — 4 Comments

Three years ago I wrote up a list of my favorite plug-ins, and decided that it was well past time to give the list a fresh look.  While many of them have stayed the same, I’ve got a few additions and a few deletions.

The ones that stayed the same

These plug-ins have certainly been updated in the past few years, but remain part of every blog I manage:

Akismet – Amazingly awesome spam fighting plugin.

FeedBurner Feedsmith – I still run all of my blog RSS feeds through FeedBurner, and this is a great plug-in to quietly redirect visitors over there.

Google XML Sitemaps – A simple way to generate an XML sitemap and automatically notify search engines of your new posts.

Highlight Author Comments – Make your replies stand out when you reply to comments on a post of yours.

Subscribe to Comments – Allow users to get email notifications of new posts after they leave one.  I love when blogs have this, so I can be notified if someone replies to my comment and then we can continue the conversation.

The ones that I’ve moved away from

Here are the plug-ins that I no longer use regularly, for one reason or another:

All in One SEO Pack -Most of the themes that I use (typically from StudioPress) have great SEO baked right in and this is less important.

Enhanced WP Contact Form – I’ve switched to Wufoo for virtually all of my forms.

Fancy Zoom – I still use it from time to time, but most themes have better image management.

Top Commentators – This isn’t really a bad plug-in, I simply don’t use it any more.

Sociable – I’ve removed this in favor of Twitter and Facebook-specific plug-ins, shown below.

Twitter Tools – I now use dlvr.it to handle this instead, but I use it rather sparingly; be fresh on Twitter, not automated!

WordPress.com Stats – Still a great plugin, and I use it on a few blogs, but I primarily rely on Google Analytics.

The new additions!

I’ve dropped some plug-ins, but also added some new ones over the past few years such as:

Canonical URL’s – A very simple plug-in to add the canonical tag to your pages.  Not overly helpful in many cases, but can be excellent for your SEO sometimes.  (What is the canonical tag?)

PuSHPress – This enabled PuSubHubbub support for your blog. In short, it makes sure that RSS readers and others will get your posts instantly, rather than the next time they check in a few hours.  (more about the PuSHPress plugin)

RSS Footer – This adds a line of text (with a few links) the bottom of each post in your RSS feed.  The basic idea is that if someone is scraping your site and posting it as their own, you’ll at least still get some free links back to your site!

Twitter Button for WordPress – A simple way to add a “tweet” button to your posts.

WP FB Like Button – A simple way to add a Facebook “like” button to your posts.

WPtouch – A great plug-in that creates a mobile version of your site and automatically serves it to mobile phones when they connect.

You?

What about you?  Any other killer plugins that I’m missing from the list?

In Analytics, Facebook, Mobile, SEO, Technology, Twitter, WordPress , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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I’ve installed WordPress — now what?

April 18, 2011 — 1 Comment

A lot of you have been watching my “How to install WordPress in less than 10 minutes” video, but I’ve been asked the same question a few times: “After I install it, then what?”

This short video will show you some of the next steps I take after I’ve installed WordPress to help make the site ready for prime time — setting up comment features, permalinks, etc.

If you need additional help with your blog, I’m continuing to add more videos to my “Simple WordPress Tutorials” post, so check it out.  If you’re trying to do something that isn’t listed on that page, let me know and I’ll create a screencast for you.

Update: This video can now also be found at A Brighter Web.

In Videos, WordPress ,
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Some simple WordPress tutorials

April 12, 2011 — 4 Comments

If you’re just getting started with WordPress and you’re stuck on how to use some of the features, I hope that the videos below will be helpful.  You’ll find four short videos in this post, to show you how to create links, add images, add PDFs and embed videos.  Enjoy!

These videos have been moved to the WordPress section of A Brighter Web, along with many others to help you with your WordPress site!

In Videos, WordPress , , , , , ,
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How to install WordPress in less than 10 minutes

October 12, 2010 — 3 Comments

I talk about WordPress quite a lot on this blog.  It’s an excellent blogging platform, and it’s a great addition to almost any site — as long as you have time to write on it.

However, some people get intimidated by the idea of installing it and end up using Blogger or something else instead.  Long-term, having the software installed on your own server offers a lot of advantages, so here’s how it’s done.

Before we get started you’ll need to do a few things:

  • Get hosting established. For this tutorial I’m using a cPanel-based host (like ClickHost), though most hosts will be similar.
  • Get your FTP software installed and configured. The FTP software I use is completely free and is called FileZilla.  Your hosting company will provide your username and password, which you put into the software.
  • Find the location of your hosting “control panel”.  Again, this will be provided by your hosting provider.

During the install, I’ll be going out to wordpress.org to download the software.  Note that wordpress.com is something different — be sure you’re going to the .org site.

Ready? Here we go.

After you’ve finished installing WordPress, check out “I’ve Installed WordPress — now what?” for some suggested next steps to take.

Update: This video is also now available over on A Brighter Web

In Videos, WordPress , , , ,
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WordPress plugins; less clutter, more Facebook and Twitter

August 12, 2010 — 1 Comment

Right now I’m in the process of changing up some of the social icons on my various sites.  For a few years now, I’ve been a fan of the Sociable plugin for WordPress.  It’s an excellent plugin that makes it easy to add quick links to various social site (Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc) for users to click on.

It looks something like this:

It’s a great plugin, but I was wanting more.  A few months ago, Facebook released a pretty slick “Like” button that could be added to sites, and just recently Twitter added a similar “Tweet” button.  Rather than being simple links like the buttons above, these buttons are much more interactive.  You can see who else has tweeted/linked the post, and users can tweet/like without having to leave the page.

The problem then became clutter. If I added both of the new buttons and still kept sociable, I’d be making things rather messy.  So, Sociable had to go.

You can install the buttons manually if you want, but I found a few simple plug-ins to do the job for me instead.  There are many to choose from (and all of them are quite similar), but I’m using:

So far, I like them!  While it’s kind of a shame to lose the other icons, these are the two that people use overwhelmingly, and I really like how much cleaner things look.

You can see the new buttons just below this post.

What do you think?  Have you installed either of these on your site yet?

In Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, WordPress , , , ,
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Being productive on the road

August 5, 2010 — 3 Comments

I’ve worked hard for the last few years to be productive while away from the office, but a recent trip to Michigan showed me what I was lacking.

I have three primary computers; a beefy desktop, a solid laptop, and a netbook.  My goal is to be able to pick up any of the three machines at any time and have virtually all of my tools available to me.  Using web-based services such as Gmail and Nozbe are easy, but the challenge has been with desktop-based software like code-authoring and FTP tools.  I’ve just about got it worked out, so here’s what my arsenal looks like today.

The tools I’ve used for a while

Gmail – Love it. Being web-based it’s available on any computer I’m using and has a great interface on my Droid X

Google Reader, Calendar, Analytics, etc – All are web-based.

Nozbe – For task management. I have dozens of projects in there and it works great. Despite searching for something better, I haven’t found it.  Nozbe is still doing a great job.  No Android app yet, but their mobile version is good enough.

Evernote – I have it loaded on all three computers (along with their weak Android app), so they’re always in sync with my 500+ notes.

Dropbox – Aside from personal photos and videos, ALL of my files are in there; more than 15,000 of them, taking over 13GB of space.  Every file is accessible from any of the three computers and from their Android app.

Tweetdeck / Sobees – I use Sobees on my main computer (more screen real estate to play with) and Tweetdeck on the laptops.  On Android I’m currently using Seesmic and I’m quite pleased with it. Since they all pull directly from my Twitter account, they’re automatically in sync.

The new tools

Now, none of that stuff is particularly new to me.  I’ve been doing that for a while and it’s worked great.  My problem is when a client needs something fixed and I’m on the “wrong” computer.  I’ve used Dreamweaver for years (love the way it handles FTP and code coloring) and a variety of FTP clients.  The problem is that I’d add FTP info on one machine, but I’d need to add it on the others as well.  This wasn’t a big problem since I keep that information handy (mostly in Evernote), but it was a pain.

The problem became worse because WordPress 3.0.1 was released while I was up north this time.  I’m responsible for nearly 80 WordPress installations (some are mine, some are friends, some are clients, etc), and the quickest way to update them is to find the “changed files” each time and push them up via FTP.  I had all of those sites saved in my FTP software at home, but only a handful on the laptop.  Finding and loading the credentials for the others would have taken quite a while.  Even then, I still wouldn’t have them on the netbook or in Dreamweaver on either machine.

My solution was a few portable applications. “Portable” applications are designed to run off of a thumbdrive.  It’s quite cool; pop the thumbdrive into a computer, and run the application directly from there — no installation necessary.  For an IT person that needs to carry around various anti-virus and other tools, it’s gold.

For me, the great part about these apps is that they can be installed within Dropbox and run from there.  I loaded FileZilla Portable to handle FTP and I purchased phpDesigner7 Portable to handle code writing/edits.  I spent a few hours and loaded the credentials for all of my sites into both programs, and now I’m rolling!  Any edits to either program get automatically saved to Dropbox and synced to the other machines.

So far it’s working out great.  Not only am I looking forward to my next trip, but it’ll make purchasing a new computer much easier; I simply install/sync Dropbox and Evernote and I’m nearly done!

How do you manage software/data across multiple computers?

In Productivity, Technology, Twitter, WordPress , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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