Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category
WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 Release
Monday, November 3rd, 2008For those having a penchant towards Beta Software, the good news is that the latest WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 is available for testing. It is recommended to test the software in a proper testing ambience rather than doing it on a live blog. The browser for the software is still running technical snags and thus you are well advised to test it with either Firefox or Safari. Snags should not be a worrying factor as they should be resolved by the time of release.
The software is blessed with visual designs and it will have the additional bonus of IE and Opera before it is finally released.
The release was earlier slated for the second week of November but it has been procrastinated by a fortnight. The reason given is the necessity of user testing against that finished format. The released candidate made available to us is still a high class material good enough for broad usage. The Beta men will be looking to set right the high-impact bugs which will be presented by beta testers all this fortnight.
Once settled with all the possible snags, the final release line-up will be scheduled. It is only in the fitness of things that the testing software is giving high importance to public beta cycle. No one can actually tell the snags better than the eventual users.
Download Wordpress 2.7 Beta 1 here
Whitehat SEO Tips for Bloggers
Friday, August 8th, 2008Tips on keyword optimization
- Stuffing the blog-post with SEO keywords does not make it look natural.
- The words ought to be the same that the users are typing in. Plural forms are a better option.
- Use of common keyword mis-spelling is inappropriate.
- Categories that are good keywords should be used. They can be words like – gadgets, hacks, health, webmaster etc. Apart from SEO it promotes usability.
- The keywords are better used in the posts. Since the users don’t see them, Google doesn’t put much importance on the meta description tag.
- Same keywords should not be used within a line, a variant or synonym can be used.
Tips on SEO URL or bloggers
- The blog should not be placed at the root of the domain. It should be put in the subdomain or the subdirectory.
- In the URL, use dashes/hyphens to separate keywords. Google considers underscores as good keyword separators.
- The URLs of the old posts should not be changed to a permanent or a 301 redirect.
- URL extensions like .php, .asp, .cfm, .htm, .html, etc all can be used but not .exe.
- Question marks or hash marks of a dynamic URL are treated as static URL by Google, but the parameter must not exceed three. Google bot cannot crawl if it is beyond three.
- Your own domain name must be used in the FeedBurner feeds.
Tips on accessibility and usability of the blog site
- Always use Alt tags with Images. A full sentence may be used in the Alt tag but it should not exceed three to five words. Irrelevant keywords must be avoided.
- It is better to do a podcast or a video. Matt says, the blogger can submit his picture to hotornot.com and if the rating is above 7, then a video can be a good idea.
- Wordpress must be used for the blog to ensure that the site is crawlable. Today, since a lot of people access sites on their cell phones, it is better not to use frame sets or any other weird stuff, they don’t work well with cell phones.
- The dates of the posts must be shown.
- The use of Akismet comments spam protection will prevent your blog from being spammed. Google Analytics can locate the traffic on your website. Finally, there is no substitute for a great compelling content.
Wordpress Plugins
Sunday, July 13th, 2008There are a wide range of plugins you can use to extend the functionality of your Wordpress tool. Each of these plugins have its own usage and functionality and here we discuss some of the best wordpress plugins.
All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO Pack optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization). It becomes easy to post metadata (primarily title, keywords, description) for each and every blog post with the help of All in One SEO Pack plugin.
All in One SEO Pack Wordpress Plugin
Akismet
Akismet is used to implement spam filtering in Wordpress Blogs. Akismet blocks the possible spam post until you approve them thereby fighting spam in your wordpress comments.
StatPress
Statpress plugin is used to gather real time statistics of your blog visitors. Some of the information collected include information about visitors, spiders, keywords, feeds, browsers etc
Also check out Wordpress.com Stats
Wordpress Google XML Sitemaps
This great plugin can be configured to generate XML-Sitemap compliant site map in less than 5 minutes. The site maps generated are supported by Google, Ask, YAHOO and MSN Search.
Google XML Sitemaps Wordpress Plugin
Also check out Sitemap Generator Plugin for Wordpress to generate HTML Sitemaps for Wordpress
Wordpress Cache
You can save your resources located on the SQL server using the Wordpress cache plugin tool. Wordpress cache is also referred to as WP cache where WP is the abbreviated form. You can cache and store your pages on Wordpress and store them in static files to cater to requests made in the future. This facilitates easier download the next time a user makes a request for the file and avoids the whole process of downloading the entire PHP code etc. It also helps you avoid having to build up the page from your database all over again thereby saving you time. So, if your server is a little low on performance or if your blog or site has high traffic volumes then this plugin is a great value-add.
WP-Cache WordPress Plugin
WP Super Cache Wordpress Plugin
Wordpress WP-DB-Backup
WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables plus other tables based on your choice. This wordpress database backup plugin is a very helpful resource to all bloggers to automatically backup your stuff regularly on a set schedule.
Wordpress Ecommerce
This is basically a wordpress shopping cart plugin which is powered with the help of Ajax and allows you to infuse ecommerce functionality into your blog. So you can start selling products on your blog if you wish to! Using administrative panels provided by this plugin you can easily start your own shop and store inside your blog in a couple of minutes!
Contact form: Intouch Ajax
This is a contact form that allows you to collect user information from your blog without indulging in spam in your inbox. The contact form is efficient in filtering out unwanted messages and you can even sort your messages based on the subject. You can also add on new fields to customize your contact form easily.
Sideblog
Using Sideblog plugin you can easily write short notes or comments on the side portion of your blog. You can use this amazing plugin to define your categories on the blog better, mention the number of entries are displayed on the blog as well as opt out of including your posts in RSS feeds.
Wordpress PageNavi
Through this plugin users will be able to navigate through your blog much better. This works great if you have plenty of posts on your blog as that way users can move from one post or page to another.
Sociable
Sociable is a wordpress social bookmarking plugin which allows you to list out all the popular bookmarking sites after each post on your blog. Thus your users can use some social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg etc. to bookmark your blog.
Wordpress WP-Table
A great plugin to create and manage tables in wordpress posts. You no longer have to mess up your posts by pasting HTML Table code from FrontPage or word.
Also check out WP Super Edit that allows creation and editing of HTML tables.
Post Rating: Ajax
This is yet another useful plugin which allows you to append the Ajax rating system (5 stars) to your blog posts. If you check around you will mostly find a lot of CSS website galleries using post rating plugin.
WP-PostRatings Wordpress Plugin
Gravatar 2
A Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar which identifies a person’s profile on your blog. You can use this plugin to showcase various avatars of yourself and your users on the blog. It’s a fun way to blog!
Tip : One popular Wordpress plug-in that I have Intentionally excluded in my Best Wordpress Plugin list is the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin. The reason being it is not tested entirely by the wordpress community. And you never know what wordpress would have for the new release that may result in something not working in the current live version. So Always update your wordpress installation manually.
Also Check out
Posting Java source code in WordPress Blogs
Posting & Embedding Youtube Videos in WordPress
How to install Wordpress?
Saturday, July 12th, 2008If you are new to Wordpress then you might want to try this amazing publishing platform. Wordpress is probably one of the few publishing platforms available that allow the experience of easy installation. WordPress is open source software that can be freely downloadable, directly from their website (http://www.wordpress.org). Here is a brief guide on the process needed to install this amazing platform.
If you are a beginner at using the computer then it could be a bit of a tough ride to get Wordpress to install. This easy guide will help you get through installation in a step by step manner:
Database preparation
WordPress is a database driven system based on MySql. Every WordPress installation takes up one MySql database. The first thing you will need to do is to append a database and a user to it so that Wordpress can function properly. If you happen to use a web hosting account then you can get access to cPanel which is an interface that allows you to control vital aspects of your site. According to which host you have you will need to click the link that says mySQL database or the respective icon. Then go on to add a database and a user. Finally, ensure you add on the new user to your database and you also need to provide complete rights and permissions to this user. The user must be able to remove, add records and perform various other functions easily on the database. The reason you provide full permission to the user is because Wordpress will store all of the blogging posts and other information on the database. Hence complete permission is needed to link to the database.
How to edit config file?
To help Wordpress figure out which database it can link to it is necessary to edit a particular file that arrives with Wordpress. The file is called wp-config-sample.php. You basically need to rename this file to the following name: wp-config.php. A couple of lines will also need to be modified here and there. You will need to change the database name, user name and password. You usually do not need to change the value of the ‘localhost’ variable mentioned in the file.
Upload Wordpress
Next you will need to upload Wordpress. You can upload your files either into your root directory or in some sub-directory. If you place your files on a root directory it will be the very first thing your blog visitors see when they visit your blog or site. If you are placing files in a sub-directory you could call the directory ‘blog’ for easy differentiation. You can use browsers like IE or WS_FTP LE. You will need to key in the details and then link. All you need to do is to drag drop the files and then upload to your hosting account. Depending on whether you uploaded to root directory or sub-directory you need to type in the following URL into the browser: www.domainname.com/wp-admin/install.php where domainname specifies the name of the directory or folder. This brings you to the installation process. Firstly, you need to specify the blog title you wish for and then your email address. Click ‘submit’ to reach the last process that lists the temporary password. Using this you can log into your blog from Wordpress and then later change the password.
Wordpress SEO
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008How to SEO Wordpress
Wordpress can be one of the most rewarding publishing platforms, provided you know how to maximize your presence on the web. Using high standard yet simplistic SEO tactics you can increase your blog’s visibility online and get more traffic.
Title Optimization
It is very important that you optimize the titles of your blogs to attract the maximum traffic volumes possible. The typical format of blog titles on Wordpress is first the blog title, followed by blog archive and lastly the keywords infused post title. Ideally, to get the most traffic you need to place the keyword containing post title first since search engine spiders will lay most emphasis on the first words of the title. Hence, by placing strategic keywords at the beginning of the blog post title you gain more traffic and rankings online.
Description Optimization
It isn’t just sufficient to optimize the titles of your blogs but also the descriptions. You need to provide a fairly nice description to every category on the blog. Then use HeadSpace in order to append the description into your Meta description. Once you have done this, you need to write suitable descriptions for every page or post in the blog that you want ranked on search engines. The descriptions you place will serve two functions: one, it will place you on search engines and so keywords are necessary here and second, users will be coaxed into clicking by the usage of enticing words and descriptions.
Read more: Optimize that too
The HeadSpace feature allows you the ability to also optimize the ‘read more’ aspect or link. Hence, instead of the same old ‘read more’ link you can substitute it with a more meaningful text that conveys the meaning of the description better. As they say, God lies in the details you need to make sure it is these small aspects of your blog that get optimized to ensure the best Wordpress SEO.
Optimizing your Images
You can effectively optimize the images on your Wordpress blog by writing alt tags of good quality. The way you name your image files also makes a difference in the amount of traffic you receive. Besides this, using meaningful and keyword driven text to describe images will enable users to decipher what the images are about.
Single Post Optimizations
You can easily optimize single pages or posts of your blog by adding on breadcrumbs. These are small nuggets of links that help users navigate through your blog or site easily. In addition, these breadcrumbs facilitate search engine spiders to decipher the structure of your blog easily.
Clean up your templates
You will most likely have a lot of CSS and JavaScript information inside your template files. You need to shift all of this into external files. This will help to maintain a clean template. Keeping these clean mean that users will find it easier to cache files upon the very first page or post load. This helps avoid subsequent downloads by users in future.
Best Blog Directories
Sunday, July 6th, 2008Blog directories will allow other bloggers and web users to know your blog. To get listed in a blog directory, visit them and submit your blog, along with a short description. Most of the blog directories are free and may require you to place a banner link in you blog site in order to get approved in their directory listing. There are many blog directories in the Internet. Submit your site to as many blog directories as you can, to generate back links.
Below is a list of my favorite Blog Directories. I have signed up in all of them to promote my blog and get traffic.
Directory : BlogCatalog
URL : http://www.blogcatalog.com
URL : http://www.mybloglog.com
Directory : Technorati
URL : http://www.technorati.com
Directory : BlogFlux
URL : http://dir.blogflux.com
Some other popular Blog Submission Directories to consider are;
Blogarama is one of the largest free blog directories online
Blogcrowd is a friendly blogging community
Get Blogs is a comprehensive human edited blog directory
LSBlogs is an established Blog directory and a blog search engine
Choose your Favourite Blog Platform?
Saturday, June 28th, 2008[poll id="2"]
I like Wordpress because:
- Its Free.
- It’s well supported with a strong active community surrounding it with plug-ins being developed for almost any feature required.
- Easy to install and add plug-ins.
- Free Wordpress Templates are available on the internet and these can be customized easily to suit your requirements.
Please cast your vote and post a comment supporting your choice for the same.
Earn money from Blogs
Thursday, June 26th, 2008How to Make Money from Your Blog
Web 2.0 and especially blogging have now become a very popular source of income. I would like to present here, some useful tips and various ways through which you can Monetize your blog.
The most important challenge of monetizing your blog is to generate traffic for your blog. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income with more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations etc.
I use WordPress as it’s got so much more features and also more control as to how you want to monetize you blog. After having used WordPress, Google Blogger and other similar options,i can safely say wordpress is the best.
Here is a Guide to Make Money via Blogging;
1. Sell AD Space: This is the most common means to generate income from your blog. For a blog you just created, you could consider services like Google AdSense or BlogAds.
An alternative to Google Adsense would be Yahoo’s YPN. Yahoo’s YPN is limited to only a few geographical areas. I have read that YPN pays you much more then programs like AdSense, Chitika’s eMiniMalls and CrispAds. But it lacks visitors via their own search network, and also their ads are not contextual like Adsense.
http://www.blogads.com/
http://www.google.com/adsense
2. Affiliate Marketing: Use Affiliates to help sell other’s products and earn money from commissions through affiliate sales. An affiliate program provides a means for your blog readers to click on related Advertiser products directly instead of searching them for on search engines. If you get targeted clicks/visitors to your blog, its better to use cj.com/linkshare than Google adsense to make much more money through Affiliate Sales.
Some popular choices of Affiliates for your blog are;
- Amazon Associates
- LinkShare (Commission on products sold, mostly books).
- ClickBank
- Commission Junction
3. Donations: (via PayPal or snail mail). Some people do mail a snail mail cheque if they love your blog and want to show their appreciation. Give your visitors a means to voluntarily contribute if they wish via paypal. It’s a nice form of feedback and appreciation of the blogger’s effort that a reader gives for certain articles.
4. Text Link Ads: Text Link Ads sell small text ads on your blog/site, split the revenue and deposit earnings directly into your PayPal account.
5. Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click): If you can generate traffic to your blog, you can make money with pay per click advertising programs. You can have Chitika ads on pages containing Google Adsense. It does not violate Google’s Terms and Conditions as they (Chitika ads) don’t compete because they not contextual and they also look quite different from Adsense ads.
6. Blog Flipping: It is very common to see bloggers creating blogs and selling them within 6 months to 1 year once it attains popularity and traffic. This practice is known as ‘Blog Flipping’.
7. Earn from Consulting: Usually serious bloggers are experts in their niche topics. Some make a living by becoming a consultant and giving expert advices to their visitors. While this is not so popular a way of earning money, this is high paying,as even for one consultant work per day, the going rate is usually $150 and above.
9. Pixel Advertising: You can add Pixel Advertising to the list of money making techniques. Some blogs are selling pixel space just like milliondollarhomepage.com
10. Factors like Google Pagerank: Blogs are the easiest way to make money if you have a high PR. The higher the Google PageRank the more people will pay you to get an ad space on your blog. Blogs get a good PR faster then a regular site as it is more continuously updated.
11. Sponsorship: There are many blogs today that are into sponsorship with advertisers. It’s easy for blogs with high readership to get Sponsors who deal with similar content/products. Some blogs have sponsorship with advertisers on a post by post basis too. These blogs make big money with hosting Sponsored Ads.
12. Get Paid to Write Reviews : If you have a high traffic blog, you can offer to write a review for other´s websites or products on your blog and get paid.
13. Other PPC Systems : There are plenty of other PPC Systems today that make money. I would like you to comment on these based on your experience as I have not used them anytime.
- Adgenta
- CrispAds
- Intelli Txt
- Tribal Fusion
- Adbrite
- Kanoodle
- AVN
- Pheedo
- TextAds
- Fastclick
- OneMonkey
But off course,WEB TRAFFIC is supreme. Without regular traffic, no one could make even a cent out of all those advertising networks mentioned above. Web traffic is the ultimate revenue generator. Advertising programs like Adsense, Chitika etc are just a medium or system to translate that traffic into money.
I own a blog and try to make some money out of it. I don’t write articles/posts just to make money. I also write because I love to write and feel opinions matter . If you have the passion to write and create Good Content then you would generate traffic automatically.
As a blogger who wants to generate income, you should always be experimenting with new income streams. May be come with a new stream too.
Comments and suggestions are invited.
Posting & Embedding Youtube Videos in WordPress
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
Blogs in Wordpress can be created either in a subdomain of wordpress or with your own domain name. So there can be 2 scenarios.
For the ones that are created under wordpress (subdomain of wordpress) embedding youtube videos can be done by including the final youtube video URL in the following format. It is activated by default for a wordpress blog
Usage
[ youtube=final link]
or check out
http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/07/29/how-do-i-post-a-youtube-video/
So the approach works on http://www.wordpress.com, but it wont work on your own site which uses the wordpress platform. I did a lot of research going through the list of popular wordpress plugins and finally managed to get a YouTube video embedded into one of my posts.
So there is a solution for that also. You need to install the Smart Youtube wordpress plugin and activate it.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smart-youtube/installation/
Once you are done with the activation proceed as said in the smart youtube installation FAQ (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smart-youtube/installation/)
Posting Java Source code in WordPress Blogs
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
Blogs in Wordpress can be created either in a subdomain of wordpress or with your own domain name. So there can be 2 scenarios.
For the ones that are created under wordpress (subdomain of wordpress) syntax highlighting plugin is activated by default. So if you want java code to appear with syntax highlighting you need to include your java source code between the "sourcecode " tags.
[sourcecode language='java']
public class Example {
public static void main(String args[]) {
System.out.println(”Hello, World!”);
}
}
[/sourcecode]
This can be used for posts with different programming language source codes. Visit http://faq.wordpress.com/2007/09/03/how-do-i-post-source-code/ to know more on the usage for different programming languages syntax highlighting in wordpress.
So the approach works on http://www.wordpress.com , but it wont work on your own site which uses the wordpress platform. So there is a solution for that also. You need to install the SyntaxHighlighter wordpress plugin and activate it.
Visit : http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/syntaxhighlighter/
Once you are done with the activation proceed as above to post your programming language code.
Additionally , SyntaxHighlighter Plus is an enhanced version of the SyntaxHighlighter Wordpress plugin for code syntax highlighting.
Note : You can use this plugin for Posting Source code in WordPress in general, and not just Java.
