JavaScript Workshop » WordPress

What do search engines see on your blog?

Frank Stepanski — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:34:51 +0000

Remove the style sheet from your blog’s layout and design and you will see what search engines see when they visit.

What do they see first? What is left when you remove all the pretty? That’s what search engines see.

Things you need to know about search engines when they visit your blog:

Search engines don’t “see” your design, only the words
Search engines hunt for keywords
Keyword usage and placement influences their importance
Layout matters. Push content to the top of the physical page, not the bottom
Frames, iframes and tables can block search engines from finding your content
HTML/XHTML errors can stop a search engine from visitiing
404 page not found errors, dead, or moved links lead nowhere
Flash, DHTML, or JavaScript which replaces text and have no descriptions are ignored

It is critical to ensure all such errors and road blocks are fixed. Search engines are now sophisticated enough to verify if your design and structure meets web standards. A poorly coded blog can lower your page rank score. And a poorly designed, error-filled blog can lead the robot or spider in a wrong direction, confuse it, or stop it in its tracks. If it has difficulty moving through your pages, it will stop.

Well-designed and web standard code allows the crawler to move easily through your site, which tells the search engine the site is designed with care and attention to detail and web standards.

Tips for Building Blog Content

Frank Stepanski — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 12:50:43 +0000

Writing with keyword-rich content helps your blog be found and readers to fully understand what you are writing about. Write consistent and purposeful content.

The more inline your content is with your blog’s purpose, the more concentrated your use of keywords will be throughout the entire blog, not just on a per-post basis. The more diverse your blog’s content, the more diffused your keyword usage will be across all of your blog.

Make a plan for your content. Make lists of the topics you will write about in keeping with your blog’s purpose. Stick to those subjects as much as possible to build your blog’s reputation as the place to come for answers on those subjects.

Your blog’s content lables your blog
Readers thrive on consistency and continuity
Write timeless content
Blog passionately
Give readers a reason to return
Give readers a reason to blog about your blog
Don’t regurgitate content
Comments speak for your blog
Blog on a schedule
Publish just before your readers are ready
Keep it interesting

WordPress as a Content Management System

Frank Stepanski — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:49:37 +0000

Though WordPress is by far the leader when it comes to blogging software, it has made significant strides in the last two years towards becoming a quality Content Management System as well. This means that those who love WordPress can now easily bridge the gap between blogging and a website designed for news by setting up their blog as a CMS.

What is a CMS? I would define a CMS using WordPress to create a website that does not display your posts in reverse chronological order. In other words, a CMS is using WordPress for something other than blogging.

Some examples of WordPress as a CMS:

News or Magazine-Style WordPress Site/Theme
Building a Portfolio Site
eCommerce Site
Picture Gallery
Photoblog
Video Blog
Directory

Even in looking at the early days of WordPress, you could see the potential there for using it as a Content Management System. In the years since, that potential continued to grow until it eventually became a reality, and now a significant portion of WordPress users are using it as a CMS. By far the most common WordPress CMS method is using a news or magazine style WordPress theme to create a more dynamic and informational homepage.

Usually all other pages hold to a traditional blog setup with a header, sidebar, and footer, while the homepage will display the most recent post in several different categories. The true advantage of this method is that you can easily integrate other forms of media, most commonly by adding podcasts or doing video blogging.

How do I build my CMS?

If you are uncomfortable with coding, there are a number of WordPress themes you can get that are setup as content management systems. You can find lots of free themes on the net, or go to a premium WordPress sites (these themes require you to purchase them in order to use).

There are also a number of WordPress plugins you can use to help give you the CMS functionality that you are looking for. Here are a few that I have either used or has been recommended for CMS blogs:

CForms II – More than a contact form. You can pretty much build any type of form you’d like with this form.
WP eCommerce – Gives you an easy to manage storefront and shopping cart! Integrates with PayPal and allows you to sell digital downloads.
Subscribe 2 – Most Content Management Systems include a newsletter. This plugin allows you to easily integrate a newsletter into your website and manage it from the WordPress dashboard.
Page Links To – The menu at the top of the website plays a HUGE role in a CMS. This plugin lets you control your WordPress menu without messing with the WordPress code. Want to link externally? What about linking to a portion of a post instead of the entire post?
Search Everything – By default WordPress only searches blog posts. With a CMS, you’ll
probably have a number of static pages that you use, making this plugin essential.
Role Manager - Many CMS’s include multiple authors. This plugin allows you to go above and
beyond the normal 5 roles that WordPress comes with by default, so authors have the
permissions you want them to have

Should I use a Content Management System?

This is probably a question most of us have asked ourselves at one point or another. When should you use a CMS? Unfortunately, that is not something I can answer as there are too many variables. Here are some questions that you may want to ask yourself if you are considering a CMS for your website/blog:

Do I have several categories I want to prominently feature?
Do I plan to have multiple authors?
Do I use a lot of pictures with my posts?
Do I plan to have more than just blogging? (Video blogging, podcasting, photos, etc.)

Obviously if the answer is yes to each of the above questions, your website is probably a good candidate for a CMS. You’ll also want to keep in mind that many CMS-Style blogs create a different type of expectation than standard blogs. Often people expect more news and less opinion from these types of websites.

Monetizing Directly with Advertising

Frank Stepanski — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:38:21 +0000

Advertising is by far the most popular monetization method that bloggers use. After deciding whether to show ads, the next decision is which type. The most popular advertising system with bloggers is Google’s AdSense, but there are several other advertising system options (affiliate networks), including:

Amazon Associates: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
Commission Junction: https://www.cj.com/
Text Link Ads: http://www.text-link-ads.com/
Link Share: http://www.linkshare.com/
AdGenta: http://www.qumana.com/adgenta.htm
Blogads: http://www.blogads.com/
CrispAds: http://www.crispads.com/
IntelliTXT: http://www.vibrantmedia.com/
DoubleClick: http://www.doubleclick.com/
Kanoodle: http://www.kanoodle.com/

Importing a Live Blog’s Content Locally

Frank Stepanski — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:42:09 +0000

If you have installed a local blog on your computer for testing purposes you probably will need some actual ‘real’ content to test out all your theme or other changes. Creating ‘dummy’ content is one option, but it can take awhile to create and is not the same as the actual content that a ‘live’ blog contains.

So if you already have a blog online, you can follow these steps after you have your local environment (Apache, PHP, and MySQL) up and running.

Step 1: Create a backup from your current live blog.

Log into phpMyAdmin (from a web host account), and select the “Export” tab.
Select the database your WordPress blog uses.
Make sure the “SQL” radio button is selected.
Click the “GO” button.
A new screen will display with a textarea box containing many SQL statements. These will re-create your entire database, tables with content when executed.
Copy this script to your favorite text editor

Step 2: Modifying your backup script.

Since we are restoring to a database from a different blog, we have to ‘tweak’ it a bit (database name and url parameters).
Change name of the database to the database of your development blog. This should be the first command in the script starting with CREATE DATABASE.
There are two lines that you need to specify the url of your development (http://localhost/). Do a text search on the ‘wp_options’ table. You will need to change the parameters of two INSERT INTO statements (‘siteurl’ and ‘home’).

Step 3: Copy your blog folder structure.

Copy the entire folder struture (and all files) of your live blog to your root directory of your local Apache environment. You can create a subfolder in your root if you wish. I discuss where this location is in the lesson.
Once copied, open up the wp-config.php file and make the neccessary changes. This would involve changing the database name (DB_NAME), database user (DB_USER), and database password (DB_PASSWORD) and MySQL host (DB_HOST). I discuss this in the lesson as well.

Step 4: Execute your modified restore script.

Open up phpMyAdmin in your local environment
Select the “SQL” tab.
Paste the restore script in the textarea box.
Click the “Go” button.
Verify that the database and tables have been created.

Step 5: Open up your local blog

Go to your local blog that you just copied all the files to. This will be http://localhost/. You will specify the subfolder if you created that as well.
Log into you blog

Now you have an exact local copy of your live blog that you can develop and test.

Note: Since we didn’t change any other parameters in the restore script, some of your plugins may not work. Also, if you use custom permalinks, you may need to modify your .htaccess file. Change your permalinks to the default setting (Settings->Permalinks), if you cannot see certain pages in your local blog.

20 Types of Blog Posts

Frank Stepanski — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:54:34 +0000

One of the traps that some bloggers fall into is that their blogs often become quite one-dimensional in terms of the type of posts they write.

Mixing up the types of post that you write can add interest and character to your blog, which will help to keep readers over the long haul. There are many types of posts that you might like to use—here are 20 to start experimenting with:

Instructional— I find that posts that contain tips or that are tutorials generally are the ones that are among my most popular. One of the main things that people search the Web for is to find help in overcoming a problem. Position yourself to answer these problems, and you can build a nice source of traffic over the long term.
Informational—This is one of the more common blog post types, where a blogger simply gives information on a topic. It could be a definition post or a longer explanation of some aspect of the niche that you’re writing on. This is the crux of successful sites like Wikipedia.
Reviews—Another highly searched-for term on the Web is “review.” Every time I’m considering buying a new product I head to Google and search for a review on it first—I know that I’m not alone. Reviews come in all shapes and sizes and on virtually every product or service you can think of.
Lists—One of the easiest ways to write a post is to make a list. Posts with content like, “The Top Ten ways to…,” “7 Reasons why…,” “5 Favorite…,” or “53 mistakes that bloggers make when…” are not only easy to write, but are usually very popular with readers and can be successful at getting links from other bloggers.
Interviews—Sometimes when you’ve run out of insightful things to say it might be a good idea to let someone else do the talking in an interview. This is a great way to not only give your readers a relevant expert’s opinion, but to perhaps even learn something about the topic you’re writing yourself.
Case studies—Another popular type of post is the case study, where you walk readers through an example of something that you’re writing about. These are useful posts for readers because they are real-life situations and often have practical tips associated with them.
Profiles—Profile posts are similar to case studies but focus in on a particular person. Pick an interesting personality in your niche and do a little research on them to present to your readers. Point out how they’ve reached the position they are in and write about the characteristics that they have that others in your niche might like to develop to be successful.
Link posts—The link post is a favorite form of blogging for many bloggers and is simply a matter of finding a quality post on another site or blog and linking up to it. You would usually also include an explanation of why you’re linking up, a comment of your own take on the topic, and/or a quote from the post. Adding your own comments makes these posts more original and useful to your readers.
“Problem” posts—Another term that is often searched for in Google in conjunction with product names is the word “problem” or “problems”— that is, where people are searching for help on a problem that they might have with something that they own or are trying to do. Problem posts are similar to review posts but focus more upon the negatives of a product or service.
Comparison posts—Life is full of decisions between two or more options. Write a post contrasting two products, services, or approaches that outlines the positives and negatives of each choice. In a sense these are review posts but are a little wider in focus.
Rants—Get passionate, stir yourself up, say what’s on your mind, and tell it like it is. Rants are great for starting discussion and causing a little controversy—they can also be quite fun if you do them in the right spirit. Just be aware when you write passionately about a controversial topic that others are likely to comment in a similar way. Rant posts lead to “flaming” in comment threads and to people saying things in the heat of the moment that they later regret, and which can impact their reputation. Proceed with caution.
Inspirational—On the flip side of the angry rant (and not all rants have to be angry) are inspirational and motivational posts. Tell a story of success or paint a picture of “what could be.” People like to hear good-news stories in their niche because it motivates them to persist with what they are doing. Find examples of success in your own experience or that of others and spread the word.
Research—Research posts can take a lot of time, but they can also be well worth it if you come up with interesting conclusions. Present your findings with a nice chart and with useful statistics, and you’ll often find other bloggers in your niche will link up to you.
Collation posts—These are a strange combination of research and link posts. In them you pick a topic that you think your readers will find helpful and then research what others have said about it. Once you’ve found their opinion, you bring together everyone’s ideas (often with short quotes) and tie them together with a few of your own comments to draw out the common themes that you see.
Prediction and review posts—We see a lot of these at the end and start of the year when people do their “year in review” posts and look at the year ahead and predict what developments might happen in their niche in the coming months. Prediction posts will often cause interesting debate.
Critique posts—Numerous bloggers have made a name for themselves by writing strong critiques of other people, products, or companies. Though sometimes these border on being “attack posts” and have rant-like qualities, a good constructive critique can be an effective way of making an impression upon others. People like to hear opinions, and though they might not always agree with them, if they are insightful, constructive, and respectfully written posts, they can lead to you growing your reputation in a niche.
Debate—Debates do well on blogs and can be done in an organized fashion between two people, between a blogger and “all comers,” or even between a blogger and… themselves (try it—argue both for and against a topic in one post—you can end up with a pretty balanced post). Probably the easiest way to do this is simply to ask your readers a question with two or more alternatives and see what they’ve got to say. Be willing to share your own opinion to get things going.
Hypothetical posts—”What if” or hypothetical posts can be quite fun. Pick something that could happen down the track in your industry and begin to unpack what the implications of it would be. “What if Google and Yahoo! merged?” “What if Canon released an update to xyz camera?” These posts can actually position you well in search engines if the hypothetical situation actually happens.
Satirical posts—Well-written satire, parody, or humor can be incredibly powerful and is brilliant for generating links for your blog. Keep in mind that sometimes these types of posts will be misinterpreted and cause people to react strongly.
Memes and projects—A meme is an idea that spreads, an “idea virus” as Seth Godin would describe it. In blogging this can be seen as an article or topic that gets copied from one blog to another, usually with a link back to the originator. Write a post that somehow involves your readers and gets them to replicate it in someway. Start a poll, an award, a competition, or ask your readers to submit a post/link or run a survey or quiz.

This is not an exhaustive list but rather just some of the types of posts that you might like to throw into your blog’s mix. Not every one will be suitable for all blogs or bloggers, but using more than one format can definitely add a little spice and color to a blog.

What is a WordCamp?

Frank Stepanski — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:31:09 +0000

WordCamp is a conference type of event that focuses squarely on everything WordPress. Everyone from casual end users all the way up to core developers show up to these events. These events are usually highlighted by speeches or keynotes by various people.

WordCamp is a spin off from the popular BarCamp which was a spin off of FooCamp. Each one of these events are smaller in nature when compared to your particular conference, but they are usually focused on a particular subject.

So what can you expect when you attend a WordCamp event? Based on the numerous amounts of videos and photos taken from attendees, you can expect a whole lot of fun in an atmosphere that promotes social interaction.

The first WordCamp conference was held in July of 2006 in San Francisco. Matt Mullenweg pulled this event together in only three weeks time and ended up with about 300 people in the Swedish American Hall. The first international WordCamp event was held in Beijing China on September 1st, 2007.

Check out the BlogHerald to see if there will be WordCamp in your area, or start your own.

Tips on Blog Administration and Management

Frank Stepanski — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:54:40 +0000

Administrating your blog goes beyond just writing posts and tracking your page ranking. It includes the regularly scheduled maintenance a blog need over time.

Managing your blog is a challenge at first as it is all new and there is so much to learn. As your blog becomes more sophisticated, possibly expanding into advertising, you will spend more time, do more research, and work harder at trying new things to make your blog better, and your readers happier.

Here are some quick tips to help your manage your blog better and more efficiently.

Create a blog maintenance calendar
Keep a collection of ready-to-publish posts handy
Don’t expect to reply to every comment
Create a home page for your product or service
Backup your blog
Upgrade your blogging program
Update plugins, widgets, gadgets and add-ons
Update blog content
Check for dead links and 404s
Validate and optimize your blog’s code

Understanding WordPress: Top Ten SEO Tips

Frank Stepanski — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:51:41 +0000

Some great tips I found on SEO:

http://www.understandingwordpress.com/blog/top-ten-search-engine-optimization-tips.html

WordPress 101

Frank Stepanski — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:31:42 +0000

“A blog (short for web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order” Wikipedia. There are many blogging engines available such as Expression Engine, Movable Type, TextPattern, and WordPress among others. Most are open source (free), provide almost unlimited customizable features and take only minutes to install.

WordPress is customizable through themes and extendable through the use of plug-ins. To use WordPress you can either use your own web host and install it (assuming your web host does not already have it pre-installed) or use the hosted site of WordPress.com which provides a hosted login for you. Of course, hosting it yourself gives you more flexibility of having access to the source code.

Updated June 2009
This site currently uses WordPress version 2.8.

Background

WordPress was developed by Matt Mullenweg and Ryan Boren and the name “WordPress” was proposed by one of Matt’s friends Christine Selleck. Codex, the official helpdesk for WordPress is very rich and it documents almost every piece of functionality delivered by WordPress with a lot of good examples. The appearance and content of your WordPress blog depends on the code in the theme applied to it.

WordPress uses the instructions in the theme’s files to display and format your blogs contents. Your posts and related information are stored in a MySQL database. The database also stores links, user information, page content, and WordPress settings. When visitors access a page in your blog, the database provides the correct content.

Technical

When you use your Web browser to administer your blog, your browser sends commands to add and modify entries in the MySQL database. in fact, the content for your entire blog is stored in a single MySQL database file.

When readers visit your blog, their Web browser send PHP commands to your MYSQL database. The database contents are returned to their browser for them to read. To display blog contents and administration screens properly, WordPress uses theme files which include templates for displaying various kionds if information and pages. These plain text files combine PHP, XHTML, and CSS code to control how content is presented on your site.

WordPress uses PHP to create template tags which are special commands that it uses to find and retrieve data from the MySQL database. These template tags work with a template’s HTML to assemble and display blog pages. You don’t need to know how to write or edit PHP to modify a theme (though it would help), but you do need to be able to recognize which parts of a template file you should leave intact.

Although the appearance and features in a WordPress blog can vary depending on the theme file that determines its appearance and any plugins that may be installed, there are several basic features that can be found in most WordPress blogs.

1. Header:
The header appears at the top of each page and normally contains the name of the blog and a brief description.

2. Links to static pages:
WordPress enables you to include static pages in your blog. Most bloggers use them to provide information about the blog or themselves, but they can be used for any content. Links to static pages can appear in the header, sidebar or elsewhere.

3. Posts:
Posts are individual entries in the blog. Each post normally includes the post title, the post date and time, post author. Posts can be as long or short as you like. My blog uses a Read More… link so readers can read the entire article. This makes it possible to keep the home page short or display many posts without getting too long. Posts can include images, videos, and other links to other pages.

4. Footer:
A footer appears at the bottom of each page. It normally includes copyright information and additioanl details about the blog.

5. Sidebar:
The sidebar appears on every page and usually includes a variety of navigation links and other features like search, category, archive, links and RSS feeds.

Getting Started

You can either use the free hosted service or manually install it on your own web host. Using the free hosted service does not allow you access to the code and you cannot upload your own themes without paying for them. So installing it on your own web host is the best option normally.

Installing it on your own web server: (go here for more instructons)

1. Download at http://wordpress.org/download
2. Minimal requirements are PHP 4.2 or later and MySQL 3.23 or later
3. Extract files and FTP to web server
4. The wp-config.php has the database and server settings that you will need to configure for your own web host
5. Create a blank MySQL database
6. Open install.php on your web server and start the installation process. You will go through a few pages that will setup your blog. The final page will create the necessary MySQL tables and configuration settings.
7. Start blogging!

Themes

Changing the look and feel of your blog is done though themes which are freely (usually) available at different websites. The main site for themes is at http://themes.wordpress.net.

After you download a theme, all you have to do is upload the files to the /wp-content/themes folder. Then you can view the themes within the administration panel.

Plugins

Plugins are special files that make it easy to add extra functions and features to your server-installed WordPress blog. They include PHP code that adds functions or performs other tasks. For example, a plugin may trap comment spam, show post headlines from other blogs, or display all the photos you’ve uploaded.

To install a plugin, all you have to do is download it and upload the files to the /wp-content/plugins folder and activate it within the administration panel.

Developing Your Own Theme

As you use WordPress for a bit, you probably will want to modify a theme you are using or even create your own. Creating your own can be a time consuming task, but it is easier if you disect an exisiting theme’s code and then learn how to take your own html and css and convert that to a theme. You will need to know a little PHP and some basic web design skills. But of course the more you know the easier it will be.

Here are some links to get you started:

Theme Development
Template Tags
Function Reference
Developer Documentation

Recommended Reading

If you need to have something tangible to read and use as a reference off-line, here are the books that are available:

WordPress 2, Visual QuickStart Guide
WordPress Complete
WordPress for Dummies