26
Oct
Author: admin | Category:
How to...
It seems like each week I learn a little more about running my own blog/website. A few weeks ago I was not really even sure what a plugin was, but now I have learned to LOVE them. There is an amazing variety of plugins available for free, and they can add some cool features to your blog.
I have often times felt a bit overwhelmed when I’ve searched WordPress for plugins. There seems to be endless options. Not only do I not know which one to choose, but I also have a hard time figuring out how to activate them and select the correct options to configure them. It seems like they are written in another language…the language of programmers and website administrators. As a layman, I have relied on searching the internet for other people’s reviews of the plugins I should try for my blog.
These ten seem to be on almost every list/blog I visited. I’ve recently installed them, and so far so good. Word of caution, most of these require you to set up additional parameters for them to work properly. Once you’ve activated them, check your Settings to see what additional information is needed to make them work. I have to admit, I did not understand about half the questions they asked, so I kept most of these plugins setup with their default settings. If anyone has any advice on how to maximize these plugins, please send it my way.
- Google XML Sitemaps – creates sitemaps for you.
- All in One SEO Pack – optimizes your blog for SEO
- FeedBurner FeedSmith – redirects your feeds to a Feedburner feed. Then you can use Feedburner Feedstats.
- WP-Cache – makes loading time faster
- Akismet – blocks spam comments
- Twitter Tools – brings your tweets into your blogs and tweets your new blog posts
- Social Bookmarks – social bookmarking widget
- Google Analyticator – allows you to access Google Analytics
- WP-DB-Backup – backs up your WP database
- WordPress.com Stats – tracks views, post/page views, referrers and clicks
Following are some of the sites I visited to find most of these. Let me know if you have any others you suggest.
14
Sep
Author: admin | Category:
How to...,
Weekly Chronicle
After building my two blogs and writing a handful of posts, I was anxious to have people start visiting my sites. I changed my signature on my email to include links to my new blogs, I updated my LinkedIn profile, I sent an email to all of my friends and family asking them to check them out and I asked my Facebook friends to do the same.
Although having my friends, family and former colleagues check out my blogs and provide me with feedback was great; what I really wanted was for someone I did not solicit directly to find me. Last week I got my wish. On both of my blogs I received comments from total strangers who found me organically. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to know that someone was reading what I wrote.
I decided to do a small experiment and see if I could find my blogs via searching for key terms. Although I was able to find my posts eventually, it took a lot of scrolling and searching. In the past week I have done quite a bit of reading on Search Engine Optimization. The main thing I learned is that it is far from an exact science. Everyone seems to have ideas on how to improve your ranking, but there is no magic recipe.
My blogs are not like the movie The Field of Dreams. I’ve built it, but I need to do a lot more than that if I want them to come.
Following are a couple articles and tools I found useful:
What useful information have you found on this topic?
01
Sep
Author: admin | Category:
How to...
After HOURS and I do mean HOURS of searching through free WordPress themes for my two blogs, I have found a number of great sites. Like I mentioned in my week three blog (When did I become a programmer?), free themes come with limitations. These limitations can be partially overcome by changing code, but that is not so easy for us non –technical types.
To avoid having to do a lot of modifications, I recommend doing the following before you start your search for a free theme:
1) Review lots of other peoples’ blogs and how they are setup. This will help you get an idea of what you need and want out of a theme (how many columns, functionality, etc.) Pay close attention to those you were immediately attracted to and found easy to navigate.
2) Decide what functionality you want in your blog. If the theme is “widget enabled” you can often add the functionality you want (e.g. RSS links, Twitter link). Some themes have built in functionality. For example it might have a built in RSS link in the header. You may prefer to have a subscribe icon that offers lots of different options (Facebook, Twitter, RSS, email, etc.). If you aren’t familiar with code and programming, these things can be very difficult to change.
3) Give some thought to the image/brand you want to portray. I looked at my blog theme as my packaging. For this blog, I decided I liked the idea of the sky is the limit and also the play on the metaphor regarding the grass being greener. I new when I was searching for a theme I wanted to incorporate those two elements.
Now that you have a good idea of what kind of theme and what functionality you are looking for it is time to start reviewing themes. WordPress offers an impressive array of themes, but there are many other sites that have quite a variety. My advice is to download any themes you find interesting. I made the mistake of not downloading a few I liked, and I wasted lots of time trying to find them again.
Here are a few of the free theme sites I found. There are many others, but I found these sites to have a good variety of themes and they were easy to navigate. One last piece of advice, if you plan on using widgets, make sure the theme you choose is widget enabled.
1. www.wordpressthemesbase.com
2. www.topwpthemes.com
3. www.wordpressthemespark.com
4. www.wpthemesfree.com
5. www.wpthemescreator.com
6. www.themespreview.com
7. www.amazingwordpressthemes.com
8. www.themes-wp.com
9. www.wptown.com – This is the site I found this blogs theme on.
10. www.ezwpthemes.com – This site has some unusual themes. I found my onthegochicago.com blog theme here.
