Editing plugins [ 3:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is the third part of the answer to the following question.

I’m new to blogging with WP. I want to know how to quickly modify a theme template and edit a plug-in without being a geek-nerd

The past two days we discussed the theme portion. Today lets talk about the plugins.

Quite a few plugins don’t require anything more than to upload them into the wp-content/plugins/ folder. Then log in to your dashboard and click plugins, then click to activate them.

All done. No fuss no muss. There may be options available inside that you can change or alter right from the dashboard. Widgets for example. If you upload the sidebar widget plugin and your theme is widget ready you will only need to click presentation, sidebar widgets then drag and drop the widgets in the order you want them to be.

Now there are others that interact with your theme. Those you will need to do some changes but again most of those have good documentation on their site.

For example – I always add in SEO Title Tags to my blogs. To make this work you do need to edit one line of code in your template. If you click on the name of the plugin where you activated it you will go to their site and they have very explicit instructions of how to do this. More importantly they show you exactly where to find it and what to replace it with. I just copy the new code into a notepad document then go to theme editor and look for the piece of code.

Now any time I am going to edit any pieces of my theme the first thing I do is make a backup of the file. Just click inside the box and ctl a – ctl c then copy into a notepad document.

This way if I make a mistake (and it happens way too often, I am old and bald after all) I can just replace the changes I made with the original.

In summary for most plugins they are pretty much plug and play but for a few you will need to at least be able to follow directions.

Have a question you would like answered on Word Press or blogging in general? Leave a comment or click the survey tab at the top. Then keep checking back for the answer.

Changing header graphics [ 3:34 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is a continuation of the question asked yesterday.

I’m new to blogging with WP. I want to know how to quickly modify a theme template and edit a plug-in without being a geek-nerd

Yesterday I talked about changing themes and more importantly picking the right theme which is the key if you don’t want to be playing in the theme templates and CSS files.

Today lets talk about changinng the header which is the most common change people make.

You can find the header graphic by going into the following file structure –
wp-content/themes/youtheme name/img/

Now the img may be images depending on the theme author. In that image folder there should be the current image file for the theme. Most times it is called header.gif or jpg but it may be something similar like bg_header.gif.

The last one I did it actually had a name of hr02.jpg so it won’t necessarily have the word header in the image name but it usually does. If you find a theme where it is not it is still easy to find. It will most likely be the largest image in the folder. Check the file size and the biggest one is usually the one you want.

You can double check in a browser by calling the file directly and make sure it is the one you want. To see the header in a browser it would look like

http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/themes/img/image name.gif or jpg

Obviously if your blog is in a folder and not in the top level you would need to add that.

Once I have the right file I outsource the rest. For me I download the image and email it to the guy who does my graphics with a few notes on what I would like it to look like. A day or two later I get a new image in my email. I save it then ftp it up to replace the original image and I am almost done.

By sending him the original I get back the exact size image I need and as some of the images for headers may be different sizes this save us both time.

The final step is to turn the options for the title and tag line off if I added them to the image. Now if you do graphics then you can save the email step and just do it yourself.

However, for this Old Bald Guy I don’t do graphics and don’t want to learn so I’ll keep a good relationship with Tim Whiston and let him do all my graphics. You can check out his site here.

Changing themes [ 2:15 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here is today’s question.

I’m new to blogging with WP. I want to know how to quickly modify a theme template and edit a plug-in without being a geek-nerd

Actually you should rarely need to edit the themes other than graphics. Obviously, you can edit them in lots of ways but mostly you pick a theme that you like so that you do not have to edit it.

With the number of themes available you shouldn’t have to do much if any editing if you picked the right theme. To change themes is easy just upload to the wp-content/themes folder the theme you selected. Log in to your dashboard click presentattion then themes and click on the new theme.

Now if there are options for that theme then you will need to do that within the dashboard. None of these should require you to edit any of the theme files. If you use a widget ready theme and install the widget plugin then you can change the sidebar from the dashboard too.

If you have picked the right theme you should now be done with the exception of changing a graphic header if you wished.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss doing that and the day after that I will address the plugin portion of the question.

Have a question you would like to see addressed? Click the survey button at the top or leave a comment. Check back and you’ll see the answer.

Upadate and apology [ 1:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sorry for the lack of updates here. This Old Bald Guy has been hit by some bug that has slowed an already slow guy down even more.

I will be traveling today down to Philadelphia for a Word Press meet up. It will be my first time but figure it would be good to actually get out and socialize with other Word Press users. I will have my recorder with me so if I find something of interest it may show up in the podcasts here. You can find Word Press Meetups here.

The teleseminar on Wednesday was excellent. There is a comment on the post about it that reads

I can’t believe all the amazing tips and tricks you and Ross Goldberg provided! You guys did a DYNAMITE call!

You can catch the replay at The Only Submitter Call Replay but I am not sure how long I will have that up so check it out today.

As always I would love to have your questions. Please click the survey button above and submit it or leave a comment. This way I can deliver the tupe of input you are looking for to you.

I thought blogs were for kids [ 3:15 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is a question I got a while ago. Kind of like MySpace. Lots of people think that they are just for kids. Blogs can be very effective for your small business and more and more you are seeing large businesses add blogs to their websites. Like MySpace there are more adults and businesses blgging than you may think.

Here are just a few ways that a blog can help your business.

• Get the word out to your customers about your services and products
• An easy way to keep your employees updated
• A way to allow interaction from your customers or employees

Do reviews of your products and get feedback from your customers. Even the bad comments will help you to improve. You do get final control over what gets posted but sometimes improving your product or service and let people see how you improved your process or service can help you build loyal customers.

This can show that you are responsive to your customer needs. This alone can set you head and shoulders above your competition.

If you have employees a blog can be an excellent way to keep your employees updated. If you are like me and run a business from home a private blog can be a great way to keep your employees up to date with deadlines or new assignments. Real handy when you have people working for you in other parts of the world.

Those are just a few ways that a blog can be helpful for your business use.

Have a question you would like answered here? Leave a comment or click the survey button at the top of the page. Keep stopping back for the answers.

Still time to sign up for the Web 2.0 and SEO Tips teleseminar on Wednesday. Ask your question and sign up here.

Rating Dominator [ 2:23 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Jason De Velvis has released a new plug in today called Rating Dominator. You can use it to allow people to rate your content when they leave comments. It also allows others to rate the comments and whether or not they are useful.

This can allow you to generate more comments and interaction with your blog. It also gives you feedback from your readers.

The past few posts I have talked about getting extra traffic to your blog and this type of interactivity can be a big help.

The installation is not plug and play because you will need to edit your theme to make it work but Jason has a good manual and videos to help you accomplish this. The plugin is free but he does have some premade themes that you can purchase that are plug and play to create a rating site.

You can see a sample of one of them I set up to allow my members to rate the various themes I review in the Word Press Made Easy membership site each month.

====> Theme Review

Take the time to check out Rating Dominator today and see if it would work for your blog.

=====> Rating Dominator

Web 2.0 and SEO Tips [ 2:17 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yesterday I talked about generating traffic to your blog and the various ways to do that. I also mentioned that I would be doing a teleseminar this coming week with an expert on using Web 2.0 and SEO to generate extra traffic to your blog, Ross Goldberg.

The details are firmed up and the call will take place this Wednesday at 9PM edt.

First all my readers and listeners are welcome to sign up to access the teleseminar. It will last about an hour but I will need your help.

See I have my questions for Ross but I would love to have your questions too. If you go to the page below you can leave your question and you will get access to the recording even if you can’t make the actual call.

By getting your questions I can make sure that the questions that you have get asked. Providing you with good information is my number one goal.

=====> Your questions

As always feel free to ask your Word Press and blogging in general questions by leaving a comment or using the survey page located at the top of the blog.

Traffic, traffic, traffic [ 3:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Next to how to make money with a blog the biggest question I get by far is how to get more traffic.

First and foremost is good content and regular postings. If your content, pardon the expresion sucks, then you just won’t get people to come back to your blog. Sorry that is the facts. Along with the content at least for me is having a reasonably attractive blog.

Now they may look good and be “kewl” but some of the blogs I see with dark backgrounds and light text will hurt my eyes. They are hard for an Old Bald Guy to read and consequently even if you have great content if it is tough for me to read I won’t be back. An easy to read blog definitely helps.

There are a few other things that you can do to make things easy for people to return. Using a plugin like Subscribe me to make it easy to subscribe to your RSS feed. It surprises me when I see how many people I get that draw the feed each day.

Making sure that your blog is set up to be search engine friendly will also help.

Something that can be helpful too is to capture email addresses of people that want to be notified of when you have updated. This is an area I have been lax on but will be improving shortly.

The biggest thing that has helped my traffic though is using directories and social bookmarking sites to create links coming back. Submitting your RSS feeds to the various directories and if you have podcasts submitting them too is helpful. It gives people another way to find me and eventually helps my ranking in the search engines.

There are also some other Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo and MySpace that you can use to draw traffic. Everyone that visits my Squidoo Lens about using Word Press gets to see the feed for this blog. If the title showing in the feed is attractive they may click through to read more.

None of these individually will draw you tons and tons of traffic but the more that you implement the better your traffic flow will be.

I will be doing a teleseminar next week with Ross Goldberg who specializes in Web 2.0 traffic and will post more here when it is scheduled.

If you want information on Squidoo there is a tab at the top that has a podcast on the subject.

All of these little things will help you get traffic but the bottom line is that it is and always will be your content that matters most. Posting quality content on a regular basis will help your traffic the most.

Upgrading Word Press versions [ 2:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Before I get into todays question just a bit of an aside. I love using Google’s Alerts to keep track of various topics of interest to me. I found a gentleman who had asked about upgrading his Word Press blog as Word Press upgrade is one of the topics I watch. I made a comment on his blog and left some short instructions.

After all one of the reasons I use and love blogs is that you can have a conversation on the topic of the blogs and do try and comment where I can contribute to the conversation. To make a long story short he sent me an email and asked this question which will be the topic today.

Thanks for responding to my blog post about upgrading Word Press.

Maybe you can help me.

I set word press up through my domain at Yahoo Small Business.

I was trying to look around to see if I could or how to upgrade Word Press through it. I saw this:

Blog type: WordPress
Version: 2.0.2
Upgrade: Automatic [Edit]

I guess the automatic update only means that I am upgrading the 2.0….version, correct?

Have any idea how I upgrade to the higher version?

Or do I even need to upgrade to it?

Does it make a big difference?

Thanks for any info you can give and thanks again for answering in the first place..

Well I am not sure where to start. First I am always amazed that the various hosts and even Fantastico at times can be so far behind on the current version of Word Press. If you are using the 2.0 series the current version is 2.0.10. Having an upgrade of 2.0.2 is almost criminal.

Yes you should upgrade as there have been numerous security updates to Word Press since the version you are using. I answered how to do this in a previous post so I won’t go into great detail here.

A quick ruin down would be to go to Word Press, grab the latest version of the series you want to use and follow their instructions.

As long as you are on the 2.0 or 2.1 series with latest versions you should be fine. Word Press has stated that they will be supporting the 2.0 series for a few more years so there is no great rush to be on 2.1.

Unfortunately, there are people out there who get a great deal of pleasure out of hacking into blogs that it is imperative to keep your blog current before as a friend of mine woud say those “muppets” find your blog and screw it up just because they can.

Feel free to add your questions by clicking and filling out the survey at the top of this blog or just ask it in a comment.

Video plugin [ 1:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Okay this is the plugin that I had a problem with. Turns out it wasn’t my fault and at this point it won’t work in the rich text editor within WordPress 2.1.3. It does work fine if you turn off the rich text editor.

You can do that under users – your profile. Just uncheck the box. This will allow you to easily add in videos without having to imbed the code in your post. It is a great time saver if you like to add videos to your post from places like YouTube. You can even add your own flash videos. You can find the plugin here.

The author does have a good support forum and does answer questions which is always a big plus.

Now I have added a video from YouTube below and unfortunately a picture from this started a real brouhaha at Netmarketing Forum because the owner is a fan of Carlos Mencia and has started using Dee Dee Dee to replace the posts of the driveby spammers. Hope you enjoy it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h0z6vkcY10[/youtube]

As always if you have a question on Word Press or blogging feel free to ask it in the survey button at the top of the blog or leave your comment.