Word Press 2.2 Review [ 3:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Seems to be stable in the short time I have had it up. Does have a few nice features that I like.

If you use lots of plugins it won’t activate a plugin that will cause a problem. Nice little feature.

They have built widgets right into the script so you no longer need to get a widget plugin. If you have one you will need to make sure that it has been turned off before you do the upgrade. You may also need to resort your side bar but with the widgets that is a relatively simple task.

The upgrade does make some changes to your data base.

The one thing that I don’t care for is you actually have to click to get a preview of the page after you have saved your work. I liked just being able to scroll down to see it but you do get a full page view so it is not all bad.

This makes it very important to follow the upgrade steps to the letter. Make sure you have turned off all your plugins and pulled a backup of your data base.

I haven’t tried to restore a blog back to the previous series but would want a data base backup in case the changes caused a problem and you want to go back to an earlier version.

Overall if you like the latest and greatest do the upgrade. No big reason to rush to upgrade if you are current on either the latest version of 2.0 series or the 2.1 series.

If you are adding a blog I would use the new version. All in all seems nice but no features or reasons that I can see to change all my blogs but I will use it on the new blogs.

If you have a question about Word Press or blogging in general please ask it by clicking the survey button above or leaving a comment. Then stop by or better yet sign up to be notified when the question is answered.

Blog Traffic - Part 4 [ 3:44 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Almost switched topics today with the release of Word Press 2.2 but did not want to upset people. I have installed it here and will comment on it tomorrow.

Today we’ll talk about blog exchanges for generating traffic. Now let me preface this by saying I run and own a piece of a blog exchange. Despite that anyone that knows me will know that I still shoot straight and this topic is no different.

Blog exchanges can be a great place for a new blogger. You will get your site seen and if your content is good you can start to develop a readership. They are very much like the blog communities in that you will get out of them what you put into them.

If you just buy credits or surf through blogs mindlessly you will not get much. The key to using these is to build relationships. If you find someone writing on your topic and you can add to the conversation take the time to comment. DON”T SPAM!!!!!!

Just leaving one liners or links will cause you much more harm then good. If you can add to the conversation then and only then do it.

Use blog exchanges for this purpose and build relationships that will help you.

Now a review of the series.

First and foremost have good content and update it regularly. Now if you only have time for one post a week that is fine just make sure that it is every week. Stop and you lose readership. You set the time frame but keep it fairly consistent.

Make sure you blog is set up to be search engine friendly. Use things like Google Alerts to see how fast your posts are getting picked up. Once you have a regular posting schedule you should see an alert within 24 hours if your blog is set up properly.

Submit to the various RSS directories. Your feed if you are using Word Press will take care of all future updates. If your blog does not ping properly (Blogger comes to mind) make sure to use a service like pingoat.com each time you post.

Tag your posts properly for Technorati and make sure to claim your blog at Technorati. There are plugins for this for Word Press the new Blogger has a label function. Use it every time.

Use a submitter or a service like onlywire.com to bookmark your posts at the social sites. This will help you get more traffic. Make it easy for people to bookmark your posts also. There are plugins that will do that for you. If you look at the bottom of this post you can easily bookmark this post at some of your favorite sites.

Comment on other blogs. That was covered above so enough said.

Use the blog communities and exchanges to build relationships.

Create a Squidoo lens on your topic and add your blog feed there.

None of these things by themselves will throw the magic traffic switch. Do them all on a regular basis and you will be surprised at how your traffic flow will improve. Just keep on keeping on and one day you won’t be asking the question how do I get traffic.

If you have question about Word Press or blogging in general please click the survey question at the top or leave a comment. Then stop back and look for your question to be answered.

Blog Traffic - Part 3 [ 3:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is the 3rd part of the series on traffic for your blog. We have covered submissions to the rss directories, using comments properly, blog communities and social bookmarking sites. Today we will discuss Technorati and Squidoo.

Technorati and creating proper tags and submitting each time to them is probably the best way to generate traffic. Google loves Technorati and it is very likely that if you do a search on any keyword that you will find Technorati’s tag list of that keyword in the top 20.

Using proper Technorati tags and your blog will do the work for you. If you use Blogger make sure to add your labels when you post and go to pingoat.com and ping your blog. If you are using Word Press make sure you have set up either the Ultimate Tag Warrior or Bunny Tag plugin to do this each time you post.

Make sure you have an account at Technorati and have claimed your blog.

The next tool to use is Squidoo. Squidoo is like a blog on steroids. You can create content on a specific topic that matches your blog. One of the features is to pull in your RSS feed. This allow people that find your Squidoo lens to find their way to your blog.

Now creating a Squidoo lens is fairly easy but if you check through previous posts there is a lot more detailed information on using Squidoo. You can listen to the teleseminar I did with Bob Jenkin’s about using Squidoo if you click the link at the top of the blog.

Because of that I won’t go into more detail on it.

Remember though that each of these items by itself won’t generate huge numbers but the consistent use of all of these will make a big difference in your results. There is no magic button only effort and consistency.

Next time I will do a summary and talk about blog exchanges for generating traffic.

If you have question about Word Press or blogging in general please click the survey question at the top or leave a comment. Then stop back and look for your question to be answered.

Have a great day.

Blog Traffic - Part 2 [ 3:18 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Last time we discussed the rss directories and commenting on other blogs in your niche. These are good ways. You can also get involved with blog communities.

Mybloglog is a good example. You can see the widget on the sidebar of this blog. Now the widget is a neat tool because you can see other member’s who have visitied your blog. Also, when you visit other blogs that have it your pic gets left.

I know I tend to check out the blogs of the people that have visited. You can just click the picture and get to their profile there. Now if like me you have more than one blog a single visit to a blog may take them to your profile. There they can see all your blogs and if they liked one they may visit the others.

It has an interactive message system for you to leave comments. There are other similar style communities that can help you get traffic.

Take the time to bookmark your blog at the social bookmarking sites. Use Only Wire to submit your site at 20 different bookmarking sites. This like most of the things to generate traffic takes a bit of effort to get it set up. You need to join each of the sites and add your user and password but after that you definitely save loads of time.

Taking the time to bookmark your posts each time is worthwhile. Again, it is a cumulative activity but all these little things can really start to help.

Next time I’ll talk about using Squidoo and Technorati to help your traffic.

Now in my best Peter Grave’s voice – “As always should you have a question on Word Press or blogghing in general please ask the question on the survey form above or leave a comment. This message will not self destruct in 10 seconds.”

Have a great day.

Blog Traffic - Part 1 [ 3:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Traffic for your blog seems to be a common problem for most people who submit questions. Here is one I got recently.

I have submitted my blogs to lots of blog directories and a traffic exchange for blogs, but I’m not satisfied with the small amount of traffic I’m getting. How do I get more traffic to my blogs?

First let me be clear it takes time and effort to get your blog a consistent amount of traffic. I don’t know of any one technique that you can do that will just turn on a switch and you automatically get traffic.

Getting your blog in a variety of directories and also taking the time to get your blog posts bookmarked is a great first step. For more information on bookmarking and those topics there is a replay of a teleseminar I did with Ross Goldberg available at The Only Submitter site that has a few actionable items listed at the end of it.

This will be a big help in increasing your exposure.

One of the things that I do is to use Google Alerts for topics that I write about. It does two things for me. It shows me how fast Google discovers or even if they discover what I write on those topics.

It also shows me who else is writing about those topics. This allows me to join the conversation on those topics in other places. I can leave an appropriate comment on other blogs and again where it is appropriate and adds to the conversation can link back to what I have written on that topic.

Now a very important caveat to this. ALWAYS make sure that you are adding to the conversation on that blog. Do not use this for spamming. It will hurt you and your comments won’t be approved.

This can where appropriate be a great way to get back links to your blog but only if you are part of the conversation and not an interruption.

Organizing Multiple Blogs [ 2:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of the big questions I get is about keeping track and dealing with multiple blogs. This has been one of the problems I have had too.

It usually becomes a real problem with keeping track of the various passwords although things like Roboform or a spreadsheet can help there, My big problem was remembering which blog was due for more posts and it is extremely easy to get off track and forget one on occasion.

Regular readers know that it happens here once in a while.

Well I have been testing a new piece of software called Niche Empire Generator.

Now it was designed to put up Word Press blogs to use the techniques Andrew Hansen teaches in Niche Marketing On Crack. These use Word Press blogs to create a variety of niche sites and the technique works quite well.

The point is though that Andrew made it customizable and it is extremely easy to set it up with the themes and plugins that you like. You can prepost and drip in your posts easily.

More importantly for users of multiple Word Press blogs like me I can set it up to control them from one place.

Because of the customizable nature the next time Word Press updates the version I can just upload it to a single control panel and upgrade all of my blogs from there.

No more ftp into each site and run the upgrade as I add content to each blog it will also do the upgrade for me. Same thing goes if I want to change a theme or add a new plugin.

Now its not perfect. If you change themes or add a new plugin you will still need to login and turn them on. If the plugin requires some theme editing to work properly you will not be able to automate that but overall it is an extremely easy piece of software to use and will save me hours on maintenance and organization each month.

If you run or are planning to run multiple blogs it is definitely worth taking a look at it.

Check it out at Niche Empire Generator.

As always if you have any questions on Word Press or blogging in general please click the survey link at the top or leave a comment.

FTP Part 2 [ 4:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is a delayed continuation on using FTP. Sometimes life gets in the way.

There are two basic types of transfer – binay and ASCII. Most servers transfer everything in binary. ASCII is only used for text and html documents. Most FTP clients will select the proper format but if you need to set it choose binary. Text and HTML documents still transfer fine in this mode but images and scripts don’t transfer well in ASCII mode.

The other big thing to understand with FTP is that if you select a folder it will transfer everything within that folder. Now this is great especially for making backups to your computer. You can easily highlight the public_html folder and pull the whole site in the current structure. Much easier than downloading all of the files one by one.

The next thing for Word Press users is adding themes or plugins. Here it is important that you place things in the right place. If you are adding a theme here is how you would do it.

Find the theme you like and download the zip file. Unzip it on your computer. Log in to your server that hosts the blog. Locate the directory for your blog. In the case of this blog it would be public_html/blog as you reach this blog via http://miketestsite.info/wpt.

Once in that folder you open the wp-content folder then the themes folder within it. Once that is open you should see all the themes that you have added. That is where you want to place the themes folder. So located the theme folder you unzipped and press the arrow and voila you have added a new theme.

The total path if you are using the subdirectory blog like I am would be public_html/blog/wp-content/themes.

Now one thing that I haven’t mentioned is that you can chmod or change the properties of the various files with your FTP client. So while we have the access you sould open the folder for the theme and highlight all the pages and change the settings to 666 so that you can edit within your dashboard.

That will save you having to pull the files down, edit them and reupload them. Plugins will work the same way except you will add the new plugin to the plugins folder instaed of the themes folder in wp-content.

Questions on Word Press or blogging in general feel free to use the survey button above or leave a comment.

How do I FTP? [ 3:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of the biggest questions that new people have trouble with is using FTP. Now FTP stands for file transfer protocol.

It is the one tool that is invaluable to me when working on Word Press blogs.

Basically, an FTP client allows you to copy files over the internet between your computer and the server where your web site or blog is hosted.

There are quite a few FTP clients available and they all have their idiosyncracies. You can find quite a few free ones or you can buy one with more features. Personally, I use WS FTP which is a paid version. I do that because of the number of sites I deal with and some other more advanced features.

To avoid confusion for anyone brand new you should read the help files from the client you download. There are two basic ways that the various FTP clients work. Some you see the server in one window and your computer in the other window. There is an arrow pointing in each direction. You highlight the file you want to transfer in the one window then click the arrow to move it to the other window.

The other method uses a drag and drop. You grab the file by left clicking and holding your mouse and drag it over to the other window. Either way works fine but the problem most new users have is file structure.

Both your computer and the server are set up like an out line would be set up.

Below is a picture of what my FTP client looks like.

Everything on the left is on my computer and everything on the right is on my server. The key is to make sure that you are in the right folder on the server before you click the arrow to move the file over.

Tomorrow I’ll add some more details on using FTP. If you have specific questions on this or anything else with Word Press or blogging submit your question to the survey link above or leave a comment.

Cron job and automated rss [ 3:33 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Todays question is

I want to know how to make the “Automatic RSS” work properly. I got the program from WordPress, installed it on my blog, and tested the link to make sure it would pull in articles. It did when I ran it manually, but the cron job won’t work it automatically.

The fact that the plugin works when you use the direct url you create means it is a hosting problem.

These can be a bit touchy to sort out because different servers use different paths to run their cron jobs. First lets explain what a cron job and how it makes this work.

All a cron job does is to basically run a particular file on your server at the frequency that you set for it. This can be almost any frequency you want but the major settings are hourly, daily, weekly and monthly.

Here is an example from a traffic exchange. This has a game where the more you surf the more letters you get. Form the words and get bonus credits. You want it to reset once a week and you have a file on the server that will rest it to the start whenever this file is called.

You create a cron to once a week at a set time run that file and each week at that time everyone gets reset to the beginning. This way you don’t have to go in every week and actually enter that url to reset everything.

That is basically how a cron job works. It is a way to automate things so you don’t have to remember.

In the case of your question the job hasn’t been set up properly and as different servers use a different configuration to run their cron jobs you really need to talk to your support at your web host to have them debug the statement for you. Without access to the server and knowing what path they use for this it is impossible to give anyone an answer that would work for everyone.

Have a question you would like to see answered here? Click the survey button at the top or leave it in a comment.