Donna here. I need to know how to get around having to click on the post to add a comment. I have to continually write our subscribers explaining that you have to click on the article (post) and then the comments are at the end.
Part of the problem you are having is theme related. Different themes have certain formatting that can make commenting easier or harder. That is something to consider when picking your theme.
For example on this theme there is a link at the bottom of this post that will show the number of comments even on the main page and if it is clicked then it will allow for comments.
The other item is that if you are sending people vbia email use the direct link not the main blog link. This will allow the comment box to show.
Finally you can either use a plugin like WP-Candy that allows you to add specific text to the bottom of your post or you can hard code into your theme a message that will explain the commenting procedure.
Should you bookmark your posts more than once – after a month or so should you go back round and bookmark them all again?
This is actually a good topic. Too many people try spamming the bookmark sites. I never bookmark a post a second time at the same service at least on purpose.
Understand how bookmarking works and making your bookmarks useful is the real key.
If you want to lose your account at any of the better sites just go through and bookmark all your posts and nothing else. You will quickly be marked as a spammer and I have talked to many that have lost their account at places like Digg by doing this.
If all you are bookmarking is your blog and never anything else then you aren’t participating in the community. It is very much like spam blog comments. Take part in the community and add value and people will gladly post your comments.
Do the same with your bookmarking. If I find a good article about the things I follow I bookmark it. Give the person that supplied good content some link love and it gets returned. If you look at a persons bookmarks and they are all on the same site how much value does that add to the community.
Aren’t you more likely to follow the bookmarks of someone that has bookmarked 10 different sites on the same topic over 7 or more domains.
When I see that the person automatically has shown me that they are someone who has really looked at that topic and been finding the better items for me in that topic. They become an authority figure, not because they are the expert but because they have obviously looked at a variety of pages on that topic.
If you are commenting on blogs in your area of expertise to develop your own backlinks (and you should be) bookmark the posts that are of value. this will do two things for you. Make your bookmarks more valuable to the community and if you have commented and participated on that topic it will also help people find your site through your comment link. A win win win. The owner wins, you wins and the reader that follows your bookmark wins.
I know that the temptation to scam the system is there and short term it may generate some quick traffic but using the resources responsibly and consistently will generate you much more on a long term basis.
What article submission sevices are worthwhile in terms of getting good backlinks? Which ones are a waste of time? Also, if they share your article with several different sites, won’t you get spanked for duplicate content?
I personally use Isnare because you can get your articles submitted to a variety of places for about $2 or less a piece. They also have a series of newsletter publishers that they submit your article to that help to drive traffic.
Submitting articles can be time consuming so for me $2 is a bargain.
Any of the big article directories will work to help you get back links. Commenting on blogs that don’t have no follow will also help but usually the top article directories have a higher page rank.
Now to the duplicate content question. Hopefully, you aren’t using the same article on your blog as you are submitting to the directories. Your blog can’t be effected with a duplicate penalty if you aren’y using the same content as the article directories are.
Here is a link to good article on the duplicate content penalty by Jonathan Leger. He has done much more research on article writing and submissions than I have.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
I was installing the Buy Me a Beer plugin on my blog. It looked great but when i clicked on it to test it it gave me the following error on the PayPal page. “The seller accepts encrypted website payments only. You cannot pay the seller through un-encrypted buttons. Please contact your seller for more details.”
Mike what do I need to do to correct this?
This is actually easy to fix. Log in to your Paypal account. Click profile. Click Website Payment Preferences in the section under Selling Preferrences. On a US account and I do know that some of the text is different for different areas you will scroll down to the section for encrypted website preferrences.
This should be set to off.
That should now allow you to use the buy me a beer plugin and accept unencrypted payments.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
What’s the easiest, yet still powerful gallery plugin/option for the current install of WordPress? I’d like to integrate a gallery into my site, along with two other sites I’m involved with.
Okay lets start with a disclaimer. I have not used a gallery plugin and think that for most the flickr plugin would be sufficient. See that one quite frequently on blogs.
Now for a more full featured gallery I did some checking and came up with Next Gen Gallery. Here is how I came to this conclusion.
First I used Google for a search and find quite a few. Then I looked at the ratings if the site was listed by WordPress. Finally I go through the documentation and support functions. I would try this one primarily because it has a good rating 4+ starts out of 5. Has had a large number of downloads and most important has a very active support forum.
Now does this mean it will be the best available? No but it most likely is a good solution or at the very least worth testing.
I will tell you that after researching these types of plugins that there will be a learning curve and they will be a bit technical to get working exactly the way you want them to work.
Following this research model when looking for plugins of checking how popular an item is, looking at the availability of support will usually allow you to avoid bad plugins and a lot of frustration.
What is the best way to place Adsense ads on the pages of your posts or pages. Also is there a way to have it automatically show up on every post or page created? Thank you for all your great tips
NOTE : Before I get into the question a note on using Adsense on your blog. If you are preselling affiliate products you probably don’t want to use Adsense as it creates a leak. If you are using Adsense as your main monetization then that is okay. Too often I see people preselling with a great article and having a link to the very same product in their adsense block which can be clicked instead of their affiliate link.
There are several plugins that you can use for adding Adsense and my favorite is Adsense Deluxe. It allows you to input the code where you want it and allows you to use different adblocks easily. You basically set up the various formats in the backoffice and can just add a snippet in your post as you create it.
If you are going to do a specific adblock that will always be the same like a 300×250 floating to the left in every post then I usually hard code the ad into the template. It save me time when I am posting as it automatically appears every time I post.
Which way is best really depends on what you are doing. If you want to change ad blocks and placement frequently use the plugin. If you are going with a fixed format just hard code it in to your theme.
First a thank you to those have added questions. It is appreciated and will allow me to make this site more active.
Here is today’s question.
I am the new owner of this site, received an email to moderate a blog entry, but the username and password I was given do not work.
I have looked everywhere I can think of for a solution, sent an email to whereever I could think of to no avail.
Thank you for your time and assistance.
First I have to make an assunption that because you asked it here that it is a WordPress blog.
There is a password recovery feature built in to WordPress but there may be a problem or two with you getting it to work with limited access. To use it you would need to know the user name. If it was a regular install and has not been changed it is admin. If it was done through fantastico it could be anything. You will also need access to the email address that was set up as that is where it will be sent when you create it.
Now if you don’t have access to this the only way to be able to gain access will be to go directly into the data base. You will need to login to cpanel. Click on phpMyAdmin. This will allow you to browse through the various tables in your data base.
Browse the table for mp_users. The admin user will normally be user 1. You won’t be able to see the password as it is encrypted but you will be able to see the user name and email address. You will be able to edit the email to one you can receive then go do the lost password function on the login screen and get what is necessary to an email you receive to be able to access the blog.
Not easy but will get you in if there is no other way to get the info for the blog.
Have not been posting as often as I used to do to a lack of questions.
I have added a little reminder box to the side and would appreciate your questions on WordPress or blogging in general. You can either leave a comment here or submit your question through our survey form at the top.
The form only asks for your email so that if it is a very specific question that would not be of interest in general that I can answer you directly.
One of the things that I like for increasing traffic to this and other blogs I have is to use AWeber to automate the broadcast updates of this blog. If you have signed up for the update list you get an email each time I add new content. The cool part is that I don’t have to deal with that.
I just add my post here and AWeber checks my feed every so often and says “Aha that Old Bald Guy added more content let’s tell the people that asked that he has done that”. (Not really but they do automatically send out an update for me. Not quite sure that a computer goes Aha or even cares that I am old and bald;) )
Well AWeber has gone one step further. Feedburner keeps track of the number of people that have subscribed to a specific feed. This can be great social proof that people like your blog. Now they will also add in the number of people that have been added to your AWeber list to the total of people that you have subsacribed. This will give you even more social proof.
