I am very new to wordpress, my question is when you edit a post which has already been published does the ping-o-matic, ping – the post again as if it were a new post?
The default in WordPress is to re-ping the post when it is edited. This hasn’t changed to the best of my knowledge.
This is one of the reasons that Smart Update Pinger. It checks to see if the post was previously published then only pings if it hasn’t already been pinged. This keeps me out of trouble when my proof reading sucks. (Most of the time ).
If you constantly ping your posts you can have trouble with the services as they may feel you are spamming them.
Also you should add more than just pingomatic to your ping list. You can add those under settings – writing at the bottom of the page. In the paragraph above is a link to the codex which will show you quite a few others you may add.
As always your comments and questions are welcomed.
Can you discuss the importance of a domain name? I’m setting up my first blog as “myname.com”, because I want to build my own online brand–but if I wanted to get more into selling, would it be better to setup different domains with niche-specific names?? I noticed you have a blog with your own name and many niche sites with specific names.
Interesting question with no right answer. I use the myname.com thing as my home base on the internet. Having a blog like that is great. But…
When you are using a blog for a specific niche your domain name can be extremely helpful.
Google will highlight the keyword that people have entered when showing results and having part of the url highlighted does give your listing a bit more credibility.
Much more important to me is to make your domain name easily memorable when possible. One of the mistakes I have made is worrying more about getting my keywords into a domain and not making it easy to remember.
Here is an example of a recent domain my partner and I set up that is easily remembered (at least by our target market.) We are giving away a report targeted to be of interest to car dealers.
In the car business a focus group is known as a 20 Group. So to make it easy for others to pass it on we registered www.digital20group.com. Probably not something the average person would remember but definitely something that our target market is very familiar with.
But like I said in the beginning I don’t think there is a definitive answer that you MUST do this or that but hopefully this has given you some ideas for your domain research.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Does or should a Blog have a sitemap? I see too many blogs that are all over the place in their design. I want to be able to follow some kind of “order with a purpose” in designing my blog but not too busy that it drives traffic away. It seems as though there is a delicate balance here, right.
A very good question but I think you don’t quite have the terminology quite right.
I do recommend that you use a sitemap plugin so that you can automate the spidering of your site. I do not use a sitemap for people to read.
One of the things that WordPress does quite well is to organize the navigation of your blog. The more tightly targeted your content is to a single subject the better a blog performs with a few exceptions.
One of the things I like to do especially for my niche blogs is to pick out the major areas I want to emphasize and use them for categories. If you are dealing with a very specific topic this will probably give you between 4 -10 categories. These would be your upper level keywords you want to target.
Now if you are doing a general blog like I do with my name blog it can end up being many more because it tends to be more eclectic and cover a much wider range of topics. (Not something I recommend except for name blogs.)
If I understand your real question and unfortunately this means I have to use that ass/u/me word, you are looking for a checklist more for your side bar so that it doesn’t become too overwhelming.
The key will be how you are using the blog and what your monetization is. For most I use something like this but it does vary from topic to topic.
Lead capture form – If you have followed me at all you know why.
Pages – this is where I will have things like about but it will depend on the theme as this theme lists pages in a top header so this would be redundant on this particular theme.
Categories
Recent posts
Recent Comments
Links
Subscribe Me
Tag cloud
That would be the basics but if you use things like My Blog Log I would use their widget too.
The key though is not to copy the order but see what your primary goal is. If it was to attract people to my links then that would move up as an example. It really depends on your own goals and testing and tweaking to see what gets the most attention and putting your primary goal in that position.
Hope this helps as I hate answering questions where I use that ass/u/me word. If not resubmit or leave a comment here and we can continue the conversation.
As always your comments and questions are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
P.S. I just updated the 7 Tips book and if you have bought it before you need to login and download the latest version.
Let’s say that I blow up my blog…meaning I take all this time tweaking the theme and plugins and then something goes wrong….How do you fix it if you are not techie? I’ve had problems in the past where I would just get this ‘database error in wpcontent line456???? Now I’m afraid to make changes
The answer is quite simple – BACKUP.
Now for the details.
Before you start making any changes get a copy of all your files. Login via FTP and create a folder on your computer and save all the files you have on the server here. Don’t forget to back up the data base too.
Now you have all the changes that are working fine in one place.
Make your edit to change what you want. Save it. Check the blog.
If it is working fine. If not replace the file you changed with the one you backed up.
If you are just tweaking the css file then you could just copy it into a note pad file before you start and follow the steps above.
Even if you are not planning on tweaking your blog anymore you should have a current backup on your hard drive. I also recommend backing up the data base regularly.
How often depends on how often you post. I try to do this weekly but if you only post once a week you could do it less.
Unfortunately, no matter how good your web host bad things can happen. Someone can hack your site or the server you are on can go kaput. Over the years both have happened to me.
Usually your web host is backing up regularly too but…
Backups when you have a problem are invaluable. If you have all the files and the data base you can restore or at least pay someone to restore what you had easily.
From reading your blog and others, I have learned it is important to build an opt-in e-mail list to keep in contact with readers via an e-mail subscription. Can you talk about how to set up your blog to optimally to collect e-mail addresses? Also, once you have promised the reader periodic e-mails (such as tips or advice, etc), where would you start in creating these newsletters. Is there a step-by-step process you use as far as collecting e-mails for your list, sending out a regular newsletter, and automating it?? I’m sure it depends on what you’re trying to do with your blog but I’m assuming there are some basic similarities that apply to all bloggers.
First I am glad to see that you understand the need to have an opt in list. Having the ability to stay in touch with your readers and get them to return can and will drive quite a bit of traffic.
There are a few different ways and many tweaks that you can make to adjust this to your niche.
The offer…
First you need to really consider what you are going to offer to your subscriber of value for their email address. If you know who your ideal subscriber would be (and you should) this becomes relatively easy.
This is the most important piece of the puzzle. If your offer is something that a reader just has to have the structure of how you present it becomes less important.
Where and how to put it…
This is something you need to test and keep adjusting. Usually right at the top of your sidebar is best. That way it is always in view for everyone coming to your page (as long as your blog displays the side bar on all posts – The standard Kubrick does not on WordPress.)
Depending on the service you use or have access to you can also add it as a pop up, a slide in, an exit grabber or as a floating action button. It is important that you actually test all of these because in different niches you will get different results.
Now before you tell me I hate pop ups etc.and they get blocked etc. think about this. I have found that for me when IE went to automatically blocking pop ups they actually made them more effective for the targeted viewer.
Have you ever gone to a page, heard the sound from your pop up blocker and then reloaded the page to allow it so you could see what you missed?
I have but…
Only when it was a page that I had a real interest in. That is the real key. Is your reader interested or just passing through? You won’t offend the people that you are really trying to attract.
Delivering your message…
Personally I use AWeber to send out my email and because it allows me to automate things. For example on this blog I offer a series of 5 Blog Traffic Tips which are already loaded to go out automatically. Once you sign up they automatically deliver them in the sequence I set up and at the time frame I have set.
Then for continuing updates I have AWeber read my RSS feed and automatically send out a notice for me whenever I post. Love this feature.
Now I don’t have to do anything other than what I normally do – Post to the blog. They automatically let everybody that has signed up know that I have added more information. I do nothing after the initial set up.
Testing your positioning…
This will take a bit of that W word – WORK. You will need to be tracking your visitors and if you are using AWeber you will need to create a separate form for each method. Now you can see which method is getting you how many subscribers.
Check the signups versus the traffic you are getting and you will quickly see which forms are working and which ones aren’t.
As always your question and comments are welcomed and appreciated.
I know you are a big wordpress fan but I believe you mentioned using blogger on occasion. On what occasion do you use blogger instead of wordpress? Also, are there any tutorials you can recommend on setting up and optimizing blogger?
I never use Blogger for a primary site. I want to own any primary site and the easiest way to do that is by having a WordPress blog on a domain I own. Blogger is not easy to optimize unless you are going to make major changes. I don’t bother for what I use it for which is primarily back linking.
Have not seen but then again I haven’t really looked for tutorials on optimizing Blogger. I am sure that there are some but personally would not put the effort into something I did not control.
When I was creating various niche Adsense sites it was easy to get your site spidered by Google by using a Blogger blog. Because Google owns Blogger they spider those sites quite regularly and a good link to a new site will get the spider to your site extremely quickly.
Likewise if you are looking to open an Adsense account the easiest way is to create a Blogger blog, make a couple posts and apply through Blogger.
I still use Blogger as part of a network of sites to rank for a keyword but don’t spend much time optimizing them just using them to push links with the anchor text for the keyword I am trying to rank for. You can use some other services the same way to create your network. Sites like MSN, Yahoo, MySpace and some others all have blog type platforms to create links going to your primary site with your anchor text.
Creating a series of these along with a lens or two at Squidoo, some Hub Pages on your topic can all help to drive traffic and help you rank for your keyword often times multiple times from the various platforms. That is how I use Blogger but would never depend on it for a primary site.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
I had “WordPress.com Stats” plugin working on my blog…but when I upgraded WordPress to the latest version, the “Blog Stats” plugin is there. I uninstalled the WordPress.com Stats one, and re-installed it, but still not there. I’ve done other things too, but I don’t want this to be a book…anyhoo, I use Google Analytics, but I just liked the WordPress.com Stats plugin.
Well before today this was a plugin I had never used, I did download it and install it on one of my blogs.
Seems to work fine there. Now as I can’t create the problem with a blog running the latest version of WordPress there are a couple of things that I would tell you to try.
Make sure that you have the latest version of the plugin (1.2.1 as of this writing). Deactivate the plugin in the dashboard. Go in through ftp and delete the existing plugin in the wp-content/plugins folder. Then upload the latest plugin to the same folder.
Go back in to your dashboard and activate the plugin. Add in your API key if needed then allow some time before that stats will start showing.
Hope that helps.
Reminder – Will be doing my free Q and A call on Monday night at 8 pm. If you have questions you can go there now and add them in the question box. Stop back Monday to hear the answers.
It must be time to do another question and answer session.
Yep, Monday night – May 19 – at 8pm.
Mark your calendars.
Of course ike always you can ask your questions in advance. Go to the page and fill in your question then stop back on Monday night to hear the answers.
Hi Mike, In setting up my blog, I have so far taken your steps of selecting a niche, adding appropriate plugins, setting ping list etc. Now, I’m trying to set up the aesthetics of the site. My primary concern at the moment is finding a semi-professional looking header, and finding a theme that allows me to easily upload custom headers. Any suggestions?
There are literally thousands of available themes available. The WordPress Theme Viewer probably has the largest selection. One of the things I recommend to my customers when picking a theme is to look at the test site and make sure you are comfortable with the text layout, how they display block quotes, ordered lists etc.
Once you have a theme that you like it is relatively easy to change the header graphic. If you can find one that meets your needs except for the header graphic it is time to test it.
Caveat: There are a lot of choices but not all are coded well. You may have trouble with some themes and it is not unusual for me to try 3 or 4 before finding a quality theme that is coded properly. Can be frustrating especially when it has the exact look you want.
Now if it has passed the test and seems to be stable go into the theme folder and find the header image.
Usual path will be wp-content/themes/yourthemename/img or images. Most times it will be called header.jpg or header.gif.
If it doesn’t have either of these go into the style sheet and scroll down until you see #header in the code and below that there will be the code that pulls the image so you can find what it is called.
Download the image to your computer so you can see what size it is. For example on this blog the header is 860px x 150px.
Create an image the same size and name it the same and overwrite the image on your server and you should be good to go.
That is all it will take to change the image.
Now if you have added your site name and tagline to the image you will need to go to the header.php file in your blog and remove some code that automatically displays your blog name and tag line over the image.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
If XML-Sitemap gets corrupted, can we delete it altogether (thru cpanel or FTP) and recreate a fresh one without creating any problems? Thanks
Now I have to make an assumption here and we all know what that ass/u/me word does. If you are using the plugin for WordPress here is what you can do with some caveats.
Yes, you can delete the files with either FTP or cpanel. There will be 2 files. sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz.
Then go into your settings – XML sitempa and manually rebuild them.
The caveat and the problem is that once you have deleted them depending on your server settings the folder your blog is in may not be writeable. If you get an error than you will need to increse the permissions of that folder. Click the rebuild link again. Then return the folder to it’s original permissions. Make sure that the new sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz are set to 666 so that the blog can update them each time you post after that.
It is important that you not leave the folder for your blog set to the permissions necessary to write your original sitemap.xml files as this will leave you vulnerable to hacking.
Make sure that you have submitted the sitemap to Google and Yahoo too if you hadn’t originally.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
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