Just saw this from twitter and decided this would be a good post to schedule while I was gone today so this will be showing up while I am not here. That is one of the nice things about pre-scheduling your posts.
Found a great list of WordPress Theme tweaks. This is not for those that aren’t comfortable editing your themes. If that is you don’t even go there.
However, as long as you make a backup before you start making changes these can allow you to do a variety of things so go check out…
Just finished a short report on Twitter and WordPress and those that are subscribed will be getting it after it has been edited one more time.
Really what I would like to know is what topics would be most helpful to be covered here. Not getting a lot of questions and have always tried to make this blog provide you with the answers to the questions you have about WordPress and blogging.
So guess this is more of a reminder to use the survey form in the menu above and ask your questions or leave your comments.
Still looking for ideas as to what plugin you would like Mr (Rocks) Plank to create for the readers here so he stops telling me that I suck. (It is all good natured of course.)
Thats all for today as I need to go to a funeral tomorrow so will be back on Saturday with the answers to questions that you have.
Use the survey form or leave them in the comments. Til then have a great day.
Mike Paetzold
P.S. Still looking for one more guinea pig test subject to participate in proof for 15 Minute Blog Traffic. If you have it and would like to share your results you can see the full details at the Test Results Blog.
I really hadn’t mentioned it on this blog but had on my marketing blog but I did a call last night with Jason Fladlien as part of his series of teleseminars and webinars from various marketers to raise funds for his parents to cover the funeral expenses and other bills from his 8 year old brother’s losing fight with cancer.
The price is a bargain for what he is offering and their aren’t any affiliate commissions so this truly is going to help the family. He has a lot of other marketers helping with this and has already raised quite a bit of money but has not reached his goal yet.
The reason I mention this is that call ran an hour and 45 minutes. The first hour was all content that I normally only share inside WordPress Lessons with people who pay me a lot more than what he is charging for access.
We then spent 45 minutes answering all of the questions the people that attended had. Now you can still get the recording of the call and all of the calls that have taken place or are scheduled by going to Ryan’s Tribute. Hope you help Jason out with this and enjoy the information.
Mike Paetzold
P.S. Welcome to all the new readers that stopped by after attending the seminar and feel free to let others know what you thought about the call good or bad. (yes that was my sales pitch come read my blog )
I created a new blog yesterday and will be updating it weekly on generating traffic using the 15 Minute Blog Traffic method. This time I have a few volunteers that have purchased the product and they will be sending me their stats too.
Should be an interesting experiment. I picked a niche topic and will not be giving out the domain (I black it out on the screen shots) to not have any linking or traffic to that blog corrupt the stats.
Will be adding the information from the volunteers blogs along with my own and how much time and effort I place into it.
If you have purchased 15 Minute Blog Traffic and applied the techniques I would love to have you comment there with your results.
Just saw MaxBlogPress Opt In Adder and had to test it out. It is created to allow you to easily add an opt in form to your sidebar or the bottom of the post. It works with a few caveats.
Those are enough that I won’t be using it here but if you are not comfortable with playing in the theme this can be a valuable addition.
There are a lot of customization available and it is easily done. You can change the background color, border color and button display. The WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface allows you to customize the text and works well.
The problem is the size of the table it creates. It is not customizable and if you have a narrow sidebar it may create theme problems. On this blog it works quite well in the wide top portion but can’t be used in any of the narrower sidebars.
You can also automatically add in an opt in form at the bottom of the posts. This works well but again I have a problem with the size. Being relatively narrow I did not care for the way it looked on this blog with a wide text area and could not add it in exactly where I would want it to display.
The only other complaint I had was that the set up for it displays under tools and not either settings or directly under plugins like most plugins. Took me a bit to find it when looking to change settings.
Now to be perfectly clear here I am not the target market for this plugin as if I want an opt in box at the end of the post it is easy for me to add it in and format it to suit me. I do the same with adding them to the sidebar. The plugin does work as advertised and makes it very easy to add your opt in box to the blog.
If you aren’t comfortable with doing those things this does a good job of creating an opt in box as long as your theme side bar is (and this is a guess) over 200 px wide.
Being brand new I am sure as input comes in that some of these items might be addressed in future updates.
All in all a nice plugin for those that aren’t comfortable playing in the theme with the caveats mentioned.
As always your comments and questions are welcomed.
Still looking for more ideas on the plugin Robert Plank has offered to make for my readers. Have a good idea let me know.
Have to say that I am a bit perplexed. Not really all that unusual I am old and bald and these things happen sometimes. What has me perplexed is the lack of response to just one post.
Usually I get a good number of people commenting when I talk about a variety of topics but that dried up when I asked what kind of plugin you would like?
See I have paid a programmer a couple hundred dollars to get specific plugins made for me. Everyone here has a chance to get a talented programmer – Robert Plank – to make a plugin for your blog that you can get here for free.
Just need to add your idea in the comments and have it be the one picked.
Despite that there have only been two submissions previously.
I love the offer to make the plugin from Robert but would really prefer it to be an idea from a reader not just what I want so let me know and allow this old bald guy to become a bit less perplexed. Maude will appreciate it and I can stop going around the house going “Huh?”
I talk a lot about Twitter and your blog but last night I got this message.
@MikePaetzold Hey Robert Plank rules and Mike Paetzold sucks… just kidding… can I make a WordPress plugin just for your blog readers?
So of course I said yes but now the question is what kind of plugin would you like to get?
Now a bit of background here. Robert is a bud from way back and I met him through Robert Puddy. A few years ago he did a whole post at the Warrior’s Forum asking people to call in and leave a message “Robert Puddy sucks… Robert Plank rocks…” and put the results on line.
When I finally met Robert in Philly last year at JV Alert I walked up behind him in the bar and reversed the saying. Now you understand the tweet I got from him.
So lets get back to the point here. Robert is a talented programmer and does great plugins. He has even created a product that I own that will help you create your own plugins called WordPress On Crack.
What plugin would you like to have created that you can get from here made to do what you want?
Leave your comments here to let me know. I also recommend you follow Robert Plank on Twitter and check out his blog. Robert is one of the good guys despite what he said about me.
Okay February is half way over and it is time to once again turn on the radio (Blog Talk Radio) and answer your questions. Mark your calendar for this Tuesday at 7 pm and plan to tune in at
You can leave your questions in the comments here and they will all be addressed on Tuesday night.
If you have not checked out Blog Talk Radio you can listen live from the web, call in and speak direct to me and talk to other listeners in the chat box. Always a good time so I look forward to seeing you Tuesday night.
Okay I know it is a pain trying to keep up with everything you hear about each and every day. Today I am going to address something simple for those that actually participate in the conversations going on in the blogosphere.
See the defauilt on WordPress blogs is to use Gravatar for comments. Most people don’t go through all the settings when they create a new blog so the vast majority of blogs will look for your gravatar when you comment. Besides the gravatar system works and even though I do go through the settings I still use it because it is one of the more popular ones.
Gravatar allows you to link your email to your picture and have it display when you post a comment. Just go to http://gravatar.com and follow the directions to tie your email address and picture together.
Now I would much rather have people reading my comments see my picture to the left rather than the default gravatar image to the right.
It helps people know who I am especially as I use the same picture on Facebook, Twitter, MyBlogLog and any other social network where I can add a picture to my profile.
Now for you bashful types it does not have to be a picture of you. It can be whatever avatar you use to brand yourself with on the social networks and forums. I have a buddy who uses a fish graphic on Twitter and went to his picture and people ignored him because he was no longer the grinning fish and they did not recognize his tweets.
The whole reason for this post is that on average less than half of the commenters on this blog have a gravatar. I work hard to make sure that people adding to the conversation here get the maximum reward for it and this will increase the value you get from commenting here. So go get your avatar set up at http://gravatar.com so that all my commenters get maximum branding. It only takes a few quick minutes.
As always your questions and comments are appreciated.
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Now I would much rather have people reading my comments see my picture to the left rather than the default gravatar image to the right.
