WordPress has released version 3.2. There are big changes in this release so it pays to do a bit of checking before doing the upgrade.

Because of the changes your server must have different requirements than previously needed. You must be running at least PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0 to run the new version.

You can check with your server host to make sure of what your site is running or there is a WordPress plugin you can add to see if your current server configuration is okay.

Go to Plugins ? Add New and search for “health check” (it should be the first result). Install it, activate it, and it will tell you if you need to update anything.

If you do then contact your host to get them to make the appropriate changes.

Now the upgrade is not supposed to be able to be done if your server is not properly set up but as mine are I have not been able to test it.

Finally, there may be some plugins that will cause trouble with the new version. Make sure to deactivate your plugins before upgrading. (Yeah I know it is in the instructions but we all tend to get lazy on this type of thing.)

If you use Digi List Builder or Digi Viral Traffic plugins, Andy has already released upgrades and you should have received an email with the new download. (One of the reasons I like Andy’s plugins. He always stays on top of them.)

You can see what is new in my review of the beta release of 3.2.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: server configuration, server host, upgrade wordpress, wordpress, WordPress 3.2

WordPress announced the first beta version of version 3.2. It is expected to be final and released around the end of June but that is far from being etched into stone as regular WordPress users are well aware.

Three things to be aware of about the newest version.

• WordPress has new minimum system requirements: PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0.
• Internet Explorer 6 will no longer be supported.
• The favorites menu has been removed. If you’ve written any plugins that use this menu, it’s time to switch over to an admin bar placement.

A lot of what is new is under the hood and done to speed things up. The big visual differences are…

A new default theme – Twenty Eleven. Not a huge change in looks from Twenty Ten but with better menus. Just as easy to customize too.

A reminder in the dashboard if you are using an older browser. (Personally I am not quite ready to switch to Firefox 4 so I got the reminder below.)

Some minor changes in the admin dashboard but more a tweaking than anything else.

And you can now use the HTML mode in the full page writing mode. (For me this is a non issue as I never use the dashboard for writing my posts and prefer a desktop editor.)

Will see how it holds up as I play with test it out. Have not had any conflicts with my normal plugins. If you are testing it I would love to have your opinions too. Just leave a comment.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: beta version, dashboard, default theme, html mode, internet explorer, wordpress 3.2 beta

The latest update from WordPress addresses a security flaw and a few minor bugs that missed the last update.The security flaw fix is primarily for multi author blogs. Here is the notice.

Contributor level users could publish directly.

With as easy as the upgrade process has become would recommend that you upgrade. The upgrade video is below.

If you are uncomfortable with upgrading then you can get me to do it for you.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: upgrade wordpress, wordpress 3.1.2

Yesterday WordPress released it’s latest update with the release of version 3.1.1. Too many will ignore it like happens every day when they log in and see plugin updates. I know because I work with numerous bloggers when they have problems.

All too often the problems are created because they did not take the time to update when notified.

This was understandable with the earlier versions of WordPress because it often was a technical challenge to keep your blog and plugins updated. You had to use FTP and upload, then activate plugins and new versions.

With the latest updates if your blog is set up properly on a quality host it is very simple to update. With the advent of widgets and child themes it is no longer a problem when you are doing updates.

Doing updates and having the proper security plugins added can make your blog much more secure. Ignoring the updates can be fraught with peril.

If you have not read it check out 7 Ways To Lock Your Blog Down And Protect Your Blog for ways to secure your blog.

This would not be a problem if there were not cretins out there that just love to take advantage of those that do not keep their blogs updated. For them it is fun to come in and wreak havoc on your site.

So today’s question is are you keeping your blog updated? Yeah it can be a pain but not as painful as trying to fix it after the fact.

Leave your comments below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: bloggers, blogs, plugin updates, proper security, quality host, technical challenge, updating your blog

Jet Pack Plugin - Should you add it? [ 3:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of the items that has shown up in my reader is the new Jetpack plugin from WordPress.com. It allows you to use some of the features that they have added to the hosted blogs on you self hosted blog.

It runs off of their cloud servers so it should not hurt your speed or hurt your resources. A big plus.

You can use it to eliminate a few plugins you may be using or added if you use the features it covers. Big plus. It is 8 plugins in one.

Now the features are…

• WordPress.com Stats – So if you are already using their stat plugin this would replace it.
• Twitter Widget – Display your Twitter feed in your sidebar. Would replace your current one if you are using one.
• Gravatar Hovercards – Really like this feature. If someone hovers over the Gravatar displayed in your comments they can see the card that person has on file at Gravatar.
• WP.me Shortlinks – If you are using a short link plugin this will replace it and use the WP.me short link instead.
• Sharedaddy – Share content with Facebook, Twitter, and many more. Can even add your own.
• LaTeX – Mark up your posts with the LaTeX markup language, perfect for complex mathematical equations and other über-geekery.
• After the Deadline – Helps you write better by adding spell, style, and grammar checking to WordPress.
• Shortcode Embeds – Easily add videos from sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Slide Share and more.

So this looks like it could be good. Not sure I will use it though and here is why.

1. Already getting stats from Google Analytics and like that better than WP Stats.

2. The only functionality out of the 8 I would use would be the Twitter Widget and Gravatar Hovercards.

I rarely if ever use the posting functions inside of WordPress for creating my posts. Always prefer a desktop app like Blog Desk. I don’t use complex mathematical equations in my posts.

And finally I prefer a different format for sharing buttons than what is available on Share Daddy.

As I already have a Twitter feed on my blogs this is not right for me at this time.

That being said this does look like it could be very good for bloggers that do use the dashboard for creating their posts, aren’t comfortable adding embed code into a post and do not have Google Analytics installed or prefer live stats. (GA is always a day behind.)

It looks like this could be an excellent addition for a lot of people and seems to be relatively easy to use. Will be testing it on my beta blog and if there is an interest will post more about the configurations if people need it. (The instructions seemed quite good to me but then I rarely have trouble with instructions for plugins because of experience. If they have assumed some knowledge I probably have it. You may not.)

So that is my opinion. What is yours?

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: analytics, google, gravatar, jetpack plugin, latex markup, markup language, mathematical equations, share content, widget

Last week I discussed some of the biggest user changes in the latest version of WordPress. Post format support is one of the biggest changes on the developer side.

The idea behind it is not new. You could create different looks for different type posts prior to this using taxonomies. In fact it is ruffling some feathers with some theme designers but the thought behind it is to at least make most of it standard.

Without standards, changing your theme could be a disaster for anyone using custom post types. If you are using custom post formats and the new theme has different custom posts your display would be quite frankly totally messed up.

If people use the same types, regardless of how they format them you would have the option of changing themes.

The types of post formats are…

• aside – Typically styled without a title. Similar to a Facebook note update.
• gallery – A gallery of images. Post will likely contain a gallery shortcode and will have image attachments.
• link – A link to another site. Themes may wish to use the first <a href=””> tag in the post content as the external link for that post. An alternative approach could be if the post consists only of a URL, then that will be the URL and the title (post_title) will be the name attached to the anchor for it.
• image – A single image. The first <img /> tag in the post could be considered the image. Alternatively, if the post consists only of a URL, that will be the image URL and the title of the post (post_title) will be the title attribute for the image.
• quote – A quotation. Probably will contain a blockquote holding the quote content. Alternatively, the quote may be just the content, with the source/author being the title.
• status – A short status update, similar to a Twitter status update.
• video – A single video. The first <video /> tag or object/embed in the post content could be considered the video. Alternatively, if the post consists only of a URL, that will be the video URL. May also contain the video as an attachment to the post, if video support is enabled on the blog (like via a plugin).
• audio – An audio file. Could be used for Podcasting.
• chat – A chat transcript

So this feature will depend on theme developers adding the code and developing the look for different types of custom post types.

If you are looking for information to add these to your own themes check out the codex for post formats and some of the supporting references.

A lot of potential here but only time will tell how well it will be embraced.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: attribute, custom posts, image attachments, taxonomies, theme designers, type posts, video url, WordPress 3.1

Well it is finally here WordPress has just released the latest version 3.1. Now as this is a feature update and not a security update you may want to wait a bit if you are a technophobe.

Have upgraded a couple of mine and they are working fine with the plugins I use as I have been testing all along with the release candidates.

If the new features are must have take the chance and upgrade to take advantage of them. (More about those further down.) If not, it is rare that despite beta testing and numerous release candidates there is not something found once it goes into wide spread release.

Even think that Matt Mullenweg may even be reading this blog. Here is the email I just received and remember I was looking for a Valentine’s Day release.

Missed you on Valentine’s day. We were busy, busy, busy coding away on this WordPress thing. It’s blogging software but people have started using it for pretty much everything, powering their entire website.

The new 3.1 release is pretty cool, it has a new admin bar so you’re never more than one-click from your admin and adding links in the WYSIWYG is now like 42x faster and includes a lookup to make it easy to link to your own posts and pages.

What’s New With 3.1

• Redesigned linking workflow
• Admin bar
• Streamlined writing interface
• Refreshed blue admin scheme
• Post Formats support
• New CMS capabilities
• New Network Admin
• Advanced taxonomy and custom fields queries

Some of these features are good. I am loving the admin bar. If I am logged in and go to the blog I can get back to where I want (add a post, check comments, see stats just by clicking the bar at the top of the blog.

Post formats is something I will be using and writing about soon.

So if you use WordPress more for a CMS than a blog you will love this version. There is a lot to take advantage of there.

As I always do when we get a new release I put the easy upgrade video below but remember that upgrading or not depends on how important the new features are to you. If they are not wait for the first update.

The process has not changed since 2.7 so the video is still valid.

Look for more on WordPress 3.1 over the next week or so as it gets a wider distribution.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: upgrade wordpress, whats new wordpress 3.1, WordPress 3.1

Things often get stuck in my head. Does not always make sense as to why, but it happens. May be a function of age and baldness or maybe I am just getting senile. Hard to say.

One of the things that stuck was what WordPress wrote when announcing WordPress 3.1 Release candidate 2

“Beta 1 came on Thanksgiving, RC1 on Christmas, and RC2 on New Year’s Day. We won’t be waiting for another holiday for the final release”

Well because that stuck in my mind and we now have an RC4, will it be a Valentine’s Day release?

See I told you strange thoughts sometimes travel through my gray matter and quite truthfully it will come when it comes. I much prefer it be right than be released to meet a deadline.

WordPress does a great job with improving the software and this is not a knock on them but after that statement wouldn’t it be true justice to see 3.1 on Monday?

That is my rambling today what do you think? Leave your comments below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: upgrade wordpress, Valentines Day, WordPress 3.1

WordPress has just released the next release candidate for version 3.1. (The latest trial balloon.) They have had to pare some things back with some of the Ajax functions.

When they released version 2 they commented that after releasing “Beta 1 came on Thanksgiving, RC1 on Christmas, and RC2 on New Year’s Day. We won’t be waiting for another holiday for the final release,” well there is a lot to check in the new release candidate so we may get the new release for Valentine’s Day.

All of that being said there are more than the usual changes in release candidate 3. You can see all of them on the WordPress blog.

If you are a theme or plugin developer that was looking to take advantage of the new Ajax features you will need to check out the latest information.

Will be playing with the new version on the beta blog and will report more later.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: ajax, new release, release candidate, trial balloon, wordpress blog, wordpress-upgrade

It has been 2 months since I last looked at the stats. Guess the holidays got in the way. As there is no doubt that the blog that was almost dead has been revived despite me. I figured it was time for a wrap up.

We’ll look at what worked and what didn’t.

First a quick review of were this started. The first post and the project started on October 12, 2010. The quote below is from that post.

My original blog The Old Bald Guy got hacked two years ago and ended up getting banned by Google. Fixing the hack caused me to lose a lot of the content and except for getting it reinstated I have totally ignored it.

Well not totally I did three posts in two years. Not exactly a good way to get the traffic going well. Time to change that around and get this blog back up to snuff.

I figure it will be a good case study so I posted today for the first time since November last year which was the only post I made on it for the year 2009.

As you can see from the copy of the Awstats below it is only getting about 15-20 visitors on a good day.

Now despite planning hoping to post 3 times a week I have averaged about one new post a week. Why it was a hope not a plan.

I did do the other items that I planned though and one additional one. The two things I was planning to help boost the blog was to use WP Syndicator for creating backlinks and to use Traffic Bug for bookmarking the new content.

The unplanned addition was to use Tweet Old Post plugin. That plugin will automatically tweet past posts to Twitter once or twice a day.

The question was what has this done to my traffic. By the end of the year the daily visitors were consistently over 150.

And the daily so far this month has been averaging over 190 visitors.

If I can actually start posting there more than once a week I should be able to get the traffic back up over 500 visitors a day or more.

The biggest bump came from adding the Tweet Old Post plugin. The WP Syndicator and Traffic Bug usage led to lots of backlinks. A quick search in Google shows 177,000 links.

Unfortunately I did not check that in the beginning so I have no idea how many links I started with. Still it is definitely not a number to sneeze at.

The biggest jump (about 45-50 visits a day) came from adding Tweet Old Post which happened in the first week of December. The bad thing is that it is not necessarily a duplicable item.

I say this because you need a good bit of content on the blog already (this one had over 50 posts despite what got lost in the hack) and you need a sizable Twitter following to drive those type of numbers.

My following on Twitter is a hair under 10,000 followers so depending on whether you have more or less and how actively they follow you your results will vary.

In the end I am very happy with the results at this point. I retired the turtles to allow me additional time to add content to the Old Bald Guy so it should continue to grow.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: awstats, backlinks, blog, case study, google, traffic, traffic bug, tweet old post, WP Syndicator