WordPress Lessons just re-opened yesterday. Classes will begin in October and the structure will be the same as last time.
If you are on the waiting list you should have received an email yesterday but email being what it is and Aweber having the troubles they have over the last few days I decided to post here.
Until Saturday at 10 am the price will be the same as it was last time. After that the price will be going up by $50 but did not want anyone that had signed up to miss this discount because of the email problems.
My monthly free call to answer your questions about WordPress and blogging will be held on Thursday, September 11, 2008 at 8 pm edt. You can stop by any time between now and then and leave your questions.
Just fill in the question form and submit then stop back on Thursday to find the answers. I do recommend that you stop by for the actual q and a session but there will be a replay if there are no recording problems. (My luck has not been good of late with recordings )
Finally caught up enough to download and install the new WordPress 2.6.2. Don’t see any major changes inside the blog but there is a good reason to upgrade ASAP if you are using any of the 2.6 versions.
Stefan Esser recently warned developers of the dangers of SQL Column Truncation and the weakness of mt_rand(). With his help we worked around these problems and are now releasing WordPress 2.6.2. If you allow open registration on your blog, you should definitely upgrade.
You can read the whole post at the link above.
With any security flaw I always recommend upgrading and as there are a few minor bug fixes the primary reason is listed above. You can check out the minor bug fixes here.
I have added the upgrade video below that I created a while back.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
I have long recommended that you host your own blog especially for the sites that are “money sites”. I just am not comfortable with letting some one else have control of the sites I use that generate my income.
Due to this I tend to use the free sites to help improve the hosted blog with incoming links to where I generate my income. The problem is that you may not know exactly what you need from a web host to be able to host your own blog.
Personally I prefer hosts that use cPanel and have MySQL data bases. There are others out there that use other host management tolls like Plesk but I am old and cranky at times and more comfortable with cPanel but they can be used.
You do need to have a MySQL data base to run the blog. Your posts and other information are generated dynamically so if you don’t have a data base to store your posts and other information you won’t be able to use the software.
CPanel hosts usually have Fantastico which can save you time in installing your blog but you do need to tweak the installation after with plugins and a theme to make your blog stand out.
This eliminates most of the free web hosts and even quite a few of the lower cost hosts. You can find quite a few that will work for you for $6 -$10 a month.
So spend the money to get a decent host and buy a domain so you control your site. It is money well invested.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Google is launching their browser today and doing it in a different way. Someone leaked the comic book they are using to explain it. Yes I said a comic book.
Now I have not seen the browser but will be looking forward to trying it. It will be open source similar to Firefox and after reviewing their comic book it will be a lot different than what is out there. If it works as they hope it may quickly become the browser of choice for Windows users. The initial launch will be Windows only but they are working on Mac and Unix versions.
Will be interesting to see how this works out and what changes it causes in the various other browsers like Firefox and IE.
Having watched Google with other services looks like the browser wars have been renewed.
Next question will be what that does to web design and the various themes. Displays could be interesting as this gathers followers.
As always your question and comments are welcomed.
This links directly to my marketing blog. It changes the titles as I post new items to my blog.
It took me less than 5 minutes to create it and gives you the code in regular html and billboard code (what most forums use).
The steps were quite easy.
Sign up
Confirm your email
Put in your blog’s feed
Copy and paste the code where you want your banner to show.
That’s all you need to do and the banner will change automatically each time you update your blog. Now one caveat it only updates a few times a day so there will be a delay before your latest post shows on the banner.
Be interesting to see how well this does in forums where I am active to draw additional readers.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Ken McArthur is holding his Impact Boot Camp this weekend in Philadelphia had Twitter has been a buzz. I am actually sad that I can’t go but went to DC last week and two weeks in a row would cost me my happy home.
Now one of the things that Ken McArthur is good at doing is creating a family feel so quite a few of the people that are attending are people that I do follow on Twitter.
It started really early this am with various people heading to the various airports to catch their flights into Philadelphia. Quite a few are in the Florida area and have been watching Fay while trying to get there.
Some had flights cancelled and been an interesting day seeing what is going on across the country with our air transit system. Others have been checking in as they arrive. People like me have been sending regrets to old friends that we won’t get to see but the family is gathering.
Twitter has allowed all of us to keep in touch and I am sure that I will know what is going on all week end (though not as well as if I was there) through Twitter.
What does this have to do with blogging you are probably asking?
Twitter is like a mini blog and you build relationships and keep in touch with conversations there. Your blog should be doing the same thing with your tribe.
If you really want your blog to be effective the more of a community feel you can create the better you will do with it. Take the time to create your blog where you are asking Sterling Valentine’s Ice Breaker “How can I help you?” and then deliver the answers.
Your readers will appreciate it and become your biggest evangelists.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
P.S. Michael Savoie glad to see you finally made it. You can check out Michael’s story at his blog and help out if you can.
Unlike some previous releases this one is not security related. To quote from the WordPress blog on the 2.6.1 release
August 15, 2008
WordPress 2.6.1
By Ryan. Filed under Releases.
With 2.6.1, we’re continuing our trend of releasing a maintenance release shortly after a major release in order to get fixes for the inevitable “dot zero†bugs into your hands without a long wait. If you’re happy with 2.6, however, keep on using it. You need not upgrade to 2.6.1 if 2.6 is getting the job done.
2.6.1 offers several improvements for international users. Styling of the admin for right-to-left languages is much improved thanks to the efforts of the Farsi and Hebrew translation teams, and a mysterious gettext bug caused by certain PHP configurations is now fixed. For IIS users, 2.6.1 fixes several permalink problems. Image insertion problems in the Press This feature experienced by IE users are also fixed. Of note to everyone is a fix for a performance bug in the admin where those with a lot of plugins would experience slowness on some pages.
I have upgraded my blogs but if you are not having trouble there is nort a need.
Here are a few tools to help you come up with topics for your blogging efforts. From input I get from conference rooms, surveys and comments this can often be a big problem for new and even established bloggers.
First following blogs in your niche and commenting regularly not only helps you get traffic from your commenting but you also get to see what others are discussing. The easiest ways I have to do this easily is to use Google Reader and follow the rss feeds.
You can find blogs in a few ways. First is Technorati. Punch in your keyword in the search box and you will find blogs to subscribe to.
You can also use Google to search for more blogs.
Add your topic as a Google Alert and get the latest news and information that Google finds directly into your email box each day. Here again you also see what is new in your niche.
Finally Google has just added a new service Google Insights For Search. this is a really nice tool for finding what is hot and that can also help you to get better traffic by picking the topics that are currently hot in your niche.
It also will show you the hot topics for that niche.
As you can see it shows you what specific topics are rising in search volume.
To summarize – gather the best blogs in your niche and add them to your Google Reader so you stay current and can take part in the conversation in your niche.
Take advantage of the tools like Google Insight For Search to see what is changing and follow the news through Google Alert and you should always have plenty of fodder for blog topics.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
)
