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 just released a security update for version 3.1.

This update covers per the WordPress blog

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, wordpress 3.1.3, WordPress security

Yesterday I spent time going through and removing the MyBlogLog widget from my blogs. As I had 11 different blogs with the widget it could have been a huge undertaking but it wasn’t.

The reason is that I use the widgets function for my sidebars.

Now I have friends that prefer to hard code in their sidebars. I can understand why too. I have on occasion (rare occasion) had trouble with the display of the content in widgets.

It is rare but that needs to be compared to the time savings and ease of using widgets.

In this example, all it took for me to remove the MyBlogLog code was to log in to the various blogs, click appearance then widgets.

Open up the widget titled MyBlogLog and then delete it.

Compare that to going into the editor for the sidebar and finding the code, removing it and making sure I did not remove anything extra that would mess up my sidebar.

Much easier to just delete the widget.

Add in the fact that I can rearrange the sidebar as I am testing things by just dragging and dropping things and there are a lot of advantages to using the widgets.

One final advantage of using widgets is if your theme has an upgrade you do not have to worry about redoing the sidebar file or ignoring the update (not recommended). Now you could avoid that problem if you used a child theme for your main theme with the sidebar code in it but that is a topic for another day.

• So are you taking advantage of the power of widgets?
• Do you prefer to hardcode everything?

Let me know in the 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: editing sidebar, theme editing, wordpress, WordPress widgets

Spring is here or is it? [ 2:41 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Think Mr Murphy is having fun with me today. (Of course when doesn’t he stick his nose in when I am getting excited about things?) Last week the weather here was gorgeous. Got excited that the Ground Hog may have been right (he predicted an early end to winter) and spring was coming early. Today is the first day of spring here in PA and I wake up to…

Not a nice spring day but snow. Yuck.

Really set me back a bit. Really thought about just heading back to bed and crawling under the blankets. After all I have had enough of snow and ice for one year. Would really like to put the snow blower away for the year. Drain the gas, pull the plug and push it into the back of the garage not to be thought about until next fall.

So what does this have to do with blogging or is the old bald guy just losing it?

If you voted losing it you may be right but the thing is that Mr. Murphy loves to mess with bloggers too. Often think that is his favorite sideline.

This is why it is important to be prepared for his arrival. He always tries to show up when you are least prepared.

Even though a day of 70+ temperatures had me thinking of putting the snow blower away for the year I did not. That always waits until much later. (Like the end of April here.)

The same thing goes with making sure your blog is backed up. You never know when Mr. Murphy will decide to visit your blog.

It may be in the form of a hacker. It may be a server problem. It may be a computer crash.

Having backups is something you can and need to do regularly. Make sure you are backing up your data base and WordPress files regularly. Here are a couple previous posts that can help you.

• Using your database backup
• Security Plugins
• Backups – They can save your bacon

Use a backup service like Mozy for your computer.

Make sure that your hosting company is making backups too.

You can never be too ready.

This way when Mr. Murphy decides to visit like he did me this morning you are ready.

Yes I complained that I had to go get the snow blower out again but at least it was ready to go. Like wise I hope to never need my backups for my blog but if Mr. Murphy shows up I will be ready. Maybe not happy but definitely ready.

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: backup service, backups, computer crash, data base, first day of spring, hosting company, mozy, server problem, wordpress

An analytics surprise [ 2:15 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Was digging through Google analytics this morning and something just jumped out and shocked me. Normally when I am checking things there I am more concerned with seeing the top level.

• How many visitors
• Traffic sources
• Bounce rate
• Keywords

You know the items that tell me if I am improving or declining. Which posts are drawing the most traffic. How the traffic is finding me. That type of thing.

Now what shocked me is when I looked inside the visitors area. No surprises there until I noticed the browsers. A big surprise there.

Firefox was number 1 by a huge percentage and Chrome was number 2. IE for this blog was number 3 with about 15%. A huge surprise and actually something that made me smile.

WordPress uses css and one of the big problems with a lot of themes is that IE does not display them the way the other browsers do. Usually when you are looking through the better themes the coder has added extra code to account for the difference in IE.

Maybe that has caught up with them and people have gotten disgusted with it. I sure hope so.

Now to be sure this was not an anomaly because this blog is about WordPress and the readers would tend to like Firefox because of the various plugins, I checked a couple others .

The numbers were similar across the board.

In fact on another blog Firefox was even higher on that blog at over 60%.

So it looks like I am not the anomaly I thought I was. Except for checking display I never use IE. Always Firefox or Chrome and most of the time it is Firefox.

So what browser do you use? Why? 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: browser, google analytics, wordpress

Been beavering away in the background working on some new things. Before it goes too far though I prefer to get your input.

One of the things with WordPress and blogging in general is the speed at which things change. This creates a problem when it comes to creating products for it.

For example – When I first created WordPress Made Easy we were on version 2.0 of WordPress. As WordPress has changed the product has been updated.

Dealing with anything that has to do with plugins has been even tougher. Just went through this week end and went back to the original plugins I used to recommend. Except for Askimet there is not one plugin that I originally recommend. Not one.

When I started blogging and teaching it there was no My Space, Facebook, LinkedIn, Friend Feed or Twitter. All things that with the exception of My Space that I now use regularly.

As a product creator I wonder whether an ongoing membership that consistently updated would be better than creating individual products for this topic.

Now I would love your opinion and would like your input.

The other question is that if you did vote for the membership option would you prefer a higher single payment or an ongoing monthly/quarterly/annual payment?

As I am sure you can tell I am favoring a membership type way of delivering content but that ultimately is up to you the reader.

Appreciate your input.

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: blogging, creating products, individual products, membership option, membership type, single payment, wordpress

Should I have a blog or a website [ 2:06 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A lot has changed in 4 years. Has it ever.

Was doing one of the unfun things that are necessary but not what I like to do. Was going through my stats and seeing where people find me from.

One of those posts was 4 years old and discussed “How do I make my blog look like a website.” That is a topic that has certainly changed in the last 4 years.

HTML5 is becoming the standard for web design. It is more dependent on using css to display pages. CSS works well with the structure of WordPress. Now if the browsers ever started displaying things the same it would become even more prevalent.

More and more people are using a blog structure as their website. I do for almost all of my sites.

With the changes over the last couple of updates to WordPress it has become very easy to use the software as a CMS (content management system) and display different types of pages in different formats. Some pages with a blog look, others with a website look.

No longer is it necessary to hack a theme to make them look similar. You can just set up custom pages and it is now easy to maintain the same look across the board because you are drawing the same theme across the board.

A variety of new themes have taken advantage of this and now it is point and click simple to change pages with the appropriate theme.

This way you can easily get the look of a website but maintain the advantages of a blog across your site.

So has the new question become why isn’t my website a blog?

What do you think? Leave your comment 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: blog, content management system, web design, website, website-vs-blog, wordpress

3 Ways To Attract And Connect With New Readers [ 3:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Now it is no secret to regular readers that I read a lot of blogs. Personally, I think it is one of the keys to writing better blog posts.

Feeding your mind helps you to get more ideas and often to take a slant that is uniquely yours.

There are 3 things that will increase the likely hood that I will read your post.

1. The headline

The first thing that attracts me is the headline. Whether I find a blog from my reader, Twitter, Facebook or Buzz that is the absolute first thing that gets me to open that blog.

Just like a sales letter, the headline creates an immediate response from me as to whether this post is something I want to spend my time with or not.

If you don’t sell me right then and there I am off to something else. After all you are competing for my attention with a lot of other content.

My reader on an average morning just for the topic of blogging and WordPress usually has over 150 new posts each day. Out of that number I usually only open and read 15 – 20 at the most. So only 1 in 10 is likely to get read.

Add in the social sites and the number of opportunities is massive. Time is our most valuable commodity so if you don’t have a rock solid headline the chances of attracting me is nil.

2. Formatting

Once I arrive at your post the next thing is how it is formatted.

Is it easy to read?

Are there subheads if it is more than 3 or 4 paragraphs?

Just this morning I went to a blog that the headline attracted me from my reader and as soon as I opened it there was one huge block of text. Guess what happened?

Yep I was gone. Now it may have been excellent information and it was definitely a topic I was interested in. After all the headline attracted me. Seeing 300+ words in one block makes it very hard to read and consequently not worth the effort.

It was an immediate turn off.

For me the general look and the formatting are key to getting me to take the time to read something.

If it is not easy to read on screen I am gone.

Now for me that means lots of white space, easy to read (black text on white background works best for me).

3. Use Images

Now this is less important than the formatting but if you are using images it gets my attention right away.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and it often can be.

The big thing that an image does with me though is it shows extra effort. When making the decision to continue to read when I arrive an image can make the difference between whether I continue or not.

The other advantage an image gives you is that sites like Google Buzz, Amplify and others will show the image and a properly selected image may just be the curiosity factor get me to click through.

So these 3 ways that can help you to attract and connect with new readers but it only works if the quality of your content delivers.

These 3 items are less important for readers that you have already connected with but aren’t we all always looking for new readers?

That is my thought. 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: 3 things, blog-readers, blogging, formatting, more blog readers, wordpress

WordPress and plugins go together like peas and carrots. (Yeah I know a Forrest Gump thing, love that movie.) Plugins make things easy and can be very helpful but are they getting over saturated?

Over the last few months I have seen more and more plugins released. Some are free and some are paid plugins. Now I don’t have a problem with paid plugins. Have recommended some that can do things to help or automate things.

Really it is surprising that so many authors offer so many for free.

The problem is some are for CMS purposes and some are for blogs. Some are just because of laziness. That last category is the one that can hurt you.

Quite a few of those new paid plugins are specifically for making WordPress into a CMS and that part is fine. More and more I am using WordPress as the base for all of my sites. Except for older sites almost every new site I create uses WordPress to run it. Even minisites.

The problem I am seeing is that each plugin you add has the potential to slow down the loading of your blog. As Google is using load speed as part of their algorithm, page load speed matters.

The point is that although a plugin can make something easier, what is the trade off?

Often a bit of coding, like using a widget, can add the same thing a plugin does with some html. If you add a plugin versus adding some of your own code often you slow your load speed.

Think about it next time you think about adding a new plugin. Ask if there is an easy way to do something the same or similar without adding the plugin.

That little bit of thought may help your load speed.

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: add plugin, cms content, content management system, plugin, wordpress, wordpress plugin

Really like interacting with people and that is one of the reasons I always ask for your questions and get them through comments and even occasionally through Twitter. Here is one that came in last week on Twitter.

It is the rewrite mod and how it works that can cause a problem. When you change from the default settings to a different style of url it creates rewrite rules in your .htaccess file.

There is a good explanation in detail on how this works and why it is harmful.

Now that may get a bit technical so the short version is that using things like %postname%, %category%, %tag%, or %author% first in your permalink will make your rewrite rules become bloated slowing down how quickly your blog can return the proper page. You can use something in front of those tags first like %year% or %post_id% and still use them without it being a problem.

With Google putting a premium on how fast your page loads this can not only frustrate your potential reader but can hurt where your post ranks in the serps. Neither item is something you want to do.

Your questions are always welcomed and encouraged here. Just leave a comment 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: default settings, google, htaccess file, page loads, permalink, rewrite, serps, wordpress