Blog

Have you been thinking about setting up your own WordPress site? Talking to other WordPress users, the general consensus is it’s easy!  All you do is install and start blogging. Well that is true but everyone who sets up a WordPress site should be familiar with plug-ins.

Plug-ins are what I call enhancements to WordPress. They are like extra tools to make your site better, custom and SEO friendly.  Only two plugins come with a standard installation and even these plugins can be removed if you don’t want or need them.  Plugins are completely up to you. In this blog entry I’m going to discuss the four “must have” plugins.

The first plugin I recommend is Askimet. This plugin comes standard with every WordPress installation. Askimet works to block spam comments on your blog. Activating this tool is pretty straight forward. In the plugins section, click Activate under Askimet. Then go HERE for your key (this does require you to signup).  Keys for Personal Blogs are free and non-personal keys are between $5-$15 per year. After submitting basic information for your type of blog an email is sent to you with the key.  Back in WordPress there will be a red box at the top t of the page asking for the key. Enter the information and you’re done. Your blog is now protected from spam comments.

The rest of the plugins I’m going to refer to do not come pre-installed on WordPress. You must find them and install them manually. Don’t worry this process is easier than it sounds.  There are two options for installing plugins.

1.       In the WordPress plugin page, there is a search for additional plugins box. Type in the name of the plugin you want, click search and select install on the plugin you were looking for.

2.       Outside of the WordPress admin console, locate and download the plugin you want. Then FTP the unzipped files to yoursite.com/web/content/wp-theme/plugins. Login to the WordPress Admin Console, navigate to the Plugins page and there is your plugin.

The Social Networking plugin that I recommend installing is AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button. This plugin adds a button to your blog posts that allows readers to share the posts on multiple Social Networking sites (like, twitter, facebook, etc) It’s a great way to let users help you get your blog noticed.

There are two SEO plugins that I would suggest to every blog user; Meta SEO and Google Sitemap Generator. Meta SEO helps you manage and add meta tags to your blog posts. After activating this plugin you’ll notice a new category in the left navigation of the WordPress Admin Console “Meta SEO”. This is where you manage your tags. To add tags to posts, either add a new post or edit an existing post. Scroll down beneath the content area of the post and you’ll see new features called Meta Keywords, Meta Tags, and Meta Descriptions, which is where specific post SEO information goes.

The other plugin, Google Sitemap Generator, does just that; it appends new posts information to an existing sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.zip file. Before this plugin is activated, you need to create a blank sitemap.xml and a blank sitemap.xml.zip files to upload to your site. Place these files here: yoursite.com/web/content/. Activate the plugin and submit this xml file to Google Webmaster tools.

I have recommended four basic and very helpful plugins that every WordPress site should have; Askimet, AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button, Meta SEO, and Google Sitemap Generator. Although there are thousands of plugin out there, from my experience these four are the foundation to improving your blog.

Do you use any plugins similar to these? What are your core plugins?

Related posts: Search Engine Optimization Starter Tools, How to manage a blog – tutorial

Filed under: Blog,SEO   Tags: AddToAny, Askimet, Google Webmaster Tools, seo, sitemap.xml, Social Networking, WordPress,
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Being someone who spends my days on a computer, I’m often asked about blogs.  How do I successfully engage end users? Why isn’t my blog ranked at the top of search engines? What’s the best way to advertise new content? Well, before we cover those questions, let’s backup a little.  Before we dive into blogs, we need a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Search Engine Optimization also known as SEO; sounds scary but there is nothing to be afraid of.  All SEO is a process of optimizing your content for search engines.  Keywords, organization, and linking all support the improvement of SEO. There are many ways to use SEO, but this topic requires its own blog post(s).

So, what does SEO have to do with writing a blog post?  Everything!  Every blog post requires a title but before you just type in a title, stop and think about it.  Having a blog title made up of common, everyday words will make the blog harder to find on search engines.  For example, if you’re looking for a blog about arranging wedding roses, you wouldn’t search for “arrange flowers”.  Instead you’d type in “Arrange wedding roses” which will produce more accurate results.  The second title specifies the type of flower and the type of arrangement. These are keywords.  Having keywords in the will help place the blog higher than blog posts without keywords in the title.

Now that we have keywords in the blog title, let’s cover the use of categories.  Blog categories were once explained to me as drawers in a file cabinet.  Each blog needs to be filed away and there are only so many drawers, so each drawer needs to cover a general topic.  The above simile uses the drawers as categories and the file cabinet is a website.  The main points to take away from the example is each blog needs to be assigned to a general category, there should be a limited number of categories, and categories help organize your posts.  So if you have a category labeled “Fitness” and I find one blog in this category I can easily navigate to the Fitness category to view the rest of the Fitness blogs.

Tags are a place to enter keywords that deal with the topic of the blog.  We can think of Tags as the folders in the file cabinet drawers.  These would be keywords that are (or wouldn’t fit) in the title.  Back to my Fitness Category; if I wanted to see more specifically blogs about Running, a tag would take me to that “file” with all Fitness blogs that deal with Running. When thinking of tags, it’s suggested to have a handful (or two) and reuse as the tags over and over again.  Having too many tags can overwhelm end users. How do you enter a tag? Most blogging sites follow this format: health,medical center,technology.  Where a comma separates the words and spaces are only allowed between phrases, like “medical center”.

Now that we’ve gone over how to organize your blogs, the next step forward is end-user interaction.  This section will cover comments, trackbacks, social networking, and RSS feeds.

Each blogger has their own opinion about enabling comments on blogs.  The purpose of comments is to allow readers to share knowledge, ask questions, and give their “two-cents” on the topic.  You might even get comments from readers requesting more blogs about the topic at hand. Without comments, it’s just your opinion/view out there.  No discussion, no feedback. Not having reader’s comments makes for a pretty lonely blog out there on the web.   Now, I do want to mention briefly that having comments enabled on your blog not only leaves the door open for readers to interact with the blog, it also can lead to some spam.  There are tools available to help alleviate spam and some bloggers just turn off comments on old blog posts.

Every now and again, you may write an excellent blog that completely inspires someone.  This end-user would like to write more than a comment; that’s where trackbacks come into use.  Trackbacks are a way of telling another blogger that you have found their post useful, and have made a post of your own which continues the discussion. This feature must be enabled on your blog site and enabled on the other person’s blog site to work.  When a reader uses a trackback that was set on your site, you will receive notification.  Now you can see what they wrote and post your comments.  You can look at trackbacks as a way to “link” common blog posts together and generate more conversation.

With the explosion of Social Networking websites, it is an excellent SEO strategy to use plugins on your blog site that enable readers to easily place a link to your blog on their social networking site (facebook, twitter, linkedin, etc.)  This is the electronic “word of mouth” advertising that every successful blog uses.  Using this feature as a plugin, takes little time to setup and can be one of the best features on your blog.

Living in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, Many people don’t always have time to sit down to go through all the of the blog sites they want to.  This is where RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds come to the rescue.

Every blog should have an RSS feed URL.  This allows potential subscribers to use an RSS Reader, which requires this URL.  A RSS reader aggregates all of the end user’s favorite blogs and RSS feeds into one central location; allowing the user to simply check the RSS reader to view the latest updates from their selected blogs and RSS feeds.  A RSS reader can be a stand-alone desktop application like NewsGator or many homepages like Google allow you to add widgets that will serve as an RSS reader.

*** Suggested Tip: Use Google’s Feedbuner to publicize your RSS feed.  The advantage of Feedburner is it allows you to change where your blog is hosted without changing the RSS feed URL that viewers have subscribed to. Subscribers that are linked to RSS feed’s that are run through Feedburner won’t even notice that your blog location has changed which prevents loosing subscribers.  If you move your blog without Feedburner, then users will have to re-subscribe to your RSS feed which can lead to loosing subscribers.  For more information on what feedburner can do check out their help section.

In conclusion, successful blogs harness Search Engine Optimization which leads to more readers.  Keeping your blog organized and encouraging viewers to interact with your blog are the fundamental steps to building something great. There have been many steps covered here and I hope every topic gives you a better understanding on how each part builds to the next part.

Do you have any experience with blogging? If you have, what has helped you? If you haven’t, did this article help get you started?

Filed under: Blog,SEO   Tags: Blog, Categories, comments, RSS, seo, Social Networking, tags, Title, trackbacks,
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*UPDATE*

Chad Keck recently put a video tutorial which explains how to do this in a much simpler manner than what I have described below.  I suggest you first try and follow his video. http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_demos/cloud_computing_word_press_install

Here is a quick step-by-step guide to install WordPress on a site hosted through Mosso (Cloud Sites).

Assumptions:

• You know how to manage your domain
• You know how to upload files to your website

1. Set up your Cloud Site.
1a. Login into Mosso then navigate to Cloud Sites under Hosting in the left-hand menu.
1b. Below the currently hosted websites you will see a section Add a New Website. Fill in your details here.

1c. Add the website as you have any others, make sure to allow for 1 database and set the Default Technology to Linux/Apache/PHP

2. Download WordPress. You can get the download at, http://wordpress.org/download/.

3. Extract the zip file to your local computer.

4. Open the extracted directory wordpress and rename the file, “wp-config-sample.php” to “wp-config.php”

5.Set up your MySql database for the website.
5a. After your site is created you should be in the management section of the newly created site. Click on the Features tab to go add a new database.

5b. Once you have navigated to the Features page click on the “Add” button in thee Databases section at the top.

make sure to remember or write down what you fill out in the next two steps.

5c. Step 1 – Give your database a name, I usually choose the domain name of a shortened version of it.  Choose MySql * as your Database type.  Continue.
5d. Step 2 – Enter a database username, I always use the same as you used for the database name to keep it simple.  Enter and confirm your password.  Finish.

6. Update the WordPress file, wp-config.php.
6a. While the database is being created you can go ahead and update this file. Open the file up in your favorite text editor.  You should see where you need to enter your database name, database username, password and host.  The name, username and password you just created.
6b. The host can be found once the database is created under the Features tab you should be able to click on the name of your database to edit it. On this page you will see a section title Database Information.  You will see “Hostname” under the Name and Hostname section.  Use this to replace, localhost below.

update the fields in red below

6c. Update the Authentication Unique Keys in this file.  In the file it gives a handy link to generate the keys, https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/. Open up a browser and go to that url.  Copy the output of it and replace what is in the file with it.

6d. Save the wp-config-.php file.

7. Upload all the wordpress files to your site via ftp.  Go grab a bite to eat, this may take a few minutes.

8. Now you’re ready to start configuring the blog. In your browser navigate to: [yourdomain.com]/wp-admin/install.php.  If you haven’t  set the domain to be live yet you can use the testing url here.
Fill out the info on this page.
Uncheck “Allow my blog to appear in search engines..”  Once you have the blog ready to go live you can check in this settings.
Click the button Install WordPress.

9. Note the username and password and then “Log In”.  I just copy the password to my clipboard.

10. Login and change password.
Login and click on “admin” in the upper right corner of the page.  This will take you to your profile where you can update your password to something you’ll remember.

11. Create and Upload a .htaccess file so you can have friendly urls for your posts.
11a. Open up a text editor and create a new file.  Add the text below:

11b. Save the file as “.htaccess”.
11c. Upload this file to the root of your blog.

12. Update the blog to allow for friendly urls.
12a. In the WordPress admin section under Settings in the menu found at the bottom click on Permalinks.
Under Common Settings update it to one that you like and Save Changes.

13. Delete the index.html file located in the root directory.  This is just a placeholder page created by Mosso until you have your site ready.

YOU’RE DONE.  You should now be able to go to your domain and see your blog.  Some of the steps could be done out of order but following it will get your blog up and running.  I hope you find this beneficial.

Filed under: Blog   Tags: Rackspace Cloud, WordPress,
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