Choosing a WordPress theme is a very formidable task. Not only do you have the challenge of finding something that looks good to you, but you also have to worry about whether your viewers will appreciate it. Your big question should be, ”does this theme represent the brand I am trying to promote to my customers?”
Here are a few things to consider when choosing a theme: » Read more: Finding the right WordPress Theme
I have learned a new lesson related to my craft. Apparently, some websites practice what is called website scraping. This is where they grab your content and then republish it as their own. Yesterday, I posted “9 ways to keep your mind sharp“. On that very same day, another site took my post and posted it on their website. No mention of my name, just a Read More link that pointed to my post. I discovered this post because of this thing called a pingback.
» Read more: I learned something new today
During my first 100 posts, I have been getting used to the routine of blogging. I have been mainly focused on the content and not worrying about the presentation. I have been kind of taken for granted the software called WordPress. WordPress provides a consistent and feature rich user experience for bloggers and blog readers.
I just finished reading a book titled ”WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.” The first half of this book was mostly a review for me. It covered many things I had discovered the hard way. It was good to read another point of view on WordPress. It reinforced what I had already learned, plus I picked up some new tidbits along the journey. The second half of WordPress for Dummies covers all the stuff under the hood; the details of WordPress themes and Plug-ins and how to customize the user experience. This was the main reason I bought the book and wasn’t disappointed. I have already learned many new things I plan to utilize in the future.
One of my goals for the next 100 is to focus on the user experience.
With my website I plan to:
A few short months ago, I created my personal blog called Wes Johnson – MrWes Words of Wisdom. The blog theme has been based on my life experiences and wisdom gained along the way. In the spirit of the nature of this blog, I’m going to take a moment to reflect on where it’s been.
My original goals:
What I received:
I started my blogging journey by learning WordPress the web-based framework for making blogs like this possible. I’m using the self-hosted version, so there were a few access issues that needed to be resolved in order for everything to function properly.
After installing WordPress, I started learning about Themes and how they work within the WordPress framework. Themes are simply the look and feel of the website the user experiences while they’re visiting. Many themes are free and developed by individuals. Sometimes, a developer may not have tested or encountered a particular scenario. This requires a little bit of PHP programming or CSS magic to resolve these issues.
Once my Theme issues were resolved, I moved on to the WordPress Plugins. A WordPress Plugin allows a developer to extend or create a desired feature that can be shared with the rest of the WordPress community. There a many popular Plugins that help bloggers improve the user experience. I have commented on a few. My most recent discovery was Pretty Link, a WordPress Plugin that aids in creating permalink shortcuts using your domain. Pretty Link adds an extra edge to those that are trying to develop their brand.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
My journey continued with Search Engine Optimization. I had to learn the terminology, tools, and techniques to improve opportunities to be recognized by search engines. Fortunately, there are several WordPress plugins that have helped in my SEO efforts. SEO isn’t automatic, but the tools make it easier to keep up with the important aspects of SEO.
Google Analytics and Web Tools
Two important tools I’ve been utilizing during my first 100 blogs are Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Toolkit or GWT.
GWT – helps the blogger/webmaster see which searches are finding their website. It also points out areas that may be affecting their rankings.
Google Analytics – helps the blogger/webmaster see exactly what’s working and what’s not. This tool provides great insight into which pages or objects in my website receive the most requests.
Google Analytics provides information like:
A few Google Analytics details for MrWes.net between August 28th and September 27th 2009
Content (Ideas)
When I first started, I did have a concern that the flow of my ideas would dimish over time. I am happy to report that I still have lots of ideas for many more blogs. Of course, since this is a personal blog, I do have the freedom to write about any topic I wish.
Future endeavors
In an effort to expand my horizons, I have been considering breaking my blog into two parts. I already have control over the domains mrwes.com and mrwes.net. I would keep mrwes.net as my personal blog and make mrwes.com more focused on one topic. Perhaps tutorials and technical support.
What do you think? Is there a topic you’d like me to spend more time on?
The Journey continues
I hope you have enjoyed my last 100 blogs. If you have enjoyed them, please feel free to Leave a Reply and let me know how much you’ve enjoyed them. Tell your family, friends, networks and associates. You can bookmark blogs that you find useful. You can track this blog using an RSS feed or Subscribe via email using the Posts icon in the upper right hand corner.
I learned something new while I was teaching my Personal Marketing Workshop yesterday. I learned that Short URLs, while being convenient, aren’t always a good thing.
Problem - As part of the prerequisites for the workshop, I have the students do some job research. Many of the links I reference are very long. In fact because they’re so long there are lots of opportunities to mistype the URLs. So, I thought it would be nice if I shrank the URLs down to something short. I used one of the popular web based URL shrinking applications. It works in theory until you discover the short URL domain is blocked by the firewall. This is especially frustrating when you’ve gone through the trouble of getting your domain approved by the IT department. If only there was a way to shorten URLs using my own domain.
Solution - The problem of generating short URLs within a particular domain has been solved in the form of a Wordpress Plug-in called Pretty Link. Blair Williams has created a tool for shrinking, tracking, and sharing URLs on the internet. Pretty Link converts URLs into an Permalink address within the domain it runs on. Pretty Link creates a random short link for you to use or you can override the suggestion and provide your own. With this tool I was able the convert the short URLs that weren’t working to similar short URLs that utilize my domain.
Here is an example of some short URLs that were quickly converted to use my domain instead.
| http://TwitPWR.com/ske | converted to | http://mrwes.net/ske |
| http://TwitPWR.com/skh | converted to | http://mrwes.net/skh |
| http://TwitPWR.com/skz | converted to | http://mrwes.net/skz |
Resolution - The chances of the short URL working increases wherever my domain is allowed. When the short URL is converted back to the original URL it should work as long as it hasn’t been blocked by the firewall.
Added Benefits – Pretty Link provides these added benefits
Flexibility - Pretty Link provides a lot of flexibility
You might have noticed I’m a little excited about this Plugin. I definitely recommend it to anyone who is using WordPress as their blogging platform.
Google Analytics
A few months ago, I started learning about my readership. I added Google Analytics to my website. At first I was just curious to find out about my audience. I wondered about how many people were visiting my website and where they’re located.
Then I discovered you can find out a lot more about the methods your audience is using to read an article. For instance you can see which browser, screen dimensions, Operating System, Internet connection. This is all useful information for your decisions on how to present your information.
As I started getting more familiar with the statistics and the terminology, I decided to add some conversion data to my Google Analytics. A conversion is getting your audience to visit a desired page, as a result of clicking through the page they’re on. This is a really important statistic to know when you’re trying to sell stuff. In my case, I don’t currently sell anything, but I am trying to develop my own personal brand. So, if the readers are interested enough to go to my personal information, then I consider that a conversion.
At the time of this article, I have people viewing from 10 countries or territories. Most of them are from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The remaining 7 countries or territories are from around the world.
Within the United States I have a readership in 23 states so far. It’s kind of interesting as I see which states are reading my blog on a regular basis. I can also see where there are concentrations of people who enjoy my blog. One of my goals is to eventually have my blog represented in all 50 of the United States. I guess I haven’t found a topic that is interesting to everybody yet. I may never find it, but I’m always hopeful. For anyone who has been following this blog for awhile, you know I have a wide range of interests and like to share my views. If I ever find that one special topic I’ll let everyone know. I may even start a new blog just to focus on that topic.
Analyzing the statistics
I regularly visit my web statistics tools
In the morning, I check just to see if there is any new information from the day before. It appears to be information from the previous day. In the evening, I’ll check once more, because I never know when those bots will be crawling my website.
If I see any technical issues have popped up, like broken links or duplicates or other suggestions related to meta data, I try to address it as soon as possible.
Sometimes, I can equate watching the web analytics to watching a single stock in the stock market. You watch it rise and you’re celebrating. You watch it fall and you wonder why. I think this is where it could become an obsession if the focus is too much on the statistics. I have already decided that I’m only going to check twice a day and not be too concerned about the peaks and valleys. Because the statistics change daily.
After a few months of waiting, the Google Webmaster tools finally gave me a list of common keywords found while crawling my site. I’m not sure what to do with this information. But I’m sure someone has blogged about it. I’ll check with www.ProBlogger.Net to see if they have some insight on how I should utilize this information.
BTW: If anyone has experience with other useful web analysis tools please feel free to leave your coments.
SPAM seems to be a problem wherever you go on the internet. Unless you’ve never used email before, you’ve probably received at least one SPAM email. You know those unwanted emails that try to sell you performance enhancing drugs, get rich quick schemes, and phishing scams.
You would never expect to see this kind of thing appear in blogs. Unfortunately, if the default blog settings allow comments to appear, the SPAMMERS will have a field day with it. They post the same kind of stuff that gets sent via email.
One tool that helps fight SPAM is to require admin approval for any comment. Enabling this filter helps prevent the end user from being exposed to SPAM, but the administrator must still deal with the SPAM comments.
Another tool that helps WordPress bloggers fight SPAM is the Akismet plugin. This is a wonderful tool that in my experience has kept up with the attempts of SPAMMERS to fool the system.
One more tool that I plan to utilize soon is the CAPTCHA mechanism that tries to determine if the user is human or a robot before it accepts a comment or Form submission. I’ve heard about some that aren’t so smart so robots can work around them. Before I commit, I’ll be evaluating the available plugins for the most effective solution.
Special thanks goes out to the developer of Akismet. You have done a wonderful job of detecting and blocking SPAM in Wordpress.
If my blog ever gets as popular as your commercial limit, I would be happy to pay.
Till next time, I’ll be evaluating the latest WordPress SPAM fighting solutions
I recently experienced a missing page error on my website. It didn’t match the theme at all. I was kind of disappointed, since the rest of theme had been done so nicely. I figured, no problem, I’ll just install and activate one of them handy dandy Plugins to resolve the error and then it will display nicely within the the content window of my theme.
I’ll admit at the moment, I’m a newbie to the Wordpress framework. So, I have a little learning to do. After doing a some googling on the subject, I discovered, that the missing file error is handled in the theme’s 404.php file. Usually, the theme author modifies the page to be minimalistic, blend in with the theme and display a friendly message to the user. Unfortunately, the error page in my theme must have slipped through the cracks. It didn’t quite fit in, so I set out to create the error page that would fit my needs.
I found a great article Creating an Error 404 Page that gave some great suggestions. I ended up copying the default page, then pasting into the 404.php file. This got me part of the way to my pretty error page. But, it wasn’t trapping the errors, like I had hoped it would. This is where I ended up installing and activating the “Useful 404’s module” at http://skullbit.com/wordpress-plugin/useful-404s/
This module maps the different kind of error codes and information into relatively useful messages. All you have to do, is paste in the code <?php useful404s(); ?> at the strategic point in the 404.phhp file to make it all happen.
This expereience has piqued my interest in what it takes to develop Wordpress themes, Widgets and Plugins. I plan to increase my knowledge on customizing my Wordpress environment.
Till next time, I’ll be learning more about WordPress
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