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- Alexa Traffic Rankings Undergo Major Change | 1 Comment
Every blogger who checked their Alexa rankings today would be in for a surprise. Alexa has just completed making some major changes to their ranking algorithm, and possibly any other service that relies on their ranking would also be effected.
In recent months we’ve heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest. Ask and you shall receive!
We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings system is much closer to what you asked for. We now aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.
In the past, Internet marketing or “make money online” type of blogs generally had much higher Alexa traffic rankings simply because more people in that market used the Alexa toolbar. With these recent changes, I believe Alexa has become a more reliable tool for estimating a website’s real traffic and overall ranking on the Internet.
I assume that most blogs in the “make money online” niche would have taken a hit, and blogs in other niche markets would have seen their rankings increase.
- Spread The Love With The KeywordLuv Plugin | 10 Comments
The KeywordLuv Plugin is the answer to all the irritation that has spread amongst blog owners worldwide as it puts an end to supposed spamming comments once and for all. Or so it seems. It is still up to the blog owner to check their comments and whether some spammer has sneaked his way into the door.
After all, we all encourage thoughtful and useful comments that contribute to the conversation don’t we? All too often I still see one liners and or stupid attempts to push somebody’s wares through a comment and I normally simply delete these.
Even if it is from a reputable blogger.
What this KeywordLuv Plugin does is it allows blog commenter’s to insert their name in front of the keyword they’d like to use to hyperlink back to their sites.
It is obvious however that this will only be beneficial for bloggers who use a dofollow principle on their blogs. If you don’t, then you won’t need to worry about this Plugin. Unless of course you want people to put their name into the comment field regardless.
So instead of having Gobala@EasyWordPress.com leaving a comment, it will now look like this Gobala from Easy WordPress
As you can see, this looks way nicer and proper to the eye. It would also encourage readers to actually use their names when commenting on other blogs if they use this KeywordLuv Plugin.
Personally I hate nothing more than bloggers who comment with Fats Credit Cards. How the heck am I supposed to address this person in a return comment?
You tell me.
The KeywordLuv Plugin works on WordPress 2.2+ (tested on WordPress 2.5, 2.3 and 2.2)
- WP Security Scan Plugin Adds Peace Of Mind | 9 Comments
If you ever wonder how secure your WordPress installation really is, then this Plugin might fascinate you enough to download it. The WP Security Scan Plugin will give you some great insight into your security zone.
What the Plugin does:
- It scans your WordPress installation for file and directory permission vulnerabilities
- It recommends corrective action
- It also scans for general security vulnerabilities.
Here are some screen shots from the authors page:
The Plugin is designed to work in WordPress versions 2.0 and higher, all the way up to the latest version 2.5. The author is still testing some future releases which will involve more goodies such as:
- .htaccess verification
- doc links
- lock out/log incorrect login attempts
- user enumeration protection
- intrusion detection and prevention
- one click change of file/folder permissions
- test for XSS vulnerabilities
This certainly does look like a helpful Plugin that could tell us a thing or two about our security perimeters on our blogs.
If you want to read more about the WP Security Scan Plugin, click on the link and it will take you to the authors homepage.
To download it straight away, go to WP Security Scan.
- WordPress Lightbox Plugin for Your Images | 7 Comments
If you use a lot of images in your blog, you’ll definitely want to have a Lightbox plugin to jazz up the previews and display of your images.
To give you an example of how this works, click on any of the thumbnails below and you’ll see the lightbox preview window, with the ability to browse all the images.
To do this effortlessly on your WordPress blog, you need to download the Lightbox 2 plugin for WordPress, and upload the entire folder to your plugins directory.
Then, activate the plugin and go to the “Options” page (or the “Settings” page in WordPress 2.5). Here you can select different color schemes but after trying all of them I still prefer the default “black” color scheme.
To activate the lightbox effect, you need to add this code to every link you create:
rel="lightbox"Of course this can be automated using another brilliant plugin called the “Add Lightbox” plugin. Once you install this plugin, all thumbnail images linked to the source image will automatically use the lightbox preview codes.
If you’re a photographer or have an image-heavy blog, this will make your site seem much cooler!
- I’m Becoming A Twitter-holic | Leave a Comment
Seriously, I managed to stay away from the lure of Twitter until about two weeks ago. Now that I allowed myself to get sucked in, it is too late I’m afraid.
I’m hooked!
So what is all the fuss about Twitter and why is it cool to be part of the movement? For starters I think we have some sort of voyeuristic streak in us. Twitter allows us to see what our blogging buddies are up to. Kind of like an online bog brother it you will. We can chat via instant messaging system, send each other private messages or post what we are up to for the world to see.
Ok, so you don’t want to know if such and such has just been to the toilet. That’s ok, because I don’t want to either. As far as I’ve seen this isn’t the kind of stuff that is shared on Twitter anyway.
Twitter users are posting about their current activities and what they blog about right now. The question Twitter asks you is what are you doing now and you are supposed to answer that at any given time during the day.
What already annoys me is people who only post links on Twitter. The social network wasn’t intended as a free advertising platform and you are well advised to adhere to this, otherwise you shall feel the wrath of the Twitter gods.
The platform is really easy to use. You login with your username and password and then start twittering away.
Twitter is great to stay in touch with:
- friends
- family
- business partners
- school buddies
- colleagues
- customers
- and whoever else you can think off
Once you are in the system you can add friends and follow people. What this means is that if they add you as a friend too, you can actually communicate with each other. If you get active enough without destroying your to do list you’ll have plenty of Twitter friends before you know it.
There are also cool Twitter Plugins that make your life easier, such as blog applications that let you post to your blog with Twitter, Twhirl which is a little desktop application to twitter with.
Further to this you can twitter via your mobile phone, GTalk, Jabber and Live Journal.
Twitter Plugins for WordPress are a cool feature to use Twitter on or with your blog. Check out that link to see what is available.
Twitter Firefox Plugins let you customize your browser if you are a Twitter-holic like me.
There is way more stuff out there on Twitter as I barely scratched the surface. If you like to give this a go, then head over to Twitter and start twittering like mad.
If you like to follow me on Twitter feel free to visit my Twitter site.
- Stay Inspired With the WordPress Timestamp Feature | Leave a Comment
Do you have moments of total inspiration when everything falls into place and your blog writing just flows? I bet you do, we all do at some stage or another. But unless you can take advantage of this without losing unnecessary time, you will have to go back into your WordPress admin and publish the posts a few days later.
Not so with the timestamp feature. Instead of saving a draft post and then having to go back to publish you can stager future posts at your peril.
This is especially useful when you are going on holidays. Instead of worrying about keeping up with your publishing schedule, why not prepare some posts ahead of time and then publish them to be released every other day, or whatever your posting schedule might be.
You can find this feature in the right hand side of your posting screen. Just change the date to a future date and the adjust the time if you like and then hit publish. If you forget to click on publish it will only save the post as a draft and unless you go in manually and click edit, then publish it won’t be live.That’s it, easy peasy.
Now you never have to worry again about not being able to hold that deadline or not keeping up with your schedule on holidays.
- Zemanta Firefox Plugin Can Read Your Mind! | Leave a Comment
Well almost anyway. This cool new Firefox Plugin works with several platforms to provide you with an ingenious way of posting your blog content. Not only will it supplement your post with related images, links and more. Ideal for you guys who read Easy WordPress to play around with while posting your blog posts.
Zemanta was only just launched on 26 March this year and is already making waves. The Plugin supports the following platforms:
- WordPress Dot com
- Blogger
- Self hosted WordPress (upwards of version 2.0)
- Typepad
It creates a semantic platform that tries to think while you write and provides you with relevant data that you could use to support your posts.
The guys on Zemanta are also working on adding a function that will allow you to integrate your own links using their Firefox Plugin.
Where are the articles pulled from?
The articles are from over 300 indexed top media sources as well as several blogs within the network.
What about copyright issues?
The content which is provide by Zemanta is cleared by copyright or listed clearly as creative commons material. The images are suggested by sources like Flickr and Wikimedia commons.
Presently the Plugin is only supported for the English speaking community.
The idea behind this software is that it will save you time in trolling the web while looking for relevant links and pictures to add to your blog post. I have yet to test this as I just came across the news now and thought to give you a heads up so you can go and check it out yourself.
Just remember, you’ll need to have Firefox installed on your computer as this is a Firefox Plugin.
- How To Connect Your MySQL Database With WordPress | 1 Comment
I found this very good video on how to create a MySQL database for your WordPress blog. The video walks you through the setup of your database and how to add a user to it.
Then it goes into the setting up of your config.php file and what you have to do to upload your WordPress software to the server.
I know many new bloggers who first buy their own hosting are confused about this whole system. The guy in the video really did a great job of explaining how you can do this.
Check it out.
- Is Your Blog On Shared Host? | Leave a Comment
The whole time of being online with my Freelance Writing blog (which nears one year next month by the way), I have been on a shared hosting account. Little did I know that this could potentially get me into some deep trouble.
For starters, did you know that being on a shared host could get your Adsense account banned? Yes, it’s true. A friend of mine shared his hosting account with a spammer and got shut down by Google. No remorse. They simply don’t care.
How would you feel if that happened to you? What if the main portion of your income relied on Adsense. This is a heavy pill to swallow and certainly not what I would want to happen to me either.
Especially since I’m getting into niche marketing seriously know. My first site is up and running and after building for some weeks I finally put my Adsense up and now I’m already earning.
Already ranking in the tops spots on Google for several keywords, this site will go from strength to strength and that’s only the beginning. Plus it helps having been mentored one on one by a leading niche marketer too. Besides this, I’m also building BANS sites and while doing so having a whole lot of fun getting my domains.
So the decision to move to my own server was necessary to save me potential headaches in the future.
See, if you are on a shared domain with someone, you are sharing the same IP address and this could mean serious trouble. Another friend of mine lost his blog overnight, because the guy who shared his server was another spammer and he got shut down without warning.
Eventually after much headaches and annoyance he got his blog hosted again on another host, but it wasn’t really necessary. That is also why I strongly recommend you go with a reputable company like Hostgator for example.
Bluehost stuffed up another friends blog last week. It just disappeared without trace and naturally he was freaking out. So he too had to find himself a good host.
We work too hard on our blogs to have this happening to us and I warn everybody NOT to go with some cheap hosting company, just because they are cheap. Look for a reputable business who has been in the industry for some time and has a great track record.
Then once you can afford it, move to your own server.
I’d love to know from you guys on what hosting company you recommend. Not because you heard it from a friend, but because you are using it and are happy doing so. Who knows, we might get a good collection of companies that we could recommend without worry.
Please let us know in the comments below.
- 5 Reasons You Should Not be Blogging | 10 Comments
Blogging isn’t for everyone, so why force yourself when you’re just not cut out for it?
In fact just for the record, I’ll say that you don’t need to be a blogger to own a blog. You can be a blog owner and get someone else to do all the writing and traffic building, while you focus on other aspects of the business.
As an expansion to Monika’s post “5 common beliefs about blogging”, here are some tell-tale signs that blogging simply isn’t your “cup-o-tea”:
- You absolutely hate writing - There’s no cure for this, and if you really loathe the thought of typing you should not be blogging. True, you can choose other type of media for example create a video blog or focus more on doing podcasts, but you’ll still need to write summaries and perhaps the occasional text post.
- You rather go out and play - If you don’t like looking at the computer for more than an hour, you can’t really blog. Yes again, you can be outdoor more often if you’re doing a video blog but you still need to edit the video, upload it and blog about it. Generally speaking, a blogger has to spend at least 2-3 hours a day looking at the computer screen.
- You don’t like to explore / learn - There is a lot of information on the Internet, to the point where there’s usually too much new things happening that you need to read, understand and eventually blog about. If you don’t adapt to well to learning new information, you end up with nothing to say on your blog.
- You choose the wrong topic - Spinning the same post in different angles can only get you so far. Although you can learn how to come out with creative topic to write about, usually if you find yourself running dry too fast, it has something to do choosing the wrong topic in the first place, a topic that you’re not really passionate about.
- You’re pretending to be another blogger - If have to develop your own blogging identity and style as soon as possible. You cannot constantly try to mimic what other bloggers are doing and trying to beat them at providing the exact same information, especially if your niche market already has several large, established blog.
If you’re guilt of any of the above, then ask yourself “Should I remove myself from the process of continuously creating new content, and focus instead on marketing and getting more traffic?”
New content is great, but there are tons of other things to do if you’re hoping to make a full-time income blogging, such as , building relationship with other bloggers, that you can sell from your blog etc that you may be more suited to.
In such a case, you should outsource the writing part to someone more capable, and you should see better results for your blog; more traffic, more links, and more money generated at the end of the month.
Gobala Krisnan is a direct-response marketer turned blogger who makes over $10,000 a month from his blog empire. If you want to make money online from blogs, he is the only person who can reveal the secret of merging time-tested direct marketing strategies with web 2.0 traffic. Read more about him >>
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