WordPress

3 Tips in Securing Your WordPress Blog

WordPress is a powerful blogging platform yet it isn’t without its weaknesses.  Because it is a popular open-source platform, it lends itself to becoming vulnerable to attacks from hackers. A number of WordPress blogs have been victims to these attacks.  There are some things that you can do however to reduce your vulerability and no longer become the low hanging fruit on the tree.  Here are 3 things you can do to secure your wordpress blog more tightly

1) Don’t use the default admin username.

One of the most important things that you can do to secure your blog is to use another login name for the admin other than the default login name.  When you install wordpress onto your website, most of the time, people tend to use the default login name of ‘admin’ and that makes it easier for hackers to get into your admin panel because then they only will need to guess the password.  This one thing alone can cut down on the the ease of hackers getting into your blog.

2) Keep your blog updated

WordPress is constantly coming out with new versions that have been tested against the latest known attacks.  These new versions keep your blog from being vulerable to the popular attacks that are out there.  It is quite easy these days to upgrade your blog , as it is as simple as clicking a button.  If the automatic upgrade doesn’t work, it is probably due to not enough space in your hosting account, or some change in the server setting that needs to be done.  If you do have enough memory, then contact your hosting server and let them know of the problem.  They should be able to change […]

By |July 25th, 2012|Website Development|1 Comment
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WordPress Blogging Tips – Top Mistake Blog Owners Make

WordPress is a powerful blogging platform that can also be used as an

entire website.  This blogging software is powerful enough to fit the needs of most small businesses when it comes to using this platform to create an entire website.  In fact, WordPress is the most popular blogging platform out there today and in use by both large and small businesses.

One of WordPress’ major benefits is that it is very a flexible platform due to the large number of plugins available for the platform.  These plugins add functionality, therefore allowing WordPress to be able to fulfill most kinds of standard website application requirements. This is the main reason why this blogging platform is used by many website owners today.

Even with the quickly growing adoption of this blogging platform, many users still don’t know how to set up the blog so that it makes optimum use of its features to be able to improve their SEO ranking as well as automate some of the maintenance functionality that will save a lot of time and frustration in managing the website.

One of the biggest mistakes that WordPress users make is choosing the default setting in how the URL’s of the blog pages are created.  This is very important because the choosing the correct setting is an extremely easy way to improve the website’s SEO rankings.

The image below shows one of the permalink settings that should be used.  Notice something other than the default setting is picked…

Blog URL: Linking Settings

The reason why this setting […]

By |July 16th, 2012|Website Development|0 Comments
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Answer Your Internet Business Questions Day – Internet Business Strategies Show

Today’s episode covers general questions that I have received from customers or web visitors relating on creating a powerful web presence.   The questions range from social media, to article marketing, to traffic generation techniques to web conversion and more.  The topic of Internet Business Strategies is a large one and can involve many aspects, yet each one is important in creating the road-map of what needs to be done to get a web presence from point A to point B.

Listen in as you get the answers to the following questions.

Question 1:    I want to learn more linkedin
Question 2:    How to write a good call to action and How often to submit articles?
Question 3:    How can I implement videos, .mp3s and advertising on my WordPress site.
Question 4:    How to get customers to order from your site.
Question 5:    Top search engine ranking followed by getting visitors to the site.
Question 6:    how to establish credibility online and getting the target audience to the website?
Question 7:    How do I capture names/e-mail addresses of blog visitors?
Question 8:    How to prevent business blog from becoming boring and mundane.
Question 9:    How to do the least expensive advertising on the web

By |January 26th, 2011|Radio Shows|0 Comments
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WordPress Blog – Replacement for Ping.fm Service

Well sometimes the plugins work and sometimes they don’t.  There is a very handy plugin for WordPress called ‘CR Post to Ping.fm’ that worked like a charm.  Recently however, many people have had their API codes for this particular plugin suspended.    Ping.fm has been slow to respond when you follow up with them and so there is not an easy way to get the plugin working again. So what is a person to do in it’s place?

What is nice is with this application is that it allowed the blogger to update all of their social networking sites all at once through using the ping.fm service and the ‘CR Post to Ping.fm’ plugin.  The latest news from the author of the plugin shares that Ping.fm is still evaluating his plugin in their bid to reduce spammers from abusing their service.

In the meantime, there is another plugin that uses another service called LinksAlpha.  LinksAlpha is similar to Ping.fm with some important differences.  The first one is that it updates fewer number of websites than ping.fm, and second, it has a tiered service that gives you only the barest number of social networking sites you can update for free and the barest number of times you can update those sites.

If your only wanting to connect to the major sites like Linked-in, Twitter and Facebook and you only have one blog you want to share with these networks and you post no more than once a day, then this solution will serve your needs.

  • First you need to get an account at LinksAlpha and setup your networks.
  • Then install the plugin ‘Network Publisher’ and activate it
  • Click the link that says ‘add your api key’ and you will go […]

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By |December 28th, 2010|Website Development|3 Comments
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4 WordPress Widgets That Will Give Your Blog Maximum Flexibilty

I have used these widgets with great benefit to my blogs.  There are others out there that will also add functionality, but these are the basic ones that no blog should be without…

1. Widget Logic

Widget logic is a useful widget that allows you to control which pages your widgets appear on. It’s power resides in the fact that it can be implemented on a widget by widget basis. This gives you full reign over what kinds of content appears on what pages and you an further target your content to a much tighter topic. Widget logic can be found at wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic/ and is a free plugin. You will have to understand some simple WordPress conditional tag syntax, but it is very easy to pick up and once you have it, you are on your way to creating a truly unique website.

2. WordPress Signup Forms

WordPress signup forms are widgets that interface directly with your autoresponder, or mailing list software. The more popular emails list services each have their own wordpress widget, so the specific one that you would use will depend upon the service you have. Using these widgets makes it easy to add a signup box to all of the pages on your web site, which will help your mailing list grow more quickly.

WordPress signup form widgits include the following:

1shoppingcart – wordpress.org/extend/plugins/1shoppingcartcom-wordpress-signup-forms/

Aweber – wordpress.org/extend/plugins/aweber-integration/

Constant Contact – wordpress.org/extend/plugins/constant-contact-api/

IContact – wordpress.org/extend/plugins/icontact-widget/

3. RSS Feed

The RSS feed comes with the standard WordPress install and it allows you to bring in other feeds to place on your website. Using RSS feeds allows you to have content on your blog that is constantly changing. This feature will bring the search engines back to your site on a more regular basis, […]

By |November 3rd, 2010|Website Development|0 Comments
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Top 3 Pages That Should Be On Any WordPress Based Website

WordPress has come a long way in it’s journey as the #1 blogging platform out there today. As the features and functionality has increased over time, the possibilities for what can be done with WordPress as a website solution have increased. With today’s features, WordPress can be used to create an entire site in most cases in addition to just a blog. This article discusses which pages should be on a WordPress blog.

1. Landing Page

The landing page or home page, depending upon the type of web site, is critical in being able to convert your visitors to taking a specific action. It is very difficult to do that with a blog. When people land on your blog home page, they usually land on a page with a lot of content and nothing really directing them to do anything. If any of your blog titles happens to catch their attention, then when they click on a specific post, you may be able to convert that into an action, but only if your post is written up to do just that. If not, then you will just have a reader who may or may not come back to your site.

Having a landing page will allow you to prepare the visitor and guide them through the site the way you want them to go.

2. Contact Us Page

WordPress makes it easy to put a contact us form on your website that will get emailed back to you when the visitor submits the form. There are a few contact us plug-ins that give the website owner a lot of flexibility in getting the kind of feedback that will be most beneficial to them. One of the contact form plugins […]

By |October 7th, 2010|Website Development|0 Comments
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Free WordPress eCommerce Plugins

Here are some free WordPress eCommerce Plugins.

These plugins are available for free and can be found at the Plugin repository on WordPress.org.

Ecommerce plugins come in both free and paid versions. The jury is still out on whether or not the paid plugins are better. The best way to understand which solution is best for the blog owner is do a feature/product comparison table and determine which plugin best fits those needs.

Some free ecommerce plugins:

Yak Shopping Cart – This plugin provides simple ecommerce capability to the blogging platform. Some of the features of this plugin include the ability to create products from posts or pages, configurable shipping, checkout widget, downloadable products multiple payment options, and ability to set promotions, among other features.

eShop – eShop offers customizable checkout, product options, downloadable products, multiple payment gateways, shipping options, automatic emails for purchasing and it’s compatible with WP affiliate for affiliate marketing. You are even given some inventory control as well.

Are Paypal – This plugin is more of a paid content type of plugin. Users of this plugin would use it to manage the payments of paid content on their blog. This plugin allows for subscription payments, bonus add-ons as well as standard one time access payments. What is nice is that google can search the hidden content so it can be indexed in the search engines.

More on Ecommerce shopping cart plugins:

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By |August 21st, 2010|Website Development|0 Comments
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Free WordPress Plugins That Will Take Your Blog To the Next Level

WordPress is a blogging platform and a content management system that provides an extreme amount of functionality for a very low lead in cost.  With some plugins, you can turn your blog into anything from an ecommerce site to a social networking site.  There are free solutions as well as solutions that are paid.  What is the advantage of the free solution?  Well it is free.  The free solutions allow the blog owner to get going at a low entry level.  The thing with these solutions the support for these plugins can be a bit spotty.  (It can for paid versions as well, but that is usually less likely.  Look at the reviews for the plugins before investing)

So what are these plugins that will take your blog to the next level?  And what exactly is that level?

Membership Site

If you want to turn your blog into a membership site then there are a couple of free plugins that you can use to do that.

1) Members is a free plugin that turns your site into a membership site.  Some of the features of this plugin include:

  • Edit Roles: Edit (and delete) specific roles and each role’s capabilities.
  • New Roles: Create new roles for use on your site.
  • Content Permissions: Control what roles have access to specific posts and pages.
  • Shortcodes: Use to restrict/allow access to content.
  • Template Tags: Functions to be used within your WordPress theme.
  • Widgets: A login form and user list widget for use in any widget areas.
  • Private Blog: Force visitors to log in before viewing your site.

You get a bit more flexibility with user status and content, but as you can see, you would need additional functionality to add payment plans to the site.

s2Member […]

By |July 4th, 2010|Website Development|1 Comment
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WordPress Magic and How it Can Supercharge Your Whole Web Presence

In this show, Corrinda Campbell of Get it Done Marketing and B. Hopkins covered the benefits of how using WordPress can fill the needs of most small business owners, and also some things to watch out for when creating your blog.

Catch the answers to these following questions!

Question 1: What is WordPress?
Question 2: Isn’t WordPress just for blogging?
Question 3: Why is WordPress a good solution for a small business owner?
Question 4: What are the benefits of having a blog page integrated with my website?
Question 5: How does my blog relate to what I do with social media and my web presence?
Question 6: What’s the best way to get started with WordPress, (.com v. .org)?
Question 7: What do I need to host my own WordPress website/blog?
Question 8: How do I add a blog to my existing website?
Question 9: There’s a new up date coming soon WordPress 2.9 what can we expect?
Question 10: Where can I get help with my WordPress website/blog
Question 11: How do I create a login?

Get it done marketing – http://getitdonemarketing.com
Internet Business Strategies – http://psiphonconsulting.com

Also B. mentioned the Facebook class w/ Grandma Mary and Andrea Vahl.  More details at this: Facebook Class – Now Repeated for a new date!

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By |January 23rd, 2010|Radio Shows|0 Comments
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How to Start a Blog for a Life Success Coaching Business

The importance of a blog is that it provides many benefits to the owner of the blog, especially in the areas of branding, SEO, displaying their knowledge, and a means of connecting with their target market.  A blog is an important tool for many businesses, however it is especially useful for those in the coaching business.

For those in the life success coaching business, blogging is one tool that can really let you connect with your target market.  You can use your blog to discuss different life coaching topics and share with your readers how you would either coach someone through different life situations, or how you yourself would handle different life situations.  The later one is the more powerful as you are showing your reader that you are practicing what you preach.

So how does a life coach start a blog?  Here are the steps for both not having a website, and having one.

1)  Not having a website.

If you don’t have a website and don’t desire to get one, you can still start a blog for your business, and get leads for your business as well.

Here are the steps:

  • Decide on one of the online social blogging sites that allow you to register a blog.  There are free and paid sites.  For your purposes, a free blogging service will be more than adequate.  Some of the free blogging services out there are:
  • Once you have decided, choose name for your blog that is keyword focused (I.E. Denver Success Coach).  Begin blogging about different training topics related to Life Success Coaching.  Blog regularly (in the beginning, at least once a week), and you will begin to build up […]
By |December 21st, 2009|Website Development|2 Comments
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